DATE: Wednesday, September 24, 1997         TAG: 9709240031

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: LARRY MADDRY

                                            LENGTH:   81 lines

TATTOO EXPO FELL VICTIM TO INJURY SUFFERED IN A BUNGEE PLUNGE

I WANT TO apologize to readers who showed up at Chick's Beach on Labor Day weekend expecting to see a tattoo exhibition that had been canceled.

It was all my fault.

Agnes Reddick of Newport News was but one of the readers who called to complain.

``You wrote a column saying there was going to be a Chick's Beach Tattoo Expo on Labor Day weekend. And on the basis of that article, my family drove over on that Saturday with a picnic lunch in our pickup truck. My brother Earl followed us on his Harley. Earl wanted to enter the contest.''

Agnes said her brother has a stunning array of tattoo art on his person, including anchors, dragons, a large heart bigger than a throw pillow on his chest and a hunting scene in which the hounds in pursuit of a fox chase him down into Earl's underwear.

``Why didn't you put something in your paper saying the tattoo expo had been canceled?!'' she demanded.

Agnes said she didn't normally read my column but had seen it posted on a bulletin board in a coin-operated laundry in Newport News. I told her how sorry I was to have caused such inconvenience.

I also want to apologize to Bob Guess, Will Walker, and Randy and Bobbie Clemmons - organizers of the tattoo event - for any embarrassment I have caused them.

They had taken note of the fact that the Chick's Beach neighborhood of Chesapeake Beach was notably deprived of art save for the people sunning in and around the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel.

``If you take away the neon sign advertising Camel cigarettes in the Junior Market window - which looks real nice after dark and has given a creative uplift to our little community - there's hardly anything left except the tattoos,'' Bob said. Why not celebrate the tattoos, he asked.

And that's how the Chick's Beach Tattoo Expo got started.

There had even been talk of having a tattooist at the site of the expo who would tattoo dogs for a fee so they could be identified if stolen. I told Bob to sign up my dog Mabel, because she has always envied dogs who had them.

So, I was not against the tattoo expo. I simply forgot when Bob phoned me to say the event had been canceled. At the time, I was writing about the last running of the Low Rent Regatta - which took place on Labor Day weekend - and got distracted.

Bob had phoned five days before Labor Day to say the event would not be held and gave me ample time to write of the cancellation.

``I've got some bad news,'' he said.

``How's that, Bob?'' I asked.

``You remember my telling you about the Menendez Brothers who were coming from Sausalito, California?

``Only vaguely,'' I replied.

He reminded me that the Menendez Brothers were to have been the centerpiece of the Chick's Beach Tattoo Expo. ``They've been written up in all the tattoo magazines,'' he said. ``Jose, Rodriguez, Miguel and Al.''

``Well,'' he continued, ``I just got a call from Sausalito. Al was injured in a bungee-jumping contest and can't make it to the expo. He's in a body cast at the hospital but is expected to live.''

``What about the other brothers. Are they coming?''

``They can't come,'' he said.

``Were they bungee jumping too?'' I asked.

Bob said it wasn't a question of injury, it was the nature of their tattoos.

He explained that the brothers were a one-of-a-kind walking exhibition of Dick Tracy comic strip art.

``Each has a frame of the comic strip tattooed on his stomach,'' he said. ``Naturally the brothers have to stand shirtless beside each other so that viewers can read the entire Dick Tracy strip in order on their stomachs,'' he said.

``Natch,'' I replied.

I asked Bob if the other brothers couldn't come anyway.

``Normally they would,'' he said. ``Sometimes they are scheduled to be at a tattoo event and one gets sick and it doesn't much matter, they tell me. But Al is critical. He's the final frame and has Dick Tracy nabbing a jewel thief on a rooftop beneath a full moon right there on his stomach.''

Bob said the Menendez Brothers collective artwork would make no sense without Al. So the entire expo had to be scrubbed, he said.

Bob gave me Al's address in the hospital in case I wanted to send him a card. I think the expo committee should take up a collection and send Bob to Al's hospital in California.

He's something of a card himself.

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