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Most people with an iota of intelligence will avoid listing the top ten anything. Name your favorite ice cream flavor and, sure enough, the chocolate-mint-chip people will be all up in arms because they got beaten out by vanilla. Even a list of your favorite movie stars will have irate theater owners refusing to sell you a ticket. No matter how hard you try to assemble a non-threatening roster of favorites, somebody’s going to be miffed. Name a “top one hundred” and the bottom fifty will never speak to you again. The top two-thru-ten will be horrified that they’re not Number One. And the ones you leave out? They’ll spit whenever your name is mentioned.
Joe Vegas once said, “Make a list, and everybody will want to be on it.” But before I once again become an object of derision (during my fifteen years with SKIN&INK, I earned the nickname “Target”), please know that I love everybody! Even the idiots, I love. Even the people who swallow parakeets and hate Elvis, I love. Even the numb nuts who are somehow on my list (solely because they are influential), I love. They probably know who they are, by the way, and should thank their lucky stars that I’m in a good mood and don’t compile of list of Tattooing’s 101 Biggest Jerks.
So, here I go leaping into the breach, counting down with numbers 101 thru 92. It is done this way, ten at a time, to both stay organized and build suspense. By the way, all you potential candidates who are thinking of influencing my vote—since this feature will be monthly and run for almost a year—keep in mind that there’s at least one Christmas, my birthday and a Father’s Day in there somewhere.
—Bob Baxter
