How did you feel when you saw how you were being portrayed on the show?

If I took your life and edited it down to the one percent I want to show people, I can make anybody look like whoever I want. I can make the biggest asshole look like an angel. It’s so far away from who a person really is. We ended up being these characters that we really aren’t. That’s TV. It’s not a scripted show, so the viewers start to believe every bit of bullshit that happens during it.

When did you realize it wasn’t going how you wanted it to?

In the beginning, I saw American Choppers and I said, “Man, we got a great potential show to do what those guys are doing.” Not that I’m a fan of their fucking bikes, but the dynamic of a shop is so interesting. My whole idea was that it was going to be real. But TV makes it not real. If I scream at Yoji [Harada] once a fucking month, they make it look like it’s every fucking week. You can’t have control over everything unless you produce your own fucking show. Miami Ink was 99 percent fake and I’m sorry people have to know that. If it was real, I wouldn’t have to walk through the door three fucking times so you can capture the scene.

So was the Kat Von D fallout mostly TV magic?

Man, that’s TV, dude. I never have anybody shit in my house. When somebody talks shit about you in your own fucking house, you ask them to leave. And that was it. They’re saying that I called her screaming at her on the phone. She said I was chauvinistic and I said a woman doesn’t have a place in a tattoo shop. It was all fake. I didn’t even have the chick’s number. They wanted to create drama because they wanted to push another show. They needed to create a cliffhanger. At that point, I lost all trust in the network and said, “I’m done. I don’t want to do the show no more.” I didn’t agree to have my name spread with 60,000 people because it was my name that created it. It was LA Ink, London Ink, fucking Italian Ink. It was endless.

So we probably won’t be seeing you making any cameos on LA Ink?

Oh, no. You will never see me having anything to do with Kat, on TV or off. I don’t wish anything bad on her, but I don’t want anything to do with what she or the network are doing.

Did the show end up having a negative effect on your tattooing?

I’ve done the best tattoos I’ve ever done over the course of the past four months, and it was due to the fact that I was out of that fucking shop. Being in there shooting for four years destroyed me mentally and artistically. It made me hate tattooing. I was associating tattoos with sad stories and tragedy. I can’t go out at night without having some poor bastard coming up to me and telling me that he wants a tattoo for his dad who died yesterday. It just made it so fucking horrible.

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