I visited The Village on Friday, and stopped by the neighborhood Borders, where I picked up the latest Guitar World. Its cover story was an interview with Jimmy Page on the making of Led Zeppelin's 1975 opus, Physical Graffiti, and I'm an easy mark when it comes to all things Zeppelin.

On the back cover is an advertisement containing a truly horrific photo of a guitarist named Kerry King of the heavy metal group Slayer. Photographed wearing a sleeveless black t-shirt, it's painfully visible that King has tattoos over his entire body, including his neck and otherwise bald skull. It looks (at least to me--who is someone who does not pretend to understand the Tattoo-American demographic) like the equivalent of Michael Jackson's self-mutilation, except that rather than employ plastic surgeons to do the job, King has had a gallon or ten of ink pumped under his skin.

Since so many heavy metal guitarists now contain bodies (and heads!) full of tattoos, I guess it's only fair that a new study finds that "Tattoo Ink May Contain Heavy Metals".