Rats get fat while brave man dies tattoo

A hefty mob turncoat who plotted to blow up Salvatore “Sammy Bull” Gravano gave jurors the skinny on the meaning behind his bizarre tattoos.

Salvatore “Fat Sal” Mangiavillano, 39, told a defense lawyer that not only did he and his old pal Thomas “Huck” Carbonaro scheme to whack Gravano in Arizona together – but they also have strikingly similar ink.

Both alleged hit men tattooed their bodies with the words “Death Before Dishonor” – a slogan that is popular among military personnel.

“It means I would rather die than cooperate with law enforcement,” said mob informant Mangiavillano.

Ironically, without his cooperation, the feds might never have known about the Gambino family’s failed plot to kill Gravano as punishment for testifying against John Gotti.

Lawyer John Jacobs grilled the witness over why he let Carbonaro – who is covered from neck to toe in gruesome tattoos – take his shirt off for two massages in Phoenix while the two were trying to keep a low profile.

“I guess it was kind of dumb to do something like that,” Mangiavillano conceded.

The witness, a longtime bank burglar, said his own tattoos include the names of his two children, a baby playing with a jack-in-the-box, a black panther surrounded by clouds, and a ski mask.

“I like the way it looks, so I got a ski mask on my arm. Like you’d wear when you’re a little kid to go to school or you’d wear during a robbery,” Mangiavillano testified.

Early in his testimony, Mangiavillano gave Carbonaro a backhanded compliment when Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Dorsky about the significance of a tattoo on Carbonaro’s back that reads “Rats Get Fat While Good Men Die.”

“A rat is a cooperator. Good men are guys who stand up, like the defendant right there,” Mangiavillano said.

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Lady head tattoos are often associated with beauty, femininity, romance, desire, independence, or good luck. They can also represent a heroine, muse, or a lover. Lonely sailors at sea thousands of miles away from their homes would often get these women to remember the loved ones they had left behind. Many of the most popular lady head tattoos depict gypsy women of the European Romany culture, whose travel & nomadism were romanticized as a free way of life.

A response to “rats get fat while brave men die.” Made with materials I don’t usually use, but the result was cool enough. from traditionalflash

The River City Tattoo Parlor in Killeen, Texas is only a few minutes down the road from Fort Hood. Before last Thursday’s shootings, the military base was best known for being the largest in the United States, the site that processes hundreds of soldiers in and out of war zones. Many of those soldiers head over to River City to mark their comings or goings, to remember where they’ve been or prepare for who they’ll be. Shop owner Roxanne Willis appreciates the in-betweenness of the space, and describes her own mixed feelings about its functions. “I understand the discipline of [the military],” she says, “I really support our troops, these young boys for doing their duty, so to speak, but I don’t like the duty.” Still, she smiles, “I feel good about the tattoos we do here. It’s like a piece of magic they can take with ’em.”

Roxanne’s hope for her clients serves as a helpful introduction to Tattooed Under Fire. Nancy Schiesari‘s documentary is most obviously about soldiers’ tattoos, with several describing why they get them or how they’ve designed them. It mostly takes their view on the matter, beginning with a title card that reads, “Soldiers claim that 95% of them have at least one tattoo.” This despite the restrictions imposed by their employer, that is, according to a combat medic named Anthony, “I can’t get anything that will show in my dress uniform, so I figured I’ll just tattoo up to it and finish it when I get out.” He reveals a chest and arms richly decorated, stopping just at his collar. “In the Army,” he adds, “I have took like everyone else,” so the “tattoo is my way of expressing myself. When I’m not in uniform, I am somebody different. I am me.” At the same time, Anthony reveals, he’s joined the military not because of the usual patriotism, but out of a broad sense of community: “We’re not helping out Americans” in Iraq, he says, “But we’re helping out humans. We’re humans before we’re Americans.”

If Anthony’s dual sense of self — unique and somehow universal, both indicated in the image on his chest, a giant tag that reads, “Hello, My Name is Anthony”) — is unexpected, his experience at war is all too common. And it’s in exploring these experiences that Tattooed Under Fire shows another side, expanding its view from the tattoo stories per se to the effects of war. During his 15 months in Iraq, Anthony says, he “went from working in an aid station to working out on the front line.” For the last, he was with a unit patrolling the outskirts of Baghdad, a “unit that’s killing people,” not exactly what he signed up for. With one of his tattoos, he explains, he means to remember two fellow medics who were killed. It wasn’t “like in the movies.” As his friend bled out, Anthony remembers, “He said he wished he had made it home to see his newborn daughter.”

Listening to this story, you realize that every one of Anthony’s many tattoos likely has a similarly deep background. It’s daunting, even to imagine what he’s seen or done. Another medic, Travis, recalls his decision to join up, following three years of nursing school, interrupted by lack of money, then a series of dead end jobs. “I wasn’t really going nowhere in life,” he says, before he was presented with a choice, jail (for a drug offense) or war. None of this precisely explains the tattoo he’s getting this day, a fetus in a jar of red fluid, though you can see how he might come to his conclusion: “We really don’t know what we’re in for.”

This idea of an uncertain future affects most of the soldiers here, whether looking back on their recent service or forward to a first or next tour. Their efforts to gain control take various forms. Marri says she gets tattoos during the “most painful times of my life,” as her mother faced cancer and MS. “With this,” she says, grimacing as the artist works on her back, “You’re choosing something for yourself. You’re not feeling someone else’s pain, you’re feeling your pain.” Latoya comes in for some work after coming back. “It was horrible,” she says flat-out. “I never want to go back again. Regardless of me being stop-loss, I would find a way to get out.” She describes the hypocrisy of U.S. policies, selling weapons to bad actors, “then we fight them to take it back.” Charles says his tattoo (a picture of a rat on its back, captioned, “Rats get fat while good soldiers die”) is testimony to what he saw in Iraq, involving especially “civilian companies like KBR.”

Such stories suggest why troops feel in need of “magic.” Even when they come home, many feel caught. The film’s inclusion of another sort of commemoration, namely, makeshift roadside memorials to victims of car accidents, speaks to the ongoing pain of war, carried by soldiers who self-medicate, suffer from PTSD, or otherwise respond to traumas. For all the pride and hard work represented by Killeen and Fort Hood, Roxanne observes the predicaments they represent as well. “This town is built on war energy, all these people going to fight wars,” she says, “And you have to make your peace with it.” She sighs. However damaging memories may be, remaking them as art may help some soldiers find “freedom.”