We’re still figuring out what happened to Flazh!Alley Studio art gallery owner Joe Flazh! on Monday night, but here’s what Flazh! says.

Apparently he and artist Suzanne M. Shifflett–whose current show of paintings, “Inked Hearts: The Tattoo Portrait Series” is now on view in Flazh!’s gallery–guested Monday night on local activist Denise Penn’s cable access TV show, “The Gay and Lesbian Newsmagazine.”

(We believe that’s either Channel 65 or Channel 95 at your Charter Communications.)

Flazh! says he and Shifflett brought with them three examples of Shifflett’s work; two were portraits of shirtless, tattooed men. The third was a portrait of a topless, tattooed woman.

(Flazh!’s San Pedro gallery is billed as “The South Bay’s Best Erotic & Alternative Arts Studio.”) So far, so good.

But Flazh! says that as they were setting up, the station manager told him that Shifflett’s portrait of the woman wouldn’t meet the station’s decency standards–and they’d have to, well, cover her nipples with Post-its–despite the fact that the guys were topless, too.

“She said there were rules against it,” Flazh! says of his conversation with the station manager, “ so I asked her ‘What’s the rule?’ She didn’t know what it was, she couldn’t repeat it. I said, ‘If you don’t know it, how do you know it?’ ”

So they taped the show with two out of three of Shifflett’s portraits showing (you can see the offending portrait here if you’re 18 or older)–and the main topic, naturally, was a lively critique of censorship.

It aired Monday at 7 p.m., and Flazh! says it will repeat at the same time next week. I have DirecTV (or, as you might say, Direct TV) so this is all Greek to me.

That’s literally all we know right now, though we’ve got a call in to someone at Charter Communications and an email in to Denise Penn as well.

Maybe the folks at Charter were just exercising their decency standards; after all, the show aired at 7 p.m., which is way before any child goes to bed these days. Maybe not. We’ll let you know more as people call us back.

The other real story here is how difficult it is to get a real live person on the phone at Charter Communications. Did I say difficult? I meant impossible.

Tags: " "Inked Hearts" The Tattoo Portrait Series, " Charter Communications, "The Gay and Lesbian Newsmagazine, California, Denise Penn, DirecTV, Flazh! Alley Studio, Joe Flazh, Long Beach, San Pedro, Southern California, Suzanne M. Shifflett, The District Weekly, Theo Douglas