while watching vh1’s “40 least metal moments” (which, incidentally, was won (lost?) by vince neil of motley crue performing the chicken dance at some random community fair in, like, cincinnati) i realized that scott ian from anthrax is charlie hall’s doppelganger:

while we’re at it…
nick nolte : gary busey :: patrick swayze : kurt russell
michael douglas : martin sheen :: julia styles : kirsten dunst

i mean, really, have any of these people been seen together in the same room at the same time? just some pseudo-apocalyptic 06.06.06 rambling…

immigration is such a hot-button issue, especially here in the southland (infamous home of the minuteman project). i was listening to npr yesterday as i was driving and i heard a very provocative set of interviews with different residents of border towns – both from mexico and the united states.

one story: us border officials set up a roadside check-in station in a city (not a border town, though) and pulled over people who appeared to be of latino descent. one family was forcefully separated by these officials, after the entire family was detained and the parents were interrogated for over eight hours. as it happened, the parents had immigrated illegally thirteen years previous to this incident, and their children were born in the states. after basically being treated like the perps in the law & order questioning room, the parents waived all their rights and were deported. just like that.

another woman, an american, was interviewed in a different city (this one a border town). she complained loudly about how “those mexicans” earned money here in the states and then sent it back home to mexico. according to this woman this is a major economic issue, you see, because that money should stay here. the reported must have sensed something was off, because he continued to question her.

he saw the woman’s family in the car, so he asked if the family was going somewhere. they were going across the border to mexico, she explained, so her daughter could get an eye exam. an eye exam? the reporter questioned. well, duh, the woman answered – it’s like $30 there and over $90 here.

after an awkward pause, it dawned on this woman. “well, um, i guess our money isn’t staying here, either,” she stammered.

if this woman could remove all of “those” people from this nation, how would it improve her lot? *sigh*

my family and i took a quick memorial day vacation up to san francisco (how delightful, “francisco. francisssco!”) and, like good tourists, took in a bunch of the sights. we rode the cable cars, walked around the fisherman’s wharf, drove across the golden gate bridge and, of course, visited alcatraz!

as our boat approached the island penitentiary i had a strange feeling of deja vu, even though i knew i had not been there before. and then it hit me – i had visited alcatraz many times… through a tony hawk skateboarding game on the ps2. i’m definitely not a gamer, so it was a completely surreal experience to walk around this place that i had randomly visited in cyber/gaming-space. i must say, the tony hawk folks did a pretty good job at mapping out the island ;)

anyhoo, during the audio tour of the prison itself, we heard many interesting stories about notorious inmates, breakout attempts, prison riots and such. on one wall was this photo, describing some of the most infamous inmates ever housed at alacatraz:

second from the left is al capone, notorious gangster and tax cheat…. next to him, i believe, is the man known as the “birdman” of alcatraz (who ended up, apparently, in isolation because he was quite a handful as a prisoner). but when i saw alvin “creepy” karpis (second from the right), i had that same, strange feeling that i had seen him before. was it from a movie? was he a minor character from the tony hawk game?

it wasn’t until we were driving home that i blurted out to my startled wife who it was, exactly, that i thought mr. creepy karpis looked like – adam clayton from u2, of course! it’s always the bassist, isn’t it? my wife, being the compassionate and reasonable around here, responded by asking, “don’t you think he would be sad to hear that?” now, i’m not saying anything bad about adam clayton from u2. he seems pretty nice. still, though, bono and the gang might want to run some background checks :O