MUGSHOTS...

Aah, yes, mugshots.  I love them.  They are the lowest common denominator of humanity.  They put us in our place and let us know in NO uncertain terms that we are about as evolved as mold.  I love looking at those things.  Especially mine.  BTW, I have four.  Or is it five?  I can't remember them all.  Hey, what can I say, I started young...  My first mugshot was at the ripe old age of 16.  Something about unlawful assembly and attempting to incite a riot.  It was the '60's, what can I say?

In the words of Maria Von Trapp, whenever I'm feeling blue I simply remember (Google???) my favorite things.  Yes, mugshots.  Trust me on this, just Google "mugshots" and what will appear before you will scare the skin off of you.  I don't know what fascinates me more about these things, the image or the question of just what they did to get that fucked up looking.  There just isn't such a thing as a "good" mugshot.  Mugshots make your driver's license picture look like a formal setting from Olin Mills.  Broken noses.  Blood.  Black eyes.  Split lips.  More blood.  Missing teeth.  Really bad tattoos.  REALLY BAD TATTOOS!!!  Hair "don'ts" of amazing peculiarity.  And, of course, a smile.  Who the hell smiles during a mugshot???  Oh, wait, that's right...  really fucked up people do that kind of strange shit.

Now, I just love a mugshot of someone that I don't know.  Y'know, what I mean, the "common man".  Aaron Copeland is spinning in a coffin somewhere right now.  I look at some of those things and wonder why they never came completely out of the trees.  Down to the ground.  Where they could have had their ancestors consumed by carnivorous mega fauna.  Life today would be so much simpler.  And WalMart would not exist.  I like that thought.  But my true joy (shall we say AMAZING body rush?) is when I see a celebrity's mugshot.  Holy shit!!!  Nick Nolte's mugshot is permanently burnt into my frontal lobes.  Dude, just how fucked up were you???  What, no mirrors in your house???  There is a wonderful device called a comb.  Try using it once in awhile.  Then there's Lindsey Lohan.  Enough said on that because there's just way too many to pick from.  Paris Hilton...  more money than the Treasury Department and less sense than god gave a toothpick.  OK, I don't like her but any mugshot that includes over $500,000 worth of designer jewelry just floats my boat.  O.J. Simpson...  first off, he literally gets away with murder.  Then he decides to follow it up with pistol whipping some guy in a hotel room in Las Vegas.  Stupidity does indeed warrant multiple mugshots.  I am holding my breath for a mugshot of the Queen of England after a bar fight.  And you know that she is going to be charged with using that purse as a weapon.  This kind of shit makes me feel so damned normal it hurts.  And that alone should scare you...

There is, however, one mugshot I hold close to my heart.  Jane Fonda's.  Damned good mugshot!!!  It was back in the '60's and she was in her "Klute" stage.  Yeah, really bad hairstyle but she looked fabulous.  It's amazing what a $10,000 an hour stylist can do to make you look "revolutionary".  How the hell they let her throw up a "strike fist" amazes me.  "Hanoi Jane" be damned, I was one of the crazies that stood at her back.  Sometimes you just have to do what you have to do.  You may apologize for it later but if it made sense at the time you just have to jump naked into the deep end.  Jane, I bow to you.  DAMNED GOOD MUGSHOT!!!