When I mention to the Mexican cab driver on the way to Kennedy Airport that I'm going to Germany, he asks me if that's why I have my head shaved. I laugh at his stereotypes about fashion and Germany, but then the recent neo-Nazi violence over there gets me thinking about the truth in cliches, and how me and my shinehead could very well get caught up in something ugly. After all, a couple of days before my trip, German skinheads torched a Turkish home, killing women and children, in the first major sign of anti-immigrant violence outside the ex-East, and the worst racist attack there since the war. It was front page news in the States, and everywhere, and the symbol of this wave of violence was, of course, the shaved head.