marilyn manson
...i went to god just to see/and i was looking at me...
marilyn manson (aka brian warner) is a pretty dang talented guy. i became a fan towards the end of the 99-00 school year--everybody thinks i'm nuts for listening to his music! i had always been interested in him ever since i'd heard of him, which was i can't remember when. my sister's roommate during her freshman year of college, ellen, had a little picture of him on her dormroom's closet door that she had probably cut out of a magazine. i can remember standing there and sneaking glances at the picture. i found it very fascinating. maybe it's charisma. anyway i first decided that he was a really decent guy when i caught part of when he was on politically incorrect with bill mahar (or whatever the last name is). i was a little confused about the red sequin dress and the breasts but after one of the other people on there said "let me ask you a question...what planet are you from?!" and without getting the slightest bit offended he made a gesture with his palms out to the side (the kind of gesture you see in movies when the character says "i have nothing to hide") and said "well, california!"--i decided he was a cool guy.
my friend jen who i met when i first got to highschool is a big manson fan, and she let me borrow her mechanical animals cd for a couple weeks. i immediately loved his sad sounding and powerful 
vocals, the general sound of everything together, and was very pleased with the nice guitar the album has. you don't find guitar like that much these days. so, being the cheap person i am, i made a recording of it on a blank tape (come to think of it, i didn't even pay for the tape, i got it from my sister). i was thrilled to death that marilyn manson is also an artist, and i found his watercolours to be very interesting and inspiring. i also liked the fact that he's into art and music and writing, just like i am. meanwhile my best friends were like "ahhhhh!" after i acquired antichrist superstar (which i absolutely adore, and prefer over mechanical animals), i played some of the songs for sugar, and she thought it was scary. i didn't really find it to be frightening at all--granted, some of that album's not exactly easy listening and i had to listen to certain songs twice before i settled into them, but i really found everything bad people say about marilyn manson to be very untrue. interestingly enough we also confirmed the fact that i dance like a stripper. i was kind of 
bouncing around on the floor while i was playing "the beautiful people" and sugar says "stop that!" i asked "why?" and she said "because you look like a lapdancer when you do that!"
anyhow, i'm very excited that holy wood is coming out soon...i'm also glad the band has returned to their old sound. i hope the lyrics retain their exquisite quality--i found them, especially on mechanical animals, to be very poetic (and i was a hand grenade that never stopped exploding/you were automatic, and as hollow as the "o" in god"). but i was really pleased with the way antichrist superstar kind of ties itself up--the recurrence of the phrases like at the album's beginning when it says "while you are suffering, know that i have betrayed you" and then again at the end of one of the songs later in the album (i forgot which, plus i'm not too good with the song names that don't have the title right in the lyrics). and also the "then i got my wings and i never even knew..." thing, and "prick your finger it is done/the moon has now eclipsed the sun/the angel has spread it's wings/the time has come for bitter things." so i would like to finish this beautiful...thingy...critique...sorta...ah i just had nothing much better to do with myself...by saying a thank you to the band for making such wonderful music, jen for letting me borrow her cd, and a very certain artist for giving me superstar. till then, i'll be eagerly awaiting the release of holy wood, and plotting ways to get my hands on a copy...
--August '00
peel off all those eyes, crawl into the dark,
and click the dragon to return
