An big day for me is quickly approaching. On October 14, I will be marking the 10th anniversary of my 21st birthday party.

This statement could be read in several ways. You could be thinking that I’m making a coy statement about the fact that I will soon be turning 31. Or you could be thinking I’m trying to take a sly approach in announcing that my birthday is coming (though the date of that momentous occasion is actually October 12.) Or you might even be thinking, given my penchant for telling stories based in nostalgia, that I’ve got a little tale to tell about that party.

Turning 31 actually seems a little stranger than 30 did, but I do not intend to be coy about my age. I don’t have a problem with aging, as I’m still a big kid (as I’ve mentioned before) and I think I’m aging quite gracefully in the physical sense, if you’ll pardon the bit of an ego trip there.

However, I am a total attention whore about my birthday. I make sure that everyone I know is well aware of it’s imminence, and I am not in the least embarrassed to admit that. I am not going through the whole “Oh, don’t make a big deal over little ole me” game. Nah. Make as big a deal as you want. I will enjoy every last second of it with a huge grin on my face. This is not a ploy to get gifts, it is simply a ploy for attention. A shameless and brazen one. (Plus I do really like to celebrate birthdays - mine and others. I think it’s a great thing that we get to celebrate another year down. I don’t really understand why so many people get all uptight and weird about it.)

But more importantly, I do have a little tale to tell, as I’m sure you’d guessed by now. I can be a bit predictable at times, I suppose.

Sherman, set the wayback machine for 1995; I want to take these folks to a birthday party.

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The kid who comes to hang out with me at the store will turn 16 tomorrow. He’s excited about turning 16, but is too busy fretting over not being 18 to enjoy it completely. I can remember what that was like quite clearly. At 16, you think you know everything and should be able to do anything or go anywhere, but of course, you can’t. That’s probably a good thing overall. But being under 18 rarely stopped me from doing what I wanted. I couldn’t wait to be 18, so I just started telling people I was.

The first time I can remember lying about my age was while on vacation in Myrtle Beach, SC with a friend. We were 12 years old, but we both looked a little older than that. We were walking along the strip when a car full of cute boys pulled alongside us to chat. After a few minutes of conversation, one of them asked how old we were. We looked at each other (in retrospect: stupid move) and said in unison, “16.” The boys laughed out loud and said, “Yeah, sure you are.” and drove away. We vowed to have the answer ready next time, no hesitation. We were a tad more convincing to the next group of boys we met and before long I had learned to be very good at lying about my age.

As I’ve mentioned before, I started going to nightclubs when I was around 14 years old. Clubs are pretty serious about preventing underage drinking most of the time (not because of some sense of serving the greater good, but because they can be heavily fined), but most of the places we wanted to go were 18 & up, and I usually managed to pass for 18 with no problem. I can remember a night around the time that I was 16 when the doorman argued with me after I presented my two hands to be branded as underage with the big X’s made in black magic marker. He wouldn’t believe I was under 21, and he refused to mark me as underage, even though I had no ID. Sadly, I had known the bartender there for several years already and he knew damn well I was under 21, so I didn’t get to enjoy the benefits of passing for older.

A new club opened in town once that was a little stricter about enforcing the 18 age limit. The first time we went there we were able to worm our way in by claiming we were from out of town and with the band (which the band verified for us), but that didn’t work a couple weeks later. One of the guys that worked the door there was really cool though, and he told us that we didn’t need to have a state ID or driver’s license; we just needed to have something with our pictures on it that said we were 18. He said all this with a smirk on his face that told us he knew that we weren’t 18, but was willing to help us get in. He allowed us in that night (Probably because he was checking out my friends - hot chicks in slutty dresses can get nearly anything they want.), but warned us that he wouldn’t be able to let us slide the next time.

The next week we descended upon a local check cashing facility that sold ID cards for $5. We gave them all fake information, and they gave us photo ID cards that claimed we were over 18 years of age. Despite the fact that the cards had “Non-verified information provided by cardholder” stamped on the back in all capital letters, they worked. It wasn’t really a fake ID as it wasn’t a falsified state ID, and it wasn’t like we were trying to get bar priviliges out of them, we just wanted to get in to see the bands.

By the time I turned 21, I was nearly a staple of the Charlotte bar scene, at least in the ones that featured live rock bands. (I’m not sure that’s something to be proud of really, but there you have it.) Because I was finally hitting that magical age… that age where you really are allowed to do everything (well, except rent a car, but really, that’s not so magical) I decided I wanted to have a really big birthday party. I arranged to have use of a local club (The Milestone) and lined up 4 bands that were friends of mine to play. Marshall played the part of a DJ between sets, and I was the hostess for the evening. Nearly everyone I knew in the world was there - friends from the bar scene, friends from work, even a few friends from high school (some of which I hadn’t seen since graduation). I got lots of happy birthday wishes from everyone there, but I also had this conversation with several of my bar friends:

“So… how old are you really?” *wink*
“Um… 21.”
“Girl, I’ve known you for 5 years, and I first met you at [insert nightclub name here]. There’s no way you’re just now turning 21.”
“Uh… yes I am. Wanna see my ID?”

I actually had to show it to a couple of them.

After 21 though, it was sort of all downhill from there. There wasn’t really much to look forward to age wise, and damn if time doesn’t somehow speed up after that birthday. Though it’s hard for me to believe, I’m approaching the 10 year anniversary of that birthday party, and my thoughts on aging have shifted a bit in those 10 years.

That’s not to say it worries me or that I freak out over aging. I just marvel at the amount of time that’s passed in what seems like a flash, and I no longer feel the need to lie about my age. If I did, of course, it would be to claim that I’m younger than I really am, but I don’t even feel that need. Aging happens.

Sometimes I feel as though I’m constantly inundated with advertising that’s aimed at the vanity in all of us, urging us to stay looking young, spending as much money as necessary in order to appear young if nothing else. Just the other night The Daily Show featured a segment with a 50-something who credited her youthful appearance to the regular application of a hormone laced vaginal cream to her face. Though we all age - every single damn one of us - it seems like no one wants to admit that they’ve aged.

I refuse to succumb to this fountain-of-youth-hysteria as far as my appearance is concerned. I am much more concerned about mental aging, and I’m fighting that at every turn. I want to feel young forever, and so far I’m on track. I look forward to new episodes of Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends with the same fervor that most women my age save for Desperate Housewives. The movies I’m most looking forward to seeing when I can swing it are Howl’s Moving Castle and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. My car is adorned with stickers, the majority of them being cartoon characters. The last time I bothered to decorate my apartment it was with music and movie posters and up-all-year-long Christmas lights. I still go to rock concerts as often as my budget will allow (which, oddly enough, is less often than when I was 14) and I still have that soft spot in my heart for the 19 year old goth boys.

Don’t assume by this that I haven’t matured though - my priorities have changed and I do have a responsible streak. My budget for rock concerts is lower these days because I will actually pay the car payment before I blow the money on a concert ticket, even if it means I can’t purchase that ticket. (Which is why I am sad to report I will be missing the Nine Inch Nails concert later this year.) I just can’t think of myself as a grown up.

Though, I have to cop to the fact that my rebellion against the multi-million dollar industry of youthful appearances is probably still intact because I am one of those people who has remained young looking. I’m sure the nose ring and multi-colored hair contribute, as people tend to think once you hit a certain age you stop doing things like that (hitting 30 only made me want to do it more), but I really do still look young. If my mother’s appearance is any indication of what I have to look forward to, I will still appear young for a while yet. So maybe it’s not really fair for me to claim that I don’t care about looking young… I don’t look my age. (Not that 30, almost 31, is all that old anyway.)

That’s not just vanity talking there. I’ve been carded for cigarettes twice in the last week - though I actually sort of doubt the sanity of someone who would believe I am under 18 years of age. And as much as I think I don’t care about aging physically, I do have to admit that when the one lady told me she thought I was about 22 or 23 I got a little kick out of that.

I guess I do want the body to match the spirit some, and I plan on being a kid at heart until my heart gives out.

It’s re-post time ladies and gents! Things have just been super hectic around here with Pride this weekend and the launching of the store’s Internet radio station. And of course there’s the ever present stress of my cat and her oh-so-lovely habit of peeing on the bed, which has happened several times in the last few days after a couple of weeks’ respite. This has made it necessary for me to crash earlier than usual this evening in order to wake early in the morning to do laundry before work because we are now out of clean bedclothes, which has made it impossible for me to finish what I’ve been working on. Thus, I bring you a somewhat related re-post of a story I told a scant 2 days after I began this here blog… so I’m fairly certain most of you haven’t seen it. Just because I feel like I should post something before I head off to dreamland for the evening. So… enjoy. And feel free to give me suggestions on how to make the cat STOP PEEING ON THE DAMN BED.

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I have at least 40 pairs of panties and probably about 45-50 pairs of socks, mostly in good wearable condition (there are a few exceptions, I’ll admit). Is it because I am a fashionista intent on taking over the world of underthings? A fetishist who gets a thrill from my undies? A pack rat who cannot throw anything away? No, it’s because I despise laundromats. (Well, yeah, I am a pack rat too.)

Having been mostly poor for a good portion of my life thus far, or at least without a space for a washing machine and dryer in my residence du jour, I’ve spent a fair amount of time loitering in laundromats. Not that I would choose to spend my free time in these gathering places for the dregs of humanity, but I usually find it’s more socially agreeable to wear at least 80% clean clothing. (Unless it says “dry clean only??? on the label… that translates to “dirty???.) My solution for avoiding these places was to simply buy more underwear… thus the impressive collection I now possess. (In my world, all other articles of clothing can be worn multiple times before needing a wash, and bras can be handwashed quite easily.)
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So this post on BoingBoing today totally reminded me of my favorite science project ever. And because I have nothing else to do at the moment (besides sleep, working on the store’s site, working on the new DU Radio project, or well, 800 other things that need to be done) I thought I’d share. If you have kids, you may want to take note. I’m providing a valuable service with this one.

I always hated doing science projects. The actual idea of forming a hypothesis and then proving it (or disproving it) sort of appeals to the geek in me, but it wasn’t the process or the work that got to me. It was that we were poor, and my parents just didn’t have the money to go out and buy me a couple hundred dollars worth of crap to do a project. So I had to get inventive, which meant putting my creativity to use, and really, I just never cared enough to put that much effort into it.

This led to some really bad science projects, like the landmark “What are the effects of various liquids on the growth of plants?” I learned that watering plants with things like hairspray and Coca Cola will kill them. Imagine my shock!

One year though…

In the 8th grade I did a science project so amazing and cool that I won first place in the school science fair and got to actually take my project to the city wide competition. Just the title of it screams coolness.

“Which dentifrice is more abrasive, gel or paste?”

Yes indeed. I won a science fair by presenting a project on toothpaste. I got the idea for such an exciting pursuit from my mom, who related a story about a similar project done by a friend of hers when she was in school in the early 60’s. And it was cheap to do. I think the total cost of all the materials came to about $40, and that’s counting the poster board and other art supplies needed to create the oh-so-original tri-fold display.

I hypothesized that paste would be more abrasive than gel. To prove my hypothesis, I took a small square of plexiglass and blocked it off into 8 sections. I labeled each section for each of the 8 dentifrices I was testing, and nightly for 2 weeks, I brushed each section with it’s assigned paste or gel for 1 minute. (Ok, so in reality I spent a few hours doing this repeatedly in one day. But I claimed it was over two weeks, and I got the same effect either way, so there. Besides, my arm nearly removed itself from my body in protest of the overuse, so I was punished for my procrastination.) I judged the results by a visual inspection of the plexiglass for scratches.

There was a noticeable difference among the brands (Crest was more abrasive overall than any other) and among the different types. I actually proved my hypothesis incorrect, in that gels were more abrasive than pastes, in some cases much more so. Who woulda thunk it? It was an earthshaking revelation, I tell you.¹

So if you have a son or daughter in need of a cheap-to-pull-off science project idea, there you go. I’m sure there have been many scientific advances in toothpastes since my middle school days, so I’m betting there’s a variation or two that could be done if you don’t want to outright copy my brilliant idea, though I give you full permission to rip me off. I know just how super-cool this idea is, so I’m willing to share it with the world.

But I will caution you to go the extra mile and purchase a separate toothbrush for each participating dentifrice, as that’s what kept me from getting anywhere at the city competition. A judge there pointed out, and rightly so, that using just one toothbrush for the entire experiment skewed the results. Those charlatan judges at my school had missed this very important detail apparently.

So take my idea and perfect it. Your lucky child will go on to win every level of competition in the science fair arena!² Just remember me when you’re raking in those scholarships and prizes, ok?

¹Can someone please tell me why I can remember things like this - things that happened 17 years ago - with such clarity, yet I forget to buy paper towels when I am grocery shopping?

²Please note there is no money back guarantee on this. My results were likely not typical; your kid’s mileage may vary.

My boyfriend and I met through the Yahoo! Personals. We hit it off immediately, and neither one of us actually even went on another date with anyone else after we met. That was four years ago, and I plan to be around to nag him for a while yet, so I guess you could say we are a personals success story. But it’s not a course of action for the faint of heart; I had to go through a LOT of losers to get to my man.

The truth is, I love the personals. I love the concept of being able to get to know someone before you meet them, and I love reading through ads, even when I’m not really looking. I loved that rush that came with reading a personal ad that seemed to connect, though those were usually few and far between. I first fell for them before I was even supposed to be using them, though we didn’t have the big fancy Internet back then. No, personal ads were found in the back of Creative Loafing, the weekly alt rag in Charlotte. My friends and I read through the ads every week. They were a big joke to us for the most part, but occasionally I’d see one that sounded interesting. I’d never call them because that would require calling a 900 number, and being a teenager meant not getting to do things like that without unwanted parental scrutiny. But placing an ad was completely free, as was retrieving the messages left for your ad. So, at the tender age of 17, while still a senior in high school, I spent a few minutes whipping one up and mailed it in.

I don’t actually remember most of the messages that were left for me in the first few weeks of the run, but I know I wasn’t inspired to call any of them back. The last week that the ad would run though, I got a message from a guy who sounded sort of interesting and lacked the redneck accent. He said he was a musician / recording studio engineer, and that he was new in town. Something about his message struck me, and I called him.

His name was Pat. He was much older than me - in his mid-to-late 30’s at the time if I remember correctly. I fessed up to my underage status fairly quickly when talking to him, and we both concluded that dating would not be an option with the age difference. But we connected, if only as friends. We talked on the phone nearly every night for several months, discussing everything you can possibly think of at some point or another. We made plans to meet a couple of times, but somehow, the plans fell through every time. (To be fair, sometimes it was my fault, sometimes it was his.) Around the time I graduated from high school, he had to leave town suddenly, some family emergency I believe, and I didn’t hear from him for a while. Over the next year or so, I would occasionally get a call from him. Sometimes he claimed he was on the road with some musician or another (never anyone really cool), sometimes he said he was out of town working in some recording studio, but Pat was never in Charlotte when he called. To this day I don’t know if he was telling the truth about anything he told me, but it didn’t really matter. He was interesting, and he entertained me for a while, though we never did meet in person.

And that was how I got hooked to meeting people through personal ads. I figured if I could meet one interesting person, or at least talk to one on the phone, I could probably meet more. I ran a number of ads in Creative Loafing over the years, eventually ditching them for the Internet based ads later. I’ve met a lot of guys through ads - even a straight girl once who just liked my ad - some of the experiences good, some of the experiences plain awful.

Though there are lots of good stories to tell resulting from running these ads, but for now we will start at the beginning.

The first date.

I didn’t actually meet anyone that responded to the first couple of ads that I ran. Most of them were boring enough on the phone so I didn’t need to meet them in person to know I didn’t want to date them. Hell, most of them I didn’t even call back. The first guy that I did meet in person, who went by the name of Todd, almost made me want to re-think the whole personals strategy.

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I’ve met a number of celebrities over the years: the cheesy hair metal guys in my groupie years, the random people who would pop up when I worked in the Charlotte airport, the musicians I interviewed when I was a writer, and a few brushes with celebrities when I lived in LA. I can’t pretend I haven’t been excited about meeting some of them - I’m a pop culture junkie and celebrity does have some sway in my mind, however silly and shallow that may be - but at the end of the day, they’re just people, you know? I try not to deify these people because they act or sing or whatever.

I can’t quite dismiss one celebrity encounter that easily though; meeting Tori Amos was just a whole different sort of experience.

You have to try and understand the level of devotion I have to Tori. Though her more recent releases haven’t wowed me as much as the older stuff did, I still adore her as much as ever. I will always proudly count myself as a Toriphile.

I actually well remember the first time I saw her. I was getting ready to leave the house, MTV was on in the background. I heard her voice first, a soothing, calming voice, with piano as the backing. I stopped for a second to look and listen. The red hair caught my eyes (I have a major thing for red hair) and I immediately fell in love with “Silent All These Years”. I noted her name when the video credits showed on the screen, and resolved to find out more about her. Later that very night, while sitting in the back booth at Jeremiah’s, she actually came up in conversation. My friend Michael had recently discovered her and was starting to spread the gospel already. I bought the tape the next day.

Since that time I have been a devoted fan. I’ve seen her live many times, I’ve bought as many of the 8000 recordings she’s released that I could afford (The woman is prolific like none other!), and I’ve regularly turned other people on to her work. There is just something special about Tori to me. I don’t think I could fully explain it if I tried (as evidenced by the poor attempt to do so here), but she writes beautiful music with poignant lyrics, and she has the presence of an angel, if a slightly loopy one. Listening to Little Earthquakes still gives me goosebumps.

Though it was nearly 9 years ago, I still haven’t quite gotten over meeting her.

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You might have read this line in the little about me page over there. If so, you might be wondering what that is all about. Or you might not care one bit. But, as you may have suspected already, I’m going to tell you about it, whatever the case may be.

I am most decidedly not a neat person. Ok, that’s an understatement. But there’s not a name that I know of that describes the polar opposite of a neat freak. Anyone have any suggestions on what I can call myself? (I love to label myself; saves everyone else the trouble of having to.)

I rarely clean unless I am forced to (whether because of an impending visit to the apartment, having run out of dishes, or some other such annoyance). I am not organized. I am a pack rat of the second highest order (I cannot even touch the pack rats of the highest order.) forced to live in a relatively small apartment.

The strange thing is, I can only function in what appears to be chaos; this is the comfort zone for me. Even though it looks completely disorganized to the outside observer, I actually know where most things are in the mess. There are little piles of stuff everywhere, but ask me for a particular item and I will usually know which pile it’s in. When I am forced to clean, though I’m usually proud of having accomplished such a momentous feat, I feel ill-at-ease. I can’t find things; I can’t remember where I put them.

This has been the case all my life. After what was probably the 800th argument that ended with me confined to my room until it was clean (which usually meant I’d just stay in my room all day), my mother finally gave up trying to get me to keep my room clean. This happened when I was about 10 years old. We just agreed that I would keep the door closed at all times and everyone was happy with the arrangement. (And given my penchant for privacy, I was doubly happy about it.) By the time I was 17, she’d fully come to terms with the fact that my room was a disaster area. (Mind you, it wasn’t as though the rest of the house was in the best order either - some of this inclination was passed to me genetically) So when she spotted a blurb in the Charlotte Observer asking kids to send in pictures of their messy rooms, she made a beeline for her camera. Laughing the entire time, we took 10 or 15 shots of the room in its usual state, which is to say looking much like a hurricane had come through recently. We sent them off to the address listed in the paper and promptly forgot all about it.

Sadly this is the only remaining picture from that photo session… I only have this one because I glued it into my senior scrapbook.

The brown carpeting and the wood paneling really combined well for an overall cheery look, no?

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Continued from part 2.

I was at work when the call came. The guy from the PR company had tried to call me at home, and my mother gave him the number for the store. (That was so professional… my mom gave the PR guy the number to reach me at the record store where I worked. Some bigshot writer I was! And yes, I still lived at home at age 21.)

“Hi Melanie, this is Chris from Formula PR. I’ve got good news! You should get that interview after all because Marilyn Manson has just scheduled a date in your hometown. This time you don’t even have to drive anywhere to get it.”

This was shocking really. I hadn’t expected them to play Charlotte because there weren’t any venues that were really the right size for them. They had played at The Ritz in Charlotte (completely unrelated to the one in Raleigh) previously, but they had been the opening act for Danzig at that show. It was likely that Marilyn Manson could have filled it, or at least come close, on their own at this point (it had a capacity of about 2000 if I remember correctly), but it was closed because the owners were being sued by the family of a boy who was electrocuted after leaning against a broken illuminated sign at a Lemonheads concert. All the other concert venues in town were either too big for them to fill at their current level of fame, or far too small. I immediately asked Chris (I have no memory of what his name really was, so for story purposes, we’re going to call him Chris.) where they were playing.

“A place called… um, here it is. Jeremiah’s.”

I literally dropped the phone as I doubled over in laughter.

Most likely, there’s only one of you reading this who will understand without further explanation why that was one of the most hilarious things I’d ever heard, so let me break off from the story here for a second to give you the insight that Rachelle has.

Jeremiah’s was our main haunt during our senior year in high school and the insane summer that followed. This is the club where Rachelle, Brande, and I had spent so much of our wasted youth. Two of the bands that Brande had been in (she was a drummer extraordinaire), along with a number of our other friends’ acts, had played there many times. Brande had worked there as a cocktail waitress on and off for a couple years. Rachelle and I were known to be there nearly every Tuesday and Wednesday; I had even worked the door there a couple of times when the regular guy wanted to get on stage to jam with whatever band was playing. This was a hole in the wall bar with a tiny, waist high stage that was most well known for hosting the cover bands that were part of a Southeastern circuit. The place held, at max capacity, 300 people, maybe, and that was counting the staff. It was an old Western Sizzlin steakhouse that had been converted into a nightclub for chrissakes!

The thought of Marilyn Manson, with their big stage productions and Mansonites-who-love-to-mosh audience, playing at this steakhouse-cum-club was more than laughable. It was the funniest joke I’d ever heard. (Yes, even funnier than the penguin joke.)

When I’d recovered enough to pick up the phone, I said, “That place is awfully small, I just don’t see Manson playing there without major problems.”

“Well, they told us it was about the size of a bowling alley,” Chris explained.

After a second round of nearly hysterical laughter (this time without dropping the phone), I shot back, “A bowling alley with one lane maybe.”

“Well, regardless, they are scheduled to play there. Do you want to set up an interview or not?” Chris was starting to sound a little miffed that I found this all so comical, so I straightened up some and made the arrangements. After all, I really wanted this interview to happen.

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Continued from the first installment. (In other words, read that first if you haven’t.)

I started to get quite nervous as the interview date approached. I had interviewed bands before, but only local acts, and mostly local acts that I didn’t really know much about to begin with. Strangely, I found it had been easier to prepare for an interview with the unknown. This was partly because I had no problem asking them the basic questions - “How long have you been together?” “What were your previous projects?” etc. My previous interviewees weren’t celebrities in any sense either. They were just guys (and gals) in bands in NC - they worked day jobs, they played shows for 50 people on a good night, they hung out with everyone after the show. They were just like friends I’d known for years.

In the many articles already written about Marilyn Manson, the basics had been covered repeatedly (even though they were really just starting to break), and Mr. Manson was like no one I’d ever known.

I felt like there was more of substance to learn from an interview with Mr. Manson and I didn’t want to end up with just another copycat interview; I wanted to ask new questions. I posted an inquiry on a fan message board on AOL (the only “online” I had access to at the time) with the subject, “If you could ask Marilyn Manson one question, what would it be?” I polled kids who came into the record store for their questions. I asked my friends what questions they wanted answered. Mind you, as much as I wanted to be unique, I also didn’t want to look like a complete moron in front of this man I admired so much. So I tossed out the greater majority of the questions that had been proffered. (There’s a reason AOL message boards acquired a bad reputation.) With what was left and my own ideas, I managed to come up with a short list of questions I deemed worthy and interesting. The day of the show, I wrote them all in a spiral notebook, packed it up with a borrowed cassette recorder, and made the three hour drive to Raleigh.

I arrived nearly five hours before show time, a full hour before my appointment. I was allowed into the venue and sent over to the bar to wait for the tour manager. After 20 minutes or so, Daisy (the band’s guitarist at the time) wandered up to the bar and we chatted briefly. Though he was entirely pleasant throughout, upon learning that I was there to interview Manson, he grimaced a little, said “Yeah, that’s probably not going to happen…” and he was off without further explanation. The tour manager appeared moments later, and informed me that I wasn’t going to talk to Marilyn Manson that day. “A writer for Spin¹ flew in today to interview Mr. Manson, but her flight was delayed so because of that we’re way behind schedule, and we have a signing to do at a record store before the show… and sorry kid, it’s just not gonna happen tonight. You’re still on the guest list for the show, so head on outside and we’ll see you for the show.”

Talk about crushed! It was like just knowing your mom got you that kick-ass bike for Christmas, having seen it in the garage, but then seeing it with your big brother’s name on it Christmas morning. The big brother who already had a kick-ass bike anyway and really didn’t need another.

As I exited the theater I was on the verge of tears, but there was already a line of Mansonites outside the door, so I couldn’t cry like the wussy girl I am… not in front of them.

I saw a couple of familiar faces in the crowd. A few people that I had met at an earlier Manson show, friends of the same very strange boy who had introduced me to the fan club girl, were gathered near the front of the line. They knew I was supposed to chat with Mr. Manson that day; via the strange boy they had supplied me with a couple of my cleverest questions for the interview. I was as nonchalant as I could be about the situation, but it was probably evident that I was bummed. I’m sure I wasn’t much fun to be around. Nonetheless, I waited with them for the rest of the afternoon, even tagging along with them to the record store signing (which was an entirely uneventful cattle call situation).

Once in the theater, I hung around the front of the stage with them until just before Clutch came out to play. I had learned to be wary of Mansonite mosh pits already, so I retreated to a table on the balcony to sit out the rest of the show, dutifully guarding all of the swag that my newfound friends had purchased lest it be destroyed in the melee. While Clutch was playing I made a sort of pillow out of t-shirts and I laid my head on the table. I actually shed a tear or two of diappointment, and the exhaustion of the day up to that point led me to take a short nap. (Either that or Clutch was just so incredibly boring that they put me to sleep.)

Despite all this, I still enjoyed Marilyn Manson’s show that night. The spectacle of Marilyn Manson live was just something else to behold.

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In case you didn’t peruse my concert list, or you’re not one of the people reading this who already knows me, I will reveal a fact about me that might not be something you would assume, given what you know about me thus far.

    I ♥ Marilyn Manson.

I probably don’t strike you as your typical Marilyn Manson fan. At least, I like to think I don’t. I’ve been following Manson’s career since their major label debut, and in 11 years I can honestly say I have met very few Manson fans that I can stand for long periods of time. Most of them make me feel at least slightly homicidal within moments.

In these past 11 years, I’ll admit that some of the obsession has worn off. I don’t feel the need to catch every show in a 100 mile radius anymore (indeed, save for the 3 song Jimmy Kimmel performance, I’ve not even seen them live in 7 years), I don’t have to know every little detail of Manson gossip, and I barely cared at all when Mr. Manson kicked Twiggy out of the band. I still haven’t even watched the DVD that came with “Lest We Forget”, which was the sole reason I purchased a greatest hits album. But I still ♥ Marilyn Manson.

It started innocently enough. A friend of mine had been in Florida for a while when Marilyn Manson and the Spookykids were but a mere local band scaring the hell out of retirees and had been somewhat impressed by them at a live show. I was out shopping with him one day when we came across the cassette tape (remember those?) “Portrait Of An American Family” at a record store. He didn’t know that they’d been signed, and after the appropriate amount of flipping out at this discovery, he bought the tape. He popped it into the cassette player for us to listen to on the ride home, and I read through the lyrics as it played. At the time (this was 1994) I was in this strange place musically… I still liked some of the hair metal that only a few years previously had dominated my music collection, as I was still attracted to the glitz and the glam, but I had branched out too. I was listening to music with more substance; music that had lyrics that meant something to me. (I mean, really, “Nothin’ But A Good Time” is still a great party song in my opinion, but it has nothing really important to say, you know?) There was something about Marilyn Manson that appealed to all of these senses for me… a bridge between the hair metal world and the more thought provoking music I’d more recently discovered. They looked like a glam rock band, but wrote lyrics about questioning who you are and what you think. I was hooked.

Now, those of you who have never really listened to Marilyn Manson, or only know of them what you’ve seen on MTV or the news, are probably trying to reconcile this notion that they have substance. I could spend several paragraphs pointing out the wisdom and philosophy that is actually contained in the lyrics to songs like “Cake and Sodomy”, “Get Your Gunn” or “Dope Hat”… but that really would take us a long way away from the story that I actually do eventually want to tell here, so you’re just going to have to trust me on this one. There’s a lot of deeper meaning behind the freaky ass makeup, scary man poses, and fake boobs.

As an attempt to get to my actual point, we will jump forward about a year in the story now, thus skipping over the first live Manson show, working at a record store where I met far too many Mansonites, and befriending a very strange boy who loved Manson. There’s some interesting stuff in there somewhere… but we’re going to have to skip it for brevity’s sake. (Brevity, in this blog? Ha, I just made a funny!)

By late 1995, I had gotten to know the girl who was running the Marilyn Manson fan club at the time through a mutual friend (the aforementioned very strange boy). She and I chatted online quite a bit, even talking on the phone once or twice. At the time, I was writing reviews for a publication that was put out by the record store that I worked for, and when I mentioned this fact to her, she asked if I’d like to interview Marilyn Manson.

Think of a celebrity that you really admire. Not just the “he’s totally hot!” kind of admire, but someone you think would be really interesting to sit down and chat with. Now imagine that someone was offering you the chance to do just that; to sit down and ask him or her whatever questions might be running through your brain.

I don’t know if you’d do it or not, but I had to say yes.

So I did. Without checking with my editor, I just said yes, and called the PR rep whose number she had supplied me with. Within a day or two I had an interview scheduled with Marilyn Manson. A few weeks after that phone call, I was to be at the Ritz four hours before their show in Raleigh, NC to sit down and chat with the man himself. Almost literally jumping with joy, I called my editor to give her the good news, and without hesitation, she turned it down.

Apparently, there had been some previous issues with the PR company that was handling Marilyn Manson, something about missed appointments and run-arounds, at which point they had pissed her off royally. Also, she claimed that they weren’t really interested in covering Marilyn Manson due to the “nature of his work”, which was deemed too racy for the publication. (They would happily sell the music in the stores, but would offer no press.)

This was a quite the setback. The PR company was already a little leery of me, probably thinking me just some crazed fan who wanted to meet Mr. Manson (which of course, wasn’t so far from the truth really). They had asked for a copy of the publication I was writing for since it wasn’t a big name periodical, and it was implied that without that the interview would be canceled. Sure, I could just lie about it, but I didn’t want to do that (because I do have some ethics) and honestly, I wanted to actually publish an interview.

Luckily, a few friends of mine had recently begun working on a new monthly magazine, and about a week after this dilemma popped up, they put our their first issue. I ran into one of the founders at a club one night, and asked if she’d be interested in an interview with Marilyn Manson for their next issue. I don’t think she actually believed I had this lined up, but she played along with me and said, “Sure, why not?” We talked about it a little more, and as I made it clear that yes, I really honestly had already set this all up, she got very excited about the implications. It would be their first celebrity interview.

And so… it was on. A dream of mine was about to come true. I was to interview one of the most controversial musical acts of the time, someone whom I personally found fascinating, and whom I greatly admired. Or so I thought anyway.

(to be continued soon)

*Update 5/3/05 - Continued here.