People get all worked up about Marilyn Manson as some kind of culture
clasher, but if you really pay attention, he’s more of a Tom Petty figure.
His music, like Petty’s, is a highly competent version of a genre. What
Petty does for mid-tempo rock — display quiet confidence, utter lyrics that
are neither hackneyed nor astonishing, arrange the instruments in a suitable
fashion, wisely hire a good drummer — Manson does for heavy metal. The
arrangements of Marilyn Manson songs, for instance, are well-planned, mildly
ambitious and efficiently executed. His voice is neither great nor
horrible. He can be a power balladeer, like when he covers the Eurythmics’
“Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This),” or he can punk out on the delightful little
ditty “Cake and Sodomy.” Clearly, he knows what he’s doing. And his life
story reflects this.

“The Long Hard Road Out of Hell,” co-authored by Manson with Neil
Strauss of the New York Times, is beautifully designed, nicely paced, loaded
with interesting epigraphs and not as pretentious as you’d think. For a man
who considers himself the antichrist, it’s one of the least evil memoirs I’ve
read in a while; it can’t even come close to last year’s Spaulding Gray
ickfest, “It’s A Slippery Slope,” for example, in which the author
nonchalantly recounts ruining the life of his longtime girlfriend while
learning to ski.

Manson isn’t subversive, but he’s an ace student of subversives past. He
doles out little manifestos like: “As a performer, I wanted to be the
loudest, most persistent alarm clock I could be, because there didn’t seem
like any other way to snap society out of its Christianity- and media-induced
coma.” Fine. This has been the goal of the avant-garde since before dada
and it’s hard to pull off. He’s also fluent in the more American, postwar,
what-are-you-rebelling-against?/whaddya-got? school of delinquency, claiming
that cops make him nervous because “even when I’m not doing anything illegal
I’m thinking about doing something illegal.” He pulls pranks like cutting
his arm with a razor blade in front of children at Disney World, bragging
that “there’s nothing like the feeling of knowing that you’ve made a
difference in someone’s life, even if that difference is a lifetime of
nightmares and a fortune in therapy bills.” Isn’t that so cute, in an “I just wanna be somebody” Mark David Chapman sort of way? This book is so by-the-book.

I actually felt a real kinship with Manson reading the earlier chapters
about his upbringing in Christian school. I had a similar freaky ’70s youth
courtesy of the book of Revelation, and Manson’s descriptions of his apocalyptic nightmares involving the Mark of the Beast in the form of UPC codes (considered by fundamentalists at the time to be one step away from systematic 666) nearly mirror my own less-than-sweet dreams of the era. But one thing Manson — who’s very clear about his will to shock — and I don’t agree on is the nature of the antichrist himself.

Manson’s antichrist theories are probably more complex than mine. He sees
the figure “not as a villain but a final hero to save people from their own
ignorance. The apocalypse doesn’t have to be fire and brimstone. It could
happen on a personal level. If you believe you’re the center of your own
universe and you want to see the universe destroyed, it only takes one
bullet.” Manson claims this as his birthright, titling his last album
“Antichrist Superstar.”

I don’t know about Manson, but where I come from, we Pentecostals
received intensive antichrist-spotting training. And like everything we
learned in Sunday school (and reinforced by two of my favorite TV shows at
the time, “The Munsters” and “The Addams Family”), the rules were pretty
simple. When the antichrist arrives — there was no “if” — he will not look like
a demon. He will not be dressed in bondage gear, have tattooed arms, expose
his bottom, wear goofy makeup or give his songs titles like “Kiddie Grinder”
like Mr. Marilyn Manson. No, he will be beautiful. He will be loved. He will
be blond. (At the time I pictured Robert Redford, but I realize this was a
little off. There’s something cold about Redford. There’s a wall around
him.) The antichrist would be a smiley, likable kind of Joe, a
Kevin Costner type, in actor terms. The antichrist would be popular. John Carman
of the San Francisco Chronicle was onto something recently, imagining that “if
Clinton roamed the corridors of the White House shooting everyone in sight
and then, soaked in blood, seized the airwaves to declare that he is the
living antichrist, his rating would probably shoot up another 10 points.”

In short, the antichrist will not be riffing on the songs of mass murderers
like Marilyn Manson does with Charles Manson’s “My Monkey.” The antichrist
will be a three-headed, tow-headed monster of harmony, filling your head with
“MMMBop” bliss so that you don’t notice he’s stealing your soul. And that’s
why that joke imagining a band called Marilyn Hanson isn’t even very funny. Wouldn’t the two looks cancel each other out? Like, what happens with the hair combo when you superimpose Manson’s goth black tresses on Hanson’s goldi-locks — what do you get, auburn? Wouldn’t Marilyn Hanson look and sound just like Pavement? What’s the fun in that?
Because adding the healthy modern darkness of Marilyn Manson to Hanson’s
freakish light could only dilute the blond boys’ delicious depravity.

But if the real Irving Thalberg were still with us, there’s a chance — though he’d be loath to admit it — that he’d recognize AVN as a classic movie mag, one that mixes the gossip that used to fill the pages of Photoplay or Movie Screen with the industry scuttlebutt of Variety. Granted, the stars who posed for the chiaroscuro glamour shots of photographers like George Hurrell and Clarence Bull didn’t appear looking eager to give a blow job or put a dildo to use, nor were they happily flashing the camera during a night on the town. (Try as you might, you just can’t imagine Greer Garson dropping her top at the Brown Derby.) But adult movies may be the truest descendants of the old Hollywood system that are left in show biz. Like the stars of the studio era, porn stars are under contract to one company, and their appeal is counted on to sell the product. The single most influential tool in selling a video is the box shot, the photo of the star that appears on the video’s package. Just as people used to talk about the “new Bette Davis” or the “new Errol Flynn” rather than using the picture’s proper name, porn fans talk about “the new Jenna Jameson” or “the new Missy.” And the stars seem to have mastered the old Hollywood art of selling themselves, their product and their studio. So when Nikki Tyler is asked about her move to Metro, she praises her new home by saying, “They do the hardest, raunchiest stuff in the classiest way. It’s art.”

On some level, maybe an unconscious one, AVN seems to be aware of its connection to old Hollywood. Despite the fact that the magazine is targeted toward video retailers, industry insiders and then to fans, and despite the close eye it keeps on various First Amendment threats, AVN is a movie magazine through and through. A friend tipped me off to AVN a few months back, and I’m hooked. For my money ($6.95 an issue) it’s the most entertaining and friendly movie magazine out there. The only drawback may be locating it. It’s too explicit to be sold with other entertainment mags, and since it’s not a stroke book, you might not find it with them either. Your best bet may be a video store with an adult section. (I get mine at Tower.)

In the old days, the studios controlled the information put out about their stars. That’s still true, but now magazines like Premiere and TV shows like “Entertainment Tonight” sell what amounts to commercials for upcoming films as “industry reporting” (a term that should be reserved for muckraking books like Julie Solomon’s “The Devil’s Candy” or Nancy Griffin and Kim Masters’ “Hit & Run”). And perhaps in reaction to the fact that studios no longer compel their stars to make nice with the gossip columnists, gossip has gotten nastier and more vindictive than ever. Just take a look at the E! network’s parade of kvetching heads, “The Gossip Show,” where aging ghouls like Cindy Adams and Rex Reed blab along with their hell-spawn progeny like the Village Voice’s Michael Musto and Time’s Belinda Luscombe. Or pick up an issue of Movieline, which drips with the smarmy superiority of Spy. It’s as if none of these people can decide whether they want to be Hedda Hopper or David Letterman.

The porn stars who get tattled on in AVN may be just as annoyed as their mainstream counterparts. But let’s face it, it’s a hell of a lot harder to embarrass someone who fucks on camera for a living. So what if Jenna Jameson got felt up by Marilyn Manson at the “Private Parts” screening? Or if Dick Nasty is worried that his career is over because Lovette accused him of using her social security and driver’s license numbers to illegally lease a Nissan? Fat chance. You can enjoy the gossip in AVN (oodles of it in every issue) without feeling that you’ve given over to the pettiest side of yourself, or that you’re getting your kicks at someone else’s expense. Try not to smile reading this: “Based on a recent hot tub encounter … director Frank Thring seems to be under the distinct impression that he and Lennox have a special thing going. Sources close to the situation, however, say that Lennox isn’t exactly running out to pick china patterns.” And the damnedest people show up in the pages of “AVN.” Here’s Richard Dreyfuss happily posing for a shot with Kylie Ireland (“Oh, the pictures of you that I have in my mind!” he’s quoted as saying). And there’s George Plimpton with Serenity at the AVN Awards Show. (Plimpton was researching an article on the porn industry for Harper’s, but maybe this could be a turning point. He’s already tried pro football and hockey, as well as working as a trapeze artist and a movie extra. Why not porn? Can’t you just hear the expectant hush on the set as the director calls out, “OK, Big George, time for the money shot, babe!”)

The bulk of AVN is made up of reviews that are about what you can find in any skin mag. Here’s Irv: “The Mila/T.T. Boy scene is certainly worthy of attention, especially as T.T.’s athletic ramrodship drives Mila out of her mind with ecstasy.” They beg the question of whether it’s possible to review porn. You can gas on about “production values” all you want; the only real criterion for the consumer is if it turns you on.

But if you know what turns you on, the reviews in AVN can be like your very own fetish catalog. (The “names” of the reviewers are often more creative than the reviews: “Rollin Hand,” “Anna Lingus,” “Harry Manas” — I think he means “manos” — and the exquisitely monickered “Raoul O’Toole.”) And though you shouldn’t have to justify the fun AVN (or porn) delivers, I should say that AVN, a member of the porn industry’s Free Speech Coalition, is fighting the good fight against censorship and laws that amount to censorship, like a proposed Houston city ordinance requiring adult clubs and bookstores to relocate to the desert (effectively putting them out of business) or a proposed California “sin tax” on adult videos and magazines.

Of course, AVN is the sort of ally most respectable free-speech advocates don’t want to acknowledge. (Does anyone really believe that a mainstream media outlet would portray the adult industry’s side of those zoning or tax issues without feeling it their duty to tar porn as unclean?) But let’s face it: Porn wouldn’t be a $3 billion-a-year industry if the only customers were sad, lonely or depraved old masturbators. Given the propensity of the American public (probably including many closet porn fans) to freak out about pornography, it seems like a minor miracle that the Fox network (owned by that grouchy old prude Rupert Murdoch) allows David Duchovny’s Fox Mulder on “The X Files” to be an avowed AVN fan. If he can make that brave admission, so can you. Come on. The cooch is out there.

In Miami, jurors are currently being selected in what is, to my mind, one of
the biggest hell-is-other-people lawsuits in history. Something like 60,000
flight attendants who never smoked are holding tobacco companies such as
Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds liable to the tune of $5 billion for ailments related to repeated exposure to second-hand smoke. These
frequent fliers are living out one of the most basic human fantasies: revenge. You made me suffer, now you will pay.

Since every last inconvenience we face results in stress, and too much
stress can lead to heart disease, and the cause of every death is always,
eventually, heart failure, then I say, Let the lawsuits begin! Let’s subpoena
Jehovah’s Witnesses for ruining all those stress-reducing naps! Haul
telemarketers before a judge to justify their dinner-wrecking jobs! File
class actions against those shoe-ruining jerks who toss gum willy-nilly on
sidewalks!

But the one thing as insidious and stressful as being held captive to other
people’s cigarettes is being held captive to other people’s stereos. I
think those flight attendants might be onto something. We all know that
noise pollution is just as detrimental as pollution pollution. With that in
mind, I’m thinking of staging similar legal protests against the purveyors of
aural dreck.

For starters, I think I’ll sue my neighborhood supermarket. Because it
seems like every time I enter its refrigerated cavern, I am held hostage to
the piped-in trauma of R.E.M.’s “Shiny Happy People.” Don’t they know what
this song does to me, not to mention my blood pressure? Do they realize what
it means to not only be force-fed the words “shiny happy people” 3
million times in a row, but the fact that the shiny happy people are
holding hands makes me want to brain my fellow shoppers with 12-packs of Bud?
Or how irked I can get when some pushy woman slams her cart
into mine just as Michael Stipe is mocking me with drivel like, “Everyone
around, love them, love them”?

And howsabout suing the cab drivers of the world who, I swear, in order to
receive their licenses, must take an oath to search through the radio dial
and hunt down the absolute worst station possible. Have you ever heard a
good song in a cab? Me neither. Last week’s winner: Paul McCartney’s new
one, “Flaming Pie.” I believe that I shaved actual minutes off my life
expectancy just contemplating the horror of hearing one of the most talented
individuals of the 20th century destroy what’s left of his lingering
reputation making lines like “I don’t care how I do it!” or “I took my brains
out and stretched ‘em on the rack” sound absolutely true.

I also wouldn’t mind suing Marilyn Manson for actual damages of $2.95
because I dropped a glass the first time I saw his ugly mug on TV. Or Hank
Williams Jr. for those “Monday Night Football” commercials of his. Or
Courtney Love for confusing me (mental anguish). Or even my beloved Meat
Puppets, because this is business, not personal, and I’ll never get my
hearing back from one of their deafening concerts three years ago.

But you know who could really use a good dose of legal medicine? Hanson!
These three adorable brothers from Tulsa, Okla., with their marvelous, uplifting
single “MMMBop,” are causing me more than their fair share of mental duress.
Now I know what you’re thinking. Why begin litigious action against these
beautiful Okies? They’ve got soul! And cheer! That song just soars! This,
friends, is the problem. I can’t go more than two hours without putting that
song in the CD player. I’mmm addicted to “MMMBop”! And what do we do with
addictive substances in this country? Outlaw them! Or at least regulate
their consumption. And when that doesn’t work (see cigarettes, once
again), we sue! What if this song invades our playgrounds? What if children,
hearing it, start thinking their lives will be filled with glorious harmonies
and happiness? What kind of example is that? Because when musical smack
like “MMMBop” comes on the radio, everything else — the traffic, the summer reruns,
and all the other other-people impositions — seems that much more shoddy and dreary and sad by comparison. That song is yet another product of the all-powerful
disappointment lobby — and what is disappointment if not a cancer of the
spirit?