Listening Post

Just in time for Halloween, Marilyn Manson is back with what may honestly be the most viscerally disturbing video of his or anyone else's career. Directed by Shia LaBeouf -- who's apparently a hell of a lot sicker and more twisted than any of us thought -- this hypnotic, six-and-a-half minute descent into hyper-literate hell is absolutely NSFW.

Credit where credit is due: If Manson set out to prove that he can still shock once in a while, he did it.

Happy Friday, kids -- here's Born Villain.

Listening Post

The best Manson single since The Beautiful People -- and probably the last good one we'll ever see -- it's Mobscene.

Angel of Death

I'm apparently very bad luck for celebrity types or something.

The last time I was out in Los Angeles, Lindsay Lohan plowed her car into a tree and wound up checking into rehab and Charles Nelson Reilly died. Just a couple of months before that, I was in South Florida on vacation when Anna Nicole Smith collapsed on the floor of the Hard Rock in Ft. Lauderdale and never regained consciousness.

So, as it turns out, what happened last Thursday in L.A. -- just a few hours after I arrived there?

Marilyn Manson's former bass player, Brad Stewart (better known as Gidget Gein), was found dead in his Burbank apartment of a drug overdose.

What's weirder: Manson came up through the South Florida music scene at the same time my band did and I even went out with Brad's on-again-off-again girlfriend, a stripper named Trish, a couple of times in the very early 90s.

Cue the Twilight Zone music.

Oh, and I'll be taking requests as to where I should vacation next -- I'm thinking wherever that Michael Bublé guy lives sounds lovely this time of year.