Where Is My Mind?

     "If you act like a rock star, you will be treated like one," wrote Marilyn Manson in his 1998 autobiography, The Long Hard Road Out of Hell . Since the start of his career, it is a philosophy he has accordingly upheld. In a time where rock music seems too safe, Manson (born Brian Hugh Warner) is the last of his generation (second to Alice Cooper) to live up to the excesses of rock star life and perhaps the last for future generations to come. No other figure in rock music today even remotely scratches the surface. A glimpse of that grandiosity is evident in his third album, Mechanical Animals , albeit in a glam/glitter rock sense. Considered his more adventurous (and self-righteous) work to date, the album explores his fictional David Bowie-inspired Omega and the Mechanical Animals band. Manson adapts the role of Omega, a substance addicted, gender ambiguous, “alien messiah” glam rocker who fell to earth, is apprehended, and placed with a band called The Mechanical Anim