It seems newsworthy to mention that an online video for Marilyn Manson’s new music video is apparently going to be online for only another day or two. The new single is called “Heart Shaped Glasses” and features romantic lyrics about erotic cutting and Manson looking like he is feeling his inner rockstar. Most coverage of the video has been rather frantic speculation on whether Marilyn Manson and actress Evan Rachel Wood are actually having penetrative sex in the opening scene of the seven plus minutes long vid. It is totally irrelevent to the final product whether or not his penis was actually in her vagina, as neither is visible, but the two manage to communicate wonderful chemistry between them on screen.

When I saw the movie Seven, I kept wanting them to turn the damn lights on. It seems like it would have been much more obvious that Kevin Spacey was the killer if they hadn’t been doing investigation and forensics with flashlights, when there were perfectly good light switches nearby. I felt a little bit like this during much of the video for “Heart Shaped Glasses” when I watched it on the German video sharing site ironically enough called Sevenload. The actual Marilyn Manson site links to an IP with no real site on it and a much higher resolution version of the video. Everything is much clearer in the version on Manson’s site, although the lighting is still colored and moody. The interface on the Sevenload version is much more user-friendly though.

The video kicks off on Sevenload with the artist introducing the clip and, linked off his site, it goes straight into Manson and Wood writhing around and kissing passionately. This is pretty hot for around two and a half minutes. The initial makeout scene includes some very light choking. Somehow I think iTunes still won’t have any problem billing for the music video download down the line. The video is then interrupted with one of those talky interludes that musicians who want acting roles like and nobody else enjoys. The two of them are in a car and she tells him to drive faster and he takes altporn style polaroids of her with a kitchen knife and a schoolgirl skirt. This scene is where the heart shaped glasses referred to in the song’s title first appear. They then move to a club scene where Manson is rocking it old school and a sorta normal looking girl in the audience is watching from behind her heart shaped glasses and touching herself with hands covered in interestingly incongruous driving gloves. This I believe is Wood in a sort of fifties looking good girl dress. I don’t think she’d be good casting for the part if she weren’t Manson’s paramour, but the chemistry between them is so powerful that it more than makes up for it. I think the moody lighting, which might otherwise be a bit much, makes her come across a bit darker too.

The main concept of the video revolves around, aside from hipster sunglass, romantic cutting. So the club scene, err, cuts back and forth to a blood-drenched black bed and shots of a sort of heart shaped tattoo with a lightening bolt S on Wood’s thigh. I don’t know if the tattoo is real any more than I know if the fucking is real. Doesn’t matter because it works for the video. Oh yeah, then they drive off a cliff Thelma and Louise style. I loved Thelma and Louise so much that when my friend Blue Blood writer Shariann Lewitt and I saw it, Shariann told me that maybe one of us needs to learn to drive better. As Wood steers with her foot in Manson’s video and they still drive off a cliff, I think Shariann was mistaken about the requirements.

Anyway, the song is okay and I like the flow of the lines:

she’ll never cover up what we did with her dress, no
she said, “kiss me, it’ll heal but it won’t forget”

When I am elected Benevolent World Dictator, there will be a lot more videos in this vein and they will be available for more than a week.

I get a lot of inquiries about my scars. I proudly display them and flaunt the name on Scar13.com, so it is no wonder people are curious. Here is an explanation, for everyone who was wondering but thought they would offend me by asking :-)

All of my scars are self inflicted. When I was younger I was the epitome of troubled youth, very unhappy and very manic-depressive. I took any pain I had in my life out on myself. By the time I was thirteen, I was cutting myself, not to the degree of scarring but mostly for the physical sensation. It is a distraction, you see. When I was in pain or bleeding, I never thought about what I was really feeling emotionally.

Long story short, I eventually got through this stage in my life. It took a lot of self realization though, and a lot of internal struggling. It was habit to hurt myself after so many years of doing it. One day after I had hit rock bottom. I had started using drugs more than recreationally and was cutting myself deep enough that I had scars up and down my thighs and on my left arm. I noticed that children and dogs on the street would avoid me. My family was scared of me, not in the way that they didn’t still visit with me, but in the way where they didn’t know who I was anymore. My friends didn’t even bother to call.

My world had become one in which I was isolated from anything beautiful because I had surrounded myself with ugliness. Seriously, though, the animals and the children were what snapped me out of it. My whole life I had always been able to get a smile out of a child and dogs would walk right up to me to be pet. All of the sudden I was projecting such negative energy that both shunned me. It may sound trivial, but that is what made me change myself.

I sobered up with the help of my mom and my friend Sal. I stopped cutting myself. It was a decision, not a coincidence. It was hard to do but not as much of a struggle as a new state of mind. I decided that I wanted to be a more positive person, that I wanted to bring people happiness.

Now I am rarely unhappy. I get frusterated and discouraged by life, of course, but I remain positive and realize that everything is temporary, and the bad times will pass. I wake up often and think how lucky I am to have all the beautiful friends I have, a well paying job and the opportunity to travel sometimes. I honestly believe that I am luckier than most people on the planet.

So, to everyone who wants to know if I am promoting self mutilation or glamourizing pain, the answer is no. I think everyone goes through a time in their life when they struggle with depression, mine just happens to be displayed physically. My scars are a reminder that I can get through anything. I am not trying to encourage anyone to hurt themselves, quite the contrary. I got through the shitty part of my life and came out a positive, happy person in the end, and I hope anyone out there struggling with depression problems will see that and have hope that they can do the same. It may sound cheesy but I am half hippie and half goth, and the hippie side of me says a positive outlook can make a huge difference.

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The author is the star of Scar13.com