Rudy and I arrived in Syracuse at 5:30pm after a 3 hour drive from Buffalo. We quickly parked the car and went to the front of the venue where there were about 20-30 protesters all praying for the bunches of media that were there. Rudy struck up a conversation with this nice young lady who gave us little Mary necklace charms. She was asking us not to go to the show and was telling us all the bad things that Manson does like jerk off on stage and tear pages from the bible. She even went so far as to say he once ripped up the Mormon bible but she "didn't care because [she] could care less about the Mormon bible", which I found very hypocritical. She also asked us to give a special prayer book to Manson if we were to be in contact with him. We graciously declined the request. After that we went around back and found Jen and Juli. We sat down with them and waited for Jen to get the word that she was on the guest list. At one point, the guitarist for 12 Rounds (blond afro guy) was out smoking and an apple hit him from above. He took the apple and was about to throw it back at the assailant when a whole mess of stuff came flying out of the upstairs window. I moved to see who it was, and I could see the white, tattooed arm of Manson. He continued to toss plates and fruits out the window until finally a woman closed the window. It was great seeing Manson return to his childish, rock star ways.

We finally entered the venue at around 7:45, and promptly took our seats in the third row, just right of center. Perfect seats for me as I was Twiggy side in Toronto and I wanted to watch John 5 more closely this time. 12 Rounds performance was only a little better than Toronto's, but that's not saying much. A 30 minute wait and out go the lights for Manson. The setlist was pretty much the same as Toronto's except Mechanical Animals wasn't performed because the stage was too small for Manson to move around in the stilts. I really missed seeing that part. Also IHA wasn't played and the show ended with The beautiful people if I remember correctly.

Special occurances at this show. There WAS glitter during Lunchbox and I have confirmed with other people that there was none in Toronto.. not that it's a huge deal. Right before Lunchbox Manson said something to the effect that if the audience wasn't going to put effort in the show, he was just going to go to sleep, so he laid down on the monitors and made yawning motions until the crowd was sufficiently noisy. Before one song (I forget which.. 2/3rds into the set) Manson demanded that two guys who were about 10-15 feet from me be removed or else he wouldn't play anymore. The security guards refused to remove them and the guys didn't move by themselves. Manson even went so far as to walk into the orchestra pit and yell at them to leave. Since they wouldn't go, Manson said they could stay if they took off their shirts and touched each other.. which they did. Manson commented on how they looked like the Backstreet Boys and he might even fuck them himself. During the next song Manson came out into the pit again and handed the 2 guys a water bottle, blew kisses at them, then proceeded to bend over and rub his ass in their direction. Again, the highlight of the show.

Rudy and I managed to get to the aftershow party (thanks to a certain someone) and ginger showed up rather quickly. We went over to get an autograph and just say what a great job he's been doing. After about 20 or 30 minutes, Pogo strided in and a few people, including myself, crowded around him. He said "I don't want to talk, I just want to sign stuff. Don't talk to me, just give me shit to sign. That's what I came down here for, to sign shit, now give me stuff to sign." I gladly handed over my two tickets for him to sign. While he was signing all this stuff, this stupid chick kept bothering him about something that happened 2 years ago in Austin Texas. I dunno what happened cuz I only heard parts of it, but Pogo kept telling her that he can't help her, she could only help herself. At one point he said "I can't remember that. It was two years ago. I don't remember things and I prefer it that way." She kept bugging him so Pogo suddenly goes to the wall and bangs his head into saying "Don't you get it?! You just don't get it!" As he was leaving, he was shouting "the world isn't perfect! It can't be perfect all at once. If the world is going to be perfect, we need to be perfect one person at a time". Then he stomped up the stairs and left. I couldn't have been more pleased with that. Pogo never ceases to amaze me. After that we were all shuffled outside and we left. I got some good pics of the protesters and stuff, so as soon as their scanned I'll let the list know. God damn that was long.

tOny
"when the fire g0es 0ut, y0u better learn to fake"
"m0m's c0min' r0und t0 put it back the way it 0ught t0 be."