Goth

I dress this way Just to keep them at bay Because Halloween is everyday. -Ministry Lyrics to live by, if your black lipstick, pink hair, ghostly white face, Goth music and witchcraft mark you - painfully - as a social outcast. "Those people who did that" at Columbine High School - "they're feeling those painful feelings. " The young woman speaking has those painful feelings, too. She has been an outcast most of her life - made fun of for her choice of clothes, music, hobbies, philosophy.

Shock and awe: That's what's expected of Marilyn Manson. But it was more like schlock and awe Sunday when the goth rocker's Against All Gods tour rolled into a sold-out Electric Factory for an evening of campy theatrics and thundering heavy metal. Rather than try to top his past onstage shenanigans (which have included everything from ripping out pages of the Bible to not-so-simulated sex acts), Manson expertly manipulated the power of good old-fashioned spectacle. Dressed in a long black trench coat, revealing skirt, and an ever-changing assortment of hats, the singer led his four-piece backing band on an invigorating 90-minute run through his 15-year career, paralleling the songs on his recent best-of collection, Lest We Forget.

Before the bodies of the 14 teenagers and one teacher had even been removed from Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., the search for possible causes of the mayhem had begun. Both Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris apparently listened to the notorious "satan musician Marilyn Manson and the industrial band KMFDM. They also wore black trench coats, black clothes and occasionally hung out with people who experimented with the odd stick of eyeliner. So being Goth was added to the list of reasons why these two teenage boys became teenage terrorists.

This just in from the Marilyn Manson research laboratory: Rock is deader than dead. Shock is all in your head. No cause of death is given on the high-concept Mechanical Animals (Nothing/Interscope 1/2), which arrives in stores tomorrow. None is needed: The attraction, apparently, is witnessing Manson and his band of merry men pick over a warm carcass. On track after stylized track, they savor buzzing guitar patterns that were fresh in the days when Mott the Hoople roamed the Earth.

Honestly, how many times can Stormy Suicide remove her shirt and flash her electrical-taped breasts to the assembled crowd? Six? Seven? At a certain point, you stop counting. Stormy is a prodigious smoker and exhibitionist, her 19-year-old body a field guide to tattoos, nine in all. She's performing at the Trocadero tonight and tomorrow in the international Suicide Girls Live Burlesque Tour, a proto-punk, goth strip show with a female-empowerment philosophy. "Suicide Girls is all about the attitude," says Missy Suicide, 26, founder of the Web site that launched the tour.

As an unseasonably warm breeze blows throughout the first Saturday in March, Patrick Rodgers goes to work - opening his new store, gathering his mail. Once upon a time, the sight of Rodgers in long black clothes with his onyx hair blowing would cause people to whisper tired insults regarding vampires in the sun. That Rodgers has (if you look closely) a set of fangs only added fuel to their fire. But he doesn't suffer fools gladly. He's too successful to bother. His Digital Ferret Records and CD shop popped the top on its new address this month along Fourth Street's Fabric Row, a store twice the size of his former location on Fifth Street, off South.

Dee Snider is many things: prime-time DJ on Philly's rock-radio redoubt, WMMR; former lead singer for notorious '80s headbangers Twisted Sister; and creator and narrator of Van Helsing's Curse, a horror musical that swoops into the Keswick Theatre on Saturday night. Given Snider's resume, his most surprising accomplishment may be that he's been married to one woman for 28 years. After all, rock romances must weather situations most relationships never face. For instance, Dee and Suzette started dating in 1976, shortly after he joined Twisted Sister.

'An unpleasant task," hissed Patrick Rodgers, a usually genial young man with a taste for dark outfits girded by chains and a smile that reveals a double set of fangs, customer-crafted by a dental technician. It took his army of volunteers more than six weeks to set up the Haven, the city's only exclusively gothic and industrial-rock nightclub. And it took six to seven hours for them to dismantle it last week, after Rodgers was stunned by news that the building where he'd opened the club in April was being padlocked by his landlord's bank.

Live music and more, tonight through Thursday, compiled by Shaun Brady, Tom Di Nardo, James Johnson, Sara Sherr and Jonathan Takiff. POP . . . plus The Fractals: Don't know if the "similarly shaped parts within larger parts" definition of their name exactly fits. 'Cause some seriously skewered dynamics are going down within a Fractals song like "That Girl Tonight" - which flips between cool samba and jangle pop rock - or the sometimes Eastern European-flavored (then sometimes not) incantation, "The End of End of Days.

If ever there was a hard-rock band that guys and girls could agree upon, the upstart Evanescence is it. And judging from the 50-50 male-female split at the nearly full Electric Factory show Friday night by the Little Rock, Ark., quintet, an accord has already been reached. For the fellas, Evanescence's songs featured grinding rhythms that moved the earth like a jacked-up bulldozer, and tough-as-nails riffs played by agitated-looking guitarist Ben Moody, who fancies spitting water into the front rows.

It couldn't be further from the conventional period drama with the nipped-waist bodices and ostentatious accessories that frequently garner award-show attention for costuming. Nonetheless, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo , the American film based on the first book of Stieg Larsson's popular Millennium trilogy, is likely to attract some attention with its hard-hitting looks that reflect a darker side of contemporary street fashion. The producers of the film, which opened Tuesday, put together a style dream team to transform actress Rooney Mara into Lisbeth Salander, a waifish goth-punk heroine who becomes an unlikely ally for a journalist involved in a twisted mystery.

The Great Leader By Jim Harrison Grove Press. 329 pp. $24 Reviewed by John Shortino   There are several aspects of Jim Harrison's The Great Leader that may seem a little familiar to readers of crime fiction: The "goth girl" hacker assisting the detective, a religion-obsessed villain committing violence against women, and a protagonist whose investigations are often sidetracked because the...

Bristol Palin - undone by wine coolers! (They still make those?) That proud daughter of Sarah Palin , in line to become America's first Royal Empress, reveals in her new memoir, Not Afraid of Life: My Journey So Far, that she was sloshed on the stuff when she lost her virginity to high school stud (and later dropout) Levi Johnston . Bristol, who valiantly waited till she was 20 to write her first memoir (some celebs pen 'em at 16 and 17!), was so coolered-up, she can't remember a blessed second of the sacred event.

Has Angelina Jolie 's youthful, bloodlusting, black-leather-clad, post-punk, Goth, um, thing rubbed off on her kids? Jolie and partner Brad Pitt famously are raising six kids. Consider: Jolie tells Vogue that her daughter Shiloh recently brought her a dead bird and asked if she could "have a dead pet. " Angie was flustered. "I'm . . . 'Uh-uh, I don't think it's healthy, honey,' " she says. So Mum went out and bought Shiloh "a taxidermy bird. " Is that healthy?

Live music and more, tonight through Thursday, compiled by Shaun Brady, Tom Di Nardo, James Johnson, Sara Sherr and Jonathan Takiff. POP . . . plus The Fractals: Don't know if the "similarly shaped parts within larger parts" definition of their name exactly fits. 'Cause some seriously skewered dynamics are going down within a Fractals song like "That Girl Tonight" - which flips between cool samba and jangle pop rock - or the sometimes Eastern European-flavored (then sometimes not) incantation, "The End of End of Days.

She is an adept keyboard player who doesn't shy from grand gestures or baroque flourishes. She loves theatrics and grand concepts, especially with a layer of fairy tale, mythical or biblical allusions. She's fond of the dichotomy between the sensual and the metaphysical. She's a dramatic singer who often soars into her upper register, and she's an ambitious, sophisticated songwriter who occasionally flirts with a catchy chorus, to great effect. Like Tori Amos and Amos' musical fairy godmother, Kate Bush, Natasha Khan is ambitious, impressive, and a little weird.

As an unseasonably warm breeze blows throughout the first Saturday in March, Patrick Rodgers goes to work - opening his new store, gathering his mail. Once upon a time, the sight of Rodgers in long black clothes with his onyx hair blowing would cause people to whisper tired insults regarding vampires in the sun. That Rodgers has (if you look closely) a set of fangs only added fuel to their fire. But he doesn't suffer fools gladly. He's too successful to bother. His Digital Ferret Records and CD shop popped the top on its new address this month along Fourth Street's Fabric Row, a store twice the size of his former location on Fifth Street, off South.

As an unseasonably warm breeze blows throughout the first Saturday in March, Patrick Rodgers goes to work - opening his new store, gathering his mail. Once upon a time, the sight of Rodgers in long black clothes with his onyx hair blowing would cause people to whisper tired insults regarding vampires in the sun. That Rodgers has (if you look closely) a set of fangs only added fuel to their fire. But he doesn't suffer fools. He's too successful to bother. His Digital Ferret Records and CD shop popped the top on its new address this month along Fourth Street's Fabric Row, a store twice the size of his former location on Fifth Street, off South.

It was a hot summer afternoon, but the two mothers and children walking through Laurel Hill Cemetery were dressed in black nonetheless. Faith Eternity Ranelli-Del Rosario, 4, wore a black T-shirt and a pink skirt, along with a temporary tattoo on her right calf. She held hands with her friend Joe Holtzinger, 7, who sported a T-shirt with a skull and crossbones on it. All four were on their way to their favorite picnic spot, a scenic bluff overlooking the Schuylkill. While a cemetery might not seem like the first place a parent would think to take a kid on a picnic, Jennifer Holtzinger, 31, and Lynnea Ranelli-Del Rosario, 37, take their families there for two reasons.

If you're a pretty boy band with a cult following on the cusp of sensational stardom, nothing ensures the screams of your rabid fans better than cheap tickets, proximity and new songs. Throw a live MTV2 taping into the mix, and you had Wednesday's sold-out show at the Trocadero with My Chemical Romance - a $2 concert with Jersey's emo glam faves to be televised Sept. 16. What did you get for your two bucks? Chunky, silvery-tongued crooner Gerard Way swished, blew kisses, and lifted more jazz hands than the cast of Chicago as he snorted through the rapid-fire "Give 'Em Hell, Kid" and the choppy, chipper new "Damn.