what i ended up doing was launching the thickbox uploaded manually via a jquery click event. then with setInterval i was able to hide the pieces i wanted.
jQuery(document).ready(function($) {
$('.specialclass').click(function() {
//get post id from somewhere (for me this was the row column
string = $(this).parents('tr.type-portfolio').attr('id');
if(/post-(\d+)/.exec(string)[1]) post_id = parseInt(/post-(\d+)/.exec(string)[1], 10);
tbframe_interval = setInterval(function() {
//remove url, alignment and size fields- auto set to null, none and full respectively
$('#TB_iframeContent').contents().find('.url').hide().find('input').val('');
$('#TB_iframeContent').contents().find('.align').hide().find('input:radio').filter('[value="none"]').attr('checked', true);
$('#TB_iframeContent').contents().find('.image-size').hide().find('input:radio').filter('[value="full"]').attr('checked', true);
}, 2000);
if(post_id) tb_show('', 'media-upload.php?post_id='+post_id+'&type=image&tab=library&TB_iframe=true'); //tab sets the opened TB window to show library by default
return false;
});
});