Hello my friends...and dammit let's get it right out front, you are my friends...we have stuff in common to the point that we actually go and hang out together (okay, maybe it's because my band is playing somewhere and you guys come to see us...but that's sort of like hanging out together)...sorry to blow steam right off the start fools fans but this rant is about friendship and the many forms it takes...but we'll get to that in a minute...first a little family business....to those who may have been curious, my 'trash barrells in the trees to attract eagles experiment' was by all accounts and on all fronts a dismal failure...but I learn from my mistakes and so it is with some trepidation that I embark on a new project which once again involves those friggin' trash barrells...you know, the big plastic kind that the wheels fall off of and then you don't know what to do with them...anyhow---check this out...as it turns out the Fools Mansion has about 15 or so acres of undeveloped land...[for those of you not 'in the know'...the Fools Mansion was purchased by the band during our flush with hits we got money to crap period and is situated in the mountainous northeast region of Ipswich Massachusetts....a town known for 2 things...fried clams and...well...us, the Fools]...anyhow, when the barrells were removed from the trees and counted it turned out that there were 18 of them...can you see where I'm going with this...so here's what I'm thinking...how about we get someone to build us a world class golf course and instead of using those little tiny holes that you have to hit the ball into (that shit's hard!)...how about we sink those big trash barrells into that short grass (green?) use them as holes an d then you got something that your average 'I suck at this' golfer can do...oh believe me, I know they'll be the occassional purist like Lou who whines 'you're ruining my game'...but you can't tell me that even Tiger Woods wouldn't like to look down the fairway on a sunday afternoon with a few million lira on the line and see that his target is a hole big enough to crawl into.....and besides, it would allow me to get rid of these friggin' broken trash barrells........enough of that let's get to the subject of this weeks' nonsense...frienship....as you may have noticed, the Fools have recently joined myspace...for those of you who are new to this, myspace is a vast network of people who seem to want to network...it's kind of cool because you can put up your page with your personal profile (age, body type, whether you're married or single, etc.) along with a picture, and you slowly aquire 'friends'...it's like if there's someone you know who knows someone else, who knows someone else etc. (I don't think I've used 2 etc.s that close in a while)...essentially it's like meeting people in real life without the messy physical interaction...but if it sounds like I'm putting it down---I'm not...I confess I have recently become a myspace junky...it's better than tv...you can check out someones' friends, what they said to their friends...and if you dig deep enough, what their friends said back to them...romance buds everywhere...and some people use quite revealing photos of themselves...ahem...which I must admit to at times viewing...but one of the weirder aspects of myspace are the people who feel the need to be on as many other peoples' pages as possible...it's not uncommon for most myspace people (in my limited experience) to have between 20 and 50 friends, most of which they at least remotely know....then there's people like Tom...if you've been around the 'space you probably are a friend to Tom because he has somehow glommed onto your page...Tom is from Cali f. and at last count he has over 2,000,000 friends on myspace...I was curious about his need to hook up with the Fools on myspace so I scrolled down to the part of the profile where his favorite bands were listed...nope, no Fools...I felt kind of bad about that...and then I thought about the people who've actually seen us a lot and didn't mention us...and I felt worse....but then I realized that like a lot of life and most relationships...much of it is make believe....and what Tom does is take advantage of the fact that most people don't block out anyone who stumbles across their page...I know people like that...hey it's good to have friends...on the other end of the spectrum there's Moto, who saw us in at the Tweeter Center last week and dropped a line about how much fun it was...now that sounds like a friendship in the making...so whether you've got 5 or 6 real friends,,,or 2,000,000 make believe friends...enjoy them....adios amigoes....Mike