New York is amazing today. 68 degrees and sunny. Just to sit in the park and write is difficult because there are so many beautiful people everywhere to look at and talk to. so many beautiful girls in New York. today as I was walking down Park Ave. I was looking at all the beautiful girls that pass you by, and sometimes you just have to watch them as they walk out of view because they are so beautiful and fresh and alive looking. And this is part of the joy and wonder of being a man and loving women in New York. With no intention, you just watch them and admire them. for me I love the girls with the dark hair and the Italian glasses. Forget about it. I almost drop dead from that look. I'm thinking, how could we ever choose just one? how would we ever know which one to choose? I swear to God you could fall in love ten times in a day and not even notice it. falling in love is easy. staying in love... now that's the challenge...

it has to be something magical involved in the process. Something that tells you ‘this is the one’ and that makes you forget about all the others. I am longing for that now. not that I haven't been for years now, but the other fantasies have either been lived and experienced or don't seem as important now compared to that. so we wait for that something magical that just blows you away and takes a hundred and ten percent of your attention... someone you can become slightly obsessed with I guess and that can occupy all of your attention so there isn't any left for all the other birds out there you haven't had opportunity to be with. As I was walking I had this realization...  that... ‘she too waits to meet you.’ it was a whisper in my ear by the angels I believe. that simple. But profound. She too waits to meet the man of her dreams. and that is quite a comforting thought. So I just kept walking on, and lifted my head a bit higher and realized that one needn’t worry too much about it. relax and allow.

Made me think of Cleopatra. Always something so tragic there. all I wanted to do was protect her from that. and yet I knew I couldn’t. what could I really do? but still, I carried it with me from the moment we met. Always trying to protect her... eventually I came to realize that I couldn’t. it wasn't up to me. it was something carried inside of her. I could talk her down, but I couldn’t eradicate the fear and anxiousness. It just wasn't for me to do. but still, even today, I still feel called to it sometimes when I hear that in her voice. Maybe that's just the man in us. that wants to protect and comfort and heal and provide safety and security to our beautiful little loved ones.

Liner notes for new album:
When we were rehearsing for the new CD, we had a lot of songs to choose from. I knew I wanted to record an album called Girls and just record all the songs each of us had ever written about girls. Maybe have one disc of new, unreleased songs about girls, for we are always writing them, and then another disc as a freebie that would contain a compilation of all the songs about girls collected from other already released albums. just for fun really. humor me on this one. I know that's what the guys in the band have been doing about it. as they always do.

So while we rehearsed all these songs about girls, we also rehearsed others as well. songs that didn't seem to fit in anywhere. Perhaps another album. Solaris and we are columbine and Zion and the rest of them. Soon a set of songs appeared that all seemed to go together. they had the same vibe. Maybe not the same style, which has always been my Achilles heal as a song-writer. My eyes are bigger than my stomach so to speak. Always wanting to take on more than I can handle or more than you are meant to on one album maybe. That has always been according to critics at least a burden that I was all too willing to bare regardless of the criticism because frankly as an artist I just enjoy doing whatever the hell I want to; and as a music fan I just really enjoy lots of different musical styles. I've never enjoyed listening to a whole album all the way through. Not even by my favorite artists. Call it ADD, whatever, that's just me.

One of the things we noticed about this new set of songs is that they all had this influence from TV or film or literature. They all had this theme of media in them or about them. for a long time we were going to call the album Cinematique because of this. I asked around. no one could tell me where this word came from. French, Italian, English? Spanish? No one knew. but I liked the sound of it. One day Jasmine was at the kitchen table drinking and smoking and philosophizing about things while we rehearsed for the new album. On a break we started talking about the political ramifications of the songs, the evil regime that had somehow infiltrated American government and perpetrated its divisive and nefarious acts live on the fox news network and CNN every night for all the world to see. It wasn't hard to feel anger or to feel the anger in and of the songs. And even more than anger, because what is anger going to get you in the face of the current American government? More like hopelessness. Despair. Longing. disillusionment. We are columbine is anger. Blind eye is giving up.

Jasmine is known for her one-liners. She is a journalist. That's her thing. She casually says in between drags, “isn't it sad how all of your heroes eventually become villains...” and I looked up. There in that moment, time stopped, as it always does, when something is found and cemented like that. The song all your heroes become villains was a little thing we were working on for weeks just once each rehearsal because we enjoyed playing it. We were trying to create a piece that didn't have a key, didn't have a root chord, that didn't resolve, that never resolved. We didn't care that it didn't have a melody or lyrics. We just enjoyed playing it. The title seemed to fit the song perfectly. This is how this album and it’s title cut came to be.

Don't look them in the eyes. don't look them in the eyes. in New York, its all about don't look them in the eyes. if you look them in the eye that gives them an opening. There are so man crazies here. you just have to remember not to look them in the eyes.

very cool story ... I never knew this..
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A lady in a faded gingham dress and her husband, dressed in a homespun threadbare suit, stepped off the train in Boston, and walked timidly without an appointment into the Harvard University President's outer office. 
The secretary could tell in a moment that such backwoods, country hicks had no business at Harvard and probably didn't even deserve to be in Cambridge. 
"We want to see the president," the man said softly. 
"He'll be busy all day," the secretary snapped. 
"We'll wait," the lady replied. 
For hours the secretary ignored them, hoping that the couple would finally become discouraged and go away. They didn't and the secretary grew frustrated and finally decided to disturb the president, even though it was a chore she always regretted. "Maybe if you see them for a few minutes, they'll leave," she said to him. 
He sighed in exasperation and nodded. Someone of his importance obviously didn't have the time to spend with them, but he detested gingham dresses and homespun suits cluttering up his outer office. The president, stern faced and with dignity, strutted toward the couple. 
The lady told him, "We had a son who attended Harvard for one year. He loved Harvard. He was happy here. But about a year ago, he was accidentally killed.  My husband and I would like to erect a memorial to him, somewhere on campus." 
The president wasn't touched.... He was shocked.  "Madam," he said, gruffly, "we can't put up a statue for every person who attended Harvard and died. If we did, this place would look like a cemetery." 
"Oh, no," the lady explained quickly. "We don't want to erect a statue. We thought we would like to give a building to Harvard." 
The president rolled his eyes. He glanced at the gingham dress and homespun suit, then exclaimed, "A building! Do you have any earthly idea how much a building costs?  We have over seven and a half million dollars in the physical buildings here at Harvard." 
For a moment the lady was silent. The president was pleased. Maybe he could get rid of them now. 
The lady turned to her husband and said quietly, Is that all it costs to 
start a university? Why don't we just start our own?" 
Her husband nodded. The president's face wilted in confusion and bewilderment.  Mr. and Mrs. Leland Stanford got up and walked away, traveling to Palo Alto, California where they established the university that bears their name, Stanford University, a memorial to a son that Harvard no longer cared about. 
You can easily judge the character of others by how they treat those who they think can do nothing for them. 
>----- A TRUE STORY ----- by Malcolm Forbes

I don't know if this story is true or not but it sure is a great story.