TOP TEN THINGS THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA WILL MISS NOW THAT "THE REAL WORLD" HAS LEFT

10. More appearances by the giant inflatable rat. He's so cute!

9. Some black guy getting tossed out of the house on his ass.

8. Seven young, highly motivated uh, advertising...or possibly fashion...or something...interns.

7. Lucrative revenue stream from hot tub cleaning and supplies.

6. Lucrative revenue stream from bail bondsmen and process servers.

5. Roommates' constant complaints about the smell.

4. Gripping video of Caleb from Arkansas eating his first cheese steak.

3. Some serious sex with roommates' visiting girlfriends/boyfriends.

2. Guest star Jack Osborne pissing on the Liberty Bell.

And the number one thing the City of Philadelphia will miss now that "The Real World" has left is:

1. "Total Request Live" from Independence Hall!

THE WEARIN' O' THE PUKE

It's St. Patrick's Day. I wonder, do full-time alcoholics get defensive on St. Patrick's Day? I mean, do they sit around saying, "Where the hell are you people the rest of the year? Welcome to my world! Have fun with that hangover tomorrow, you lousy solid citizens!" Or are they pretty much the only ones who are getting drunk today just like every other day?

OH GOD

According to the NY Times, Hollywood executives are rethinking faith films in light of the success of Mel Gibson's "The Passion Of The Christ".

Some movies in the pipeline include:

"David" by Jerry Bruckheimer Productions. Goliath gives him all he can handle, until David kicks some Philistine ass! Starring Colin Farrell.

"Sodom and Gomorrah", by Paul Verhoeven. They don't call it "sodomy" for nothing! Starring Sharon Stone, Elizabeth Berkley, and Mr. T.

"Genesis: The Trilogy", from the Wachowski Brothers. Keanu Reeves is Adam, leader of a new race in a new world. But is it real? After watching all three films, you may still not know. Also starring Carrie-Ann Moss as Eve.

"Jonah", by The Farrelly Brothers. Living inside a whale is even more disgusting (and hilarious) than it sounds! With Jim Carrey and David Spade as the voice of the whale.

"Teen Jesus", from the makers of the "American Pie" series. Jesus tries to get into a good carpentry school with the help of the irrepressible Judas and a cast of wacky teen apostles! Topher Grace is the Messiah, and Jack Black is his wisecracking betrayor-to-be.

NEVER MIND

I'm not doing the stupid lame Sopranos bit this week or ever again. I've got absolutely nothing, and there's no point in trying to force it. I rarely watch TV aside from HBO any more, and it's very hard to make fun of something you don't watch. That was the whole point of this bit, in case you didn't get it. The Sopranos is actually a good show, and nearly everything else on TV is crap. So, I created this scenario of what the Sopranos would be if it was on any other channel, which basically amounts to that it would also be crap. It's kind of an obvious point, and I no longer feel compelled to make it.

Other than that, I have nothing to say. Here's a joke from last year at about this time that still holds up pretty well.

HOW TOUCHING...



Create your own Bush/Cheney poster here! (Use the "city" field to create your own message.)

SCENES FROM LAST NIGHT'S "THE SOPRANOS" HAD HBO MERGED WITH ANOTHER NETWORK

I can't believe I'm doing this pathetic bit again. Oh well, here we go for season 5. I gotta write something in this thing.

This week's network is NBC.

SCENE: Carmella sends A.J. on an errand, and a bear appears in the back yard.

EXTRA SCENE: "Queer Eye For The Straight Guy" drops in to give A.J. a makeover, but after watching him repeatedly scream, "Mommy", they decide their work is done.

SCENE: Carmine has a stroke and nearly chokes on his egg salad.

EXTRA SCENE: The "Fear Factor" final challenge is to give Carmine mouth-to-mouth, and then eat the egg salad.

SCENE: Feech La Manna asks Tony if he can "get back in the game".

EXTRA SCENE: To everyone's surprise, the game is "The Apprentice". Donald Trump immediately appoints Feech to Project Manager of Versacorp over the protests of Nick, whose lifeless body is later found in a dumpster on 7th Avenue.

SCENE: Paulie Walnuts shoots a waiter who is having an epilectic seizure after the waiter complained about not getting a tip and Christopher beaned him with a rock.

EXTRA SCENE: The "ER" gang medi-vacs in and stabilizes the waiter, but only after smolderingly sexy Dr. Luka Kovac finally decides which hot County General chick to bang steady.

SCENE: Dr. Melfi rejects Tony's advances after Tony confronts her in her office.

EXTRA SCENE: Phoebe sets up Tony with Rachel, Ross gets jealous, and hilarity (and high-caliber weaponry) ensues. So much for a Ross spin-off!

MAKING THE GRADE

The NCAA released documents today listing some of the test questions from Georgia assistant men's basketball coach Jim Harrick, Jr.'s class, Coaching Principles and Strategies of Basketball. Among the questions were, "How many points is a 3-pointer worth?"

Now some may say these questions were a bit on the easy side, but TCP would beg to differ. I mean, at least these questions involved some math. The crack research staff here at the Project sifted through some of the hundreds of documents that the NCAA discarded during this investigation, and we were able to locate some questions that Harrick decided not to use because even he thought they were too easy for the average college basketball player. Here are a few:

#34. You're on a recruiting trip, and the upperclassman assigned to you has passed out, leaving you alone with two hotties who are trying to get you to play strip poker. Do you:

a. Notify the nearest Resident Advisor of your predicament, and call the NCAA ethics hotline when you get home.
b. Attempt to wake up your Upperclassman, and politely tell the hotties to leave.
c. Never try to draw to an inside straight, especially if one or both of the hotties is only wearing her underwear.

#42. One of your teammates has apparently shot and killed another one of your teammates, and your coach is trying to get you to tell the investigating committee that the teammate who was killed was a drug dealer in order to cover up the fact that he, you, and several other of your teammates have been receiving illegal payments. You should:

a. Notify the NCAA ethics hotline immediately.
b. Refuse to spread the falsehoods and promptly alert the authorities.
c. Transfer to another school, claiming hardship so you don't have to skip a year, and blab everything to ESPN.

#67. Your school has been cited for numerous recruiting violations, some involving you. Your coach has given you the option to play out the season, or forfeit the remaining games. You should:

a. Suck it up and play. You caused some of these problems, and you should bear some of the responsibility. The fans expect and deserve for you to play.
b. Play the games, but as soon as possible come clean to the NCAA over all possible recruiting violations you've been involved in.
c. Spring Break, Cancun style! Kick it, baby!

HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL...ESPECIALLY AMONG CELEBRITY PORN ADDICTS

Jeez, if Bitty Schram or Karen Grassle ever do a nude pictorial, no one will ever stumble on this site.

But, until then, I just got about 10 or twenty more hits!

BE REALLY PREPARED

The White House announced yesterday that they would be bringing the Boy and Girl Scouts back to Iraq.

Of course, the merit badge system will be slightly different than the U.S. Here is a brief list of U.S. Merit badges (courtesy of USScouts.org) and their Iraqi equivalent:

U.S.	IRAQ
Archaeology	Looting
Atomic Energy	Procuring Yellowcake
Aviation	Box Cutter Concealment
Communications	Al-Jazeera Downlink
Energy	Oil Company Kickbacks
Genealogy	Avenging Ancient Wrongs
Landscape Architecture	Landmine Deployment
Law	Creative Punishment
Plumbing	N/A
Public Speaking	Incitement
Rifle Shooting	Shoulder Fired Missile Launching
Truck Transportation	Truck Detonation

DATABASE POTATO



Well, I'm pretty sure I exist, so it must be that going to the gym only a few times a week isn't cutting it...

ON GOLDEN MAN

Yeah, you know it, I stayed up and watched the whole freakin' Oscar telecast last night. And oh yeah, you really know it, I am compelled to write about it, because no one ever writes about the Oscars in their web log. A few thoughts:

- All the Hollywoodlians are now officially and completely under the collective thumb of their Conservative corporate masters again, if they ever weren't. You could almost tell from Tim Robbins' facial expression he was thinking, "Oh fuck George Bush and his illegal war, somebody go and get me a triple foam Starbucks latte, and make it snappy!"

- Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Billy Boyd, and Dominick Monaghan...REALLY ARE HOBBITS!

- Billy Crystal is slowly morphing into Buddy Young before our very eyes.

- Even a parody of Robin Williams' act isn't funny any more.

- Nice job of calling Academy President Frank Pierson "a weapon of mass sleep-induction" before Frank came out and paid tribute to Gregory Peck in front of Peck's family. Was that Bruce Vilanch's idea? Off with his comically hirsute excuse for a head!

- Clint Eastwood brought his mom. I'll just let that one sink in.

- Nobody ever thanked the sheep of New Zealand. And since LOTR was a long, torturous shoot populated mainly by very ugly men, I'm sure they played a vital role in the well-being of the cast and crew. Especially Elijah Wood, but I'm only speculating.

- To Catherine Zeta-Jones/Charlize Theron/Julia Roberts/Angelina Jolie/Nicole Kidman/Renee Zellweger/Naomi Watts/Samantha Morton/Susan Sarandon/Julianne Moore/Scarlett Johannson/Holly Hunter/Jennifer Garner/Diane Lane/Sandra Bullock/Marcia Gay Harden (special hormone-enhanced edition)/hell, even Oprah:

Nice rack!

As for Uma Thurman, the Latvian Folk Festival is over that a way. Reowr!

- Sorry, Steven Cojocaru just inhabited my brain for a few seconds there. And we all know how painful that can be.

- I think Lord Of The Rings was robbed in the Foreign Language Film category. That Elvish sounded pretty damned foreign to me. Well, the whole script did, frankly, but that's only because I've been laid.

- Is it over yet? Ha ha, gotta insert that lame hack joke about the Oscars going on forever. Actually they got it in well under four hours this year, mainly because of more efficient Oscar-handing-out techniques developed by the crack Academy R&D team which consisted of handing out Oscars to the same people over and over. Look for the same technique next year for "The Passion Of The Christ" (See Item #1).

- "There may come a day when the strength of men fails; when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship...but that is not this day...On this day...we meet at the Hollywood American Legion Hall in costume and get fucking blitzed!!! Well, you know, maybe drink some mulled cider or some non-alcoholic mead. Really, I can't stay too late. I gotta get back and help my Mom with the laundry."

NOW THAT'S MARKET RESEARCH

Well, at least they hired a guy with experience.

A LITTLE TOO HIGH

Yes, folks, today Comcast came out and officially ferried me across the digital TV divide! I am now the proud watcher of High Definition Television. It went pretty well, aside from the fact they unnecessarily unhooked my DVD player, couldn't figure out what channel the High-Def signal was coming in on the receiver, which caused them to tell my wife it was broken and they would be back "later", forcing her to sit at home waiting for them when it was actually working fine, and left me the new multi-function cable box remote without any codes to program my other devices, but hey, you can do that when you're a monopoly that is threatening to buy pretty much every entertainment company in the known universe, and is hosting this web site, so I must now shut up. That sentence was too long anyway.

Anyway, the picture is great. I must say, you haven't lived until you've seen Oprah's acne scars!

HOT FOR TEACHER

In a coordinated effort between several agencies of the US Government, thousands of schoolteachers are being arrested and sent to Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay after Secretary of Education Rod Paige referred to them as terrorists.

"We're taking this very seriously," said Attorney General John Ashcroft at a joint news conference today with Secretary of Homeland Defense Tom Ridge. "One of our fellow cabinet members has made a determination, and the Justice Department is moving swiftly and with all available resources to apprehend the enemy combatants and remove them from the theater of battle, er, classroom."

Reports are streaming in from all over the nation that US Marshals, DEA agents, Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms personnel, and even county Sherrifs and local law enforcement are being pressed into service to arrest and detain the educators. "Yeah, man, it was really cool," said 9th grader Sean Garrity of Lincoln High School in Wilmette, IL. "We were, like, sitting there doing our, like, practice standardized tests, and then these dudes with, like, yellow 'DEA' jackets come busting in and grab Mr. Harris. He's like, 'What the f***!', and the dudes go, 'Hit the floor and put your hands behind your head, you terrorist!' We were all, like, tripping out at first, and then after they took him away, we were like, yeah, party dude!"

Homeland Secretary Ridge has raised the national threat level from Yellow, or Elevated to Orange, or High, until the last of the teachers can be taken into custody, which could take weeks according to a spokeman. In the meantime, volunteers from the President's Council On Faith Based Initiatives will be filling in for the detainees, according to the Bush Administration. President Bush told a group of reporters, "It's time our children was taught to learn some values the right way, and these people is just the group to do it."

HE'S OUR MAN



Every village has to have its idiot, and Preston Lit is Philadelphia's. It's a pretty impressive honor to be the village idiot of the nation's fifth largest city, so let's see what Mr. Lit has done to deserve it.

- In 1996, he harrassed a male news reporter for the local NBC affiliate who he was in love with and thought was Jesus, and led police on a 120-mile high speed chase.
- Placed a fake bomb in a mailbox in 2002.
- Barked like a dog and turned over a table during court proceedings after that arrest.
- Missed his parole hearing last month, then dumped trash all over his yard.
- Placed a fake bomb in a mailbox in Northeast Philadelphia last week.
- Left several suspicious packages at the Philadelphia International Airport last week.
- Checked into a hotel room last night and sprayed grafitti all over the walls and left a package for Al-Qaeda.

The FBI and the Philadelphia Police Department, seemingly more amused than alarmed, have not yet apprehended Mr. Lit, and he remains on the loose, both literally and figuratively. So if you see any stark raving lunatics carrying paper bags and muttering religious-themed love sonnets to Steve Levy, please return him to Philadelphia. We need our idiot back. Oh, we have several other candidates ready to step in, but it just wouldn't be the same without Preston. Thanks.

BABY YOU CAN BUY MY LUNCH

Today I'll be celebrating my third consecutive provided-for lunch. I'm not calling it a "free lunch", because we all know there is no such thing. For these lunches, for example, I've had to endure three days of training. But there are lunches where you don't have to actually buy the food at the grocery store, prepare it, pack it, carry it, stuff it in the refrigerator in the industrially-appointed kitchen area, then at Noon go stand in front of the microwave praying that you don't have to be forced to interact with your co-workers while it heats up, and then eat it by attacking a gooey, rubbery mess inside of a Ziploc container, and then go back to the kitchen area to clean the dishes, while once again hoping not to have to make small talk.

No, these lunches involve getting in a car and leaving the workplace, sitting down at a restaurant and being served a meal cooked by a professional, having a fine conversation with people in your particular field of endeavor who have traveled long distances to be there, eating the meal, watching as one of the intrepid travelers pays for it on a company card, and then leaving the restaurant with a fine mint, perhaps, arriving back at work several minutes if not hours past the usual lunch-ending time. These lunches are those type of lunches. I like those type of lunches. And today is my third straight day of having one. Hurray!

BRONX CHEER

Removing the last obstacle for the New York Yankees' pending acquisition of slugger Alex Rodriguez, Major League Baseball has OK'd the trade, and in a related move, declared the Bronx Bombers to be World Series Champions for 2004.

Baseball Commissioner Allen H. "Bud" Selig presented the championship trophy to an elated George Steinbrenner in a brief ceremony at his office in Tampa, where the Yankees were to start Spring Training this week. "This is great!" said Steinbrenner. "We earned it, let me tell you. I want to thank the Commissioner, my General Manager Brian Cashman, and of course, Alex Rodriguez, for making this possible. Oh, yeah, and all the fans who pay me to get the YES Network on their cable boxes. This one's for them!"

Rodriguez, known popularly as A-Rod, would have played third base for the Yankees this season had there been one. "I'm just glad the Commissioner saw the light and decided to just give us a ring," said Rodriguez. "This sure beats playing a long hot season in Texas!"

At a press conference following the trophy presentation, Selig told a group of reporters, "It seemed like the right thing to do given the circumstances. I'd hate to see a bunch of guys get injured, operated on, experience the bitter taste of failure, what have you, all trying to do the impossible. Sure, some of the other teams will take a financial hit, but it just goes to show you how bad we need revenue sharing in baseball."

The Major League Baseball Players Association was consulted before the trade and the handing of the title to the Yankees, and gave their blessing. "As long as our guys get paid, it's no skin off our nose," said Union Director and General Counsel Donald Fehr.

The Yankees announced a ticker tape parade through Manhattan to begin at 1:00 PM tomorow to celebrate their 27th World Championship. Boston Red Sox fans were distraught as usual. "The Curse strikes again," moaned long-time Sox booster Dan O'Shaugnessy of South Boston. "We almost got A-Rod. If only we had $254 million, this could have been our year."

FINANCIAL ADVISOR FOR A DAY

They are announcing our bonus today on a webcast. I'm debating several ways to spend it this year, but I just can't make up my mind. Sounds like a job for my imaginary readers!

How should I spend my bonus?

Vegas, baby! No load mutual funds, whatever the hell they are. Down payment on a nice big Hummer. Full payment on a nice big hummer. Plasma TV with TiVo, to catch all future wardrobe malfunctions. Complete DVD collection of "Yes Dear" Give it to the poor. Just kidding. Open offshore subsidiary of TCP in the Caymans. Private concert by Baltimora. Joke writer.

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NOW SHOWING ON THE BIOGRAPHY CHANNEL, "HUCKLEBERRY FINN"

The Sci-Fi Channel has a reality show. Isn't the "Fi" part short for "fiction"? Oh, right, it's a reality TV show.

WORLD EXCLUSIVE

Click here to find out what I found out this weekend.