Here it is, your inspirational quote of the day:

 "I'm so funky I can't even sleep with myself."

That's the divine Prince at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival Saturday.

Bet it's true. Prince sang our favorite underrated great song, "Anotherloverholenyohead." 

Wish we had been there. Apparently, he amazed.

Oh, Miley Cyrus is so less-smiley now that her topless -- well, not really -- Vanity Fair photos have been conflagrated over the internet.

Miley, 15, worshiped by tweens as Hannah Montana, posed with a bedsheet, her chest very much covered, her back exposed for celeb shooter Annie Leibovitz. The photos will appear in the June issue.

Leibovitz  works with a staff so large it could easily populate a European principality. Miley employs a huge staff as well, and has very involved parents who were on the set. Her father, country crooner Billy Ray Cyrus, stars as her father in the Disney hit Hannah Montana.

So how was it that no one on the photo shoot figured out that, perhaps, this was the wrong image for the Disney princess?  This is, after all, Vanity Fair, the publication famous for getting actresses to disrobe.

"Unfortunately, as the article suggests, a situation was created to deliberately manipulate a 15-year-old in order to sell magazines," said Disney spokeswoman Patti McTeague.

In the article, Miley/Hannah says "Annie took, like, a beautiful shot, and I thought it was really cool. That's what she wanted me to do, and you can't say no to Annie." Miley adds "I think it's really artsy. It wasn't in a skanky way."

From what we can tell, we think Disney doth protest too much.

As Vanity Fair tells the New York Times, "Miley's parents and/or minders were on the set all day. Since the photo was taken digitally, they saw it on the shoot and everyone thought it was a beautiful and natural portrait of Miley."

Check for yourself.

Brooke Shields survived playing a child prostitute in Pretty Baby. Pregnant unwed teen Jamie Lynn Spears' show is still on Nick.

Perhaps every one involved with the shoot might have rethought the bedsheet but then we wouldn't be writing about it, you wouldn't be reading about it, and Vanity Fair wouldn't be creating all this lovely buzz that we all know sells magazines.

Oh, and the back flap continues. People. com quotes  a "source" close to the Cyrus family: "The photo suggests that she is [naked], but she is not. She is covered by a sheet, and beneath the sheet she is clothed. Originally, she was in a flesh-colored tank top but was asked to remove it."

So she's wearing clothes under the sheet. As someone who has seen her show, she wears less on stage than a bedsheet over a top.

Is this a great day or what?

Sure the pols have decamped to Indiana and North Carolina but the Flyers won and advance in the playoffs!

The Sixers won!

The Phillies won! 

And Johnny Doc -- a man who has, more than once, told colleagues to check under their cars before turning on the ignition -- lost! That's a hat trick and a fallen doc.

Mark it down, folks. April 23, 2008, a day that smiled on this city. 

Apparently, phone bells are still ringing from presidential candidates. A reader wrote to say his phone is still fielding calls from politicians -- not for votes but for money. 

Our No. 1 guilty pleasure, the CW's Gossip Girl, returned Monday night after a hiatus of several election cycles. As in, forever.

While the writers were out on strike, the economy tanked, making the exploits of Manhattan's spoiled and trust-fund teens even more absurd.

Titled "The Blair Bitch Project," Blair returned to her previous despicable behavior. Thank Bergdorfs. Who, after all, wants a nice Blair?

The horrible puns continue. Blair's Russian maid awoke her charge from the bed announcing "Club Bed vacation cancelled." There was talk of "Upper East Side-borgs." The clones came out in droves. There was a Breakfast at Tiffany's parody. Class issues continued. Jenny stole a Valentino to buy a Dolce. She lied, rose and fell and rose in the social heirarchy, and all in one episode!

One of the many fabulous things about GG, which never even attempts reality, is that the actors real -- or allegedly real names -- are even more absurd, gender-confused and porn-confused than those of their characters:  Blake Lively (female), Leighton Meester (female), Penn Bagdley (male), Taylor Momsen (female), Chace Crawford (male).

Now that everything to do with commerical flying is beyond awful and resembles hard time in a penal colony, you might think the train provides a welcome alternative.

But you would be wrong.

The folks at Amtrak, in addition to not being able to spell, appear to be taking a page out of the airlines' customer-service manual.

All trains are reservation-only these days, a horrible  development resulting in long lines when a train is delayed.

Which seems to be happening more and more. Of course, it's usually the conventional service that's delayed, never the Acela that costs so much more to get you to New York a few minutes earlier.

While waiting in line to trade in the ticket for the train that's delayed an hour, you can easily miss the next train during your wait. At New York's atrocious Penn Station, there's rarely any Amtrak customer service rep around to tell you how to avoid the line.

Which turns out you can. But only if you purchase another ticket, then wait in line when you reach your destination and return it there. Otherwise, there's a financial penalty.

Unless, that is, you chose, and remember, to use the ticket on the very same date a year later.  

We are not making this up.

So, after 20 mintues in line to purchase a ticket for third train, while everyone around you exhibits various degrees of disgust and misery, you wait around for a while, take note that there are no seats at Penn Station. Unless you're taking the Acela.

But if you take the Acela, thet train that costs so much more to get you there a few minutes earlier, your train is not delayed and, therefore, you don't need the seat.

Almost makes you want to hop in the car and travel the Jersey Turnpike.

Please feel free to share your experiences.

Why doesn't every top job come with a cool car? Look at the Pope's dope ride. It makes the job seem that much better.

As a teen, we desired the BMW 2002, mostly because the coolest boy we knew had a used one.

Then, we moved on to the reissued Thunderbird, especially in Crest green, possibly the coolest car ever. It came out in 2002. Then the fools at Ford stopped making it three years later.

Now, the Smart car looks like a pretty wise bet. That is, if we're ever fortunate enough to drive a cool car. 

But can anything beat the wow factor of the Pope's wheels? It's a a custom-built two-door Mercedes ML 430, which was donated, gratis, to the Vatican.

Feeling a little lighter today? Us, too. And it's not due to Dr. Siegal's trademarked cookie diet (see post below), though we're thinking of looking into it.

By the way, we couldn't find any enticing tax art -- even if the new five spot is a fetching violet -- so we're using this shameless ploy to attract you here. 

Tax Day is one of those rare moments that unites almost all Americans of ever race, creed, class and culture.

There ought to be a song.

There ought to be festive geegaws to put in South Philadelphia rowhouse front windows to break up the long stretch between Easter and July 4th, perhaps shredded Monopoly bills or Ben Bernanke bobblehead dolls or maybe a Vodoo doll of a hedge fund manager.

Perhaps Pope Benedict's arrival today isn't coincidence but divine assistance for America's day of woe.

By now, you may be on your own recession diet. We're buying coffee from the truck, all of 75 cents but how we miss those blue-and-white cups featuring the Parthenon. We've given up red peppers for far cheaper green. We're thinking of going back to our college lunch regimen of yogurt and chips. It was $1.00 then, and under $2 now.

Honestly, there's no end of ways to celebrate the wonder and the glory that is our Tax Day.

And now it's time for Press Release of the Day.

Madonna -- you may have heard of her -- told a Phoenix radio station Friday that her husband, Guy Ritchie, was on an unusual diet to lose weight but it had an unfortunate side effect.

"My husband went on that cookie diet and it was such a turn-off because he didn't want to have sex," the shy and retiring star said. "He's not on it at the moment, thank God."

Well, now the doctor has weighed in on the matter.

"I've treated more than 500,000 patients with Dr. Siegal's® COOKIE DIET™ in the 33 years since I created it. While my cookies curb their hunger for food, I can't recall any patients reporting that they lower their sexual appetite, too," said Dr. Sanford Siegal. "My cookies taste good enough but I can't imagine someone preferring them to sex.

"But not one has been married to Madonna, Dr. Cookie.Listen, when you're married to someone who's authored and starred in a book called Sex, there's a lot of pressure from the get-go that no amount of chocolate chips can help.

By the way, everyone knows that cookies are the perfect aphrodisiac. Especially when served with butterscotch vanilla ice cream.