Tomorrow's post: Why Candyland stinks

The wonderful folks at Hasboro have been working furiously to destroy the beloved game Monopoly for the last month -- After May 12, the game will no longer feature Park Place and Boardwalk but instead feature some of the great (and some really crappy) landmarks from major cities throughout the country.

And they're letting people vote on it.

I don't know how many presidential elections this country is going to have to go through before we all demand a king (or military coup, with Fort Awesome as its HQ) and realize that there are certain things people shouldn't be allowed to vote on.

So the public gets to choose among such wonderful Cleveland sites like Jacob's Field, Elucid Street and ... something else that has the same photo of Elucid Street. They couldn't even get a third photo in there, for the love of gawd.

Sorry -- I'll post a picture later -- blogger is broken yet again. If it wasn't free, I'd have to complain.

Or, if you travel down to New Orleans, you can vote on three things that no longer look anything like the pictures supplied.

But none of that is my problem -- who cares how lesser cities are represented for future generations. My problem, as you probably guessed, is with the Philly choices:

*** The Liberty Bell
*** Independence Hall
*** Ben Franklin parkway (a "cultrual mecca, including museums and educational institutions" )

Independence Hall is a great symbol of the city as the birthplace of the country, and the line they give there about Ben Franklin parkway combined the majesty of optimistic thinking and good old-fashioned American BS.

But we all know what's going to win: That damn loser bell.

That broken chime is the symbol of everything that's wrong with Philly today. It's the physical embodiment of "trying hard" and "perservence" with the silently understood "but still failing" afterwards. Anywhere else, they would have fixed the crack or thrown it away and bought a new bell. Not here, though. Here it get fixed enough for it not to crack more, but not enough to be used. And we revere it.

When Rocky lost to Apollo in the first movie, he was the Liberty Bell in action: Impressive and inspiring, but not enough to amount to anything real. Every time a Philly sports team makes a run, they Liberty Bell it just enough to get further than they should but just short of the top spot.

And I blame the Liberty Bell (and Greg Jeffries). We need to ditch it in the harbor like so much Boston tea and embrace a symbol befitting the city's grace and not-New-Jersey-scent.

So I implore you: Go here and vote for Independence Hall. Save our fair city from another decade of this albatross of a symbol. And while your there, see if you can figure out a way to vote for the site of Kennedy's assassination on the Dallas page. Isn't that what people really think of?