Funk

Even when the Roots are alone on the bill, there are a whole bunch of bands on stage. This Philadelphia collective's picnic basket overflows with musical goodies. Look inside, and you'll find a full-on soul revue and an old-school rap outfit. There's a furiously shredding noise-rock band, and a tasty improvisational jazz ensemble. Not to mention an astonishingly focused hip-hop wrecking crew - leaders in bringing a genre-blending vision to life on stage. So the Roots Picnic, offered over 10 sweltering hours Saturday at the Festival Pier, was an idea whose time has come.

Brandon Huber was the buzz of the Philadelphia Flower Show preview yesterday, winning - at age 18 - his first blue ribbon. Not long after judges pronounced his Amorphophallus konjac tops in a hardy tuber-bulb-rhizome-corm class, Huber found himself the center of attention from a tag team of invited show visitors, all members of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. They stared and giggled at his purple-brown plant, which is shaped like a phallus and not only looks bizarre but also has a smell often compared to rotting flesh.

Coming off back-to-back losses, Villanova doesn't figure to have things any easier tonight when the Wildcats try to snap out of their slump on the road against 18th-ranked Pittsburgh at the Petersen Events Center. The Wildcats (13-5 overall, 3-4 Big East), who fell out of the top 25 this week, need a win tonight to avoid their first losing streak of more than two games since they dropped their last five regular-season contests in the 2003-04 season. But the Panthers (16-4, 4-3)

DEAR Solomon, I've been reading your column for a while, and I've gotta tell ya, your wife is a lucky woman. You work hard. You spend time with the kids. You go places with your wife. So what if your dinner dates sometimes involve going to Sam's Club and filling up on the free samples? At least you make sure your woman eats! My point is, you're a good man. And who better to ask about finding a good man than you? So, what do you say? Do good men exist - and do they come with a warranty?

I THINK this is one of those watershed weeks. Either the Eagles are going to play well and put together back-to-back wins for the first time all season, finally making it to .500, or we'll see that last week's win didn't mean much and this is still a sinking ship. I think the first scenario is slightly more likely, even keeping in mind that the past two seasons, after winning coming off the bye, the Birds have then gone out and lost the next game. Chicago is in that post-Super Bowl funk Eagles fans know so well, but after last week's embarrassing loss to divisional rival Minnesota, I think we'll see a strong effort from a team that just isn't as healthy or as formidable as it was a year ago. There's a real good chance Devin Hester scores a touchdown, one way or another.

For music lovers who came of age in the 1980s, Prince is like a polymorphously purple Dorian Gray. While his fans are aging like Oscar Wilde's portrait in the attic, the perfectly preserved 49-year-old imp is downstairs cavorting in his funk/R&B/rock playroom, letting his libido run wild and mischievously plotting to stick it to the music industry. Planet Earth, his 24th studio album, which comes out today, finds him in fine, if not spectacular, form. The CD cements a comeback that began with Musicology in 2004 and continued with last year's 3121 before going global with his spectacular performance at the Super Bowl in Miami this year.

For its first six months, J. Michael Harrison's Friday night show on WRTI (90.1 FM) went nameless. There were a number of ideas, concepts devised and rejected, friends consulted for their input. But Harrison kept coming back to "The Bridge. " There are, of course, the obvious musical connotations. And fittingly for a show that prides itself on an adventurous and eclectic mix of music, "The Bridge" is also the title of a 1962 album by iconoclastic saxophonist Sonny Rollins. But most of all, the name encapsulates what Harrison set out to accomplish with his weekly program.

As yet another Atlantic Ten Conference opponent made more than half its shots against Temple yesterday, a fan at the Liacouras Center yelled: "Got to work on the D, Fran. " The way Temple coach Fran Dunphy assesses the situation, it's much more than his team's defense that needs work. After a frantic second-half comeback came up short and the Owls fell to Rhode Island, 85-77, for the sixth loss in their last seven games, Dunphy said: "We weren't doing anything offensively, we weren't moving like we need to move.

IT DOES James Brown a disservice to get caught up in all the titles- legitimate, concocted, self-serving-that were attached to his cape. So put aside the "Godfather of Soul" and "Mr. Dynamite" and "Soul Brother No. 1" and "the hardest-working man in show business," all bestowed upon Brown, who died of congestive heart failure on Christmas morning at age 73. And while you're at it, forget his trademark grunts of "good Gawd! ... Ugh!" and "Hit me!" Forget his piercing screams, or the buckets of sweat from his supercharged performances.

If all goes according to plan, the New Jersey Devils will be playing in their new arena in Newark next season, and the Flyers will never again have to pull on their skates in the dank visitors' locker room at Continental Airlines Arena. And believe it, they won't shed a tear. For nearly two periods last night, the Flyers looked as if they had their act together, playing with a sense of purpose while holding a 2-1 lead. Then they seemed to remember where they were, and they simply stopped doing what was necessary to hold on for a much-needed victory as the Devils pulled out a 3-2 win. Since the start of the 1990-91 season, the Flyers are a grim 8-29-5-1 during the regular season in the building off Exit 16W of the New Jersey Turnpike.