What, exactly, is the Eagles “positivity bunny”? | Weekly Report Card

Look, we love Kyle Schwarber. The city loves Kyle Schwarber. Dogs wearing tiny Schwarber jerseys love Kyle Schwarber. The man hits baseballs into orbit, leads the clubhouse, and has basically willed this team to look alive some Septembers when vibes were bleak. Him staying in Philly always felt inevitable.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth we’re all circling: We’ve seen this movie before.

Schwarber is now locked in through age 37. Harper, Turner, Nola — all extended into their late 30s too. The Phillies are doubling (and tripling) down on the same aging core that keeps putting up big regular seasons and then… evaporating in October.

Yes, Schwarber smashed 56 homers in 2025. Yes, he’s historically elite. Yes, Rob Thomson deserved his extension, four straight postseasons don’t grow on trees. But also: This team has repeatedly stalled in the playoffs, and running it back with the same core isn’t exactly a bold correction.

Dombrowski insists they’re “not just bringing the band back,” but right now it feels a lot like the band tuning up the same setlist and we already know how ends: a killer eighth-inning rally in June, a heartbreaking NLDS in October.

If the Phillies really want a different result, they still need a third true power bat behind Schwarber and Harper — the Rhys Hoskins void has been haunting them for three seasons. Until they fill it, this roster is basically an expensive version of “just try that again.”

Philly finally beat New York and Vegas at something — unfortunately, it’s being the top target for online gambling ads. Companies dropped $37 million this year convincing us that our phones are tiny casinos that fit in our pockets and aren’t ruining our credit scores.

And guess what? It worked! Calls to 1-800-GAMBLER about online betting have nearly tripled since 2021. Penn State says 30% of Pennsylvanians now bet regularly, and about 785,000 people in our commonwealth of 13 million are estimated to be problem gamblers, which, coincidentally, is also the number of people who think the Sixers will “definitely cover tonight.”

The hotline stories are brutal: drained retirements, missed mortgages, broken marriages, people betting on Russian table tennis at 3 a.m.

Yes, Harrisburg pockets tax money. No, that does not offset the fact that some folks are blowing entire paychecks faster than a Broad Street Line train skips your station.

Only in Philadelphia could a three-game skid lead to the installation of a giant inflatable “positivity rabbit” in the Eagles’ locker room, the kind of holiday décor your aunt buys at Lowe’s, except this one is supposed to fix the offense.

According to NBC Sports Philly, the O-line wanted “good vibes.” So the Eagles brought in a five-foot inflatable bunny. Reddit immediately turned it into a full-blown prophecy, a meme, and possibly a new religion. Some fans think it’s the 2025 answer to the underdog masks; others think it looks like the guy who egged Patullo’s house finally got caught.

And then Jason Kelce stepped in with the dagger: “To be honest, I don’t really like the rabbit. It’s a little hokey… It didn’t work. You have to ditch the rabbit.”

The vibes bunny now sits at a dangerous crossroads. If the Birds win out: parade float. Philly embraces it forever. Etsy shops explode. If they don’t: that thing gets thrown on I-95 like HitchBOT.

South Philly’s favorite holiday tradition is back — and so is the gridlock, horn-honking, and pure, uncut neighborhood rage that comes with funneling half the region down a street roughly the width of a rowhouse hallway.

This year, 6abc reported that Morris Street briefly closed and pushed even more cars onto 13th, turning a beloved Christmas display into a live reenactment of Uncle Frank screaming “Look what you did, you little jerk!” Residents are understandably asking the city the obvious South Philly question: How exactly is an ambulance supposed to get through when Karen from Cherry Hill parks her Highlander on a diagonal to get the perfect photo?

Neighbors want more open-street hours, as in let people walk, let cars chill. Councilmember Squilla says he’s willing to talk about it, which is Philly for “maybe... if everyone stops yelling.”

The demolition of the Painted Bride isn’t just another development story. It’s the slow, painful end of something that felt uniquely, defiantly Philadelphia. After nearly six years of lawsuits, appeals, zoning wars, neighbor fights, preservation pleas, and enough public testimony to qualify as its own Fringe Festival show, the Old City building that once held Isaiah Zagar’s 7,000-square-foot mosaic is officially coming down.

If you grew up here, walked past it, or just have a pulse, the loss hits hard. The Painted Bride wasn’t a blank canvas waiting for a luxury building. It was already the art. It was the kind of place tourists would stumble upon, go “What is this?” and locals would answer, “Oh, that’s just Philly being weird and beautiful.” Now it’ll be dust, plywood fencing, and a future apartment building trying its best to pretend a few salvaged tiles can replace an entire iconic facade.

Neighbors didn’t want height. The Bride didn’t want the building. The city didn’t want to officially call it historic. The developer wanted to preserve it until a court told him he couldn’t.

This is the kind of loss that feels bigger than one building. Philly’s magic is fragile. Sometimes it’s protected (hello, Wanamaker Organ), and sometimes it’s chipped away, boxed up, and repurposed as lobby decor.

On a 35-degree December afternoon, Philly looked out its office windows and saw something even weirder than usual at Independence Mall: a tall, bearded man in nothing but his underwear standing on a box near the Liberty Bell.

Tourists stared. Rangers grew concerned. Locals did what locals always do — tried to figure out if this was art, a bet, or a fantasy-football punishment gone horribly wrong.

Turns out it was art. The man, an artist from Baltimore named Ham (“like the sandwich”), calls the whole thing a commentary on social media. Instead of posting content, he becomes the content.

Ham has done this in New York, Berlin, and even a Norwegian village but claimed Philly gave him the best interactions: confused tourists, National Park rangers offering him clothing, a police officer checking in, and Philadelphians who stopped just long enough to ask, “Buddy… why?”

In a very Philly twist, he’s putting the money people hand him toward an engagement ring, which somehow makes the whole thing feel less like performance art and more like a South Street side quest.

No matter how you interpret it, it’s peak Philadelphia: a nearly naked man shivering by one of America’s most sacred monuments, and the city responding with equal parts curiosity, concern, and “yeah, that tracks.”

Ham planned to stand out there through the weekend — but only until around 4:30 p.m., because even performance artists know better than to be half-naked in Center City after dark.