Your Introduction to PPO
By: Barry Coen
December 20, 2006

Hey there, you new visitor you. My name's Barry Coen. I'm part of the PetePhillipsOnline.com (PPO) Development Team and Head Writer of this site. Yeah, it's not BarryCoenOnline.com, but you'll notice that I don't contribute all that much. Sometimes I get assignments and sometimes I just go out and find a story on my own. But we don't want to get too carried away linking you all over the site just yet.

What would I put into an introductory guide? This is one of those assignments. They're a little harder than just making a story up. I suppose the best place to start is at the beginning... Back in the 90's, little Pete Phillips being a former sick kid (thereby nixing all athletics), had very little to do. With time on his hands, he started to teach himself the basics of making web pages. He started a music site that covered some really terrible music and twelve kids, tops, at school, liked it.

By the way, I'm going from notes scribbled by Pete. This could be total BS. Throughout school, teachers fostered his writing ability and he worked on the web stuff. It was only a matter of time until the two smashed together on the internet. That's the general story of this site. After going to college and tiring of re-telling the same stories to people from home, he made a site to chronicle how insanely boring his life was in Wilkes-Barre, PA.

No one knows if it was the chicken or the egg. Did Pete's life become more exciting because he had a site or did Pete find more excitement to make his site better? We may never know the answer to that, but after the first Day in the Life of a Superstar, the beast was set loose on the world. Many people don't know that Alexa Beretski was the first friend Pete made up a story about, but it's true. Back then, Pete didn't even chew gum that often. Now he does regularly.

In August, Pete exposed his celebrity uncle, Lou Diamond Phillips. This was only months after his scathing expose about shorts with words on the ass. The site was a hotbed of new thoughts and ideas. From big issues, like doing the laundry, to small ones, like running out of soap, Pete wrote it all. As time went on, he would become a bit more selective.

In year two, Pete found dissension in some visitors, but still reached the landmark 10,000 hits. A few serious pieces even ended up on the site, but there was always room for the daily grind, like having a postcard stuck to his windshield. Year two also opened up the door to many adventures with his, now former, girlfriend. Meeting munchkins and going to weddings were great, damaging memories chronicled right here for your enjoyment.

By the time the third year rolled around, there was a shift in content. Many people that went to college with Pete had moved away by May. Pete struggled with becoming a card-carrying Pennsylvanian and pretended to be engaged to Alexa. The end of the year held mounds of controversy for Pete and the site. He almost lost his job because of a disgruntled visitor, but the issue was addressed indirectly and Pete ended the year strong with a fun Christmas Game.

Things were looking sour for Pete: the whole job thing was a blow to the site ego, Pete had parted ways with his girlfriend (the aftermath inspired at least one piece), and Lifetime moved Unsolved Mysteries out of the lunch time slot. There was almost no recovery. It was not the end of ridicule though. A child star from The Shining and Little Rascals found a piece written about him and lashed out at Pete. After so much trouble, Pete established the Uncensored section. This gave Pete the ability to lock away any questionable material, just in case.

The Tragedy of Pete Phillips was one great epic, based on the play about Julius Caesar. Audiences responded well, but it was nothing compared to the wave that the Fpoon would cause. Though the regularity of updates was down in the year, the quality was maintained, and media was up quite a bit, like the release of more songs and the great Old Navy Pants Tribute.

As an introductory guide, we can't really cover a best-of type of thing. That would seem unfair. I mean Pete thinks this whole site is a best-of of his life or some stupid thing like that. You'll be able to learn plenty about Pete Phillips here, and you'll find out that he's a pretty good guy, in my opinion. He's pretty demanding on deadlines, he really busts my ass when I don't write things, and he gets kind of whiney when I don't have anything to write, but hey, he's okay.

Oh-- what you do now is go read all sorts of other things in the extensive archives. Believe me, there's plenty to read and you'll have your hands full for a while. It's good mental exercise.