There may be people who only attended the third session of the 2008 Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival, but as a wise man once observed about his questionably unclothed behavior on a famed bathroom floor, "It Wasn't Me." So the remains of Days 1 and 2 -- The French Fry Diet, crap sleep, SPF 45 caked on like Steven Tyler's mascara, temperatures reportedly reaching a singeing 112 degrees, fee

In a better universe, Prince would've been the original alternative rocker. Able to play virtually any instrument in virtually any style -- funk, soul, R&B, gospel, pop, rock, folk, psych, new-wave -- he was a multiracial, pansexual, politically minded, sacredly profane fashion freakazoid who posed in the shower wearing a trench coat and a "Rude Boy" button.

Here are two skewed views of the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival, which opened its three-session 2008 cavalcade at Empire Polo Field in Indio, California Friday (just minutes away from where the late Merv Griffin once held court as the cardiganed billionaire pasha of this desert resort-village refuge, as the sultan of streets named after legendary golfers -- Nicklaus, Palmer, even We