Orange is the new black, apparently. During the off-season, the San Jose Sharks unveiled an updated logo, team colors, and new uniforms. The biggest change is the addition of orange to teal, black, and white, replacing silver as the highlight color. ...

We mentioned a few weeks ago that the funding for California's oft-proposed bullet train system is suspect. Things are looking up in a way, as the High Speed Rail Authority approved the project's first phase. However, the Fresno Bee recently reported another wrinkle: Since the management for San Diego, the Southern California Association of Governments, is pushing for "magnetic levitation trains," rather than steel-wheeled ones, that city may get left on the boarding platform. ...

The Sharks dispatched the Mustard Men in 5 games, which makes the series seem a lot less close than it was. 3 of the games were decided by one goal, with Game 1 in double overtime. Even Game 2, the Predators 5-2 win, was not decided until late in the 3rd period. Nashville's undisciplined play (they led all playoff teams with almost 30 minutes of penalties per game) was their undoing, even though the Sharks power play was more or less ineffective, and often frankly ugly to watch. But it was one more way to wear down the Nashville defenders, and keep their skill players on the bench. Patrick Marleau again scored some big goals, and Joe Thornton took the first step toward erasing his playoff-choker reputation with dominating play and 6 points in the series. Nashville wasn't the only team to distinguish itself with dirty play in this year's playoffs. The Calgary Flames managed to steal the spotlight by having their backup goalie come in to play lumberjack to the Detroit Red Wings Johan Franzen's, umm, old growth redwood late in Game 5 of their series (Franzen, fittingly, scored the series winner in Game 6). Then the Flames' Jarome Iginla and Daymond Langkow got in the act late in the game (cross-checking plus slashing and sucker-punching, respectively). Classy. Brad May of the Anaheim Ducks got a 3 game suspension for sucker-punching the back of Minnesota Wild defenseman Kim Johnsson (who is both emphatically not a pugilist, and happened to be Minnesota's best D man), which then caused a multi-player dust-up between the Ducks and Wild during the *pre-game skate* of Game 5 in their series. ...

The Pond's horrible ice and Teemu Selanne's illegal stick helped the Sharks avoid being down a man in overtime against the Ducks last night. Selanne was called for unsportsmanlike conduct at the beginning of overtime, negating a Craig Rivet penalty that was carrying over from the end of regulation, and San Jose went on to win the shootout for a 3-2 victory. The Sharks came back to even the score after being down by 2 goals in the first period, and both teams helped their playoff positioning against the Dallas Stars. ...

Conservatives are doing what they do best-- feigning outrage over trivial little thing, that being the fact that Gavin issued a proclamation making last Friday, "Colt Studio Day." For those not in the know, Colt Studio is a gay porn company in San Francisco that just recently celebrated it's 40th Anniversary. ...

-The Warriors lost to the Charlotte Bobcats last night, 98-90. You can't really get too upset about the game as the Warriors are on the longest road trip of the season and played a game in Philly the night before. Most teams in that situation would lose. Not so good is that they are 1-3 on this road trip. -Sharks beat up on the Blackhawks 4-2. They're still having problems with their power play (0-6)......

Congratulations to Cement Brunette for winning our Second Gavin Caption Contest, with the entry: San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and girlfriend Sofia Milos seen rehearsing their "I've Had The Time of My Life" Dirty Dancing number for the upcoming California Democratic Convention variety show.. Ha! In other news, we saw some more movies for the SFIFF, including the controversial The Bridge, about suicides off the Golden Gate Bridge. We also saw the Yeah Yeah Yeahs,......

SFist As fans' loss is our personal gain, as SFist Jake's brief hiatus gives us leave to post on yesterday's sixth-inning infield brawl at Anaheim! We love a good baseball fight. That's because the very first baseball game we ever watched was the one where Nolan Ryan put that dude who rushed the mound in a headlock and pounded the crap out of him. Ah, memories. Anyways, we have no idea what's going on in the season or anything that happened in the game last night beyond what we saw on the news last night (Chavvy hit a homer, As won), but we can tellyou that in the sixth, As catcher Jason Kendall, up at bat, thought Angels pitcher John Lackey was taunting him about getting intentionally beaned for walks, and ran straight at him. Two Angels grabbed Kendall, who nevertheless managed to take Lackey down before both teams raced onto the field, for our slo-mo TiVo delight. Video here. This is the first bench-clearer for the As since 1993 in Milwaukee (while the Angels got in their last big fight in 2002 against San Diego, in spring training.) This is Kendall's second time charging the mound, too -- in 2004, Kendall went after (now-teammate -- awkward!) Joe Kennedy when Kennedy was at Colorado and Kendall was with Pittsburg. Did any of that even make sense? Don't worry, folks, SFist Jake will be back soon. ...

For those who haven't heard, BARRY HAS ARRIVED IN TRAINING CAMP! We repeat, BARRY HAS ARRIVED IN TRAINING CAMP! A day late, however, something that drew a raised eyebrow from some ("oh my God, Barry did something on his own again"). Like last year, Barry met the press to give his annual State of Barry Address, but this time didn't do it press-conference style, instead he just answered few informal questions from the dugout. Probably a smart move as last year's infamous press conference, the one where he spent most of the time berating the press, could only have been a worse P.R. move if he would have given the entire thing while Jose Canseco injected steroids in his ass. Nothing terribly exciting was said, but to sum up: will decide about retiring at the end of the season, wants to spend more time with his family, doesn't want to play for another team, and wants to retire as a Giant. Since we've long since learned not to believe anything the Barry has to say, we take his comments with a grain of salt and wouldn't be surprised to see him wearing a L.A. Angels of Anaheim in Orange County Right Off of the Imperial Highway uniform next season. ...

We know, we know: It's Barry Bonds Week in Bay Area baseball. That's very exciting, but there's also a pennant race going on just across the bay from 24 Willie Mays Plaza. After Monday night's 2-0 victory in Cleveland, the A's are a game behind Los Los Angeles Angeles de Anaheim Anaheim in the AL West and 1 1/2 games behind Cleveland in the AL Wild Card race. There are only so many ways......

In May, while the A's struggled along 8 1/2 games behind Los Los Angeles Angeles de Anaheim Anaheim in the American League West, A's Brand Baseball promised not to mention the division standings any more until school started in the fall. It was hard to imagine, back then, that the A's would be playing meaningful games when schoolkids were buying pencil boxes and new backpacks, but here's this (Go Bears!), and here's this. After......

Sunday night, the A’s finished a 3-4 road trip with a frustrating 0-1 loss to Los Los Angeles Angeles de Anaheim Anaheim. Joe Blanton pitched the first complete game of his career, giving up 6 hits and a run and making everyone who hyped him going into this season look good, but the offense didn’t bring in the two runs it would have taken to win the game. The anemic run production—3 shutouts and......

New SFist Jake gets us up to speed on what the A's have in store for us this season....

So we're cruising Defamer today for pretty, young gossip, and we stumble across a map of Anaheim, centered on Disneyland, from the Megan's Law Database via southland blogger Flagrant Disregard. Even we were a bit shocked and saddened. But then we thought to ourselves, "Hey, wait, isn't the Traditional Values Coalition based in Anaheim? Man, no wonder they're so skittish -- they're absolutely inundated with convicted sex offenders." So we figured if we could use......

What an ignominious weekend for Bay Area baseball. Saturday, 2 October 2004 will long be remembered as a dark day for Northern California baseball fans. After a big win over LA on Friday night, the Giants' bullpen collapsed as dramatically as any Dodgers fan could ever hope on Saturday afternoon, leaving the team's fate in the hands of the pathetic Colorado Rockies, who got swept by the red hot Astros in Houston this weekend. When......

SFist brings you yesterday's baseball madness in a nutshell or two: with only three games left this weekend to finish the season, the Giants, Dodgers and Athletics all won, the Angels lost, and the Astros didn't play, leaving the Giants, who are playing the dreaded Dodgers this weekend, three games back of Los Angeles in the NL West and tied with the Astros in the Wild Card race, and the A's, who are playing the......

A's remain tied with Angels after trading wins with Seattle....