Try drowning Dave Eggers, Michelle Tea, Stephen Elliott, Beth Lisick, Barb Bersche, Eileen Hassi, or 826 Program Director Erin Neeley, via a dunking booth, this Sunday afternoon at the first 8/26 Day Festival. The literary bash will feature live performances, cartooning, Everett Middle School's dance troupe, readings, local writers (pardon me, novelists), paper flower making, haiku writing, bon mots flying to and fro, and much, much, much more. The festivities go from 1 p.m.......

-- Rykarda Parasol: Dreamy rock crooner (and fellow beverage taste-tester) performs tonight along with the Dilettantes and Brad Brooks. Show starts at 9 p.m. at Cafe Du Nord, 2174 Market; $10. -- Porchlight: A Storytelling Series' Five-Year Anniversary: Hostesses and superb comedians Beth Lisick and Arline Klatte celebrate their spoken-word comedy showcase's fifth birthday with stories from Kelly Beardsley, Lisa Margonelli, Hemlock Tavern's Anthony Bedard, journalist Sylvie Simmons, Hai Ning Luan, and Matt Gonzalez.......

Sounds like a cosmo-swillin' kind of event: entertaining local female writers like Beth Lisick and Kim Wong Keltner (among others) are reading from a collection of essays entitled The Bigger The Better The Tighter The Sweater, about the hilarity of body image issues. Also: gift baskets and free eyebrow waxing! The event's sponsored by Green Apple, so the reading's at the Rockit Room, one block down the street (406 Clement, x 6th). 7 p.m., free.......

Happy Memorial Day! Here's some stuff to do if you're not barbecuing. Hey, remember that interview that SFist Rain did with Mystery Science Theater 3000's Mike Nelson last week, about his new project, Rifftrax? Download an .mp3 of the MST3K folks and play it while watching its corresponding mainstream movie! GENIUS. Well, you can see Mike yourself at RiffTrax Live tonight -- they won't say what movie's going to be screening (all we've got is......

SF Jenna plays Huey AND Riley tonight! Cuz a little culture never hurt anyone.... Aaron McGruder at the JCC: Ever crack open the morning paper to catch up on the latest exploits of Huey and Riley, adorable inner-city youths exiled to the suburbs in The Boondocks? Even if you haven't read the recently-ended comic or seen the show, you've probably heard of cartoonist Aaron McGruder and the controversy swirling around his oft-politically charged work. Swing......

Here's a listing for tonight's events...

It's the third annual San Francisco Notable Portrait Auction, to benefit Creativity Explored! We love this event. Creativity Explored is dedicated to promoting works by local developmentally disabled artists, and they invite a group of local celebs to sit for portraits by their artists, and then auction them off with the celebs in attendance. Jonathan Richman (!!!!) will also be playing. The event is this Thursday, April 12 at 111 Minna, and you can......

Cars Grotto Nights presents Driving Obsession, a free night of reportage, science, and art in the form of a subversive Valentine to our cars at Mezzanine (444 Jessie St at Mint). This cabaret-style variety show features Bucky Sinister reading his show-stopping poem on NASCAR, Dr. Graham Fleming of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory explaining how he and others are using synthetic biology to create fuels for the future, Baghdad taxi driver/art student Mounaf Shaker's screens his......

Saturday: we're hitting the YBCA (700 Howard Street at Third) for the SFist Krissy-recommended Kronos Quartet and experimental musicians, Matmos and Walter Kitundu collaboration. Sure, we love the Kronos Quartet and Matmos, but we're also eager to see the extraordinarily threatening Kitundu in action. Shows are Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., buy tickets here. Sunday: we can't miss Maker Faire, the DIY get-together to beat all get-togethers, at the San Mateo Fairgrounds. There are......

Cursing can be fun. Liberating, even. In the right hands, it's almost artful. In the wrong hands, well, you have a million bad rap songs. It's all in who says it, we guess. In the hands of uptight comedians, hipsters, or cartoon eight year olds, it's giddy inducing. In other hands, it's only confirmation of our worst suspicions. All of which is why when we heard that the Edinburgh Castle was going to have it's First Annual "Swearing Festival" we knew we had to go. If there was any place that would do cursing right, it would be the Castle as it would be sure to feature lots of literary types, smart hipster types and Scottish types. We love hearing Scottish types curse. How could this event not miss? It did. Unfortunately, while the concept was brilliant, the execution wasn't. ...

Tonight: We're running just down the street to Borders Books and Music (200 King Street at 3rd) for Making It: Writers on the Verge. Brought to us by our pals at Friends of the SF Public Library this event features Beth Lisick, Michelle Tea, and Stephen Elliott with moderator Oscar Villalon (SF Chronicle book editor) discussing how they started out and how they sustain their work. And it's free! Saturday: We're headed down to......

Good thing we got to the Swedish-American early for Friday night's Porchlight Third Anniversary storytelling evening -- even 45 minutes before the show, the rush ticket line was snaking all the way down to the Lucky 13. And inside, the crowd (women in flower-print shift dresses, men in corderoy) was distracted the arduous folding-chair seat selection process by the gigantic set of klieg lights and steadicam equipment -- KRON 4 was taping the show. (We've always wanted to be on KRON 4!!! Look for us!) Porchlight is basically the live San Francisco version of This American Life -- hosts Arline Klatte and Beth Lisick invite people to come up to the stage and tell an extemporaneous story on a theme. No notes, no patter, and a strict 10-minute limit per person. Friday's show was Porchlight's Third Anniversary show, with the theme, "Eye of the Tiger: Stories of Weird Little Triumphs." Because it was the Third Anniversary, storytellers were limited to 6 minutes, and they featured a lightning round, where five members of the audience would be picked to tell a one-minute story each. After the jump: the tyrannies of a live studio audience, the ominous 2-minute piano warning, and Matt Gonzalez on Archie Manning. Picture of Porchlight hosts Arline Klatte and Beth Lisick by Lori Spears...

Everyone seems to describe spoken word artist and writer/poet Beth Lisick as "fizzy" -- but she really is! City Lights was packed to the gills with Missionistas who walked up Columbus from the Montgomery BART/MUNI stop, eager to send Ms. Lisick off in style for the first stop on her book tour. City Lights generously sprung for champagne, wine, and foccacia, but we were too worried about losing our seat to actually get any. Beth Lisick's new book, Everyone into the Pool is a collection of personal essays from childhood to 16th and Mission and onto motherhood, about "turning out too weird to fit into the mainstream world... but being too normal for the fringe." So, you know, essays about diligently attempting to be bisexual, the humiliation of SuperShuttle dropping you off on a crack block, dressing up like a banana for the Fruit Guys -- you know, living in San Francisco. It got an A from Entertainment Weekly! What it was like writing The Buzz Life SFGate column, after the jump. ...

Why is it that when people do readings, they get that weird This-American-Life tone in their voice? And what is it about the quality of polite clapping at bookreadings that makes it sound so poignant? Contemplate these thoughts as you hear your favorite local authors starting tomorrow and going all next week in San Francisco's local literary festival, Litquake. ...