Here's a few sports stories to get you through the bleakness of the Rox/Sox World Series...

-- New Pornographers: Yay, the New Pornographers! We heart them ever so. Seriously. Heart them yourselves tonight as they perform along with Lavender Diamond and Fancey at 8 p.m. at the Warfield, 982 Market; $25-27. -- Laughing Liberally Local 415: Political comedy showcase featuring Joe Klocek, who performed on Comedy Central's Live at Gotham, and Diane Amos (AKA: the Pine-Sol lady!), who has appeared on Comedy Central, A&E, and at SF Comedy Day. Show......

-- Scott McCloud: Experimental and wildly popular comic artist and novelist (Making Comics) speaks tonight at "Evolution of the American Comic Book". Rory Root (owner, Comic Relief) and Andrew Farago (curator, Cartoon Art Museum) also speak. Starts at 6:30 p.m. at the Commonwealth Club, 595 Market; $7-$20. -- End of Summer Slam Jam for Teens: Are there words prettier than "back to school"? Maybe. But when we start seeing back-to-school commercials and such, we......

Buy yourself some peanuts and cracker jack: Baseball All-Star Game mania continues apace in San Francisco! The All Star Fan Forum runs until 8 p.m. tonight. You can just hang out, or you could attend a session on teaching kids how to play catch (7 p.m.), and learn how to score a baseball game (4 and 6). If you're so filled with baseball fever you're skipping work, you can also meet the women players who......

We could've gone with a YouTube clip of the video for Love Is A Battlefield (totally one of the best videos ever), but we went instead for the Benatards doing "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" at the Eagle Tavern -- that's right, Pat Benatar's playing a show tonight! If you can get up to the Marin County Fair in San Rafael, Ms. Benatar and her husband Neil Girardo will be performing hits like......

We always hate it when we see a new Seymour Hersh article in the New Yorker, because we know it's going to be something really upsetting that the Bush Administration's done. Last week's article detailed just how badly Donald Rumsfeld treated Gen. Antonio Taguba, who did the investigation on the abuses and torture at Abu Ghraib. Give Gen. Taguba a hero's welcome and hear his story in person at the Commonwealth Club tonight at 6......

--At Intersection for the Arts, an evening of performances, readings, and conversations with formerly-incarcerated youth in The Prison Project, their year-long artistic exploration of the California penal system. $5-15, 7 p.m., 446 Valencia (x 15th). --At the Balboa, you've got a documentary about Hitler's theft of European art works in one theater, and Knocked Up in the other. 3630 Balboa (x 38th), $8.50 (unless it's your birthday, in which case it's free!). --Tonight at the......

Dude, she was shot at Jonestown! it doesn't matter she didn't win her race for Lieutenant Governor. Former State Senator Jackie Speier speaks at the Commonwealth Club tonight about the book she co-authored, This Is Not The Life I Ordered, which tells not only her story, but the story of three of her friends as well. $18, reception at 6, reading at 7, at 595 Market 2nd Fl. (x 2nd). Other events: --The Stars and......

The acclaimed French-trained Guinean contemporary circus troupe Circus Baobab makes its US debut as part of the SF Int'l Arts Festival, performing The Jumping Drum, a fable about globalization and family, complete with acrobatics, stilt-walking, and African music. 5:30 p.m., $30, Project Artaud Theater (450 Alabama, x Mariposa). They're here through Sunday, and you may find it intriguing to learn that tomorrow's performance is in French. That's them on the YouTube above. Other events:......

The Commonwealth Club's 76th Annual California Book Awards have been announced, and two Cal faculty members are big winners this year: Ishmael Reed for "New and Collected Poems, 1964-2006," and journalism professor Michael Pollan for "The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals."...

(A little late, because we're fixing our servers around here today.) Total number of people pictured in this week's Swells society column: 70. Number of people pictured whom we recognize: 8 (including Charlotte Maillard Shultz, Stephan Jenkins, and a certain precious Bumblebee!) Minority count: 7 (10%). Getty v. Traina: 1-3, with Gettys represented by Swells stalwart Gavin Newsom. Bumblebee sightings: 2! Ms. Jennifer Siebel attended a benefit party/auction for Tipping Point, and will also be......

Pirate Cat Radio benefit concert at the Makeout Room (3225 22nd St. between Mission & Valencia) with Lisa Dewey, Bettie Black and The May Fire. Pirate Cat needs money to buy new gear and more server space so they can continue to broadcast and webcast. (9pm) At CCA in SF (1111 8th St. near 16th and Wisconsin) there are three separate art openings tonight. Capp Street Project presents an installation by Michael Stevenson examining......

Ask a MacArthur "Genius" - ROVA presents a Q&A with composer John Zorn as part of its Improv 21 series. As well as being a composer and saxophonist, Zorn runs a music venue in NYC and his own label that releases an eclectic range of music, from free jazz to Japanese noise, to klezmer. Subjects for Q&A will be chosen improvisationally and jump-cut from topic to topic, probably including discussion of Zorn's artistic influences,......

For the week that burners are most burnt out, there's a lot of mess on tap. Even (and maybe especially) excluding the postponed Women on the Web mixer. Tuesday: The monthly Silicon Valley blogger meetup (every first Tuesday) is happening at Santa Clara's Barefoot Coffee. We're not sure who HyperScope is or what they do, but hey, parrr-tay in Menlo Park, babies. Wednesday: There's a 'New Tech' meetup at CNet's offices on 2nd in SOMA,......

Wednesday has 100 gmail invitations left! Tonight: Former SF firefighter Caroline Paul reads from her first novel, East Wind, Rain (about 1940s Hawaii), at Clean Well-Lighted. Paul wrote an acclaimed memoir of her time in the SFFD, called Fighting Fire, but what's also notable is that her identical twin sister is the actress Alexandra Paul from Baywatch. (Caroline is the Gay Twin in the picture to your right.) Thursday: We're never going to be done celebrating the 1906 quake! The Exploratorium and the SF Arts Commission are presenting a spoken word event with WritersCorp youth poets from Everett Middle School, who will read from their new collection Solid Ground, and create interactive poetry with the audience. 6-8 p.m., $13 adults, $10 students, $8 kids from 4-12. and Friday: It's not just Lotta's Fountain's centennial -- it's Samuel Beckett's too! Celebrate a century of cheerful Irish nihilism with the ACT and the Commonwealth Club as scholars discuss his work and then actors read some of Beckett's greatest hits. (Will Godot ever show up?) The big one-oh-oh kicks off at 5:30 at 415 Geary Street, and admission is free. ...

One hundred years ago this month, San Francisco survived an earthquake. You may have heard of it. Well, despite the odds (and the sky-high earthquake insurance rates), people keep moving here, and San Francisco's celebrating 100 years of rebirth and survival. The big day is April 18. And there's no shortage of things to do! Just to pick events randomly: the Commonwealth Club is holding a panel discussion about the 1906 quake on April 17. The SF Fire Department's historical society is sponsoring the 1906 Expo at Pier 48, from April 15-17, which will feature historical exhibits and modern-day preparedness events (and a costume party!). And City Hall will host a photo exhibit about post-1906 rebuilding (and a show about the PUC and Hetch Hetchy. It's so Bay Guardian!). And, like they have for the last 35 years, history buffs will meet at Lotte's Fountain on 3rd and Market, and then paint gold the one hydrant in SF that didn't fail in 1906 (on 20th and Dolores). Warning, though, the fountain meetup starts at 4:30 a.m., because that's when the quake hit. Adding insult to injury (if the quake itself wasn't injurious or insulting enough), they're expecting huge crowds for this event, to the tune of giant screens on Market Street showing the scene in closed-caption. The fountain gets painted at 7:30 a.m. We sincerely hope KRON 4 labels this program clearly so we can just TiVo it to watch later. Lots and lots and lots of other events after the jump -- we'll try and update this periodically as the big day gets closer. Let us know if we've left anything out too! Picture of the post-quake Financial District from the Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco...

Summertime of Poverty pens a lyrical reflection on the modern world, but the title says it all. On that note, Ron Gonzalez gives a final state-of-San Jose speech, and San Jose Inside readers take the opportunity to lament his tenure. Up north, Michelle Slatalla plays with new real estate tool Zillow, but while intrigued, is not impressed by the inaccurate data. Kim Knox at Left in SF goes over the details of Arlene Ackerman's......

Say hello to my li'l Wednesday! Tonight: Don't say there's never anything to do around here! Case in point: An Italian saxophone quartet is playing their classical and light jazz repertoire tonight at 8 p.m. at the Old First Church, which is on Sacramento Street between Polk and Van Ness. We've never seen some many euphemistic synonyms for the word "....interesting.....!" before. It could really be awesome! $15. Thursday: The one, the only, the ur-Wonkette: Ana Marie Cox is in town promoting her novel. At the Commonwealth Club. In a conversation with Chose and Lost Tabitha Soren. We can't wait to see the bus ads they run for this one. "So.... do you really take it up the ass? I asked Wonkette." $20 for non-members. and Friday: Guilty pleasures, dance version! ODC Theater present Underserved II: a night of 11 choreographers setting 5-minute performances based on pop songs they're embarrassed to admit they like. Please take note: Weezer will be featured. Genius! ODC's at 17th and Shotwell, show's at 8, $12 admission. ...

We visited the Commonwealth Club for their most recent session of Inforum, a division of the Club that aims to “inspire debate around civic issues” for people in their 20’s and 30’s. Moderated by conceptual artist and local gadfly Jonathon Keats, Graffiti: Urban Scrawl or Artistic Freedom? featured a debate (er, discussion) between the following individuals: APEX is San Francisco native and former street artist; Michaela Hocter is the Deputy City Attorney, San Francisco......

Special "We had to accept a challenge to a game of dodgeball yesterday" edition. Jennifer over at Life Begins at Thirty spent last week blogging about food. Of course, lots of people do that, including SFist. But what made this exceptional is that it was as part of a series on trying to eat locally and sustainably, both in and out of the house. Of course, it can't always be done. As Jennifer points......

Tune into KALW 91.7 next Tuesday at 1 p.m. to hear San Francisco's first female fire chief and first female police chief (pictured at left) speaking with SFist political reporter crush Adriel Hampton through the Commonwealth Club Broadcasts series (or stream it live now). Slippery criminals! A bank robbery suspect waiting to be interviewed by the FBI pried open a screen in the Federal Building in Oakland and then casually walked out past the U.S. Marshals office and out of custody. We hope he was whistling as he did it. The FBI re-caught the guy at the San Leandro BART station. And the Los Gatos police have made an arrest for murder in a missing persons case that's been unsolved for three years. The victim had gone out drinking in June 2001, met two guys at a bar, and then disappeared. The police finally solved the case when, about two years after the disappearance, someone living nearby contacted the authorities and said she'd found a rug matching the description of a rug missing from the victim's house. The police were able to trace fibers from the rug to the murder suspect. ...

Marcia, Marcia, Marcia -- oh, we're just the good ol' reliable Bay Area in Election 2004, no one cares about us -- no one's wooing us, no one's filling up our airwaves with "I'm George Bush and I approved this message" disclaimers, America Coming Together and Berkeley's own moveon.org aren't hosting Springsteen and Dixie Chicks concerts at the Shoreline, and no one's marketing W ketchup at our local farmers' markets. So us lovelorn political junkies are bubbling with enthusiasm over this week's triple bill -- John Edwards at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco, raising $1.5 million and showing his support of the striking hotel workers, Jesse Jackson speaking at the Commonwealth Club last night, and John Ashcroft at the Tech Museum in San Jose today, ominously intoning that "Young people must learn ... of the risk of intellectual property theft." In Cleveland, Ohio or Erie, Pennsylvania, they'd probably just view that showing as pretty second-tier (and they'd be right), but for us -- wow! People actually coming here to promote national political agendas! It really must be the cheese! ...