First off, we are not gamers. Our Mom decided, at a very young age, that gaming was evil and for the lazy. (Wtf! Right?) We've tried several times to get into it but it seems now that everyone can kick our ass. We hate losing, so we refrain to play but really it's all our Mom's fault. Damn you, parents. Now that we have that out of the way, gaming has become a huge......

SFist interviews Mike Birbiglia and gives away tickets to his upcoming show at Cobb's. ...

Quintin Mecke's long odds on becoming Mayor this year, per the "Xam...

California Governor, Leo, mad fondler, and kindergarten cop Arnold Schwarzenegger turns a still-sexy 60-years-old today. The Grandpanator will spend the big day dealing with the state budget (giggle) and quite possibly getting some sweet Shriver love later this evening. But Carla Marinucci has the Gov’s five birthday wishes right here. Happy birthday, Conan.......

Platinum Studios, a comic book publisher (KISS 4k (yes, about the band) and Hero by Night) is hosting a sort of "American Idol" for comic creators. A few of those contestants are from right here in the Bay Area. Kevin Buckley is the writer on this project and an artist in his own right, though Marcus Thiele, his partner, is the artist on their pitch: "The Strange and Many Eyes of Dr. LeFaux." Kevin and Marcus took a few minutes to talk about their art and living in the Bay Area. ...

We don't think he'll attract quite the crowds that Conan amassed last week, but another TV personality has decided to broadcast from our fair City. Charlie Gibson is anchoring ABC's World News from San Francisco this week, and the newscasts are focusing on the Bay Area's varied attempts at "going green." Insert Conan's marijuana/plastic bags joke here. In other local TV news items that have managed to make their way into our In Box,......

Do you guys think it's true that Gavin Newsom refused to do anything with Conan O'Brien when Conan was in town last week because his feelings were hurt by Conan's jokes about him? If so, that is so lame! (Also, you can just scratch SFist off the Gavin Newsom party invite list right now.) So the official story is that Mayor Newsom didn't show up for NBC's Conan celebration day last Wednesday because Newsom......

There's so much going on across the Ist-a-Verse that it's almost impossible to keep track these days. Fortunately, we do it so you don't have to! Londonist took a walk through Oliver Twist's London, thanks to a gorgeous map layer for Google Earth. They also caught up with modern-day fictional London, with the Fantastic Four and 28 Weeks Later. It was a week of insanity over at DCist. They started the week off with......

Conan, we hardly knew ya. Conan O'Brien's week in San Francisco came to a close today with his final taping at the Orpheum Theater, and the line to get in reached from the front of the theater, all the way down to the scary Carl's Jr., and then across the street and back up again so that those in the front of the line could wave to those at the end of the line......

On Monday's show, Conan did a little video bit where he spent the day traveling around the city showing off the city's sites. We looked and looked and looked for it but couldn't find it anywhere. Finally, today, we found a version of it on YouTube. Come on YouTuber's, it's been days before this video aired! ...

We have never seen the filming of any TV show before. Not a sitcom, not a talk show, not even a public access show. The only thing close to seeing something filmed live was one of those PBS pledge breaks and who really cares about them? All of this means that we were pretty excited to see the filming of Conan's first night in San Francisco. ...

Conan O'Brien Ticket Giveaway in S.F. at NBC 11...

Did you get your tickets? We are speaking, of course, about free tickets to "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" which will be taping a week of shows at the Orpheum Theater starting on Monday. So, seriously, did you get tickets? And if so, can you take us with you? Actually, we will be going to one show, on Monday, when the guests will include Dana Carvey and the Arctic Monkeys. But man, we'd sure......

Conan O'Brien and his "Late Night" crew are coming to San Francisco for a week starting April 30th. The shows will be taped at the Orpheum theater. He's scheduled to make the announcement on his show tonight, along with details on how to get tickets. (We've been clicking on supposed link to get tickets for a while now, and the dang page just won't load!) What kind of San Francisco-centric guests would you like......

In some ways, we're kind of happy that we here in California have no say in any of the Presidential elections. Sure, it would be nice if our vote counted but at least we can turn on the TV without fear of being bombarded with that many campaign ads. We actually feel sorry for places like Ohio or Iowa and all those swing states for having to put up with all the attention they get during the elections. It's not fair they have to take the brunt of it. ...

Gleefully recommended to us by Isotope, "Conan and the Songs of the Dead," by Joe Landsdale and Timothy Truman, is exactly what it looks like, and what we eagerly hoped it would be: the sort of zero-budget b-movie 80s cheese that you might find on an independent UHF station while flipping through channels in an Des Moines hotel room at 2 in the morning. A gruff warrior with ridiculous musculature slices up zombies and......

very once in awhile, we like to visit the other side as it were and cruise through the world of conservative blogs. Oh, the fun one can have at gawking at the alternate reality they live in, where the Stones, the Who and the Sex Pistols are stalwart conservative rockers, where Global Warming is some paranoid hysteria dreamed up by a bunch of tree huggers, and our President is a Great American Hero. Lately, we've discovered that their newest object of wrath is Google. Why? Because you know how Google always comes up with those cute little icons on holidays that they paste on their page? Well, they had no icon for Memorial Day. ...

Don't know if it's the roast that's in the oven, or the fact we've been spending way too much time in the desert lately, but after looking at the posts we flagged this week, it seems incredibly obvious we have a jones for the veggies. We don't seem to be in any imminent danger of going vegan (remember the roast in the oven?) but spring has brought out our lust for the greenery. Which mean's......

Seattlest saw a house party get senselessly attacked with a shotgun and end in seven dead. A local senator is debated and their version of the big dig is investigated. To truly get to the bottom of it they interview the writer Jonathan Raban. Bostonist has its first birthday party and investigates how to attach more gambling dollars to the Red Sox. Benjamin Franklin is celebrated and Johnny Damon is not. Image by Ethan Bagley......

Phillyist notes a fistfight between local pols that leaves one man down for the count. Jehovah's Witnesses get a Philly contributor out of bed, things get a little geeky with a film festival and geeky gets taken to a whole new galaxy when they talk with the Dragon Queen of the Dark Kingdom. Shanghaiist gets all excited this week over a new nightclub in the city unfortunately named "Snatch" and Mike Tyson is scheduled to......

We went to WonderCon and all we got was this lousy MI:III baseball cap. But at least it will keep our War of the Worlds t-shirt company in the junk drawer. WonderCon has come, gone, and left us a little sad. For some reason, the magic we felt last year was lacking this time around. Maybe it's because we're just plain tired of the stormtrooper costumes (even the weird Arthur Conan Doyle-stormtrooper hybrids. WTF?)......

Just a little word from your sponsor before we kick into last week's winner: this correspondent's taking a little time off from the column -- it's not you, it's us -- and SFist Eve has generously volunteered to cover the column for a few weeks. We'll be back soon, though, we promise! (Or rather, more specifically, we promised SFist Eve.) Okay, where were we? Oh yes, the Guardian. It's the endorsement issue! Get your November ballot cheat sheet here! (Never fear, SFist will do one too, if we get around to it.) Featuring: the world's most tepid endorsement in the assessor's race! (Thanks to Left in SF for pointing this out.) In other news, an article about Friend of SFist H. Brown's one-blogger campaign for reopening the bathrooms in the public park, and a picture of a protest outside TIC lawyer Andrew Zacks' office. Hey, that's right by our Peets' Coffee! The sex columnist is forced to explain the sex subculture of people obsessed with Conan the Barbarian. (Maybe the SchwarzenWatcher can get behind that one?) Local band Deerhoof. And two pictures previously featured on the 'Fist, Edward Burtynsky and Dr. Atomic. Next up, the Metro: Legal drug plants! Landlord evicts all those cool shops in the middle of downtown San Jose -- apparently tacos will attract SJSU student riffraff. The Mercury News refuses to run an article about a man campaigning against "penal enlargement" (you know, prisons) with a mildly-risque cartoon illustration. Cover article: facilitating Chinese internet censorship with Cisco routers. Just like the SJ City Hall, only substitute the word "ethical shenanigans for "Chinese internet censorship." Korean food in the S. Bay. Gwen Stefani and other folks who broke from their bands in an attempt to make it big. How's that working out for ya, Trey Anastacio? And Straight Dope: who ya got, Shakespeare or Tom Clancy? Get your New Times Media barrage with the SF Weekly and the EBX after the jump. Plus, this correspondent's very last pick of the week! Who knows what SFist Eve's gonna like starting next week? ...

One of Gothamist's favorite comedians, Todd Barry, will be performing six shows starting tonight at eight at the Purple Onion and running through Sunday. Who is Todd Barry? Well, find out for yourself by reading the interview he did with Gothamist (where, to the world's chagrin, he declined to answer the question "Imagine prostitutes gave receipts. Imagine you go to prostitutes. What do you think your receipt would have on it?"). Named "It Stand......

The Ditty Bops are Amanda Barrett and Abby DeWald, two modern LA twenty-somethings celebrating yesteryear with their self-titled debut album [listen here]. Both their record and their live show are a must-hear, featuring bell-clear vocal harmonies, finger picked guitars, and upbeat melodies that'll have you partying like it's 1929. These KCRW-darlings have already appeared on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" and "The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson" and are currently touring the country with......

sfist reviews Smoosh, aqueduct, and mates of state at noisepop 2005...

We may have just found our new "so best" pic, thanks to the folks at Late Night with Conan O'Brien who put together a little slideshow for Bill Gates' keynote address and Media Center PC demonstration at CES in Las Vegas. Bill fumbled with the remote after the system hung up, prompting uber-geek Conan to quip, "Who’s in charge of Microsoft?! —oh." Phillip Torrone of Engadget, who took the above picture, was there to......

This week's Bay Blogger Thursday has been a long time coming. Ever since EssEffist went deep into the bowels of the innerweb trolling for bloggers to add to our link list (over there on the right), we've wanted to let the world know about A Comedy Notebook. Immediately upon finding this site, we knew we had struck gold. We have no idea who's comedy notebook this is, but they're good. They should be writing bits for Dave or Conan's monologue, as far as we're considered. Of course they could write for Jay, but the jokes would have to be much less funny. A sampling: What is this a picture of? A. The effects of a hurricane on a pier B. A large wave crashing on a Florida coastline C. A Reuben Studdard cannonball dive