*FILM: The 5th Annual San Francisco Irish Film Festival kicks things off with Garage by director Lenny Abrahamson and writer Mark O’Halloran. This is followed by a reception with the Consul General of Ireland, Emer Deane. According to LS, "other highlights include Speed Dating, a romantic comedy about a lovelorn amnesiac; the award winning Irish-language feature film Kings, and finally The Undertaking, a documentary about Irish American undertaker and poet Thomas Lynch, who is......

Lucas (1986), Say Anything (1989), My Bloody Valentine (1981): The first film has socially-retarded Corey Haim falling head over heels in love with a sensitive football player, Charlie Sheen, or something like that; Cameron Crowe's tale of teenage love and angst has John Cusack causing egregious noise pollution when he holds up a ghettoblaster pumping out a Peter Gabriel ballad; and the final film has a murderer in a small coal mining town killing......

Gus Van Sant isn't the only one who might make you a shiny, coke-addled star here in San Francisco. Take, for example, MTV and NBC who want to use you for their up-and-coming reality programming....

Oh la la. The reportedly very prickly Reese Witherspoon and rubenesque Vince Vaughn -- whatever, we'd hit it. Hit it hard -- are in town filming their new divorce-themed romcom, Four Christmases. (According to IMBD, it's about a "couple struggle to visit all four of their divorced parents on Christmas Day." If you're not in tears already, then clearly you have no soul.) And here they are at a....downtown locale of some sort? We......

It seems the world of dating has moved beyond breaking up on post-its into the new world of breaking up via Facebook status. That's rough. Breakups are hard enough to go through without spreading the news in front of all your virtual friends. The update from Boinkology paints an even uglier picture: the dumper placed it on Digg, too. While the dumper reasons out why a face-to-face breakup wasn't deserved, we can't help but......

-- Emmy-winner Al Gore might also win the Nobel Peace Prize. Weren't Bono and Princess Diana supposed to win that at some point, too? (You know, before she...vroom.) [Wired News] -- Bay Area Reporter endorses Newsom. Shocking. [BAR] -- Double shooting in East Oakland. [CBS5] -- 16-year-old Angel Carrion busted out of juvenile detention center. Because he's bad. Real bad. And probably dating your daughter. [Examiner] -- Infant cold sniffle medicine yanked off store......

Here's a few random sports stories for the day...

A new blog purports to document cougar sightings from the S.F. dating scene. ...

Seattlest watches as a S.L.U.T. is born and Seattle Flickr users go nuts over a local art installation. A restaurant critic demands a Diner's Bill of Rights over a gnat next to her drink, and, in lieu of a Portlandist, Seattlest debates with itself over the identity of the Northwest's crown jewel. Seattlest also joins the guys from Fantagraphics for an ill-fated gun party in the woods. LAist saw national headlines soar this week with......

The premiere offerings tonight are limited, with the 8 p.m. return of "Beauty and the Geek" on the CW being the only new show in the line-up. The show maintains its "hot girls, geeky guys" convention once again this season, but they will be adding one geeky girl and one hot guy to the "social experiment" this time around. That's right, this isn't a dating show, although there have been hook-ups in the past.......

Yay! We're so excited!! In today's Chron Datebook Peter Hartlaub article, on the various types of lame apologies, SFist wins!!!!! Well, technically, Gavin Newsom "we're still dating!! we are we are we are!!!" girlfriend Jennifer Siebel won, with her long-winded and poorly-copy-edited "apology" comment that turned into an attack on former Newsom employee-paramour Ruby Rippey-Tourk. Hartlaub notes that what made it particularly excellent was that a second apology had to follow from the first......

Hey, all you singles in San Francisco/Oakland, looks like you live in the right place. Our fair city was tops in Forbes 7th Annual Best Cities for Singles Report....

Kathy Griffin seems to prefer the techie geeks. (And just who wouldn't?) According to le Hilton, Kathy Griffin is dating Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. (Yay! It's nice to see a redhead making good.) Is this true? Are they really spooning each other? We have no idea. But it'd be nice to see Griffin frolicking around the Castro again. Lord knows the strip needs something to keep it queer and interesting. (Assuming Wozniak lives in......

For $25 a pop, you can attend iPhone-only iDating marketing schemes parties. "The iPhone makes speed dating more user-friendly, because you're rejecting a photo, not a real person," says iDating party thrower Niko Atuna. (But what if, like us, you've been repeatedly told that you're a two-dimensional ass? Ouch is right.) We don't have an iPhone, so we're not exactly sure why our sad, old BlackBerry might keep us out of said parties. Anyway,......

Derrick Schneider has an excellent food-focused blog called "Obsession With Food." He also wrote for SFist regularly for quite a long time, most notably his still-popular SFist in the Kitchen series. So of course we were very pleased to see that he wrote an article appearing in the Wine Section of today's Chron. He writes all about "fruit wine," or wine made with fruit other than grapes....

its a big weekend folks! here's where to jumpstart your Pridealicious weekend: Still don't have a date to the tomorrow's Dyke March? Find the perfect lady at Fairy Butch! Speed dating at 8pm, followed by an erotic cabaret & dance party. $10-$20 sliding scale entry fee. at the Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. Head over the Fat City (used to be Studio Z) for Cockblock, queer dance party. Shake it like a polaroid picture......

Remember Edith Delgado, the girl who accidentally killed two members of the royal family of Tongo Tonga about a year ago on 101 in a speeding accident? She was found guilty of misdemeanor manslaughter (but not the more serious felony version), which has a maximum penalty of 3 years. The prosecutors alleged that Delgado had a history of reckless driving and was drag-racing at the time of the accident, but her lawyers disputed that. In......

--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......

We really love these guys, and you should love them too! The Del Sol Quartet performs works by 20th and 21st century women composers in Berkeley tonight (and one male composer too) in their "Umbilical Chords: Women Composers and the Creative Process" program. And in interesting modern music trivia, one of the women composers (Ruth Crawford) is folk singer Pete Seeger's mother. Del Sol plays at the Ashby Stage (1901 Ashby, x MLK, right across......

SFist gives away tickets and album for Voxtrot at Great American Music Hall on 5/30/07...

This isn't just tonight -- it's for all month -- but it's so cool we're making it the pick of the day! Bank of America customers, you can flash your ATM card or credit card and you and a guest get into a bunch of local museums for free, free, free! (Wells Fargo card holders, you'll have to pay not only admission but also a $2.50 service charge. Kidding, kidding.) Offer applies to the SFMOMA,......

Matt Gonzalez: "I'm sorry, SFist Elaine, but I've gotta run." SFist Elaine: "We've only been dating for five minutes, and you're already breaking up with me?" Matt Gonzalez: "No, I just can't stand how Luke Thomas is always crashing our dates." Luke Thomas: "She's mine, Matt!"...

We've been slightly afraid of Tribe 8 lead singer Lynn Breedlove ever since she crashed into us in a riotgrrl mosh pit, causing us moderate injury -- but that shouldn't stop you from checking out her short film "Godspeed," based on her book about speed freak bike messengers, which is screening next Wednesday, April 11, as part of the Third Annual SF Women's Film Festival! The Women's Film Fest has put together an eclectic group......

Our feelings regarding the sneaky scheduling of Gavin Newsom’s Third Fake Question Time this Monday can best be expressed through American Idol runner-up Katharine McPhee’s latest single, “Over It.” The purple halter dress she wears in this video is pretty cute, too. However, just because we're over it doesn't mean we're not secretly putting together a special Fake Question Time ensemble in the hopes of running into some chick dating some dude (not to......

A few weeks ago we published an article about online dating sites to help out those in need of some lovin’. However, the on draw back to online dating sites is just that: to meet someone you have to be at your computer instead of out mingling with real, live humans. So given your affinity for reaching for your cell phone to fill time / avoid awkward situations we wanted to introduce you to Crush or Flush™ – a new mobile dating service that’s fun, safe and most definitely a more entertaining time filler than scrolling through your list of contacts… again… And again… And again…...

What, you don't believe in Santa Claus? Don't tell Dr.Lloyd Darrow, a self-proclaimed 'Santa-ologist', whose made it his life's mission to uncover the truth about this elusive fat man who visits us just once a year. Darrow's proof the jolly man exists include a lost video from a 1949 polar expedition, the Santa Papyrus dating from 1342 B.C., and an actual jingle bell found in the wreckage at Roswell, New Mexico. ...

Who's that being spotted Hollywood clubbin' with Giants' curveballer Barry Zito? ...

As promised -- when we find people defending Newsom, we diligently write 'em up in the column we call.... Who's Defending Newsom Now! Who's swinging for the mayor? --The mayor himself!: Before heading out to Switzerland this week, Gavin sat down with the gay-focused Bay Area Reporter (picture features a blue tie) for a chat about what's going on with him. Beyond the now-standard complaint that the Chronicle is out to get him, Gavin also......

Sunday. Usually, a quiet, contemplative day in the Blogosphere. But not here in the Ist-a-Verse. Nonono! Just look below and see all of the wild and crazy stuff our staffs are up to....

Two people saved from gunshots by inanimate objects -- a deputy saved by his belt buckle, and a husband saved from his pistol-waving wife by his La-Z Boy. The wife of the man in the La-Z Boy tried to kill him by shooting him through the back of the chair, but the chair blocked the bullet. The man then got out of the chair and followed his wife into the kitchen, where she tried to......