It's debatable whether Walt Disney ever really did meet with Adolf Hilter in 1935 -- but what if they did? What if he met with Leni Riefenstahl and Joseph Goebbels and they talked about making fascist cartoons? Come check out this theatrical what-if exploration in the play Disney and Deutschland at 975 Howard (between 5th and 6th), Thursday through Sundays through Feb. 24. (Disclaimer! We're friends with the actor playing Goebbels! Our friend is nothing......

Due to the "unusual and extraordinary" Christmas Day tiger attack at the San Francisco Zoo -- which resulted in the mauling death of 17-year-old Carlos Sousa Jr. and wounding of Paul and Kulbir Dhaliwal -- a three-member tiger team formed by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums has been called in to examine the zoo's big cat grotto. While the investigation and renovations are underway, the tigers and lions are currently kicking it indoors.......

OMG! It's the Nicole Ritchie of laptops! (Ritchie before she got fat and pregnant, that is.) It seems that the new MacBook Air, just unveiled a few hours ago, features multi-touch ability on its oversized trackpad, similar to that of the iPhone; some sort of crazy wirelessness; recyclable aluminum case; a mercury and lead free display; and you can buy the thing in two weeks, starting at around $1799. Read more about it here.......

Everyone's behaving a little bit funny this weekend, and it's throwing the city's transit into a tizzy. An absolute tizzy! We haven't been this tizzied in MONTHS. First, there's Critical Mass. Lots of people firmly believe that something is be gained by proving that bicyclists are just as capable of causing gridlock and frustration as motorists, and they'll be doing just that ... um ... yesterday. Sorry about the late notice. Then there's a pilgrimage......

It seems that Disney is putting more eggs into the digital animation basket here in the Bay Area: they're setting up a studio in our neighbors to the north, Novato. Teaming with director Robert Zemeckis (the genius behind Back to the Future and now the Angelina Jolie animated nudie flick, Beowulf), the pair is forming ImageMovers Digital—a digital animation studio focused on the "Is that really animation or isn't it?" type of filmmaking. Disney......

Photo of protest by Filipino-American's at the Disney Store....

Have you heard all the rumors about how friggin WEIRD the next Pixar movie is going to be? Weird good, of course. Just look at the mind-bendy marketing they're doing for it. And IMDb says that Ben Burtt -- the guy who composed R2D2's beeps -- will be one of the film's voice actors? What does that even mean? Anyway, all of our questions will surely be answered tomorrow at 4pm. According Upcoming Pixar,......

-- The Arcade Fire: LCD Soundsystem and Wild Light open for this white-hot -- that's right, white-hot, or so we hear -- Canadian indie-rock band. Music starts tonight at 7 p.m. at Shoreline Amphitheatre, 1 Amphitheatre Pkwy, Mountain View; $19-40. -- High School Musical: You know what? We watched this on Disney and it sucked us in. Sad, yes. Absorbing, for sure. Ray of Light Theatre and School of the Arts (SOTA) put on......

-- Avenue Q: This tee hee-inducing musical features un-Seaseme Street-like puppets (e.g., a closeted homosexual republican, for starters) and an ode to racism. What's more, the indie production won a surprise Tony Award for best musical, as well as best score and book, beating out Disney's Wicked. It opens tonight at 7 p.m at the Orpheum Theater, 1192 Market; $25-$90. -- Ask a Scientist: Are you none too bright? We sure are. Which is......

Arizona recently executed their first prisoner in over seven years, Robert Comer. Comer was sentenced to death for murdering someone in a campsite and was also charged with rape and kidnapping. He was killed using lethal injection. ...

You all ready for a new "lawyer in San Francisco" show? There was that one a few years ago by David Kelly with the three nice looking young ladies, "Girls Club." Lasted for a very few episodes in 2002. Well, there's a new pilot that may have a shot. See, this time there's a new pilot with a San Francisco attorney that has an angle. It could maybe have been called "The Court Whisperer," or maybe "Joe of Arcadia." This new show is called "Eli Stone," and the title character may be a prophet....

Tonight's the opening night for the San Francisco International Film Festival! It's two weeks of everything in the world you can think of that's related to film: new indie favorites, an old (remastered) Disney darling, foreign films, documentaries, film-related music concerts, and even panel discussions -- one of which is moderated by film fanatic and former SFist editor Eve Batey! We're totally there (with the big glitter sign that says "I Love You Sanjaya,"......

A group at UCSF estimates that tobacco products in general-admission films are raising a whole lot of new, young smokers. The solution: slap an R on any film in which smoking is portrayed as having zero health consequences, since kids aren't mature enough to understand the real-life dangers of tobacco. We meet that idea with skepticism; it is with vivid detail that we recall the extensive anti-smoking education of our youth, and our impression......

Yesterday was the first day of spring so we decided to celebrate a day late with a YouTube clip of Tchaikovsky's Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" from Disney's Fantasia. Then we realized that's the boring one where all the dinosaurs die and who wants to watch dinosaurs die? So we found this instead, Amilcare Ponchielli's "Dance of the Hours" featuring the dancing hippos. What says spring more than dancing hippos? Besides, who doesn't love......

The Bay Area is home to many intriguing small businesses. Still, color us surprised that we've found in Juno Baby a local purveyor of high-quality children's educational products that manages to encapsulate what we like best in a company. ...

SFist Mihi leaps through the SFIAAFF for some warm-hearted, life-changing anime! This is why we go to film festivals. Once in a while you get to see a movie that you probably would have missed if it weren't for film festivals, but has made your life just a little bit better. A movie that transforms you. A movie that makes your heart swell and your soul sing. A movie that makes you weep silent streams......

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

t's looking like Spocko the Blogger's little stunt he pulled on KSFO is working. Both Bank of America and MasterCard pulled either all of their advertising or some of their advertising from KSFO. Others are expected to follow suit. ...

MacWorld. Keynote. It's Steve's time. Look, the long-desired iPhone. How does Steve Jobs choose to showcase the new phone's music technology? By playing The Beatles' "Lovely Rita, Meter Maid." That's so gangsta. Why? This staged moment is Steve's announcement/flaunting of the fact that the long war between Apple Computers and The Beatles is effectively over. Steve won. And now the world's greatest rock band is Steve Jobs' prop. Apple Computer and The Beatles' Apple......

Now that Netroots have slowed down on the Tauscher hating, they've moved onto another subject to which their ire is drawn, KSFO. One of the diarists on Daily Kos is telling the story of poor Spocko the Blogger. Spocko had a thing about KSFO for whatever reason and decided to record bits and pieces of various shows with the hopes of capturing of something truly appallingly in bad taste and full of invective. Our guess is that he probably spent a good ten minutes or so before he had enough damning evidence. With recorded bits and pieces of the shows. Spocko the Blogger turned some of the quotes into mp3s and sent them to various sponsors of KSFO shows as well as their corporate overlords. The obvious reason, of course, is to show those holding the purse strings just what they are spending money on....

So here's how the story goes: plucky, fresh-faced tech geeks put together some new web gizmo that quickly becomes one of those things everyone loves. Plucky, fresh-faced tech geeks quickly make a lot of money for doing something that doesn't make a lot of money, but is based on their potential for money. But since plucky, fresh-faced tech geeks run the company themselves with no affiliation to any of the Big Boys, Big Boys slowly lick their chops and move in for the kill, either by buying them out or by competing against them. Say goodbye to plucky, fresh-faced tech geeks and say hello to evil media conglomerate. Why do we bring this up? Because it's happening to YouTube....

If last week was a downer in terms of new movies, this weekend is definitely not. Basically, this is start of the big run of movies for Christmas/Oscar season so we'll start seeing the big, serious movies. Good thing it's going to rain. ...

Let's take a look back at a week that raised this Zen koan: if Kevin Federline got into a wrestling ring with a wrestler, who would you root for?...

Since we have to lead with anything Journey here at SFist, check out the YouTube clip of the ad for Atari's "Journey Escape" we found on Kotaku. Avoiding (pixelated representations of) crazed fans and manipulative music industry types never looked so fun! Buy it now! If espionage is more your game, then the cloak-and-dagger shenanigans at HP should be up your alley. Even reporters were entangled in the web of lives spun to discredit......

It's been a while since we published a tech roundup. But the Internet turned 15 last Sunday, we got a new laptop from an entrepreneur and friend who'll be enabling this 'Fister's addiction to blogging, and SFist Chuck, whom we dearly miss, was kidnapped by Disney, who force him to Imagineer at gunpoint. All the while, you've been lost in the unmapped multiverse, wondering who Supr.c.ilio.us and TechCrunch are, and which is the hipper one......

Last week's winner, the East Bay Express. The man who invented the suction-cup Garfield was defrauded by a friend. A civilly-disobedient city of Walnut Creek refuses to sign a California state loyalty oath, and can't get paid. Cover article: Michael Savage. The title "Savage Hate" is pretty good. Cat show this weekend. SF Jewish Film Fest. I Like Eating satisfies as always, at the second brewpub in California, and the new food critic checks out......

With the sun finally appearing, it's time to think about our favorite springtime city activities. Like street fairs. Our favorite street fair? The North Beach Festival. Nothing we love more than hanging out in Washington Square Park, downing some brews, then drunkenly stumbling into the maelstrom for more food, booze, and White Boy Blues. Man, what fun. Oh wait, there's going to be no booze allowed this year? Nevermind. ...

Imagine if you were put in charge of fixing the decline of Disney's theme parks over the past few decades. Assuming that your head did not explode from the mind-boggling coolness of the assignment, what would your first step be? Setting up a blog about it, of course. That's what's up with Re-Imagineering, which proves that not EVERY Blogspot account is a splog. A handful of Pixar and Disney employees -- wonderfully, blissfully, orgasmotronically lucky......

Look! Up in the sky! It's... well, just a bunch of fog, apparently. People have been spending a lot of time looking to the tech world for heroes and personal saviors, only to have those illusions shattered when they realize all they're getting are software, search engines, and MP3 players. Leander Kahney of Wired News got some flak for his commentary about the relative merits of Steve Jobs vs. Bill Gates. He says that......

How on Earth can you not love Doctor Strange? Even if you're not one of his fanatical followers -- as is Isotope Comics' James Sime, who first guided our attention towards the Doctor -- there's no escaping the Dcotor's strange charms. This time, the master of occult arcana faces a small army of dead supervillains who've discovered a means to temporarily resurrect themselves. Killed off by superheros in the 70s, The Pitiful One and......