The Third Annual Thanksgiving Dodgeball Game is kicking off at 9 p.m. at Dolores Park, Thanksgiving Day. While it's probably best that you go after your food's been well digested, there's nothing like getting pummeled with balls to help you work off those turkey pounds. Just make sure to bring your own balls (literally and figuratively, we suppose) as whoever is running this thing has told us that they won't be supplying the, uh, supplies.

Also after doing a little Google searching, if your heart has a little dodgeball shaped hole missing in case you miss this opportunity to gleefully hit people you know with balls, then check this out: The National Dodgeball Association is an actual organization with tournaments and not just a made-up group from a movie. Take your game to nationals and all that dodgeball glory will be yours. -- Dianne de Guzman

As some readers have already pointed out, Saturday's collision of death at Dolores Park should prove interesting. With a bevy of corpses available for you to express yourselves, which one will you choose?

In addition to the "Thriller" dance record-breaking attempt at Dolores Park, Saturday's Antiwar march, starting at Civic Center at 11 a.m., will end up smack-dab at the same recreational area. Once there, the "Fall Out Against the War" marchers (another worldwide event happening on the same day) will stage a (symbolic) die-in "to bring home the 2 million Iraqis who have died, the 500,000 who are now refugees, and the nearly 4,000 U.S. soldiers who have died for an occupation that only benefits weapons manufacturers and oil corporations."

That's a lot of dead bodies scattered around DP this Saturday. Mind your step.


"Thriller" rehearsal image: btobin's flick stream; die-in pic: Glenn Beck

Behind us was Film Geek guy who spent the entire night dazzling his fawning girlfriend with his amazing ability to discover plot holes. In front of us was some woman who just couldn't get warm no matter how hard she tried. She'd shift around in her chair, lie down and then sit back up, and add layer after layer of clothes. The moment we'd adjust to her adjustment, she'd adjust herself once again. Then there were the gaggle of girls a little bit farther ahead of us. As far as we could tell, they didn't watch any part of the movie and spent the entire two hours having rather animated conversations and gossiping. Besides angering our inner cineaste ("this is the scene where all the faces melt, how could you not watch!?") we just couldn't get over the fact that it didn't occur to them that if all they wanted to do was talk and drink wine, doing so in a huge park full of maybe a thousand people watching a movie might not be the best place for it. It didn't help that one of the girls, the one directly in our line of view, would move back and forth between leaning in to share some particularly juicy insight or lean back to laugh in hysterics at her friend's bon mots every other minute. We had finally adjusted to the lady right in front of us for the umpteenth time only to have the girl move in and out of our line of sight.

And yes, we're cranky, bitter old men. If we were smart, we'd organize some sort of neighborhood group that would complain about all the increased traffic and noise into our neighborhood and how showing movies in Dolores Park just isn't Mission enough and might bring in people who don't live in the Mission. Maybe even people from Walnut Creek!

But we won't. Because it was still pretty darn cool and we still had a great time. In fact, we can't wait for October's showing of Young Frankenstein.