If you have a free second - provided you have finished reading each SFist story and clicking on every one of our advertisers, of course - checkout the Guardian's "Offies" of 2007 - their Off-Guard Awards for the "dumbest, lamest, most pitiful, and most bizarre moments of a year that's finally, finally over." A couple of them that made us chortle: WHEN A SIMPLE "CUNT" OR "PUSSY" JUST ISN'T GOOD ENOUGH A Florida production......

Former A's pitcher Joe Kennedy, 28, died at his home in Florida this morning. At this time the cause of death is officially unknown, but it was "sudden" and a brain aneurysm is rumored to be at fault, according to the Chronicle. Making his major league debut in 2001 with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, Kennedy went on to play for other teams such as the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Toronto Blue Jays, and of......

We got word today from an anonymous source that two residents of Bernal Heights -- including a former President of Golden Gate Audubon Society -- spotted a burrowing owl a block from their house on the southeastern side of the hill. The (sub?)species was confirmed by another Audubon-er. So, why does this matter? Because at the moment there is construction going on in the same area (i.e., landscaping improvements such as steps, etcetera) where......

Currently with six full-time employees on staff (whoa), according to the Chronicle, Wikipedia wants to expand its talent base while increasing its presence in developing countries (i.e., Asia), so it's making the move to hedonistic and wonderful San Francisco. Yay. How exciting. After throwing its junk into garbage bags in its St. Petersburg, Florida HQ (ew), they're sure to find San Francisco the perfect town for finding drunk assholes yammering on about widgets at......

The Mission's an interesting place to screen a movie about gentrification, filmed from the eyes of the gentrifier -- so there was certainly no shortage of things to think about at last night's showing of New Urban Cowboy for DocFest at the Roxie. New Urban Cowboy is a documentary about Michael Arth, a kind of hippie-dippie former resident of Santa Barbara who moves to the small town of Deland, Florida, near Orlando, and more......

Now, here's something for Jan Wahl to aspire to be: Maria Salas, entertainment coorespondant for South Florida's NBC 6. You can watch the on-air personality -- an exhausting and worrisome job title if ever we've heard one -- here, or catch it after the jump. (Note: Sorry about the commercial before the video; it's not ours. Proceed at your own risk.)......

-- "Dub Mission": Resident DJs Sep and Vinnie Esparza welcome Teleseen to their weekly dub-dance club night in the Mission. 9 p.m.-2 a.m. at Elbo Room, 647 Valencia; $5. -- The Way Light Strikes Filled Mason Jars: This winner of the SF Fringe Festival has famous writers visiting a playwright on the precipice of completing his final work. Film starts at 7 p.m. (with free wine and cheese afterwards. Hic!) at the Traveling Jewish......

SF shootings: two shot, one dead, in the Bayview Monday afternoon (the resulting scene then blocked the T-Third for an hour), another shooting in Oceanview, and a man shot in a drive-by at 21st and Florida on Friday night. Dang! A huge fight on Durant Avenue by Telegraph in Berkeley Sunday night -- around 50 people were involved and they had to close off the area for an hour. A 14-year-old was sent to the......

To celebrate 07/07/07, local modern Japanese theater troupe Theater of Yugen is presenting The Cycle Plays, an all-day festival of pieces influenced by Japanese Noh theater traditions. The performances use Noh theater conventions and imagery but present stories about figures of American pop cultural legend -- so there's a piece about Ted Kaczynski, a play about Helen Keller (pictured at right), and an adaptation of A Long Day's Journey Into Night. Plays start at 9:30,......

Here's todays sports news...

We are deeply, deeply regretful that the cityblog format had not been launched back in 2001 and 2002, when we were totally obsessed with the Diane Whipple dog mauling case. For those of you not here at the time, that was the case where a rugby lacrosse coach was killed by two fighting dogs kept as pets in a Pacific Heights apartment by two really loopy local lawyers, Robert Noel and Marjorie Knoller -- and......

Butoh dance is a post WWII form of modern Japanese performance art seen as a combination of dance, traditional Japanese theater, and mime, and which is described as provocative and shocking. Sounds like fun! The local Japanese dance group Theater of Yugen presents an evening of Butoh dance tonight, featuring nature-themed performances, along with music by new music ensemble the Nanos Operetta. 2840 Mariposa (between Florida and Alabama, near Project Artaud), 8 p.m., $15. Other......

That's what the Ohio State University and the entire sporting world, with the exception of diehard Gator lovers and their recently embarked bandwagon brethren across the land, are thinking after the University of Florida beat down the OSU 84-75 last night to capture the men's NCAA basketball national championship. It's OSU's second consecutive national championship game defeat to Florida, this year.

If you're thinking it's deja vu all over again, you're right. The Gators came into the championship game as the defending NCAA champs -- and went out the same way. Their hard-fought but decisive victory marked the first back-to-back basketball championships by any Division I men's team since Duke's 1990-1992 run and only the second repeat since the end of the John Wooden era at UCLA more than 30 years ago.

Meat and Greet Self-described as a print magazine of meat culture, Meatpaper celebrates the launch of Issue Zero at Sugarlump coffee lounge tonight in the Mission. Tastings and demonstrations by local restaurants and meat companies like Incanto and Prather Ranch serve up festivities (non-carne nosh will be available for the veggie crowd); drinks will be provided by Trumer Pilsner , Sonnema VodkaHerb and others, along with a gallery of meat-inspired art to feast your eyes......

The first weekend of the men's and women's NCAA basketball tournaments is in the books -- are you still alive in your office pool? Not if you took the Road to the Final Four less traveled.

If you went with the favorites, chances are you're sitting pretty. With the exception of the toothless male Badgers of Wisconsin, all first and second seeds in both tourneys advanced to the Sweet 16. That's not to say that a few high seeds didn't get a scare or that some middling seeds will never get a chance to germinate into full-blown Cinderellas, but overall, both tournaments are sticking to the script.

Here's todays sports wrap up...

The two SF Indie Fest films we watched on Friday night at the Victoria Theatre made for a very thought-provoking juxtaposition. The short film Mischief at 16th and Florida captured the rich history of an industrial area (and the river beneath it) located just a mere five blocks from the film screening. The feature film The Ballad of Greenwich Village was related to us through the countless anecdotes of the many amazing artists, performers......

Eight people were arrested today in the murder of a San Francisco cop. In 1971. They are charged with the murder of Sgt. John V. Young who was killed when two people pulled a Terminator and burst into the Ingleside Police Station and fired a shotgun through a bulletproof glass window. Now we in now way are condning what happened and have nothing but sympathy for the people who were shot during the incident, but bursting into a police station to shoot things up is pretty ballsy....

Speed kills. It's an old football saw, but it still cuts right to the heart of the matter in sorting out the detritus of last night's BCS National Championship Game: faster is better.

Can they send a bloodhound to find him? There's a $1000 reward for the return of a "very shy" Palo Alto Police Dept. K-9 bloodhound named Luke, who was last seen outside an elementary school in Newark at 7:30 on the weekend, close to his home. Look how cute Luke is! He's Palo Alto's only bloodhound (though they also have German shepherds on the team). Bloodhounds become despondent if they're separated from their owner and......

-And Stanford hires...Jim Harbaugh. Harbaugh was an NFL QB, most famously with the Bears and the Colts. and was the coach of the University of San Diego, not exactly a DIvision 1A team. His record there, though, was 29-6 with 27 wins in his last 29 games which isn’t too shabby. But is it a reach? Or a gamble? And is it the right gamble? ...

While most of the 2006 elections are over, there's still a bit of a contention coming from, where else, Florida. In the Sarasota congressional race, a recount was held and 18,000 under votes were discovered. That meant those people voted for everything else but not for congress. This drew alarm bells from people because the percentage of under votes was higher than anywhere else. And, you'd have to figure that the one race people would vote on would be for congress instead of the school board or bond measures or a Sarasota style Question Time. Voters also complained that the machines garbled everything up and they never got a chance to vote. ...

So the final pre-bowl Bowl Championship Series (BCS) poll is out, and guess what? Everybody's pissed about something, except for Ohio State and Florida, the two teams that received Golden Tickets to the big game. Different year, same BS for the BCS.

We're not big fans of airport security. We know, we know, post 9/11 reality and we must put up with whatever to make the world safe for democracy and all that. And we'd be down, really, if the measures made sense but they don't. They're all pretty stupid, actually. Like that liquid ban which was done after that alleged plot involving liquid explosives. That's a total joke because the reality is that in order to build the bomb the terrorists would have to have created some sort of chem lab in the airplane in order to build it. We just don't see that working And don't even get us started on the whole shoe thing. If we ever ran into the alleged shoe-bomber, we'd personally beat the snot out of him for making it so we had to take off our shoes everytime we boarded a plane. Talk about dumb ass. ...

Yikes -- that's not the kind of boost we wanted in our Jamba Juice! Our local healthy smoothie company recently discovered that one of its supplier's strawberries were possibly contaminated with the listeria bacteria. Only about 50 cases went out, and they all shipped to southern California, Arizona, and Nevada from November 25-Dec. 1 -- that's less than 3% of all the smoothies made in that region. (They go through over 1666 cases of strawberries......

Memo to David Stern: Start the playoffs right now, baby, the Warriors are ready to make a run!

What is it with this team? Just when Warrior nation was about to write them off as the latest version of Chris Cohan's spectacularly unsuccessful basketball product, they up and beat two of the best teams in the league in consecutive games.

Suns 113, Warriors 110- And so endeth the Warriors six game winning streak and five game home winning streak. All this to the Suns, a run-n-gun basketball team that we have a feeling have influenced Mully and Nellie more than you'd like to know. High scoring basketball, catch it. The game was close, though, as the Suns won on a last second three pointer from former Santa Clara grad, Steve Nash. Monta Ellis led the way with 31 points for the Warriors....

SFist interviews Matt Costa ...

--The US Attorney's office is going to monitor the SF elections, like we're East Timor or Florida or something. --Courtney Love was 50 minutes late to her book signing in Corte Madera. --District 6 candidate Manuel Jimenez confirms neither confirms nor denies that he's Latino (see comments!), with a picture of his baptism. --The cops get back the discretion to press pot charges. --Stanford students don't really care about the election. --Does the Bayview need......

-Bechtel cutting and running from Iraq. -Daly now ahead in D6 race? ...