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.......

Someone else viewed as unbeatable has a hail-Mary opponent from the progressive left -- and we're not just talking about Gavin Newsom and Chris Daly! That's right -- the stridently anti-war soldier's mom Cindy Sheehan has declared her candidacy against San Francisco's House representative, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Sheehan says she's running because Pelosi didn't move to impeach Bush by July 23. She's running as an independent and, along with the anti-war thing,......

Last week Filipino CPDRC Inmates’ astounding version of "Thriller" zipped past us, and thank God it did. But looking over their oeuvre, they also have something SF-relevant (well, aside from the fact that what they’re doing is so very gay): a routine to Sister Act's "Hail Holy Queen" -- we are truly blessed.......

Here's todays sports news...

We'd like to thank SFist Rita for sharing weekly-reading duties! Last week's winner: the SF Weekly. Spare the glare - oops, the fancy new Federal Building's got some lighting and climate control issues. Cover article: The SF International Film Festival keeps on keeping on and tries to attract young audiences with downloadable movies (what beautiful cinematography, well, it's probably beautiful, from what I can infer from the teensy screen of the video iPod ... even......

Here's a rundown of what's happening in the world of sports blogs...

Photo of a purported Hummer H2 school bus...

We heart tortillas. We heart art made in our 'hood. Naturally, we're all over the tortilla fest known as the Great Tortilla Conspiracy exhibition. It's free (!!!!) and a few steps away from our home BART stop, the beauty that is otherwise known as 24th Street. Artists use corn tortillas as a canvas, using silk-screening, digital printing and other means for thought--although maybe not hunger-- provoking art. We outright giggle when folks say they......

Check out the hailstone that SFist Jim captured on film at around 9:07 p.m. in the Haight! In his poetic phrasing, "bigger than a bb, smaller than a lemon drop." This was all due to a small storm cell above the northern half of the city, and was accompanied by heavy rain and lightning. Where were you when the ice started raining down? We were just leaving a bar downtown, and then we got......

We don't know about you, but we were awoken in the middle of the night by howling wind and driving rain that made us think about just how secure our windows were and if the roof is leaking or are we just imaging it and dear God, not the Dementors again! No! Stay away from us! Uh, where were we? Oh yeah, well, the reason for all the raining is that we are in the beginnings of a full-fledged winter storm. If the rain isn't good enough for you, there are also predictions of thundershowers tonight and hail. We love hail. Things are expected to be clear tomorrow, then get right nasty over the weekend and into next week. In fact, we looked at the weather chart on SFGate and if it was something that came up in playing slots, we'd be rich. ...

Gavin fleeing The Press Conference. Better add some Hail Marys to that latte, playboy. By SFist Elaine......

-Judge rules lethal injection in California a not very nice thing to do. -$1 billion bucks to go to easing congestion through Interstate 580 between Alameda County and the Altamont Pass....

Sometimes a loss can be a victory and this is one of those losses that looks like a victory. Except in the win column where it really counts. The Niners came out right from the start loaded for bear and scored a TD with Alex Smith hooking up with Vernon Davis on their very first drive. The Cards then went on to take a 21-7 lead but the Niners kept coming and coming and coming, only to finally go down in defeat when Smith's Hail Mary pass fell incomplete. In fact, the Niners could claim they won all the big things but lost due to the small things, like penalties and missed passes and one missed field goal. Which sounds pretty bad if you're a contending team but really good if you're pretty much not. Oh, and Frank Gore is the man. His two-yard TD run where he basically just pushed himself into the end zone was the kind of football that would have made Vince Lombardi smile. ...

SFist interviews Barb Traub, author of "Desert to Dream: A Decade of Burning Man Photography"...

While today's elections should prove less depressing than the last presidential one, you can always use a few laughs, right?...

This SFister is not what folks call a "hardcore" Giants fan. We do not have season tickets, we don't really know the names of anyone on the team other than Barry Bonds (though we might recognize some of them if you read them out loud), we have no opinion about the designated hitter rule, and when we go to a game (usually for some tourist- or corporate perk-related reason), we annoy everyone around us by getting up at inopportune times, chatting throughout crucial plays, and constantly asking, "why's he doing that?" Which is why we're so into Andrew Morbitzer! Morbitzer is the guy who got up on Sunday right before Barry was up to bat and was waiting in line for peanuts (after they ran out of BBQ at the Say Hey Sausage stand) when he heard a loud roar from the crowd, looked up, and a ball fell into his hands. He then got whisked away by security, before he even had a chance to pick up his order (two beers, a BBQ sandwich, and peanuts), as his wife was wondering what the heck was taking him so long. Morbitzer paid $17 for bleacher tickets, and had the presence of mind to say that Sunday was the second best day of his life, after his wedding last year. Hail to the casual baseball fan and how he for once finally comes out on top! ...

This weather? Bugs. Bugs us all to hell. It's not that it's rainy. We can handle the rain, or at least be okay with it. It's always rainy this time of year. No. What's getting to us is the whole schizo-ness of the weather. First it's sunny. Then it rains. For about ten minutes. Then it stops for a few hours. Then it rains again for a few minutes. Then it's sunny again. For a few minutes. Then it rains again, usually at the exact moment we get off of BART or are coming back from lunch. ...

Little. Orange. Different. Winter is on its way out—you can tell by the storms and hail—but before you bid adieu to citrus, hunt down some oh-so-cute kumquats at your local market. The tiny fruits started to appear at one of the markets we visit, and they should be around for a month or two. We've only seen the Meiwa variety, but the Nagami is more common. Both thrum with potent orange flavors, but kumquat......

Amanda Boyden, author of Pretty Little Dirty is going to be reading from her book at 7 p.m. at A Clean Well-Lighted Place tonight and City Lights tomorrow. Doesn't the idea of sitting in a cozy bookstore listening to bits of a punk-influenced story of friendship sound perfect on a day like today (yes, that WAS hail)? Even if you can't make it to one of these readings, Amanda's publishers want to give the......

SFist Jacob steps up to the blog pulse plate, while SFist Jackson's on hiatus. All anyone can talk about is the snow, snow, snow. (OK, those last two are actually tagged as "hail," but you get the point and the pics are pretty.) In our eyes, all this cold just means the onset of summer. Still, if you're jonesing for some tropical island loveliness, head over to the Humu Kon Tiki's San Francisco section to......

It snowed in the Bay Area this weekend -- the first March snowstorm since 1896. And we're not just talking snow like in the Sierras or maybe on the top of Mount Tam -- there was snow in Danville, on Mount Baker in the South Bay, and even some snow in San Francisco by West Portal. The last time it snowed in San Francisco was in 1976, and we got about an inch. (Click here for some interesting SF snow history: SF's largest snow was 3.7 inches in downtown on Feb. 5, 1887.) We didn't get a huge 1887-style blizzard on Sunday, but Highway 17 was closed for three hours on Sunday morning for snowplows, a section of 280 south of 92 was closed, a seven-car pileup on 80 was blamed on hail, and in the area's biggest car pileup in ages, 28 cars spun out of control in the snow on the north side of the Waldo Tunnel just outside Sausalito, as unsuspecting motorists sped out of the downhill-heading tunnel only to be faced with snowy, slippery roads. As an immigrant to San Francisco from a snowier clime, this correspondent assumes you kids out there will have no idea what we're talking about when we say that we're sorry this didn't happen during the week so you could have a snow day from school. Know why we know you won't know what we're talking about? The Chronicle had to provide a definition of snow for its bewildered readers!!! We love this city.

While snow falls in flakes and looks more like small ice shavings, hail is balls of ice, usually small. If the trees are white, [National Weather Service meteorologist Brooke] Bingaman said, it's probably snow.

DCist helps us make more sense of the world this week. Posts like this concert review are the reason for Scott Stapp. DCist also enumerates the reasons for playing ultimate frisbee, Condi's tight buns, their love of a local convenience store, and their jealousy of a person in Seattle calling the city. LAist documented graf artist Banksy's most recent visit to LA in one two three posts. They also found the best possible use......

Cole Stratton isn't just one of the founders of SF Sketchfest, which starts tomorrow. (Are you going? We are, and you should, too.) We should have asked him what he did to attract performers from Mr. Show, The Kids in the Hall, Saturday Night Live, Stella, The State, The Daily Show, Arrested Development, and The Upright Citizens Brigade to the Fest, as well as ask him what local stars of the comedy stage Kasper Hauser,......

The week between Xmas and New Year's always makes us into shut-ins. Plus, it's raining, like, all the time. We're broke. We're pervs. And there's nothing on TV. But wait: there is. Something very... weird. Yeah, Comcast has made us all its bitch, but now it looks like there might be something worth taking the cable conglomorate's pain for the past year. Starting in October, Seattle's bizarro obsessive film collection company Something Weird Video......

A drunken truck driver in Pacific Heights killed a cabbie and one of his passengers Sunday night. The trucker had been running stop signs and red lights all around Russian Heights, and had grazed a guy at Polk and Washington, without stopping. The hit-and-run victim was following the truck driver and saw him run head-on into a Yellow Cab at Broadway and Webster. The cab driver and the passenger in the front seat were killed; the two passengers in the back were taken to the hospital. The cab driver was a union organizer trying to get health benefits for other drivers, and the passenger was a senior at Duke who had gone to Indonesia to help out after the tsunami. Well, if you went to see A History of Violence, you might have at least been prepared -- moviegoers exiting the Jack London movie theater in Oakland last week were greeted by a hail of gunfire, as two rival Latino gangs shot out their differences outside the movie house. Moviegoers hid in the bathrooms as the gunshots shattered the glass doors, and one angry San Franciscan said, "Given that I live in San Francisco, I'd say there's a pretty good chance we'll skip the Jack London cinema from now on. There's a perfectly good movie theater in Emeryville.'' What, the Metreon's not good enough for you either? And a gay male cruising site has sued Paypal, because the online money collection service won't let them collect donations through their site for Katrina victims, citing their rule against using Paypal for sex-related businesses. CFS.com (Cruising for Sex.com; we assume it's NSFW) says it has two employees who have relatives affected by Katrina and had collected between $1500-2000 before Paypal pulled the plug. ...

San Francisco's a city of immigrants -- how many people do you know who actually grew up here? -- and our lovely vintage F-line is no exception. The refurbished trolley cars on the F hail from Boston, Philadelphia, England, Italy, and, notably, New Orleans; and starting tomorrow, the New Orleans trolley (that's the one with the sign that says "A Streetcar Named Desire") will be carrying a torch for its hometown. Actually, it'll be......

How good is this TV show? How good is this TV show!!! We love it! So you think you can DANCEdancendancedancedance. Any show with an echo effect in its theme song title has got to be great. The setup of the show is so fricken brilliant: 8 guys, 8 girls, all of whom dance in different styles, including ballroom, ballet, the ubiquitous hip-hop, jazz, and "lyrical" (which we think is supposed to mean modern, but is best portrayed by the guy who brought in his own mattress to dance on at his audition). Every week they pick random partners and learn the choreography for a random dance style, for your viewing delight. Dude, it is so genius watching, say, the freestyler and the ballroom dancer gamely struggling to get through the "lyrical" choreography. So many spirit fingers wiggling! Gasp as the pop-and-locker and the tap dancer flail their way through the jive! Shriek in horror as the wind machine blows open a diaphanous untucked shirt to expose pale male dancer chest! And cheeeeez, could these judges be any meaner? Clearly choreography is the career path of choice if you like to talk smack. (They were even better when they got to talk more in the earlier weeks. "They named this show right. These people THINK they can dance." Owwwwwwch! More, please!) We are glued to the TV. Glued! Bay Area connection? Four dancers hail from this neck of the -ist: lovable hip-hopper of size Allan Frias, who grew up in the Bayview and teaches dance at Dance Mission; hollow-staring Slavic ballroom dancer Artem Chigvinsev from Palo Alto who teaches at Metronome Ballroom; cheerful Pinoy jazz dancer Melody Lacayanga from Daly City; and Nick Lazzarini from Sunnyvale, who we really have no memory of at all (sorry, Nick! Did you dance the hip-hop routine, maybe?) So hey, don't call us anymore on Wednesdays between 8 and 10. We're not picking up for you! ...

We personally think the whole "Top Whatever" lists thing to be totally overdone and usually laughably wrong. On the other hand, they are darn fun to ruminate over. Especially a particularly juicy one that hasn't been done before. Recently, USA Today put together a list of the "Top Twenty American Rock Bands." The top American band of all time, as voted by the readers? Pearl Jam. Something they got in part for "longevity" even though we thought they broke up in '95 or something (we kid! We know they're still around. It's just that they’ve been releasing the same half-assed disc for the past ten years). Of local interest is the fact that the Bay Area throws down and represents. In fact, four out of the twenty (well, actually, twenty-one but do we really want to include Bon Jovi?) all hail from our hallowed climes. Those bands? The East Bay's own Creedence Clearwater Revival (15, tied with Bruuuuuce!!!!!) and Metallica (12), the Dead (7), and clocking in as the highest ranked Bay Area band-- Journey (5). Don’t stop believing, indeed. For a bit of perspective, that's more great bands than Chicago (zero bands), Boston (one band), Seattle (three) and the mighty New York (three). Take that, Big Apple! The only area more rocking than the Bay Area is SoCal, with six, but there should be some sort of penalty incurred for giving us the Eagles. ...

SFist had to leave work early last week for a four o'clock doctor's appointment downtown. Because we're several varieties of bonehead, we left something at home and had to run back to our apartment in the Mission before our appointment. By the time we grabbed what we needed, we had a little less than half an hour and were unsure of our ability to make it via MUNI. No problem, thought us, we can always hail a cab. After all, we live right off 16th & Valencia. How hard could getting a cab be? ...

We don't mean to ALARM anyone ... but according to sketchy, unreliable camera-phone-based reports, there seems to be an IRISH FLAG being flown above the door of the capitol building. As per the Bloggers' Code of Ethics, we are honor-bound not to disseminate sheer speculation as to the implications of this strange turn of events; but it's pretty clear to us by now what's going on. Obviously, city government has been overtaken by a......