*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......

HBO bought the rights to Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO and the Steroids Scandal That Rocked Professional Sport, the infamous book penned by Chronicle reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams. According to a sister over at Variety, in it Bonds is "painted in 'Game of Shadows' as a gifted player who made a Faustian bargain to increase his power." (Might we suggest Damn Giants as a working title, then?) Ron Shelton -- auteur......

After last week's dueling press conferences and memo-leakage, the Homeless issue is becoming the Issue du Jour, leading to a full-fledged reporter dogpile. First came CW Nevius who weighed in with yet another story on the issue, this time saying that even in liberal, tolerant, San Francisco, residents might not be feeling so liberal and tolerant when it comes to dealing with the homeless. As evidence, he points to one of those online polls SFGate ran about the issue in which 90% of the people said they wanted something to be done. We, as a rule, hate those "polls" because it's actual scientific value is nil as it's all determined by people who were motivated enough to play along and doesn’t factor in those who were too lazy to. ...

Here's todays sports news...

Barry didn't play last night due to his legs being shot from playing Tuesday's 13 inning birthday game, thus disappointing a sold out stadium, Bud Selig, and scores of press from around the world who instead got stuck watching a very good pitching duel and Noah Lowry solidifying his role of staff ace. Maybe Bud Selig should institute some sort of "best interest of baseball" rule saying that if Barry isn't going to play, the Giants should announce it first thing in the morning so fans know they don't have to go, Bud can have a nice night out in the town, and all the press hordes can either go home or just hang out in the press booth and get drunk....

From the tallest skyscraper in the City of Brotherly Love to Canadian tourism copywriting brilliance, here's what you should know from our -ist cities: This week, Phillyist took a gleeful listen to the White Stripes' exciting new release, watched in awe as their new tallest skyscraper was finally completed, found a cheaper way to get to Gothamist, invented a tasty new dessert, and brought back their Craigslist Round-Up feature with a bang. Bostonist watches......

Holy smokes! Giant fish on the MTA, Paris Hilton in jail, then out, then in again, Al Gore, goatses, blumpkins, Matt Damon, and baby art critics! It's been a busy week across the Ist-A-Verse, and here's a smattering of what's been going on. In Gothamist's neck of the woods, they found out that many things are possible: A man caught a 40+ pound fish off the Rockaways and took it home on the subway. Graffiti......

Yesterday, the 415 twosome, the only one's actually charged with anything, met up in court to once again enter their pleas. This time around, the second member of the 415 Gang, Brian Dwyer entered a plea of not guilty to charges he kicked the living sh-- out of one of the Yalies. The kid, Brian Dwyer, is charged with assault and battery and if found guilty and if actually sent to jail for all of this, could face seven years in prison. Yikes-- if we were Dwyer, we'd be totally freaked out right about now as this all came from one bad, drunken decision. The other one, Richard Aicardi, entered his plea of not guilty on March 8th. ...

We've always wondered what would happen if there was a power outage somewhere in Silicon Valley. Would the stock market crash? Would we not be able to surf porn? Would we no longer be able to download "Buffy" reruns over iTunes? Well, we're about to find out as there's a blackout in one of the hearts of Silicon Valley, that being San Mateo County. ...

OK, so maybe we’re a little addicted to crime dramas, but when we finally rented HBO’s acclaimed Paradise Lost documentaries last year they literally changed our life. We’ve been following the plight of the West Memphis Three ever since. To give you some background: Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley and Jason Baldwin were once three young boys in rural Arkansas who happened to listen to heavy metal and wear black. Shortly after three eight-year-old boys......

Before the screening of the documentary, They Chose China, Director Shuibo Wang stood in front of the audience and declared that San Francisco was his favorite city in North America. That already predisposed the largely gray-haired audience to feel kindly towards the director but then he further ingratiated himself by saying, "I have never experienced a festival like this. It is very very warm. This is a very sweet experience." Wang, whose previous documentary......

We were amazed as heck that the folks from the High Times Comedy Festival emailed us instead of SFist Jackson, and even more surprised that they offered us tickets to giveaway to some lucky readers to attend Saturday's 10:15 p.m. show of their Fest at Cobb's Comedy Club. There are going to be some exceptionally funny comedians playing these shows... the scathing, biting humor of Tom Rhodes, who has been seen on Comedy Central......

In the past month we managed to catch up on two seasons of "Battlestar Galctica" (yes, we listened to our dear readers and got good and hooked) including the season finale, and now it's all over and we have to wait until OCTOBER for new episodes. Sheesh. Maybe we should have savored those DVDs instead of devoring them like the gluttons we are. Now what? Is "Lost" even on anymore? (OK. It's on this......

We know it makes us hopelessly recherche, but this particular outpost of the SFist empire has never seen an episode of The Sopranos and can't afford HBO, so its season premiere last Sunday was a non-event for us. However, Catherine Nash's recipe for spaghetti and meatballs, that we could get behind. It says it makes 42 meatballs. That seems a little low for us, but then again, our mother only knew how to make......

A couple of months ago, Randy Moss admitted to Bryant Gumbel on HBO's "Real Sports" (a great, underrated show, by the way) that he sometimes, every once in awhile, liked to smoke a little reefer. He didn't say he still does, or he does during the season, or even that he does gravity bongs with Snoop Dog and Donald Rumsfield at after-game parites. He just said that he "likes to have fun." Granted, in these......

The end of HBO's drama "Six Feet Under" is this week's most notable television event, and at first we were a little ambivalent about it. (Warning to anyone who is planning on catching up on the series on DVD, thar be spoilers ahead. Although, really, if you haven't heard about what's gone down this season yet, you live in a better bat cave than we do.) We've seen every single episode of the show,......

There are two great things about getting to compile this column -- one is the sense of camaraderie and sharing we get when our wonderful SFist colleagues or readers recommend, refer, or concurrently read (Christine, that's you) books from their online reserve list. There are so many books we've read only because we've checked them out, borrowed them, or purchased them from one of our fine local independent bookstores at the behest of a......

The first ad-supported gay cable channel is set to hit the airwaves today, but most people in San Francisco won't be able to watch it. We wrote about the City's crappy cable TV service a few weeks ago, so this news comes as no surprise. LOGO, which is owned and operated by MTV networks, will be available to DirectTV subscribers, and to those in the City who get their cable service through RCN. But......

Of course SFist is of the opinion that The Sopranos is the only good thing that's been on television in the last decade or two. Sure, there's stuff that's entertaining all over TV -- but in more of a "can't turn away from the impending trainwreck" way than a "oh my God, the artistry!" kind of way. But airing after the Sopranos last season was a show called Deadwood, which told the tale of......

While it's always fun to snark on the Religious Right, lately it's just been too darn easy. After taking on Sponge Bob and "No Name Calling Week," those whacky Bible-thumpers are at it again, this time with yet another cartoon (do they watch anything else?) In this case, the upsetting thing is a cartoon airing on PBS, a cartoon about a cute little bunny named Buster. Postcards From Buster is about Buster's adventures travelling to......