For most of the day it looked like a total Cinderella story for unknown Jason Donald, but when the very last rider of the 2007 Tour of California (TOC) prologue crossed the finish line Sunday, it was Levi Leipheimer who had tears in his eyes.

A Credit Agricole rider suffers his way up the last 300 meters to the finish line atop Telegraph Hill. Photo from SF_Chris.

Following a ribbon-cutting ceremony and the national anthem, Jean-Marc Marino of team Credit Agricole rolled down the starting chute at 1:00 p.m. sharp and the prologue was on. In a time trial like Sunday's prologue, riders race alone and against the clock rather than against each other en masse. Following Marino, 144 more riders attacked the course at one-minute intervals for the next two hours.

Here's a bizarre story to say the least... A man was found buried to death by sand on Ocean Beach this morning. Apparently, he was sleeping on the beach and, well, we actually have no idea how this happened, it's all so James Bond-ian. You know, like there's a villain out there, Sandfinger. ...

Last week's winner, the Bay Guardian. Tim Redmond didn't like being in jail (congrats on your Society of Professional Journalism award, Tim!). As expected, the Guardian came out against those PG&E grass sofas. Also, the Guardian decides that the enemy of their enemy (the SFPOA, Bevan Dufty) is their friend, so they're now backing Police Chief Heather Fong. However, they also ask: who should replace her? Annalee Newitz is pretty happy. Sonic Reducer on French......

So what movies are opening this weekend, the last weekend before the holidays start up? The big one seems to be the new Bond flick, Casino Royale. It's getting good reviews and getting a lot of attention because of it's desire to "restart" the Bond franchise by changing the tone and introducing the "origin myth" as it were in telling how Bond became the Bond, James Bond we all know and love. Frankly, from what we're hearing, the new Bond is all broody and angsty and apparently gets roughed up. Even worse, there's only one femme fatale. In all seriousness, we don't want our Bonds angsty and broody and dark. We want our Bonds making bad jokes and sleeping with tons of hot women and having no problem with violence. What made Sean Connery so badass was because he was the only Bond really to actually look like he was enjoying himself. And if you were James Bond, how could you not be enjoying yourself? ...

Our friends at the San Francisco Symphony want to give a couple of lucky SFist readers tickets for HK Gruber’s cabaret Frankenstein!! at Davies Symphony Hall. Listen to how crazy this show sounds: The music, played by the traditional orchestra doubling on a battery of toy instruments, ranges from the deceptively tuneful to the mildly berserk, like a Looney Tune score imagined by Mozart. This is not a retelling of the Frankenstein story—the lyrics......

SFist inteviews Jeffrey Anderson aka Movie Jeff of combustible Celluloid...