Last week's winner, the Guardian: Hey, we've received late-breaking word of some layoffs at the Bay Area's Oldest Alternative Newspaper. Hope you guys are all doing okay. Onto the pre-layoff news: It's the Freedom of Information issue! Hey, here's some free information -- the Guardian laid off some people. Slumlords, first in a three-part series. Cover: FOIA, FOIA, FOIA. Vanessa Hua gets some love for breaking the Kevin Shelley story. RIP, Octavia Butler. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs are so much better than No Doubt! New DVD magazine by McSweeney's. Bars and Clubs insert: how to open your own bar, and barronista gossip. And SFist Eve's horoscope: a gust of wind could destroy your potential this week, so proteck ya neck! (don't feel bad, SFist Eve, our horoscope says that our inner fears have paralyzed us. Why, we can hardly move our fingers to type this post!) Next, the East Bay Express: Bottom Feeder! A collection of funny Jerry Brown quotes, and an update on the social worker that let a teenager slash an old lady's throat in Berkeley. Ferries aren't really going to save us in an earthquake, are they? (no.) Cover: using citrus-based anti-bacterial lotions to stop AIDS (really!). Chinese buffets. Rob Harvilla warns about the dangers of Dem Franchise Boyz's song "Lean wit It, Rock with it": "If you lean wit it at the exact moment the person behind you chooses to rock wit it, you may collide and knock each other unconscious." That wins the prestigious "sentence of the alternative week" award! And trendy band alert: Arctic Monkeys. And hey, the SF Weekly's Nate Cavalieri shows up across the bay! Lean wit the SF Weekly, rock wit the Metro, after the jump. Also, the weekly of the week!...

Come here, widdle Andrew, let Mommy bury you in her bosom! San Francisco's current best Freudian drama took another lurch into the Viennese land of cigars and trains steaming into tunnels, as the Chronicle reveals that Sunset doyenne and Tom DeLay wannabe Julie Lee told everyone she was going to start her fundraising/money laundering scheme because she just really wanted her little boy to become a San Francisco city supervisor, and the only way he could do that was by raising money for (now-former) Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, so he would endorse Andrew. Julie Lee was convinced Shelley would become the president. (Of the United States? The guy who yelled at people in a bathrobe and with a toothbrush in his hand?) Oh, how mothers crush the dreams of their offspring! Andrew Lee just wants to grow up to be a rap star! Nonetheless, he dutifully ran for office, and came in fourth in his 2002 election (losing to hottie supervisor runner-up and the producer of his first album, Fiona Ma. Dude, it's like when Kanye West went out on his own). Then he tried to get on the PUC board to please his mother, but was stymied by the coup de Daly. Poor guy! What about his dreams? Stand up for yourself, Andrew! "Mom, you've just gotta let me LIVE MY LIFE! I gotta rap!" Picture of Julie Lee (on left) with (anti-gay) Rose Tsai from Asianweek...

This was our first time at the Li'l Roxie, and we hope it won't be our last! (Please, please, say the rumors aren't true!) We squeezed past the teeny-tiny hallway and into a long, narrow, but spacious, comfy, and well-proportioned closet, and settled into our squeaky chair (we apologize to all our neighbors) for 90 minutes of SF DocFest electoral rage. We also picked up a ballot on our way in -- before you ask, it was an IndieFest optical scan, where choices (or "ratings") are marked with a circle. Call It Democracy, by Matt Kohn, is an exploration of the problem of electioneering in the 21st century -- from the oddities of the electoral college to Supreme Court shenanigans to missing electronic ballots to Colorado's electoral-vote splitting movement in 2004. Okay, we're not too liberaler-than-thou to admit it -- electoral reform is really not the most interesting topic in the world to us. So it's with a great deal of relief that we can report that this movie is not like one of those long DailyKos tinhat-wearing posts that you skip, or a long filmstrip with blue states and red states, or anything like that. The clips are interesting! The movie moves at a brisk pace! We didn't find ourselves trying to gouge our eyes out with a stick! That's good, right? Cameos by stapler-throwers John Bolton and Kevin Shelley, after the jump. ...

See The Lady From Shanghai tonight at the Balboa's Reel SF Festival! A true lady from Shanghai, Julie Lee got indicted by the feds yesterday, for mail fraud and witness tampering, over her alleged money laundering for Kevin Shelley. Her attorney says he's never seen someone get busted by the city, the state, and the feds. Yahtzee! We are so sorry that SFist wasn't around at the time of the Noel-Knoller dog mauling case (RIP, Diane Whipple). The best were those line drawings! Hott! But we'll be covering the latest round of legal shenanigans: the California Court of Appeals just reinstated the second-degree murder charges against Knoller, ruling that the DA didn't need to prove that Knoller knew that the dogs would kill someone, just that she knew she couldn't control them. We've said it before, we'll say it again -- you name a dog "Bane," you probably have some kind of idea it might be a crazed killer. And we're going to cover this latest item briefly, but reluctantly, and we were really hoping not to cover it at all: the son of Oakland City Counsel president Ignacio de la Fuente was arrested on two charges of rape last week. De la Fuente, considered a leading candidate for Oakland City mayor, was understandably pretty upset about the news and has been accepting the condolences of the Oakland community. When asked how this would affect his mayoral chances, de la Fuente said, "The last thing on my mind is the mayor's race." ...

You know the organizing principle at team SFist is always: what about the children? So yeah, bummer for Julie Lee about getting indicted for grand theft over the tattered remains of Kevin Shelley's career, huh, as ably reported by the Chron. But -- what about Julie's son? Andrew Lee! A.k.a. Drew Nasty! How will he cope? What will he do? Drew's had a tough go of things since all the smack came down on his mother. He lost his job with Kevin Shelley (he blew his back out lifting "very heavy voter information guides"). He dropped out of law school. The Inc. doesn't seem very interested in picking up his Fiona Ma-produced R&B single. His band C-Quence isn't playing gigs anymore. Sure, he sang "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" at a fundraiser last week, but how many more gigs like that is our crooner going to have now that Mom's fighting to stay out of the slammer? And was there a rap interlude in the middle? Julie Lee's refusing to comment on any of this, calling it all "Westerner gossip" (Gourmet de l'Ouest, watch that mouth!), but we're worried sick about Andrew! How's your neck holding up, guy? Chronicle photo by Paul Chinn...

California politicians are in a state of shock after hearing the news that soon-to-be-former Sec. of State Kevin Shelley's Palm Pilot was stolen from his Glen Park home. "It's crazy! I'm getting emails from people pretending to be Hugh Hefner!" said beleaguered state controller Steve Westly. The Palm Pilot, which Shelley repetitively bragged about having used to raise millions of dollars off of, not only contained the personal email and cell phone information of many of California's hottest political celebs but also, more embarassingly, personal notes like "get Help America Vote kill pill" and "check from Julie Lee," as well as some triple-x hottt [NSFW, or ever, really] photos of Shelley in compromising positions with state treasurer Phil Angelides and insurance commissioner John Garamendi. Politicians from Schwarzenegger on down are bracing themselves for an onslaught of calls from bored teens looking for fun. But the most intriguing entry? "Newson, san fran mayor, 415-[redacted]." JK, JK. Shelley did lose his Palm Pilot, though. He blames disgruntled employees. ...

DCist forwarded us an article from Roll Call (paid subscription required) entitled "Q: Where Is Nancy Pelosi Not a San Francisco Liberal? A: San Francisco." We love it when DC politics realizes that, like, there's a whole country out there! Really! And it's full of constituents! Not all of whom like their elected representatives! Of course, this information is basically a re-hash of the same arguments surrounding her accension to House Minority Leader. San......

We s**t you not, we just went to the 'Gate to find a link to this brief news item buried in a Bay Area section sidebar about the FBI setting up a hotline for whistle blowers to report corruption and graft in local city, state and federal offices. Of course, we were going to make the inevitable comparisons to the poor, beleaguered staff of Kevin Shelley. "Haha, he's corrupt!" being the implication [Ed. Note:......

SFist Cares is a great, great feature, profiling various ways you can volunteer or give back to the Bay Area community. Plus, SFist Mary-Lynn's funny as all get out. Political Junkie, by contrast, is filled only with low-quality writing and schadenfreude. But darn it, just because we snicker doesn't mean we don't have a heart as well! So we urge you to give, give, give -- to Kevin Shelley's legal defense fund. Kevin Shelley is California's beleaguered secretary of state, who's beloved by millions, especially his staff. So how strange that the legal defense fund he started back in November 2004 should only have collected $250, from one donor. The one donor is Tony Miller, the Shelley employee who was in charge of running the program that's under attack for misusing federal funds (and was sent to testify before the State Senate in Shelley's stead a few weeks ago). Dude, that's like making your little brother buy your quota of stained-glass ornaments for the school band's sale drive out of his own allowance. Shelley claims he hasn't been able to raise money because he "hasn't had time during the past half-year to call people and ask for their assistance." Funny, that never seemed to have stopped him before. The Kevin Shelley Legal Defense Fund doesn't seem to have an online donation site, so no, we suppose they don't take Paypal. So send those checks, wadded-up five dollar bills, Safeway coupons, and free AOL CD-ROMs straight to Sacramento -- remember, every cent counts -- and every political junkie cares. ...

>...or is it a DCist cameo on SFist? Our sister site notes that one of our local boys, Adam Werbach, and his new group, the November 3 Theses have invaded their town to wheat-paste flyers on the doors of the DNC. Kind of like Martin Luther, except he had 95 theses and the November Thirders only have nineteen. ...

The Easy Voter Guide is a great resource for new and busy voters....

brief summary of Mabel Teng's career and the current nepotism/cronyism charges....

Kevin Shelley still has his job – do you have yours? It’s time for a SunsetGate update!...

Kevin Shelley, the only man standing between California voters and Diebold, is in a world of trouble. Special feature by Rita Hao....