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......

Tomorrow, ESPN will take a break determining whether Tom Brady is more Now than LeBron is and feature a town hall type thingy in San Francisco on the issue of Barry Bonds and the Hallowed Record. Despite ESPN's increasing descent into annoying shtick and hype, this should be pretty interesting as it's being hosted by "Outside the Lines" host Bob Ley, one of the few ESPN "personalities" with any integrity left. It's supposed to be a discussion on all things Barry, including race, Bud Selig's complicitness in the mess, how tainted the record is, and a whole bunch of other things. The panel will feature a bunch of writers including ESPN's excellent Buster Olney and "Game of Shadows" Lance Williams as well as Barry's ex teammates Kirk Rueter and Ellis Burks as well as Dusty. Jeff Kent will not be participating. ...

The Chronicle has been doing a lot of back-slapping over their work in the BALCO case, turning their two reporters, Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada, into full and official Martyrs of the Constitution, complete with the victory lap around the newsroom. Yay, Chronicle. But maybe they shouldn't be so excited....

It looks like the Chronicle's two BALCO reporters, Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, will not be joining Josh Wolf in prison as they're no longer on the hook. The main reason being the source who they were protecting finally came forward to admit that that he was the leak. The person in question was the lawyer for Victor Conte and BALCO vice president James Valente, Troy Ellerman. Ellerman is being charged for handing court transcripts over to Fainaru-Wade and Wiliams. In a perfectly oily move that gives lawyers the reputation they have (sorry SFist Rita!), Ellerman was busy complaining to the judge about leaks all the while being the one who was leaking. Of course, it could have all been his master plan. After all, who would suspect the guy complaining the most about leaks? ...

-A SFPD police officer was shot in killed trying to serve a felony warrant on somebody who was under suspicion for a variety of burglaries in the Taraval district. It's the third cop to die in the line of fire this year. The suspect was also killed in the shooting -A tiger mauled a trainer at the San Francisco zoo during feeding time yesterday afternoon. This happened in plain sight of everyone who was watching. ...

Late last night, Yahoo! of all sites was reporting that the leak in the BALCO case was Victor Conte's defense lawyer. Or at least that's what the FBI is thinking as they've launched an investigation. ...

Josh Wolf's Ninth Circuit appeal is officially dead, and it looks like he's stuck in jail for the next 18 months -- unless he wants to turn over his video footage. And in other grand jury contempt of court news, an animal rights activist is scheduled to stay silent before the federal grand jury today, and the LA Times laments the fate of Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada. Remenber the drunk ostrich killers in Half......

We were psyched yesterday because we though a decision would be reached about Chronicle Reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams and their refusal to name who leaked to them the Grand Jury testimony in the BALCO case. We even had a posting all ready to go the moment the judge threw them in jail. Everyone seemed to be pumped in anticipation for it as reporters held a protest and sports writers everywhere weighed in. So what happened? Pretty much nothing. Late Thursday afternoon, a judge basically said that they might go to prison if they lose an appeal. In other words, he told them "this time, I'm really, really serious about sending you to jail and if you don't, I really, really, really might have to do something...." ...

--We missed this yesterday, but it's still awesome. Who's put security cameras in Chris Daly's office? --Your SF school board candidates. --More bus-only lanes on Geary, please. --$1 billion for Facebook? --The Albion Hotel in the Mission by Katz's Bagels gets sued. --Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams may go to jail. --A poignant profile of the homeless Asian man shot to death in San Mateo earlier this month. --The man who wrote Celluloid San Francisco......

--Former HP board chair Patricia Dunn and leading Palo Alto attorney Larry Sonsini will testify before Congress about that whole leak thing. --John Karr may be a free man. --It's noisy at Stanford. --City attorney Dennis Herrera throws out a proposed ballot proposition about redevelopment in the Bayview. --Heads roll after the fights outside the Raiders game last week. --It's so crowded in the SF prison that inmates get bitten by spiders. Gavin decides to......

A Federal Appeals Court today ruled that Josh Wolf had to turn over what is quickly becoming the hottest video since the Paris Hilton sex-tape or else go back to prison. The three-person court ruled unanimously that Wolf had to turn over the tape because there were no grounds for resisting the subpoena. The reason? "He simply videotaped what people did in a public place," the judges wrote. ....

If life were a Monopoly game, Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada just rounded the Free Parking corner -- the next roll might put them in jail. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Earlier this week, Judge Jeffrey White of the local federal district court ordered the Chronicle's sports reporters who broke the BALCO story to testify before a grand jury which is investigating how the BALCO grand jury's testimony got leaked to the......

Wow, it's got to suck when the rights of reporting you'd go to jail to defend contain factual inaccuracies, but that's the case for the beleaguered authors of Game of Shadows. Hmmm. Is it more difficult to self-righteously blog about your First Amendment 'battle' when reporters you're defending are damaging innocent peoples' reputations? The errors in question involve track and field star Gail Devers, who was mistakenly described as having trained with admitted steroid distributor......

The man to your left is a cabdriver named Jack Neeley, not rogue cop John Haggett -- and he's richer by an undisclosed amount after settling his lawsuit with the Chronicle for their misidentification of him in a cover story as Haggett, in their otherwise-strong weeklong report on police brutality from earlier this year. The Chron continues to maintain that they have no idea how it happened, but has apologized, run two corrections (one on......

Hey, the Examiner said it first, not us: BALCO Reporters Could Face Prison Time reads the thrilling headline to their article on Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada, who have been have been subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury regarding leaked testimony in the BALCO case. Could they really go to jail over this? We at SFist are watching this case eagerly, and watching the comments on Phil Bronstein's post on the Chron's not......

Remember when we told you about the Northern California Book Awards? SFist reader Mark went, and blogged it. From his post you can see that it wasn't the event it could have been -- and, in fact, he emailed us a day later with http://liz-henry.blogspot.com/2006/04/lambda-lit-night.html">this link to Liz Henry's experiences at Lambda Lit night. In his words, "The contrast between the two events is, I think, instructive", and we're inclined to agree. As Mark......

Saturday:We're hitting the San Francisco Peoples’ Organization “Auctions Off Downtown" event at 111 Minna. There'll be live music, film screenings, and the aforementioned auction with Matt Gonzalez taking the auctioneer's podium. This we've got to see! It all starts at 7:30. Sunday:We'll be at the SF MOMA's Wattis Theater for the 2 p.m. screening of local filmmaker Philip Lane's 55-minute documentary Working Title, a movie about "career, art, and identity in America". Monday: We're......

>Barry's reality TV show got off to a big start today with news that a new book written by the Chronicles' Steroid Beat reporters, Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, detailing the Barry's steroid intake over the years is set to be released. The book is already being excerpted in the upcoming issue of Sports Illustrated. The information detailed came from evidence collected by investigators during the BALCO trial as well as the usual Woodward and Bernstein methods. And, oh it's bad. Very, very, bad. ...

Senior Editor of Editor and Publisher Joe Strupp penned a lengthy feature published today about the Chronicle's Executive Editor Phil Bronstein. Oh, there are so many gems to choose from! Here's our favorite: He also wants the paper to work more with its Web site as a "continuous" news source, but admits a lack of interest in blogs, claiming many are just "people writing about what they had for breakfast..." So what does that......