Tomorrow, March 29, from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. millions of people will turn of their lights to make a statement about climate change. It's all a part of Earth Hour, a green event conceived by the World Wildlife Fund. Over 100 U.S. cities are participating in the do-goodery, including Atlanta, Chicago, Phoenix, and, of course, San Francisco. While this won't do much insofar as saving the planet--which is doomed!--it will make a dark and profound statement about conservation and the environment....

Just some random scribbling on a game that is still reverberating through our hungover, overstuffed brains.......

(Check out the actual chin scratching occurring, lower right, at an intelligentsia event. Har!) Here we have novelist Dave Eggers at the National Book Critics Circle nominee announcement at City Lights. We're in love with his bulky v-neck sweater. Very nice. Image credit: Flickr user Steve Rhodes.......

Here's todays sports news...

-- Red Meat: God bless the Rickshaw Stop. And if (s)he existed, he totally would. Why? For many reasons. Take, for example, the fact that they often have extraordinary talent gracing the stage on Monday nights. (Mondays are, after all, the new Fridays.) Red Meat blends honky-tonk, bluegrass, country, and western swing with hints of gospel harmony. Mmm. Eilen Jewell (read more about her here), Axton Kincaid, and DJ Lenny & Squiggy (hee) also......

News of a new law expanding the requirements for bicycle lighting. ...

Prints + good tunes = the Pipettes -- The Pipettes: This all-female, British, Phil-Spector-sounding band gains more and more popularity by the day. See them tonight so that by next year when they're too big for SF venues, you can say you saw them when. They perform with Social Studies and Monster Bobby (read our interview with him here!) -- the Ladybug Transistor, who were scheduled to go on, will not be appearing -- tonight......

-- Laura Gibson: We'd hate to genre-ize her lovely sounds, but neo-folk songstress Gibson -- who uses such tools as trumpet, viola, and musical saw in addition to her sublime vocal cords-- sings delicate siren songs that will have you crashing at her feet. She performs along with Musee Mechanique (Portland) and Snowblink starting at 8 p.m. at Rickshaw Stop; $8. -- Lawrence Ferlinghetti: You know the man, the legend, the poet, the beret......

The mathematics of the Lights Out San Francisco event....

That "Lights out SF" bullshit was a huge success! A couple of local landmarks switched off some lights for a few hours, one night out of the year, so now the whales are all saved. Hooray! Many residents didn't participate, and in fact most of the people we talked to had never heard of it. Inconceivable! How could they have avoided Lights Out's bombardment of enviromessaging? The event had a website and everything. Sure,......

Gothamist learned about the craziest urban nightmare come true: A huge python found in the bathroom pipes. It was also a nightmare for some Yankees fans, as manger Joe Torre declined to come back and manage the Bronx Bombers. At least the city's attempt to give some direction to subway riders was interesting, pranksters went shirtless at the Fifth Avenue Abercrombie & Fitch and the I Heart Brooklyn Girls calendars came out. And just......

-- Gay Geeks Saturday Night Social: "Fucking faggots," you scream? Ah, correction: "fucking nerd faggots," is more like it. Queers (not just Marys) who like to "geek out on the arts or science, study old plane crashes,... the myth of the American cowboy or how to make graphs more efficient for displaying data," this is the night for you. Come! Starts at 8 p.m. at Muddy's Coffeehouse, 1304 Valencia; free. -- Lights Out SF:......

-- Plumpjack caves in to Lights Out SF. [CurbedSF] -- Oh snap! "...if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president's amusement." [Chron] -- Handsome South Asian chef too distracted to flirt. Boo! [Fog City Notes] -- Hidden Valley Pesticides. Yum! [SJMerc] -- Dear Ellen DeGeneres: You're insane. Love, everyone. [Examiner] -- Then again, who are we to......

-- Oh noes: local homes sales are in the crapper. [SJ Merc] -- Sex assault charged against Sacto Kings player Justin Williams. [CBS5] -- More lighted landmarks to shutdown during Saturday's Lights Out SF. [Examiner] -- Suing Ed Jew. [SFGate] -- Jon Stewart and Daily Show confusion. [BeyondChron] -- Not guilty plea in Bailey murder. [Oakland Tribune] -- Gayrab party. Ha! Get it? Yeah. Anyway, check out Bibi this Saturday at Club Eight. [SFBG]......

Of course. We should have known better. Lights Out SF -- happening this Saturday from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. -- is of an energy conservation movement, not a low-lighting aesthetic one. To wit: On this night, we invite the entire city of San Francisco to install one compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL) and turn off all non-essential lighting for one hour. No. No! We cannot condone the purchase and installation of these ugly......

-- Have you seen this man? (Also, we think that we have that same shirt in our closet. Yipes!) [Chron] -- Meet Jose Alfredo and Olga Contreras, parents teetering on the brink of homelessness while trying to make a life in SF. [Examiner] -- More on Lights Out. [The Snitch] -- "Animal Rites" for your perusal. [SFBG] -- At last....mansion Deco Duel! (We want the one on the right.) [Curbed SF] -- Google all......

The season premiere of "Friday Night Lights" comes to NBC tonight at 9 p.m. and since it first aired we've hoped that it would eventually get moved to Fridays. Not because we think it's a particularly good night for the show (or any show, for that matter) but because we're slightly anal and it annoyed us that a show with "Friday Night" in the title did not, in fact, air on Friday nights. But......

R.I.P. When The Lights Go Down In The City November 2004 - September 2007 It was SFist's first editor Jackson West who asked me to write a music column back in '04 and he also came up with the name of it. I thought, it's SF-related and a quote from a Journey song - perfect! For the past three years my aim has been to tell you about the music in San Francisco that......

We'll confess to having never really listened to Wolf Parade; maybe we got them confused with Mice Parade, and we've always though Wolfmother sounded pretty derivative, so they just fell through the cracks for us. But one of the two lead songwriters in Wolf Parade, Dan Boeckner, has a band with his wife Alexei Perry called Handsome Furs which we're really liking. It's a little dark and dire while still being melodic and engaging; we......

Never having been huge fans of instrumental music, we were taken by surprise when we listened to Maserati's latest record Inventions For The New Season. Their own entertaining bio describes the music as a "post-psychedelic orgy of hooks molesting the tired cliche of math-prog" and/or "a post-disco drone machine bristling with the buzz-saw sound of 1,000 angry square waves nestled on a California king size bed of shoegaze swirl." We like to think of the......

It's been a long time since we randomly clicked on a band's website and were utterly captivated by the music we heard. We saw Bowerbirds' name and photo in Cafe Du Nord's show listings and were drawn to listen to the songs they stream on their site. It's amazing the beauty you can find sometimes just by turning over a few rocks. The music is homespun and intimate; Phil's gentle croon and the spare......

Late August can be a bit of a slow season for touring, whether it's bands not wanting to deal with the blazing heat in most of the United States or record labels holding back tour support until closer to the lucrative fourth quarter releases. The upside is that local bands can sometimes benefit from a venue's slow month, and we're really excited about the chance to see Or, The Whale, Birds & Batteries and Social......

There are no less than three fantastic music festivals all taking place over the weekend of September 14-16. What gives? And how do we choose? Since we live in the bay area, perhaps our decision has been made for us: we're heading to the inaugural Treasure Island Music Festival presented by the fine folks at Noise Pop and Another Planet. The two day festival features 14 bands each day on two stages with mostly hip......

John Vanderslice is someone you can truly count on. Aside from his incredible talent, we're always impressed with his indie rock work ethic. He keeps his studio Tiny Telephone open as an incubator for top quality recordings, he's always good for a genuine smile and a hug when we run into him, and about once every 18 months or so he releases another incredible album through Seattle-based indie Barsuk Records. His latest release Emerald......

-- 756. [SFist for links] -- Bonds' ball chasers. [Chron, The Snitch] -- Steve Jobs' pretty new iMacs and more. [eWEEK, Chron] -- Schwarzenegger forces the fuzz to patrol more Oakland streets. [Chron] -- Lights Out wants to dim SF's lights for an hour to neck, or write poetry with a plume pen, or...something. [Examiner] -- Half Moon Bay soccer team busted for "looking for love in all the wrong places." [CBS 5] Image:......

Sorry we missed this story the first time around -- the cops are still looking for the assailants in a stabbing on 19th and Castro back in June. Two gay men were walking down 19th Street when three young Hispanic men got out of a car following them. One of the young men asked them for a cigarette, and then stabbed both men repeatedly. The men managed to make it to 18th Street before one......

The shows coming to San Francisco this week give us an excuse to talk about some of our favorite music of 2007. Perhaps the best album we've heard this year comes from a Texan named Annie Clark, a.k.a. St. Vincent. She's a seasoned touring guitarist for Sufjan and the Polyphonic Spree, but at only 24 years old she just released a debut album that's sophisticated, brave and artistically mature enough to make you think that......

The lovely local ladies in Von Iva are gearing up to release a brand new CD called Our Own Island. They're doing their part to heat up the chilly San Francisco summer by having a special CD release party on August 4th at 12 Galaxies (in addition to tomorrow's party at the Blank Club in San Jose). They promise a bikini bonanza (use your imagination) so risque that you have to be over 18......

Prolific, ornery, talented, unpredictable, easy on the eyes, genius, bastard - there are many ways to try and describe Ryan Adams, but at this point if you've heard of him, you've probably formed some sort of opinion. In his new single "Two" he sings: "I got a really good heart, I just can't catch a break." Whether or not you buy that, we're still loving his new CD. Easy Tiger is built on the......

Next Thursday, July 19th, Sonic Youth perform 1988's double album Daydream Nation in its entirety at Berkeley Community Theatre. The acclaimed album is lauded for its artistic vision and flowing dynamics from lulling instrumentals to all-out noise. We have a pair of tickets for one lucky winner to (re)discover the underground masterpiece. Watch the video for "Teen Age Riot" and enter to win. (Contest ends 7/15. Winner will be notified via email.) Tonight catch brazen......