Someone please tell us what this means! We neither speak nor understand Mexican. Helpo! It seems that these have been found up and down Howard Street today, and we're flummoxed. What secrets do they hold? How to find the Maltese Falcon? On which corner the strongest tar is available? The new editor of the Chronicle? Gracias to James over at Nature abhors a vacuum for the image.......

Phillyist prepared to party by doing the hustle, lighting the lights, shopping up a storm, and... visiting Khrushchev? LAist continues to cover the Hollywood Writers Strike with visiting guest "strikers" such as KT Tunstall and Presidential candidate John Edwards. To celebrate Veteran's Day, they visited a Civil War reenactment and to celebrate Geography Week, they asked all the Los Angeles City Councilmembers about the districts they represent finding that LA's 180+ official neighborhoods are......

The new Maltese Falcon at John's Grill is less "pigeony" (Image: The Colbert Report). Applause to John's Grill owner John Konstin, who decided to put some money into the arts. When the Maltese Falcon replica displayed in the restaurant was stolen earlier this year, Mr. Konstin offered a $25,000 reward for its return. The heartless culprits were never found, however, and Mr. Konstin decided against buying an inexpensive replica or "fake," as the momentarily-panicked......

When I slap you, you'll take it and like it, see! Negative portrayals of Asian-Americans and gays aside, we do still love Humphrey Bogart in the Maltese Falcon -- so you know we're avidly following the news that someone has stolen the famous jewel-stuffed bird from the John's Grill restaurant on the edge of the Tenderloin, where Dashiell Hammett used to hang out. There's a $25,000 reward for the bird's return. (We're just giving this......

In 1950, the great mystery writer Raymond Chandler wrote of the contemporaneous critical response to his stories and those of James M. Cain, Dashiell Hammett, et. al. that: It takes a very open mind indeed to look behind the unnecessarily gaudy covers, trashy titles and barely acceptable advertisements and recognize the authentic power of a kind of writing that, even at its most mannered and artificial, made most of the fiction of the time......

Y'all know that the first thing on your movie plate this weekend should be the San Francisco International Film Festival -- that's pretty much all we got going on. So many great movies this weekend and beyond, do youself a favor and break out of your usual routine and hit some of these fantastic shows and events. OK, you're just not in an International Film Festival mood, we can accept that. So, what to......