Gus Van Sant isn't the only one who might make you a shiny, coke-addled star here in San Francisco. Take, for example, MTV and NBC who want to use you for their up-and-coming reality programming....

Last week Numb3ers -- that Tiffany network show starring the reportedly-difficult-to-work-with Rob Morrow -- featured an Alternate-Reality Game (ARG) as a plot device. It turns out that this was an actual launch for an ARG, Chainfactor. The idea is this: a players find codes on l'Internets as well as in real world locales. Take, for example, the tip we got that a hidden code is hidden at one of the billboards or advertisements on......

Kwik-E-Mart, a store normally confined to your television set, is invading 7-Eleven stores across the country; locally, there's one in Mountain View. ...

Today marks the third anniversary of "Care Not Cash" and as a result, homelessness is having the Best Week Ever. In honor of the anniversary, Team Gavin has launched a full court press showing that despite appearances, things have improved. Question: what is the proof? Answer: according to Trent Roher, about 1,800 homeless people are now people formerly known as homeless. Those who go into the program mainly stay in the program. Of course, numbers can be spun all sorts of ways and there's been different interpretations of those numbers. ...

Hey check THIS out. Tryouts for MTV's Real World are nigh. You guys have until Monday, May 7th to see if you'll be the next to fill the shoes of Pedro, Puck, or Judd . . . and subsequently appear on all sorts of weird competitions where you fight people from other MTV shows....

In today's "No Duh" study of the day, the San Francisco County Transportation Authority determined that-- are you sitting down for this?-- a rapid bus system and better public transportation options will increase ridership along Geary Street. The study also determined that puppies are cute, Brooke on "the Real World" is crazy, and the Giants need more offense. ...

Here's todays sports news...

Spring is when we get busy here in the Ist-A-Verse. Very busy. But, after staying bundled-up indoors all winter, it's nice for us to be out, about, and collecting things to write about for you. Here's a glimpse at what's been keeping your favorite citybloggers busily away from home and out of bed. For LAist, strong winds attacked LA on the same day the Feds raided the Crips. Not to fear, though: the Japanese version......

Official friend of SFist Irene McGee-- ex dj at Free FM (KIFR 106.9) and, yes, "Real World" alum and recipient of "the Slap Heard 'Round the World"-- is having a benefit tonight at the Red Devil lounge to raise money for her after she lost pretty much everything (including one of her cats) in a fire. To help her raise money, she has some fairly heavy weights to help her out-- Exene Cervenka formerly of X and Ben Fong-Torres and Kitten on the Keys will be your emcee for the night. Show starts at 8 and tickets are $15. ...

As 2006 ends and 2007 begins, the -ists look back not at the past week, but at the past year. So here it is, your Best of 2006 Spectacular. And from all of us at the -ists, happy New Year!...

This was not a very happy week for the -ist network as one of our own, Phillyist co-editor Star C. Foster, passed away early in the week. Her wit, intelligence, and good nature shone through the site, making Phillyist an immensely fun read. She was loved by many and will be missed by all. Phillyist paid tribute to her this week with a heartfelt letter to her and an obituary. And now, the awkward......

Okay, all you haters out there, all you people who think Fantasy Football is nothing but one big huge geek-fest and more proof that men can't even be from Mars because we would have only gottten lost on the way. See, we're not really playing for the money or the bragging rights or to win a trophy, we're playing because there's value in fantasy football. See, we're learning math. Like algebra and fractions and that thing you do when you put an x in the middle of two numbers and get a really high number. That thing. ...

News from the fauna! A male blue heron from Fairfield is recovering from a pellet gun wound to its wing at the International Bird Rescue Research Center. Because blue herons are protected under federal migratory bird laws, injuring a heron is a felony -- and because people love animals, there's a $5000 reward for information leading to an arrest. They're watching the bird closely because it seems very anxious to fly away (understandably). In happier local bird news, Stephen Colbert's adopted bald eagle was hatched (go to "Stephen Jr. Hatches") at the SF Zoo the day before the earthquake anniversary. Exciting! Also: it was cool when he ate the bird's placenta, to be just like Tom Cruise (go to "tip/wag Tom Cruise"). And in your last bit of local animal news, the City and County of San Francisco's been sued by a Sacramento pit bull advocacy group, over the new mandatory pit bull sterilization law. The Coalition of Human Advocates for K9s and Owners ("CHAKO"), through its attorney and founder Dawn Capp, alleges that the policy discriminates against disabled people, who should be permitted to breed pit bulls to use as guide dogs or service dogs. Check out Capp's blog for more information -- the most recent entry castigates the Denver location of the next Real World because of the city's anti-pit bull legislation....

Yeah, the Giants lost the season opener last night 6-1 as Jake Peavy shut the Black & Orange down, but that, of course, isn't what everyone is talking about. In something that should be par for the course this season, anything the Giants do will have two components to it-- how the Giants do and what happens to Barry. Barry lined the first pitch he saw for a double and scored the first Giants' run of the season (brought in by Lance Niekro, hopefully a good omen) but didn't do much else...

Let us put this bluntly: The last season of "The Amazing Race" sucky, suck, sucked. They never left the continent, the tasks were as exciting as watching paint dry (and we believe that was, indeed, one of the tasks), and the whole "family edition" idea just blew. The show is at its best when the race involves flying from one part of the world to another, not when bickering families have to drive from......

"I want to put the awe back in superhero movies," says filmmaker Michael Sparaga, "The characters have sort of become blasé about what they could do, as well as the people watching them." His movie, Sidekick, screens as part of SF Indiefest on Thursday and Saturday at 4:30pm at The Roxie, has no shortage of awe: mild-mannered comic enthusiast Norman is bowled over to discover a coworker with superpowers. As a sidekick, Norman loyally......

You might have noticed a new city up top in our -ist nav bar: Miamist is in the house! We've been checking them all day long for updates on Wilma, but will keep coming back for hott Dolphin action, even hotter kitten action, and dirt on The Real World. Note to the Miamist staff -- when the inevitable opportunity to interview Julian McMahon arises, can we help? Welcome to the wonderful world of -ist,......

Like the band Semisonic says, "Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end." So what new beginnings and other beginnings' ends did we see this week? Well, we ushered in the the atomic age, for one. And the end of the Bay Area's AL and NL baseball seasons. The man who made the doggie diner head has passed on. Fleet Week came and went. Say goodbye to tuna melts, Ross Mirkarimi! Say goodbye to dignity, Ron Chun! In new beginnings, though -- welcome to our ombudsman's new gig as our East Bay correspondent! And the Real World will be filming a new season in SF. Welcome to Daily Show stardom, Tom Ammiano! Welcome back, Keplers! And SFist Jackson introduces a new column -- the Bay Area Blog Pulse. Say goodbye to the old week -- say hello to the new....

This just in! Bunim/Murray will be in Berkeley tomorrow casting for the 18th season of "The Real World." According to the press release, they'll be looking for "characters from real life; people with strong personalities who are unafraid to speak their minds." Also wanted: people who can't hold their liquor, people who have never been around "homosexuals," and homosexuals who can't hold their liquor. A penchant for getting arrested is also highly desirable. They......

The second in our three-part series of perspectives on Burning Man. Yesterday we hooked up, today we Rant, and tomorrow we Rave. Look, we have nothing against the idea of Burning Man. We like the idea of going to some desolate place, getting all decked out in costume, and partying. We've done our fair share of it, in fact. Our problem with Burning Man, however, isn't what it is but what it's become. For......

We guess all those Bay Guardian warnings about the dangers of gentrification are coming true because in a study trying to determine what's a conservative city and what's a liberal city, San Francisco only came in as the seventh most liberal city in the country. See what happens when you let a bunch of Yuppies move in? The most liberal city? Detroit, followed by Gary Indiana, Gary, Indiana, Gary, Indiana. San Francisco was even beaten by local brethren Berkeley (third) and Oakland (fifth) which does mean that we can say that we are the most liberal area in the country. In case you were wondering, the most conservative cities are Provo, Utah and Lubbock, Texas, two cities we're sure we'll see hosting MTV's "Real World" real soon....

It's been a depressing week for TV, so this time around, we're going to take a slightly different approach. We're going to tell you what not to watch... Don't watch "Big Brother 6". We got sucked into it, and we're afraid we won't be able to break away, and we don't wish this fate on anyone else. This season, the house is filled with even more vacuous pretty faces than before, and despite the......

We don't know what to do with ourselves. The TV season has come to an end, the finales are all over, and TV is beginning to look like a vast wasteland of reality shows. (Seriously, people. "Dancing with the Stars"?!) We're not sure what to do with ourselves. Go OUTSIDE? But doesn't that give you cancer? We could read, but if we're going to be sitting at home anyway, why not just turn on......

Usually, we try as hard as we can to avoid the real world, but we'll make an exception for the fourth San Francisco Documentary Film Festival. There are so many unbelievable films to check out over the festival, which opens tonight and runs through Sunday May 22. Many of the directors of the films and other interesting folks will be making appearances throughout the festival, so if you're a documentary groupie this Festival is......

Sci-fi geeks may have the upcoming Star Wars movie, but to political geeks, their Revenge of the Sith may just be this Friday when UC Berkeley hosts a discussion with New York Times' columnists Thomas Friedman AND Maureen Dowd. It's like the Sunday edition of the New York Times come to life except without the coffee and bagels. Seeing these two super-stud columnists together is like the "Real World/Road Rules Challenges" before they became overdone......

We're so excited to hear that Alex Clemens, the dude who had the genius idea to buy up the ad space on the back of Frank Chu's sign, will be appearing on the next Real World [PDF] along with the rest of the Barbary Coast Consulting crew. From the press release: “We’re giving these city slickers one bed, an intermittently functioning sink, and a variety of ‘colorful’ drop-in guests from the neighborhood,” said Real......

SFist has made it very clear in the past that we love us some TiVo. Our love for TiVo is so deep, we DO want to marry it thank you very much! One of the things we love about TiVo is how it allows us to watch TV like an unemployed person, even when we are, indeed, gainfully employed. We can record those daytime soaps and talk shows, come home, open a box of......

SFist has seen our traffic spike since the change in calendars, setting a new record for sessions in a 24 hour period on Tuesday. We'd like to think that it's because of the incredible popularity of our SFist Cares feature (it should be), but we have a feeling it's because we've taken the WULAD approach to increasing our readership -- Britney Spears' baby, anyone? Speaking of which, this weekend marks the anniversary of Roe......

We here at SFist were totally going to blog this debate because blogging is, from what we hear, the new black, but since we were also playing the officially sanctioned Wonkette Vice-Presidential Debate Drinking Game we were too hammered by the fourth Halliburton reference to finish up. Plus, Jon Bon Jovi was on last night's episode of The Real World and who cares about politics when John Bon Jovi is all set to stop being......