Although the real-estate bubblewatchers got a head start on the festivities some time last year, we have been waiting until there's a whole lot of data before we begin the "Woe is us!" chant over our monthly (fixed) mortgage statement. That data has all fallen into our laps in the last two days. Zillow issued a report on how well the San Francisco Bay Area did, real estate sales-wise, for this year's second quarter. After......

As we said earlier, making jokes about the President is easy. Making funny jokes isn't. Far too many comedians take the lazy way out and just resort to "George W. Bush is stupid" lines. Yeah, there might some truth to it and yeah, it's kind of liberating to say, but it's just not very witty or clever. As a result, a lot of political humor these days is way more rant than joke. And ranting is hardly ever as funny. The Second Annual George Bush Going Away Party comedy event on Saturday showed the difficulties in political humor. Especially political humor in San Franciso, where saying "Bush sucks" is greeted with the same sort of vigorous acknowledgement as saying "Yankees suck!" in Boston. There were way too many punch lines that were pretty much along the lines of "Bush is stupid" or "Cheney is evi"" or "red state voters are dumb" all greeted with thunderous applause. And the audience, about what you’d expect at such an event-- middle aged hippies from Marin with "Visualize Peace" bumper- were ready for some serious playa hatin'. The audience cheered when somebody just said "I hate SUVs." ...

We reckon a good percentage of San Franciso music-lovers will be at Great American Music Hall this week, whether it's at one of the three sold out Arcade Fire shows or Saturday's sold out X show. We commend you, SF, your taste is impeccable. While you're down at Great American, SFist Emily recommends stopping by the box office to purchase your ticket for the Tsunami Relief Benefit on January 28th. A $20 donation gets you......

A dear friend of SFist's is contemplating a career change to library science, and we couldn't be happier for him. How nice it would be to have a "connection" to move us up the online reserve list. Alas, his library talents will probably end up being utilized by the San Francisco Unified District of Schools. Now, if only we could get a pal at one of our fine local independent bookstores.... SFist Rita was going......

SFist knows that some good movies have been shot in the city. But damned if they ever seem to run them on TV. At least, not on the basic cable we're set up with. Final Analysis, airing Wednesday at 11:30am on AMC, is an example of a bad San Francisco movie. Richard Gere stars as a San Franciso shrink and Uma Thurman is his patient. Uma also has a sister, played by Kim Basinger.......

SFist contributor and virtual TV pundit Rain Jokinen offers her Bay-area-centric TV picks of the week It looks like Indian summer may be over for good what with the wind and the rain and the whining about the wind and the rain. So SFist recommends that you stay indoors and enjoy some of San Francisco's local landmarks on the small screen. The creative partnership of Clint Eastwood and director Don Siegel is probably best remembered......