Photo by khoalaMA/Flickr Sean Penn, the gingerphobic Gus Van Sant, and some tranny. What's going on here?......

Well, you can breathe a sigh of relief, citizen of the Bay Area. Tempestuous celebrity couple Sean Penn and Robin Wright-Penn have withdrawn their petition for a divorce. Apparently, the Oscar winning method actor took to the stage this past Monday night at some sort of Eddie Vedder cabaret revue and "reportedly dedicating a song to his wife." Sniff. The sweet and sour couple who reside in Marin, if you recall, called it quits......

Well, it's been fun. The trailers, the megawatt celebrity sightings, the lights, the cameras, the not being invited to cast/crew parties -- SFist will miss it all. As most of you know, Gus Van Sant's biopic Milk -- the story of assassinated San Francisco Supervisor and gay rights advocate, Harvey Milk -- started shooting in January. This past Sunday, the production came to an end. Alas. For those of you who weren't able to......

Noted Marin resident/incendiary actor, Sean Penn, and noted tsunami survivor/Russian Czech model, Petra Nemcova, noticeably attended last night's Academy Awards show together. It is presumed that the two of them have had sexual intercourse with each other. There. Happy now?......

READING: Idiolexicon Poetry Series brings together different types of poets -- from slam to experimental, hip-hop and academia -- having them share a stage. Tonight, the lineup includes performances by poets Stephen Meads and Myron Michael, and music by Cynthia Weyuker. Happens tonight at the Boxcar Playhouse. COMEDY: Part of local sketch comedy troupe SPF7, Justin Lamb and Jay Starr perform tonight at Club Deluxe. MUSIC: One of the Innovators of the Bakersfield Sound,......

Described as a wiki of stupidheads, jerks, and self-awareness-free men, the Wikipedia parody site lists notable dickslices such as homecoming queen murderer O.J. Simpson; sexist boor Donald Trump; the Gisele Bundchen-impaling Tom Brady; that fat Arctic bastard Santa Claus (mean!); and Marin County's very own Harvey Milk impersonator, Sean Penn. The nerve. According to Dickipedia: Often described as an acting "powerhouse," Sean Penn is known for his intensity and humorlessness. He has been a......

This was the scene tonight in the Castro with hundreds of extras helping to make movie magic....

Happening on Castro and State streets over the weekend, where Gus Van Sant's Milk is currently shooting, it started out with the words "Harvey + George" (with a hearts!), "The Penn is lying" (Leigh Wolf, say it ain't so!), and the oddly and for no reason URL-y "Dan White.com, faggotkiller." Then, it turned into the bathroom wall at the Lexington, but not nearly as amusing, collapsing in on itself with to much text and......

Sean Penn as Harvey Milk, Emile Hirsch as activist Cleve Jones Although the reportedly very considerate Milk production crew requests that you not take pictures, our awesome readers know when to disobey. Harvey would've been so proud. Sniff. Image credit: GayCities Photos......

Recreating Harvey Milk's campaign poster for SF Supervisor, Penn is downright adorable. And surprisingly endearing. Aside from the obvious anal sex joke lingering above, your thoughts? Image credit: Tinobear......

Undergoing a procedure to erase 30 years from its face, the Castro neighborhood is going retro, circa 1978, for the filming of Gus Van Sant's Harvey Milk biopic, Milk, which starts shooting this week. Already the Castro Theatre, right, and boutique shop Given, formerly Milk's camera store / campaign headquarters, are being renovated to get that '70s vibe. Rumor has it that Castro Street between 18th and 19th streets (i.e., the staphicenter) will be......

Well, this is some depressing news. Marin's very own Hollywood transplant power couple, Sean Penn and Robin Wright Penn, are getting a d-i-v-o-r-c-e. At least according to People Magazine they are. The couple, chained together in varying levels of wedding bliss for over 11 years, have two children. The two appeared together in two flicks: the film adaptation of Hurlyburly and Nick Cassavetes' She's So Lovely. (We love the latter. A lot.) And if......

Filled with a combustible mix of conceit and twink rage, Leigh Wolf, hot piece of ass and President of the College Republicans at SFSU, interrupted Sean Penn's Dennis Kucinich-endorsement speech on Friday. Basically, he quietly held up a sign that (incorrectly) whined about Sean "supporting the moral majority's America's Enemies, " or something inane like that. Meaning to impress someone more than make an important or clear statement, Wolf's protest... oh, who knows? But......

It's not fair that our sister, LAist, gets all of the great writers strike coverage. Alas. But the Bay Area's own Sean Penn has joined the noble striking effort. He helped to create the above Writers Guild of America-conceived video for "Project Speechless," videos that feature A-list thespionic talent. What's more, they found a way of making Mr. Penn funny. (We kid, Sean. Please don't hit us. Not that you'll have the chance.) Anyway,......

Quintin Mecke's long odds on becoming Mayor this year, per the "Xam...

Anyways, Sean saw this, failed to see any humor in it, and made his offer to be the money bags to everyone's favorite "hunky-hipster attorney". Again, we don't know if this is true or what the what is with the story. It could be a joke, a crazy rumor, or something Sean and Matt jokingly talked about while drinking some wine and discussing the finer points of Costas Gravas's L'Aveu. ...

We were at work, surfing the Web when we noticed that Wonkette just posted some crazy story that Sean Penn is offering Matt Gonzalez $5 million dollars to run against the Gavster. Apparently, Sean would give Matt the money if Matty G. switched to the Democratic Party. What, Sean doesn't think a naked guy and a man named Grasshopper are good enough candidates? ...

Sean Penn isn't the only person who was captivated by the Chris McCandless story (first made popular in the Jon Krakauer book, "Into The Wild," and now a major motion picture directed by Penn, promoted on Oprah, and playing at a theatre near you.) In the early '90's Chris McCandless abandoned all his worldly goods, took on the name Alexander Supertramp and embarked upon a Thoreau-esque adventure trekking around North America, ultimately perishing in an......

We used to think we couldn't stand Sean Penn, but he never really did anything to deserve our ire. He's talented; seems to have similar political to ours; married to her, wonderful her; surfs; from Southern California; lives in the Bay Area; and above all else, is attractive. Then we figured it out: we didn't hate Sean Penn, we feared him. He seems like the kind of guy who could and would kick our......

Local movie star, sometimes activist, and Tosca regular Sean Penn will play gay for pay in the long-incubated version of Randy Shilts' 1982 "The Mayor of Castro Street". (An amazing book for those of you who have yet to read it.) He'll play murdered San Francisco Supervisor and gay rights activist Harvey Milk, who was shot and killed along with Mayor George Moscone by Supervisor Dan White. Perma-boy Matt Damon gets to play the......

A photo of Iraq war opponents Sean Penn and Carol Migden...

Since this rumor is getting a lot of play these days, it's time to do the Official SFist post on it and that is the Danny Glover for Mayor rumors. The rumors supposedly started on SFJunto and have been picked up by progressives as something doable and even kind of exciting. Hell, somebody has to run against Gavin. The thinking is he'd make perfect candidate because he's a noted lefty (he was so virulently anti-apartheid that he killed a bunch of South Africans diplomats), lives in San Francisco, and is a star, baby, a star. Hell, if Arnie could be governor and Fred Thompson the sudden leading Republican Presidential candidate based on his appearing on "Law and Order" why not Danny? The Examiner has him at 450-1 odds that he's running. ...

Here's todays recap of the todays news...

We'll tell you about two shows that have little in common except perhaps six degrees of separation....

50 out of 50 Wednesday precincts reporting -- Tonight: Come see newly-anointed state assembly representative Fiona Ma, along with DA Kamala Harris, performing at the SF Black Film Festival's Urban Slam spoken word event tonight, at the Theater Artaud. My name is Fiona/ Janet Reilly is bologna..... The Urban Slam starts around 8:15, after the 6:00 p.m. screening of the movie Sp!t, a documentary about the hip-hop poetry slam scene. $10 for the movie, $10 for the slam. Theater Artaud is at 450 Florida (x Mariposa). Tickets here. Thursday: Screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, who wrote that Sean Penn movie "21 Grams", will be at the Balboa for the 7:00 p.m. screening of "The 3 Burials of Melquidas Estrada," for which he won the Palme D'Or last year. Arriaga will be signing copies of his book The Night Buffalo starting at 6, and at 7, he'll be leading a discussion about screenwriting tips. The Balboa's at Balboa and 38th Ave. and Friday: Shoo-be-doo-waaaaaah -- the Pacific Mozart Ensemble presents an evening of a capella jazz and pop songs at the Green Room in the War Memorial Building on 401 Van Ness. $20. Finger-snapping is always our favorite. Download musical excerpts here....

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......

It's easy to make fun of Sean Penn. We've done our fair share of it in the past, in fact. But you gotta give Sean credit for being a man of action. It's all too easy to go on Larry King and break down in tears while telling people how great you are for donating a million dollars, and sort of easy to tell an entire live audience that "George Bush Hates Black People" (which we thought was totally awesome), but that's not how Sean rolls. Instead, the dude saw what was going on with the flood, flew out with a bunch of people (including a photographer), got himself on a boat and rescued a bunch of people. Gave them money even. How can you make fun of that? We can't even make fun of him for not plugging a hole in his boat and having to row the thing for most of the way. Nicely done, Sean. ...

Last week's winner, the SF Weekly: Tommy Craggs, like Tony Toni Tone, has done it again! This week, he uses the Microsoft Word auto-summarizer to read last week's interminable Sean Penn in Iran articles from the Chron! Could it be that Mr. Craggs heard our desperate cries for help? In other news, Matt Smith hates on Chris Daly's Rincon Hill deal, the Infiltrator pretends to Christian rock, and the cover article's about heavy metal Thor. Savage Love: you know, if you start a letter to Dan with "I'm straight, I'm smart, I'm funny, and I'm hot," you kind of get what you deserve. Next: the Metro! RIP, Bob Moog. The war on terror seemed a little overblown in Lodi. Spongebob Squarepants at Great America! Cover: San Jose gang war. And Secret Asian Man eats your hate up like love. The Guardian and the East Bay Express after the jump, plus the pick of the week! ...

Look, you've probably noticed lots of other people talking about this, and look, it's not like we don't care about the Middle East or Iran or anything (hey, we read both Persepolises, we'll have you know -- and Reading Lolita in Tehran.) But -- well, look. We've tried. Good Lord, we've tried. But we just cannot get through these Letters From Iran by Sean Penn that the Chronicle Datebook is faithfully publishing. Not even to mock. We just can't get through them. We can't even scroll through them online, they tire us out so much. We like Mr. Penn fine, don't get us wrong -- he seems like a nice and thoughtful man and a good actor and all that. Just -- well, he's not really a writer, now, is he? A history of US-Iran relations? Iran's ambivalence about the US? Please, Datebook, please -- make it stop! We were wrong -- we would prefer some more articles about how to play Sudoku, or lengthier Jon Carroll colummns. Picture of S. Penn by Robin Weiner, from the Chron...

Whew, it's been such an eventful posting day that we've only just now gotten to the big political gossip news! According to PJ Corkery's Examiner column, remember when Kimmie and Gavin went out a few weeks ago to the Tosca? And Matt Gonzalez was there that night (scroll down) too? With Sean Penn? Well, someone (our bet is that it's Kimberly, since Kimberly talks to PJ all the time) told PJ that Matt went up to Gavin and noted how funny it was that new L.A. mayor Antonio Villaraigosa beat James Hahn after being defeated by Hahn four years before. Gavin, swift as a hare, says, ".....are you running again, Matt?" Matt smiled, and walked away. Someone then reported that Kimberly then went up to Matt and said, OMG Matt, are you running? PJ concludes, "I think Matt was just giving them the mickey." Wait, wasn't it just the other day they were saying Matt was going to run for governor? Or the House of Representatives? But OMG, Matt, are you running??? Tell us!! We're totally more trustworthy than ol' Kimbers! And oh yeah, by the way -- today's the day the hyphen-Newsom gets officially detached from the name Kimberly Guilfoyle; Kim and Gav's divorce is final as of today. Let us know if you see Gavin staggering into any bars this weekend! Picture from CNN and the AP...