-- 177 Townsend's promise of public art delivered, raised. [Curbed SF] -- Grace Cathedral almost burned down last night via an infamous Burner. [CBS5] -- Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner: thin, pretty. [BeyondChron] -- Gavin Newsom's address. [SFGov -- ETA for video of the speech...?] -- Fog City Notes on NextBus. Also: the handsome South Asian chef speaks! [FCN] -- Gap Inc.'s rigorous employment program for youths. [SFGate] -- "Fog City Journal, without h., is getting......

-- 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......

-- Grey Gardens: Kiki & Herb's Justin Bond hosts one of the most splendidly tragic documentaries every made, about life inside a rundown East Hampton mansion with Jackie Kennedy Onassis' eccentric aunt and cousin. Little Edie look-a-like contest happens before the show. The psychosis starts at 7:30 p.m. at the Castro Theatre, Castro and Market Streets; $6-$9. -- Pundits With Punchlines: South Asian comedians highlight this night of comedy. Samson Koletkar, Hasan Minhaj, and......

There's no better way to celebrate the Frameline GLBT film fest than by entering to win free tickets for you and a friend to a screening tomorrow night! We've got passes to Nina's Heavenly Delights, which SFist Sara found thoroughly enjoyable. A closeted South Asian-Irish lesbian enters a curry cooking contest to save her family's restaurant business, only to fall in love with an old school friend along the way. Cooking, coming out, and......

Last week's winner, the East Bay Express: Hey, maybe you could let the Laotian community know, in Laotian, when your refinery blows up? Cover article (which is by the same person that wrote the Lao article -- Kara Platoni had a busy week!): People hoarding gene patents. Book section: Books about eating, and a book about how a dowser found someone's missing harp. Nontraditional BBQ in Berkeley. And the digital music industry still sucks. And......

We are so sorry that the collective we of SFist missed this year's South Asian Film Festival by Third i -- due to an unfortunate confluence of reviewers being out of town, a baby shower, and people getting sick, none of us got a chance to see: a documentary about an Indian customer service call center, a movie about Asian Dub Foundation, a Bollywood feature, and the classic curry western Sholay. We're totally kicking......

First, the excitement of the election, and now the excitement of a (for many people) three day weekend. More excitement! Movies: Third I South Asian Film Festival, In Debt We Trust by Danny Schecter Friday and Saturday night, Hardcore Viewmaster on Saturday night, early Werner Herzog shorts at SF MoMA, Saturday afternoon, and New Italian Cinema all day Sunday. Book Parties: Friday at the Cartoon Art Museum, Just Like Heaven, which is a children's......

In doing a little due diligence before writing this review, we turned up an entry on the Hyphen blog noting that reviewers are not supposed to reveal any of the plot to this movie until it goes into wider release. So we'll abide by that (even though the movie is based on a play, and the adapted movie script is available online....). So here's the setup of the movie: five freshly post-collegiate Asian-American roommates are......

We promised you giveaways, and this one is a doozy! The filmmakers and Larsen Associates are offering one lucky reader passes for two to both the SFIAAFF's screening of Punching at the Sun and its West Coast Premiere after-party. We've been told that "South Asian immigrant culture, post 9/11 politics, interracial relationships, violent streets, and the American firestorm of hip-hop culture all mix into a fierce concoction" in Punching at the Sun. Winners will......

Looking back on 2005, we think the year could be described as "The Year The Earth Fought Back". Starting out with late 2004's tsunami, through the summer of hurricanes - culminating in Katrina - and then the south asia earthquake... well, we don't want to jinx the rest of the year but we hope there isn't anything left for her to throw at us. While we sit around waiting, let's not forget that there......

As we settled into our seats for the world premiere of documentary It's My Country Too, there was a generalized hubbub as a tall man wearing black and carrying a guitar case strode down the aisle. We heard his escort say, "It's so weird that no one's recognizing you!" Turns out that man is Pakistani-American rock star Salman Ahmed, the narrator of the documentary It's My Country Too. Ahmed is the lead guitarist for the band Junoon, which has been called the U2 of Pakistan. We think this makes Ahmed Bono (scroll down to read Bono's letter to Ahmed), since the Edge doesn't seem to take too many positions on global politics. It's My Country Too follows Ahmed as he travels America trying to see how 9/11 politics have affected the Pakistani-American community. After the jump: Muslim comedians, Muslim lawyers, and the founders of the website Muslims for Bush (who are Salman Ahmed's aunt, uncle, and cousin). Picture of Salman Ahmed from the BBC website...

We got to see an advance screening of Donal Logue's Tennis, Anyone...?, and liked it enough that we're going to tell you to go over to Berkeley's Act 1&2 to see it. Reminiscent of the indie classic Bottle Rocket, this semi-autobiographical film (written, directed, and starring Logue) details the small failures and triumphs of two slightly successful actors. We'll be interviewing Logue next week, so see the movie now so you know what the......

So color us surprised when Adriel Hampton sent us a note asking if we wanted to join him in a chat with some South Asian media professionals in town on a junket with the State Department. Apparently they wanted to learn more about these "blog" things, and how they relate to journalism, both online and in print. When we found out that the representatives from the different publications represented a readership numbering in the......

C'mon, Star Trek 4 is all about cops in SF! Yesterday's bomb scare at City Hall was traced to a kook who went up to the security desk on the Van Ness side around 3:30 p.m., put his cell phone down, and said, "I put a bomb in here." After evacuating the building, the po-po shot a water cannon at the phone and determined it was explosives-free. SFist Jackson has an airtight alibi (item 4, around 1:00:00. Thanks for sticking up for the bloggers!) Yet more wacky weed news! Firefighters in El Cerrito that were inspecting a house that had been flooded by a water main break last Friday morning "noticed grow lights, hydroponic equipment and the strong smell of marijuana." Suspicious, they called the cops, who found about 100 plants and a pound of processed pot, and promptly booked the residents. Bummer to get busted at 3 in the morning while your house is flooding. "....No, man! I gotta get the Galactic bootlegs out of the basement!" And South Asian families in the Valley are concerned that they're being targeted by thieves who know that they tend to have expensive gold jewelry in their homes. Fourteen families have been robbed on weekends since December. This reminds us of that spate of burglaries in the Orange County Asian-American community (.pdf), where they figured out the burglars were targeting houses where there were a lot of shoes outside the front door. ...

If SFist answered to mammon instead of to you, our readers, we might bother to have a big budget pick this week. But look at what's out there! Dude, it's so not going to happen, as, to paraphrase SFist Jon, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" about any of this week's mainstream releases....