-- Comedy, Darling: Sleepover!: Mary Van Note hosts a new monthly underground talk and comedy show, where the stand-up is done in pajamas. Cute! Breaking the hymen of this monthly party is gangbang of hardcore comedic talent, featuring Brent Weinbach, Richard Kiss, Candy Churilla, Chris Garcia, and musical guest Jethro Jeremiah. The funny startsd at 8 p.m. at Edinburgh Castle; $8. -- M.I.A.: "Get crackin' get get crackin'/Get crackin' get get crackin'" [horny horns].......

During the wee hours of the morning, a woman sporting a French maid outfit was arrested for going the wrong way down the northbound lanes on (the) 280 in San Francisco. She caused (only) three collisions before she was finally nabbed by the cops....

-- Newsom bats his eyes at progressives. [BeyondChron] -- Blue Angels to be banned in SF? [Examiner] -- Islamic Center of the East Bay's recent blaze decried as an "act of terror" by local Muslim leaders. [Chron] -- Man who attacked Holocaust survivor/scholar Elie Wiesel at Westin San Francisco Market Street (formerly the Argent Hotel) apologizes. Aw. Warm fuzzies for all. [ABC 7] -- Benjamin Wachs on crime and Big Brother. No, not Big......

In case you missed it, President 25% Approval Ratings was able to ram through some legislation revamping all those FISA laws you keep hearing about. It's hard to make heads or tails of what the bill says as the administration, in a surprise to no one, won't tell anyone what it says, but it involves making warrants kind of unnecessary, the monitoring of anyone suspected as a "terrorist" and-- get this-- the oversight by one Alberto "Fredo" Gonzalez. That's more than letting the fox guard the hen house, that's letting Michael Vick run the SPCA. ...

What with all the Ed Jew Borderline and guy taking off his nose business at our city's seat of government, we almost missed some interesting news about the Market/Octavia onramp of bicyclist injury! The Board of Supes has authorized local transit people to put in a raised median strip at the rightmost lane at the intersection, to discourage people from illegally turning onto the highway. We're not absolutely positive that's going to solve the problem......

Proud son of the East Bay and noted environmental activist James Hetfield was held at a London airport upon arriving before Metallica's performance at the Live Earth concert. Apparently, airport authorities pulled him aside because with his new double pronged beard, he looked too Taliban-y. ...

LAist was comped front row seats by the Dodgers due to Malingering being struck by a foul ball last week, and she came back with some great photos, and earlier made fun of 4th of July on Venice Beach. But the biggest stories of the week was that the Mayor's Hot Tamale was revealed, and that a Kwik-E-Mart was erected in Burbank. Phillyist was busy doing the Fourth of July up right, exercising their......

Aaaaaaah! Zombies! Run! ....and by "run," we mean, "run to the Roxie and start buying your tickets and passes now" for the Fourth Annual Another Hole In The Head Indiefest fantasy, sci-fi, and horror movie fest! Whether your tastes run to anime fantasy, vampires, blood and gore, or Danny Elfman, there's plenty of genre to go around and a good time to be had! The Primitive Screwheads will be doing their splatterfest improv for the......

Well, it's about time! As the progressives run around in a circle waving their hands around in terror for another week or two until June 2, the more right-leaning folks have decisively made their move! Former supervisor and sometimes lounge singer Tony Hall has filed his paperwork to run for mayor. Tony Hall's been famously irritated with Gavin Newsom ever since Newsom dumped him off at the Treasure Island Development Association to give his Supervisor's......

Before we kick things off, we should give a big shoutout to SFist Sarah L, who generously stepped in to read the weeklies for us while we were away. Thanks, SFist Sarah L! She rocked it so hard we're going to start alternating weeks for weekly-reading from here on out. Now, who did SFist Sarah L pick to win last week? The Metro! Gary Singh on San Jose soccer. The FBI may start investigating local......

SFist Sara S's got the jujubes! Please don’t mistake us for fans of human suffering but it’s high time a film was made to tell the uninformed public about the genocide in Rwanda. Beyond the Gates, at the Embarcadero, is a smart, engaging, often (rightly) painful view of the conflict from the view of a Catholic training college manned by John Hurt and Hugh Dancy. It’s a tearjerker but it’s really edifying to see how......

Listen... Can you hear that? That distant sound? As if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced? Holy nerd alert, Batman! WonderCon is coming! Yes, this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday Moscone Center will host the hundreds, nay, thousands of nerds, dorks, fanboys and fangirls who are too lazy and/or poor to make the trip down south for ComiCon in July. And we will proudly be amongst them. After the......

A recent wave of immigration sweeps (or, as Indy Bay calls it "Gestapo Immigration Raiders") is creating a bit of a fuss not only in San Francisco but throughout the Peninsula and East Bay. There's talk of protests, organizing, sending out nasty press releases, and even the creation of new laws. In Redwood City, there's talk of creating an "Immigration Sanctuary" in San Mateo County and in San Francisco, the Board of Supervisors will debate a resolution tomorrow condemning the sweeps. That'll show them. Hell, even Gavin's jumped into the fray with his very own press release tut-tutting the raids. All of this has brought the Minutemen into the action as they held a rally in Castro Valley to call for closing the border. It wasn't until a few days ago when we realized the Minutemen were named after our Revolutionary soldiers and not their sexual dysfunctions, although one could probably explain the other. ...

Last week, the Washington "Moonie" Times wrote a story saying that, in effect, that Nancy Pelosi requested that the Air Force provide her flights to and from Washington whenever she actually deigns to come home to the City by the Bay. The story is potentially embarrassing to Pelosi as it plays on the caricature of her being shrewish bitch who requests military planes while our brave sons and daughters are dying to fight the war on terror even though Iraq has nothing to do with it and even Republicans wish the war would end but they're still going to stop non-binding resolutions to stop it. Or something like that. As these things tend to happen, the story got out into the Republican echo chamber and you know what happens whenever that occurs-- the press has to cover it like it's an important story. Also, so called blabber mouths in politics and cable news spout it off like it's the unbridled truth without actually investigating it. ...

Two days after Nancy Pelosi had to redo her business cards to say "Madame Speaker," the fall-out of the election is still falling out. Pelosi yesterday gave kind of a victory lap press conference where she made a few jokes, tried not to sound too giddy, and said bipartisan about twice every minute. For those of you wondering how good of a job she could do as the Dem leader despite her obvious lack of television charisma, wonder no more-- she started off her press conference with a cute homily about children being the future and God help us whenever a politician says children are the future. ...

That eavesdropping case we've been following took another step to eventually seeing the light of as an appeals court has decided to review the decision by U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker that the lawsuit should move forward despite the whining of the Federal Government. The eavesdropping case, for those who don't remember, was brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation against the Government and AT&T for reading things they shouldn't be reading. Of what, we don't know but its super serious and of utmost importance to the War on Terror. And porn. We're sure somewhere they're checking out porn. ...

-SF Board of Supervisors Committee approves plan for more foot patrols in troubled areas. -Daly and Newsom go at it again over anti-violence measures. ...

We had a great time at the Between the Bridges reading/concert on Friday night and got all excited about the upcoming week. So what else is out there in Litquake World? ...

-HP Chairman (Chairwoman?) Patricia Dunn will step down in January for all the craziness HP has been involved in lately. We're sure that with all the scandal swirling about that she's sort of responsible for, HP will give her a package commiserate with the mess, like say only several millions of dollars. ...

You, the voracious reader, will soon be left to repine most piteously, for a most sorrowful event is pending. Yes! Local author Lemony Snicket's final book in A Series of Unfortunate Events, titled The END, is being released next month. The final volume to this terrible collection will no doubt fill the reader with terror, pity and sorrow once they learn the final fates of the unlucky Baudelaire orphans. Worse - there will be no......

Celebrate Ben Franklin's 300th birthday with the Bikini Bandits and Phillyist! (NSFW). Speaking of Mr. Franklin, send in a picture of Ben (or Ed Rendell) with a red tongue and win a free t-shirt. And they might have the next YearlyKos in Philly. You know who's going to be upset about those Bikini Bandits? The Houston school system. Houstonist also reports on some redevelopment shenanigans over a landmark theater. LAist's sex advice column on......

We here at SFist feel compelled to write about the latest outrage coming out of Crawford Texas these days. No, not the whole War on Terror thing, but the word on the street being that one of W's Summer Beach Reading Books is Albert Camus' "The Stranger." Apparently, he was so taken by it that he debated it with Tony Snow. We can only imagine the conversation too: "See, 'The Stranger' is a book about philosophy, which means the author, Cay-Moo, philosiphizes. He's a philosopher. I find what he says interesting."...

Even as the stores sport back to school sales (which depress us, even now), summer lingers on your friends the -ists. This week's collection of links provides some of the best, worst, and oddest bits of summer fun. So, bring your laptop up onto the roof, make yourself an umbrella drink or ten, and enjoy this week's choice posts from across the Gothamist network. Torontoist (where it's 75 degrees F as of this writing)......

If you've been like us, you've been reading all sorts of stories about terrorist plots in a whole bunch of cities that aren't the Bay Area and feeling kind of jealous. Hey, terrorists, what about us? Aren't we good enough to terrorize? Are we not infidel enough? Does our lack of good bagels preclude us from being part of the International Zionist Conspiracy? Luckily, reports have been coming out saying that yes indeed, the Bad Guys have been looking our way and plotting some terror. ...

From the Grey Lady, that traitorous, terror-loving newspaper of record in New York, we get a story about a battle raging on about the installation of a pot club in Fisherman's Wharf of all places. You pretty much know the score here, but to sum up: pot club wants to open on the Wharf, neighbors say "thanks but no thanks," battle ensues. The pot club in question is the Green Cross, a dispensary which got kicked out of the Mission for being perceived as not such a great neighbor, and the location is 2701 Leavenworth. ...

Over the weekend we were flipping through the TV and came upon the old classic sci-fi flick, The Andromeda Strain, that movie from the 70's about dangerous microbes causing death and destruction and the end of the world in ways only movies from the early 70's could. Good thing, we thought to ourselves, we didn't have to worry about it. So naturally, this morning, we checked out the Examiner's web site only to see that a court hearing has been set over the Bush administration wanting to put a biodefense lab at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. LOL! ...

DCist is screwed in the event of an oil crisis. Not that we're not all screwed in the event of an oil crisis, just D.C. is more screwed. Don't sell your car yet, District resident, a cabbie can kick you to the curb if he doesn't like your address. Not even Metro can save you now. Londonist experiences the London of the future through the wonders of 3D modeling, but while the 3D guys are......

There actually is a local component to this whole NSA wiretapping/eavesdropping scandal, one that is about to make the scandal more scandal-y. It involves AT&T and the claims of former AT&T technician Mark Klein that sometime in 2002, AT&T allowed the U.S. Government to build a secret room in their Folsom Street office for the express purpose of eavesdropping not just on phones, but the internet too. And yes, whenever we read about this, we picture guys in black suits, black ties, and black shades running around the AT&T offices led by a mysterious figure smoking a cigarette. ...

The good news is that vacancy rates are low across the hotel business in San Francisco. The bad news is that at least some of those rooms may be off the rolls as they are being fumigated. When we wrote our original post on San Francisco's growing bedbug infestation, we were at a loss to come up with direct reports of encounters with the parasites in some of The City's hotels. Well, Hotel Chatter dropped......

Anyone else remember that episode of "Friends" where Joey is in the musical, Freud!? We've had the song he sang (All you want is a dingle/What you envy's a schwang in our head) since we heard about the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival and the San Francisco JCC's FreudFest, and its Cinema on The Couch series, which kicks off tonight with Secrets of a Soul. From the press materials: cinematic superimpositions, symbolic imagery of razors......