-- A Vallejo husband and father, Kevin Owens, 41, went though with a murder/suicide pact (with himself, we guess) on Friday night. He shot and killed his wife, Stacey Owens, 38; wounded his two-year-old daughter; and then turned the gun on himself (right after "a big Thanksgiving dinner at their home Thursday night.") This happened on the 300 block of Carousel Drive. Owens' 10-year-old son managed to escape the bloodbath, run to a neighbor's,......

In Los Angeles, LAist most definitely celebrated Thanksgiving like no other. After all, one has to keep up all the energy to keep on walking the line at the Writers Strike and fighting the unfortunate return of the wildfires in Malibu, which single handedly destroyed over fifty homes within the first 24 hours. National outlets may be covering the fires, but CNN also found it is easier to buy a gun than fruit and......

Welcome back, little piggies, from your night of binge eating and sipping. (That is, if you were fortunate enough to do so.) Why not get up, out, and about tonight to work off that meal, hangover with the following: -- Kristi Yamaguchi Holiday Ice Rink at Embarcadero Center: Our Kristi, our Kristi, why hast thou forsaken us? Alas, although no longer branded with Olympic gold-medal allure, you'll still have a blast at the holiday rink......

Black Friday, the Friday after Thanksgiving, the day where big retail shoppers traditionally break even for the year! Traditionally considered the biggest shopping day of the year! Is it retail therapy? ....Or is it kowtowing to the gods of capitalism and binding the workers who long to be free? Well, if you're heading out to Union Square today but feel kind of guilty about it, you can at least make yourself feel a little better......

Blah blah blah soup kitchens blah blah fun-runs blah holiday schedules. All that stuff's fascinating, of course, but here's what we really want to know: Muni, where can we find all the hottest Xmas shopping deals? Aside from Dress Barn, of course. Fear not, shoppers, for Muni's assembled a guide to holiday buying, starting on the day after Thanksgiving and extending to late December. Thanks to the MTA, you are now fully prepared to......

Care to avoid be ridiculed by your Thanksgiving hosts following your departure after din din? Good. Then pay attention. (For those of you who have T-Day hosts who regularly gulp Chuck Shaw or Yellowtail, ew, feel free to ignore this post. You're screwed anyway.) Here's what NOT to bring to Thanksgiving dinner: Cabernet Sauvignon (for the love of God, don't bring Cab) Merlot Petite Sirah Chardonnay (unless there is a crab dish) The varietals above......

The Third Annual Thanksgiving Dodgeball Game is kicking off at 9 p.m. at Dolores Park, Thanksgiving Day. While it's probably best that you go after your food's been well digested, there's nothing like getting pummeled with balls to help you work off those turkey pounds. Just make sure to bring your own balls (literally and figuratively, we suppose) as whoever is running this thing has told us that they won't be supplying the, uh,......

-- The Life of Reilly: He starred in Hello, Dolly, won a Tony and an Emmy, a Broadway director, and had one hell of a mother, but Charles Nelson Rilley will always be remembered for his Match Game PM innuendos and Brett Sommers trashing. His one-man show was filmed (thank God) for posterity just before he died, and you have the privilege of seeing a star of such magnitude tonight at 7:30 p.m. and......

Be careful if you're having Thanksgiving dinner near the coast tomorrow. Because if you plan on strolling down the beach afterwards to walk off that dark meat sitting in the pit of your stomach -- does anyone really prefer white meat? why? -- you might get swept to sea. Unusually high swells could reach up to eight feet over the holiday weekend according to the Nation Weather Service. What's more, "swimmers and [well, for......

So are we! Since this is the perfect time of the year to make a donation, we thought we'd help out those animal lovers among us by providing a list of local animal-related charities and nonprofits that can use a little (or alotta) support. PAWS (Pets are Wonderful Support) - Donate or volunteer for this fabulous organization which helps low-income persons with HIV/AIDS and other illnesses keep and take care of their companion animals. Rocket......

This is the story behind the best egg nog--and the best egg nog traditions to accompany it. First, we must explain that this recipe is a secret. It was a secret when Mr. George P. Hunt pried it out of a man named Otis Terrell in Shanghai in 1926, and it was a secret when Mr. Terrell pried it out of Carl Seitz, a lumber executive from Virginia, some years before. We always take......

Every year at Thanksgiving, you're bound to forget one or two critical items. A shallot, cooking twine, mushrooms, Ketel One -- something will slip your mind and you run the risk of having your Thanksgiving dinner collapse in on itself. And then you've ruined everything. Everything! But who can we prevent such yellow wallpapered hysteria? This is where you come in: do you know of any grocery stores that stay open late on Thanksgiving......

Lindy in the Park this Thursday...

Intimated by Martha Stewart? Of course you are. But Apartment Therapy has a nice round up of Thanksgiving Table settings they found on Flickr. These are worth browsing for some last minute inspiration. ...

Later this month you will start to see something droll, orthodontically-estranged, and charmingly inbred on the street of San Francisco: British-like double decker buses. San Francisco will be trying out the 14-foot-tall buses along the busy streets of Geary and Mission to see how the riding public feels about them. Will you be a top rider or a bottom? Now, this can be either very, very good or very, very bad. The good: easy......

Want to know why there's no Thanksgiving card from grandma in your mailbox today? Because it's Veterans Day. (Or because she's dead, Timmy.) While Bush pretended to be sad about it in Texas today -- "Not on my watch," chump? Bite it. Hard -- we thought of a recent veteran who died over the weekend, Mr. Norman Mailer. (He was a cook during WWII. How awesome is that? Well, we think it is.) Although......

So, the horrible ordeal of Halloween has passed us by, and we escaped more or less unmolested except for Kenny the fire-juggling clown; but SOME PEOPLE just will not let it drop. "It was so hard to see busloads of police marching through an empty Castro," says one Castro resident, and another adds, "I was in tears last night." The buzzword for the evening seems to be "martial law," which is technically two words,......

For all those Decemberists fans out there waiting patiently for Thanksgiving weekend (a four-night run in San Francisco) to happen here's some bad and then even worse news. First, the bad: Decemberists' tour is canceled. Over. Done. Second, the worse news: now you have to find some other excuse why you don't want to spend time with your crazy family. We're thinking that this just sucks all around. What else was were we going......

Now this is why we love DocFest so much! Eat At Bill's is a completely charming love letter to the famed local organic Monterey Market in Berkeley and its perpetually-cheery (and perpetually-free-sample-eating) owner Bill Fujimoto. The movie's set up in a series of small vignettes -- from the hotly-anticipated arrival of cherry season, to a tour of the back room where the chefs get first pick of the boysenberries and mesclun, to a tour......

Mikey, Mikey, Mikey -- we've been poking fun at this guy, mostly because we like him. He's a goof. Reminds us of some of our college buddies. Forgets his eggs in a breakfast challenge. Is overly thrilled at his sloppy, greezy steak sandwhich in the firehouse challenge. Enjoys throwing out somewhat tired concepts like a twice-baked potato (during the "Thanksgiving innovation" challenge, no less) and surf & turf appetizers. And who can forget the snicker/cheeto lollipop? ...

-Shootout on 880 leads to one death, one injured and major traffic. -The search for the lost family continues on...

The SFPD has put out a missing persons bulletin on a local Noe Valley family, who haven't been heard from since last week. James and Kati Kim, along with their two daughters Sabine and Penelope, drove to Seattle to spend Thanksgiving with James's family. The Kims were scheduled to be in southern Oregon last Saturday night, and had called the inn where they had reserved rooms and asked for a key to be left at......

Remember that bad neighbor dude Bob Bertone in Visitacion Valley who terrorized his neighborhood with loud music, mysterious gunshots, explosions, and lots of junk in his yard? Well, his house caught on fire Wednesday when his water heater ignited a bucket of gasoline that was sitting too close by. The neighbors did a pretty good job of not looking too smirky as they were interviewed. Incidentally, Bertone ran for the Board of Supes in 2000......

Oy, gee. We're sick today. We feel like grade-A crapola, and it may color our review of the last episode of Top Chef just a tad. Not to mention that we're about 10 lbs. heavier than when we watched this episode last Wednesday on Bravo, which is making us even more pissy. This episode was a 'very special Thanksgiving' episode. And it was pretty special--Tony Bourdain, the well-known chef and world-traveler, was the guest judge, and yes, we love his bad-boy image, his wry personality, and he writes a hell of a good fictional book along with his spectacular non-fiction. Sorry if we're judging this man on his image, folks, along with his writing and cooking pedigree. Oh, P.S. -- he's had some swell adventures recently with our own Mary Ladd/Jalepeno Girl, which you should check out here and here....

Worst. Holiday. Ever. For. Eritreans Near and Far. We’re not joking about the sadness and confusion this Turkey Day crime has wreaked. The shell-shocked East African Eritrean Bay Area community, numbering 10,000 to 12,000 strong according to many reports, is still reeling from the Thanksgiving Day killings that left 3 members of the same family dead in an Oakland apartment shoot out. "This is the worst ightmare for Eritreans,"Yikaalo Gebreselassie of Alameda told the Chron, who said he was a friend of the victims. "We've never had this kind of experience before, and now we have three people dead." ...

Week Twelve of the National Football Season's regular season is here, post-Thanksgiving. Grab some leftovers and plunk down on the couch, here comes this weekend's set of Bay Area American football entertainment....

If you’re hiking, consider charging up your iPod, as Seattlest finds out that a man lost during a hike was found by the glow of his iPod. That cleverness seems to be devoid in cops who were using police cruiser instant messaging clients - although we imagine IMs “so are you nakie” to be included in cop shows, just for realism. If only the cops were busting the Hummer-driving jerk who made a poor......

--Gavin Newsom's decided to run for reelection after all. Here's the text of his fundraising letter, which appears to have been sent to previous donors only. (Thanks to reader Tiffany for the tip!) --Charities feeding the needy. --Vegetarians feeding turkeys. --Termites feeding on the Larkspur City Hall. --Vigil on Monday Nov. 27, which is the anniversary of Harvey Milk and George Moscone's assassination. --Yes on an injunction barring the Oakdale mob from loitering, but......

Happy Thanksgiving! --Speaking of Thanksgiving, thanks very much to Pat Murphy of the San Francisco Sentinel, who was nice enough to pass along William Wilson's picture of Gavin and squeeze of the moment Jennifer Siebel. Here's another picture of the couple at Stanlee Gatti's art exhibition. --It looks like after the provisional ballots are counted, incumbent Johnnie Carter may just squeak by John Rizzo (the Green Party candidate) for the SF Community College board,......

Hey, folks -- what better to whet your appetite for the most food-laden of holidays than an episode of Top Chef, tonight on Bravo. And what better to whet your appetite for tonight's Thanksgiving-themed episode than a reminder of and our take on what happened last week? You may recall a bunch of bitching in our last review -- the short reminder is NOBODY WENT HOME. Well, as some even predicted, this week made up for that (at least in terms of numbers) by sending two of the chef-testants home. Obvious foreshadowing by the show's editors: Josie telling the camera's that she and Marisa are the only ones that trust each other. Hmph. ...