-- 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......

Some local PBS affiliate stations will be re-airing two San Francisco-centric episodes of "American Experience" this weekend. The first, and best, is Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple. Through interviews with former members and survivors of the Jim Jones cult, along with loads of archival footage, you get an eerie portrait of a good idea gone bad. In hindsight, it's hard to imagine how anyone could have fallen under the spell of......

Dude, she was shot at Jonestown! it doesn't matter she didn't win her race for Lieutenant Governor. Former State Senator Jackie Speier speaks at the Commonwealth Club tonight about the book she co-authored, This Is Not The Life I Ordered, which tells not only her story, but the story of three of her friends as well. $18, reception at 6, reading at 7, at 595 Market 2nd Fl. (x 2nd). Other events: --The Stars and......

This week's shows have an equal emphasis on the old and the new. Mix things up a little by seeing an up-and-comer followed by a living legend or two; it's just the kind of eclectic variety that San Francisco's concert venues have to offer. On Friday we're delighted about the opportunity to see 80 year old living legend Charlie Louvin play an early show at the Swedish American Hall. The Louvin Brothers had their heyday......

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......

These are my top 12 favorite albums of 2005. That's right, I said "my" not "our." That's because once a year at SFist we get crazy and write a post in the first person (and also because my fellow SFist music writers probably have wildly different favorites of their own). Sufjan Stevens Illinois Young, ambitious, talented, and accomplished, Sufjan Stevens has topped the majority of 2005’s Best Of lists his own way, on tiny independent......

Saturday: We're going to The Canvas for Feria Urbana, everyone's favorite source for locally designed clothing, jewelry, home accessories, and more. The fair runs from 12-5. Sunday: We can't pass up the The Life Size Game of Mouse Trap carnival. Besides the aforementioned big-ass game of mousetrap, there'll be carnival rides, a haunted zombie room, and an oddity museum. See it all at 9 or 11 p.m., at 1634 Jerrold Ave., (at 3rd Street),......

This week we take you from Orinda to Fort Mason to the Artaud Building for Shakespeare, an Irish story and a reimagined Greek myth. ...

Nerds should start arranging transpo down to Menlo Park tonight for the latest Dorkbot at Onomy labs. Topics include artist Jill Miller's hunt for Bigfoot in the northern Sierra, PARC alums Scott Minneman and Dale MacDonald discussing collaborative innovation and somebody will be bringing an x86 laptop with OS X hacked onto it. It's getting rather queer over on the Craiglist listings -- it's Naughty Schoolgirl night at Divas, Bay Area Black In The......

Our concert picks for the week of 8/11 - 8/17. It's August, and if we were anywhere else in the country, the sun would be beating down on us relentlessly and we'd be wishing September would come around to bring back the touring bands. But this is San Francisco, so we put on sweaters when we leave for work and we still get good concerts even during the touring lull that is August. And here......

Musicals, musicals everywhere in this edition of Stage Fog....

We don't know what to do with ourselves. The TV season has come to an end, the finales are all over, and TV is beginning to look like a vast wasteland of reality shows. (Seriously, people. "Dancing with the Stars"?!) We're not sure what to do with ourselves. Go OUTSIDE? But doesn't that give you cancer? We could read, but if we're going to be sitting at home anyway, why not just turn on......

SFist can take or leave most of the email we receive, but we never fail to get a little thrill when we get that email from the San Francisco Public Library letting us know that our online reserve is in. We're not quite as thrilled when we get that note about how irresponsibly high our fines have gotten, as that keeps us from blowing our extra dough at one of our fine local independent bookstores....

SFist is so &%#$# sick of the blizzard of press surrounding Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow that we could puke....

You might think that all SFist reads is the internet, but we are here to tell you that it's just not so! We all love not just our local bookstores but our local libraries, and visit them often. We especially love how easy it is to reserve books from the San Francisco Public Library for pickup at whichever branch is most convenient for you, so pull out your library card and give it a......