Paul Auster: Sure, metafictionist Auster wrote the screenplays to Smoke, Blue in the Face, and The Brooklyn Follies, but he also penned the phenomenal collection of PoMo detective-fiction tales, The New York Trilogy, his best work to date. Auster appears live with San Francisco International Film Festival Director Graham Leggat after a screening of his latest film, The Inner Life of Martin Frost. Witness him in action at 7 p.m. at the Jewish Community......

-- Bambi Lake-inspired cabaret duo Kiki and Herb perform at ACT. (Also, did you know that they met at Café Flore in the Castro before they became totally famous? It's true.) Show starts at 8 p.m. at American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary; $20-$60. -- Marke B judges a damp jockstrap contest come midnight at ‘70s/‘80s retro dance club “The Rod.” Damn perverts. All of them. Goes from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. at Deco......

The New York Daily News is reporting that Barry Bonds tested positive last year for taking amphetamines. As part of the recent steroid testing measure MLB took up last year, amphetamines were banned. What makes the story even worse for the Barry is that according to reports, he immediately blamed somebody else, mainly teammate Mark Sweeney and said whatever it was he tested positive for was something he got when he ate something from Sweeney's locker. ...

Community Hero: At YBCA (701 Mission @ 3rd) is a screening of the African Film, Sango Malo by Bassek Ba Kobhio, the story of an idealistic new teacher in a rural school whose plans for radical praxis bringing social change to students and villagers is met by strong resistance from the headmaster and the village chief. Co-presented by California Newsreel, the San Francisco Black Film Festival, the Museum of the African Diaspora Present and Yerba......

The final week of the National Football League's 2006 regular season is here. It couldn't have come quickly enough for the Raiders....

The Oakland Athletics this afternoon showed why this year’s team is infinitely grittier and more determined than playoff teams of years past. This collection of misfits and guys barely above the legal drinking age simply know how to win. They’ve outplayed and out-executed the Twins in the Metroblob, and showed the baseball world why they’ll go deep into the playoffs. Instead of Frank Thomas hammering the Twins into submission this afternoon, it was the likes of Nick Swisher, Marco Scutaro and Mark Kotsay running the Twins ragged. The 5-2 final score doesn’t reflect the way the A’s controlled this game. Boof Bonser, the Twins starting pitcher, never really had a chance against the highly selective, pitch-conscious A’s batters. They nitpicked the poor guy like vultures picking at an animal carcass. And in the end it came down to the basics: hitting, pitching, defense and the big play (something the Twins were touted as superior to the A’s). Esteban Loiaza, a man we’ve called out in the past, pitched like he’s been sipping on stud juice—he was simply outstanding before running into a couple of homerun blasts. It was also Swisher making adjustments and not swinging for the fences, but using that crappy dome for less glamorous doubles. Smart move, Swish! And it was Mark Kotsay’s brilliant inside-the-park homerun that sealed the deal on this little affair in Minneapolis. ...

It's a sad for us at SFist when we see a journalist even lazier than we are, but we've found one in The New York Times' Nathan Lee. In a move that seems almost calculated to make The San Francisco Chronicle entertainment coverage seem less lame, Lee makes himself sound kind of silly in his review of locally produced film Quality of Life. Here's how the piece opens: The Mission District of San Francisco......

The New York Times, and the even more trusted Fangoria magazine, are reporting that Showtime has pulled Takashi Miike's short film "Imprint" from its series "Masters of Horror." Instead the episode will be released direct to DVD, although a release date has not been set. Miike's film Audition was one of the most horrifying things we've ever seen. EVER. So we wonder what the producers of "Masters of Horror" could have possibly been expecting.......

Well, the Chronicle has their watch-thingie to pick on small, local bay area officials about semi-trivial issues like broken signs, graffitti and potholes. Since we're small and local, we'll turn it around and pick on a big official on semi-trivial issues like journalistic ethics, campaign financing ethics and, well, potholes. Seems Skeletor Maria Shriver is kind of back to working on the Today Show, at least in the capacity of vetting guests that have......

The New York Daily News is reporting that Major League Baseball is investigating Barry Bonds and looking into his various troubles. Dude has 99 problems and, yes, a, umm, "woman" is one. Let's see, there's possible income tax evasion, possible perjury, and the whole steroid thing. And then there's the latest problem- the surgeon who performed Barry's latest knee surgery, a Dr. Albert Ting, has been reprimanded twice by the California State Medical Board and......

We initially passed this press release from the Author's Guild along to Gothamist Jen so that she could get the scoop on Gawker and FishbowlNY. Why? Because it looks like the Author's Guild along with the American Society of Journalists and Authors and the National Writers Union, UAW Local 1981, have come through with an $18 million dollar settlement for copyright infringement by companies like Time, Inc., The New York Times and the Wall......

One of SFist's favorite writers, Michael Pollan, was interviewed in California Monthly magazine. And we have the link!...