Sure, it's now (oddly enough) cool and obligatory for people in the Bay Area to label themselves as "self-described nerds" or "self-described geeks." (And anyone outside of the 18- to 25-year-old range is inherently uncool, right?) But there's a dark side to holding such an annoying title. more ›

It's January 1, and here are the best things from the last 365 days. more ›

We're the first to admit that we're not a big Robin Williams fan. That fast talking, manic thing got stale for us before we hit the "cocaine" unit in health class. We find his beard movies even more tiresome, but do like us some creepy Williams: in he was only eclipsed by Michael Vartan's saggy balls. more ›

50 out of 50 Wednesday precincts reporting -- Tonight: Come see newly-anointed state assembly representative Fiona Ma, along with DA Kamala Harris, performing at the SF Black Film Festival's Urban Slam spoken word event tonight, at the Theater Artaud. My name is Fiona/ Janet Reilly is bologna..... The Urban Slam starts around 8:15, after the 6:00 p.m. screening of the movie Sp!t, a documentary about the hip-hop poetry slam scene. $10 for the movie, $10 for the slam. Theater Artaud is at 450 Florida (x Mariposa). Tickets here. Thursday: Screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, who wrote that Sean Penn movie "21 Grams", will be at the Balboa for the 7:00 p.m. screening of "The 3 Burials of Melquidas Estrada," for which he won the Palme D'Or last year. Arriaga will be signing copies of his book The Night Buffalo starting at 6, and at 7, he'll be leading a discussion about screenwriting tips. The Balboa's at Balboa and 38th Ave. and Friday: Shoo-be-doo-waaaaaah -- the Pacific Mozart Ensemble presents an evening of a capella jazz and pop songs at the Green Room in the War Memorial Building on 401 Van Ness. $20. Finger-snapping is always our favorite. Download musical excerpts here. more ›

The creative team behind J.T. Leroy should send James Frey flowers, since his little revelations have given the J. T. Leroy hoax story a sort of also-ran quality. However, we were pleased to see the San Francisco Chronicle finally pick up the story and give it a well-sourced local angle. First up: the local literary Who's Who with regard to who was sucked in: Dave Eggers, Susie Bright, David Wigand, Michael Ray, Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman. more ›

Our live music picks for the week of 2/17-2/23. more ›

The Night Cabbie column has been up and running for eight years, first with the then Hearst-run Examiner and now with the Hearst-run Chronicle. Nobody knew who exactly the Cabbie was, leading to all sorts of guessing games (we’ve always wondered if any of the multitudes of cab drivers we’ve had in the city was him and if so, hopefully it wasn’t on one of those nights that involved Jager) but once a week, a column would appear relating whatever adventures he had with any sort of comment he’d add to it. The writing was gritty and minimal and all sorts of slice-of-life-ish but frankly, we always thought the column was a better idea than an actual column. Like a lot of writing in that style, it was either hit or miss and we thought it was mainly miss; most of his stories left us wondering what the point was. But that could be just us- we’ve probably seen way too much Taxi Driver and were probably just disappointed in the fact that the columns weren’t full of prose about how the scum needed to be washed off the city streets and how hot Jody Foster is. Regardless, the column was a pretty unique one and a change of pace from John Carroll’s cat-columns and Leah Garchik’s gossip columns about people we’ve never heard of. It also leaves the Chron with one less columnist than they had before. We're sure they're right on it.
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at home, but a tad embarrasssing for public transit. more ›