Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start: when Alex Smith got injured, there was some back-and-forth about whether or not he was healthy. While this was going on, Nolan made the occasional subtle and not-so-subtle dig at Smith for not being sufficiently tough. Cue speculation and rumormongering approaching Brangelina levels. The Merc apparently had heard some other Niners joining in on the Smith dog pile and asked Alex about it. Alex went a wee bit on the ballistic side and accused Nolan of trying to turn the team against him, making him play when he wasn't healthy, and for generally being a big poopy-head. This all hit the press sometime yesterday and, well, hello hullabaloo. Naturally, the two parties met and issued statements talking about how their relationship is all :) and not :( ...

Call it the calm before the storm, or a brief respite from the dudely bravado of the District 6 and other election campaigning, but we are thrilled that we have multiple women's literature events to attend tonight: The Madrone Lounge (500 Divisadero at Fell) presents a joint reading with The May Queen contributors and editor Christina Amini and contributors from Before The Mortgage. The May Queen describes itself as a "fascinating collection of 27......

The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival organizer who introduced 51 Birch Street at the Castro Theatre on Saturday said, "welcome to our high class shvitz." The bubbie sitting in front of us turned around and asked, "do you know what a shvitz is?" We wanted to tell her that if you looked up "shvitz" in Leo Rosten's The Joys of Yiddish you'd see a picture of our shvitzy Korean-asses shvitzing like crazy all over the......

Before we get into it -- ding ding ding! Envision a scantily-clad lady with a placard reading Round Three! Alt-weekly fight! If this were a schoolyard, we'd all be surrounding the SFBG and the Weekly in a circle. The Weekly lunges! And the SFBG throws a punch back! Oooooh! (Online only -- and geez Louise, the Weekly's essay is loooooong. We got a cramp in our mouse finger scrolling down.) Okay, onto the actual weeklies. Last week's winner (who's featuring last week's cover on its website), the Guardian. Dude, we are so not prepared for a Katrina-type disaster. Cover article: nuclear power is bad. Hats! If the restaurant Maverick were in your neighborhood, you'd be a lucky person. People complain about their, um, endowments. And oh yeah, we threw out some shiny insert about food. The Weekly: Matt Smith in rare form, on various humiliations visited on the white race by SF last week. The Chron's Burning Man coverage is only the beginning of the Smith attack! The Infiltrator tries to get his cat cloned. Tommy Craggs on the new A's stadium (lots of diagrams). Meredith Brody's father reminisces about his dinner with Kinsey (no number on the scale revealed.) OK Then on anti FEMA music. Canada, the new Montreal! And the Bouncer goes to the Lone Palm. After the jump: The East Bay Express, the Metro, and the pick of the week....