*FILM: The 5th Annual San Francisco Irish Film Festival kicks things off with Garage by director Lenny Abrahamson and writer Mark O’Halloran. This is followed by a reception with the Consul General of Ireland, Emer Deane. According to LS, "other highlights include Speed Dating, a romantic comedy about a lovelorn amnesiac; the award winning Irish-language feature film Kings, and finally The Undertaking, a documentary about Irish American undertaker and poet Thomas Lynch, who is......

Cal Performances' biennial Berkeley Edge Fest is dedicated to presenting works of contemporary music and performance. Starting this Thursday (June 7) and running through Sunday June 10 at Zellerbach Hall, the Edge Fest seems to be pushing an anti-Bush theme this year. Oh, they're just giving the people of Berkeley exactly what they want to hear! This year, the Edge Fest is featuring a musical theater piece by Paul Dresher called The Tyrant, based on......

Cruciverbalists rejoice! New York Times crossword editor Will Shortz, widely considered the best puzzlemaster in the world, is speaking tonight at Cal Performances. Shortz was profiled in the documentary Wordplay and is credited with modernizing and popularizing crossword puzzles with witty clues, aesthetically satisfying designs, and pop cultural awareness. Folks like Jon Stewart and Bill Clinton (above, with the puzzle he made in yesterday's paper here) swear by Shortz's puzzles, and you will too (if......

We went to see John Mackey, founder/CEO of Whole Foods speak Tuesday night with journalist Michael Pollan of The Omnivore’s Dilemma fame and golden child for all things foodie and farm-related. We haven’t read Pollan’s book (it’s on our list!) but in it he takes a few jabs at Mackey and Whole Foods and how maybe Whole Foods is not the green do-gooder it claims to be. Maybe Whole Foods distorts the truth about some of its own food suppliers, and hurts the small local farmer by supporting large industrialized organic farms. (Something like that.) ...

Who was fortunate enough to see Sufjan Stevens last week? We made our way to Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall for the first time, alone since our contact could only spare a single ticket but grateful to be able to continue SFist's support of Sufjan. Zellerbach Hall is a formal, seated venue built with the foremost value of great acoustics (rather than easy access to a sticky bar and stinky bathrooms). The majority of concertgoers looked to......

SFist inteviews Shara Worden, of My Brightest Diamond. They will be opening for Sufjan Stevens in Berkeley October 10 and 11 2006...

Sci-fi geeks may have the upcoming Star Wars movie, but to political geeks, their Revenge of the Sith may just be this Friday when UC Berkeley hosts a discussion with New York Times' columnists Thomas Friedman AND Maureen Dowd. It's like the Sunday edition of the New York Times come to life except without the coffee and bagels. Seeing these two super-stud columnists together is like the "Real World/Road Rules Challenges" before they became overdone......

Tonight marks the first of eight nights of Hanukkah, that minor holiday puffed up to major holiday deal so goyim have something to say after that awkward pause that invariably arises when they ask a member of the Tribe how their Christmas shopping is going. So there’s only two Hanukkah songs of note, there’s no kitschy Rankin-Bass holiday special featuring little Moishe and Rebecca as they and Judas Maccabee try and save Hanukkah from......