At the bargain price of just $35 dollars down at City Hall this morning, authorities released the emergency 911 tapes of the San Francisco Zoo tiger attacks. The attacks, if you don't remember, occurred on Christmas Day, taking the life of Carlos Sousa Jr. and injuring the now (in)famous Dhaliwal brothers. The footage is raw, with the most unnerving robotic British female voice overlapping the frantic phone call, but to check listen to the......

Less than a week after the fatal tiger mauling at the SF Zoo, much of the news that has (slowly) unraveled from the Christmas Day tiger attacks has been disheartening. From the downplayed info about the too-short tiger pen fence, conflicting evidence that the three boys taunted the Siberian tiger just before the attack, and that emergency protocol wasn't followed by SF Zoo employees, there are more chin-scratching facts to add to the list.......

-- The Breasts of Sherry Glaser: The protest-y Miss Glaser's comedy and peace activism show runs the gamut from her unsheathed mammary glands to an interpretation of 9/11 and the Twin Towers falling down. Oh my. (Warning: audience participation will occur!) Starts at 7:30 p.m. at The Marsh; $10-15. -- The Velvet Teen: The Velvet Teen rocks. Hard and with perfection. Because that's what they do in Santa Rosa. Be sure to see them......

From Lady_K via Contribute page, who found this note on Church Street in front of the Blockbuster near Market -- also, how on earth does that Blockbuster remain open for business? -- she found this detailed 9/11 to-do list, presumably written today: On 9/28/07 Everyone should stuff your bras, dress like a woman, act like a woman, and then tip a bus on 9/11. Chocolate Rain... Chocolater Rain… Uhhh This letter will self destruct in......

Here's a video posted on YouTube by the San Francisco State College Republicans. Yes, boo, hiss, etc. -- BUT they were trying to co-host a peaceful memorial for 9/11 victims with their democratic counterparts. Extending the olive branch and, according to the speech the guy gives, trying to whitewash this of political partisanship to whatever extent possible. Of course, some protesters showed up, once again proving that there are just too damned many opinions constrained within this predominately two-party system of ours. ...

Ann Sherry's North Beach mural "Gold Mountain," a work that depicts Chinese influence to San Francisco and American history, fell victim to hooligan defacing. Specifically, the recent addition of Betty Ong, a San Francisco flight attendant who died in the World Trade Center attacks. While it doesn't seem like an intentional hit on Ong's heroism, 9/11-ness, or whatever -- because murals in this city get defaced the second the paint starts drying -- it is......

-- 9/11 felt around the Bay. [CBS5, Chron, Examiner, SFBG] -- Come get your soy-based ice creams and kombucha tea, Potrero Hill! [SFMetBlog] -- Grand Prix moves out of San Jose. For good. [CBS5] -- No deal for Ed Jew. [Chron] -- Extortion attempt at SF's Maze Cafe. [Chron]......

Tomorrow BART celebrates 35 years of hauling your asses around. Revenue service began on 9/11 in 1972. Since then, according to BART Board President Lynette Sweet, BART has continued to "carry the Bay Area through good times and bad...[w]e were there to keep the economy moving when the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake knocked out the Bay Bridge, and most recently when the MacArthur Maze connector collapsed." But most important of all, BART has also......

Earlier this morning, Forensics Analytical Lab in Hayward called the fire department for help because they'd spilled a bunch of picric acid. Dry picric acid is apparently very sensitive to shock and friction, and can explode like dynamite. This one article we found says it blows up when you drop a 2 kg weight on it, from just 36 cm above. (Metric units because the article is Canadian.) Yikes! So all the other businesses in......

"Cult Alert!" flyers garnished lamp posts on Third and Market Streets the other night -- a siren song if ever we've heard one. (It seems like forever since SF's been plagued with a jazzy, crazy-ass cult. No offense, L. Ron.) In case you missed them, or in case the quality of life sect tore them down, the missives cried out: Cult Alert! Please be advised: Youth With a Mission (YWAM) has been under investigation......

In case you missed it, President 25% Approval Ratings was able to ram through some legislation revamping all those FISA laws you keep hearing about. It's hard to make heads or tails of what the bill says as the administration, in a surprise to no one, won't tell anyone what it says, but it involves making warrants kind of unnecessary, the monitoring of anyone suspected as a "terrorist" and-- get this-- the oversight by one Alberto "Fredo" Gonzalez. That's more than letting the fox guard the hen house, that's letting Michael Vick run the SPCA. ...

Duck meatballs from the Oakland Tribune. We gobble the various food sections up each Wednesday. Here are our favorite nibbles from today's offerings. It's short but suh-weet. SF Chronicle: Breaking bread with neighbors and "new friends"/potential love mates continues to catch on at community tables. An explanation from restaurant guru Clark Wolf perhaps explains why the post 9/11 trend has taken awhile to grow: "...Americans don't share space well. So it took a little......

Jerry Falwell, the founder of the Moral Majority, was found dead in his office earlier today. Our condolences go out to his family and loved ones. That said, Falwell was known for his commitment to right-wing causes of all kinds, and in particular, his hostility to civil rights, feminists, and gays made him not particularly well-liked out here in San Francisco. Remember when he said the purple Teletubby Tinky-Winky was gay? Or when he blamed......

Last week, the Washington "Moonie" Times wrote a story saying that, in effect, that Nancy Pelosi requested that the Air Force provide her flights to and from Washington whenever she actually deigns to come home to the City by the Bay. The story is potentially embarrassing to Pelosi as it plays on the caricature of her being shrewish bitch who requests military planes while our brave sons and daughters are dying to fight the war on terror even though Iraq has nothing to do with it and even Republicans wish the war would end but they're still going to stop non-binding resolutions to stop it. Or something like that. As these things tend to happen, the story got out into the Republican echo chamber and you know what happens whenever that occurs-- the press has to cover it like it's an important story. Also, so called blabber mouths in politics and cable news spout it off like it's the unbridled truth without actually investigating it. ...

We're not big fans of airport security. We know, we know, post 9/11 reality and we must put up with whatever to make the world safe for democracy and all that. And we'd be down, really, if the measures made sense but they don't. They're all pretty stupid, actually. Like that liquid ban which was done after that alleged plot involving liquid explosives. That's a total joke because the reality is that in order to build the bomb the terrorists would have to have created some sort of chem lab in the airplane in order to build it. We just don't see that working And don't even get us started on the whole shoe thing. If we ever ran into the alleged shoe-bomber, we'd personally beat the snot out of him for making it so we had to take off our shoes everytime we boarded a plane. Talk about dumb ass. ...

Few things are more annoying than a government that touts a righteous altruism then acts in ways that brazenly contradict it, and then seeing the news media deliberately let them get away with it. When the world's sole superpower toys around with foreign nations as if they were little army men on a map, they must stymie their opposition with duplicity and mistruths, which is exactly what the Bush Administration has done. ...

We had a great time at the Between the Bridges reading/concert on Friday night and got all excited about the upcoming week. So what else is out there in Litquake World? ...

-Dick met Bush yesterday and in one of his speeches Bush talked about how he's going to end poverty and bring world peace. No, just joking, he talked a lot about terrorism, Iraq, 9/11 blah, blah, blah. But that's not the big thing. No, the big thing is, and we kid you not, there is an actual George W. Bush Elementary School in Stockton. And the library is the Laura Bush Library. We'll leave it up to you to make with the jokes, but if you want a starter joke, the obvious one is if the library carries "My Pet Goat?" ...

-HP Chairman (Chairwoman?) Patricia Dunn will step down in January for all the craziness HP has been involved in lately. We're sure that with all the scandal swirling about that she's sort of responsible for, HP will give her a package commiserate with the mess, like say only several millions of dollars. ...

Those season premieres are trickling in, with the big gusher arriving next week. We'll try to come to you daily next week with coverage and (hopefully) some actual reviews of pilots, but for this week we offer a slightly briefer rundown. "Monday Night Football" premieres on ESPN tonight, but if you're someone who watches football, you already know this, so that's all that needs to be said about that. This being the fifth anniversary......

--You'll never turn your TIC into a condo now. --SF needs more lesbian bars. --Be in a Chronicle podcast and tell them your 9/11 story. --Bisexual runs for the BART board. --Chris Daly declines to attend a District 6 candidate forum hosted by his nemesis Pat Murphy. --Kids might be eating fresh fruits and vegetables in Alameda schools.......

"Papa, are you a terrorist?" We spent several very fun, yet dark weeks in Hamburg, Germany (when you don’t get up before noon in December there, you don’t see much light) with a friend who grew up there years ago. Watching the dim, gray aerial views and port scenes of what we found to be an ultimately beautiful city in the Hitchcockian style, Seeds of Doubt brought us back to those days. However, what followed was an unmistakable reminder that things have changed in Hamburg, as they have many places, in a post-9/11 world. We didn’t really know what to expect going into the film, whose German title Folgeschaden, we’ve been told translates into "damaging after-effects." The film showcases a young couple, presumably in their thirties, who’ve seemingly already acknowledged and encountered the issues inherent in sharing their lives with someone of a different ethnicity and religion. When Tariq is suspected of being a "sleeper" in a Hamburg terrorism cell, it becomes apparent that the couple only touched the surface of the difficulties their relationship will face in the days to come. It is clear that Maya and Tariq have discussed issues relating to their young son and his religious upbringing, but not much more. SFist Wendy, contributing...

Seattlest saw a house party get senselessly attacked with a shotgun and end in seven dead. A local senator is debated and their version of the big dig is investigated. To truly get to the bottom of it they interview the writer Jonathan Raban. Bostonist has its first birthday party and investigates how to attach more gambling dollars to the Red Sox. Benjamin Franklin is celebrated and Johnny Damon is not. Image by Ethan Bagley......

We promised you giveaways, and this one is a doozy! The filmmakers and Larsen Associates are offering one lucky reader passes for two to both the SFIAAFF's screening of Punching at the Sun and its West Coast Premiere after-party. We've been told that "South Asian immigrant culture, post 9/11 politics, interracial relationships, violent streets, and the American firestorm of hip-hop culture all mix into a fierce concoction" in Punching at the Sun. Winners will......

Now that yesterday's BART fire is out and trains are moving again, the inevitable finger-pointing has begun. Who bears the blame here? Is it BART? Why does BART use flammable solvents on its tracks? Is the reason why there was garbage on the tracks to catch on fire because they took out all the trash cans in the station post 9/11? Shouldn't BART have a better way of alerting passengers about track emergencies? Is it......

No one does mafia like the Chinese mafia: the FBI has gotten in on the investigation of the mysterious death of Chinatown businessman Allen Leong, who was shot to death in his office on Jackson Street. Leong, who was active in a number of Chinatown fraternal groups, also known as tongs, had rejected another tong's request for $100,000. The rejected group then vandalized a number of storefronts and sent taunting letters to Leong's tong, to......

Today is the President's State of the Union speech, which basically means staying completely away from the TV or the non-Lindsey Lohan obsessed internets for the night lest we get over-run with a tidal wave of bile that these things cause. We hear this year's speech is going to be a doozy too-- while W. shreds the constitution, all the Republicans in congress will sit back and smoke cigars lit by $100 bills given to them by Jack Abramoff. Which raises the question of what to do? Well, there's always NetFlix, of course, as well as good old TiVo. It's also a good night to go to the movies and while Brokeback Mountain is all too obvious of a choice, not to mention something we've all seen by now, we'd like to suggest the Underworld: Evolution as there's something appropriate about watching a blood-drenched movie featuring both Vampires, Werewolves and Kate Beckinsale in a black leather outfit. Ba Bow! ...

Better start walking down Chestnut with your arms defensively crossed, folks -- the SFPD is hot in pursuit of a serial groper in a light-colored SUV. Handsie stopped four women on the street between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. to ask for directions and then started up with the touching. All four women managed to get free. Handsie is a white male, about 160 pounds, and was wearing a white shirt, a blue shirt, a plaid shirt, and a tan jacket. That's a lotta layering there, pal. And speaking of handsies, two Niners season tickets holders, along with the ACLU, have sued the NFL. No, not for the Niners sucking, but because they're tired of being patted down before going into the stadium. The NFL says they put a league-wide requirement for patdowns before games post-9/11. The ACLU previously sued in Tampa Bay and got an injunction on patdowns before Buccaneer games for the rest of this season. ... and let's get into the holiday spirit! A good samaritan in Concord who hastily left his car running on the side of the road as he dashed to help a family trapped in a flipped-over SUV was busy trying to free three children from their seat belts as he saw someone else dash into his truck and drive it away. Everyone's fine, but the samaritan's out a 1989 white Chevy truck with wood paneling on the side, license plate number 3U55070. ...

As we settled into our seats for the world premiere of documentary It's My Country Too, there was a generalized hubbub as a tall man wearing black and carrying a guitar case strode down the aisle. We heard his escort say, "It's so weird that no one's recognizing you!" Turns out that man is Pakistani-American rock star Salman Ahmed, the narrator of the documentary It's My Country Too. Ahmed is the lead guitarist for the band Junoon, which has been called the U2 of Pakistan. We think this makes Ahmed Bono (scroll down to read Bono's letter to Ahmed), since the Edge doesn't seem to take too many positions on global politics. It's My Country Too follows Ahmed as he travels America trying to see how 9/11 politics have affected the Pakistani-American community. After the jump: Muslim comedians, Muslim lawyers, and the founders of the website Muslims for Bush (who are Salman Ahmed's aunt, uncle, and cousin). Picture of Salman Ahmed from the BBC website...

Here we are playing the old curmudgeon again -- but, seriously, we can't stand being buzzed by those super loud, super scary Blue Angels as they practice their feats of derring-do around the oversized office bulding we work in. Last year we were spared their scare tactics, as they didn't come around for Fleet Week. This year, it looks as though we'll be hiding under our desk again every time they thunder by, just......