Of course Hillary Clinton is still a formidable candidate, especially in the bigger states. This all adds up to a certain humdinger of an election. This campaign trail is heading right to your doorstep, San Francisco. The establishment vs. the indies -- who will win? Enjoy your evanescent enfranchisement while it lasts!

Throbbing Pain
Ars Technica is reporting on a new California bill that would ban the use of toxins in the production of cell phones and other electronic devices. If passed, they claim, the bill would shape environmental legislation and impose restrictions on electronics manufacturers in the rest of the country.

Sensitivity to Light and other Stimuli
Google announced a new Google Page Creator service on Thursday for the simple, HTML-free creation of ugly web pages with 100MB of web space. The company had already cut off new sign-ups within hours of releasing the service, because of high demand. Interested users can still get on the mailing list to be notified when new accounts are available. Alternatively, they could try Google's own blogspot, Yahoo's geocities, WordPress.com, Yahoo 360, MySpace, Livejournal....

Nausea and Vomiting
Apple's iTunes Music Store countdown contest is over, with the billionth song downloaded being a track by Coldplay. The "winner" was a user from Michigan who now has a scholarship to Julliard (not some obscure music school, as some cynics predicted) named in his honor.

Speech Problems
A hearing today was supposed to determine the fate of the BlackBerry, which has been under threat of a shutdown because of patent infringement. CNet News reports that the service remains available for now and also provides a transcript of the Judge's ruling.

Inability to Focus
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has been getting attention for his interview with the Globe and Mail in which he criticizes the company for undermining its philosophy and splitting its focus. He says that the switch to Intel processors undermined the company's "different is better" philosophy, and that the company should spin off iPod and other consumer electronics into a separate division, to allow the rest of the company to focus on computers and operating systems.

In a departure from most superhero movies, is told from the point of view of, well, the sidekick. "I think the sidekick, in some ways, is Canada," says Michael "It's not purposeful, but I can see, being a Canadian, why I would choose a sidekick to be my hero. There's a part of me that feels, the odds are I wouldn't be the guy with the power." But in fact, Michael's won himself some considerable clout with this film; Focus Features, a studio for hipster navel-gazers, negotiated with Michael for the rights to remake his film with a big budget. They nearly made him promise never to show the original: "some of Sidekick can only exist in the indie world. They were like, 'great job, we'll buy the screenplay off you; and you'll get rid of THIS movie. Don't show it.' And I was like, I can't. I've been working on it for over year and a half now, all my friends and family worked on it, and I believe in it."

One scene in Thursday and Friday's screenings that won't be in the remake is Micahel's favorite. "The alleyway scene is tricky. In fact, in rewriting, it was one of the first things gone. It was a little risky for a mainstream superhero movie. ... Victor decides to teach [some criminals] a lesson by making them, uh, do things to each other. And that's a realistic thing to do -- 'you making fun of me, how about THIS?' And it's one of those moments that the audience is laughing, and then when Victor takes it too far, where maybe a decent person wouldn't, and the audience gets quiet, like there's a nervous laughter. And that scene is one that I had to fight for ... it works because everybody in the theater questions why they were laughing and enjoying it in the first place."

We'll be running a review of Sidekick after Thursday's screening (4:30, The Roxie; then same time and place on Saturday). As an added bonus, Michael and a slew of cast and crew will be present at the screenings.

We keep saying we're going to start a We Read The Glossies column to cover San Francisco Magazine and 7x7, but you know, we just can't do it. As a very wise co-editor of ours once said, "it's like reading someone else's yearbook."

Well, there's even less reason to read the rapidly-diminishing content in the local glossies this month -- San Francisco magazine unilaterally pulled an article they were planning on running about sexual harassment allegations at the Thunder Valley casino near Sacramento (side note -- shouldn't Sacramento Magazine be running that article instead? Just a thought.) -- because the new publisher of SF Magazine was worried that Thunder Valley's owner would pull their advertising out of the magazine (for the other casino they own, the Red Rock). However, the Thunder Valley owners were like, "we didn't lodge any complaints about it at all."

The new publisher, Modern Luxury, is refusing to comment, and the president of the magazine was all like, "well, yes, we did pull the piece, but it was for a lot of different reasons." The executive editor is fuming, not the least because the story then got snapped up by Salon, which ran it today. (We don't have the attention span to sit through that ad they make you sit through to read their articles, but we'll give you the link anyways.)

John Burks, a SFSU journalism prof (who was a editor at SF Magazine's former incarnation, San Francisco Focus) is hopping mad about the whole thing. "I don't think of myself as the Lone Ranger, but if you're going to do that, why do journalism? Why not just put out catalogs?" Or yearbooks!

Red state on blue state violence! The conservative Colorado-based group Focus on the Family (the guys who came out against SpongeBob Squarepants) has announced that it's withdrawing all its money from Wells Fargo banks because the SF-based bank gave $50,000 to GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Discrimination), solely off of profits made in the San Francisco area. You knew that $2 ATM surcharge fee was going someplace!

Focus on the Family says it can't keep their money at a place that gives money to an organization that pledges to use funds to "fight the anti-gay industry," and has immediately withdrawn the $145 million it's stashed in the bank. Wells Fargo responds, "We absolutely made a $50,000 grant to GLAAD, and we're absolutely proud of our support for the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community." Wells Fargo also notes, though, that the donation was not specifically earmarked for fighting the anti-gay industry.

Last year, Wells Fargo gave $2 million to gay and lesbian organizations.