For both the New Orleans Saints and the 49ers, this season has .

There's no worse feeling in fandom than unmet expectations. And both of the NFL's gold-helmeted teams have seen the bottom drop out of their dreams for the 2007 season.

* New Orleans vs. San Francisco
Sunday, October 28, 2007. 1:00 PM, PST.
Week 08
The Battle Of Fool's Gold

After being counted out of the 2006 season post-Hurricane Katrina, the Saints made an unlooked-for offensive surge with rookie Head Coach Sean Payton calling the shots, won an utterly surprising amount of games, and plowed all the way to the NFC title game.

(Including mooshing the 49ers 34-10 in Week 13 at the Superdome, kneading the Niners around like a gramma gently working meatloaf into shape. Speaking of which, all the money spent on rebuilding the Superdome could have been better spent in the community of New Orleans. Football is a sport -- it can wait -- but people still need our help in New Orleans. It's not like FEMA is gonna get the job done. Donate to standard-checked charitable organization with this link. Do what you can. Now, back to the column.)

Since that final game of 2006 in Chicago, the [nu ˈorliənz] American football franchise has fallen hard. The weak secondary wasn't really improved in the offseason. Their hard-charging RB Deuce McAllister is lost for the year with an injury. Opposing defenses have been able to fluster QB Drew Brees, disrupting the triggerman of Payton's accuracy-requiring offensive scheme.

One of the best things about living in San Francisco is all the film festivals! We thought we were on top of them, and then we just found out this weekend that the SF Black Film Festival is starting later this week too. We can't keep up!

The Ninth Annual Black Film Festival runs this weekend and next at the Theater Artaud and the African-American Art and Culture Complex, and is featuring African and African-American movies in all genres: e.g., a romantic comedy with Vanessa Williams, foreign films from Africa, foreign films from Ireland, short films, a movie described as "the African Rambo," music documentaries (on the queens of reggae!), and what looks like a harrowing film about Hurricane Katrina, among many, many others.

They're also showing kids' movies at the Museum of the African Diaspora, hosting a black music and film festival at the Apple Store, and it looks like Busta Rhymes might be coming to town as well.

SFist is belatedly getting in our application for press access even as we speak, and we're hoping to be there as usual, reporting in on the scene!

What?! Never owned a book? In America? Surely not here. Maybe Biafra, or someplace else we tried to mail our uneaten "children are starving in Biafra" peas. But here?

Yup. The Hoopoe Books Share Literacy Program aims to solve this problem by providing at-risk kids with books and supportive materials they can own and learn to read and read better. The book series is based on something called "Teaching Stories"...

Teaching-Stories™ is the name given to this literary genre, which is all but unknown in Western cultures. Educators and psychologists recognize these stories as developing higher-level thinking skills in both children and adults. They do this by presenting a series of unexpected patterns and relationships carrying multiple levels of meaning that can be discovered at the reader’s own pace. These stories encourage flexibility of thought essential to understanding and coping with our complex world.

That sounds hard and fun and the illustrations and descriptions of the books are great. Kaiser Permanente is sponsoring the program locally but Share Literacy could always use your donations. One of the most timely options might be to donate directly to the books for Katrina kids.

As much as we said we were going to avoid the NFL Draft, we found ourselves on a lazy Saturday morning tuning in and getting hooked. In its way, its got that same addictive quality as a good reality show-- it's totally mindless yet totally absorbing. And like your good reality show, there's all the suspense going on once you figure out all the various storylines, especially with this year as it early on became "What About Matt?"

What makes the draft so compelling is because in a way, the draftee's entire NFL career is being determined at that very moment they get picked. It's a little existential drama being played out in real-time. Get drafted by the right team with the right system? Hello Pro Bowls and Superbowls. Get drafted by a bad team with a horrible system? Better hope you have a good financial advisor as your career could be over sooner than later. In a way, the player vs. the team is the NFL's nature vs. nurture argument. Is it the player who is good or is it the system? Would Joe Montana be Joe Montana if he played for the Cardinals? Or any other team that didn't have Bill Walsh running things? Just look at Steve Young-- with the Bucs he was just plain horrible, but then again the Bucs were just plain horrible. It was only because he was traded to the 49ers and put in the hands of some of the smartest, most competent football types that he became an NFL Hall of Famer.

And don't think for one moment the players didn't realize that too, which is why we got into watching people's reactions. Oh, they've all had enough media training and experience to say the "right thing" but sometimes their faces would betray different emotion. Like Reggie Bush. Bush didn't look all that happy when he was drafted 2nd and by the Saints. Yeah, he's about to make some big money, but he's gotta be thinking that he's just been drafted by a historically doomed franchise playing in a newly doomed city that plays in a stadium that's being rebuilt because it was trashed when hundreds of stranded Katrina survivors used it as shelter. Sure doesn't sound as much fun as playing in, say Houston or pretty much anywhere else. And you can't tell us that Leinart wasn't saying every prayer he could possibly think of in hopes he'd get drafted by the Jets, only to eventually be drafted by the Cardinals. He was that close to being able to move up from from chasing LA co-eds to New York models with Nick Lachey and now he's stuck chasing whatever they have in Arizona, playing QB for maybe possibly the worst franchise in sports and in a cartoonish looking uniform that gives nobody any sense of dignity. How bummed was he?

Thanks for sending in more earthquake-related events, guys! There's so many that we're doing another post of upcoming events! Keep 'em coming in and we'll keep posting them. Don't forget, the big anniversary is April 18.

The SF People's Organization is sponsoring a progressive's perspective on disasters in post-Katrina America, with a panel discussion on April 17th about how San Francisco can prevent displacement of the disenfranchised in the next disaster. 6:30-8:30 at Gordon Lau Elementary (950 Clay, between Powell and Stockton).

This Saturday, April 8, QuakeHold, who manufactures earthquake safety equipment like those straps you should really have on your bookshelves and china cabinets, is sponsoring an earthquake awareness day at the new Daly City Home Depot (in the Westlake shopping center). They'll go over how to prep your house and will be giving away free safety fasteners. 10 a.m.-2 p.m.

San Francisco City Guides are hosting Earthquake Walks throughout this entire year, in period costume, and discussing the impact of the quake on the lives of everyday people. Flee with them from SoMA to the safety of Union Square!

More events after the jump. Here's the post from yesterday with more listings.

So why did Elsbernd push it off to committee, a sure-fire way to delay the sucker and keep the thing from ever being voted upon? Says Elsbernd in Matier & Ross: "I have more important things to do than to vote for President Bush's impeachment.' But because the idea that the San Francisco Board of Supervisors should always involve itself into national and foreign affairs is such a given, Beyond Chron wonders whether Elsbernd is either just trying to stick it to Daly, or-- horror of horrors!-- exhibiting support for Bush and Cheney.

Why this resolution is important because, once again, San Francisco will be leading the way to affect change throughout the country. We're sure once the resolution passes, an Assemblyman in Peoria will be so inspired that they will push a similar resolution there and once Peoria calls for it, well, buh-bye Bush. Because that's what always happens when we pass one of these resolutions.

Beyond Chron has another theory, one formulated after a discussion with a member of the politically attuned and well connected San Francisco People's Party, about how with all that BushCo. have done, they just might be guilty of enough war crimes to be thrown in front of the War Crimes Tribunal. Which will SO happen.

Actually, it might in that one country on the board of the Hague is Venezuela, which is run by Bush's good buddy Hugo Chavez. And Chavez is just crazy enough to do it. And by crazy, we mean well more than missing a few episodes of a "Buffy" Season Three box set DVD. Like more than half the season and every episode in the second half after Faith goes bad and joins up with the Mayor and even probably the awesome episode where Willow has to impersonate her bad-ass lesbian Vampire alter-ego (we lurve that episode). It goes without saying that with Chavez leading the way, the other nations will follow through and it'll only be a matter of months before Bush is hauled away in prison t's.

All of this thanks to Chris Daly.

In other news, we were pretty bummed when we realized we had missed Oprah's Christmastime Favorite Things episode when it aired last month, so we can't tell you how thrilled we are that it's being repeated TODAY! (On ABC at 4 p.m., or late tonight at 1:30 a.m.)

While watching her pimp all those overpriced products is entertaining in itself, the real thrill comes from seeing the reactions of the audience. You may have seen "Saturday Night Live"'s spoof (QT) of one of the shows and--minus the women giving birth in the aisles--it really wasn't that much of an exaggeration. In the past, recipients of the favorite things were just members of an audience who were lucky enough to get tickets to that day's show. But this time around, the audience is full of Hurricane Katrina survivors relief volunteers who thought they were coming to a hurricane follow-up show. Can't wait to see THOSE reactions!

We've checked out her list of things and were amused to find Oprah pimps her own 20th anniversay DVD on the show. (Well, you can't become one of country's richest women through modesty, we suppose.)

Now pardon us, as we just must do some last-minute shopping and get that $1,800.00 Philip Stein Teslar diamond-encrusted watch for everyone on our list.

Sheya, right! We suck at resolutions. Did you know dental floss can go bad? Yeah, that's how good we are with following through on our resolutions. It helps when you do it with friends, of course, which is why we love the idea of PledgeBank. You pledge to do something, but only if a certain number of other people do it with you. That seems like it would help take the pressure off a bit, doesn't it? And yes, you do still have to get up and do it. But you won't be alone.

One of the pledges we've seen on PledgeBank really intrigues us - pledge to become a mentor to people in the developing world. We love to see that ambition, and they're nearly halfway there. But you could pledge to do something simpler, like sending CDs to Katrina survivors or donate to Iraqi schools.

You certainly don't need to be so participatory high-tech about it. Just between you and yourself you can pledge to do something great with yourself next year. Tell us all about it - what do you want to do?