-- Toshio Hirano: Local country music star -- alongside his trusty bassist, Kenan O'Brien -- croons tonight at 9 p.m. at Amnesia; free. -- San Francisco Contemporary Music Players: David Milnes leads this nineteen-member strong group of experimental and orchestral musicians, many of whom are already members of the San Francisco Symphony, Ballet, or Opera Orchestras. Starts at 8 p.m. at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; $10-27. -- Arse Elektronika's Afterparty: Tech-, machine-sex......

Sean Penn isn't the only person who was captivated by the Chris McCandless story (first made popular in the Jon Krakauer book, "Into The Wild," and now a major motion picture directed by Penn, promoted on Oprah, and playing at a theatre near you.) In the early '90's Chris McCandless abandoned all his worldly goods, took on the name Alexander Supertramp and embarked upon a Thoreau-esque adventure trekking around North America, ultimately perishing in an......

With unseasonable weather descending upon much of North America, schools getting ready to reconvene, and sports seasons getting exciting, it's a busy time of year for us here in the Ist-A-Verse. Luckily, even with all the things we have to do, we still managed to get together to let you know what we've all been up to. After cooling down from a hot weekend of many badass Sunset Junction Street Fair photo dispatches, LAist asked......

Above poster by Trudy L. Cole If the purple Impeach banner at Sunday's Giant's game got you all giddy with subversive glee, then tomorrow's opening of the Propaganda III World Tour at the Phoenix Hotel is sure to have you hyperventilating. Celebrate our country's {insert George W's voice here} "freedom" {end voice} by perusing hundreds of culture-jamming, political posters from around the globe, the act of which will make old Uncle Sam's hairy, gray......

It's near the end of March Madness, which means casual sports fans across the North America, and in the Bay Area in particular, start caring about the National Hockey League. Well, maybe "caring" is too strong a word. Noticing? Glancing at the hockey scores and standings when they're done with the stories about minor NFL signings, and baseball spring training notes and box scores? Remembering that the NHL exists? The Stanley Cup playoffs are right around the corner, and they're what most of the non-die hard hockey fans really care about. The NHL regular season is mostly ignored by the sports-viewing public, a situation made worse by the fact that the NHL is no longer on ESPN (or rather, ESPN2 when they didn't have more important things to broadcast, like meaty, red-faced dudes named Magnus pushing Peugeot’s around a beach somewhere), but rather the Food Network. ...

Cultural Learnings of Blogosphere for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of -Ist-a-verse Jagshemash! Borat is a hit. It's getting rave reviews, grossing millions, and definitely the most quotable thing we've seen in ages. But Borat seems to have missed most of the -ist cities, and we were all wondering how the film would have been different if he'd made his way around the world on the -ist tour. In Shanghai, Borat would be observing Inane Learnings......

Less than an hour north of the City, a lonely wedge of land juts out into the teeth of the Pacific swell. Almost completely separated from the Marin mainland by the grinding force of the San Andreas Fault (SAF), the Point Reyes Peninsula is a focal point for all kinds of natural forces.

Londonist prepares a Happy Birthday bath for Buddah this week and then things get all cliched. A madman goes on a rampage while axe-wiedling and London's mayor warns an American diplomat to avoid the kitchen if the heat bothers him so much. LAist has finally come around to purchasing tickets for Clipper Train. Hyper local dating sites are spamming L.A. neighborhoods and the fascinating Dame Darcy talks with LAist about art, the city and earthquakes.......

Before the screening of the documentary, They Chose China, Director Shuibo Wang stood in front of the audience and declared that San Francisco was his favorite city in North America. That already predisposed the largely gray-haired audience to feel kindly towards the director but then he further ingratiated himself by saying, "I have never experienced a festival like this. It is very very warm. This is a very sweet experience." Wang, whose previous documentary......

SFist interviews Tyrone Davies of blue vomit fame and Free Form Film Festival Proprietor...

This is a pretty boring week for TV. The only thing we're even halfway excited about is something Rita mentioned last week: There are some new episodes of "Animal Cops San Francisco" airing this week on Animal Planet. You can catch two episodes tomorrow at 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. There are also a few reality show season finales this week, but we can't seem to muster any enthusiasm for those. At 9 p.m.......

Well, the archaeologists from Cal have packed up their trowels and carted off the bones of what they believe is an adolescent Columbian Mammoth that were discovered last month in a San Jose drainage ditch (sometimes called the 'Guadalupe River') by local resident Roger Castillo (who was walking a live lupus familiaris specimen). The land officially belongs to the Santa Clara Valley Water Authority, who stand to inherit the bones, including two well-preserved tusks,......

SFist is proud of our coverage of local events, including SF IndieFest, SF Noise Pop, and Cinequest. We're really happy to continue this tradition with our coverage of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, running in San Francisco from March 10-17, Berkeley March 11-20 and San Jose from March 18-20. While our coverage will focus mainly of the San Francisco screenings, most of the films are being shown in multiple locations. Brought......

Slashdot today points out that Cops on Top, the organization that climbs peaks to memorialize fallen officers, has been keeping an audioblog from their ascent of Kilimanjaro in Tanzania to honor SFPD officer Isaac Espinoza, who was slain on the streets of San Francisco last year. The climbers have just returned to their high camp after cresting the peak, and have been using a combination of a satellite phone, open source blog software DasBlog......

Oakland one step closer to dream of Giant Pandas....

Earthquakes of magnitude 2-2.8 are nothing by San Francisco standards, but when Mount St. Helens starts feeling 10 of them in a 24-hour period, we here at SFist know that's not where we want to be. Mount St. Helens, the most active volcano in North America, last erupted in 1980, and has been closely scrutinized ever since. The USGS has issued a Notice of Volcanic Unrest, leading the US Forest Service to close many......