Citing anti-freedom of religion sentiment, Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill over the weekend blocking any and all circumcision bans in the state of California. Assembly bill 768, penned in response to San Francisco's controversial (and, admittedly, somewhat misguided) failed circumcision ban, will bar citizens from impinging upon Jewish and Muslim rituals involving foreskin snipping -- religious acts that some have decried as male genitalia mutilation.

In addition to sparking some of the laziest journalistic puns this side of Carrie Bradshaw, the hasty (and, according to many, anti-Semitic) San Francisco circumcision ban would have made it a misdemeanor for anyone under 18 to perform one -- even for religious reasons. It would have been punishable by a $1,000 fine and/or up to a year in jail.

Fun fact: Circumcision is required for every muslim boy before entering the mosque and performing prayers and other rituals. If the mood should strike, the video below features the circumcision of Muslim boy. (The comments on Youtube are ripe with wackadoo. Naturally.)

[KTVU]

Tagged under "Pretty sure this is the first time I've seen someone who wasn't homeless expose himself on 22nd" on Uptown Almanac is this marvelous NSFW photo of a drunk man whipping out his dick in some misguided effort to intimidate the cops in their riot gear. This all went down at Mission and 22nd last night, and we're pretty sure this is the first time we've seen a man expose himself in celebration of a Giants victory.

Ah, San Francisco. You do love your exposed genitalia, no matter what the occasion.

[Uptown Almanac - NSFW]

Candid shot from yesterday's St. Stupid's Day Parade.

NSFW version after the jump.

Yeah, yeah. We stuck this in Day Around the Bay, but we feel it merits its own post. (Besides, we'd hate for some local bloggers to go one day without bashing us in private for being "too gay now." We digress.)

While filming Gus Van Sant's Milk in San Francisco last year, Sean Penn was overcome with joy shocked at the size of co-star James Franco's reproductive organ during the filming of nude scenes. Finally, Franco revealed to a curious Penn that his man meat was, in fact, a prosthetic. " A couple of weeks later we did this scene," Franco says, "where we're both dancing and we're naked, and we both have prosthetic penises" which is when he broke the news to a (presumably) deflated Penn.

Still, we didn't know Van Sant's ode to former City Supervisor Harvey Milk involved so much (and such massive) full-frontal. We're buying tickets today. (Pink News)

-- San Mateo Bridge shuts down, then opens. Ta-da. [Examiner]

-- Dan Noyes on Jerry Lucas, the sanity-estranged man who followed a then-pregnant Jill Rabinowitz into her garage, severely beating her with a can of paint. He might soon get sprung from the funny farm. [ABC7]

-- Streets such as "Van Ness Avenue, Broadway...Harrison Street" and more could turn into toll roads under a proposed city plan to ease traffic congestion. [Chron]

-- Viggo Mortensen shows off his penis during a nude fight scene (albeit a tasteful one, of course) in David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises. [SJ Merc]

-- Newsom and cults. (Of love, that is. No, not really. Something about a questionable yoga and holistic health sect called Dahn.) [The Snitch]

-- Damien Hirst's "For the Love of God": a pretty, pretty diamond-studded skull! [SFBG]

-- Save-the-date info on another Transbay Terminal meeting at City Hall. Eee! [Curbed SF]

-- TWoP underwent a most radical transformation, visually. [TWoP]


Image: Metropolitan Transportation Commission

Halloween is a special time. Not only is it perfect for carousing in purely ridiculous get-ups (when else can you go out of the house with a giant penis on your head?), one can also dabble in the dark arts and no one seems to care. We here at the SFist love a Satanic possession just as much as the next guy, and of all the weekends of the year this is definitely the best for it.

In the spirit of Hell on earth, we went out looking for a tasty bar that would potentially satisfy our most nefarious desires. Ok so maybe not so dramatically, but we did find a tasty little bar off the beaten Mission path.

Delicately balanced in one part slick, one part dive, one part Vampira Elvira, the Attic, down at Mission and 24th Street, is a traincar of a bar lit only with red lanterns and a superficial brightness coming from sources unseen.

is good old-fashioned B grade camp and the audience for the almost-midnight showing of this soft-porn "monster" movie came with the right attitude. We were tipped off that this wasn't your average scary movie by the crowd who whooped, hollered, pumped their fists in the air and recited dialogue during the promo for Zardoz -- a sci-fi movie playing the next day (which features a long haired Sean Connery running around an arid plain wearing what looked like a red diaper).

The problem with The Beast wasn't the lack of scaryiness. The Chewbaca wannabe running around the forest chasing pretty girls while ejaculating spooge from his comically large monster penis was definitely the best part of the movie. The problem with The Beast was that it took almost a full hour of really bad movie making to get to the good part. There was some attempts at plot going on but who knows what it was?

It was midnight and we were already tired and pretty bored. Clearly, so was the woman sitting next to us who kept falling asleep and snoring loudly until the giant monster penis finally made its appearance.

SFist MiHi Ahn, contributing

Attempting to read an issue is sort of like climbing Mount Everest -- several times, we nearly had to give up in exhaustion. If your stomach is strong and your attention span is short, you may feel an urge to struggle your way through the books simply as a test of your own constitution.

After the jump: Tron: the comic book; and all the riveting drama of chess.

While mainstream America's attention has been focused on TomKat's recent offspring and Brangelina's pending progeny, we joined San Francisco's arthouse hipster crowd at the Kabuki late Wednesday night for the local unveiling of , the creative brainchild of Matthew "most important American artist of his generation" Barney and the inimitable Björk. It was screened as part of the SF International Film Festival in collaboration with SFMoMA, which mounts a major solo exhibition of Barney's work on June 23.

We were quite excited about the event, not just because we're Björkophiles and longtime Barney followers, but because it's an exceptionally well-suited creative pairing: two artists who both think unflinchingly about sexuality, who are meticulous in their opulent choreographing of sight/sound, whose consciousnesses seem to be completely unaware of any boundary separating reality and mythology, and who are real-life lovers playing out the consummation of a relationship.

A full house settled into the theater at 11:30PM to listen to Matthew Barney introduce the film, which runs just under 2 1/2 hours. After the lights came back on around 2:10AM, we overheard one attendee say, "Yo, wake up. That was some f***ed-up s***."

More about whale intestines, clowns, cannibalism, and Matthew Barney's penis, as well as some viewing tips, in the second part of this post.

Friend of SFist M. C-, contributing.