You’ll notice this year’s Burning Man Temple looks a lot different than previous years’ laser cut jigsaw designs of David Best. Best has handed off the task to his previous lead engineers and architects, who’ve come up with a simple but striking concept composed of flat panels. But that’s not the most significant difference in this year’s Temple, as this year’s builders have a new ecological focus in which they’re using wood from trees killed by drought conditions and global warming.

“Throughout Nevada and California there are dramatic changes occurring in our forests,” tree scientist Lee Klingler notes on the Temple 2017 website. “Pines, oaks, and many other kinds of trees are dying in unprecedented numbers from diseases and pests such as Sudden Oak Death and pine bark beetles. Last year scientists reported more than 100 million dead trees in California, and just last month scientists reported over 800 million dead trees in Colorado. Indeed, all of the western US states are experiencing elevated levels of forest decline. Many point to climate change as the cause of this decline.”

Roughly 100 million trees have died in California forests over the course of the drought, according to Cal Fire estimates, all of which need to be cleared and burned to control fire risks. PG&E was tasked with clearing 300 large Ponderosa pine trees killed by bark beetles that were threatening power lines near Yosemite, and now those dead trees are getting a last bit of life at Burning Man.

“They could spark a wildfire, they could cause a power outage, they could fall into a home,” PG&E spokesperson Lynsey Paolo told ABC 7 last month, who took a tour of both the Tuoulome County site where the trees were cut down and also the West Oakland studio where the trees were being repurposed into boards for the Temple. “Reuse and recycle is important to the folks who are participating in Burning Man, and it’s important to us as well.”

That wood has been milled into the 3,000 boards being used to create this year’s Temple. "It’s about a hundred thousand pounds of wood," Temple engineer Mark Sinclair told NBC Bay Area. "It’s not structural grade wood but it’s good enough for our purposes."

If you’ve never dragged yourself out to Burning Man, the Temple is one of the few solemn and sober installations where people build small shrines to their deceased friends. It’s symbolically pretty cool that the wood itself is also coming from dead trees this year. But more importantly, it’s a fantastic and sensible avoidance of waste that the Temple is made of wood that a big utility company was just going to torch anyway.

Related: Check Out This Cool Hyperlapse Video Of Burning Man Interactive Art

Well this is odd. Famed Scientology evangelist and sometimes actor Tom Cruise is father to a fully grown son now who's a globe-trotting DJ, in case you weren't aware, and that son, Connor Cruise, must like San Francisco because he's celebrating his 21st birthday here in January by spinning a set at Temple nightclub. As NBC Bay Area tells us, the party is on January 29, over a week after Connor's actual birthday, on January 17.

It's unclear if this is his "official" birthday celebration, or if his famous dad will be making an appearance. It may just be that he has a gig at Temple and they're branding it as his birthday, but in any event, tickets are $15.

Connor Cruise has been at the DJ thing since he was a teenager, and TMZ made a thing about his putting on some weight last year, attributing this to his lifestyle. He's apparently still down with Scientology despite some suggestion a couple years ago that he was loyal to "mum" Nicole Kidman and might therefore leave the church. Here he was last January wishing pal and hardcore Scientologist Kirstie Alley a happy birthday, saying she's his "#spiritanimal". Cruise is close friends with Alley's daughter Lillie Parker.

Below, one of his mixes on SoundCloud from two years ago.

So, it's the eleventh hour and you've decided against crushing up a couple of Ambiens into a mug of fume blanc and calling it a year. Instead, you've turned that frown upside down, choosing to see what's happening tonight on New Year's Eve 2008. Good for you. And to help you out, here are some last-minute events for each neighborhood in the San Francisco. Just follow links for more info; they will provide you with more in-depth details.

And remember, we care about you guys, so remember to drink plenty and drink often tonight.

• Haight: Club Deluxe NYE Comedy Extravaganza (Stand up comedy while betting buzzed off of gin martinis.)
• Fisherman's Wharf: New Year's Eve Peace Party at the Wax Museum (NYE at the Wharf? Why not.)
• Bayview-Hunter's Point: Cyclecide Bike Rodeo New Year’s Eve Show at Ace Auto Junkyard (Dear God, run for your life-- um, we mean, this will be a most festive, cyclist-friendly bash.)
• Downtown/Rincon Hill: Diplo (DJ/genius spins at Temple)
• Fillmore-Pacific Heights: Count Basie Orchestra with Ledisi (We love us some Ledisi. And she sings for the imbibed masses at Yoshi's SF.)
• Tenderloin: Bearracuda New Years' Eve (Party in cracktown for large and/or enthusiastically hairy homosexual men.)

The first, and best, is Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple. Through interviews with former members and survivors of the Jim Jones cult, along with loads of archival footage, you get an eerie portrait of a good idea gone bad. In hindsight, it's hard to imagine how anyone could have fallen under the spell of Jim Jones, he of the questionable jet-black hair and sideburns, ever present sunglasses, tacky leisure suits and, more importantly, bombastic personality.

But by listening to some of the cult's members, you can understand how the Peoples Temple--which actually began in the 1950s--latched on to the dying hippie ideals of the 1960s and 70s, and the people who held on to those ideals; things like racial equality for all, caring for ones elders, and self-sustaining communities all sound like great ideas. But the church was being run by a lunatic, and it is incredibly sad and horrifying how many people lost their lives because they didn't realize how insane Jones was until it was way too late.

Slightly less engrossing is Summer of Love, which focuses on that historical summer of 1967 in San Francisco. Perhaps it's just because having grown up here, we've heard enough about the summer of love--and have stumbled over enough burnouts from said summer on Haight Street--that the nostalgia factor didn't really hit us. But the documentary did make us realize that while many consider the "Summer of Love" the beginning of the whole hippie thing, it was really the beginning of the end of it, and peace and love would never be the same again. Some of the summer's participants interviewed include Peter Coyote, Joel Selvin, Peter Berg, and Judy Goldhaft.

Jonestown airs Sunday the 26th at 8 p.m. on KRCB channel 22.

Summer of Love airs Sunday at 9 p.m. and 2 a.m. on KCSM channel 17.

After seeing two women-centered movies at the Frameline LGBT Film Festival on Friday night, we've determined that you can tell the difference between a lesbian movie made for a mainstream audience and a lesbian movie made for lesbians by the so-called "butch" in the film.

(Ci Qing), a Taiwanese import, played at the Castro on Friday night and as far as we could tell, the only thing that made one of the female leads "the butch one" was her sensible shoes. Takeko (aka: the butch one) is a sensitive tattoo artist who is holding on to a lot of baggage. It's a wonder she has any sex at all since every time she gets down with the ladies, something horrific seems to happen.

Her love interest is Jade, a soft porn webcam girl, with mommy abandonment issues. Jade looks like what would happen if a Kewpie doll mated with Hello Kitty. She's basically a living stuffed-animal with an oversized head and the affect of a super girly kindergartner. Next to Jade, even Shirley Temple would be "the butch one."

We enjoyed Spider Lilies but were confused by the ending. We think it ends on a happy note but what's up with the sad music?

Spider Lilies plays again on Tuesday, June 19 at the Parkway.

SFist Mihi, contributing.

Last Thursday night we squeezed into 330 Ritch to see Spoon, one of our favorite bands of all time. We'd just helped celebrate former SFist Eve's birthday at Tempest Bar and picked up our friend after her fire dancing class at Temple of Poi, and thankfully got to the venue just as Spoon hit the stage. Spoon were the consummate professionals as always, delivering a tight set without much banter or bullshit. We love them for playing a diverse set of songs from across their many releases. The opening riff of "Fitted Shirt" gave us a rush of excitement and nostalgia especially; such a great song about such an unlikely subject. The title of Spoon's new record has us puzzled, and hearing Britt's pronounce it like machine gun fire - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga - was interesting to hear, but, yeah, we still don't get it. Speaking of Spoon, we're headed to their (and our) old hometown of Austin this week for a sunny vacation. The bad news is that we picked a week with no less than four shows that we're crushed to miss: Chris Garneau at the Hemlock tonight, Arcade Fire at the Greek on Friday and Saturday, Laura Veirs at Cafe Du Nord on Tuesday and Client at Amoeba on Wednesday. Watch Chris Garneau's video for "Relief", off of Music For Tourists and then read this week's show recommendations below.

Tonight there's that must-see show at the Hemlock with Chris Garneau, Liam Carey and Laura Weinbach. As you saw from the video, singer-songwriter Garneau sings torch songs with a reserved passion (think Sufjan Stevens' quiet voice). This is a show we're dying to see, but we're on vacation in Austin, remember! Also tonight, our friends at The Bay Bridged present Social Studies, Tempo No Tempo and The Lovely Public at Rickshaw Stop. Popscene presents a record release party for the locals in Scissors For Lefty and Brakes Brakes Brakes at 330 Ritch. There's a note on the website that tells us Brakes Brakes Brakes was formerly known as The Brakes, and this just makes us laugh. Are there any "The" names that haven't been taken? The Bougainvilleas? The Dodecahedrons?

While intra-city burrito debates are a San Francisco tradition, we were a bit shocked to come across this article from a San Diego-based pub in which a "burrito expert" of sorts totally disses the San Francisco burrito! It's on!

The money quote from this Mr. Crawford: "Having lived [in San Francisco], I know that they're really good only if you're drunk, but compared to the San Diego burrito, they're not even close. They're wrapped in foil, steamed and they put beans and rice in everything."

Sir, we drink frequently, and enjoy our local burritos equally sober as we do inebriated. (We will, perhaps, cop to eating with a little more gusto when altered).

Wha-ha? We're at a loss of words. We've surely had great Mexican food in San Diego -- particularly the fish tacos -- but to paint with an equally broad brush as Mr. Crawford did: sorry, San Diego -- your burritos ain't even close to ours. We asked our own expert panel of highly-regarded, Bay Area-based burrito enthusiasts -- Dan Johnson from Burritophile and Charles Hodgkins from Burritoeater -- for responses to this piece.

Mr. Johnson corrected Mr. Crawford's assertion that "There's really no telling when burritos started."

"It's really easy to find out the origins of the burrito," said Johnson. "Check it here."

Further, Dan tells us that San Francisco burritos are wrapped in foil for two reasons: 1) To keep them warm if you get 'em to go; and 2) To help thwart leakage problems like we see in [as pictured in the article] chile relleno burrito.

Finally, in Mr. Johnson's opinion:

"There are some pretty awesome burritos in San Diego, but it's kind of like the Triple-A baseball of the burrito world. You can get a really good one every now and then, but you'll see consistently more boneheaded assembly errors than you will up here in the big leagues."

In the spirit of brevity being the soul of wit, Mr. Hodgkins stated: "San Diego's OK with me. 72 and sunny all the time, right? And where would we be without Stone Temple Pilots? Not sure about the fries-in-the-burrito thing down there, though."

It can get pretty crowded in the cafeteria-style seating area, but on warm weekends it’s nicer to sit outside on the lawn outside of the temple anyway. While the lines to get food can sometimes get a little hectic, it’s smooth sailing after that: You sit outside; you eat your meal; you soak up your Vitamin D before the rain hits on Monday.

Remember to exchange your money for tokens, and then buy your food with the tokens. (We think they make you get tokens for tax purposes). The temple scene is one of those only-in-Berkeley events where old and young hippies roam freely. But the inexpensive meal + picnic is well worth your tokens (did we mention the mango sticky rice?).

Get there on the early side, as the brunch ends by two. For you early-rising city folk, the temple is close to Ashby BART (the corner of Russell and Martin Luther King).

By SFist Jessie

But that's just us.

We were pretty excited about seeing the play at the Orpheum Theater primarily because it's the first time we've ever seen it actually produced on a stage by professionals. The only other time we've seen it performed was by some community theater group that did it at a church to commemorate Easter and some theater troupe in the city here that had a tradition of performing it at the late and lamented Paradise Lounge. But this was the first time we'd see it with a full on orchestra and props and actual real-life professional actors. And not just any actors, but Ted Neely who played Jesus in the movie and on stage (but not on the original soundtrack, which, as we all know, was played by Ian Gillian who later was the lead singer of Deep Purple). The play also featured Corey Glover of Living Colour (the band, not the TV show) in the meaty role of Judas. How could it not miss? We were so there.