Variety is reporting that HBO Films has purchased the rights to the book Game of Shadows, the exposé penned by SF Chronicle reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams about the steroids lab BALCO and its relationship to star athletes Barry Bonds and others. (Courtesy Mediabistro.com.)

Ron Shelton (”Bull Durham,” “White Men Can’t Jump,” “Tin Cup”) will direct the film, to be shown on HBO.

How about Samuel L. Jackson to star?

Dear Mr. Business Suit in White Lexus,

I was the cyclist on Embarcadero, in the bike lane, when you almost hit me. I thought you were drunk- but you were on a cell phone.

I wanted to catch up with you at a stop sign- and tell you to get off your effen phone before you kill someone, but you managed to dash off waving your big fat Lexus butt around the car lane. Who knows, maybe it’s not the cell phone- you just don’t know how to steer. Maybe you had two martinis at lunch. Maybe you just hate people exercising on a beautiful winter day, bitter about your own entrapment in a career you detest, setting out on a two hour commute to your home in Alviso. I don’t know, I just know that seeing a stretch of white paint on a 1-ton car an inch from your handlebars is terrifying.

Thank you,

Someone That Now Understands Why Cyclists Have Attitude

Next: Almost killed by train
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San Francisco author Stephen Elliott, whose anthology Sex for America: Politically Inspired Erotica will be released early next year, has been out and about. Earlier this month he appeared at Eastern Michigan University to talk about fiction and politics, and last week he joined Mattilda Bernstein, Jennifer Blowdrier and others to read from the new issue of Instant City. Today he popped up in the New York Times Book Review’s blog offering a playlist of favorite tunes.

In addition to his writing, Elliott also founded LitPac to raise money for progressive candidates through readings and literary events. Their next event in San Francisco is January 19.
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Long the heavyweight of the East Bay jazz community, Yoshi’s tonight opens its brand-new 417-seat jazz club in the Fillmore. Here’s their SF club’s website and here’s the new location at 1330 Fillmore at Eddy.

3 stories of note, 2 that are victims fighting back and one goes in the category of incredibly stupid criminals. From the Central Station, Captain Dudley’s email newsletter (I’m so lazy). Since it’s almost the end of Nanowrimo, give me a break! I have 5K words to write in 2 days, groan.

The stupid criminal first. Seems obvious that stealing a GPS system is not a good idea…

On 11/25/07 at 10:45 PM, on the 2200 block of North Point, Officers Matt
Sullivan and Jessie Ortiz were assigned to plain clothes duty for the
purpose of auto burglary abatement. The Officers responded to a report
of an auto burglary which had just occurred and spotted the three
suspects fleeing the area on bicycles. Two of the three suspects were
apprehended; one, after a foot chase which covered several blocks.
Property stolen in the burglary, including a GPS system, was recovered
and returned to the owner.

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As a feature film on the life of Harvey Milk starts production in the city, the real-life legacy of Milk and Mayor George Moscone will be commemorated tonight, the 29th anniversary of the assassinations.

The somber march no longer goes from Castro St. to City Hall. Instead, it will go from Harvey Milk Plaza at Castro and Market Streets to the site of Milk’s camera shop. There Holly Near, the Gay Men’s Chorus, and other artists and politicians will perform/speak. The event gets under way at 5:00 pm.

Here’s a good AP article from 2003 on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the assassinations.

The film, directed by Gus Van Zant and starring Sean Penn as Milk and Matt Damon (!) as nutball murderer Dan White, got some early notice this month when the film crew cast extras.
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Image by parker day.

My favorite local burlesque dancer Bombshell Betty (on right) is performing in a packed, delicious-looking lineup this monday (that’s tomorrow) at Oakland’s fabulous new Uptown Club, for only $5. They’re promising “Sexy Girls, Variety Acts, Drunken Emcee’s… & a Gorilla!” Sounds like a great way to start the week to me… This week’s lineup includes:

Pookie Patootie, Bombshell Betty, Bombshell Betty’s Burlesqueteers, Margaret France, Peekaboo Burlesque, Heather Von Domhoff, Gorilla X, “and many, many more!”

Doors 8PM, Show 9PM; 21 & Up w/I.D.; five dollars

UPTOWN HUBBA HUBBA! is at… The Uptown Club: 1928 Telegraph Ave, Oakland (1 block from 19th Street BART)

Also: A Burlesqueteer is down — hit by a drunk driver. Give some Love for Amy.

Whore Magazine and Artists Television Access are presenting a monthly series of films about prostitutes, and Monday night at 7:30 is the amazing 1969 epic Midnight Cowboy — in which a handsome asswipe from Texas comes to New York to play the gigolo, and winds up as the pet of a tubercular street punk played by Dustin Hoffman (”I’m walkin’ here! I’m walkin’ here!!”).

The event will include a discussion of the film by Whore Magazine’s editor Ginger Murray and Metblogs’ own Melissa Gira, who is also development coordinator of St. James Infirmary, the local sex worker care and education organization.

Next in the series, on Dec. 17: Luis Buñuel’s sublime Belle du Jour.

Michelle Tea (pictured) is a triple threat. She produces literary events month after month that writers crave to join and readers flock to. She writes awesome books. And she is a sterling role model for young writers. Some day she may be one of our country’s great literary lions — the way Kathy Acker would be regarded now if she were still with us. But in the meantime, you have chances to see her several times a month.

On Tuesday, Nov. 27 at 7 pm she’ll be appearing at City Lights bookstore with Rhiannon Argo, Meliza Banales, Tara Jepsen, Ali Liebegott, and Chelsea Starr as part of her ongoing — can I say seminal? — Sister Spit tour. Sister Spit is not just a coast-to-coast event that crops up from time to time; by now it’s almost a movement. Google Sister Spit and you’ll find more reviews, blog entries, tall tales and Flickr photos than you can shake a vibrator at.

And the next night, Wednesday, Tea hosts another in her series of monthly Radar Salon readings at the Eureka Valley branch of the SF Public Library. This month she hosts Charlie Anders and Beth Lisick. That’s at 7 pm, free.

Here’s another reason this should be called “Black Friday” — the great Klaus Kinski died on this date in 1991 in his home in Lagunitas — not far from San Francisco (map).

“I came into this world in the form of a human, but the sun, the stars, the wind, fire, deserts, forests, mountains, skies, oceans, and clouds were trapped inside me. Do not be sad, Nanhoi [Kinski's son]. The truth is, I can never die.” — Kinski

- Klaus Kinski’s MySpace page
- Cintra Wilson on Kinski, from Salon
- German fan site