The film follows the finalists in the National Grocers Association Best Bagger Championship, which is exactly what it sounds like, I guess. Also on the program is a short, Leonardo, by Pixar animator Jim Capobianco.

Speaking of the Food Bank, VISA is doubling donations to the group right now. So go to their website and give ‘em some money. The Food Bank is a great community organization.

Bring pictures of dead loved ones, wear black, feel free to dress in skeletal attire. Kids are welcome.

Just a note to tribal/Burning Man types: leave your freaking bongo drums at home, OK?

On Alabama Street near Cesar Chavez.

If you enjoy living in San Francisco, stop reading right now.

Why? Is he going to tell me something that I haven’t learned in my thirty years here? Something that will make me boogie off to Atlanta or Denver?

No, that’s not the reason.

If you don’t stop reading, you’ll probably come across something you disagree with, then you’ll want to leave a nasty comment, then you’ll realize I don’t accept comments, then you’ll email me, and then I’ll have to ignore your email because I warned you not to read this.

Aw! He doesn’t want to deal with someone disagreeing with him! It’s almost cute.

OK, to save time, here is his worst criticism: San Francisco is dirty and overcrowded, and this implies that the citizens value their delusions about the city and themselves more than they do its residents, especially the residents who are poorer and less privileged.

Don’t be afraid, Alex Payne. I don’t disagree. I think it’s a good argument, and also a true picture of the city. (In fact, you should have stuck to that. The other criticism, that you run into too many other tech industry people and feel you always have to be on, to properly represent your latest business idea or image — oh, come on.)

Comments on Payne’s piece welcome here, even if he doesn’t want to deal with them there.

Admission to the party, which is at the Amnesia bar [map] on Thursday, Aug. 27 at 7:00 pm, is $20 and includes a hardcover of the book. Frequently-seen writer and presenter Bucky Sinister MC’s. Buy advance tix.

Picture: Wolff at left, Elliott at right. Elliott photo by Katherine Emery from LA Times

Not only is the whole concept of garage stores cool, but the guy featured does it very much as a service to the nabe, selling brand-name soccer equipment to kids near cost. Totally the opposite of the globalized brand-filled big-box neighborhood-killing stores.

Dorothy Allison. Photo by Jill Posener

Novelist Dorothy Allison (Bastard Out of Carolina, Cavedweller, Trash) headlines Writers with Drinks this Saturday. She is an amazing live reader and you will be a better person for hearing and seeing her.

Also on the bill is “Mythbusters” star Adam Savage — not sure what he’ll be up to, but maybe he’ll be able to duplicate his goofy screen presence. Also appearing are science fiction author Steven Barnes, author Mary Miller, and Clint Catalyst.

Dreamboat Beth Lisick guest hosts. Writers with Drinks is Saturday, Aug. 8 at 7:30 pm at the Makeout Room on 22nd St. near Mission.

Even though that was more than 20 years ago for me, I still feel a lot of affection for Mission High and the way it allows families to pursue their dreams for their kids. Now, courtesy Mission Local, I just ran across a nonprofit called Mission Graduates which runs a tutoring center and other programs for the neighborhood kids. Because if it’s anything like it was when I was teaching there, a lot of kids need more help than they can get in a class of, say, 30. Check ‘em out.

This morning I went to my favorite café, Progressive Grounds at 21st and Bryant. As I sat there reading The Savage Detectives I became aware of a woman with a braying voice having a loud phone conversation — unusual at that café. “I’m twenty-six,” she was saying. “I’ve got long hair, almost down to my ass. I’m 36 double-D. I’m real pretty, I work at Centerfolds…”

I looked up. The speaker was a frankly ugly woman with thin, straight shoulder-length hair. She was in her mid-30s at least, fat, and dressed like a Capp St. hooker in a dirty pinkish party dress and a bright pink puffy jacket. She had on weird hookerish tinted glasses and high-heeled shoes, and she was saying “I just got off work at 4:00 a.m. Yeah, I have pictures on disk that I can send you. Well, what are you looking for? No, I don’t have a cell phone camera. Well, why is that important?”

Then the party she was talking to apparently hung up. The woman went to the counter and ordered a complicated vanilla latte with lots of whipped cream. (The staff at the café treated her with as much respect and politeness as they treat everyone, I noticed. Did I say I really like that café?) Then she took her drink back to the table and, with her finger on an advertisement in the back pages of the SF Weekly, phoned another potential employer.

I was thinking two things at the same time: She is atrocious, but also, she is awesome. She had probably never been pretty. Her voice sounded like the dregs at the bottom of a bottle of beer. But she was working that camera-less mobile phone and lying up one side and down the other about how gorgeous she was. What was the point? What were people going to say when she actually showed up at whatever strip club or massage parlor she was calling? Did she look in the mirror and see herself as she described herself? And how much of the way we all present ourselves is mostly bluff and squinting in the mirror and hoping that other people never call us on it?

After the second phone call she checked her messages, collected her things, and departed.