Predictably, I have no idea what I will be wearing for Halloween. The predicament of an anti-brand costume shopper is a dire one in today's Halloweenie world -- we are forced down one of two routes when celebrating everyone's favorite not-for-kids-anymore holiday. You can (a) do the decent thing and spend hours rummaging through every Goodwill in the city for high five kudos at the house party this weekend or you can (b) drop a cool fifty on a prepackaged 'stume everyone's going to "get" immediately. Read more »

Of course the Guardian staff didn't have the dough for tickets to Game Five of the Giants and Phillies battale royale for the National League crown. But hey, the real party was outside the park -- so Caitlin Donohue (by land) and Rebecca Bowe (by sea) staked out where the real fans were hangin' -- and caught a little animalistic behavior and political fracas in the bargain. What more could you ask of a ball game? Game Six is on Sat/23 at 4:57 p.m.

Morgan Fitzgibbons isn't thinking small when it comes to goals for his Western Addition sustainability group, the Wigg Party. “We want to make our community a leader in the transformation in resilience,” he tells me during our coffee date to discuss the group's upcoming anti-boycott “carrotmob” at Matching Half Cafe (Sat/23). 

It's no coincidence that his language sounds a little new age-y. The basis for Fitzgibbons' vision for the Wigglers seems grounded in the PhD of Philosopy, Cosmology, and Consciousness he received at California Institute for Integral Studies. “We're these sacred beings,” he tells me earnestly of his San Francisco community. “This is a sacred movement – I want people to look back in a hundred years and see that.” Read more »

I've been dabbling in dystopia of late. A little Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood, a little Brazil (1985) and bam! I'm up to my ears in fears of bureaucracy and government subterfuge and omnipresence – as if that's a new thing. 

But on the real, it is a bit discomfiting, the similarities between our culture's visions of the fall. This discomfort sharpens with “black sites” researcher Trevor Paglen's monograph Invisible: Covert Operations and Classified Landscapes (Aperture), an eerie book of photos and artifacts that acts like a show-and-tell of why we can't trust The Man to level with us. Paglen will be presenting it at City Lights – those anarchos, of course! – Thurs/21. Read more »