Featured Articles from SFGate

To understand the depth of Paula Creamer's satisfaction Sunday, flash back to her two previous LPGA events in the Bay Area: She tied for 16th in the Longs Drugs Challenge in Danville in October 2006 and tied for 11th a year later. Both times, she smothered herself in pressure to win in front of family and friends. Both times, she tumbled out of contention early. This time, Creamer simply smothered the other 19 players in the Samsung World Championship. Her steady, 3-under-par 69 on the rolling fairways of Half Moon Bay's Ocean Course gave her a one-shot victory over South Korea's Song-Hee Kim (68)

Breading This easy, three-step technique ensures an even crumb coating. It's commonly used on thin cuts of chicken, pork or veal that will be fried or baked. To begin, set up your breading station. Fill the first of three shallow dishes with flour. In the second dish, make an egg wash by whisking eggs with a little bit of water, milk or other liquid or seasoning. Finally, place your breadcrumbs (or other crumbs) into the third dish. Start by dredging a piece of meat in the flour.

After five years of booze, bareback runners and increasingly bad press, insurance giant ING is bowing out as sponsor of San Francisco's annual Bay to Breakers race. "All I can say officially is, they were a wonderful sponsor and chose not to renew for the 100th anniversary next year," said Sam Singer , a spokesman for the race, which is run by Anschutz Entertainment Group. Unofficially, however, word is ING is fed up with all the bad publicity that the race has generated in recent years, especially the complaints of residents around the Panhandle and Alamo Square about revelers and runners urinating, defecating and generally behaving rudely.

Santa Claus has been canned from Macy's, and he's anything but jolly about it. His fans aren't happy, either. And there are many. John Toomey, known for 20 years at the Union Square Macy's in San Francisco as "Santa John," was told Saturday he'll have to take his "ho, ho, hos" elsewhere because an adult couple complained about a joke he cracked. The joke has been in his Santa bag for decades. But after thousands of tellings, the 68-year-old retired caretaker for the elderly finally hit the wrong recipients - apparently an older woman and her husband, who considered it inappropriate.

2006-05-14 04:00:00 PST Coronado, San Diego County -- A neat line of 177 Navy SEAL recruits link arms and wade into the sea. The day is stormy, with 7-foot breakers and 61-degree water. But instructors order them to turn and lie on their backs in the surf. The young men soak their boots, battle dress uniform trousers and white T-shirts. Their bare, crewcut heads must stay immersed as waves bat them around. Eight minutes later they rise, race to the sand dunes, drop and roll to become "sugar cookies."

Several years ago I heard about this book by some porn star that was yet to be written: It was "How to Make Love Like A Porn Star" by Jenna Jameson. The brainchild of Judith Regan and Jameson, the book was, at first, going to be a sex guide from the most famous porn star in the whole wide world. A big hit, for sure. At the time, I worked closely with a number of other sex educators and sexologists, and we all felt the pain when the book was announced. Here was yet another porn performer, one of those who do athletic and unsafe sex for a living, telling the world to use spit instead of lube (which Jameson did, notoriously)

Google is a window on the world, but your view can depend on whether you're in the West or the East. Search for images of "Tiananmen," as in Tiananmen Square, scene of the 1989 student democracy protest, on the China site, Google.cn. Most of the time the results turn up pictures of the Beijing plaza: a flock of birds soaring above the grounds, the square all lit up at night, tourists posing for the camera. Run the same search again on Google.com, the uncensored version used here in the United States, and the images are strikingly different.

On a cloudy Monday morning in early November author Iris Chang 36 drove her white 1999 Oldsmobile Alero down Alum Rock Avenue toward the green foothills of East San Jose. She passed the iron gates of Calvary Catholic Cemetery where marble statues of winged angels their heads bowed in prayer mark the graves of early settlers. She passed the football field and the blocky concrete auditorium of James Lick High School. Turning right she pulled into the strip mall across the street from the school.

SAN FRANCISCO -- As prosecutors mulled whether to file charges against a college football player who allegedly refused to pull up his sagging pants at San Francisco International Airport, the outside world seized the incident to debate broader questions about respect, fashion policies and racial stereotyping. Deshon Marman, 20, a defensive player for the University of New Mexico and graduate of Lincoln High in San Francisco, was arrested and removed from US Airways flight 488 Wednesday after police said he ignored an airline employee's request to pull up sweatpants that exposed his underwear below the buttocks.

I was at the dog park the other day, chatting with a dog-obsessed friend who knows me really well, when another dog owner came over and mentioned that her dog had recently been diagnosed with a bladder infection. I smiled at her and opened my mouth to ask a question, and noticed that my friend was shaking her head, scrunching up her eyes and basically indicating with every available bit of body language that something terrible was about to happen. I frowned, and asked, "What?" "Please," she said.

Q: We would like to hang pictures, some of them rather large, on a plaster wall. Can you tell us the best way to do this? We are afraid of cracking the plaster. A: With proper technique, hanging pictures on a lath-and-plaster wall isn't a problem. If the pictures are small and equipped with a wire on the back, use a small picture hook and nail. To install small picture hooks all you need is a hammer. Gently tap the nail provided with the hook diagonally into the wall using the hook itself as a guide.

John Toomey woke up Tuesday to discover he was the world's second-most-famous Santa Claus. Over the weekend, he was sacked from his 20-year job as the Union Square Macy's Kris Kringle - he says it was after an older couple complained about a mildly risque bit of humor on his part. Now, the man known as "Santa John" is in the news from here to London and fielding job offers. The once-again-jolly man took a gig with Lefty O'Doul's to sit on Santa's throne for the Geary Street landmark's annual Fire Department toy drive.

Unlike whiskey, which has been a crucial prop for the tough and the heartbroken since the invention of cinema, wine and movies have rarely been a great pairing. Perhaps it's because most Americans didn't appreciate wine until recently. Perhaps it's because wine is more complex than whiskey, and Hollywood is all about simplicity. But sometimes it clicks: Wine plays a significant role, the filmmakers get the wine parts right, and the movie is a pleasure to watch. Using those three standards, The Chronicle proudly presents the Top 10 Wine Films of all time.

Steak eaters are slaves to fashion. While a tender piece of filet or New York strip is timeless restaurant goers are flocking to lesser bistro steaks such as hanger skirt and flank. Though fibrous and chewy they are packed with flavor. The popularity of these steaks -- among Latin American and Asian as well as French bistro chefs -- has driven up the price making these once lowly meats either hard to find or more expensive than their rough texture might merit. That's where flap meat comes in. Also called flap steak the unflatteringly named cut is similar to skirt and flank in that it comes from the less tender regions of the animal.

Elie Wiesel, the renowned Holocaust author and Nobel Peace Prize winner, was attacked and dragged out of a San Francisco hotel elevator last week, possibly by a Holocaust denier who claims to have stalked Wiesel for weeks, police said Friday. Wiesel, 78, was at the Argent Hotel on Feb. 1 for an interfaith conference when he was confronted around 6:30 p.m. in an elevator by a man insisting that he wanted to interview the author, said police spokesman Sgt. Neville Gittens. Wiesel said he would do the interview in the lobby of the Third Street hotel, but the man insisted on going to Wiesel's room.

The dogs came to Petaluma with looks that define their celebrity status -- in large part so their owners could prove their pets aren't defined by those looks. The canine comedian and animal rights activist from southern New Jersey was there to help his owner promote a message of tolerance. The punk-rock pooch from Philadelphia, complete with mohawk and skull-logo T-shirt, was being used to support animal charities. But their owners all had one thing in common: a desire for their genetically unfortunate pooch to be crowned the World's Ugliest Dog. The anti-beauty contest, an increasingly popular event at the Sonoma-Marin Fair, celebrates physical repulsiveness -- and inner beauty.

Death Row at San Quentin State Prison is an antiseptic form of hell nearly devoid of the things like intimacy and love that give life value. Living here is a numbing gray slog for the 647 condemned killers who sit year after year waiting to die on the nation's most populous death row. Behind the prison's granite walls quarried by inmates more than 150 years ago is a stark environment of concrete floors and clanging cell doors. It is a monotonous controlled alternately boring and spooky place that echoes with the shouts of lost souls.

Linda Ronstadt had celebrated her 60th birthday three days earlier -- going to see "Pirates of the Caribbean" with her teenage son and having the girlfriends over later that night -- and flowers are still everywhere in the sunny upstairs Laurel Heights duplex where she has lived since moving back to San Francisco last fall. "I think flowers are almost as important as groceries," she says. Not interested in having her photograph taken, Ronstadt lounges in dishabille -- rolled-up jeans, white blouse, pink house slippers -- in her third-floor living room with the Golden Gate Bridge outside her window, her bowl-cut hair framing a heart-shaped face.

Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City: Musical. Book by Jeff Whitty. Music and lyrics by Jake Shears and John Garden. Directed by Jason Moore. Through July 10. American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary St., San Francisco. Two hours, 45 minutes. $40-$127, subject to change. (415) 749-2228, www.act-sf.org . Judy Kaye is a delightfully down-to-earth Anna Madrigal, spicing her anything-goes bohemianism with tantalizing twinges of a troublesome secret.