The main story on Fresno Famous this week is a look at the new Irish pub downtown making everyone all excited. We at the Beehive cheer the opening of Irish pub #2, although we will always love us some Body in the Bog.

Famous also takes a look at last week's Rebecca Ryan lecture. (See also here and here.)

Apparently, City Hall needs to get down with Skype.

Also ... dudes. Lay off the food delivery folks. Geez.

"When it's 2 a.m. and you hear the (police) helicopter overhead and wonder what's going on, now you have a chance to find out," says George Berz, a local ham radio operator, private pilot and self-described "computer geek and nerd at heart." Berz is streaming the Fresno police scanner live on his Web site, ScanFresno.com.

Berz writes in an e-mail that he built the site to give folks the chance to hear the scanner without having to fuss with a lot of technology -- "no investment in radios and figuring out the antenna issues, programming the darned thing," etc. He wants "to build community awareness about real crimes and situations in Fresno. Not CSI-type stuff -- real, authentic and happening right now," he writes. "The police have to deal with a lot of ($@%#!) on a daily basis and this may make people more appreciative of all the things that they do," he writes. "Let's face it, a lot of people never interact with a police officer and when they do, most are just getting a traffic ticket."

I know summer's well on its way, but come on. Are we reduced to robbing the ice cream vendor now?

Lifehacker links to a Make tutorial on making your own digital video recorder out of an old PC, which I'm now actually contemplating doing, since I've taken to reading TV squad to keep up my cultural literacy. (Hey, you know that TV makes you smarter, right?)

If you're at all into this sort-of DIY thing, LifeHacker's probably right up your alley. Lifehacker readers know how to: Make wallets out of duct tape, turn old t-shirts into pillows, and make fire from chocolate and Coke cans. You're totally missing out.

(See also Readymade.)

Try out our online MP3 player, streaming all the songs available on our weekly CD Roundup. Scroll down the list and click on a title to play it, and check "play all" if you want it to keep moving through the playlist. Macromedia Flash Player required.

Another one of those Men's Health city rankings is making the e-mail rounds this morning. This one claims to reveal which U.S. cities are the most and least depressed. And what do you know -- Fresno's pretty darn happy. The 7th-happiest, in fact. Maybe this will make up for our lackluster scores on the intelligence index and the safer sex index. Then again, maybe this is all a fiction borne out of the feverish Googling of the Men's Health intern.

Leaning towards the latter explanation, given Fresno's simultaneous position as one of the flabbiest and one of the fittest.

Missed The Bee this weekend? Don't miss Jim Davis' package looking into the expense accounts of Fresno's elected officials, chock full of graphical goodness from Theresa Doffing (a PDF sample).

And from today's paper, make sure you catch Diana Marcum's account of a suspected burglar who apparently locked himself in a car trunk.

Update: Check out the Bee coverage

As previously mentioned, Rebecca Ryan was in the Crest Theater last night, talkinbout hot jobs and cool communities. Her lecture on how to attract and keep "knowledge workers" was quite a hit with the crowd. The talk centered on the characteristics of the new generation of prime workers, a.k.a. Generation X (which Ryan defines as anyone born from 1961-1981, although, she says, "a lot of it is more what generation you identify with"). Much of what she presented is given in slices and bits at her Web site's Knowledge Cafe section.

Some highlights from the lecture follow, sorted in vaguely chronological order, with anecdotes, laugh lines and contexts shuffled around to suit each one ...

Let's briefly relive the saga of the finger-lickin' good Wendy's chili episode. On March 23, Anna Ayala burst into our lives in an AP story with this once-in-a-lifetime lead:

A woman's meal at a Wendy's restaurant brought a whole new meaning to the term 'finger food.'

She had bitten into a finger in her Wendy's chili, she said. The story developed a local angle when we learned that the finger-fied Wendy's was part of a Fresno-based franchise.

The story started smelling fishy, however, when police and Wendy's officials could find no missing digits among the employees at the restaurant. Yesterday, Anna Ayala was arrested.

In today's Life section, Don Mayhew notes a new development -- marathon runners are being urged not to drink too much water before they run. Conventional wisdom has held that there's no such thing as too much water. Apparently that's no longer true.

This comes on the heels of another piece of news that contravenes conventional wisdom (and also contravenes earlier federal studies) -- "People who are overweight but not obese have a lower risk of death than those of normal weight" (NYT).

Tucked into The Bee's wire feed is this nugget -- The Gap will be opening a new chain targeted to boomer women, called ... wait for it ... "Forth & Towne."

Correction: León, not Léon, corrects Famous. Sorry, Gloria, we wouldn't want our name misspelled either.

This week's Famous centerpiece is a look inside the Crest Theater in downtown Fresno. Tonight, Rebecca Ryan's lecture at the theater presents a somewhat rare opportunity to see the beautiful space.

Gloria León, the building's owner, has been trying to bring it back to life for years. A March 1997 article in The Bee talked about León's hopes to show Spanish-language films in the theater. A year later, another article reported that a new church was opening up at the Crest, but according to CinemaTreasures.org, that church left the theater in January.

Now, several groups and individuals seem interested in resurrecting the Crest, from budding entrepreneur and substitute teacher Matthew Schwartz of The Local Noise to (as Famous reports) local restaurateur Josh Singh.

From today's news briefs:

Results of laboratory tests conducted on samples of a suspicious powdery substance found in an envelope Sunday at the Internal Revenue Service center in southeast Fresno came back negative for any biological organisms, Tim Casagrande, environmental health services director for Fresno County, said Tuesday.

Used to be when you didn't like the way something was done on the Internet, you just had to sit there and take it. Find my images distracting? Too bad for you. Don't like your links opening in new browser windows? Deal with it.

All that has changed. We're well on our way to the Custom Web, where you can tweak every aspect of your browsing experience to suit your tastes, even if you're not a hacker by nature.

If the Beehive is dark from June 3 to June 5, this is where we are.

If you pay any attention at all to the inevitable media storm to come, I'm sure you'll hear all this. But here are some Fun Facts! about the new pope, courtesy of Wikipedia.

• He celebrated his 78th birthday last Saturday.
• When he turned 14, he was required to join the Hitler Youth, "but according to his biographer John Allen he was not an enthusiastic member."
• He's got a posse. (Which, on update, seems to have been Slashdotted.)

Pope trivia?! Bah. We want to see K-Fed in middle school!

Items of interest from over the weekend ...

• Clovis West was evacuated Thursday due to a bomb scare. Students and parents seemed generally unperturbed. Also, 10 employees at the IRS were taken to hospitals after exposure to a white powdery substance.
• Chris Bochin, the smokin' sub, apologized for his behavior. At least he had the students get the marijuana paraphernalia from his car, not the cemetery.
• Fresno State's student newspaper, The Collegian, is rallying for an increase in the fee students pay to support the newspaper. The newspaper says the current $1.50 fee, created in 1989, is not enough to support its independent operation.

For anyone who might have missed J.P. Batmale's comment here, the Great Valley Center has posted PDFs of many of the presentations given at the April 1 solar power conference on its Web site. Much good material is there. Look for notes from my interview with J.P. here on the Beehive next week.

With the announcement that Meetup.com will be charging groups to use the site, groups like the LiveJournal Fresno bunch and others are left without a free spot to organize their events online. Except not really. In his letter announcing Meetup.com's decision to charge users, company co-founder Scott Heiferman encourages groups to try the other free sites and see if they like the paid Meetup.com experience better.

So, in that spirit, one alternative is Upcoming.org, which looks like it covers some of the basics of the Meetup.com service, although it's less organization-focused and more event-focused. Meetin.org looks like it could one day be a contender, but it doesn't have a Fresno page yet. And of course, there's always Craigslist.

One year later, a creative explosion that started in Fresno in April of 2004 is still going strong. This video story looks at the story behind Fresno's burgeoning creative community.

To download the videos, right-click the following links, select "Save Link As ..." (or "Save Target As ..."), and point it to a place on your computer: Part I (RealVideo) | Part II (RealVideo) | Part I (Windows Media Player) | Part II (Windows Media Player).

In today's column, Mike Oz sets the record straight on two points about Kanye's visit to Fresno last weekend -- the main one being that it was FTK, not B95, who brought the rapper to town. Secondly, though, Kanye didn't leave because he was scared by fighting between a fan and a security guard, according to FTK co-owner Bobby Naugle. Look after the break for the word from Bobby at Centralcali.com:

Among the most unique and varied stop-offs on the Fresno Web has got to be Neil'o Whispers, the blog of Neil, a self-described "proud 6'1" sardar." The site runs the gamut from funny to thought-provoking to evocative to beautiful to garbled, spanning a range of platforms, from audio to photography to fine art. Sometimes Neil's writing to and about California's Sikh community, but just as often he's writing about PS2 or Fresno in general. Spend an hour or two perusing Neil's archives sometime. It's worth it.

Speaking of corporate-owned businesses overshadowing Mom-n-Pop joints, the folks at MetaFilter this week pointed out Delocator.net, which lets you see how many independent cafés and how many Starbucks are listed for a given zip code (with the assumption that this will drive you away from the Starbucks and towards the indie coffeehouses). Don't know if this place is on the list yet, but new Fresno blogger Adrian Rodriguez is plugging the CyberSub Café by Palm and West in north Fresno, which he says features free wifi.

All right, no more solar energy for today -- time for some BRITNEY AND K-FED!! Holla!

The folks who brought you Gawker and Wonkette now present Sploid -- shameless tabloid news in shameless tabloid form. Except it's apparently about, like, Congress and East Asian policy. (Don't worry, it's also got Michael Jackson.)

Wired News, which formerly revealed the new PSP to be God's gift to the libido, announces that it is also God's gift to the l337 h4x0r5.*

Before we get too far into what solar power might mean for Fresno's future, let's take a look at what has happened so far with solar energy in the Valley. In this archive of stories from The Bee relating to solar energy (and other renewables), you can trace a clear path to where we are now. But first, a recap.

Solar power in the Central Valley. So much promise. How much progress? Stay tuned to our solar power blog as we follow the story of solar energy in the Central Valley, bring you up-to-date on the developments so far and find out what lies ahead.

Check it out, it's The Bee! And, oh! Look, it's the Tower Theatre! River Park! Parlier!

Late last year, Google purchased a satellite mapping company called Keyhole, and now they've linked that technology to Google Maps. So when you're giving people directions to your place, they can look in road map or satellite view.

Sequoia National Park looks kind of crazy.

So the latest crown prince of hip-hop shows up in Fresno to give some love to his Central Valley fans, and what do people do? Scuffle with security. From the AP article:

Grammy-winning rapper Kanye West was shuffled out a backdoor of a new urban boutique Saturday night after a fight between a patron and a security guard cut short the entertainer's autograph-signing session, police said.

The owners of the FTK store abruptly canceled the grand opening event and locked the doors.

Update: And the E!Online account of the incident makes it sound like Kanye barely escaped with his life, as hordes of marauding Fresno gangbangers closed in on him and police helicopters swerved overhead.

Sunday before last, The Bee announced the winners in its "People's Choice" survey of Fresno's favorite establishments. Last week, a commenter on Mindhub protested that the list was full of chain restaurants that just can't represent the best Fresno's got to offer. As an example, the commenter pointed out the "Best Sandwich Shop" category, where Quizno's and Subway took first and second place, respectively. No Packing Shed the 2, no Hofbrau, Silver Dollar or otherwise. No Piemonte's, although the shop did take second in the "Best Deli" category.

One might also point to the "Best Video Store" category, where Blockbuster and Hollywood Video beat out The Movies, a local institution. It was a write-in ballot, Fresno, so only you can explain it. Why no love for the locals?

Reporting from: The Great Valley Center Conference on Solar Energy In one of the last sessions of the conference, Marco Garcia offered the argument I'd expect might have the most currency amongst this Central Valley crowd. When it comes down to it, Garcia argues, solar power's downright prudent.

It's not like photovoltaics are some fly-by-night technology, he points out. They've been studied for well over a century. They're sound, proven technology that comes (at least from Powerlight) with a 25-year warranty -- Garcia says the solar cells can withstand hits from golf-ball sized hail at terminal velocity without cracking. And they bring near-instant savings.

Garcia gives a run-through of some of the photovoltaic programs Powerlight's been involved with around the world, then he offers some tips on how businesses can start rocking the solar revolution:

Reporting from: The Great Valley Center Conference on Solar Energy Right next to The Bee building sits the OK Produce facility. You've probably seen the trucks around town, flowing toward and away from OK Produce's lot on G St. But you may not have known that the roof of the OK Produce building houses one of the largest solar energy projects in the Central Valley.

Reporting from: The Great Valley Center Conference on Solar Energy Yeah, yeah, yeah, the environment's nice. Reducing dependence on oil, blah blah blah. Whatever. What people are really interested in is the money. Solar power may be good, but can it ever be profitable?

Again, those who might answer that question in the negative probably won't be found at this conference. So here's some information from the "Yes!" camp.

Reporting from: The Great Valley Center Conference on Solar Energy I've been a renewable energy nut for years, ever since I had to become a sort of armchair expert on the topic for a high school debate class. Coming to Fresno has stoked my interest in the subject of solar power. I mean, here we've got this city with sunlight up the wazoo, out-of-control air pollution, a hurting economy that could really use a whole new industry to attract high-tech jobs and highly-skilled professionals, and a couple of big solar success stories, in the middle of a state with giant energy problems and an equally giant hankering for renewable energy.

Congrats to Fresno's only online alt-weekly (heck, we'll crown you the status of Fresno's only alt-weekly period) on reaching a year of existence. A city without a good alt-weekly is like Paris without a Hilton. Famous, may you continue snarky and strong for several more years.