BRAD ALLEN: DRINKING FOR PUBLIC GOOD >>>

Drunk to Drunk: “Does beer make you smart?”

Drunk back to Drunk: “Well it made Bud-wiser.”

That’s the only beer joke I know.  Doyle’s Public House â€" after raising $842 for Seattle public radio station KUOW 94.9 back in April â€" has launched another beer drinking campaign to raise funds for the same radio station. Now through Oct. 16, for every pint of Guinness Doyle’s sells, they donate a dollar to the station.

“We are looking to break the 1,000 pint mark this year so call a friend & wake the neighbors it is time to raise a pint for public radio at Doyle's,” states Doyle’s co-owner Russ Heaton via e-mail. “Do good by drinking the goods.”

[Doyle’s Public House, 208 Saint Helens Ave., Tacoma]

CHRISTOPHER WOOD: TFF DAY 5 â€" DOCUMENTARIES >>>

Is objectivity possible when describing the overwhelming atrocities of war? What responsibilities do documentarians have to people’s suffering? Memorize-you-saw-it and The Corporal’s Diary: 38 Days in Iraq â€" shown Monday at The Grand Cinema as part of the Tacoma Film Festival â€" both emit an unflinching gaze at innocents left only with memories of war’s devastation.

Portland filmmaker Jon Betz’s Memorize chronicles his senior internship as an African aid worker. Last summer he visited Ugandan villages and shot impromptu interviews with youth forced to serve in the Lord’s Resistance Army. As Betz told viewers after the screening, he wanted a film about “the recovery from a war, or the post-war situation for the people involved.” His unglamorous footage takes our focus off the present image; what matters are the words of these children recounting past nightmares. Destitute and made orphans by rebels, the kids nonetheless display a remarkable resilience. One 17-year-old girl, a survivor of rape and slaughter, shyly confides to the camera her wish to act in movies where “love has no end.” Such moments of heartache make Memorize hard to watch â€" and hard to forget.

In Corporal’s Diary, a Bellingham mother pieces together her son’s final days through the work he left behind. Jon Santos served in Iraq barely two months before dying in combat soon after his 22 birthday in 2004. His warmth and humor live on in journal entries (narrated by his younger brother) and video footage of fellow Marines â€" including friend Matthew Drake, who loses his life in his own way.

While Memorize examines raw survival, Diary meditates on loss and sacrifice, and how we all come to know war’s brutal aftermath. Recalling the moment she knew of Jon’s death, the mother stammers through choking tears, “If you could film that, if Americans could see that…” These films and their subjects believe in the power of sight. When the simple act of seeing calls us to act, hope is born.

Tacoma Film Festival schedule
Tuesday, Oct. 7
The Grand Cinema
Full details here

2:30 p.m.
My Dad Ralph, Now You See Me Now You Don’t, Maine, Gravida, The Loneliness of the Short-Order Cook

4:15 p.m.
American Harvest

6:45 p.m.
Gimme Music, Gimme Shelter, Weiner Takes All: a Dogumentary

8:40 p.m.
Partes Usadas (Used Parts)

LINK: South Sound Restaurant Guide

STEPH DEROSA: CHOCOLATE DISTRICT >>>

Not that there needs to be another reason for me to hang out in the Proctor District, with all it’s unique stores and locally owned restaurants, but there is a special weekend that draws me in like no other: the Proctor District’s Annual Chocolate Festival. You read it right; they’ve created a glutinous weekend to remind you of what candy-lined holidays are headed your way.

Friday, Oct. 10, and Saturday, Oct. 11 the neighborhood, which houses favorites such as Metropolitan Market, Babblin’ Babs Bistro, Envy, Europa Bistro, Blue Mouse Theater and others, will host a chocolate festival to rival all food-type festivals. More than 40 Proctor District businesses will play the wacky chocolate game this weekend, and the candy-themed event will hold no sweet-toothed boundaries. Clothing stores and gift shops will have chocolate-colored sale items, restaurants will have special menu items, and discounts from all over will be at your cocoa-loving fingertips.

Kelly Henzinger of Metropolitan Market came clean with the market’s participation. Sunday, Oct. 12, from 1-6 p.m., Met Market will offer Fat Cat Fudge, homemade metro market brownies as well as hosting a local chocolatier who will prepare organic truffles. Saturday holds daylong chocolate events as well.

Somewhere in the midst of your binge, I suggest you attend the free chocolate pancake breakfast held at Washington-Hoyt Elementary Saturday from 9-11 a.m. Be sure to kiss a PTA member for that pancake, they flipped those flapjacks just for you. Also take the time to pick up a Chocolate Express Passport at a designated location in order to collect a chocolate-y prize at the end

[Proctor District, North 26th and Proctor, Tacoma]

SUZY STUMP: WIENER TAKES ALL: A DOCUMENTARY >>>

Saturday’s Tacoma Film Festival screening of Wiener Takes All: A Dogumentary sold out.

Hurrah!

Tonight’s 6:45 p.m. screening has sold out, too.

Nice!

Since The Grand rocks our film thirsty world, they have added a second showing tonight at 8:40 p.m. at The Grand Cinema.

Watch the Presidential Debate then check out a different kind of wiener.

DETAILS
8:40 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 7 at The Grand Cinema
Wiener Takes All: a Dogumentary
Directed by Shane MacDougall
Documentary (79 min)

Welcome to the world of competitive wiener dogs, a world that boasts healthy dachshunds and rabid owners. Unleash the truth as we track America's sexiest and fastest weenies on the professional dachshund racing circuit.

LINK: Weekly Volcano’s Tacoma Film Festival story and schedule

STEPH DEROSA: DOODLE LA, DOODLE LA, DOODLE LA >>>

Alfredâ's Cafe & Bubble Room on Puyallup Avenue is THE place to catch a Seahawk's game.  With a plethora of mirrors, you can't help but either hate yourself for not looking in a mirror before you left the house, or watch the damn television.  Not that there isn't a huge flat screen in front of you everywhere you look, but the mirrors make it impossible for anyone to catch a bad seat in the house.  Add a grand bar, cold beer, and Alfred's extensive bar food menu to that Seahawk's game and you got yourself a case of testosterone overload.  Ah yes, the warm, fiery scent of testosterone - a perfect thing to be overloaded with on a Sunday morning, if you ask me.

As I took a much-needed break in order to re-collect my estrogen, I pondered the upcoming football season, the fall, and the holidays to come.  I mentally took a look back at 2008, at everything I've been fortunate enough to take part in and experience.  Instead of writing out my memoirs and developing intense thumb-cramps, I've decided to put together a little recollection video. 

Thank you Destruction Island for creating the tunes you are about to hear.

RON SWARNER: NEW TACOMA GALLERY >>>

The south end of downtown Tacoma will become a little more hip and happening.

The Robert Daniel Gallery â€" dedicated to presenting contemporary art by local, national and international artists â€" will open Thursday, Oct. 23 at 2501 Fawcett Ave.

“Through exhibitions and events, we provide a forum for artists, collectors, and curators to experience art ranging from paintings on canvas and panel, to works on paper, photography, sculpture, stone, glass, mixed media and installations for our gallery members,” states owner Robert Stocker.

Stocker and his cousin, Daniel, are a perfect fit as owners.

“The history behind us is that I used to donate all of my art to charities and Daniel is perhaps one of the foremost knowledgeable artists in the West Coast when it comes to knowing his artists and the art world,” explains Stocker in an e-mail. “He is an architect and is now doing a large commission for a winery inWalla Walla.”

Daniel has also contributed his talents to Indochine in downtown Tacoma.

The gallery opens Thursday, Oct. 23 with a group show featuring artists from Tacoma, Seattle and the Portland area. The shows will typically run for six weeks with a scattering of private events lodged in between. The doors will open at 5 p.m. and you will be politely escorted out at 10 p.m.

The next night, Oct. 24, the gallery will throw party from 5 p.m. “until the party is over” adds Stocker. There will be drinks, eats, art and fun he claims.

The two planned on opening for Third Thursday Art Walk Oct. 16, but chose to host a private party for the Tacoma Opera instead. Stocker plans to offer the space for charity events when available.

[The Robert Daniel Gallery, 2501 Fawcett Ave., Tacoma, 253.227.1407]

CHRISTOPHER WOOD: TFF DAY 6 â€" SHORTS >>>

Independent dramas walk a thin line between affecting seriousness and laughable absurdity. The Tacoma Film Festival works exhibited Tuesday at The Grand oscillate between the sincere and the grandiose.

The afternoon’s opener, My Dad Ralph, stays mostly in the former category. Zach believes his father makes millions as a famous artist, when in reality Ralph humbly serves as a “lowly” house painter. The curly-haired patriarch must decide whether to reveal this devastating truth to Zach. Ralph’s deceased wife appears periodically, offering standard ghostly guidance. Must this film rely on otherworldly revelation to trumpet its earthly message of acceptance?

The apparitions kept on appearing in the Hungarian sci-fi melodrama Now You See Me, Now You Don’t. A scientist tests out an invisibility device on his son â€" or does he? Sorry, couldn’t tell you for sure. An intriguing premise and hopes of a coherent plot get lost in the film’s pacing. A character gets out of bed, another gets into a flippin’ car â€" inconsequential details. Get. Drawn. Out and. Balloon to. Ridiculous. Proportions.

Maine Story slows things down further â€" almost to inertness. Gorgeous New England scenery frames a dull story about a woman who makes chairs. Will the unexpected return of a former lover shake up her ho-hum factory life? Nice try. Watching this cast ranks right up there with building furniture.

Gravida searches for a mood as heavy as its title. An extended low-light seduction scene involving a pregnant woman ends in disappointment and tears. Lots of tears. And snot. Yep, when a pretty half-naked girl runs snotty fingers through her hair, we know we’ve arrived in independent film territory.

The Loneliness of the Short-Order Cook meanders but with good reason. Its disconnected protagonist, a Japanese emigrant waiting for his visa, floats from encounter to encounter because of a system that refuses him admittance. Loneliness achieves seriousness without depressing viewers, sincerity without bombast, and beauty without neglecting content: in short, a drama that works.

Tacoma Film Festival schedule
Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2008
Full details here

2:30 p.m.
The Grand Cinema
Endless Tunnel, Pat Martino Unstrung

4:30 p.m.
The Grand Cinema
Crawford, For You, My People

6:30 p.m.
The Grand Cinema
Cabbie, PK Granny, The Man from Mars, Taken, One Year Later, The Grayed Escape, Blind Luck, Rock in a Hard Place

6:30 p.m.
School of the Arts Blackbox Theater
Double Talk

8:40 p.m.
The Grand Cinema
Journey Green Forest, Rogue 379

SUZY STUMP: SATELLITE COFFEE ONE-YEAR ANNIVERSARY >>>

The brain trust behind Satellite Coffee will chat you up for hours on the science behind making the perfect cup of coffee. I can’t follow their code-speak. They are smart. And they know their beans.

If you have yet to visit this tiny, elevated coffee house that opened November 2007, drop by Saturday, Nov. 1, during its one-year anniversary party held below at its neighbor Supernova Hair and Tattoo, which will be celebrating a grand re-opening after a remodel. I guarantee you’ll learn a thing or two, drink delicious Stumptown Coffee and hear live music from Eddie Spaghetti and Rontrose Heathman (Satellite co-owner) of The Supersuckers, and Bob Wayne & The Outlaw Carnies.

Yes, those are the same two bands that rocked Satellite’s grand opening party March 21, 2008 â€" a party held months after it originally opened. If you were there that night you know it was packed, it rocked and French press coffee flowed freely, which will happen again Nov. 1.

The show is free. It’s a must see event.

[Satellite Coffee, 817 Division Ave., Tacoma]