NEWS TEAM: WANKERS OF THE DAY >>>

Jennifer L. Rice

Dick “The Rack” Cheney

TARP Wife

Horse Yeller

JAKE DE PAUL: TUESDAY FOOD LINKS >>>

The story behind Stumptown, the beans Satellite Coffee brews.

You should be in the gum business.

Chill for less today: Ben & Jerry’s Free Cone Day and 50 cents iced coffees at Dunkin’ Donuts

Today’s South Sound Specials

Eat with Capt. Jonathan and the Time Bandit crew tonight at the Varsity Grill.

In celebration of 40 years of serving addictive bread in a trolley car, The Spaghetti Factory offers 40 percent off select menu items through May. Check it out at 1735 Jefferson Ave. in Tacoma.

The Great Cabernet Tasting, 5:30-8 p.m., Pour at Four, 3814 N. 26th St., Tacoma, 253.761.8015.

Half Price Wine Night, Pacific Grill, 1502 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, 253.627.3535.

Tightwad Tuesdays with $2 tacos, $2 beers, and $2 wells, Hell’s Kitchen, 3829 Sixth Ave., Tacoma, 253.759.6003.

Wine Tuesday, 20 percent off bottles wines on regular list, Toscanos Cafe and Wine Bar, 437 29th St. N.E., Puyallup, 253.864.8600.

Future Things Are Coming

SPRING IN PARIS: Chef Thierry Liot honors the French masters with a class on classic French dishes Wednesday, April 22 at the Bayview School of Cooking in Olympia. The 6 p.m. class costs $5. Reserve your spot at 360.754.1448.

COMMUNITY CONVERSATION: As part of Tacoma Reads Together’s book of the year, Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, The Tacoma Public Library hosts a community conversation titled “The Farm” Thursday, April 23 at 7 p.m. in the Main Library’s Olympic Room. The discussion will center on farming in Tacoma and Pierce County â€" past, present and future. The Main Library branch is at 1102 Tacoma Ave. S. in downtown Tacoma. For more information, call 253.591.5688. For a complete calendar of Tacoma Public Library community conversations centered around this year’s book, go here.

STAR CHEFS ON BROADWAY: The Broadway Center will host 300 people for a cocktail reception and formal dinner and auction featuring signature dishes from El Gaucho, Maxwell’s, Brix 25 and others Sunday, May 3 to benefit its education program. The 5 p.m. party costs $150 per person. Reserve your spot at 253.591.5439.

LINK: South Sound Restaurant Guide

JAKE DE PAUL: PARKWAY’S BARLEYWINE FEST >>>

Barleywine is very much a beer. It is a style of beer that leaves a bite on your tongue and an itch in your nose as if you were breathing through a wool sweater.

It’s a manly beer with a girly name.

This beer is lively and fruity, sometimes sweet, sometimes bittersweet, but always alcoholic â€" packing between 8 to 15 percent alcohol. That can be as much as double the punch of other brews. A beer of this strength and complexity can be a challenge to drink, especially for the novice who is untrained in the ways of sipping. Chugging this sort of beer would be painful.

The Parkway Tavern will host its annual Barleywine Fest Saturday, April 25 from 2 p.m. to 2 a.m. They will serve 30 aged barleywines, plus roast prime rib, goat, pig and veggie dogs over an open fire in front of its patio.

Here are the beer scheduled to make an appearance Saturday:

Hale's Rudyard's Rare 05
Full Sail Old Boardhead 06
Port Townsend 06
Rogue Old Crustacean 06
Flying Dog Horn Dog 06
Scuttlebutt Old No. 1 06
Alaska Big Nugget 06
Great Divide Old Ruffian 07
Pike Old Bawdy 07
Anchor Old Foghorn 07
Left Hand Old Widdershins 07
Lagunitas Gnarlywine 07
Skagit Shiver Me Liver 07
Stone Old guardian 06
North coast Old stock 07
Boundary Bay Old bounder 07
Diamond Knot Icebreaker 07
Hair of the Dog Doggie Claws 07
Sierra Nevada Bigfoot 08
Moylan's Old blarney 08
Bridgeport Old Knucklehead 08
Victory Old Horizontal 08
Elysian Cyclops 08
Deschutes SuperJubel
Avery Hog Heaven
Deschutes Mirror Mirror
Silver City Old Scrooge
Dick's
Anderson Horn of the Beer
Fish Leviathan
Big Sky Olde Bluehair

Hope you’re thirsty.

[Parkway Tavern, 313 N. I St., Tacoma; 253.383.8748]

RON SWARNER: IT’S RECORD RELEASE DAY >>>

Jane’s Addiction, Cabinet of Curiosities

Depeche Mode, Sounds of the Universe

Booker T., Potato Hole

Zakk Wylde’s, Black Label Society Skullage

Art Brut, Art Brut vs. Satan

Camera Obscura, My Maudlin Career

Pet Shop Boys, Yes

MARK THOMAS DEMING: POLITICAL GURU ENTERTAINS AND INSTRUCTS AT UWT >>>

James Carville sits cross-legged in a chair, wearing tan sneakers, khaki jeans, a pink shirt, purple tie, navy-blue blazer and shades. This room on the UWT campus is small and the press-conference audience smaller â€" maybe five other people and me. This is James Carville for chrissakes, one of the great political minds of the last 50 years, the author of bestselling books, the wild and not-so-wooly CNN pundit â€" James Carville, the Ragin’ Cajun! In Tacoma! Sitting there like somebody’s funny uncle! How weird! How awesome! So where is everybody?

He seems bored. Somebody asks about transportation. Transportation! Busses and trains and carpool lanes! Potholes! This is a man who has a conference call every morning with Rahm Emanuel and George Stephanopoulos, who has Hillary on speed dial, who advised the 42nd president to say, “I didn’t inhale!”

Transportation?

Someone else asks something else. I don’t know. I’m not even listening. I’m writing stuff down. Tan sneakers. Khaki jeans. Pink shirt. Shades.

I don’t want you to think I’m impressed with famous people. Well, I am impressed with famous people, or at least I’m intrigued by fame. But that’s not what this is. This isn’t about fame. This is about power. I’m impressed by power. No, I’m intrigued by power. No, I’m fascinated â€" yes, that’s it, fascinated â€" by the phenomenon of power, of leverage, of political strength. Of all this world’s oddities, this to me is the most amazing and exotic: the crazed intricate machinery of rule. And James Carville knows how that machinery works. He can show you where the dipstick is. He can tell you how to adjust the fuel mixture. He has driven the goddamn thing! He has held the keys in his hand!

Maybe I’m a simpleton. Maybe I’m a hick. Maybe I grew up thousands of miles from Washington and hundreds of miles from the capital of a state (Montana) with one frigging representative in congress. Maybe I didn’t pay close enough attention in Civics. I don’t know. All I know is I know very little about how this country is actually run, about the closed-door meetings and polls and posturing and strong-arming and drafting and signing and gerrymandering and accusing and denying and filibustering and just what exactly the hell goes on. And I want to know. I want to know what transpires in the cockpit of this thing called America. I want to know what knob does what. I want to know what these assholes at the switches are thinking and why. And do they really put their pants on one leg at a time like the rest of us? And what do they eat for breakfast?

Carville, though â€" up close â€" is just, you know, human. He’s funny looking. He giggles. When I ask him a question, some unimportant nonsense it took me three days to think up, he answers thoughtfully and then challenges my inference. And what do I do? I challenge back. I parry with the bastard! Like I have a clue! Like we’re debating Ford versus Chevy or the latest Mariners trade. Putz for these no names! Are you out of your mind?

The dude’s funny. After the press conference, he treats a packed Philip Hall to a stand-up routine. Where’s John McCain when that phone rings at three ‘o clock in the morning? Looking for the bathroom! Ba bop ching! The interesting thing about the Republican candidates is the only one with just one wife was the Morman! You like that one? I got a million more!

And when he’s not funny, he’s inspirational. He talks about getting up when you get knocked down, about working hard, about fighting. And the thing is, he knows. He’s been there. He engineered the comeback kid, after all. Fall down seven, stand up eight is his mantra. He holds Tacoma up as an example. “You’re in the midst of what was one of the greatest failures in the western United States,” he says, speaking of downtown T-Town. Winos on the curbs! Drugs! Prostitutes! And look around you! Look at this fancy hall you’re sitting in! Look at these tasteful modern chairs! It can be done! It has been done! Keep doing it! Suddenly politics doesn’t seem so arcane. Just roll up your sleeves, this man is saying. Pitch in! Sandbag the levies! He’s not a liberal or a progressive, he tells us â€" those terms mean nothing â€" he’s an evidence-ist. Just do what works! That’s all there is to it! Don’t wring your hands, use them! He gave us the phrase, “It’s the economy, stupid.” Now he’s saying: Hey stupid, it’s you.

“To hell with the despair. To hell with the fear.” ---- James Carville

CHUCK DULA: TOO SEXY FOR HIS SHIRT >>>

Editor's Note: As you may recall Weekly Volcano scribe Chuck Dula struck a deal with a bisexual female friend of his. If he can lose 25 pounds by May 1, then said friend - and another female to be determined later - will have a three-way with Mr. Dula. That's what I call inspiration. Chuck will be chronicling his weight loss efforts every Tuesday here on Spew. Below you'll find the latest installment in Chuck's quest to be less fat and have sex with two women at the same time. Enjoy.

Beginning Weight: 176

The trees leaves rustled as I carved up the road turning every pedal stroke into an answer. The hill on Point Defiance’s five-mile drive posed a question and I have spent the last 3 months coming up with a response to its daunting riddle. Now, digging in and riding lightly on my saddle, all I could hear was my rhythmic breathing and my pulsing heart. That is, until I heard my name.

“Chuck!”

The scream was filled with desperation and a yearning to stop this nonsense. My riding partner, now a couple of football fields away, asked if we could take a rest. As he crouched over, praying for vomit to give him some respite from the hell I had created, I took my shirt off.

“Is this not what you wanted? Are you not entertained?!” I asked him, in my mind at least.

His name is Barham and I called him an em-barham-sent. I can say tacky one liners like this now because I am ripped and nobody dares have any response to my jokes besides side-splitting laughter. I, however, do not laugh. I know I’m funny. ‘Cause I look sexy as fuck! I didn’t lose any weight this week ‘cause god can’t make a human any more perfect than I already am. Fuck a donut!

Ending Weight: A heart throbbing 176

PREVIOUS 25 POUNDS TO FREEDOM COLUMNS ON SPEW

MICHAEL SWAN: HAPPY HOUR DISCUSSION TOPIC >>>

The documentary Earth, a feature-length spin-off of the BBC series Planet Earth, has been touring Europe since the summer of 2007, yet it will hit U.S. screens for the first time tomorrow on Earth Day. Hmmm, did Bush squash the pro-environment film?

At any rate, here’s a trailer for the film that screen tomorrow at The Grand Cinema.

LINK: Where to go for happy hour

STEPH DEROSA: YOU CAN SEE THE MAGIC APRIL 29 >>>

Apparently word has gotten out about how much talent is all up in the South Puget Sound. Rumor has it we have great live music, talented performers, and one helluva attitude to back it up. As I walk down the street, I see talent gushing out of every open crack in the pavement. Now THAT’S a lot of talent.

Brrrr! I just got the shivers thinking about all the local talent we have. Either that or I’m about to sneeze again. Damn allergies.

NBC’s #1 (or so they say) show is coming to Tacoma. All the talent you could possibly imagine will be revealed upon the arrival of America’s Got Talent to the Tacoma Convention Center this weekend. Think you’ve got what it takes to impress the likes of celebrity judges David Hasselhoff, Sharon Osbourne, and Piers Morgan, and Nick Cannon? Then now is your time to let your star shine.

This Saturday and Sunday beginning at 8 a.m. each day, preliminary screenings will begin at the aforementioned Tacoma Convention Center for those who believe that they are the next talented coming of Christ. That is, if Christ was a superstar. Of course, all the lame freaks and delusional geeks will be weeded out, with the likely possibility of a few being passed through just for laughs. I can only assume a couple of losers will make the screening, because who doesn’t like to watch a social train wreck from the comfort of their home television set? Maybe Tacoma holds the one person who will take this competition all the way to the top. Who knows?

What I do know for certain is that 120 talented individuals who have first printed a screening application will make it past the April 25-26 preliminary round, and will hopefully demonstrate the ability to not pee their pants at the sight of international singing sensation and former Knight Rider, David Hasselhoff, April 29 at the show’s LIVE AUDIENCE taping.

Yes, you read correctly: I said LIVE AUDIENCE taping. You didn’t think they’d forget the rest of Tacoma, did you? The fine people of America’s Got Talent have prepared something to help the rest of us less-talented saps to be a part of this grandeur production.

To be a part of the America’s Got Talent LIVE AUDIENCE taping that will be held at 1 and 6 p.m., April 29 at Broadway Center’s Pantages Theater, you may request your free tickets here.

I just hope The Hoff has lifted his restraining order against me. I don’t need that kind of trouble … or do I? Heheheh.