FRIDAY, JULY 15, 2011 >>>

1. After disbanding the Los Angeles new wave/power pop group the Plimsouls , Peter Case launched a career as an important American singer/songwriter specializing in the flat-pick guitar style and semi-autobiographical stories of drifters delivered in a narrative style. Case performs at 8 p.m. inside Morso Wine Bar.

2. Gastropods in general are believed to have lost half of their original bilateral symmetry somewhere during the evolutionary process; so a snail's intestinal tract twists around and evacuates near its head, where the genitalia are also located. This physiological tidbit was probably not in artist Chris Thompson's mind when he linked his paintings to snails. Thompson's show, Trails - which also includes paintings of slugs - will open at the Telephone Room Gallery from 5-9 p.m.

3. Say you go to the Tacoma Cemetery at 48th and South Tacoma Way at 6 p.m. to do a little thinking and writing in your journal. As you sit there taking hits off a flask in the E.A. Poe-ness of the place, you're joined by a strange bunch of people. Their leader, a former Dungeons and Dragons freak, is decked out in a cape and carries a lantern. He's telling his suburban entourage that the graveyard where you're sitting is full off strange stories from Tacoma's past. You slowly realize that you're smack dab in the middle of the Third Annual Living History Cemetery Tour lead by the The Fort Nisqually Time Travelers, a select group of living history re-enactors. "Cool" you whisper under your breath. Later, after the crowd shuffles off, a homeless man plunks himself down across from you to root through his plastic bag of stuffed animals, and a kid speckled with metal studs and zits and wearing a Dead Boys T-shirt strides by, giving you the old hairy eyeball. Man, Tacoma is so great sometimes.

4. In a way the Tacoma Film Festival party never stops at The Grand Cinema. As TFF's founder and continuing planner, the theater's staff and volunteers work throughout the year on each new festival. And in 2011 they've figured out a way to share even more of the festival with us. TFF doesn't officially commence until Oct. 6, but who says we can't have fun now? Not the Grand; its first-ever Tacoma Film Festival Sneak Peek happens at the theater at 6:30 p.m. Let's pre-party! For the party details, click here.

5. DJs dAb, Suga Jones, Mr. Clean, Chris Savenetti and rotating guests spin New Wave, funk, pop, old school hip-hop and club classics from the 1980s as part of Beat Boxxx night at the Tempest Lounge beginning at 9:30 p.m.

LINK: See our Weekend Hustle for more events

LINK: More arts and entertainemtn events in the South Sound

LINK: Movies open!