SUNDAY, JAN. 8, 2012 >>>

1. Blues vocalist Diunna Greenleaf and pianist Clay Swafford will make history with their first performance in the Northwest at 7 p.m. inside The Royal Lounge in Olympia when Greenleaf, a nominee for this year's Koko Taylor Award for Best Traditional Female Blues Vocalist and the Blues Music Award for Best Traditional Blues Album, joins Swafford, widely regarded as one of the best blues piano players in the world, will perform as a duo. The show will be taped so don't dress like a slob. Read Jake de Paul's full feature on the event here.

2. Today is the last day to bundle up, pinch your cheeks until they glow and strap on a pair of silver skates, Hans Brinker, for a glide across the frozen expanse at Tollefson Plaza. The Franciscan Polar Plaza, located on the corner of Pacific Avenue and South 17th Street ends today. Hit the ice from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. To read Paul Schrag's full feature on Polar Plaza, click here.

3. Photographer and downtown Tacoma resident Peter Serko loves the Museum of Glass. Loves it. Well, at least loves to shoot it. He's been capturing the many moods of the MOG since 2006. And MOG has been aware. Today is the last day to see Serko's Transformation: Art Changes a City at MOG. From noon to 5 p.m., see Serko's 18 photographs of both the Museum architecture and the Chihuly Bridge of Glass taken during different times of day throughout the seasons. Bonus: Peter Serko discusses the rebirth of Tacoma.

4. Born in Jackson, Miss., Patrick Lamb began paying his dues by playing roadhouse music as a teenager in the rural south when he heard the evocative sounds of James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles and Wilton Felder, of the Crusaders. At 5 p.m. inside the Marine View Church, Lamb will show Northeast Tacoma what he has learned over these many years, specifically awesome old school R&B soul tunes.

5. Funky blues band Bump Kitchen will perform at 7 p.m. inside The Spar in Old Town Tacoma.

LINK: More arts and entertainment events in the South Sound

LINK: Live music and DJs in the South Sound

LINK: This week's freebies

WE SCENE IT >>>

Last Sunday, I dropped by the Steilacoom Pub and Deli for its weekly open mic, hosted by singer/songwriter Jeanne Hopkins - or as many know her, Jeanlizabeth. Hopkins told me she's putting the final touches on her next album, which will likely be out this spring.

This open mic feels more like a club than a show. The musicians play to mostly other musicians, so folks try out new songs, ask for feedback and freestyle. Cottonwood Cutups, which just released a CD, and KC Brakes, a regular at C.I. Shenanigans's weekend jazz nights, lit up the joint last week.

Drop in on a Sunday night and watch music be created.

[Steilacoom Pub and Grill, Sunday open mic with Jeanlizabeth, 8 p.m., no cover, 1202 Rainier St., Steilacoom, 253.584.7693]

LINK: Previously on Spew

WHAT WE HAVE FOUND TODAY >>>

Welcome to Monday

Candle Light Vigil: Community gathers to remember Mount Rainier National Park ranger Margaret Anderson. (News Tribune)

Trespassing: On the freakin' Narrows Bridge. (KCPQ)

Tacoma Police Union: It hired an accountant to review City of Tacoma's numbers. (News Tribune)

Sentenced To Death: American Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, on trial in Iran for espionage, received some bad news. (CNN)

Swiss National Bank Chairman Philip Hildebrand: Resigns. (Seattle PI)

Kristy McNichol: Out. (People)

Proof Is In The Letter: Jack Kerouac wanted to star in On The Road movie with Marlon Brando. (Alt Film Guide)

March 25: The day Mad Men returns. (Best Week Ever)

In Defense of Pink Floyd: 10 essential tracks. (Flavorwire)

More Crying And Hugs?: Metallica planning a 3-D film. (Yahoo)

David Bowie: Myth-maker turns 65 away from limelight. (Guardian)

Would You Buy A Car From A Crazy Actor?

MONDAY, JAN. 9, 2012>>>

1. Every second Monday of the month Tacoma's Graphic Novel Book Club meets at the famed watering hole 1022 South to delve into another, well, graphic novel. Hence the name. Organized by King's Books, January's offering is Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 by Tim Hamilton, which, like all Graphic Novel Book Club selections, is conveniently available at King's. Unfortunately for the kids, you have to be 21 or older to hang with this club at 1022 South. The good times roll at 7 p.m.

2. South Sound blues legend Jerry Miller plays The Swiss in Tacoma tonight --- the show kicks off at 8 p.m.

3. Drop in on Micro Monday with DJ Melodica at Magoo's Annex and expand your musical horizons and knowledge. Even better: Tonight the Volcano's own Rev. Adam McKinney (DJ Pocket Square to those in the know) will be on hand to help Melodica get the proverbial party started.

4. Mondays in Tacoma's Dome District equate to devil horns - at least since The New Frontier Lounge instituted Metal Mondays. Pet your handlebar mustache with likeminded folks tonight. Metal Monday gets going at 9 p.m.

5. Jake's on Fourth Avenue in Olympia offers one of the best gay-friendly karaoke experiences the region has to offer. If you consider yourself a karaoke person, and have yet to see it, it's time you got in the game.

LINK: More arts and entertainment events in the South Sound

LINK: Live music and DJs in the South Sound

FREE EVENTS JAN. 9-15 IN THE SOUTH SOUND >>>

Bobble Tiki suggests that you start ducking and covering now. That's because it's this week's Freeloaders column - Morbid Edition. What in the Tim Burton is that, you ask? This week's column starts weird, with dark, morbid funhousey opening credits a montage of images happening in the South Sound this week and ends weird, with Crispin Glover singing the column's love theme, the Jackson 5 hit "Ben." If you are not a rat-o-phobe and end up reading this whole column, Bobble Tiki hopes you stay for the closing credits to hear Glover's bizarre, almost pretty take on the song, but like many reading this column right now, you may pack up and leave before it's ove...

For those still here, rub Pond's cold cream on your face and enjoy the following free morbid-ish events this week in the South Sound.

MONDAY, JAN. 9: The geeky Graphic Novel Book Club will discuss Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 by Tim Hamilton at 7 p.m. inside Hilltop Tacoma's book-themed 1022 South lounge. Hamilton's consistently muted color palette of grays, blues and blacks sustains the overarching gloomy mood and renders the bright flashes of red and orange flames all the more startling in contrast.

TUESDAY, JAN. 10: Rev. Colin co-hosts the wacky Tacoma Cult Movie Club, screening mini-skirted astro-vamps to folks of questionable character at The Acme Grub Cage. When Rev. Colin isn't behind the projector, he's behind the microphone hosting karaoke Tuesday through Saturday. At 9 p.m. Tuesday night Rev. Colin sets up camp in Puget Sound Pizza's lower level. In keeping with the Morbid Edition, Bobble Tiki suggests you sing, "There Is a Light That never Goes Out," "Girlfriend In a Coma," "The Eternal" and "The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."

WEDNESDAY, JAN. 11: The Tacoma Classics Book Club is a classic. It's been lurking around Tacoma since 1994. At 7 p.m. inside King's Books, the club will discuss the uplifting The Plague by Albert Camus, a carefully crafted political allegory about an epidemic of bubonic plague that takes place in the Algerian port city of Oran.

THURSDAY, JAN. 12: There's always one member of the family who takes it upon him- or herself to document every branch, twig, leaf and bud of the family tree. Sate this person's taste for amateur genealogy by dragging him or her to the Olympia Genealogical Society's monthly meeting at 7 p.m. in the Thurston County Courthouse, Building One, Room 152. The topic of this month's meeting will be obituaries. Awesome.

FRIDAY, JAN. 13: OK, this might be a stretch, but it's free and a lot of people are killed. Once Sold Tales Bookstore Outlet in Kent will screen Bourne Identity at 7 p.m., or what Bobble Tiki likes to call "Run, Damon, Run."

SATURDAY, JAN. 14: An informal discussion on family caregiving sounds depression to Bobble Tiki, but it's a fact of life. If you need resources, tools and skills to help care for a loved one, the Sumner Public Library offers a free class at 11:30 a.m.

SUNDAY, JAN. 15: Like Kenny Rogers says, you gotta know when to hold 'em and know when to fold 'em. So put on your poker face and test your holding and folding at the free Texas Hold'em Tournament at 2:30 p.m. inside Halftime Sports Saloon in Gig Harbor. And remember, there'll be time enough for counting when the dealing's done. ...

LINK: More arts and entertainment events in the South Sound

MONDAY IS A GOOD DAY TO START >>>

Monday night is typically a black hole for nightlife. Sure, if you run a sports bar, you'll do well during football season, but for most eating and drinking establishments, it's just dead, dead, dead. There's a darn good reason why so many of them are closed on Mondays. So how do those that remain open find ways to fill barstools on this, the most dreadful evening of the workweek?

Weekly Volcano theater critic Christian Carvajal offers a night-by-night round trip through Olympia's unique arts scene, including two weekly events happening on Monday. To read his feature story, click here.

STEP BACK IN TIME >>>

In the 1990s, while Seattle was pounding juice drinks at the Gravity Bar before knocking heads in front of a grunge band at the Weathered Wall, Olympians were knee deep in a D.I.Y. music revolution, running between house concerts and packing it in anytime indie-metal band KARP found a stage. Short for Kill All Redneck Pricks, KARP anchored the other end of the K Records roster - the loud, impenitent high-energy end. By the end of the '90s, like many of the Olympia venues of the time, KARP faded to black.

After 4 1/2 years of collecting archival footage - and conducting interviews with Calvin Johnson of K Records, Justin Trosper of Unwound, Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill and others - Brooklyn filmmaker William E. Badgley has managed to capture the rise and fall of the raucous band in his film, Kill All Redneck Pricks: A documentary about a band called KARP. The film documents- in a rough-and-tumble style - the story of the Olympia sludge band and its exposure to drugs, demons and bad luck.

Tacomans get a chance to see the film on a big, pull-down screen tomorrow night when the New Frontier Lounge screens the KARP documentary at 7 p.m., with a Q&A with the film's director and bands to follow according to Jason Locking, who orchestrates "RocDoc Tuesdays" at the New Frontier.

See a full screening schedule, view trailer or pre-order the DVD at www.karplives.com.

[The New Frontier Lounge, Tuesday, Jan. 10, 7 p.m., $5, 301 E. 25th St., Tacoma, 253.572.4020]

WHAT WE HAVE FOUND TODAY >>>

Mount Rainier Ranger Memorial: Traffic will be impacted. (News Tribune)

Republican Presidential Nomination: Mitt Romney is expected to win New Hampshire, but there's lots of speculation about who will take second and gain momentum for the South Carolina primary. (CNN)

Drat: Six things you'll pay more in 2012. (CNN)

Morning Business Round-up: Olympus shares surge. (BBC)

Separated At Birth: Michael Cera and Hitler's mom? (Videogum)

Kenneth G: He grew snowflakes in laboratory conditions. (boing boing)

Friendship Is Magic: The Bronies take Manhattan. (The AWL)

The Shins: The band has a new track. (AV Club)

Coachella: The lineup has been announced. (Facebook)

TUESDAY, JAN. 10, 2012 >>>

1. The Swiss Pub and science are synonymous. OK, so maybe they're not quite synonymous, but they do go together quite well -the monthly "Tacoma Science Café" at the Swiss proves it. Today, join the University of Puget Sound's Rand Worland, Ph.D. as he delves into "The Physics of Music: Using Light to Study Sound." As hype of the free event reminds us, music has vibration at its root. Worland will help attendees, "discover how he uses lasers to produce images of these vibrations and how differences in vibrations alter how we perceive sounds. The Tacoma Science Café kicks off at 6:30 p.m.

2. Get your Tuesday night on with the Joe Faker Band and Allen Alto at O'Callahan's Pub & Grill in Key Peninsula. If the music, which starts at 7 p.m., doesn't float your boat, just play pull-tabs. There's no cover.

3. Get your groove on tonight in Parkland. DJ Adam Ant spins during "Twisted Tuesday" at Lady Luck Cowgirl Up, offering Top 40 action and karaoke. The good times start at 9 p.m. Or, if you're looking for something more, peruse the Volcano's extensive live local music listings here.

4. Tacoma's Backstage Bar & Grill has stormed onto the scene - quickly becoming this town's go-to location for nostalgic drunken fun and devil horns. Tonight witness the awesomeness of a "DJ & Drummer Duo Battle," featuring DJ Switch and Chris Dahl. Magic starts at 9:30 p.m.

5. The Royal Lounge in Olympia offers a Comedy Lounge night every Tuesday, featuring an open-mic from 9-9:30 p.m. and headlining comics from 9:30 - 11 p.m.

LINK: More arts and entertainment events in the South Sound

LINK: Live music and DJs in the South Sound

SOUTH SOUND DINING NEWS, NIBBLES AND BITES >>>

Tonight: Toscanos Café & Wine Bar hosts Hot Drinks & Cool Scarves tonight. If you purchase one of Toscanos's specialty hot cocktails you'll be entered into a drawing for a bitchin' winter scarf.

Fill Your Growler: Beginning today through Friday, Jan. 13, Wine Bank & Beer Vault will take $2 off any growler fill.

Bonus: Through the month of January Brix 25 will present an envelope to diners to open after their meals revealing a $20.12 discount, a free dinner up to six guests or $500 gift certificate. Reserve your spot at 253.858.6626.

News: Garlic Jim's on Sixth Avenue is now called Sammy's Pizza with the same owner.

Hot Dog Cart: T-Town Hot Dog cart will open for business at 10 a.m. Monday-Saturday in Tollefson Plaza beginning today.

New Club: Surreal Ultra Lounge replaced Club Kokonut in April 2010 at 728 Pacific Avenue in downtown Tacoma. Surreal closed in late 2011. Now, Club Kokonut has re-opened in the same space. The dance club hosts "Wobble Wednesday" featuring DJ Reign spinning dubstep and $3 top-shelf pours without a cover change.

Celebration: Northwest Mountain Winery celebrates its first anniversary from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 14 with jazz music by Norma Owens. Admission is free.

On Hold: Wildside Wine will be closed until Jan. 18. It has a Bordeaux blind tasting scheduled for Jan. 28.

Maxwell's Night Out: Maxwell's Restaurant offers two wild mixed green salads, two selected entrees, two scoops of ice cream, two glasses of house wine and two tickets to The Grand Cinema for $60. Reserve the deal at 253.683.4115.

Farrelli's Pizza is opening up a new store this summer