TUESDAY, APRIL 24, 2012 >>>

1. The Diversity Film Festival continues at The Grand Cinema with each film a meditation on the theme of cultural diversity. The concept began a few miles (and years) away from The Grand, at Tacoma Community College. Dr. Scott Earle, a TCC English and Humanities instructor since 1999, along with fellow teachers and staff, has hosted on-campus film screenings of this sort for some time. A suggestion was made to Earle and his colleagues in late 2010 to graduate their young program - let it leave the classroom and test its wings in the community. Today at 2 and 6:30 p.m., the Grand will screen Scheherazade, Tell Me A Story, which playfully yet bitingly evokes the titular Arabian Nights fabulist in contemporary Egypt.

2. Tacoma Restaurant Week continues through Thursday offering diners a $25 three-course dinner menu and optional $15 three-course lunch at 25 participating area restaurants. For a list of participating restaurants, and their phone numbers for reservations, click here.

3. Taking cues from early hardcore, as well as perennial punk from the '80s, Portland's Autistic Youth make driving, anthemic stuff that'll clear up your sinuses. Songs rush by in delirious two-minute bursts of group cheering and insistent drumming. The band will be joined at 6 p.m. inside Tahoma Tea & Co. by a stupid good assembly of punk acts from all over: the frantic Youth Avoiders from France, Oakland's chunky and melodic Acid Fast, rising punk locals Snak Pak, and fellow Tacoman punks Criminal Code, who will be leaving on tour following the show. 

4. The Choir of the West returns from its tour to Oregon with 10 more ways to order coffee and a bunch of varied choral work, which it will present at 8 p.m. inside Lagerquist Concert Hall.

5. The guttural growl and the howling vox of Author & Punisher's post industrial robotic doom metal will fill The New Frontier Lounge at 9 p.m. Taurus and Helms alee will also join the fun.

LINK: More arts and entertainment events in the South Sound

LINK: Live music and DJs in the South Sound

LINK: South Sound happy hours