SATURDAY, OCT. 19 2013 >>>

1. For some, running can be an excruciating experience. To many others, it's what they live for. But however you feel about running, there's no doubt the experience can be improved by the donning of a ghoulish costume or vampire teeth and a cape. Enter the Black Cat Fun Run, a family-friendly 2.5 or 5-mile jaunt through Point Defiance Park set to go down at dusk. Organized by Metro Parks Tacoma, the event caters to runners and walkers of all levels, and the registration fee gets you a running cap with lighted brim, glow necklace and live music, hat bales and snack at the finish line ... or water if you're, like, a really hardcore runner and stuff.

2. What would all this Halloween talk be without perhaps the most classic (and bloodiest) Halloween-y performance of them all? Head over to see Tacoma City Ballet performance of Haunted Theatre: Backstage Tour and Eerie Dances at 3 and 5 p.m. inside the Merlino Arts Center. Walk behind the scenes in an old ballet studio and see what kind of chills, thrills, and arabesques lurk as Tacoma City Ballet dancers perform spooky Halloween ballets complete with bats, marionettes, ghosts, monsters, mummified Egyptian cats, pumpkins, skeletons and witches. Afterward, go grab a "bite." The dance company will be sure to make a great impression (or is it a great mark?) on you.

3. Actor Elliott Gould will appear at a 7 p.m. screening of the 1970 Robert Altman film M.A.S.H., in which Gould played Trapper John McIntyre, as a fundraiser for the Olympia Film Society's digital cinema campaign at the Capitol Theater.

4. PugetBrass will perform traditional and contemporary literature in a unique and entertaining style popularized by British colliery bands of the early 20th century at 7:30 p.m. in Tacoma Community Coolege Building 2 Auditorium.

5. "For an event that pretty much takes the worst elements you could possibly combine together," says Craig Egan, "we've had surprisingly little amount of trouble." Egan is speaking about his annual take on Oktoberfest, called Maltoberfest at 7 p.m. inside Bob's Java Jive. It doesn't take much detective work to figure out that Maltoberfest celebrates that most dubious of concoctions: malt liquor. Now in its eighth year - and with the ridiculous subtitle of "Maltoberfest 8: Menace II Sobriety" - the event brings together all of Tacoma's rabble-rousers for a night of punk, hip-hop, German nonsense and many dozens of forties of Old English, Mickey's, and Steel Reserve. Read Rev. Adam McKinney's full feature on Maltoberfest 8: Menace II Sobriety in Music and Culture section.

LINK: Saturday, Oct. 19 arts and entertainment events in the greater Tacoma and Olympia area