WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 28, 2011 >>>

1. The Scrabble Rousers will push the wood from 6:30-9:30 p.m. inside King's Books. Entrance fee is $10 per person with proceeds benefiting the Tacoma Community House Student Scholarship Fund. And since it's Banned Books Week, you'll be rewarded if you come dressed as your favorite character from a blasphemous book.

2. Join your peers for discussions on local, regional and national arts advocacy issues and updates from Pierce County and municipalities at noon inside the Tacoma Municipal Building. Panelists include Andreda Mensink, Business Development manager at Tacoma Regional Convention & Visito Bureau and Mark Gerth, the new executive director of the Washington Sate Arts Alliance.

3. The Kareem Kandi Band and jazz trumpeter Jay Thomas will fill Tacoma's Pour at Four wine bar with awesome jazz from 7:30-9:30 p.m.

4. Jazzbones' Wednesday Sessions hosts the Olivia De La Cruz for a night of soulful, lyrical and passion beginnign at 9 p.m.

5. A tall, bearded man who always sports a utilikilt, Rev. Colin possesses a wealth of oddball musical knowledge and a disarming ease for calling everyone "baby." Having hosted karaoke for a little more than 12 years, Rev. Colin will host 9 p.m. karaoke at Puget Sound Pizza with a sure hand and a sense of fairness with who gets to sing and how often.

LINK: More arts and entertainment events in the South Sound

LINK: Half-priced wine nights

TUESDAY, SEPT. 27, 2011 >>>

1. This fall, Tacoma's favorite Victorian-style glass conservatory offers a botanical montage of madness, paralysis and death. The exhibit Wicked Plants: An Exhibit of the Deliciously Dark Side of the Plant Kingdom features deadly flora that would please a homicidal 19th-century botanist. The W.W. Seymour Botanical Conservatory exhibit is inspired by Amy Stewart's bestseller Wicked Plants: The Weed that Killed Lincoln's Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities, a much-needed compendium of plants that rack up body counts. Go see it from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., if you dare.

2. Drop by The Art Stop inside LeRoy jewelers and check out Ken Stevens' signature celadon glaze works from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

3. The final 6th Avenue Farmers Market will feature musician Billy Farmer & Friends from 3:30 to 7:30 p.m.

4. It's just the way that I live, yo
Like a pirate out to get his booty, yo
But yo ho ho and a bottle of rum
I'm gonna pimp like a pirate till my days are done.
We suspect author Rudy Martin, one of the founding faculty members of The Evergreen State College, has better stories of the sea than ours in his collection of short fiction, Seaside Stories. Martin will prove it at 6 p.m. when he shares them at Orca Books in Olympia.

5. The Hy-lu-Hee-Hee bar in Gig Harbor hosts a 6:30 p.m. Tuesday Trivia Night featuring three rounds with $25 price gift cards each, and a cumulative cash prize of $50 for the puzzle page. If no one wins it, next week would be $100, and so on.

LINK: More arts and entertainment events in the South Sound

LINK: Happy hours!

WEEKLY PUB QUIZ WITH A TWIST >>>

Tuesdays seem to be the hottest night for the overeducated South Sound masses to prove their intellectual worth. And where do such brainiacs head? Glad you asked.

The GEEKS head to Paddy Coyne's Irish Pub.

The Tacoma watering hole is the site of John Dicker's Geeks Who Drink pub quiz night. Dicker, a genius from Colorado, has taken the Irish Pub quiz tradition to a new level with Geeks Who Drink games across the nation, including every Tuesday night at the downtown pub, hosted by graphic artist and Weekly Volcano production assistant Holland Hume. A second game with host Ozzimo is held Thursdays at 8:30 p.m. inside The Ram Restaurant & Brewery on Tacoma's Ruston Way.

The quiz consists of eight rounds of eight questions and is played in teams of up to six people. Questions are read aloud by the quizmaster; teams write their answers on provided sheets and turn them in at the end of each round. The team with the most points after eight rounds is the winner.

"Rounds two and seven are audio rounds, five is a visual round with image on a piece of paper and the rest are read by me to the crowd," explains Quizmaster Hume, or as the teams at Paddy Coyne's call him - Holland the Wonder Boy.

Team Grasshopper

Four times during the quiz, participants get the chance to answer a random question, and the first one to show the correct (and legible) answer to the quizmaster wins a free drink and bragging rights for the night.

"The quiz is compiled by about a dozen individuals, fact-checked by a team of library science majors, and supervised by a gentleman who earlier this year was one of fourteen people ever to win six episodes of Jeopardy," says Hume.

Team The Goobs

Hume has commanded the Paddy Coyne's version for two months.

"The first month was pretty rough - the second night I had two teams," says Hume. "Now I consistently get 12 to 15 teams every Tuesday night, which packs the pub to capacity."

Team Angry Pissed-off Mama Possums

What's the wackiest thing Hume has seen during his reign?

"I can't really think of any one instance. Usually each night has its own event, whether it is corralling the people too drunk to play or publicly humiliating cheaters. Hmmm. Oh, I had one guy that kept trying to ask me about my shirt while I was reading questions, and then halfway through round one he ran outside and started puking everywhere. Stuff like that keeps the job entertaining if nothing else."

Geeks Who Drink pub quiz

• Tuesdays, 8 p.m., no cover or entry fee
  
• Paddy Coyne's Irish Pub
• 815 Pacific Ave., Tacoma
• 253.272.6963

LINK: Last week's results

LINK: More photos from last Tuesday

TUESDAY, SEPT. 13, 2011 >>>

1. We fell under the spell of bluegrass music long before The Grand Cinema ran Coen brothers' O Brother, Where Art Thou? for 13 years in a row. Our dad filled the truck's cab with the high, lonesome mountain-blues sound of Bill Monroe's plaintive voice accompanied by a banjo, mandolin and fiddle. The Oly Mountain Boys are putting together a celebration of the music of Monroe on the occasion of his 100^th birthday at 7 p.n. inside the Black Lake Grange Hall. Runaway Train will headline, the Oly Mountain Boys will open, and Pickled Okra from Seattle will do an all-Monroe set in between. There will be birthday cake, door prizes, rare concert film projected, and an all-around toe-tappin' good time.

2. Prairie Line was once the terminus of the Northern Pacific Railroad, today running through the University of Washington-Tacoma campus and other areas around downtown. This stretch of land has largely been forgotten in modern times, but there's a facelift in its future - a walking and biking interpretive trail headed up by design studio Thoughtbarn, made up of Lucy Begg, Robert Gay and Todd Bressi. These folks will hang from 9:30-11 a.m. inside the Rain City Café to share their plans with the public. Read the Weekly Volcano's story a program called Public Art In Depth (PA:ID) is kicking up its heels along the Prairie Line Trail here.

3. Olympia's Le Voyeur often slips through the cracks. But for those in the know, this trendy little restaurant is a perfect spot to sip PBR and discuss obscure Soviet films. Le Voyeur doesn't offer too many specials, but they do have $4 sandwiches on Tuesdays. The cheap sandwiches are a perfect complement to inexpensive beer, the amazing garlic fries and the ultra-hip clientele that are some of Le Voyeur's other specialties.

4. Geeks Who Drink Quiz Night with Quizmaster Holland Hume goes down at 8 p.m. inside Paddy Coyne's Irish Pub in Tacoma. The game consists of eight rounds of eight questions and is played in teams of up to six people. Questions are read aloud by Hume; teams write their answers on provided sheets and turn them in at the end of each round. The team with the most points after eight rounds is the winner. Oh, and there's drinking involved, too.

5. The DJ & Drummer Duo Battle featuring DJ Switch and Chris Dahl begins at 9:30 p.m. at the Backstage Bar & Grill on Sixth Avenue.

LINK: More arts and entertainment events in the South Sound

LINK: Tonight's Nightlife It List

WHAT WE HAVE FOUND TODAY >>>

How Can You Have A High-Speed Chase In Fern Hill?: It happened when a moron stole a car and crashed into a state trooper. (News Tribune)

Innovation Partnership Zone: Can in happen to the east side of Tacoma's Foss waterway? (News Tribune)

Through Rain And Sleet And Email?: The U.S. Postal Service is in trouble (CNN)

Teeny Tiny Waspy Stupidity: Everything that is wrong with fashion magazines today (Dumb As A Blog)

Space Invaders: Atari is making a joystick for the iPad (Gizmodo)

May The Interior Designer Be With You: George Lucas' crazy new offices for LucasFilm in Singapore look like something out of Star Wars movies (Gizmodo)

No It's MY Chemical Romance: Michael Pedicone, the drummer for My Chemical Romance, has been fired for stealing. (Take 40)

Newsflash: Madonna absolutely hates hydrangeas. (Billboard)

TUESDAY, AUG. 30, 2011 >>>

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. Looking for a good all-ages comedy open mic? Look no further than Tuesdays at Northern Pacific Coffee Co., where each week Jennifae hosts just that. Sign-ups kick off at 7:29 p.m. and the laughs stretch from 8 - 11 p.m. The hype promises, "some of Tacoma's finest and also littered with some novice acts."

4. Speaking of laughs, and venturing down to Olympia, the Royal Lounge 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.

5. It's "Trivia Night" at the Mix in downtown Tacoma.

LINK: Arts and entertainment events in the South Sound

LINK: Live music tonight in the South Sound

THURSDAY, AUG. 25, 2011 >>>

1. We've long held the notion that going out on the weekends just ain't what it used to be. All of your favorite bars are packed with people you don't know/like/understand; RV traffic is infuriating, and on and on.  Whatever.  It's "Anything Goes" every Thursday night at Chopstix on Sixth Avenue. Dueling piano players perform before lovely chiquitas grinding to Whitesnake, Sinatra, Beyonce and others while tossing back $4 specials, beginning at 9 p.m. What's going on Friday morning and afternoon that's so important, anyway? 

2. When your car starts looking like it's been crapped on by a big brown bear, you take it to Brown Bear Car Wash to get it all cleaned up. Today, in celebration of its 54th anniversary, the Seattle-based company will wash your ride for free.

3. From the tandem-riding Doublemint girls of the '60s to the insufferable Olsens, identical twins twins have always been fun. Another set of identical twins are making the scene, or rather scenery. Identical twins Don and Ron Snowden have their unidentical art on display through Sept. 30 at the Gig Harbor Civic Center. Don does watercolors, pen and ink and even instant coffee. Ron does watercolors too, concentrating on scenery. A reception for the TwinArt show runs from 5:30-7 p.m. at the Center. Get in on the drawing to win a painting from Don and Ron, or Ron or Don.  

4. Do drunken debauchery, sexual innuendo and '80s game shows describe your ideal Thursday night? Yup, us too. Beginning at 8 p.m. the Northern Pacific Coffee Co. will shove comedians Pat Stayblack and Vanna Fight in front of a wheel for a night of Real Misfortune. 

5. The Swiss in downtown Tacoma host a Maurice The Fish Records Showcase beginning at 9 p.m.

LINK: More arts and entertainment events in the South Sound

LINK: Live music tonight in the South Sound

WEDNESDAY, AUG. 24, 2011 >>>

1. Prepare ye for a rowdy Talk Like a Pirate Day edition of Scrabble Rousers, a competition suitable for all levels, from 6:30-9:30 p.m. at King's Books. Mateys establish their own skill level: beginner, intermediate, or expert. Scalliwags are then paired off to battle it out in two successive games. Entrance fee is $10 per person with proceeds directly benefiting the Tacoma Community House Student Scholarship Fund, which assists students as they transfer from TCH to community college.

2. Flame-worker Keiko teaches the art of beadwork using glass rods and a torch from noon to 4 p.m. inside the Museum of Glass.

3. The last Music in the Park concert of the season hits Olympia's Sylvester Park  at 7 p.m. when Locust Street Taxi fills the downtown park with lively swing and pop. Enter the free raffle for two outdoor folding chairs before the concert begins.

4. Doyle's Public House in Tacoma's Stadium District mixes it up Wednesday nights. First, if the Sounder's game is on, the place is packed. Then the info geeks arrive for the Knowledge Night trivia games. Toss in the regulars, and thrill seekers trying to nab the last shot of a Jameson bottle in hopes of winning a trip for two to Ireland - and the crowd is complete. The trivia begins at 8 p.m. Witness the awesome here.

5. The Sammy Steele Band adds soul to a country-roots-indie-rock sound at 8 p.m. inside Lady Luck's Cowgirl Up Military Appreciation night.

LINK: More arts and entertainment events in the South Sound

LINK: Happy hours!

TOO DAMN NICE TO UPLOAD PHOTOS >>>

I'm outta here. The family and I will be lost in a Key Peninsula park today. However, I do want to post a few of the photos I snapped last night at the Downtown Block Party – I'm still high on its community vibe. All walks of life converged on Tacoma's Opera Alley from 5-10 p.m. partaking in art projects, board games, photo shoots, dancing, drinking, chalking, meditating, street games and just hanging. It was awesome, to say the least.

I'll post more DBP photos tomorrow, as well as a professional batch from Steve Dunkelberger.

Have a great day everyone.

WEDNESDAY, AUG. 3, 2011 >>>

1. Mighty High will lay down some reggae at Jazzbones tonight. Mid-week jam band action is so your style.

2.  The Steilacoom Summer Concert Series continues this evening at Pioneer Park, featuring Danny Vernon's "Illusions of Elvis." The fun is free, all ages and starts at 6:30 p.m.

3. Thanks to the Washington State History Museum kids have the chance to learn about the Oregon Trail this morning at Garfield Book Company. It's just one of many cool events at Garfield Book Company this summer.

4. Sometimes a little goofiness is just what the doctor ordered. Chalet Bowl in Tacoma's famed Proctor District has you covered with Wacky Wednesday - featuring all-you-can-bowl for two hours, lots of clean fun, and a mighty-fine mid-week cheap date opportunity.

5. The sun is out and it's time once again in Gig Harbor for the appropriately named Gig Harbor Green Farmers Market. Find info here.

LINK: More arts and entertainment events in the South Sound

LINK: Live music tonight!