TUESDAY, JAN. 7 2014 >>>

1. The Broken Circle Breakdown tackles a very true-to-life story in a very true-to-life way, largely shying away from any of the cinematic tropes so common to this kind of tale, save for a few fleeting moments which serve as welcome respites from the film's uncompromising realism. This is a film that totally immerses you in its story from the very beginning and leaves you absolutely emotionally drained by the final curtain. It plays today at 2 and 6:30 p.m. in The Grand Cinema. Read Jared Lovrak's review of the flick here.

2. Karen Litfin embarked on a journey to many of the world's ecovillages - intentional communities at the cutting-edge of sustainable living. From rural to urban, high tech to low tech, spiritual to secular, she discovered an under-the-radar global movement making positive and radical changes from the ground up. She documented her discoveries in her book, Ecovillages: Lessons for Sustainable Community. Hear her adventures first hand at 7 p.m. in Orca Books.

3. Guitarist Randy Linder brings his Creedence Clearwater Revival tribute show to The Red Wind Casino at 6:30 p.m.

4. Quick! Tell us who played Violet Bickerstaff, Screech's love interest, on three episodes of the television show Saved by the Bell? If you said "Tori Spelling," then going to a trivia night might be for you. There are trivia competitions all around the South Sound on a Tuesday night, where you can unleash your inner Ken Jennings. And while you won't approach Jennings-like earnings, you can win some cool stuff, ranging from gift certificates, to concert or sports tickets, to a VHS copy of All of Me, the film starring Lily Tomlin and Steve Martin. Sweet! One of the newer Tuesday trivia contests is the 6:30 p.m. free on at Treos in Old Town Tacoma. Tonight's categories include man movies, chick flicks and American automobiles. 

5. OK, when you take a shower you make a bucket with your arms to catch as much water as you can and splash it all onto the shower floor, but did you ever think the Kareem Kandi Band would perform on a Tuesday night? It's true. The jazz band will perform at 8 p.m. in Uncle Thurms Finger Licken Ribs & Chicken in Tacoma's Lincoln District. Well, cool ...

LINK: Tuesday, Jan. 7 arts and entertainment events in the greater Tacoma and Olympia area

WEDNESDAY, DEC. 11 2013 >>>

1. We all have touchstones that bring the simple spirit of Christmas to our harried, mall-besotted souls. For some, it's that first burst of multi-colored light when the last string is strung. For others, it could be a long-treasured card or the smell of baking cookies. For us, it's the music. Northwest jazz and blues singer Maia Santell and her backing band House Blend perform their annual holiday concert and dance at 7:30 p.m. in Jazzbones. House Blend instrumentalists feature Ted Dortch on tenor saxophone, Jeff Ziontz on guitar, Ted Enderle on bass and Tim Malland on drums. The band's repertoire includes jazz, blues, swing, Latin, rhythm and blues and holiday favorites such as "Merry Christmas Baby," "Please Come Home For Christmas," "Santa Baby," Nancy Wilson's "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?" and Mel Torme's holiday classic "The Christmas Song," to name a few. 

Read more...

EVERY WEDNESDAY: TRIVIA NIGHT AT MECONI'S

Wednesdays, Rev. Colin hosts the best trivia in town at Meconi's Pub & Eatery. Best known as a legendary local karaoke host and curator for the Tacoma Cult Movie Club, Rev. Colin is a fount of knowledge, and his trivia nights are as challenging as they are wonderfully absurd. Even if the night didn't offer cash prizes for the top three competing teams, it would be worth it for the spirited gameplay and the left-field questions.

The key to a great pub quiz is to combine general knowledge questions with intuitive questions and ridiculously difficult ones. Rev. Colin has mastered this mix and emerged with a trivia night that is as infuriating as it is addictive. On several occasions he has threatened to bring back a particularly unpopular category in which he gargles a tune and asks you to name it. Pray that you don't find yourself at Meconi's when that happens.

TRIVIA NIGHT, 8 p.m., Wednesday, Meconi's Pub & Eatery, 709 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, no cover, 253.383.3388

SATURDAY, NOV 30: SING-A-LONG-A GREASE

There once was a dark period (commonly referred to as the 1990s) where movie musicals were relegated to the outskirts of Hollywood, banished from bringing smiles to the faces of nerdy film-lovers everywhere. Gone were the days of brightly colored bubblegum confections such as Grease. Finally, Moulin Rouge and Chicago came along to help repopularize movie musicals, and Glee sealed the deal.

"Wait a second, turns out we love musicals!" exclaimed a fickle and easily influenced movie-going public.

As a movie, Grease has always been a breezy and charmingly empty-headed thing. It's like a big, goofy dog that wants nothing more than to run and circles, chase cars and slobber all over your face. As such, it's particularly suited to the phenomenon known as a sing-a-long. Come in costume, sing along to "Sandy," and experience what could quite possibly be the most wholesome act ever committed by man - which only gets more wholesome with the 68th Annual Holiday Tree Lighting, which immediately follows the film. It's enough to give you cavities.

SING-A-LONG-A GREASE, 3 p.m., tree lighting follows, Pantages Theater, $18-$26, 901 Broadway, Tacoma, 253.591.5890

THURSDAY, DEC. 5: RIFFTRAX LIVE: SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS

There's a whole generation of comedy nerds who were raised on the rapid-fire joke machines of The Simpsons, Monty Python and - for those of use who woke up early on Saturdays - Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Partially responsible for creating an entire genre of laughing at bad movies, the guys of MST3K explored film's dusty basement and emerged with an absurdly high quality of jokes per minute. Though MST3K eventually went off the air, Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett continued their quest to make fun of C-movies with projects like Cinematic Titanic and, most recently, RiffTrax.

In celebration of the holidays, RiffTrax will beam into theaters around the country to eviscerate one of the mothers of shabby movies: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. This '60s film is a classic of bad movie aficionados everywhere, and it lands firmly in the wheelhouse of the RiffTrax fellas.

RIFFTRAX LIVE: SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS, 8 p.m., Century Olympia, Westfield Capital, 625 Black Lake Blvd. SW, Olympia, $12.50, 360.943.0769

See Also

Judging By The Trailer

Exterminate! This is Nerd Alert, the Weekly Volcano's recurring events calendar devoted to all things nerdy. I myself am a Star Wars fan, mathlete, and spelling bee champion of long standing, so trust me: I grok whereof I speak.

FRIDAY, NOV. 22: POTTY-MOUTHED SOCK PUPPETS, KATNISS EVERDEEN AND VIDEO GAMES

It's been 10 years since Avenue Q, the racy Sesame Street parody for adults, garnered a raft of awards on Broadway, including the Tony for Best Musical. It uses hand puppets to represent 20-something New Yorkers dealing with the ennui of post-collegiate life. My friends, you are not precious daisies, and the landlord demands his rent no matter how hard you try at your failing artisanal muffin shop. Ain't existence crappy? Perhaps you can relate. So if song titles like "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist," "The Internet Is for Porn," and "What Do You Do with a B.A. in English?" sound intriguing, rest assured they brighten the mood of a deeply funny show. I caught it at the Balagan in Seattle. Now you can see it even closer to home, for less than the cost of a grande Frappuccino. So here's another Avenue Q song title you'll find useful: "There Is Life Outside Your Apartment." Take a date, a really cool date who'll enjoy the song "You Can Be as Loud as the Hell You Want (When You're Makin' Love)." Catchy!

AVENUE Q, 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Pierce College, Fort Steilacoom Theater, 9401 Farwest Dr. SW, Lakewood, $3, 253.964.6710

As we've come to expect from middle installments of genre trilogies post-Empire, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire goes dark. Katniss Everdeen finds herself on a victory tour of Panem with the boy she bent the rules to save at the end of the first book. The Emperor - er, President Snow, rather - announces he'll mix things up for the 75th Annual Hunger Games by making it an all-star tournament of previous winners, including our gutsy heroine and her ostensible boyfriend. This time, the battleground's a circular jungle; and, thanks to the worldwide box office success of the first film, its cinematic visualization has a workable budget and convincing CG effects. I always felt the books lost the element of surprise as they went along, but I suspect the movie series will peak with Catching Fire. On the other hand, I thought Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Almost Human would be awesome, so feel free to doubt my clairvoyance. (Oh, and by the way, Disney's animated Frozen and an action film starring Jason Statham, Homefront, open Wednesday the 27th. Talk about fun for the whole family.)

Trouble, is there's a good chance you'll be too busy to hit up a theater, any theater, this weekend, because either because you'll be bloodshot-eyeballs-deep in your week-old PlayStation 4 or standing in line for an Xbox One. Microsoft's cutting-edge console integrates a Kinect 2 motion sensor, Skype client, voice and gesture commands, cloud computing, and lightning-fast eight-core processor in a sleek, black Imperial torture droid, streeting Friday with 22 optional games including Call of Duty: Ghosts and Madden NFL 25. The real excitement, however, will coalesce around next year's release of a 343 Industries Halo sequel. Xbox One will set you back just shy of $500, PlayStation 4 about $400. Alternatively, I checked eBay, and the Atari 2600's running about $24. Adventure, anyone?

SATURDAY, NOV. 23: DOCTOR WHO

Does it seem strange to anyone but me that Doctor Who premiered the night after President Kennedy was murdered? It seems a bit cavalier, right? Do missing frames of the Zapruder film reveal a British police box on the grassy knoll? Is it true the Comedian's whereabouts that afternoon have never been established? The History Channel may never know. What we do know is the BBC and BBC America have orchestrated a weekend-long celebration of all things Whovian. Expect a TV movie recounting the origin of the whimsical series, An Adventure in Space and Time, Friday the 22nd. Then, on Saturday, a special episode, "The Day of the Doctor," will be simulcast all over the world - including cinematic showings in 3-D. The plot jumbles a crisis in Elizabethan England, Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor, a monster in the National Gallery, David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor, a battle in space and John Hurt. Best of all, it's written by show runner Steven Moffat, the mastermind behind the BBC's riveting Sherlock. Pop some popcorn and watch it with the kids. Shape new little geeks. Allons-y!

Until next week, may the Force be with you, may the odds be ever in your favor, and may you never cross streams by confusing your hydrospanner with your sonic screwdriver. Isn't that right, K-9?

See Also

Judging by the Trailer

In researching material for this column, I often find myself questioning just what it means to be a nerd in this day and age. What was once a moniker of derision has morphed into a proud self-identifier - an indication that one's overenthusiastic obsession with cultural ephemera is something to be nurtured and celebrated, not scoffed at. It seems as though anything can be considered nerdy now, even things that were once perceived as jocky (fantasy football, anyone?).

It comes as quite a relief, then, to be able to report on three forthcoming events that plant their feet firmly in the comfortable nerd-space of old.

FRIDAY, NOV. 15: DRUNKEN TELEGRAPH: CLASH OF THE TITANS

Over the years, live and public storytelling has re-announced itself as an art form. Beginning with the revival of the oral tradition in the form of the one-man show, the likes of Spalding Gray and Stephen Tobolowsky once more popularized storytelling as a fascinating bit of theater - whether taking the form of hilarious anecdotes or moving tales of woe. Podcasts like The Moth and Risk! carried storytelling further into the public square.

Drunken Telegraph (taking its name from a Rudyard Kipling quote about Tacoma) is a local storytelling live show. Each show has a central theme featuring various Tacomans telling different stories on that theme, with the final act being a storytelling slam from members of the audience. This installment - hosted by the Broadway Center for the Performing Arts as part of their "Free For All" series - is entitled "Clash of the Titans," and will focus on the battles faced by the evening's storytellers.

BROADWAY CENTER STUDIO III, 7:30 p.m., 915 Broadway, Tacoma, free with registration at broadwaycenter.org, 253.591.5890

SATURDAY, NOV. 16: DUNGEONS & DRAGONS MEETUP

My first time playing Dungeons & Dragons was as a 10-year-old, with my brother and our friends, and with my dad presiding as Dungeon Master. I was always drawn to the world-building and imaginative nature of the game. You could literally be anything you wanted to be and do anything you wanted to do (provided the dice rolled in your favor).

We were frequently regaled with stories from my dad - an old D&D pro from the '70s - about his early exploits in the game, which included finding a group of Smurfs and pissing on them (Smurfs melt when exposed to urine, it turns out). At one point, a portal through space and time was opened, revealing to the D&D warriors an alternate universe where several nerdy dudes sat around a table rolling dice. The archer fired an arrow at the Dungeon Master, and the game ended.

Tap into your D&D-loving nerdy side with a Dungeons & Dragons meetup at the Tacoma Main Public Library. Your Dungeon Master will be provided for you, I'm told, but you must bring your own pencils, paper and dice.

TACOMA PUBLIC LIBRARY MAIN BRANCH, 1-3 p.m., 1102 Tacoma Ave. S., Tacoma, free participation, 253.292.2001

SATURDAY, NOV. 16: CHEECH AND CHONG

Having spent the afternoon slaking your thirst for dragon blood, spend the evening doing the other thing that my dad spent the '70s doing: laughing at Cheech and Chong.

People who've only seen the films of Cheech and Chong haven't gotten the full picture of what these guys are all about. Yes, their humor is largely druggy, but the characters they played in films only showed one aspect of them. As comedians, Cheech and Chong were surprisingly incisive and clever, weaving through absurdist bits and satirical commentary.

Sure, they've gotten up in years, but Cheech and Chong have retained the anarchic glee that established them as two of the best stand-ups of the '70s.

EMERALD QUEEN CASINO, 8 p.m., 2024 E. 29th St., Tacoma, $45-$100+, 253.594.7777

LINK: Previous Nerd Alert! warnings

MONDAY, NOV. 4 2013 >>>

1. Thanks to the ingenious marketing minds behind fine retail establishments everywhere, the holiday season has now commenced. But while many lament the loss of, say, fall, others look at the bright side: a longer holiday season means more time to chug eggnog and nosh on matzo balls, and even more excuses to go out on random weeknights, such as a Monday. With Tacoma School of the Arts moving into the second floor, and the addition of commercial and retail businesses, restaurants and pop-up boutiques and galleries, the conversion of the old downtown Tacoma post office into an urban village has sparked its surrounding businesses to unite as the Old Post Office District. Today, the merchants of the downtown Tacoma district will unveil holiday collections such as gift ideas, holiday décor and cheer.

2. Jim Oliver is a fine art photographer, known for capturing natural and urban landscapes in a variety of photographic styles. His work has been in more than 50 exhibitions since 2007. His latest solo show - a photographic survey of the experience of Solitude with the counterpoint of Blues - opens today at the Tahoma Center Gallery. Take a gander from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

3. The Bears take on the Packers tonight for Monday Night Football. OK, that's fine and dandy. Rock The Dock Pub and Grill hosts a MNF party with food and drink specials, progressive free football board, door prizes, and a chance to wine two tickets to the Colorado/UW game at Husky Stadium Nov. 9. Now we're talking.

4. The University of Puget Sound's Living Art Series hits the road with an artist discussion at 7 p.m. in King's Books. The conversation will be led by Mita Mahato, associate professor of English at University of Puget Sound. Mahato makes comic books using collage and is working on a longer narrative about end-of-life care and its subsequent grief and pain. On one side of Mahato will be Scott Kolbo, associate professor of art at Seattle Pacific University, who creates drawings, prints, and video projections that feature reoccurring characters and fragmentary narratives. On the other side will be Randy Bolton, a printmaker, who teaches at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan.

5. It's Monday, which means The New Frontier Lounge's jazz jam will explore straight ahead, funk and space beginning at 8 p.m.

LINK: Monday, Nov. 4 arts and entertainment events in the greater Tacoma and Olympia area

WEDNESDAY, OCT. 30 2013 >>>

1. Halloween might be tomorrow night, but pull out your LED Tron costume anyway. Providing house music geeks to get their bump on early, The Lochs is hosting ARSON!!! Devils Night in Tacoma featuring DJs dAb, Cide, The Architects, Chris Savenetti and Demetre Baca. Just to make the night more blinking and glowing 1313effect.com will be in the house.

2. Founded 20 years ago in response to a wave of attacks on freedom of speech and artistic expression, Rock the Vote concerts represent the intersection of young people, politics and popular culture. From 5:30-8:30 p.m. at The Swiss, the University of Washington-Tacoma and Pacific Lutheran University will Rock The Vote with several bands, including Michelle from the Club and SHEBEAR. There will be a ballot drop bag on site.

3. Wednesday night is always good for getting quizzical in the South Sound. The Harmon Brewery hosts Trivia Night with Gordon Adams, Doyle's Public House offers Knowledge Night team trivia with awesome prizes, and Rev. Colin holds trivia court at Meconi's in downtown Tacoma. Find all the info you need right here.

4. It's no surprise that Rufus Wainwright should find himself years later to be a consummate showman. The son of folkies Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle, Wainwright grew up in a house of music, joining his mother's band at the age of 13. Even his sister, Martha, has a respectable music career in her own right. Wainwright was destined for the stage, though he veered off early on from the folk music legacy of his family. Wainwright takes the Pantages Theater stage at 7:30 p.m. Read Rev. Adam McKinney's interview with Rufus Wainwright in the Music and Culture section.

5. Lindsey Pavao from NBC's The Voice will perform at Jazzbones with Hero's Last Mission, Whitney Myer and Olivia De La Cruz, beginning at 8 p.m.

LINK: Wednesday, Oct. 30 arts and entertainment events in the greater Tacoma and Olympia area

WEDNESDAY, OCT. 9 2013 >>>

1. No one knows for sure when the first Paleolithic cave-dweller stuck a mammoth tail in crushed-up berries and began painting stick figures on the wall of his rocky abode, but you can bet the market value of the neighboring caves instantly went up. Want to inject a little life into your urban blight? Bring in a bunch of artists. The Olympia Artspace Alliance wants to develop affordable new spaces to live, work, create, rehearse, perform or conduct business in downtown Olympia. Teamed with Artspace Projects, Inc. it has designed a market survey that will inform it about Olympians' specific studio and housing needs. OAA invites the public to a market survey launch party at 5 p.m. at the Washington Center.  Drop by for food, drink and information.

2. Holly Senn work is one of those rare creatures whose work is equally conceptual and visual. Her sculptures - usually small works made from pages out of old and discarded books and displayed on sculpture stands - and her room-size installations - generally made from the same materials, are all about ideas generated from the materials and their implications, meaning the pages of books and the trees they are made from and ideas surrounding the act of reading and the environment in which those trees grow. But there is much more to her work than the idea. Her work is also visually stunning. Senn's new exhibit, "Scavenged," showcases a body of new work: forms inspired by specimens from the collection of some 1,300 bird nests at Puget Sound's Slater Museum of Natural History. A reception for Senn, as well as Randy Bolton's "Have A Terrific Great Nice OK Day and Other Prints" is from 5-7 p.m. at Kittredge Gallery on the University of Puget Sound campus.

3. It may be grayer than Bea Arthur's pixie cut outside, but not so inside King's Books at 6:30 p.m.  The Stadium District bookstore draws a crowd during the Scrabble Rabble sessions, where folks compete with similar skill level players and pounce with triple word scores.  The Weekly Volcano doesn't know about you but we always enjoyed hanging onto the "Q," where it hangs there on our rack like some ultimate weapon of destruction, waiting for that all-enabling "U" tile to unleash its point-mongering wrath upon our opponents.  Anyway, if your job sucks or you have a strange rash, join the Scrabble Rabble and those problems will, if only for a few hours, ease back into the recesses of your mind.

4. New York Times bestselling author Debbie Macomber has 170 million books in print; the newest, Rose Harbor in Bloom, will be front and center at 7 p.m. when Macomber visits the Tacoma Public Library Main Branch. The book is the sequel to The Inn at Rose Harbor, which was set in the Pacific Northwest town of Cedar Cove and follows the story of Jo Marie Rose, a young widow who purchases a local bed-and-breakfast as a way to cope with the death of her husband. In Rose Harbor in Bloom, Macomber returns to Cedar Cove, specifically Rose Harbor Inn, the bed and breakfast Jo Marie purchased, and focuses on the guests' stories. If you'd like to meet one of America's favorite storytellers, then head to downtown Tacoma tonight.

5.Hailing from Chicago but circling the planet in ever-widening orbits, CAVE are known for playing with rolling funk minimalism. The band's new album, Threace, finds them inhabiting their cut-up aesthetic with tremendous ease and fewer reference points than before. Catch them at 8 p.m. with Arrington De Dionyso and Judson Claiborne at Northern in Olympia.

LINK: Wednesday, Oct. 9 arts and entertainment events in the greater Tacoma and Olympia area

SUNDAY, JUNE 30 2013 >>>

1. Man, we don't ever get tired of slide guitar. Ex-Sheryl Crow guitar slinger Todd Wolfe plays classic rock with jam-band elements thrown in and a wicked blues slant. He and bandmates bassist Justine Gardner and drummer Roger Voss conjure up tones that are swampy, greasy and menacing. Wolfe's blues is the kind of sexy, slithering strain you'd expect to hear coming through a broke-down Delta joint's screen door. Great music for dancing slow, for dancing close. Catch the band at 7 p.m. in The Spar in Old Town Tacoma.

2. There is no such thing as a typical bicyclist, but there are certainly bicycle types.  You have your die-hard cyclists, who pour their sinewy bodies into neoprene suits, ride their bikes every day and regard automobiles with derision.  You also have your weekend riders, who aren't necessarily competitive like the die-hards, but might spend big bucks for a brightly colored off-road bike.  And then you have the newbies, the amateurs and the lazies - who may ride occasionally, rarely, or not al all since their parents sold their banana seat Huffys at neighborhood yard sales 20 years ago.  But if there' one issue that bicyclists around Pierce County can agree on, it's that the Tour de Pierce bike ride is flat out fun. And if flat is your speed, skip the 30- and 50-mile routes and enjoy the flat, easy 12-miler. The ride begins between 7:30-11:30 a.m. at the Gold parking lot of the Washington State Fair in Puyallup and winds through Puyallup, Sumner and adjacent farmlands.

3. A stalwart in the Tacoma community - as a musician, bartender and all-around good guy, Brian Redman was killed when he crashed his scooter in September 2009. In remembrance and to raise money for young musicians, the Brian Redman memorial Poker Tournament and Concert will be held Sunday, June 30 at Jazzbones. The poker tournament begins at 11 a.m. for a $50 donation. Music starts at 6 p.m. for a $5 donation. Raymond Hayden and The Monsters in the Dark, Champagne Sunday and Mahnhammer are on the bill. Raffle tickets will be on hand in $5 and $20 increments, with incentive for multiple purchases. Read Nikki McCoy's full feature on the Brian Redman Memorial Poker Tournament and Concert on our Walkie Talkie blog.

4. The final evening of the Olympia Experimental Music Festival will include a performance from Olympia native Derek M. Johnson. The cello-wielding and award-winning experimental musician will surely pack a number of tricks up his sleeve. His performance will allegedly feature music created with Kodak slide projectors, filtered through the extensive array of pedals he will have at his disposal. His "ektagraphtastic" set will undoubtedly be something to write home about. For a list of band performing tonight, click here.

5. We suppose it's fitting that the Mormon Trannys will be gracing Olympia with their presence on a Sunday. We also suppose there's no way for me to really know if they're actually scorned former members of the Church of Latter Day Saints, like they claim, but what is utterly apparent is that these guys are packed almost to the breaking point with the kind of sneering satire and politically incorrect social commentary that marked bands like the Frogs and other punk weirdos. The over-the-top show begins at 10 p.m. in Le Voyeur.

LINK: Sunday, June 30 arts and entertainment events in the greater Tacoma and Olympia area

TUESDAY, JUNE 25 2013 >>>

1. It's Tuesday and that means The Grand Cinema unleashes another special film as part of its Tuesday Film Series. Today at 1:45 and 6:45 p.m. The Grand will screen An Oversimplification of Her Beauty, a multimedia collage incorporating (semi-)scripted scenes, documentary, live action and several forms of animation, all to brood over the failure of a romantic relationship and examine how it lives on, or doesn’t, in memory. 

2. If you think the medium of artists' books are limiting, you'll undoubtedly be impressed with the array of work on display at the third annual membership show of the Puget Sound Book Artists. "Puget Sound Book Artists is comprised of amateurs and professionals from all quarters of the book arts field for the purpose of creating a spirit of community among handworkers in the books arts and those who love books," PSBA member Jane Carlin previously told the Weekly Volcano. "We also strive to increase educational opportunities for private individuals as well as institutions and other organizations, fostering excellence through exhibitions, workshops, lectures and publications." PSBA's book art show from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Collins Memorial Library features a wide variety of handmade books by 30 artists demonstrating how these talented artists can interpret the book in exciting and original ways that push the boundaries of tradition. 

3. If hearing the sound of your own cackling voice echoing off the walls of your shower stall has you craving the sound of something a bit more harmonious, check out the local songbirds at Victory Music Open Mic at the Antique Sandwich Co. It's guaranteed to be jam-packed with gorgeous sounds and humbling verses, as the South Sound's greatest up-and-coming acoustic musicians bare their souls impromptu-style. Performances start at 7 p.m., and if you're thinking that your shower-time ballads are ready for public consumption, you can sign up for your own moment in the, er, sun at 6.

4. Proctor District's wine connoisseurs at Pour at Four will be tasting wines from Steele Winery in Lake County Califonia. From the 2012 Shooting Star Sauvignon Blanc all the way to the 2009 Stymie Merlot, Pour at Four believes these wines are rocking. Not only is the tasting complimentary, but it is teeming with loads of vino knowledge. Tasting runs 5:30-8 p.m.

5. There are trivia competitions all around the South Sound on a Tuesday night, where you can unleash your inner Ken Jennings. And while you won't approach Jennings-like earnings, you can win some cool stuff, ranging from gift certificates, to concert or sports tickets, to a VHS copy of All of Me, the film starring Lily Tomlin and Steve Martin. Sweet! Two of our favorite Tuesday night trivia are at Fish Tale Brew Pub in Olympia and Farrelli's Wood-Fire Pizza in Tacoma, both start at 8 p.m.

LINK: Tuesday, June 25 arts and entertainment events in the greater Tacoma and Olympia area