STEVE DUNKELBERGER: HIGH ENERGY PUNKED >>>

Last night, there was sadness, a sadder Count, neo-punk banshees and a wacky drummer.

It started with a goodbye. Last night marked the closing dinner of Seven Oh One. I toasted its demise with a great friend over goat cheese pasta and black bean chorizo soup. I wish the best of luck to Patti in her future endeavors.

We raced over to Jazzbones to catch Jimmy Thackery blend blues and rock before a crowd that could hang with my parents.

My Jazzbones highlight was watching some dude arrive dressed as the Count from Sesame Street. If he counted those dressed in costume, it would be one. Apparently the Halloween party his friends told him to dress for didn’t exist. Damn, that mo-fo vamp got punked.

Still laughing, I headed south to Bob's Java Jive to catch the old-school rock-turned punk sounds of the Dignitaries, then parlaying the excellent music into another winner with You Yell You Kick’s late set. Neo-punk banshee filled the coffee pot.

On my way home I stopped by the Fan Club in Lakewood for a high-energy walk through the history of rock and roll with Igneous Rocks. Wow, I dug them â€" even though drummer Sean Peterson is one of my Mafia members on Facebook. Igneous Rocks plays the Fan Club again tonight. I highly recommend this show.

LINK: More photos on Steve Dunkelberger's MySpace site

NEWS TEAM: GOOD MORNING SOUTH SOUND >>>

This Should Turn Them Around: Pierce County might owe jail inmates a refund.

No More Creepy Vans?: City of Lakewood to decide today on switch to fixed cameras instead of roving enforcement for speeders.

TeeVee: Mad Men, 30 Rock nab top Emmys.

Report: U.S. general calls for more troops in Afghanistan.

Stuff Happens: U.S. stocks extend global drop as dollar gains, oil declines.

Weird: Spidey lizard

Disturbing: The most creepy stuff on the web

MICHAEL SWAN: WHAT’S HAPPENING >>>

I swear every day there’s 30 or so shopping carts abandoned at Pierce Transit bus stops, sidewalks and bushes in Lakewood.

There’s four stranded in front of Lowe’s.

There’s a couple on the corner of 100th and Bridgeport Way S.W.

Every. Day.

The assistant to the assistant manager at Lowe's in Lakewood says they don't have a regular program to pick up their carts on the streets.

STEVE DUNKELBERGER: LAKEWOOD CLEANS UP THE HOUSE WITH ANGRY MUSICAL >>>

So as a confession of full disclosure as a journalist, I have state that I had a few drinks with the cast of Lakewood Playhouse's production of Angry Housewives after the show, but did not talk about the show or theater. Most of the chatter centered on the cute La Palma bartender and that our margaritas would have tasted better had alcohol been involved as promised. Although cast member Blake York offered to give the Weekly Volcano a verbal reach around if I mentioned his name in a review.

But that is a story for a different column.

While lots of fun, Angry Housewives didn't blow me away.

The story centers on Jetti, Bev, Wendi and Carol â€" good friends, but angry over the lack of respect from their men. So, they form a punk rock band, Angry Housewives, and take their local club scene by storm gaining new self-respect and renewed respect from their men.

OK, York. Here you go: Your small role as the butthead husband to Careese Robertson's character Jetta â€" while solid â€" is essentially the same dude you have played in different shows. It worked this time, but I expected you to bring more to the table.

Sheri Tipton anchored the housewives with her nails-on-chalkboard accent and deer-in-the-headlights glances. This equity actor-elect was the vocal powerhouse of the show.  However, Tipton's talent highlighted off notes elsewhere in the cast. Not that there were many. In fact, the off notes actually added to the plain-Jane mood of the show â€" in the same way fat dudes added to the working-class tone of The Full Monty.

Executive Director Marcus Walker nailed it as the grumpy boyfriend with a thing for honoring the fish that made him famous. His great sense of timing and nuance made the bit part more than just a plot device to tie up loose ends in the story.

Such was also the case with Aaron Berryhill as the son of one of the angry housewives as he battles not only with his own teen angst but also the fact that his mom's band is better than his. This young actor played the role of a young Sid Vicious caricature solidly and convincingly, that is, for playing a teen punk stereotype in a comedy where that is expected.

Overall, it's a show worth seeing.

[Lakewood Playhouse, Angry Housewives, watch out for harsh language, through Aug. 2, 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday, actor benefit matinee 2 p.m. Saturday, $18-$24, 5729 Lakewood Towne Center Blvd, next to the Pierce Transit Center in the heart of the Lakewood Towne Center, Lakewood, 253.588.0042]

Photo: Angry Housewives’ Careese Robertson as Jetta, photography by Dean Lapin

MICHAEL SWAN: ON THE BIG SCREEN TOMORROW >>>

EASY VIRTUE: A young Brit (Ben Barnes) brings his dashing American love (Jessica Biel) home to meet his parents (Kristin Scott Thomas and Colin Firth) with unsettling results.  The early Noel Coward play is adapted with wit and style. Read full review here.

Also opening tomorrow: The Proposal, Shall We Kiss and Year One.

Discover what the hell these films are about and when they screen here.

RON SWARNER: INSIDE THE INDIE >>>

Movies always settle me. I have to sit still and listen, which seems to get harder and harder the older I get and the younger I act. Friday, local filmmakers will screen their imaginations as part of Pierce College’s Spring Film Festival.

The film that I will use only the edge of my seat to watch will be Inside the Indie, a full-length documentary on the singer-songwriter scene in Puget Sound. Kevin Defy, with collaborators Kurt Lindsay and Tabitha Neeley, peek inside the brains of such musicians as James Coates, Angela Jossy, Allan Boothe, Roy Douglas, Deborah Page, Voxxy Vallejo and many more.

The trailer hints to poignant, funny, and intimate sides of these real-life characters as they explain why they, night after night, play to crowds, often small, and many times loaded.

[Pierce College Fort Steilacoom, Friday, May 29, 7-9 p.m., free, 9401 Farwest Dr. S.W., Lakewood, 253.964.6659]

LINK: See a movie today

MICHAEL SWAN: MONDAY, MAY 4, 2009 >>>

2. It's Monster Metal Mondays with Lenore, Immiserate, Boston Strangler at Hell's Kitchen beginning at 8 p.m.

3. Blues jam hosted by Borrowed Time- Neil Fallen, Doug Skoog, Curtis Smith, Paul Buck and Billy Barner â�" begins at 8:30 p.m. Maggie O'Toole's in Lakewood.

4. The documentary Earth, a feature-length spin-off of the BBC series Planet Earth, screens at The Grand Cinema.

5. Rockaraoke at Jazzbones

LINK: Live music and DJs tonight in the South Sound

STEPH DEROSA: SLOW BURN >>>

Ra Bok Ki
Palace Korean Restaurant
Price: $7.95
Burn Factor: one out of four Molotov cocktail

Lunchtime decisions in Lakewood's Korean Town are like a playing a game of Boggle with a dyslexic. You kind of have to guess what you're going to get. As I pass signs for businesses advertising "Day Care and Pianos," housed all in one store, I rely on my luck to hit something warm and tasty. Within the same parking lot as one of my favorite sushi places, Kyoto Japanese Restaurant lies Palace Korean Restaurant – one of the best places in Lakewood to find true Korean BBQ. The real kind, where you have your own personal grill in the center of the table and all.

For lunch, I kept it simple. Not recognizing any of the dishes on their lunchtime menu, I asked the barely English-speaking server what spicy dish she recommended. "Ra Bok Ki. It has pan fried rice cake in spicy sauce with Ramen noodle," she informed me. It sounded harmless, so Ra Bok Ki it was.

Within this humungous plate of Korean spicy sauce swam thin, floppy pan-fried rice cakes and large tubes of what I can only assume was something of the pasta variety. Beneath the large "pasta" tubes hid a nest of Ramen noodles cradling one lonesome hard-boiled egg. The "spicy" sauce was far from anything that would burn my mouth. No peppery fire, no blazing chilies. To me it was a red sauce with cultural flavors, and that was that. I tried to ask the server what the red sauce was made of, but a language barrier prevented me from gathering any information.

As random as this dish was, it was everything I expected out of lunchtime in Korean Town: Traditional, un-Americanized Korean food. Next time, 'I'm playing with the grills.

[Palace Korean Restaurant, 8718 S Tacoma Way, Lakewood, 253.581.0880

MATT DRISCOLL: COMMUNITY HEALTH CARE CLINIC TO AVOID CUTBACKS THANKS TO STIMULUS >>>

Whether you agree with “the stimulus” or not â€" or whether you refer to it by its birth name, the American Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 â€" the fact is the money’s starting to flow, and some of the beneficiaries will be local community health centers, which, in turn, means those with limited incomes, a lack of health insurance and medical needs may soon be breathing a little easier in these rocky and uncertain economic times.