FUTURE THINGS ARE COMING >>>

The 106.1 KISS FM Presents DoorMatt's Not So Private Performance featuring We the Kings, Forever the Sickest Kids, A Rocket to the Moon and The Ready Set Wednesday, Sept. 15 at the Puyallup Fair. Tickets are $25 for general admission seating in infield and grandstand, and include Fair gate admission.

Tickets go on sale Saturday, July 24 at 9 a.m. at the Fair box office and Ticketmaster.

YEE-HAW! >>>

Cowboy poets will gather at the Puyallup Fairgrounds today as part of the American Cowboy Days Roundup inside the Fred Oldfield Western Heritage & Art Center. Stop laughing. Can you do it? OK, then. Cowboy poetry is cool. You live in the West, you should learn to appreciate it.

Come hear tales told by some of today's finest cowboys, storytellers, poets and songwriters and see some pretty cool roping and horse demonstrations.

More details, kind of, are on the Heritage Center website.

American Cowboy Days Roundup

Saturday, July 17, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The Fred Oldfield western Heritage & Art Center, Red Gate, Puyallup Fairgrounds, Ninth and Meridian, Puyallup

THE LOWDOWN ON WHAT'S UP THIS WEEKEND >>>

WEATHER REPORT

Friday: Partly cloudy, hi 72, lo 52

Saturday: Partly cloudy, hi 70, lo 52

Sunday: Partly cloudy, hi 70, lo 52 ("Same as it ever was ...")

>>> FRIDAY, JULY 16: "DON'T NEED YOU"

Olympia plays a major roll in the story of the Riot Grrrl movement - a story brought to life and further light by the documentary Don't Need You: The Herstory of Riot Grrrl, which will be specially screened Friday at the Capitol Theater. The event is a benefit for Natalie Cox, a longtime member of the Olympia music scene currently battling a rare, aggressive form of cancer.  All proceeds from Friday's showing will go to help pay Cox's medical costs.

• Capitol Theater, 9:30 p.m. Fall ages, $5 and up, 206 Fifth Ave., SE, Olympia, 360.754.6670

>>> FRIDAY, JULY 16-SATURDAY, JULY 17: SCRAPBOOKING EXPO

What does everybody love? A birthday party!  What else does everybody love? Scrapbooking!  Isn't that the best thing in the world! If you love it as much as I do, take your scrappy self to the Scrapbooking Expo at the Puyallup Fairgrounds. It's a scrapbooking weekend with classes, workshops and uninterrupted time devoted to putting your precious photographs into cutesy albums – or just stay home with your cat and keep on shoving all your photos into unlabeled shoeboxes.

• Puyallup Fair & events Center, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, $8, 110 Ninth St SW, Puyallup, 253.845.1771
  

>>> SATURDAY, JULY 17-SUNDAY, JULY 18: GIG HARBOR SUMMER ARTS FESTIVAL

Often we try to bring you fun activities at a reasonable price. But it doesn't get any better than FREE! Of course most of the time, free isn't exactly free, that is just the sugar-coated packaging the really expensive activities come in. The Gig Harbor Summer Arts Festival is probably one of them. But it does sound pretty cool, and if you can abstain from buying anything, you might come out scotch free - unless you have a girlfriend. But ... what can be more romantic than taking a stroll along the beautiful Gig Harbor waterfront, hand-in-hand with your better-half, taking in beautiful art by 148 area artists. You will see stained glass, clothing, baskets and, of course, pastels and watercolors.

• Downtown Gig Harbor, all day, free, Judson Street, 253.265.8139

>>> WHERE OUR STAFF IS GOING

MATT DRISCOLL Editor and member of the Hilltop Elementary 1991 Recycling Team
My weekend will be all about preparing for the publication of the Weekly
Volcano's Best of Tacoma 2010 issue, to hit streets July 29. I'll be visiting our readers' pick for Tacoma's best donut shop and best "smoking accessories" shop  - not necessarily in that order. Oh yeah, as mentioned, I'll also be working on Best of Tacoma stuff.

JOE IZENMAN Music/Theater Critic
Saturday: playing concerts at 9 a.m., 4 p.m. and 9 p.m. in and around Tacoma. Sunday: sleeping the hell in.

NIKKI TALOTTA Feature Writer
My weekend consists of: Demo burgers and elephant ears to start, then serving sunburned Lakefairians their PBRs and cosmos. And repeat. Followed by a family reunion and a friends wedding. 'Tis the season!

PAUL SCHRAG Feature Writer
I'm recovering from one hell of a week. May be hosting Eprhyme the Humanimalien and wife, Chani, temporarily observing Shabbat, making some sort of feast with food from the garden, learning about sweet, mystical Jewish stuff.

JENNIFER JOHNSON Lifestyle/Leisure Writer
Going to Temple Square and downtown Salt Lake City today, fishing at Strawberry Friday with family, fish-fry/BBQ with 30 relatives Saturday and church Sunday. Wooo hooo!

KRIS BLONDIN Food/Wine Writer
I will get gussied up for Zoobilee on Friday, and then summer cleaning at the lake place. A modest amount of fun may happen, but I'll have to earn it.

ALEC CLAYTON Visual Arts Critic
I'll be checking out the new show at Fulcrum Gallery plus going to two plays: Withering Heights at Breeders Theatre in Burien (no, that's not a typo, it's Withering with an "i") and Fiddler on the Roof at ASTRA in Puyallup.

CHRISTIAN CARVAJAL Theater Critic
This would be the perfect weekend for Shakespeare in the park, don't you think? Animal Fire Theatre thought so, too. It's a new group that's staging that ominous Scottish play at Priest Point this weekend, and I'll be there with a cooler and Deep Woods Off.

LOOKING FOR MORE IDEAS? CHECK OUT THE WEEKLY VOLCANO'S LISTINGS FOR:

Events

Concerts

Restaurants

Movies

DINING NEWS, NIBBLES AND BITS >>>

Burger Night: Crown Bar in Tacoma takes its delicious $12 to $13 gourmet burgers and reduces them to $7.99 every Wednesday night. Dude, seriously.

Drink To Your Health: Toscanos Café and Wine Bar in Puyallup hosts "Healthy Cocktails Night" today beginning at 4 p.m.

Beer Tasting: Sample two beers for $1 from 4-8 p.m. at 99 Bottles in Federal Way.

Afternoon Tea: Affairs Restaurant & Catering in University Place would like to host your afternoon tea party. Their tea menu includes cucumber sandwiches, ham and cheese filled croissants, miniature Beef Wellingtons, smoked chicken empanadas, chocolates and spices nuts, and more. Of course, the full tea service, too. For details, call 253.565.8604.

Future Things Are Coming: Primo Grill in Tacoma hosts a Northwest Seafood Preparations cooking class Saturday, July 24 from 2-4 p.m. The $65 fee includes recipes and instruction, lunch glass of wine, tax and gratuity. Reserve your spot at 253.383.7000.

Food Matters: Whose recipe database reigns supreme?

LINK: A bunch of half-priced bottles of wine tonight

LINK: Who's up for a happy hour?

LINK: Join our Nosh League you foodie

SUNDAY, JULY 4, 2010 >>>

1. If you heard Parenthetical Girls' most recent LP, Entanglements, you might be tempted to call them orchestral pop. Listen to the band's previous album, and you'll not be so quick with your designation. Despite how loaded the word "experimental" is, this is the basic definition of experimentation: Lead singer and brainchild Zac Pennington desired to make orchestral pop, and Entanglements was his experiment. "We generally just consider the music that we make to be pop music, because it's a pretty wide umbrella, and it allows us not to have to feel like we have to do any one sort of thing," says Pennington. "As a rule, we are generally pop music fans, so it's easier to classify it that way and not put ourselves into a corner." Check out Parenthetical Girls with Deerhoof and AU at 7:30 p.m. inside the Capitol Theater.

2. If drunken debauchery and in-your-face patriotism seem a little too much for you, check out Grand Old Fourth of July in Steilacoom from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. Here you'll take in free historical walking tours, ice cream socials, an old-fashioned parade at 1 p.m., street dance at 7 p.m. and fireworks around 10:30 p.m. 

3. A community band will present a late afternoon concert of patriotic and old-fashioned music on the lawn of Meeker Mansion in Puyallup from 3-5 p.m.  The Meeker Society, the private nonprofit organization that maintains the 1890-era Victoria Home erected by Puyallup founder Ezra Meeker, will sell hot dogs, soft drinks, ice cream sundaes, and more.

4. Country band Broken Trail will perform from 3:30-6:30 p.m. at Red Wind Casino's outdoor Fourth of July party, which also features a booze garden, inflatable jumphouse and fireworks after dark.

5. The South Sound Blues Association hosts a Blues Stage during the Tacoma Freedom Fair and Air Show on Tacoma's Ruston Way Waterfront.  The Blues Stage is at Duke's Chowder House with Blues Redemption opening the stage at noon. The Back to Beale Street Blues finals begin at 3:30 p.m.

LINK: More arts and entertainment events in the South Sound

WHAT WE HAVE FOUND TODAY >>>

Lindsay Lohan is 24 today.

>>> SOUTH SOUND SPECIFIC

Olympia residents elected the town's first mayor in 1873 - William Winlock Miller. Before then, a town president was selected annually from among the members of the town board. William Winlock Miller High School opened in 1907 on land donated by Miller's wife on the grounds immediately east of the sunken gardens in the Washington State Capitol Campus. In 1961 the high school split in two forming Olympia High and Tumwater High.

>>> TODAY'S WORD

anarthria (an-'ar-thre-e) noun [New Latin, from Greek anarthros, not articulated]

Loss of the motor ability that enables speech

anarthric - adjective

Usage example: And then Elly May just stood there, gasping and grinning, utterly speechless, giddy as a schoolgirl on meth, very nearly anarthric, quivering and goosebumped all over her oatmealy skin, as a masked man on a ladder peered at her naked body through her second story Puyallup apartment window. "At least someone's interested in seeing me naked," she didn't manage to whisper to her fat husband in the next room who was frothing at the mouth over SportsCenter.

>>> NEWS TO US

The unemployed receive bad news before a holiday ... again.

Soon it will NOT be legal to drink and drive in Russia.

Booze v. Buds? Herbal jazz cigarettes win.

The Morning Spew posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning on this blog.

THE LOWDOWN ON WHAT'S UP THIS WEEKEND >>>

WEATHER REPORT

Saturday: Partly cloudy, hi 67, lo 52
Sunday: Party cloudy, hi 68, lo 52

TRAFFIC ALERT: According to the Washington State Dept. of Transportation, no major roadwork will happen on the major South Sound area highways this weekend.

>>> SATURDAY, JULY 3: TACOMA ROSE SHOW

The perfection of a rose. As any good (or bad) plastic surgeon will tell you, there is always a way to improve on nature. Luckily for the flowers, their improvement doesn't involve extensive surgery or months of painful recovery. It does, however, involve death. Oh well, The Tacoma Rose Society presents its annual rose show with this year's theme is "A Dress Rehearsal." Dress rehearsal for what? A death?

• Jackson Hall, July 3, 9:50 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., free, 314 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Tacoma

>>> SATURDAY, JULY 3-SUNDAY, JULY 4: PUYALLUP FARMERS MARKET

Like cherries, handmade knickknacks, ice sculptures and free parking for your SUV? Then you'll love the Puyallup Farmers Market, a valley institution for nearly as long as cows have been tipped. Engulfing historic downtown P-town every weekend, May through October, and drawing impressive crowds on a regular basis, there's no doubt Ezra Meeker would be proud of what the Puyallup Farmers Market has blossomed into.

• Pioneer Park, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday-Sunday, free, 330 S. Meridian, Puyallup, puyallupmainstreat.com

>>> SUNDAY, JULY 4: STEILACOOM'S GRAND OLD FOURTH OF JULY

Some people like to celebrate the Fourth drinking a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon, munching a bag of pork rinds and getting a tattoo of the American Flag on their nether regions. But if drunken debauchery and in-your-face patriotism seem a little too much for you, check out Grand Old Fourth of July in Steilacoom. Here you'll take in free historical walking tours, ice cream socials, an old-fashioned parade at 1 p.m., street dance at 7 p.m. and fireworks around 10:30 p.m.  I doubt the town leaders have any strange tattoos but don't take my word for it; go see for yourself at this wholesome, family-oriented Fourth of July celebration.

• Town of Steilacoom, July 4, 9 a.m. to 11 p.m., free, steilacoom.org

>>> SUNDAY, JULY 4: OLD FASHIONED FOURTH OF JULY

Once again it's time to don the red, white and blue and wax patriotic until it hurts. A painless way to revere our nation is with the Meeker Mansion Band Concert and Social – a Puyallup community group hug. A community band will present a late afternoon concert of patriotic and old-fashioned music on the lawn.  The Meeker Society, the private nonprofit organization that maintains the 1890-era Victoria Home erected by Puyallup founder Ezra Meeker, will sell hot dogs, soft drinks, ice cream sundaes, and more. Bring a lawn chair or blanket.  And let's face it, patriotism is fun. Why? Because we get to sing songs such as "Yankee Doodle Dandy," and if doodle is dandy, we're in a great country. 

• Meeker Mansion, 3-5 p.m., free admission, 312 Spring St., Puyallup, 253.848.1770

>>> WHERE OUR STAFF IS GOING

MATT DRISCOLL Editor and member of the Official John Elway Fan Club
The Driscolls will be making their monthly Costco run this Saturday. What! What! Nothing says Saturday like pallets of toilet paper, samples of bean dip and Kirkland brand athletic socks. It's gonna be dope. Later that night I'll pretend like I'm not the type of person that shops at Costco when Chain and the Gang plays The New Frontier with Basemint and DJ Dub Narcotic (Calvin Johnson) - which should be an utterly amazing show.

PAUL SCHRAG Senior Contributor
I'm wrapping up final edits on a book that will publish in spring, working on a couple of music projects, and re-designing the Web site for Environmental Aesthetics. It's more exciting than it sounds. 

NIKKI TALOTTA Feature Writer
I will be working at the bar and dreaming of King Solomon's Reef food, per usual. But then! Furloughs (mandatory day lay-offs) have kicked in and my guy has Monday off, which means an actual Fourth of July par-tay at the neighbors. Finally, state-workers and weekend service industry workers unite! Drink up, we're gonna need empty bottles to shoot rockets from!

STEPH DEROSA Columnist
I will be in Westport indulging in pyromania with my plethora of DeRosa cousins. This weekend will include (but not be limited to) terrorizing my next-door neighbor with childish antics with the hopes of his grouchy ass finally having a heart attack.

THE REV. ADAM MCKINNEY Feature Writer
Another Saturday night, and I ain't got nobody. I got some money, 'cause I just got paid. And I will use that money to get trashed and watch Chain and the Gang and Basemint tear apart the New Frontier. Rock.

KRIS BLONDIN Food/Wine Writer
If the weather holds, we are going boating with Jack and Vicky Winters. Heading to the southern part of Anderson Island to lounge and catch some crab! Then a party or two on Sunday! Happy Fourth!

JENNIFER JOHNSON: Lifestyle/Leisure Writer
Friday at Hell's Kitchen for Tool tribute band 46 & 2 to try and win tickets to the sold-out Tool concert. Saturday at Tempest for IndepenDANCE with DJ dAb, Bilori and Chris Savenetti. Ride bikes down to Freedom Fair for the Fourth on Sunday.

CHRISTIAN CARVAJAL: Theater Critic
That Othello: He's a complicated man, and no one understands him but his woman. I'm stoked for TAO's funkified production, set in New York City, 1968.

LINK: More arts and entertainment events in the South Sound

DINING NEWS, NIBBLES AND BITS >>>

Kids Day: It's all about the children at the Tacoma Farmers Market today from 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Ninth and Broadway. The Secret Circus will set up around 10 a.m.

It's Tasty Thursday Night At Cheney Stadium: Drink $2 beers, shove down a few $1 hot dogs, and watch the Tacoma Rainiers play the Salt Lake Bees at 6 p.m.

Taco Thursdays: Rock The Dock Pub & Grill on Tacoma's Dock Street serves $1 hard shell tacos from 6-8 p.m. tonight.

Tall Cool Drink Night: Toscanos Café and Wine Bar will unleash their summer drinks for the season beginning tonight at 5 p.m.

Pop-Up Restaurant: The Noodle Bar opens tonight at 9 p.m. inside Pacific Grill in downtown Tacoma. Every late Thursday night until further notice, Chefs Gordon Naccarato and Ian Thompson will offer ramen bowls, Asian street food small plates, and Japanese sakes and beers are very reasonable prices.

Future Things Are Coming: NorthWest Vintage Wine Bar in downtown Puyallup hosts "An Evening in Italy" featuring Italian wines from Tuscan Winery-Perazetta Sunday, June 27, 5-7 p.m. The cost is $50 per person. Reserve your spot at 253.864.9463.

Food Matters: Where wild salmon really come from.

LINK: South Sound happy hours

LINK: Restaurant coupons

LINK: Join the Nosh League

THURSDAY, JUNE 24, 2010 >>>

1. The 2010 Soul of the City Tacoma Poet Laureate Tammy Robacker will give her premiere reading since winning the title at 7 p.m. inside  the Tacoma Public Library Main Branch. The free event will also include readings by former Soul of the City Poet Laureates Antonio Edwards and William Kupinse, as well as three of this year's 2010 Poet Laureate contest candidates, Brittany Short, Deborah Renee Crespo, and Pamela McCauley.

2. Author James Clarkson explains why Roswell and UFOs in general are anything but case closed at 6 p.m. inside Orca Books in Olympia.

3. Second City Chamber Series kicks off its summer concerts at Lakewold Gardens with Russian music by Rachmanoninov and Shostakovich played by Brittany Boulding (violin), Julian Schwarz (cello) and Natalya Ageyeva (piano) during a picnic at 7:30 p.m.

4. Dreams Jaded, Rip Spacer, The Chelsea Speed Party, and The Endeavors play Hell's Kitchen at 9 p.m.

5. J-Fresh mixes hip-hop and Top 40 videos during ladies night at 10 p.m. inside The Gamers Lounge on South Hill Puyallup.

LINK: More arts and entertainment events in the South Sound

BEING WILLIAM WALLACE >>>

We here at the Weekly Volcano think it takes a real man to wear a skirt and wear it proudly.  That's why we're piling into the Weekly Volcanomobile and heading to the 41st Annual Tacoma Highland Games to watch some manly men flash their legs and flip some fucking big logs in the Heavy Field Events and Caber Toss.  If all that testosterone gets to be too much, we'll head for the Parading of the Clans or dancing, piping and drumming competitions.

And don't forget the bagpipes. Lots and lots of bagpipes. Did I mention the bagpipes?

Tacoma Highland Games

Saturday, June 26, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., $8-$10
Frontier Park, 217^th and Meridian East, Graham

Hey, did I mention the bagpipes?

LINK: More Tacoma Highland Games details