With a delivery somewhere between Ani DiFranco and Leslie Feist, only more sultry, chanteuse China Forbes heads the 12-piece Portland outfit Pink Martini. Drawing from jazz, Latin and world music, typical concerts find the band performing songs in several different languages as the mini-orchestra swells . . .

As riotous as his altercations with the (often bumbling) law were in his classic stoner comedies with Cheech Marin, there was nothing funny about Tommy Chong’s real life run-in with the authorities. In 2003, Chong was sentenced to nine months in jail for financing a business that sold drug paraphernalia—