Take a trip back to the 1920s, when big ideas and grand plans were delivered over a glass of scotch at a hotel bar. That was the magical beginning of the Algonquin Round Table, a group of New York City writers and actors who met for lunch each day to share their quips and quibbles.

The funny group "acquired national reputations both for their contributions to literature and for their sparkling wit." And now they're here (well -- esteemed actors are here) to remind us of the group that soon became the talk of the town.

The Talk of the Town, as the musical is called, is a singing, dancing spectacle that will take you back to the days of the roaring twenties. And thanks to our friends and advertisers at the Eisemann Center, we have four pairs of tickets to give away.

Actors are performing six times: Thursday at 8 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. If you are one of our winners, you get to choose which performance you'll attend. (That's really cool -- and rare.)

So do us a favor, and favorite the event listing on Pegasus News. How, you ask? Go to the link in the sentence prior and click the heart to mark it as a favorite (requires free / easy / painless registration and login).

We'll draw winners at 5 p.m. Wednesday, March 10. If you win, your name will be on the guest list at the box office.

We know you're counting down the days until the big fight this weekend right here in North Texas. And we just got word that the Manny Pacquaio/Joshua Clottey fight taking place March 13 at Cowboys Stadium is nearly sold out. Thanks to our friends and advertisers, PegNews has two tickets that we would like to give away to two very lucky people.

These seats are on the floor of Cowboys Stadium. Face value for the tickets is $1,400. We are the only news website in Dallas-Fort Worth who is offering a contest for these floor seats.

Pacquaio is believed to be (by most) the top pound-for-pound fighter in the world. Meanwhile, he's running for a congressional seat in the Philippines, his home country. This could be the last fight for Pacquaio in a long time.

To win the tickets, go to the event listing and click the heart to mark it as a favorite (requires free / easy / painless registration and login). Then cross your fingers. We'll role the dice on Friday and let one lucky winner claim those seats.

Hey guys, more free stuff.

Thanks to our friends and advertisers Universal Music Group, they want you to be able to see Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief for free. We have two free passes to the movie, valid Monday through Thursday while the movie is showing in theaters.

First, learn more about the movie through this video interview of the young stars. (You can also see their pretty faces right to your right.)

Then, show us some love. Go to this link and write "I want the free tickets!" in the comments section. (Writing a comment will require that you're a PegNews user, so you'll need to register and make sure that you verify your email address.)

Come 10 a.m. Tuesday, March 9, we'll roll the dice and see which of the commenters (who exclaimed, I repeat, "I want the free tickets!") will get those free tickets.

Thanks for playing!

Thanks to our friends at advertisers at Nokia Theatre, we've got two pairs of tickets to David Gray with Phosphorescent on Tuesday, March 16. Here's David:

If you want the tickets, the contest is easy: Just go to the event listing and click the heart to mark it as a favorite (requires free / easy / painless registration and login). We'll draw winners at 4 p.m. March 12. If you win, your tickets will be at will call at Nokia.

Let's get ready to rumble! Thanks to our friends at the Dallas Mavericks, we have two tickets up for grabs for the March 5 basketball game between the Dallas Mavericks and the Sacramento Kings.

I hope I don't need to convince you how cool this is. If you're on the fence, you should know that the Mavs are currently sitting at a eight-game win streak. (They play the Timberwolves Wednesday night, and if they win, they up it to nine.) These free tickets will get you two Platinum level seats and a parking pass.

The game is at 7:30 p.m. Friday. To enter to win, go to the event listing and click the heart to mark it as a favorite (requires free / easy / painless registration and login). Do it before 9:30 a.m. Friday, March 5.

Are you a real Mavs fan? Show us your love.

In our never-ending obsession with connecting with every local on the InterWebs, we rolled out a new feature for registered users this morning.

If you go to our Facebook Connect page, you can link your Pegasus News account to your Facebook account.

That does you (and us) the favor of allowing your comments on Pegasus News as well as items you favorite to become wall posts that you share with your friends on Facebook.

Give it a try and let us know what you think -- we're already on our first round of tweaks, adding tease photos to the posts and adding a per-comment opt-out, but there's always room for more.

And in case you didn't notice it, we've added convenient buttons at the bottom of most pages to allow you to share items on Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Fark and any one of the other gazillions of places people share cool stuff.

Alt rock band State Radio is coming to town. And thanks to our friends and advertisers at the House of Blues, we have tickets! The concert is coming up quickly, so act now or forever hold your peace:

The show is at 8 p.m. Wednesday, March 3. We've got five pairs of tickets. So between now and 2 p.m. Wednesday, you'll need to tell us that this event is one of your favorites and you'll be in the running to get the tickets.

To enter to win, go to the event listing and click the heart to mark it as a favorite (requires free / easy / painless registration and login). Our folks will draw names on Wednesday and let you know by 4 p.m. if you win. If that happens, there's a little something extra we need from you: We need to know your first and last name. See, what happens is that if cheekygrl492 wins tickets, it's awkward to try to convince the ticketing people that you really are who you say you are. Save us both the trouble and if one of our staffers emails you to give you the good news, give us some good news by telling us your full name.

With that, good luck.

Tuesday's the big day if you haven't voted yet in the primaries. Exercise your right as an American citizen by getting out there to the polls. You'll need to go to a location that services your precinct. Here's what you'll need to know:

Collin County:

Polling locations in Collin County, open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. March 2

Sample ballots by precinct in Collin County (scroll down until you see a heading that says "Primary Election - Polling Locations & Sample Ballots by Precinct")

Don't know your registration information?

Dallas County:

Republican primary polling places

Democratic primary polling places

Voter registration and precinct information

Tarrant County:

List of election day polling places

Sample ballots

Check out your voter registration status

No, I'm not calling for some sort of mass pyromania -- Ignite Dallas is part of a growing international collection of events where people gather to share ideas in bite-sized 5-minute talks. My kneejerk impression was that it's like a somewhat less highbrow and more homegrown TED, but with more booze. (In other words, right up my alley.)

On Wednesday, there are going to be Ignite events all over the world, including Dallas' first-ever Ignite. It was put together in about three weeks by an intrepid team of volunteers, most of whom you'll recognize if you follow local social media at all. The topics are all centered around the speakers' passions -- not sales pitches -- and follow the Ignite motto: “Enlighten us, but make it quick.”

I happen to be one of the sixteen speakers for Wednesday's event at the Granada -- I'll be continuing the thread of I started with the recent story on my improv class, looking at how to bring the lessons of improv into business communication.

Since we had rehearsals at CoHabitat on Saturday, I can tell you that you're in for a thought-provoking, eclectic and entertaining group of talks. Some are trying to save the world; some are just trying to improve one corner of the world; and some are just plain funny. You can see the list of speakers and topics here.

Tickets are going fast. Come join us and sample some interesting ideas, or at least have a cocktail with a lot of smart people.

Thanks to our friends and advertisers at Universal Records/The Verve Music Group we have more free stu-ufff! I know how much you guys loved the "find the bull" contest, so this one is along the same lines. Find the jazzy British hunk!

Three people will get a free copy of Jamie Cullman's new CD, The Pursuit, if you can find him. It's worth your time. (I saw Jamie live in London and, still, I sometimes wish he would sing me to sleep every night.)

What you're looking for is the exact photo above, somewhere hidden in PegNews. Ask yourself: At what instrument does Jamie so excel? A place selling ivories is where he will dwell.

If you think you've got it, email sb@pegasusnews.com with the link. The first three winners get CDs. Happy hunting!

UPDATE: Three smart people have found the photo! We're hereby marking this contest closed.