Puppet the Psycho Dwarf picked a plate up off a table at Fagan's Irish Pub, pulled it back toward his shoulder and sized up his opponent, Madd Mexx, for a shattering blow.

But distraught pub owner Carrie Fagan-Davis, who moments earlier watched the two Half Pint Brawlers break one of her tables with a piledriver, grabbed the plate from Puppet's hand before it could meet its destination. She was still shaking her head. The crowd, which had left its seats by this point and circled around the two midget wrestlers, booed shortly, but was cheering again once Puppet slammed Madd Mexx's head into another table.

With his opponent incapacitated, the 4-foot-4-inch Puppet, with blood all over his face, walked back to Fagan-Davis and gave her a hug. Perhaps his away of apologizing for all the carnage around her bar.

Such was Friday night's California debut of the midget wrestling troupe, the Half Pint Brawlers. Mixing a little bit of stand-up comedy with two wrestling matches -- one a bloody hard-core bout, the other more tame -- the Brawlers brought out a raucous crowd, who paid $20 a ticket to see the midgets beat each other up in the downtown pub.

One snag was that the Brawlers' ring couldn't arrive in time, so instead, they wrestled on the Fagan's stage and around the seating area. That was just fine with the fans, which oddly enough included a bachelorette party, as well as the expected 18-34 male demographic.

One night at Tokyo
On the bill Saturday night at tiny Tokyo Garden, was a rock show with locals The Nancys and Rademacher were joined by two out-of-towners: Happy Hollows (L.A.) and Birds & Batteries (San Francisco).

The Nancys started things off and rocked the place. They had tons of energy, were certainly harder than a lot of what's usually at Tokyo and were seriously LOUD. The groups plays a pretty straight forward rock 'n' roll, with elements of punk and classic rock.

Happy Hollows followed them, playing a more mellow indie rock, that lacked the umph of the Nancys set. The three-piece had pretty good instrumentation, but the vocals were a little scattered and a bit drowning. And as the group's set went on, their appeal started to drain.

Rademacher was next, but we didn't stay for much of their set, instead taking off for the Tower and 3L combo: Livingstones, Lipari's and Landmark.

Fair enough
The Big Fresno Fair had its much-talked about Hyphy Nation night with Keak Da Sneak, San Quinn and others on Saturday. I didn't go because I've seen many of those acts recently and didn't want to stomach another night at the fair. But word from numerous people -- including fair officials -- is that the show went off without any problems. Too bad the TV news channels don't make a big deal out of that, huh?

The show was one of four sold-out concerts at this year's fair. The others were Merle Haggard, Chris Brown and Raven Symone.