what's up the pike: cheetos in their natural habitat

- It looks like The Thes ("a blog about beTHESda") is officially kaput or, at least, they didn't renew their web address. We're wondering if blogger Lisa - who actually lives in Downtown Silver Spring but wrote about Bethesda because "there's more going on there," as she told me last summer - has given up and finally moved to the dark side, or if she's writing about Silver Spring now under some other blog, or neither.

- Roger Miller, the African restaurant on Bonifant Street that closed late last year, will soon be replaced by Casa de Pollo, Peruvian rotisserie place run by Togolese immigrants, according to SoCo Eats. "You don't think we're from Peru?" the owners asked blogger SoCoblogboy when asked about their non-Latino appearance but, when pressed, said they'll be offering African dishes alongside the pollo a la brasa.

- This year's Silver Spring Blues Festival will take place on May 22, according to the Silver Spring Town Center blog. The performance lineup hasn't been announced yet, but check out our review of last year's festival, which brought local and national blues artists to Ellsworth Drive for a day of music and fine weather.

- And next Thursday, the Planning Board hosts five local bloggers for a panel discussion as part of their "Rethink Montgomery" speaker series. I'll be there with Eric Robbins of Thayer Avenue, Rockville Central's Cindy Cotte Griffiths, Barnaby Zall from the Friends of White Flint FLOG, and Greater Greater Washington's David Alpert, talking about blogging as a tool for community discourse and planning. The talk starts at 7:30pm at the Fortress of Planning (also known as the Park and Planning Commission), located at 8787 Georgia Avenue.