As it turns out you DO need to use <%# %>
within asp tags as others like <% %>
and <%= %>
execute at the end of the ASP.NET life cycle and get spit out the buffer to god knows where. When using <%# %>
however, the asp control needs to be DataBound();
at the appropriate time.
This happens automatically for controls modeled in the <item template>
tags in the gridview because everything within the gridview is bound on its gridview.DataBound()
command.