Arkansas Times

NEWS + POLITICS + ENTERTAINMENT / APRIL 4, 2012 / ARKTIMES.COM

THE

LADY OF THE LAKE A mystery, a heartbroken family and a bright light snuffed out.

BY DAVID KOON AND RAFAEL NUNEZ PAGE 12

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ARKANSAS’S SOURCE FOR NEWS, POLITICS & ENTERTAINMENT 201 East Markham Street 200 Heritage Center West P.O. Box 34010, Little Rock, Arkansas 72203 www.arktimes.com arktimes@arktimes.com @ArkTimes www.facebook.com/arkansastimes PUBLISHER Alan Leveritt EDITOR Lindsey Millar SENIOR EDITOR Max Brantley MANAGING EDITOR Leslie Newell Peacock CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Mara Leveritt ASSOCIATE EDITORS Cheree Franco, David Koon, Bob Lancaster, Doug Smith ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR Robert Bell EDITORIAL ART DIRECTOR Kai Caddy

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VOLUME 38, NUMBER 31 ARKANSAS TIMES (ISSN 0164-6273) is published each week by Arkansas Times Limited Partnership, 201 East Markham Street, 200 Heritage Center West, P.O. Box 34010, Little Rock, Arkansas, 72203, phone (501) 375-2985. Periodical postage paid at Little Rock, Arkansas, and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to ARKANSAS TIMES, P.O. Box 34010, Little Rock, AR, 72203. Subscription prices are $42 for one year, $78 for two years. Subscriptions outside Arkansas are $49 for one year, $88 for two years. Foreign (including Canadian) subscriptions are $168 a year.

For subscriber service call (501) 375-2985. Current single-copy price is 75¢, free in Pulaski County. Single issues are available by mail at $2.50 each, postage paid. Payment must accompany all single-copy orders. Reproduction or use in whole or in part of the contents without the written consent of the publishers is prohibited. Manuscripts and artwork will not be returned or acknowledged unless sufficient return postage and a self-addressed stamped envelope are included. All materials are handled with due care; however, the publisher assumes no responsibility for care and safe return of unsolicited materials. All letters sent to ARKANSAS TIMES will be treated as intended for publication and are subject to ARKANSAS TIMES’ unrestricted right to edit or to comment editorially.

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APRIL 4, 2012

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COMMENT

Angered about vets I have never written a letter to the editor before, but I am incensed at the recent article in the Arkansas Times (“Vets on Main,” March 21). It suggests that the downtown neighborhood’s stance against a proposed clinic on Main Street working with veterans psychiatric issues and addiction is tied to whether or not veterans get quality care. Especially abhorrent is the reference to the 1957 school desegregation crisis as a comparison to the current issues with where the VA clinic is located by the current VA treatment center director, Estella Morris. To raise this as a racial issue is to suggest that only black veterans have problems with drugs, alcohol and post-traumatic stress disorder. The recent murder of 17 Afghanis certainly belies this and demonstrates why we would be concerned!

Secondly, to suggest that the hardworking people who have been willing to risk everything to restore this wonderful neighborhood are gentry? Are Jimmy Moses or Rett Tucker guilty of gentrification because they brought revitalization into the River Market District and ran out the homeless, black and white? Did the demand that “Our House” move from Main Street a few years ago so Main Street between Third and I-630 could begin redevelopment, be considered racist? Should the demand by the Pettaway Park neighborhood to not allow the City’s Homeless Center in “our” neighborhood be considered a racial statement?

In an era of government reduction doesn’t it make sense for government programs to work together? Why wouldn’t the VA want to save money and work with the City in their new homeless day center?

Historically, the best way to defeat an issue is to confound and confuse. Wars have been won by confusion. The only defense for such blatant and outrageous claims is for educated people to stand up, just as our veterans have, for the truth. The truth is, the downtown area has been the moral conscience of Little Rock for over 30 years. With no real research, we have identified 18 social service facilities for people in need within a one mile radius of the Governor’s Mansion. We in downtown refuse to continue to be the victim. Give our veterans the best care possible. But don’t destroy a neighborhood going through rebirth while you’re doing it.

Sharon Welch-Blair Little Rock

Distasteful doesn’t equal illegal I am glad that the Arkansas Supreme Court brought our antiquated views about sex into the 21st century.

Though 38-year-old high school teacher David Paschal’s sexual relationship 4

APRIL 4, 2012

ARKANSAS TIMES

with one of his students may have been distasteful and immoral it was nonetheless lawful, as it was consensual and the student, who was 18 when the relationship occurred, is an adult.

This case clearly shows that not all distasteful things in life are illegal.

Kenneth L. Zimmerman Huntington Beach, Calif.

Tuition hike As a proud alumnus of UA, I was surprised with the speed with which the UA Board of Trustees just rubber-stamped another tuition increase. For the Fayetteville campus, where I will have two children next fall, the increase was 5.3 percent.

With a 4.8 percent increase for the 20102011 year, that is more than a 10 percent increase in 2 years. Other than perhaps health care, in what other area has there been such inflation in the midst of such tough economic times? My question to the administration and board is: please identify one expense you have cut in order to avoid such increases? The obvious answer, sadly, is “none.” This confirms my suspicion that the only beneficiary of the lottery scholarships will be the UA System, not the students or their tuition-paying parents.

Michael J. Emerson Little Rock

Kays House significant Regarding the destruction of the Kays House, the idea shows a profound lack of vision and an amazing disregard for history. You can drive down any street in any city or town and see something ugly.

To see a building that is architecturally lovely is a feast for the eyes and lifts the spirits. That it also has significance to the university’s history should be enough to demand its preservation. You can’t press “replay” and bring it back.

Kay Darwin Coppell, Texas

From the web In response to “The medical marijuana push in Arkansas” (Arkansas Reporter, March 28): I’m an Arkansan who spent the first 32 years of my life in the natural state. I attended public schools and received my BSE from a public university in the state.

I hold an Arkansas teaching license and have worked in a professional capacity for 10 years while paying taxes. My family is in Arkansas. It’s a place I love dearly and I hope I’ll be able to return soon. The reason I picked up and moved to Colorado last November is because of their medical marijuana laws.

When I visited my doctor for a prescription I waited in a room with people of all ages and races. The doctors see people for all ailments, not just MMJ prescriptions. Two of my friends have been turned down when they cited extreme pain because there was no medical history and no observable issue. The process isn’t perfect, but it’s working. I was able to prove extreme pain due to a documented back injury I suffered in an auto accident. The doctor looked at my MRI and wrote a prescription. It took about 20 minutes, about what it took my physician in Little Rock to talk to me and issue a prescription for Oxycodone.

I have two dispensaries within 100 feet of my house. Both are well kept and operate professionally. When I first visited my dispensary, I had to complete several pages of paperwork and deem them my “caregiver,” allowing them to grow six plants for me and provide me with medicine. There is a limit to what I can buy and possess and I must show my license and my MMJ card every time I enter the premises. These businesses are incredibly well regulated. To illustrate how well the industry is currently regulated, the city attorney for Boulder recently admonished the U.S. Attorney for intervening in a city matter involving dispensaries. This Tuesday, I have an interview with the state of Colorado’s Medical Marijuana Enforcement Division (MMED). I’m applying for a worker badge so I can work legally in the MMJ industry. I have to provide tax returns for the last two years and undergo a federal background check, just like when I applied for a teacher’s license in Arkansas. In fact, this background check is more extensive and included IRS clearance in addition to criminal background checks. The people who work in this industry are for the most part educated, law-abiding citizens taking advantage of a booming industry. The only other booming industry in our country right now is natural gas and I’d say marijuana is a lot less harmful than fracking fluid.

I can’t wait to return to Arkansas. I love Denver, but my heart is in the Ozarks.

If Arkansas passes this legislation I will return without hesitation. I just don’t want to live somewhere where growing a plant can get me prison. I don’t want to live in a place where treating my pain without the use of narcotics that can kill me can get me locked up. I want to live in an Arkansas that allows me to treat my pain in a way that I, along with my physician, can support and live with. calmwriter

Submit letters to the Editor, Arkansas Times, P.O. Box 34010, Little Rock, AR 72203 or via e-mail to arktimes@arktimes. com. Please include name and hometown.

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EDITORIAL

Talking back

tate Rep. John Hubbard of Jonesboro may not be a jewel of a legislator — the evidence that he falls short is strongly persuasive — but he has a talent for drawing worthy expressions from others.

Prominent in the Arkansas anti-immigrant movement, and aggressively ignorant, Hubbard likes to send admonitory communications to public officials — and maybe his own constituents, for all we know — chastising them for exhibitions of reason and tolerance. G. David Gearhart, chancellor of the University of Arkansas at Fayettevile, heard from Hubbard after the UA announced that a public discussion of illegal immigration would be held on campus this month, and that it would include participation by illegal immigrants appearing at some risk to themselves. Hubbard demanded an explanation for what he apparently considered the university’s unseemly involvement with education.

“Please consider this as my official request that you explain both your own, and that of the University of Arkansas, roles in this specific, and most likely, ‘illegal’ activity,” he wrote.

We tend to think of Gearhart primarily as a fundraiser. But he’s an educator too, and that side of him showed in his response. “One of a university’s many purposes is to serve as a gathering place where issues and ideas are shared,” Gearhart wrote. Some of the most vexing issues of immigration policy are those concerning young people who were brought to the USA as children, he said, and “I believe it’s important to offer our students and the public an opportunity to hear firsthand from individuals who have such a unique perspective: living most of their lives as Americans, if not citizens, but without having the same legal, educational and economic opportunities as their classmates and neighbors.”

He invited Hubbard to attend.

In the legislative session earlier this year, Hubbard sponsored a bill to deny state services, including medical services, to anyone lacking a birth certificate. That elicited comment from the Rev. Wendell Griffen (a circuit judge on weekdays): “A religious or social ethic which seeks to justify denying help to immigrants is anti-holy. It does not come from the heart of God. It is not consistent with the life and teachings of Jesus. [Hubbard professes to be a Christian.] It may be politically popular to fear people who speak another language, come from other homelands, and are vulnerable in our communities on account of those realities and their economic and other hardships, but that isn’t holy.”

The bill died in committee.

A public university is and must be a part of the world around it. That world today includes the large problem of immigration, legal and otherwise. It also includes the problem of reckless politicians like Jon Hubbard, but that one is more easily soluble. The people of Jonesboro can solve it in November.

6

APRIL 4, 2012

ARKANSAS TIMES

BRIAN CHILSON

S

EYE ON ARKANSAS

ALL ABOARD!: Triston Wyatt, 6, of Little Rock watches as Union Pacific No. 844 steam special rolls past the station Friday in Little Rock on it’s way to North Little Rock where it was on display this past weekend.

Opinion overdrive

M

aybe somebody should offer Iron Mike Tyson a TV news-talk show, although it probably won’t be MSNBC. Last week the former heavyweight champ was one of vanishing few willing to await the evidence before pronouncing a verdict in the Trayvon Martin tragedy.

Appearing on Piers Morgan’s CNN program to promote a documentary film about his boxing career, Tyson was asked his opinion of a just-concluded interview with gunman George Zimmerman’s older brother.

“I don’t know,” Tyson said. “I wasn’t there. I don’t know what happened. I have a good opinion what happened, like everyone else … He [Robert Zimmerman] doesn’t look like a seasoned enough liar to talk to you.”

Tyson adverted to the nation’s long history of young black men falling victim to racist violence, then made himself particularly clear: “I want to believe that Mr. Zimmerman did something wrong and illegal, but I wasn’t there.”

Neither were you, dear reader; nor was I. Like Tyson, we’ve learned everything we know about this terrible event from a ratings-driven and increasingly unreliable news media. That is, we’ve been presented a melodrama in place of a news story, with speculation and downright fictionalization being presented far in advance of facts.

And sometimes, alas, in their place. But hold that thought.

In consequence, roughly half the country has gone all Nancy Grace; a smaller but impassioned cohort is replaying the late Johnny Cochrane’s Greatest Hits.

There’s no shortage of commentators urging a racial dialogue, when what they appear to have in mind is a lecture.

Public fallout from CNN’s interview of Robert Zimmerman basically told the story. Under polite, but skeptical questioning by Piers Morgan, Zimmerman advanced his brother’s version of the confrontation between him and the 17 year-old victim. He described a scenario in which Trayvon Martin was the aggressor.

Supposedly, after a brief unfriendly exchange, Martin had broken Zimmerman’s nose with an unprovoked punch, pounded his head against the sidewalk, and then threatened to kill the self-appointed neighborhood watch

volunteer with his own holstered handgun.

“George was out of breath, he was barely conscious,” Zimmerman said. “His last thing he remembers doing was moving GENE his head from the concrete to the LYONS grass, so that if he was banged one more time he wouldn’t be — you know, wearing diapers for the rest of his life … and there would have been George dead had he not acted decisively and instantaneously.”

Morgan pressed Zimmerman to explain surveillance videos that appeared to show his brother brought into Sanford, Fla. police headquarters less than an hour after shooting Trayvon Martin “with no apparent markings to his face.”

“There’s no visible sign of any attack,” Morgan said.

“How do you explain that?”

“We’re confident the medical records are going to explain all of George’s medical history,” Zimmerman said “because [of] how he was treated at the scene and how he was not.”

Should it come to a criminal trial, whatever those records say will definitely be important.

Also important: what MSNBC called a “newly released surveillance video” showing “new angles, never seen before” exists of George Zimmerman’s entry into police headquarters that terrible night. It was broadcast once, on Martin Bashir’s daily program at 2 p.m. Central on March 29th, and alluded to momentarily on “Hardball” that evening.

And what that video clearly shows is a large goose egg and a bloody abrasion on the crown of Zimmerman’s head.

Check it out for yourself at arktimes.com/Zimmerman.

The implications are obvious, if anything but dispositive. That’s why it’s so alarming that the telltale video appears to have vanished into a Memory Hole while MSNBC’s ace team of talk show prosecutors pretend it never existed. Nor have rival networks broadcast it.

One Fox News network is enough.

Read Gene Lyons every week at arktimes.com/lyons.

OPINION

Supreme shame

I

f the U.S. Supreme Court’s oral arguments in the health-insurance suit are a guide, the court this spring will add another case to the pantheon of shame that enshrines Dred Scott, Plessy, Buck, Korematsu, Bush v. Gore and Citizens United.

You know those cases. Dred Scott said the descendants of slaves could never be citizens or enjoy the legal protections afforded other Americans. Plessy said racial apartheid and equality were harmonious principles. Buck stood for the premise that the government did not violate handicapped women’s rights when it forcibly sterilized them so that they could never spawn disabled children. Korematsu was the 1944 decision in which the court said it was fine to strip 110,000 Americans of Japanese descent of their property and imprison them without cause or suspicion.

Bush v. Gore and Citizens United stood for — well, you know those cases too well.

Those two and the impending 5-4 decision against what Republicans call “Obamacare” all run along the same line, where the court decides not just to declare what the Constitution means but to enter the political lists to decide elections for the right party and finally to fix public policy in the justices’ direction, a domain until now reserved to the other branches.

So if the questions and observations of four of the five Republican justices

reflect their intentions, the Supreme Court will vote 5 to 4 to declare the United States to be the only counERNEST try among all the DUMAS developed nations of the earth, and a few of the undeveloped ones, that is barred by its own constitution from ever giving health protection to all its people — unless, of course, it chooses someday to follow the socialist model.

That would be the result if the court concluded it is an unconstitutional exercise of congressional power to require that most uninsured people or their employers to either buy health insurance from a company or else pay a tax to the federal government to help pay for their treatment.

There are two ways to achieve universal coverage, which was an idea embraced by 10 of the 17 20th century presidents, including four Republicans. One way is the single-payer government system, Medicare for everyone, which Republicans now call socialism, and the other was the Republican idea of mandating everyone to obtain insurance, which was first tendered by Nixon and Ford in the 1970s and embraced in the 1990s by Republican congressional leaders, including Newt Gingrich. When Barack Obama was per-

suaded in 2009 that the Republican mandate was the only politically viable way, he and the Democratic Congress adopted it, which caused the Republicans to repudiate it. Do you imagine that even one justice would vote to strike down the insurance mandate if a Republican Congress and president had fathered it?

The three days of hearings by the justices were unprecedented. The four questioning Republicans wondered aloud about how the insurance companies would make sufficient profits if the court struck down the mandate and allowed the rest of Obamacare to survive.

Issues about how well provisions of a law might work have never been the province of the courts — only whether they abrade the Constitution.

Whether the Affordable Care Act is good law is not a matter for the courts but for Congress and the president, which are obliged by the Constitution to resolve hard issues the best they can on the messy playing field of politics and compromise. The Affordable Care Act is not anyone’s idea of the best way to protect the 40 million uninsured people, but it is what could get a supermajority in the Senate.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, who will supply the pivotal vote, seemed to suggest that the right way was a single-payer system like Medicare, so that the government’s power to make everyone pay would be unquestioned. He was right; it was the better way. But the economic power of the insurance and pharmaceuti-

cal industries ended that possibility long ago.

The justices’ questions reached for absurdity. The case was supposed to be premised on the technical question of whether the commerce clause envisioned the federal government regulating healthcare transactions. But that matter was settled, in the legislature and the courts, no later than in 1965, when Medicare and the modern Medicaid were established, but actually long before that with the enactment of old age, survivors and disability insurance, which was required of everyone. Congress has acted numerous times to mandate hospitals and other providers, insurance carriers and, yes, even individuals to meet certain requirements. Only eight years ago, a Republican Congress and president changed the Medicare law so that elderly and disabled people who need help with the prescriptions have to buy drug insurance from insurance companies.

The nadir of the hearing came with justices raising the old bugbear of absurd possibilities. If the government can require people to insure themselves, couldn’t it make them eat broccoli?

The next thing you know the government could make people buy automobile liability insurance or obtain licenses to hunt or fish; it could make employers buy unemployment insurance, make hospitals give lifesaving care to indigents or make factories stop polluting the air and water.

Where it all could end, God knows.

PEARLS ABOUT SWINE

SEC good for Hogs?

T

he Southeastern Conference’s stature has reached such heights that puffery in the form of TV spots and sportswriter paeans are no longer necessary. There is a reason that Missouri and Texas A&M pined at the gilded gates begging for entry, right?

Ink spills and tongues wag over the league’s football prowess. Six straight national championships. A fierce commitment to “big boy” football with defenses that not only suffocate, but punish.

Now the men’s basketball championship has returned to the SEC with Kentucky’s vanquishing of Kansas, and the polls suggest that the conference has the odds in its favor to capture a fourth straight College World Series crown. The league is so good in the latter sport that, counting the Aggies, there are eight teams among Baseball America’s Top 25 poll with current or eventual conference allegiance.

We hear “S-E-C” chants reverberating through the crowds at all these

games of significance. Conference pride is off the charts. Arkansas fans do their part in remindBEAU ing others that WILCOX we are part of this stronghold and by God, you’d better respect it.

But is this hubris misplaced?

Much of my fanhood is spent loathing the Alabama football or Kentucky basketball teams. Our Razorback roots give us an unhealthy amount of venom for those programs that have, historically and presently, realized the bounties to which we aspire. We despise their successes because they aren’t ours, because they were at least in part taken at our expense. When Arkansas went to Baton Rouge in November with a No. 3 ranking and designs on disrupting the BCS pecking order, it was Alabama that crowed about the potentially unfair circumstance in which the Tide would

get left out of a title game when it had beaten us resoundingly in September.

We are remarkably inconsistent as a fan base when our allegiances are tested. A quick review of Facebook updates Monday night suggested that, by and large, nobody could stomach the thought of John Calipari winning a national championship due to his reputation as a flesh-peddling weasel. That was in stark contrast to the thunderous elation many felt when, say, Auburn rode a cash-on-delivery quarterback to a BCS title only 15 months prior. On that night in January 2011, all the caterwauling about Cecil Newton whoring out his freakishly talented son to replenish the Building Fund went by the wayside because, hey, it’s another title for the SEC! There is no right answer as to how this moral quandary gets resolved. But I submit that maybe we’re overlooking something rather troubling: membership has privileges and drawbacks all the same. Being part of the SEC has given Arkansas a national stage in many sports for two decades, but whether it has given us success above and beyond

what we could hope for elsewhere is debatable.

We love having highly-ranked teams, but it has engendered within us an irrepressible desire for something greater.

And yet in every damned sport, somebody is just flat-out better than we are, and our recruiting profile isn’t such that we can just casually defeat that. The quality of our coaching, the caliber of our athlete and the sheen on our facilities have all been on the uptick just as every other school has progressed in the same areas, and every time we land a game-changing recruit, John Calipari rooks a five-star into signing a 12-month lease at Wildcat Shangri-La. Thus, we participate in those chants, at the Sugar Bowl, at the College World Series, wherever...but maybe it all rings hollow. We are part of something great, but at this juncture, we’ve had only an ancillary role in bringing this league to the fore. It may be paradoxical, but as our collective athletic future brightens, do our prospects for singular glory dim?

Screw it, I’m getting too philosophical about this. We just need to get Petrino to wear a helmet. www.arktimes.com

APRIL 4, 2012

7

W O RDS

No more,

“My dog ate my recycling.”

New recycling carts from Pulaski County don’t require any sorting. Plus, you can earn rewards for recycling. For service in Little Rock, call 311. For North Little Rock and Sherwood, call 565-0191. Or visit regionalrecycling.org.

No Sorting. No Excuses. Recycle.

Hungry and shirty Baby’s little diaper loves shortnin’, shortnin’ …

From the police beat: “Baby Left in Car, Couple Arrested … Wal-Mart employees who fed and changed the baby’s diaper, told police the baby was hungry and had a soiled diaper when she was taken inside the store, the report said.”

Michael Klossner asks, “But was the diaper hungry?”

Shirt happens: “ ‘The New Republic,’ though only now appearing in print, was completed

by Shriver in 1998, near the end of a decade when the United States seemed fortunate and frivolous to observers overseas. … In a shirty author’s note, Shriver writes that in 1998, she was unable to find a publisher for her satire because, three years prior to September 11, Americans ‘dismissed terrorism as Foreigners’ Boring Problem.’ ” I think shirty is mainly a Britishism, which is probably why the spell-checker put a red line under it. But Random House knows shirty, calling it “informal” and defining it as “bad-tempered, irritable, cranky.”

Twit Romney: “American Majority trainings and materials are part of a proprietary, cutting-edge curriculum of advanced political tactics.

The curriculum includes policy education, messaging, precinct organization, GetOut-the-Vote operDOUG ations, fundraising SMITH and social media. dougsmith@arktimes.com American Majority’s Twitivism guide is widely viewed as the leading manual for using Twitter as a tool to inform and mobilize conservatives.”

Is that worth doing? What we need more is a Twitivism guide to help us locate all the twits (“insignificant and bothersome persons’) and keep them from congregating. A dog might be a possibility. North Little Rock is employing dogs, apparently with some success, to keep geese out of Burns Park Monty Python used to run a contest in England to crown the “Upper-class twit of the year.” Contestants competed in abusing waiters, keeping working people awake with loud, drunken conversations in the wee hours, and running over pedestrians.

One year, the contest winner was an upperclass twit who’d somehow managed to run over himself. Perhaps because of Python, many upper-class twits fled England and settled in the USA, where they are now competing for the Republican presidential nomination.

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APRIL 4, 2012

ARKANSAS TIMES

DAVID GEARHART. The University of Arkansas chancellor responded thoughtfully and politely to an angry e-mail from state Rep. Jon Hubbard (R-Jonesboro), who wanted to know why the university is hosting a panel discussion on illegal immigration that will include appearances by five young undocumented immigrants.

In reply, Gearhart said, in part, “As I hope you understand, one of a university’s many purposes is to serve as a gathering place where issues and ideas are shared and discussed. I believe it’s important to offer our students and the public an opportunity to hear firsthand from individuals who have such a unique perspective: living most of their lives in and as Americans, if not citizens, but without having access to the same legal, educational, and economic opportunities as their classmates and neighbors.”

He also invited Hubbard to attend.

DAVID PASCHAL. The former Elkins teacher, sentenced to 30 years in prison, won his appeal of a sexual assault conviction from the Arkansas Supreme Court in a 4-3 decision. One of Paschal’s former students previously testified that she engaged in a months-long consensual sexual relationship with Paschal when she was 18 and still a student at Elkins.

THE VA DAY TREATMENT CENTER. It got a prominent backer of its plan to relocate to property at 10th and Main streets, when Gov. Beebe said he believes the center should be on Main Street. He said he thinks it’s a good place for the services, and that veterans deserve that.

It was a bad week for…

JOE THOMPSON. The state surgeon general was arrested at his Little Rock home Saturday, and was later charged with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, use of force and attempting to influence a public official following what police say was a drunken altercation with a security guard and Little Rock police officers.

BOBBY PETRINO. The University of Arkansas head football coach was injured in a motorcycle accident Sunday in Newton County. He’s expected to make a full recovery.

UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS STUDENTS. They’ll be paying 5.3 percent more in tuition and fees in the fall, after the University of Arkansas board of trustees voted unanimously to raise tuition at UA institutions system-wide anywhere from 2 to more than 5 percent.

Live the Life You Want THE OBSERVER NOTES ON THE PASSING SCENE

Plumbing the depths of summer THE OBSERVER PLANTED 146 heirloom

tomatoes last weekend. This is pure recklessness. The Observer would sooner drive down Cantrell Hill with no brakes as plant tomatoes in March. These late winter warm spells are just bait for the intemperate gardener, sending him on a fool’s errand of planting, only to be ambushed in early April by a mass of Arctic air moving down from Canada.

Or so it used to be.

Any soul who denies global warming should spend time in The Observer’s market garden. The Kentucky Wonder pole beans came up last week for heavens sake — a month early! Three weeks ago The Observer stepped on a king snake in the elephant garlic. The world is awry.

So this Saturday, he will plant 700 more heirlooms, the whole family drafted into stoop labor. He cuts a hole in the black plastic mulch over the raised bed, son drops a shovel of chicken manure onto the hole, daughter stirs the dirt and manure with a trowel and wife plugs in the tomato plant.

Thirty years of gardening history says The Observer is a fool. Yet this feels permanent. Something fundamental has changed.

degutted us to know end.

Still, we ain’t no plumber, so with Spouse forcing our fingers down on the button with every number, we dialed up one of those sultans of stoppage. Soon enough, a van pulled up, and there stood our hero in his blue work shirt, a big ol’ rootin’ machine in tow. Standing outside by the cleanout caps at the side of the house, The Plumber and Yours Truly had the following exchange: HIM: “Where’s the bathroom you’re having problems with?”

THE OBSERVER: “It’s in the house.”

HIM: ...

There’s really nothing you can do at a moment like that to keep yourself from looking like a chimpanzee that has escaped from the zoo, had a full-body wax and somehow learned to speak, is there? We both just pretended like The Homeowner hadn’t said it.

Then again, as a pal later pointed out during the Commiseration Phase — us a few days and a few hundred dollars lighter — this IS Arkansas. There’s always the chance the bathroom in question isn’t of the indoor variety. We’d probably need a good carpenter to fix that one.

SPEAKING OF HOT WATER, The Observer

WE RAN ACROSS AN ASSOCIATED PRESS

had to have a plumber out the other day to look at the pipes in the bowels of The Observatory. The night before, while the washing machine was running, we’d heard first a trickle and then a flood as the overflow under the windowsill backed up and sent soapy wash water everywhere — all over the sewing machine and our dented toolbox and the waist high stack of ancient paint cans we keep in the laundry room for God knows what reason. We got her shut off, but not before everything got a good and thorough soaking.

Service professionals of all stripes — roofers, painters, mechanics, AC guys, plumbers and so on — have long been the bane of our existence, making off with far too much of our hard earned scratch in times of great sorrow and gnashing of teeth. They tend to work on the stuff that you mostly never even think about until it breaks, and paying hundreds or thousands of dollars to fix something we know we’ll never think about has always

STORY the other day about attempts by

the city fathers of Harrison to shed the town’s racist image. Anybody who knows anything about the sad history of racism in this state knows that Boone County hamlet — which, as the Encyclopedia of Arkansas notes, was one of the state’s “Sundown Towns” that forbade blacks from living there by threat of violence throughout a big chunk of the 20th century — has never received a gold star for “Most Improved” in that category, though the fact that some are thinking in that direction at least gives us reason to hope. It was an assessment from one white Harrison resident quoted in the AP article, though, that won The Observer’s Award for Bass-Ackward Logic.

“How can it be a racist town,” the fella was quoted as saying, “if there’s no blacks here?”

Indeed, sir. Up next: curing sexism by rounding up all the women and shipping them to Australia.

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M other’s Day

the perfect gift for

Single Parent Scholarship Fund of Pulaski County has The Perfect Gift to honor your mother or another woman who is important in your life.

When you make a contribution of $50 or more, your name and your Mother’s Day honoree’s name will appear in the May edition of Soirée.

Your gift will provide scholarships and support services to full-time, single-parent students in Pulaski County.

InformatIon and donatIons must be receIved by 4/11/12 to appear In soIrée

“When you bring single parents out of poverty, they bring their children with them.”

Call for more information 501.307.7773 or visit www.PulaskiSingleParents.org www.arktimes.com

APRIL 4, 2012

9

Arkansas Reporter

THE

IN S IDE R

An Arkansan without a country

Okaidi Yasmin PosadasTidwell, 18, a senior at Centerpoint High School in Glenwood, is like many undocumented kids in Arkansas: unsure of what the future holds, whether she’ll be able to continue to live in the only country she’s ever known.

But Posadas-Tidwell (or Kaiti, as she calls herself on her Facebook page) has a rare complicating factor: She was brought to the United States — floated across the Rio Grande in a tire — as an infant, before she had a Mexican birth certificate. That makes her a young woman without a country, an undocumented person who must first get Mexican citizenship before she can get U.S. citizenship.

At the age of 4, Kaiti was left in the care of chicken growers Grant and JoAnn Tidwell of Glenwood.

What was supposed to be a temporary arrangement became permanent, JoAnn Tidwell said, though Kaiti sees her biological mother from time to time. JoAnn Tidwell is now Kaiti’s legal mother, adopting her when she was 11 on the advice of a Homeland Security employee who told Tidwell she needed to do that as part of the process to get citizenship for Kaiti.

It was the Tidwells’ fourth attempt at getting papers for Kaiti; the first time the couple tried, when Kaiti was 7, they petitioned on the grounds that Kaiti had been abandoned, but the U.S. Immigration Service disagreed, saying that Kaiti had a family — the Tidwells, JoAnn Tidwell said. On the second and subsequent applications, the fact that Kaiti’s birth was never registered in Mexico was cited.

And finally, the adoption wasn’t enough to persuade the immigration service to let Kaiti apply.

The law allows undocumented aliens 181 days to register with the U.S. after their 18th birthday.

That means Kaiti, who turned 18 on Nov. 7, has until May 5 to get documented by the Mexican government so she can apply for U.S. citizenship. Kaiti and JoAnn Tidwell will be able to travel to Mexico City thanks to a temporary I.D. procured with the help of state Sen. Randy Stewart, D-Kirby, and a temporary passport from the Mexican consulate in Little Rock (after first being turned down). Tidwell has asked for an appointment with the consulate in Mexico City; if she isn’t granted one soon, she and Kaiti will travel to Mexico City, where Tidwell is prepared to stay CONTINUED ON PAGE 11 10

APRIL 4, 2012

ARKANSAS TIMES

Cartoonist seeks Arkansas House seat Running as Democrat on GOP turf.

BY DOUG SMITH

I

t’s a good bet that Wolf Grulkey’s staunchly liberal editorial cartoons will become better known on his home ground of Northwest Arkansas in the next few months.

His Republican neighbors will see to it.

A typical Grulkey cartoon, headlined “GOP-atine,” shows an elephant in a suit and a robber’s mask pointing to the slot in a guillotine where the victim’s head goes, and saying, “You just place silly useless social programs in this neat little device and you quickly eliminate huge amounts of unwanted fat.” But Grulkey is running for state representative, as a Democrat, in a part of the state that is strongly Republican. Most legislators from the area are Republicans, including Rep. Justin T. Harris of West Fork, an incumbent who is one of two candidates for the Republican nomination in House District 81, where Grulkey is already the Democratic nominee by virtue of being the only person who filed. The other Republican candidate is Lisa France Norris of Alma, which is Grulkey’s home also. The new District 81 is similar to but not the same as the present House District 87, which Harris represents. House district boundary lines were redrawn after the 2010 census.

Harris has received considerable attention lately as one of two Republican legislators ­– the other is Sen. Johnny Key of Mountain Home – who run private schools that teach religion but that

WOLF GRULKEY

also receive state and federal funding.

After a First Amendment group called Americans United for Separation of Church and State objected to public money for religious schools, the state Education Department commenced consideration of new rules for schools receiving public money.

Asked if this controversy is likely to come up in the District 81 contest, Grulkey said, “I can’t see how it won’t. Church and state should be separate.” Will Grulkey draw cartoons about Harris if Harris is his opponent (as seems likely)? “I think that’s a distinct possibility.”

Grulkey, 62, does not make a living as an editorial cartoonist; hardly anybody does these days, when many newspapers are going out of business and many of those that remain are eliminating the position of fulltime editorial cartoonist. One of Grulkey’s two principal outlets, the Lovely County Citizen, a weekly newspaper at Eureka Springs whose editor is a friend of Grulkey’s, gives him a free subscription in exchange for his cartoons. The other, Bartcop, a political blog with a national audience, pays nothing, and is struggling to keep its own head above water. Bartcop has run the headline “Premier Toonist Wolf Grulkey is running for Congress” above what appears to be a campaign card that says “Wolf Grulkey, state representative, District 81, Democrat.” It’s because of Bartcop’s national audience that most of Grulkey’s cartoons deal with national rather than state issues, Grulkey said.

(Bartcop is headquartered in Tulsa. Its editor is a former Little Rock resident who never uses his real name on the blog, though the name can be found at Wikipedia and other sources.)

CONTINUED ON PAGE 20

LISTEN UP

ENDING GENDER RATING

I THE

BIG PICTURE

n 2014, under the Affordable Care Act, health insurance companies will no longer be able to take gender into account in premium rates. Women in Arkansas and Wyoming would benefit the most under the act, if left to stand by the U.S. Supreme Court: Women in those states who carry individual policies pay 76 percent to 100 percent more than men for the same health coverage, according to data gathered by the National Women’s Law Center.

Only 13 states now prohibit gender discrimination. Only nine require all insurers on the individual market to cover maternity care.

The NWLC study “Turning to Fairness,” released March 16, found that one insurance plan in Arkansas charges 25-year-old women 81 percent more than men for coverage. A similar plan in Arkansas charges women only 10 percent more.

All Arkansas plans currently rate by gender, according to the study. Other facts turned up: Sixty percent of the best-selling insurance plans in Arkansas charge non-smoking women more than men who smoke.

The gap shrinks but does not close with age: Some plans charge 40-year-old women 55 percent more than 40-year-old men and women age 55 pay 9 percent more.

The study found plans that charged women age 40 up to $544 more a year.

No individual plans cover maternity in Arkansas, but 28 offer riders costing between $15 and $255.95 a month.

The study found that gender rating also occurs in the group market; women who work for businesses with a majority female workforce are routinely charged more for group coverage.

HOW MUCH MORE DO WOMEN PAY FOR HEALTH INSURANCE?

Tune in to the Times’ “Week In Review” podcast each Friday.

Available on iTunes & arktimes.com

INSIDER, CONT. until she can legally return with Kaiti. (Grant Tidwell died in 2009.)

That could mean selling her home and car in Glenwood, she said.

“Me and Katie are tired now, we’re wore out,” Tidwell said.

Kaiti, a member of the Centerpoint track team, who works at a restaurant four days a week, who’s been offered scholarships to Henderson State University and two other schools based on her grades, may not even get to walk with her graduating class or go to the senior prom. At the Mexican consulate in Little Rock, when it looked like she might not get a temporary passport, Kaiti wept and wept: This is her last chance at citizenship. But Tidwell is determined. “I never give up. Someone’s going to tell me what to do and it’s going to work.”

Rule leaves Rose Herb Rule, the Democratic nominee for Congress in the Second Congressional District, has resigned from the Rose Law Firm, where he’d practiced for 48 years, to devote “full time or mostly full time” to his congressional campaign. Asked about his later plans, he said “If I win, I’ll be occupied.”

He has a campaign office in the Tanglewood Shopping Center, 831-7747, ruleforcongress@gmail. com.

CORRECTIONS

0-25% More 26-50% More 76-100% More Gender discrimination prohibited by law No data or other

States that have already taken steps to ban or limit gender rating in the individual market: California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, New Mexico (2014), New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Oregon, Vermont and Washington.

States that ban or limit gender rating in group health plans: California, Colorado, Delaware, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington.

The study can be found at www.nwlc.org.

In a guest column last week (“South Carolina swindle”), we said that a contract the Arkansas Lottery has with the vendor Scientific Games (SGI) is highly favorable to SGI as it’s based on a percentage take of revenue rather than a fixed price, which is how South Carolina pays the same vendor. But we said incorrectly that the difference between what South Carolina pays SGI and what Arkansas pays the vendor could amount to more than $100 million. The Arkansas Lottery also signed a favorable contract with Intralot, an online vendor.

Together, compared to the deals Intralot and SGI struck with South Carolina, the Arkansas Lottery’s contracts with those vendors could cost the Arkansas lottery more than $100 million over the sevenyear terms of the deals.

In last week’s Arkansas Reporter (“The medical marijuana push in Arkansas”), we said incorrectly that Charlie Daniels was a former attorney general when he is, in fact, a former secretary of state.

www.arktimes.com

APRIL 4, 2012

11

WHAT HAPPENED

TO PATY? Patricia Guardado disappeared in broad daylight and was found dead four days later in a flooded quarry near Sweet Home.

After six months, her killer still walks free.

BY DAVID KOON AND RAFAEL NUNEZ

12

APRIL 4, 2012

ARKANSAS TIMES

once upon a time in america, there

was a young woman named Paty who seemed to be doing everything right.

She was devoted — to her family, to her church, to her job, to doing well in college so she could eventually get her own piece of the dream her parents had left a country to find. She didn’t hang out with a bad crowd. Though any young man would have loved to have the pretty, smart, dark-haired young woman on his arm, she’d only had one real boyfriend in her life, and had kindly turned down all other suitors since they broke up, deciding instead to put her energies toward her studies. She was the good one, her friends and family say, the best of them, the most caring, the one who was always willing to help.

So it was even more of a mystery, then, when 20-year-old Patricia Garcia Guardado disappeared on her way to class one sunny morning last October, after leaving her burgundy Scion parked and locked in a lot behind a Burger King across from UALR. Four days later, fishermen found her body floating in a water-filled rock quarry near Sweet Home.

Though Patricia Guardado was Hispanic, this is not a Hispanic story. It’s not a story about an outsider. It’s not a story about The Other. This is a story about a young woman who anyone would have been proud to call their daughter; a born-and-raised Arkansan who seemed to be doing everything right and yet still met an end none of us would wish on an enemy. Left behind: friends, family, and a grieving mother and father who still ask themselves why. The whys eat at them, along with the knowledge that out there, somewhere, is a witness with information that will finally bring Patricia’s killer to justice. 

the room where we met leonor garcia — a small, dusty space in the

CONTINUED ON PAGE 14

BRIAN CHILSON

midst of being converted into a restaurant, one door down from El Paisano, the store she and her husband own in Levy — happens to be the same place where she learned from detectives and her priest that her daughter was dead.

That room in shambles, cluttered with sawed-off lengths of two-by-fours, drop LEONOR GARCIA: In the lot where her daughter disappeared.

www.arktimes.com

APRIL 4, 2012

13

BRIAN CHILSON BRIAN CHILSON

cloths, carpenter’s tools and assorted screws and nails, could serve as a fitting metaphor for the way her life has been since then.

“She was the apple of my eye,” Garcia said through an interpreter. “She had a lot of dreams and a lot of hopes — a lot of dreams that she wanted to fulfill upon her graduation, which was coming up in 2013.”

Patricia was always a smart child, her mother said, always dedicated to her school work. She’d graduated with good grades from Joe T. Robinson High School in Little Rock, then had gone on to UALR, where she was a student in the International Business program. In addition to her classes, Patricia worked as a teller at the Metropolitan Bank branch on McCain Boulevard in North Little Rock. About a month before she disappeared, Garcia said, Patricia’s manager had told her that after she graduated with her degree, she could have a full-time career with the bank.

“For her, this was like a dream come true,” Garcia said. “She told me, ‘You know, mom, when a lot of people graduate, they struggle to find a job. With me, that’s not going to happen. I already have a job, and I have a promise from my manager that when I graduate, I’ll

SIGNS: A billboard on the freeway (above) and a flier in a store window.

have a career here if I want it.’ ” Patricia’s friends and family also remember her as a kind and loving young woman with a sense of responsibility beyond her years.

“She was one of those young ladies

who you were glad was a friend of your child,” said Maria Garcia, the mother of one of Patricia’s close friends (and no relation to Leonor Garcia). “She was always very respectful, a kind person. ... Whenever her mom or her siblings

M AY 2 5 - 2 7 • D O W N T O W N L I T T L E R O C K

needed anything, she was always there.

She was always thinking about them, always concerned about them.”

Karen Alejandri was close to Patricia from the time they were both girls.

Though they saw less of each other once Alejandri went off to UCA and Patricia stayed in Little Rock to attend UALR, they remained friends. She said that Patricia’s relationship with her mother was very close and she couldn’t believe that Paty had hidden anything from her mother. “Her mom was really open with her,” Alejandri said. “Her mom would give her enough liberty to trust her to go out. It wasn’t like she would sneak out. Her mom and her, by what I saw — my perception — they had a really good relationship.”

Several others we spoke to also said they couldn’t see Patricia keeping anything from her mother — especially a hidden romantic entanglement or anything dangerous. Family friend Angelina Lublin, who had trusted Guardado enough that Paty had a key to her house and sometimes met her daughters at the school bus when Lublin couldn’t, said through an interpreter that “they were so close that even to buy a schoolbook, Patricia would ask her mom’s opinion. … They were like close friends at times.

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APRIL 4, 2012

ARKANSAS TIMES

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When they went shopping, it was like a friend-to-friend thing, not mother/ daughter.”

Leonor Garcia said that Patricia had had only one steady boyfriend, but “he was going around with other girls,” so Paty and the boy had broken up over a year before she died. Sometimes, when Patricia would see him around town, she would become depressed.

“I would try to pick up her spirits by saying she should get another boyfriend,” Garcia said. “She used to tell me, ‘No, mom. Right now I want to focus on my studies. There will be time for that later, but right now I just want to study — romance and all that can wait.’ ”

The morning Patricia Guardado disappeared —Oct. 12, 2011 — was just like any other Wednesday. Garcia borrowed her daughter’s car and drove from their home near Alexander to downtown Little Rock to take Patricia’s younger sisters to school at St. Edward Catholic Church near MacArthur Park. When she got back home around 8:30 a.m., Paty was already out of bed and dressed. Garcia offered to make her lunch, but Patricia said she was already late leaving for her 9 o’clock class.

Scheduled to work at the bank that day after school, Patricia was wearing her dress clothes. As she was on the way out the door, Garcia stopped her to admire CONTINUED ON PAGE 16

Please Join Us In Celebrating Our First Year As We Honor

Rick Fleetwood

With The Inaugural Arkansas Patron Of The Year Award

A GAlA celebRAtion!

Thursday, April 19 • 7 p.m. • Dinner at the Clinton Presidential Library Craig O’Neill, Emcee • Cocktail Attire Honoring Rick Fleetwood’s community leadership and generosity with the inaugural Arkansas Patron Award.

The annual Arkansas Patron’s Award is given to recognize individuals for exceptional generosity, whose gifts of time, talents, expertise and direct financial support have contributed significantly to nonprofit organizations in Arkansas. The award carries a grant given to an art organization chosen by the recipient.

Reserved seating is available for tables of ten. Table purchase includes 2 tickets to VIP reception at 6 p.m. at the Argenta Community Theater. (Shuttle between ACT and Clinton Library) ACT – committed to serving the community through education and advancement of the performing arts.

For Tickets Or To Make A Contribution www.argentacommunitytheater.com or call 501-353-1443 www.arktimes.com

APRIL 4, 2012

15

THE DELTA

CULTURAL CENTER Helena, AR

ARKANSAS DELTA FAMILY GOSPEL FESTIVAL MAY 19th, 2012

Mother’s Best Music Fest

June 9th, 2012

King Biscuit Blues Festival

October 4th-6th, 2012

Make the drive to historic Helena and discover the Delta Cultural Center!

We believe deeply in the stories of the Delta and its people. Experience our award-winning exhibits on the music and musicians of the Delta, the arrival of Arkansans in this fertile land by the Mississippi River, the Civil War, and much more. Check new art in our galleries.

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(870)-338-4350, toll free (800)-358-0972 www.DeltaCulturalCenter.com

THE DELTA CULTURAL CENTER IS A MUSEUM OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ARKANSAS HERITAGE 16

APRIL 4, 2012

ARKANSAS TIMES

the woman her daughter had become.

“I remember I told her she looked very beautiful,” Garcia said. “She was all fixed up, and had put on some makeup.

She looked like the picture of a young woman going out into the world. The only thing I remember telling her was: ‘What a pretty daughter I have.’ She sort of looked embarrassed, and said ‘Oh, mom.’ She smiled at me, and that was it.”

Patricia’s normal routine was to call her mother after she got off work, sometime between 4 and 6 p.m. That day, however, she didn’t call. Sometimes, Patricia would stop by El Paisano to see her relatives before coming home, so Garcia called there, but they hadn’t seen her. She called a cousin who attended some of the same classes as Paty at UALR, and learned that Paty hadn’t attended her first class at 9 a.m.

Panic began to set in. Patricia’s brother called local police departments to see if she’d been in an accident, but got no information. Garcia called Paty’s cell phone, but it kept going through to voice mail.

“By 7,” she said, “I knew, and even said out loud, that something had happened to my daughter.”

In desperation, Leonor put her younger daughters in the car and went out looking, driving aimlessly through the gathering dark. They drove to UALR and circled through the parking lots near the campus where she knew Paty sometimes parked. As Garcia cruised the lot near the Mexican Consulate across from the school, her daughters spotted something.

“My two younger daughters started crying because they saw her car,” Garcia said. “They told me, ‘There’s Paty’s car!’ ... I couldn’t tell because I had tears filling my eyes. I couldn’t see. I came in through the entrance to the Consulate.

They kept saying, ‘It is her car! It is her car!’ I parked behind it, but there was nobody in there.”

The doors to the car, which was parked squarely and neatly in the slot, were locked. Garcia called the police.

Eventually, it was determined that the only things missing from the car were Paty’s purse, cell phone, backpack and a pair of prescription eyeglasses. From that moment, the search for Paty began. In many ways, it’s never stopped for Leonor Garcia.

Garcia said that she was at the lot until midnight. Officers tried tracking Patricia’s cell phone that night, but to Garcia’s knowledge, they never were able to get a fix on it (Garcia said the phone, along with Paty’s purse, keys and backpack, have never been found). She didn’t sleep that night, or the next. The

next morning, family, friends and fellow parishioners from St. Edward met in the lot behind the Burger King and fanned out. Garcia said she searched where her instincts told her to look: in parks, alleyways, dark streets, anyplace where her daughter might have been dumped out of a car.

Carissa Noriega was one of those who helped with the search. A UALR student who didn’t even know Patricia, Noriega said she learned about Guardado’s disappearance from a TV news report. The next morning, she was taking her boyfriend to the gym on campus when she drove by the lot where Guardado went missing and saw the searchers gathering. “It was disappointing. It was basically the family and some church members from St. Edward’s. That was it. The school wasn’t there. Students didn’t come who didn’t know her. I was the only student there who didn’t know her, who just wanted to help.”

Noriega went on to organize a search for Guardado through social media, and reached out to news stations to encourage them to keep covering the case.

“Doing that, it really touched my heart,” she said. “I didn’t feel like a lot of people were helping. It was hard for us to get any coverage. There were some channels that showed up, but it just felt like when the family was trying to get help in the community, people were slow to react.”

Similarly, Noriega said the Little Rock Police Department didn’t seem to take the case seriously enough in what she calls the “crucial” early hours and days after Guardado’s disappearance, when Leonor Garcia was telling them it was totally unlike her daughter to go missing like that. “Maybe they were doing things behind the scenes,” Noriega said, “and there’s a reason why we felt like they weren’t showing up to these events and they weren’t calling us back, and they weren’t rushing to help, but certainly before they discovered and identified her body, they were not doing everything that they could.”

Also involved in the search early on was Father Jason Tyler, the parish priest at St. Edward. Tyler said he heard that Paty had gone missing on Thursday. By Friday, searchers had printed up fliers and were handing them out. The family asked if they could hold a prayer vigil at the church on Friday night at 6 p.m.

“I thought maybe we’d have 20 or 30 people,” Tyler said, “but I bet we had 150 to 200. This was very impromptu, word-of-mouth, with very little notice this was going to happen, but we had that big of a crowd here.” Tyler said he was impressed with how the whole congregation of St. Edward stepped up to help.

J.C. White, asking if he could meet them nearby. Together, Tyler and the detectives settled on the parking lot of the Kroger store on Camp Robinson Road, just down from El Paisano. When he arrived, Tyler learned what he’d already feared: That the body found in the lake at Sweet Home was Patricia Guardado.

Detective White asked Tyler if the priest wanted to be the one to tell the family, or if he should do it.

“I asked him, ‘Well, do you speak Spanish?’ ” Tyler said. “He said he did not. I said, ‘It’s probably better for me to break the news, because while some of the people there will speak English and some won’t, I think it would be better for whoever is in the room to get the news all at once without translation.’ ” In separate cars, Tyler and the detectives drove to El Paisano. A crowd of friends and supporters was waiting outside, and as Tyler walked through them, someone cried out “Tell me it’s not really true!” in Spanish. “I didn’t know what to do or say,” Tyler said. “I think I shook her hand or hugged her or something, and just kept walking.”

Inside, Garcia was waiting. After asking all but immediate relatives to step out of the room, Tyler told Patricia’s family that she was dead. It was, he said, the hardest thing he’s ever done in his six years as a priest.

“I was totally unprepared for the outpouring of grief that came at that moment,” Tyler said. “I’ve been in the hospital with people who have died. I’ve been with friends and family members of those who have died in accidents or unexpectedly. Each of those has its own pain and its own difficulty, but none of them really had as much of a feeling of

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BRIAN CHILSON

PADRE: Father Jason Tyler, at St. Edward.

With masses presented in both Spanish and English at the church for 20 years now, Tyler said it can feel like two congregations sharing one building at times, with the two rarely crossing. The story of a missing daughter — a girl who had volunteered at the church’s Fall Festival just a week before her disappearance — clearly touched parishioners’ hearts, both white and Latino. “By Saturday and Sunday,” Tyler said, “[the white parishioners] were right there side by side with the Hispanic people, handing out leaflets and missing-person fliers.”

Garcia was up again on Sunday morning, ready to search, when she got a call from police detectives telling her they needed to meet. “When we got there,” Leonor said, “the detective showed up, and he told us that he wanted to tell us before we heard it on the news: They had found a body in a place called Sweet Home.”

It says a lot about Garcia’s mind at that moment — about her fierce hope — that even after a detective went to her house to collect Paty’s hairbrush and toothbrush to make a DNA match, Garcia went out and searched for her anyway. “In my conscious mind, I refused to accept it and believe it,” Garcia said.

“That Sunday, after he came to my home and took those items, we still went out and looked for her. I didn’t want to accept that she was gone. It wasn’t until two in the morning on Monday that we stopped searching for her.”

The next morning, Leonor and the searchers had gathered again in the parking lot behind the Burger King when she received a call from detectives, asking her to meet them at El Paisano at noon.

Around the same time, Father Tyler received a call from LRPD Detective

APRIL 4, 2012

17

These venues will be open late.

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ARKANSAS TIMES

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DUMPING GROUND: Trash near the lake where Guardado’s body was found.

tangible grief as that moment.”

At the words, Tyler remembers, Leonor Garcia yelled “No!” Then the whole family surged forward and surrounded him, bear-hugged him and each other, embracing him so tight, he said, that he wondered if his arms would come off. And there they stood in that room: priest, detectives, Paty’s family, the moment surely seeming to hang forever, the people who had loved her gripped in a vise of loss and sorrow.

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body of Patricia Garcia Guardado was often called a pond in news reports, but it’s really a lake — an old granite quarry filled with rain, so deep that the water there is the dark blue of dusk.

Even though it’s only a few hundred yards off state Hwy. 365, it feels like wilderness, a windy place surrounded as it is by spotted shadow, sawbriar and pine. On a bluff above the water stands a simple wooden cross that bears the name “Paty.”

Even all these months later, the cross is still bright white. Among the trinkets left at the shrine is a fading paper bookmark that says “Sonrie, Dios te Ama” — “Smile, God Loves You.” Patricia’s mother put the cross there. Last December, Father Tyler came to bless it. Garcia said she is sure her daughter, who had only recently started driving and was still nervous about going anywhere in town other than to UALR and the bank, had never been there in her life.

Since Patricia died, Leonor Garcia said she has never quit searching for who killed her daughter. Detectives still haven’t told her how Paty died, or where they suspect she was for the days she was missing. Garcia was never allowed to see the body. At the vigil and

funeral for Patricia held at St. Edward — both of which were so well-attended that people filled the church until the crowd flowed out the door, down the front steps and into Sherman Street — the casket had to remain closed. Father Tyler told her that was a blessing. The last image she has of Patricia is of her standing in the doorway, a woman going out to meet the world.

Garcia meets with Detective White regularly. When they met last week, she said, he told her there had been no new developments. He has told her he can’t reveal the details of how her daughter died yet, saying that it might compromise the case. “When he says that to me,” Garcia said, “it makes me understand how this might hinder the investigation. I agree with it, and I say, ‘OK, if that’s what it takes to keep the investigation going, I will wait.’ ” Police spokesman Lt. Terry Hastings said that withholding information on cause of death, even from the family, is common in an unsolved homicide case. He said even he doesn’t know how Patricia Guardado was killed. “Many times when you question suspects, and they talk about how a person was killed, the method they used and where the person was injured becomes important to make sure we have a true suspect.

That’s why we protect those details tightly.”

Hastings said that since Guardado’s body was found, the department has received hundreds of tips. “Detectives have run all those tips down and talked to everybody you can imagine about it, trying to get a better handle on it.

They’re still doing it. This is not a closed case by any stretch of the imagination.

We’re still actively investigating it.”

Police have run into several factors that are making the case more difficult to solve, Hastings said. The most obviCONTINUED ON PAGE 20

www.arktimes.com

APRIL 4, 2012

19

ous is that they just don’t know where Patricia Guardado went after she left her home for school. Though the lot where her car was found is surrounded by businesses and near the Mexican Consulate, it apparently wasn’t covered by any surveillance cameras. Since her death, yellow signs have been put up warning drivers to park there at their own risk, and that the lot isn’t monitored.

“We found her car, which tells us she ended up at school,” Hastings said, “but did she get in the car willingly with somebody? Did somebody take her?

That makes it difficult. We’ve found no one around there who saw anything.”

Another factor, Hastings said, is the language and cultural barrier. “Hispanics historically don’t trust police because of the relationships they’ve had with police in the countries where they came from,” he said. Currently, there are nine homicide detectives, on the force. Hastings said none of them speak Spanish, so they have been relying on a Hispanic officer temporarily assigned to the Guardado case for translation. Departmentwide, Hastings said, there are around 10 officers who are fluent in Spanish.

Police are investigating to see if an attack on a woman at Little Rock’s Rave Motion Pictures movie theater on Nov. 20, 2011, is linked to the Guardado murder. That night — a little over a month and less than two miles from where Patricia Guardado’s car was found — a woman was leaving the theater just before 8 p.m. when two Latino men, one of whom police say was Crescencio Duran, (a.k.a. Salbador Carillo) of Little Rock, tried to stun her with an

electric stun gun and, according to the original incident report, “attempted to grab her.” After she managed to break free and crawl under a car, an accomplice — also armed with an electric stun gun — jumped out of a nearby car and also came after her, but the woman’s screams alerted passersby who came to her aid, and the two assailants sped away. Carillo, who was in the Pulaski County Jail charged with firing a gun from a car in January, was charged in February with robbery in the Rave case.

An internal police flier circulated prior to his arrest said he was “wanted for questioning in regards to the homicide of Patricia Guardado.” At this writing, Salbador Carillo is still on the Pulaski County Detention Center roster as an inmate.

For now, all Patricia Guardado’s parents, family and friends can do is wait. A parishioner at St. Edward who works with Lamar Advertising arranged for a number of large billboards about the case to be put up around Little Rock and North Little Rock, and every store in Southwest Little Rock seems to have a flier in the window seeking information. Patricia’s friends want to believe. God is big, one of Patricia’s friends told us, and there is no such thing as a perfect crime.

“We want to see the killer brought to justice,” Father Tyler said, “but we also want to see a grieving family be a little more at peace. ... We’d love for the greater Little Rock community to see Paty Guardado as one of their own, and to see that this is not just a Hispanic situation, or a Latino or Mexican thing.”

The Arkansas Times talked to Patricia Guardado’s father, Martin Guardado, at length, but he decided that he didn’t want to be quoted for the story. A bricklaying contractor who worked his way up from nothing, he and Garcia have been separated for two years and are in the process of divorce. The anger and frustration comes off him in waves at times when he talks about how other stories about the case have focused too much on the family’s personal life, particularly the reports that gave the names and ages of his surviving daughters. He said several times that he doesn’t want people to feel sorry for him. He believes Detective White will eventually find the killer, and that writing about it will make witnesses more reluctant to reveal what they know.

Garcia, on the other hand, talks to anyone who will listen. Since the murder, she said, she has never once turned down an interview request. She has stacks of fliers about the case, each offering up a $10,000 reward along with the numbers for the Little Rock Police Department and the Mexican Consulate. When she sees a flier that is ripped, she takes it down and puts up a new one.

She talks to everyone she can think of.

She will never stop, she said.

“Whoever it is, I just want them to pay,” Garcia said. “They have to pay, because what they did to her is not something you do to a human being.”

She said she doesn’t know why there haven’t been any results in the case so far, but believes in her heart that the killer will be found. “Every time I talk to [the detectives], I tell them, ‘Please don’t

forget about our case just because we’re Hispanics. Please keep remembering this case. Please don’t abandon it.’ ” The detectives tell her that one day, they’ll call and say they have her daughter’s killer. “I want to believe that,” she said.

Garcia drives Patricia’s car now, the sporty burgundy coupe that Patricia loved. She’ll never sell it, she said, because the car somehow keeps them connected. During our conversation at El Paisano, she said that she can sense her daughter’s presence every time she drives that car.

Every Wednesday morning, Garcia drives Patricia’s Scion to the lot behind the Burger King across from UALR, parks, then sits there for at least an hour in the place where her daughter disappeared. From behind the wheel, she watches the students come and go with their bags and backpacks, so full of hope and promise.

“I sit in the car and try to imagine,” she said. “I try to retrace her steps. I still ask myself: how in the hell could my daughter disappear at 8:45 in the morning and nobody saw anything? I can’t believe it. I don’t believe that’s possible.”

If you have any information regarding the kidnapping or murder of Patricia Garcia Guardado, contact the Little Rock Police Department at 501-580-8706, or the Mexican Consulate at 501-372-6933, ext. 223. All tips will remain confidential. Those wishing to contribute to the reward fund can do so at any Metropolitan Bank branch.

CARTOONIST, CONT. Grulkey has worked at several newspapers, in and out of Arkansas, as an advertising manager and staff cartoonist, but now he runs a skydiving operation in Siloam Springs. A pilot himself, he used to fly planes that people jumped out of, but he says administrative duties keep him on the ground now.

Grulkey was born in Rhode Island, has lived in Africa and New Jersey, and moved to Eureka Springs with his family in 1962. He graduated from Eureka Springs High in 1967. He settled in Arkansas after service in the Navy.

Grulkey got into editorial cartooning about 10 years ago, when an editor who knew that he could draw asked him to do a cartoon to accompany an editorial.

A confirmed liberal now, Grulkey says, “As a kid, I was for Barry Goldwater, and I voted for Nixon twice. You know, 20

APRIL 4, 2012

ARKANSAS TIMES

kittens are born with their eyes closed.”

As a legislative candidate, he says he’ll be talking about the need for infrastructure projects, particularly projects for which the work could be kept in Arkansas, if possible, and in the United States otherwise, so that the wages

Others may see his candidacy as a quixotic venture, but Grulkey says, “I think I have a chance to win. I think the Democrats statewide have a good shot at holding on to the House and Senate, and maybe picking up some seats. I hope this is one. All the Repub-

Political buffs would love to see an editorial cartoonist in the House of Representatives.

The representatives, it can be assumed, are less eager. won’t be going to Chinese steelworkers. He’d also like to see a system of veterans’ courts, something like today’s drug courts. A Vietnam-era vet himself, he said he knows people who served in Vietnam and the serious problems that some of them have.

licans are running on national issues, it seems. We’ll see how that works out.”

The state Democratic Party is helping him, he says, and his own fund-raising is “coming along.” He recently took his banjo and fiddle with him to a Washington County Democratic event, “and

I raised $245 without even asking for it.” Yes, he’s a musician too. (“Premier Renaissance Man is running for Arkansas legislature.”) “I play pretty much anything with strings on it,” he says, but he’s found the cello, which he’s just taken up, a challenge.

He’s run twice, unsuccessfully, for the Alma City Council. For a legislative seat, he must campaign over a larger territory. “I’m going to meetings all the time. I never was a big fan of pancakes or fried fish before, but I’m learning to like them.”

Political buffs would love to see an editorial cartoonist in the House of Representatives, lampooning his colleagues.

The representatives, it can be assumed, are less eager. “I’m sure there will be things in the House ripe for cartooning,” Grulkey says. There always are.

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APRIL 4, 2012

21

Arts Entertainment

CHEREE FRANCO

AND

AT DEDICATED: Jose Hernandez and a friend in front of one of Hernandez’s paintings.

DEDICATED TO INDEPENDENT ART At new multi-use space downtown.

BY CHEREE FRANCO

O

n the night of Feb. 25, 2012, the old furniture warehouse at Spring and Seventh streets was at its liveliest in decades. The line wound around Dedicated Studios, the gallery that recently moved into the warehouse, as a decadent gang in suspenders, feathers and fake mustaches waited to enter the belly of the beast — a cavernous room pulsing with music, colored lights and the shouted conversations of roughly 300 people. After the DJs and the live bands, there would be a burlesque show, because what’s Queer Prom without a little skin? “Queer prom was crazy, but it was awesome,” said Jose Hernandez, the 28-year-old artist behind Dedicated.

“That’s the kind of thing we want to do here.”

On a recent Thursday afternoon, that same huge space is nearly deserted. Graffiti and spray-painted characters decorate the column and staircase, a couple of drum sets are nestled in corners, a skater’s half-pipe rests against a wall and a handful of folding chairs dot the floor.

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APRIL 4, 2012

ARKANSAS TIMES

“This is where we have bands and workshops,” Hernandez said. Not that Dedicated has had time to host a lot of events — Hernandez and his business partner, Robert Messenger, 27, leased the space in December. It took them two months to strip, refurbish and haul out the junk left behind from its 55-year history as Balfour Printing Co. But when the venue does have bands, it’s never just about music.

Sometimes the half-pipe comes out, and those people not painting on walls grab their boards. In addition to live music, workshops (most recently, a food-carving workshop where participants learned, among other parlor tricks, how to carve cantaloupe into flowers) and random events, the room hosts slam poetry every other Wednesday.

In the gallery up front, there’s a traveling exhibit, “Puro Borde,” showcasing artists from Juarez, El Paso, and other Mexican and American border towns.

Hernandez was born in Mexico, but he moved to Jonesboro when he was 10.

He met some of the artists featured in

“Puro Borde” during an eight-year stint in Savannah, Ga., where he formed a collective with friends after dropping out of Savannah College of Art and Design.

“That school was too corporate,” Hernandez said, shaking his head. “I just wanted to do my own thing.”

Dedicated is what his “own thing” looks like — a gallery with rotating exhibits, focused on installation and urban street art; DIS, the Dedicated Independent Store, which sells artists’ crafts on consignment; the big event space (home of Queer Prom), and an upstairs that Hernandez and Messenger plan to divide into studio space for rent. There’s also a back room that Hernandez and Messenger use for commercial design projects, such as creating signs, painting logos on vehicles and airbrushing hot-rods — “whatever pays the rent on the place,” Hernandez said.

Before Dedicated, Hernandez ran Super Happy Funland (SHFL), another gallery and event space, in the Arkansas Community Arts Cooperative space on Main Street, after the co-op disbanded in July. But only four months later, the owners wanted to sell, and SHFL had to get out. “Robert and I, we were just looking for a small place to work, and we were kind of like, to hell with the events thing.

Then we saw this building and a phone number, and …,” Hernandez trailed off, shrugging. “I just want to paint. And I want to see other people paint. I want to see people do what they love, whether it’s music, art, writing, whatever … and teaching about it, so that kids can see that there’s alternative ways to getting a job, working all your life for nothing.”

That’s where the workshops and

planned after-school programs and summer camps come in. “We want to get grants and work with the school system and be really official about all that, so that kids won’t have to pay,” said Hernandez. As the oldest of three in a family for which money was tight, Hernandez wants to offer neighborhood kids the art classes he couldn’t afford growing up.

Workshops are volunteer-led and open to the public. Thus far, in addition to food carving, Dedicated has held workshops on knitting and painting.

“I also want to work with kids who’ve gotten in trouble, to have their community service hours be going around and cleaning up walls and painting community murals,” he said. “We can talk to the neighbors and the business owners, tell them what we’re doing, and ask them what they think the community is and what it needs, then brainstorm those ideas and start drawing. It gets the kids out of the house, gets them out of their shell, talking to people. What’s cool about it is, when you’re painting in a neighborhood, you get people all the time. They stop by, they talk to you.”

He’s already in discussions with parole officers to make that a reality. As a street artist, Hernandez has a well-honed relationship with law enforcement. He’s six months through a two-year parole for graffiti in Hillcrest. “If you do graffiti downtown, it’s just a fine and a misdemeanor, but if you do it in rich neighborhoods, it’s a felony,” he said. “That’s kind of why I did it, because nobody tags Hillcrest. They charged me with seven felonies, but then it got knocked down to one.” (According to city prosecutor Larry Jegley, the graffiti becomes a felony once someone tops $1,000 of damage, no matter the neighborhood.)

But as far as Dedicated goes, Hernandez considers his attempts “more social than political. It’s community-oriented work. I’m not trying to be political about it.” It certainly seems to be laid back this afternoon, with a couple of Hernandez’s friends lounging on the gallery counter, everyone half-dazed with the sunlight, streaming full-force through the front wall-of-windows. It seems to be a good kind of place to be.

Check the Dedicated Facebook page for upcoming events, which include bands, burlesque, an art bazaar and a summer art camp.

LIVE MUSIC

ROCK CANDY Check out the Times’ A&E blog

THURSDAY, APRIL 5

BJ BARHAM OF AMERICAN AQUARIUM SOLO SHOW (RALEIGH, NC)

arktimes.com

FRIDAY, APRIL 6

MANDY MCBRYDE & THE UNHOLY GHOSTS W/ THE HARDIN DRAW (MURFREESBORO, TN)

A&E NEWS

SATURDAY, APRIL 7

THE WICKED GOOD W/ IRON TONGUE & STALLIONS (NASHVILLE, TN)

TUESDAY, APRIL 10

FIRST BAPTIST CHEMICAL CHECK OUT ADDITIONAL SHOWS AT

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MASSIVELY POPULAR INDIE ACT BON IVER, last seen in Little Rock opening

for Black Mountain four years ago, is set to return. The Grammy winners will play the Riverfest Amphitheatre Sunday, June 3, according to the group’s website. That’s a week after Riverfest and the final day of the Little Rock Film Festival. Tickets aren’t yet on sale.

ARE YOU A FAN OF BEST COAST and/

or Ghostland Observatory? Do you live in Central Arkansas? Do you enjoy live concerts in a smoke- and alcoholfree environment?

Well then you just might be in luck.

Both bands are playing at Hendrix College this Friday. Normally with these upper-tier Hendrix shows — e.g., recent performances by Deerhunter, Clipse, Spoon, Girl Talk, Cool Kids, Of Montreal and so forth — you have to be a student or a friend of a student to get in. But this time, they’re making a very limited number of tickets available to outsiders.

They’re $20 each, and you’ll need to e-mail activities@hendrix.edu to see about reserving one. The concert is a fundraiser for Campus Kitty, the college’s nonprofit that raises money for a variety of local charities.

THE LOS ANGELES TIMES REPORTS

that Ben Nichols — the Little Rock native and Lucero frontman — is writing the score for his brother Jeff Nichols’ upcoming feature “Mud,” which stars Reese Witherspoon and Matthew McConaughey and wrapped up filming last fall near Dumas.

According to the Times reports, Nichols has “been working overtime at Memphis’ Ardent studios, tightening up songs for his younger brother, director and screenwriter Jeff Nichols’ next film.”

The elder Nichols also wrote the music for 2007’s “Shotgun Stories.”

Lucero’s most recent album — “Women & Work” — came out last month and the band is on a huge tour right now.

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APRIL 4, 2012

23

THE TO-DO

LIST

BY ROBERT BELL & CHEREE FRANCO

WEDNESDAY 4/4

MONICA STAGGS

7:30 p.m. Stanley Russ Hall, room 103, UCA. Free.

Monica Staggs is a real life superhero, except that sometimes her world-saving is a bit dubious (think Tarantino — she’s been cast in three of his films, both volumes of “Kill Bill” and “Death Proof”), and sometimes she flings herself from moving 18-wheelers and ends up with four skull fractures (“Joyride”). But usually she flies through the air (“Bewitched”), falls down stairs (“Crash”) and jumps rooftop to rooftop (“Four Dogs Playing Poker”), as breezy as can be. This North Little Rock girl turned Hollywood crash dummy (a.k.a. stuntwoman) has doubled for everyone from Nicole Kidman to Uma Thurman, and she’s in town to tell all — what’s been fun, what’s been dumb, why she’ll fight in lingerie but never go topless on camera, her unabashed fear of heights and how her whole career goes back to her middle school dance classes. (Did we mention that she’s brash, fast-talking and hilarious?) Check out her creds at MonicaStaggs.com, check out her stories at UCA on Wednesday night. CF

‘DEATHPROOF’ DAME: Hollywood actor, stuntwoman and North Little Rock native Monica Staggs comes to UCA Wednesday night to discuss her career.

THURSDAY 4/5

ROBERT EARL KEEN

9 p.m. Revolution. $25.

MEDIA VETERAN: Author, public speaker and TV and radio host Tavis Smiley wraps up this season’s Bless the Mic series at Philander Smith College Thursday.

THURSDAY 4/5

I’ve never seen Robert Earl Keen play a concert, but I saw him at a live taping of NPR’s “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me” a few years back and he was the epitome of the laid-back, irreverent entertainer, a perfect counterpoint to host Peter Sagal’s adenoidal yuppie smugness.That is to say, it was an odd pairing, but worked out surprisingly well. Keen was quick-witted and hilarious and didn’t give Sagal an inch. After introducing Keen as “the singer/songwriter all the other singer/songwriters want to be,” Sagal said that “Rolling Stone once called you The Grateful Dead for frat guys. I’m not quite sure

THURSDAY 4/5

ARKANSAS TRAVELERS OPENING GAME

BLESS THE MIC: TAVIS SMILEY

7:10 p.m. Dickey-Stephens Park. $6-$12.

Tavis Smiley’s career as a radio and TV host spans more than two decades now. After starting out in Los Angeles doing local radio spots, Smiley became a regular contributor to the “Tom Joyner Morning Show,” discussing issues of race and discrimination against minorities. Some of his past jobs include hosting “BET Tonight” and “The Tavis Smiley Show” on NPR. Today, you can hear him on PRI and watch him on PBS on his self-titled shows with guests who run the gamut of politics, academia, sports and entertainment. Alongside Terry Gross and Charlie Rose, Smiley is one of the most successful and widely known interviewers in public media. This will be the final installment of Philander Smith’s Bless the Mic series under President Walter Kimbrough’s tenure. RB

Man, can you believe it’s already baseball season again? It seems like only a few days ago that I was watching the Cardinals win the World Series. Maybe it’s the fact that we didn’t have a winter this year. Or perhaps it’s simply that as the cosmos continues its incomprehensibly massive expansion further and further into the realm of the unknowable void, time itself is speeding up, imperceptibly at first, but increasing exponentially. Either way, time flies, huh? Anyways, the Arkansas Travelers make their return to Dickey-Stephens Park this week for a threegame series against the RockHounds of Midland, Texas. In a couple of weeks, the promotional

7 p.m. Philander Smith College. Free.

24

APRIL 4, 2012

ARKANSAS TIMES

what that means, but I like it. I guess it’s songs you can sing along to especially when you’re drunk.” “Right,” Keen said, “if you run out of mushrooms you can drink Keystone.” That’s true, though woe to the unlucky soul who has to hang out with frat guys whose bellies are full of cheap suds and psychedelics. Even the literate, easygoing country anthems of Keen probably couldn’t keep that situation from turning tragic. So will this show be full of frat bros tripping their flip-flops off? Maaaaaaybe. A far more likely scenario on a Thursday night in Little Rock: A roomful of Keen diehards, gripping Bud Light longnecks and singing along to every song. The show is 18-and-older. RB

giveaways get rolling, starting with Mike Trout Pinstripe Jersey Replica Shirt Night on April 21.

Mike Trout Bobblehead Doll Night is May 19.

You can get a planter kit on Go Green Sunday, April 22, or Travs Tube Socks on July 14. Probably the biggest giveaway — Clunker Car Night — is Aug. 17, followed by pre-game Midget Wrestling on Aug. 18. This year’s concerts include Band of Heathens on June 15, Honeytribe on July 21 and Walter “Wolfman” Washington on Aug. 4. But even without any promotions or concerts or giveaways or doo-dads you can always count on the cheap fun that is minor league baseball.

Affordable admission? Reasonably priced beer and snacks? An uncomplicated, almost guaranteed good time? Sign me up. RB

IN BRIEF

THURSDAY 4/5

FRIDAY 4/6

‘BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE RED OCTOPUS’

8 p.m. The Public Theatre. $8-$10.

Looks like the good folks behind Red Octopus Theater have been feasting on trash lately — specifically, lowbrow auteur Russ Meyer’s 1970 film “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” (co-written by

Roger Ebert). This time around, they’re paying their respects to the kitschy, the campy, the trashy, the cheesy and the cornball. Sample skit titles: “All My Children Went to Amsterdam, and All I Got Was This Crappy T Shirt,” “Is Jesus a Rabbit?” and “LSD? You’re Soaking in It!” As usual, this show is for grownups with fully developed senses of humor,

and not for kids, prudes, squares, scolds, prigs or no-fun-damentalists. The cast for this show includes Sandy Baskin, Brian Chambers, Alli Clark, Josh Doering, Drew Ellis, Michael Goodbar, Grant Morris, Jason Willey, and Ramthor, a.k.a. Luke Rowlan. The show runs this weekend and returns April 12-14. RB

FRIDAY 4/6

FRIDAY 4/6

‘NEXT FALL’

7:30 p.m. The Weekend Theater. $12-$16.

Geoffrey Naufft’s “Next Fall” concerns a couple — Adam and Luke — who don’t see eye-to-eye on matters of spirituality. Luke is a dyed-in-thewool fire-and-brimstone Christian and Adam is an atheist. Luke is worried his significant other will spend an eternity

in the lake of fire, while Adam can’t brook such superstition. An accident forces uncomfortable confrontations amongst their friends and families.

When the play opened in June 2009, the New York Times’ Ben Brantley called it “an intellectual stealth bomb,” and “the kind of gently incisive, naturalistic play that rarely materializes anymore.” The play’s off-Broadway run

was extended for several weeks, and opened the next spring on Broadway with the same cast and director. Weekend Theater director Ralph Hyman saw the play on Broadway and loved it.

This production stars Jackson Stewart, Harold Dean, Ryan Whitfield, Hannah Blackburn-Parish, Allison Pace and Byron Taylor. It runs through April 21. RB

SATURDAY 4/7

DESIGNERS CHOICE FASHION PREVIEW

6 p.m. Metroplex Event Center. $35-50.

Soaring temps warrant bare skin, and bare skin warrants catwalks.

Lucky for Little Rock, this Saturday marks the fifth annual Designers Choice Fashion Preview. It’s the largest fashion event in the state, attracting hundreds of Arkansas fashion devotees to check out the merch (clothing and jewelry), the flesh (hot local models) and the talent (do the names Korto Momolu and Jerell Scott jolt your brain?

Hello, “Project Runway?”). It’s for a good cause — yeah, a good cause other than ensuring your summer wardrobe is up to par. Proceeds benefit the Timmons Arts Foundation, which focuses on restoring art and music programs in public schools.

In addition to the show, there’s a beauty product expo and if you spring for the pricier tickets, a V.I.P. greet-and-munch fest (rub shoulders with models much?). Tickets are available at www.designerschoicefashion.com, Jeante, Vogue Visage, Box Turtle, 4th Dimension Salon and Uncle T’s. CF

Can’t get enough “Celtic Woman” during AETN’s pledge drives?

You’re in luck. The singing, dancing, fiddling extravaganza comes to Robinson Center Music Hall, 7:30 p.m., $45-$150. ABC News anchor, reporter, author, media mogul, web guru – Dan Abrams is all of these things and probably a few more. Abrams comes to UCA’s Reynolds Performance Hall as part of the college’s Distinguished Lecturer Series, 7:30 p.m., $10. For a night of blues, check out Bluesboy Jag and Jawbone Kenyon at The Afterthought, 8 p.m., free. B.J. Barham, of American Aquarium renown, plays a solo show at White Water Tavern, 9 p.m., $5.

Damn Arkansan plays an EP release show with Holly Cole & The Memphis Drawls, Maxine’s, 8 p.m., $5 adv., $7 door. Fayettevillebased rapper T. Jay brings some boom bap to Vino’s, with Reverse Thought and Pluto, 9 p.m., $7. If your Friday night demands some deeply tripped-out jamtronica, you won’t do better than Nadis Warriors, Stickyz, 9:30 p.m., $10, 18-and-older. For some full-band hip-hop, check out Flint Eastwood, playing at Juanita’s with the Weekend Warriors crew and Jon Bryant, 9 p.m., $8 adv., $10 d.o.s. Jason Greenlaw and The Groove rock the house over at Fox And Hound, 10 p.m., $5. Brown Soul Shoes headlines at Cajun’s Wharf, with Richie Johnson playing happy hour, 5 p.m., $5 after 8:30 p.m. Fans of Ivy League a capella groups will surely be delighted by The Whiffenpoofs of Yale, who’ll perform at the Arend Arts Center in Bentonville, 8 p.m., $10.

SATURDAY 4/7

SUBURBAN SOUND: Jersey jangle-pop practitioners Real Estate return to Little Rock for a show at Revolution Monday night.

MONDAY 4/9

REAL ESTATE

8 p.m. Revolution. $12.

The name Real Estate might have an appealing, Pavement-like plainness to it, but where Pavement’s name belied its sprawling, omnivorous guitar rock, Real Estate’s sound is mostly neat-ashedgerows jangle pop that never raises too much of a ruckus. The Jersey band was last in town in 2009, supporting its self-titled debut. That album was an odds-’n’-sods collection of singles that felt remarkably cohesive, sorta like The

Clientele’s “Suburban Light,” which had a similar reverb-soaked sound.

Their latest, last year’s “Days” sounded like a natural progression, with more of the clean-sounding guitars and lilting melodies and faintly melancholic vibe.

If you’ve been digging on the similarly forlorn pop of Girls or Smith Westerns and somehow haven’t checked out Real Estate, here you go. Opening the show are the Flying Nun adherents The Twerps, all the way from Melbourne, VIC. RB

Wildwood Park for the Performing Arts hosts the Champagne Azalea Walk, which includes champagne, live music and a garden luncheon.

How delightful does that sound?

It starts at 1 p.m. and is $30-$60, depending on whether you want lunch. Philly pop-punkers The Wonder Years come to Downtown Music Hall for a big-ass show with Polar Bear Club, Transit, A Loss For Words and The Story So Far, 7 p.m., $15. Earplugs will be needed if you’re heading to White Water Tavern for the full-volume rockings of The Wicked Good, Iron Tongue and Stallions, 9:30 p.m. Meanwhile, down in Spa City, Telegraph Canyon brings some expansive, rollicking Americana to Maxine’s, with opening acts Ben Franks & The Bible Belt Boys and Brenna Manzare, 8 p.m., $8 adv., $10 door. For some contemplative singer/songwriter tunes, go see Treva Blomquist and Adam Hambrick at The Afterthought, 9 p.m., $7.

www.arktimes.com

APRIL 4, 2012

25

AFTER DARK THURSDAY, APRIL 5

All events are in the Greater Little Rock area unless otherwise noted. To place an event in the Arkansas Times calendar, please e-mail the listing and all pertinent information, including date, time, location, price and contact information, to calendar@arktimes.com.

MUSIC

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 4

MUSIC

Acoustic Open Mic. The Afterthought, 8 p.m., free. 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-663-1196. www. afterthoughtbar.com.

Alternative Wednesdays. Features alternative bands from Central Arkansas and the surrounding areas. Mediums Art Lounge, 6:30 p.m., $5.

521 Center St. 501-374-4495.

Bolly Open Mic Hype Night with Osyrus Bolly and DJ Messiah. All American Wings, 9 p.m.

215 W. Capitol Ave. 501-376-4000. allamericanwings.com.

Brian & Nick. Cajun’s Wharf, 5 and 9 p.m., $5 after 8:30 p.m. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-3755351. www.cajunswharf.com.

East of the Wall. Downtown Music Hall, 8 p.m., $5. 211 W. Capitol. 501-376-1819. downtownmusichall.com.

Gil Franklin & Friends. Holiday Inn, North Little Rock, first Tuesday, Wednesday of every month.

120 W. Pershing Blvd., NLR. Grim Muzik presents Way Back Wednesdays.

Cornerstone Pub & Grill, 8:30 p.m. 314 Main St., NLR. 501-374-1782. cstonepub.com.

Jim Dickerson. Sonny Williams’ Steak Room, 7 p.m. 500 President Clinton Ave. 501-324-2999. www.sonnywilliamssteakroom.com.

Karaoke at Khalil’s. Khalil’s Pub, 7 p.m. 110 S. Shackleford Road. 501-224-0224. www.khalilspub.com.

Karaoke. Maxine’s, 8 p.m., free. 700 Central Ave., Hot Springs. maxinespub.com.

Karaoke with Big John Miller. Denton’s Trotline, 8 p.m. 2150 Congo Road, Benton. 501-3151717.

Ricky David Tripp. Ferneau, 5:30 p.m. 2601 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-603-9208. www.ferneaurestaurant.com.

RockUsaurus. Senor Tequila, 6 p.m. 9847 Maumelle Blvd., NLR. 501-758-4432.

Ted Ludwig Trio. Capital Bar and Grill, 5 p.m., free. 111 Markham St. 501-374-7474. www.capitalhotel.com/CBG. The Yellow Hope Project, Greg Spradlin, Isaac Alexander. White Water Tavern, 9 p.m., $5.

2500 W. 7th. 501-375-8400. www.whitewatertavern.com.

COMEDY

Jason Russell, Ryan Wingfield. The Loony Bin, 8 p.m.; April 6, 10:30 p.m.; April 7, 7, 9 and 11 p.m., $7-$10. 10301 N. Rodney Parham Road.

501-228-5555. www.loonybincomedy.com.

EVENTS

“No War With Iran” rally. Rally will be at the corner of Broadway and Capitol avenues downtown. Downtown Little Rock, 11:30 a.m.

Downtown.

Pulaski Technical College job fair. Pulaski Technical College, 9 a.m. p.m. 3000 W. Scenic Drive, NLR. 501-812-2284.

Re-enactment of Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller’s tribute to Martin Luther King. The Arkansas MLK Commission, Gov. Mike Beebe, other living governors and many people who were at

26

APRIL 4, 2012

ARKANSAS TIMES

LITE ORDNANCE: Fort Worth-based Green River Ordinance brings some overwhelmingly nonthreatening, Maroon 5-ish modern pop-rock to Revolution Saturday night for an all-ages show. Oklahoma native Graham Colton — of “Best Days” renown — opens the show, 9 p.m., $12 adv., $14 d.o.s. the 1968 observance will gather on the Capitol steps to recreate the Rockefeller’s April 7 public memorial for Martin Luther King Jr., the only such memorial held in the South. You can hear Rockefeller’s speech at historypin.com. State Capitol, 10:30 a.m. 425 W. Capitol Ave. 501324-8900. arkleg.state.ar.us.

FILM

The Art of Poetry: “Poetry.” South Korean film, which won Best Screenplay at Cannes Film Festival in 2010, portrays Mija, a beautiful older woman who tries to express her difficult life in poetry but is plagued by the onset of Alzheimer’s disease and the discovery of a horrific crime. Arkansas Arts Center, 6:30 p.m.

501 E. 9th St. 501-372-4000. www.arkarts.com.

“Waging a Living.” Includes screening of the film followed by Q&A about conditions of the working poor. Philander Smith College, 6 p.m., free. 900 W. Daisy L. Gatson Bates Drive.

LECTURES

Monica Staggs. Presentation from the Hollywood stuntwoman who has appeared in

many films, including “The Italian Job,” “Kill Bill” and more. University of Central Arkansas, 7:30 p.m., free. 201 Donaghey Ave., Conway.

501-450-3419. www.uca.edu.

SPORTS

Horse racing. Saturday post time is 1 p.m. except for April 14, which is noon. Oaklawn, through April 13: 1:30 p.m. 2705 Central Ave., Hot Springs. 501-623-4411. www.oaklawn.com.

BENEFITS

Bids by the Bridge: A Silent Auction for Social Action. Bid on a variety of items at this benefit for organizations that have partnered with Clinton School students this year. Call to RSVP. Clinton School of Public Service, 5:30 p.m. 1200 President Clinton Ave. 501-683-5239. www.clintonschool.uasys.edu.

Bone Marrow Drive. Bone marrow drive for former Bryant High student Leslie Harris, who was diagnosed last year with acute leukemia.

Bryant High School, 9 a.m. p.m. 200 NW. 4th St., Bryant. 501-773-­4580. bhs.bryantschools.org.

Alize (headliner), Josh Green (happy hour).

Cajun’s Wharf, 5 and 9 p.m., $5 after 8:30 p.m.

2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. www.cajunswharf.com.

BJ Barham (solo). White Water Tavern, 9 p.m., $5. 2500 W. 7th. 501-375-8400. www.whitewatertavern.com.

Bluesboy Jag and Jawbone Kenyon. The Afterthought, 8 p.m., free. 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-663-1196. www.afterthoughtbar.com.

Celtic Woman. Robinson Center Music Hall, 7:30 p.m., $45-$150. Markham and Broadway.

800-662-2386. www.littlerockmeetings.com/ conv-centers/robinson.

Dogtown Open Mic Nite with Matty Joyce.

Cornerstone Pub & Grill, through April 19: first Thursday of every month, 8:30 p.m. 314 Main St., NLR. 501-374-1782. cstonepub.com.

“Inferno.” DJs play pop, electro, house and more, plus drink specials and $1 cover before 11 p.m. Sway, 9 p.m. 412 Louisiana. 501-907-2582.

Jim Dickerson. Sonny Williams’ Steak Room, 7 p.m. 500 President Clinton Ave. 501-324-2999. www.sonnywilliamssteakroom.com.

Karaoke. Zack’s Place, 8 p.m. 1400 S. University Ave. 501-664-6444. www.zacks-place.com.

Port Arthur Band. Parrot Beach Cafe, 9 p.m.

9611 MacArthur Drive, NLR. 771-2994.

Robert Earl Keen. 18-and-older show.

Revolution, 9 p.m., $25. 300 President Clinton Ave. 501-823-0090. revroom.com.

RockUsaurus. Senor Tequila, 7 p.m. 10300 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-224-5505.

Ted Ludwig Trio. Capital Bar and Grill, 5 p.m., free. 111 Markham St. 501-374-7474. www.capitalhotel.com/CBG. Tragikly White. West End Smokehouse and Tavern, 10 p.m., $5. 215 N. Shackleford. 501-2247665. www.westendsmokehouse.net.

COMEDY

Jason Russell, Ryan Wingfield. The Loony Bin, through April 6, 8 p.m.; April 6, 10:30 p.m.; April 7, 7, 9 and 11 p.m., $7-$10. 10301 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-228-5555. www.loonybincomedy.com.

EVENTS

Hillcrest Shop & Sip. Shops and restaurants offer discounts, later hours, and live music.

Hillcrest, first Thursday of every month, 5-10 p.m. P.O.Box 251522. 501-666-3600. www.hillcrestmerchants.com.

LECTURES

Alon Shaya. The executive chef of the New Orleans restaurant Dominica presents “Rebuilding New Orleans: One Plate at a Time.” Clinton School of Public Service, 6 p.m., free. 1200 President Clinton Ave. 501-683-5239. www.clintonschool.uasys.edu.

Bless the Mic: Tavis Smiley. The journalist and author will discuss his work. Philander Smith College, 7 p.m., free. 900 W. Daisy L. Gatson Bates Drive.

Dan Abrams. Reynolds Performance Hall, UCA, 7:30 p.m., $5-$10. 350 S. Donaghey, Conway.

501-450-3265.

“Exploring Our World.” First in the series is “Conway’s Creative Approach to Battling Obesity Through Active Infrastructure Projects and Programs.” University of Central Arkansas, 6 p.m., free. 201 Donaghey Ave., Conway. 501-

450-5261. www.uca.edu.

SPORTS

Arkansas Travelers vs. Midland Rockhounds.

Dickey-Stephens Park, April 5, 7:10 p.m.; April 6, 7:10 p.m.; April 7, 6 p.m., $6-$12. 400 W. Broadway St., NLR. 501-664-1555. www.travs. com.

Horse racing. See April 4.

BENEFITS

Empty Bowls Charity Dinner. Fundraiser for Arkansas Foodbank includes dinner from several area restaurants and a silent auction.

Arkansas Foodbank, 6 p.m., $65. 4301 W. 65th St. 501-569-4317. www.arkansasfoodbank.org.

The Fashion Event. Chenal Country Club, $50.

10 Chenal Club Blvd. 501-227-3711.

FRIDAY, APRIL 6

MUSIC

Artistik Approach. sUgAr Gallery, 8 p.m., free.

114 Central Ave., Bentonville.

Bluesboy Jag and His Cigar Box Guitars.

Dogtown Coffee and Cookery, 6 p.m., free.

6725 John F. Kennedy Blvd., NLR. 501-833-3850. www.facebook.com/pages/Dogtown-Coffeeand-Cookery/221280641229600.

Brown Soul Shoes (headliner), Richie Johnson (happy hour). Cajun’s Wharf, 5 and 9 p.m., $5 after 8:30 p.m. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-3755351. www.cajunswharf.com.

Chris B, Therea Baker, Rodney Block B-Day Bash. Featuring Rodney Block & The Real Music Lovers, Tawanna Campbell, Dee Dee Jones, Jeron. Revolution, 10 p.m. 300 President Clinton Ave. 501-823-0090. revroom.com.

Chris Henry. Flying Saucer, 9 p.m., $3. 323 President Clinton Ave. 501-372-7468. www. beerknurd.com/stores/littlerock.

D-Mite and Tho-d Studios Showcase.

Cornerstone Pub & Grill, 8:30 p.m. 314 Main St., NLR. 501-374-1782. cstonepub.com.

Damn Arkansan, Holly Cole & The Memphis Drawls. Maxine’s, 8 p.m., $5 adv., $7 door. 700 Central Ave., Hot Springs. maxinespub.com.

DJ Silky Slim. Top 40 and dance music. Sway, 9 p.m., $5. 412 Louisiana. 501-907-2582.

Flint Eastwood, Weekend Warriors, Jon Bryant. Juanita’s, 9 p.m., $8 adv., $10 d.o.s.

614 President Clinton Ave. 501-372-1228. www. juanitas.com.

“The Flow Fridays.” Twelve Modern Lounge, 8 p.m. 1900 W. Third St. Goldy Locks. West End Smokehouse and Tavern, April 6-7, 10 p.m., $5. 215 N. Shackleford. 501224-7665. www.westendsmokehouse.net.

Jason Greenlaw and The Groove. Fox And Hound, 10 p.m., $5. 2800 Lakewood Village, NLR. 501-753-8300. www.foxandhound.com/ locations/north-little-rock.aspx.

Mandy McBryde & The Unholy Ghost, The Hardin Drew. White Water Tavern, 9:30 p.m., $5. 2500 W. 7th. 501-375-8400. www.whitewatertavern.com.

Matt Stell & Deep Roots. The Afterthought, 9 p.m., $10. 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-663-1196. www.afterthoughtbar.com.

Nadis Warriors. 18-and-older show. Stickyz Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicken Shack, 9:30 p.m., $10.

107 Commerce St. 501-372-7707. www.stickyfingerz.com.

OTR. Denton’s Trotline, 9 p.m. 2150 Congo Road, Benton. 501-315-1717.

T. Jay, Reverse Thought, Pluto. Vino’s, 9 p.m.,

$7. 923 W. 7th St. 501-375-8466. www.vinosbrewpub.com.

Ted Ludwig Trio. Capital Bar and Grill, 9 p.m., free. 111 Markham St. 501-374-7474. www.capitalhotel.com/CBG. Thomas East. Sonny Williams’ Steak Room, April 6-7, 7 p.m.; April 20-21, 7 p.m. 500 President Clinton Ave. 501-324-2999. www.sonnywilliamssteakroom.com.

The Whiffenpoofs of Yale. Includes pre-show conversation at 7 p.m. Arend Arts Center, 8 p.m., $10. 1901 S.E. J St., Bentonville.

COMEDY

Jason Russell, Ryan Wingfield. The Loony Bin, through April 6, 8 p.m.; April 6, 10:30 p.m.; April 7, 7, 9 and 11 p.m., $7-$10. 10301 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-228-5555. www.loonybincomedy.com.

EVENTS

Herbal Field Trip & Medicinal Herb Workshop.

Ozark Folk Center State Park, April 6-7, 9 a.m., $30-$95. 1032 Park Ave., Mountain View.

LGBTQ/SGL Youth and Young Adult Group.

Diverse Youth for Social Change is a group for LGBTQ/SGL and straight ally youth and young adults age 14 to 23. For more information, call 244-9690 or search “DYSC” on Facebook. 800 Scott St., 6:30 p.m. 800 Scott St. Sandwiching in History: Mosely W. Hardy House. Mosely W. Hardy House, 12 p.m. 2400 S. Broadway.

LECTURES

“Closing the Addiction Treatment Gap.” Panel discussion on substance abuse treatment in Arkansas. Clinton School of Public Service, 12 p.m., free. 1200 President Clinton Ave. 501-6835239. www.clintonschool.uasys.edu.

SPORTS

Arkansas Travelers vs. Midland Rockhounds.

Dickey-Stephens Park, April 6, 7:10 p.m.; April 7, 6 p.m., $6-$12. 400 W. Broadway St., NLR. 501-664-1555. www.travs.com.

Horse racing. See April 4.

BENEFITS

D.R.E.A.M. Scholarship Gala. Includes food, silent auction and music from Shining Rae. Metroplex Event Center, 8 p.m., $20 adv., $30 door. 2305 S. 8th St., Rogers. 479-636-5333. www.metroplexeventcenter.com.

SATURDAY, APRIL 7

MUSIC

The A State Heavyweight Edition of A Night with North Rock. Cornerstone Pub & Grill, 8:30 p.m. 314 Main St., NLR. 501-374-1782. cstonepub.com.

After Eden (headliner), Some Guy Named Robb (happy hour). Cajun’s Wharf, 5 and 9 p.m., $5 after 8:30 p.m. 2400 Cantrell Road.

501-375-5351. www.cajunswharf.com.

Brian Nahlen. Flying Saucer, 9 p.m., $3. 323 President Clinton Ave. 501-372-7468. www. beerknurd.com/stores/littlerock.

Dry County with Trey Hawkins. Denton’s Trotline, 9 p.m. 2150 Congo Road, Benton.

501-315-1717.

Every Knee Shall Bow, Ballet. Vino’s, 9 p.m.

923 W. 7th St. 501-375-8466. www.vinosbrewpub.com.

Goldy Locks. West End Smokehouse and Tavern,

10 p.m., $5. 215 N. Shackleford. 501-224-7665. www.westendsmokehouse.net.

Green River Ordinance, Graham Colton. Allages show. Revolution, 9 p.m., $12 adv., $14 d.o.s. 300 President Clinton Ave. 501-823-0090. revroom.com.

Hillbilly Chaos. The Drop Zone, 7:30 p.m., $8 adv., $10 d.o.s. 221 Oak St., Leslie.

Karaoke at Khalil’s. Khalil’s Pub, 7 p.m. 110 S. Shackleford Road. 501-224-0224. www.khalilspub.com.

“KISS Saturdays” with DJs Deja Blu, Greyhound and Silky Slim. Sway, 10 p.m. 412 Louisiana. 501-907-2582.

Little Phoebe. Juanita’s, 9 p.m., $8 adv., $10 d.o.s. 614 President Clinton Ave. 501-372-1228. www.juanitas.com.

Ted Ludwig Trio. Capital Bar and Grill, 9 p.m., free. 111 Markham St. 501-374-7474. www.capitalhotel.com/CBG. Telegraph Canyon, Ben Franks & The Bible Belt Boys, Brenna Manzare. Maxine’s, 8 p.m., $8 adv., $10 door. 700 Central Ave., Hot Springs. maxinespub.com.

Thomas East. Sonny Williams’ Steak Room, through April 7, 7 p.m.; through April 21, 7 p.m.

500 President Clinton Ave. 501-324-2999. www. sonnywilliamssteakroom.com.

Treva Blomquist and Adam Hambrick. The Afterthought, 9 p.m., $7. 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd.

501-663-1196. www.afterthoughtbar.com.

Vegas Stars. Shooter’s Sports Bar & Grill, 9 p.m., $7. 9500 I-30. 501-565-4003. www.shooterslittlerock.com.

The Wicked Good, Iron Tongue, Stallions.

White Water Tavern, 9:30 p.m. 2500 W. 7th.

501-375-8400. www.whitewatertavern.com.

The Wonder Years, Polar Bear Club, Transit, A Loss for Words, The Story So Far. Downtown Music Hall, 6 p.m., $15. 211 W. Capitol. 501-3761819. downtownmusichall.com.

COMEDY

Jason Russell, Ryan Wingfield. The Loony Bin, 7, 9 and 11 p.m., $7-$10. 10301 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-228-5555. www.loonybincomedy.com.

EVENTS

Champagne Azalea Walk. Includes champagne, live music and garden luncheon ($60).

Wildwood Park for the Performing Arts, 1 p.m., $30-$60. 20919 Denny Road.

Falun Gong meditation. Allsopp Park, 9 a.m., free. Cantrell & Cedar Hill Roads.

Fifth Annual Designers Choice Fashion Preview. Showcases local fashion designers, including celebrity designers Korto Momolu and Jerell Scott, Erica Warren, Kata Marie, Brandi Tate Phalon Montgomery Snee Dismang, Krista Smith, Nicole Mcgehee, Leslie Pennel, Candace Locke and Ocie Collins. Clear Channel Metroplex, 6 p.m., $35-$50. 10800 Col. Glenn Road. 501-217-5113. www.designerschoicefashion.com.

Herbal Field Trip & Medicinal Herb Workshop.

Ozark Folk Center State Park, 9 a.m., $30-$95.

1032 Park Ave., Mountain View.

Hop On In! Includes breakfast or lunch at the Zoo, photo with the Easter Bunny and more.

Little Rock Zoo, 9:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m., $10$19. 1 Jonesboro Dr. 501-666-2406. www.littlerockzoo.com.

Martin Cooper Day – Engineer Extraordinaire.

Cooper was the lead engineer for the invention CONTINUED ON PAGE 29

www.arktimes.com

APRIL 4, 2012

27

Books from tHE ArkAnsAs timEs

tHE UniQUE nEiGHBorHooDs of cEntrAl ArkAnsAs Full of interesting voices and colorful portraits of 17 Little Rock and North Little Rock neighborhoods, this book gives an intimate, block-by-block, native’s view of the place more than 250,000 Arkansans call home.

Created from interviews with residents and largely written by writers who actually live in the neighborhoods they’re writing about, the book features over 90 full color photos by Little Rock photographer Brian Chilson.

A History of ArkAnsAs A compilation of stories published in the Arkansas Times during our first twenty years. Each story examines a fragment of Arkansas’s unique history – giving a fresh insight into what makes us Arkansans.

Well written and illustrated. This book will entertain and enlighten time and time again.

AlmAnAc of ArkAnsAs History This unique book offers an offbeat view of the Natural State’s history that you haven’t seen before – with hundreds of colorful characters, pretty places, and distinctive novelties unique to Arkansas. Be informed, be entertained, amaze your friends with your new store of knowledge about the 25th state, the Wonder State, the Bear State, the Land of Opportunity.

Payment: check or credit card Order by Mail: arkansas times Books P.o. Box 34010, LittLe rock, ar 72203 Phone: 501-375-2985 Fax: 501-375-3623 Email: anitra@arktimes.com Send _____ book(s) of The Unique Neighborhoods of Central Arkansas @ $19.95 Send _____ book(s) of A History Of Arkansas @ $10.95 Send _____ book(s) of Almanac Of Arkansas History @ $18.95 Shipping and handling $3 per book Name _________________________________________________ Address _______________________________________________ City, State, Zip ___________________________________________ Phone ________________________________________________ Visa, MC, AMEX, Disc # ________________________ Exp. Date _______ APRIL 4, 2012

ARKANSAS TIMES

Dan Savage sinks the Titanic

BY DAVID KOON

SAVAGE U

Tuesdays at 10 p.m.

MTV

Also Available:

28

THE TELEVISIONIST

If you’re not reading sex advice disher Dan Savage’s “Savage Love” column every week, stop what you’re doing right now, go to the blog of the Seattle’s The Stranger and start reading. Unless you’re a potential Santorum voter (it was Savage, by the way, who instituted Santorum’s muchdiscussed “Google Problem” by holding a contest in which readers suggested the most disgusting imaginable definition to link to the legendarily homophobic Republican’s last name), there’s a good chance you’ll become an addict like me, feasting every Wednesday on the smorgasbord of sex troubles, weird hangups, interests and fetishes that plague and delight humankind. Savage — by turns

you something about Savage that he’s devoting his energies to trying to educate and inform the young folks, before they spend a lifetime confused, frustrated or hating themselves over a sexual issue.

Good on him.

TITANIC: THE FINAL WORD WITH JAMES CAMERON 8 p.m. Sunday, April 8 National Geographic Channel

While we know that it’s hard for some folks who saw “Titanic” to understand that the voyage and sinking of the real-life Titanic wasn’t just a big scronch-a-thon for snooty society chicks gone slumming and all those dewy-faced Leonardo DiCaprio types with perfect teeth down in steerage, the truth of the matter is it was a tragedy of epic proportions, even for a time when having your 8-year-old get his arm ripped off at work by a sock-making loom was considered “a typical Tuesday morning.”

While I have issues ‘SAVAGE U’: Sex advice columnist Dan Savage sets out to educate the youth. with the vast, striding wang that is James hilarious, gasp-inducingly vulgar, scolding Cameron and the movie he made about and downright fatherly in his advice — the sinking (suggested subtitle: “Give leaves nothing in the closet, and no subject That Oscar For Best Picture Back Right is taboo. That’s what makes it all so much Now, Because Other Than the Spectacle, fun to read. He truly seems to give a damn It Kinda Sucked”) the one thing you’ve about people, and is one of the few folks got to say for the guy and his film is that out there who seems to understand how he singlehandedly put Titanic back into much a person’s happiness can depend the public eye and cultural imagination. on sexual fulfillment. Savage moved into There are, we’re sure, people working the electronic realm a few years back with on their PhD in engineering right now his well-received Savage Love Podcasts who — though they probably wouldn’t (which are also archived on The Stranger’s admit it — are there because of Cameron’s website), and now he’s bringing his face “Titanic.” Drown 1,517 people in a stunning to television with this new weekly series display of arrogance, bravado, engineering from MTV called “Savage U.” Every failure and personal sacrifice, and The week, Savage and his producer/sidekick Future is all, “Meh, that’s kinda interesting, Lauren Hutchinson travel to a different I guess.” Dunk one slightly chunky redhead college campus and talk to people about in the water and kill off her 14-year-old sex. From the trailers we’ve seen so boyfriend, and suddenly you’ve got a whole far, it looks like the show will alternate generation of folks stoked about history, between auditorium Q&As and sit-downs genealogy and metallurgy. That’s worth where Savage discusses the ins and outs any amount of listening to Celine Dion (OK of the ol’ in-and-out with individuals ... a REASONABLE amount of listening to and couples who have a problem. While Celine Dion). Speaking of history: Here, something tells me the buckle-hats at the in this two-hour special, James Cameron Parents Television Council will be hot talks to engineers, historians, ship builders after MTV to pull this one off the air for and others about why the Titanic sank 100 the Good of the Children!, it should tell years ago this month.

BOOK NOTES

Hankins’ debut novel

BY ROBERT BELL YOU MIGHT BE FAMILIAR WITH the paint-

ings and sculptures of Little Rock artist Jane Hankins, but next month she’ll add “author” to her resume, with the publication of “Madge’s Mobile Home Park” on May 1. “These characters came to me while traveling form Little Rock to New Orleans and seeing roadside signs like ‘AKC Toy Poodles and Dog Outfits’ or ‘Curl Up and Dye Salon,’ ” Hankins said in a press release.

The story is set in the fictional town of Peavine, Ark. — “The Little Town that Grows on You” — and is billed as the first of the Peavine Chronicles Series. The jacket includes glowing blurbs from such Arkansas notables as First Lady Ginger Beebe, The Rep’s Artistic Director Bob Hupp, and Hankins’ husband, TV news

anchor Craig O’Neill.

IF YOU’VE ALWAYS WANTED TO OWN

one of Nate Powell’s works of art, you will soon get your chance. The Historic Arkansas Museum will open “Cross Sections,” an exhibit of works from the Dogtown boy made good. The show will focus primarily on work from Powell’s graphic novels from the last five years, including the Eisner- and Ignatz awardwinning “Swallow Me Whole” and the Booklist fave “Any Empire.”

The reception is Friday, April 13, at 5 p.m. and the exhibit runs through June 1. There will be music from Isaac Alexander and a soup tasting from Sharea Soup. Powell’s graphic novels will be for sale as well.

Books calendar APRIL 4 Johnny Payne (“Second Chance,” “The Silver Dagger”), 4 p.m., WW. 12-15 Arkansas Literary Festival various venues.

12 Avi Steinberg (“Running the Books”) Hendrix College, 7:30 p.m.

12 Big Rock Reading Series (John Bensko, Hope Coulter, Tyrone Jaeger and Stephanie Vanderslice) Pulaski Technical College, 11 a.m.

13 Ann B. Ross (“Miss Julia” series), 6 p.m. TBIB. 13 “Author! Author!” Cocktail reception for authors featured in the Arkansas Literary Festival, ML, 7:30 p.m., $25 adv., $40 door.

13 Nate Powell (“Swallow Me Whole,” “Any Empire”) 5 p.m., Historic Arkansas Museum.

13 Richard Martin (“SuperFuel: Thorium, the Green Energy Source for the Future”), 6 p.m., Zin Urban Wine & Beer Bar. 15 Trenton Lee Stewart (Mysterious Benedict Society series) 3 p.m., WW. 18 Kathryn Stockett (“The Help”), noon,

Baptist Health Center’s 2012 Bolo Bash luncheon 25 Joseph Torres (“News for All the People”), 6 p.m., CS. MAY 8 Charlaine Harris (Sookie Stackhouse series), 8 p.m. TBIB. Area bookstores, libraries and venues: CS: Clinton School of Public Service, Sturgis Hall, 1200 President Clinton Ave., 683-5200.

FCL: Faulkner County Library, 1900 Tyler St., Conway, 501-327-7482.

HC: Hastings of Conway, 1360 Old Morrilton Hwy., Conway, 501-329-1108.

HJ: Hastings of Jacksonville, 915 W. Main St., Jacksonville, 982-3027.

LL: Laman Library, 2801 Orange St., North Little Rock, 501-758-1720.

ML: Main Library, 100 Rock St., 918-3000.

PABCF: Pyramid Art, Books & Custom Framing, 1001 Wright Ave., Little Rock Suite C, 372-5824.

TBIB: That Bookstore in Blytheville, 316 W. Main St., Blytheville, 870-763-3333.

WW: WordsWorth Books & Co., 5920 R St., 663-9198.

AFTER DARK, CONT. of the cell phone. Activities include hacking old cell phones in the Tinkering Studio. Museum of Discovery, 9 a.m., $8-$10. 500 Clinton Ave. 396-7050, 1-800-880-6475. www.amod.org.

FILM

Graduate Film Thesis screening. Reynolds Performance Hall, UCA, 7:30 p.m., free. 350 S. Donaghey, Conway. 501-450-3419.

SPORTS

Arkansas Travelers vs. Midland Rockhounds.

Dickey-Stephens Park, 6 p.m., $6-$12. 400 W. Broadway St., NLR. 501-664-1555. www.travs. com.

Horse racing. See April 4.

BENEFITS

Art for Action. Fundraising event for a new art program for homeless and low income people.

Donations of cash and art supplies will be collected. Includes music from Ferrous Patella and Quadkiller. Canvas Community Art Gallery, 7 p.m., free. 1111 W. 7th St. 501-414-0368.

SUNDAY, APRIL 8

MUSIC

Karaoke with DJ Sara. Hardrider Bar & Grill, 7 p.m., free. 6613 John Harden Drive, Cabot.

501-982-1939.

Sunday Jazz Brunch with Ted Ludwig and Joe Cripps. Vieux Carre, 11 a.m. 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-663-1196. www.vieuxcarrecafe.com.

EVENTS

24th Annual Community Easter Sunrise Service. Includes guests Tim Griffin, Walt Coleman, Sherece West and Fernando Cutz.

Riverfest Amphitheatre, 7 a.m. 400 President Clinton Ave. Easter Lunch Cruise. Arkansas Queen, 12:30 p.m., $19-$33. 100 Riverfront Park Drive, NLR. 501-372-5777. www.arkansasqueen.com.

SPORTS

Arkansas Travelers vs. Frisco RoughRiders.

Dickey-Stephens Park, April 8, 4 p.m.; April 9, 7:10 p.m.; April 10, 7:10 p.m., $6-$12. 400

W. Broadway St., NLR. 501-664-1555. www. travs.com.

Horse racing. See April 4.

MONDAY, APRIL 9

MUSIC

Irish Traditional Music Session. Khalil’s Pub, Fourth and second Monday of every month, 7 p.m. 110 S. Shackleford Road. 501-224-0224. www.khalilspub.com.

Karaoke. Thirst n’ Howl, 8:30 p.m. 14710 Cantrell Road. 501-379-8189. www.thirst-n-howl.com.

Real Estate, Twerps. All-ages show. Revolution, 8 p.m., $12. 300 President Clinton Ave. 501-8230090. revroom.com.

Reggae Nites. Featuring DJ Hy-C playing roots, reggae and dancehall. Pleazures Martini and Grill Lounge, 6 p.m., $7-$10. 1318 Main St. 501-376-7777. www.facebook.com/pleazures. bargrill.

Rex Bell Trio. The Afterthought, 8 p.m., free.

2721 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-663-1196. www. afterthoughtbar.com.

Touch, Grateful Dead Tribute. Stickyz Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicken Shack, 8 p.m., $5. 107 Commerce St. 501-372-7707. www.stickyfingerz.com.

FILM

Reel Classics With The Rep Presents: “Ordinary People.” Includes pre-film discussion with members of The Rep’s artistic production staff and three panelists from UAMS Psychiatric Research Institute to discuss The Rep’s upcoming show, “Next to Normal.” Laman Library, 6 p.m., free. 2801 Orange St., NLR. 501-758-1720. www.lamanlibrary.org.

SPORTS

Arkansas Travelers vs. Frisco RoughRiders.

Dickey-Stephens Park, April 9, 7:10 p.m.; April 10, 7:10 p.m., $6-$12. 400 W. Broadway St., NLR. 501-664-1555. www.travs.com.

Horse racing. See April 4.

CLASSES

Finding Family Facts. Rhonda Stewart’s genealogy research class for beginners. Arkansas Studies Institute, second Monday of every

month, 3:30 p.m. 401 President Clinton Ave. 501-320-5700. www.butlercenter.org.

TUESDAY, APRIL 10

MUSIC

Brian Martin. Maxine’s, 8 p.m., free. 700 Central Ave., Hot Springs. maxinespub.com.

First Baptist Chemical. White Water Tavern, 10 p.m. 2500 W. 7th. 501-375-8400. www.whitewatertavern.com.

Jeff Long. Khalil’s Pub, 6 p.m. 110 S. Shackleford Road. 501-224-0224. www.khalilspub.com.

Jim Dickerson. Sonny Williams’ Steak Room, 7 p.m. 500 President Clinton Ave. 501-324-2999. www.sonnywilliamssteakroom.com.

Karaoke Night. Cornerstone Pub & Grill, 8 p.m.

314 Main St., NLR. 501-374-1782. cstonepub. com.

Karaoke Tuesday. Prost, 8 p.m., free. 120 Ottenheimer. 501-244-9550.

Karaoke with Big John Miller. Denton’s Trotline, 8 p.m. 2150 Congo Road, Benton. 501-3151717.

Lucious Spiller Band. Copeland’s, 6-9 p.m. 2602 S. Shackleford Road. 501-312-1616. www.copelandsofneworleans.com.

Ricky David Tripp. Ferneau, 5:30 p.m. 2601 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-603-9208. www.ferneaurestaurant.com.

Tuesday Jam Session with Carl Mouton. The Afterthought, 8 p.m., free. 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-663-1196. www.afterthoughtbar.com.

DANCE

“Latin Night.” Revolution, 7 p.m., $5 regular, $7 under 21. 300 President Clinton Ave. 501-8230090. www.revroom.com.

EVENTS

2012 Josetta Wilkins Awards Ceremony. St. Vincent Health Center, 1:30 p.m. Two St. Vincent Circle. 501-552-3000. www.stvincenthealth.com.

A Landmark Birthday: the Arkansas State Capitol at 101. State Capitol, 5:30 p.m. 425 W. Capitol Ave. 501-324-8900. arkleg.state.ar.us.

Tales from the South. Authors tell true stories; schedule available on website. Dinner served 5-6:30 p.m., show at 7 p.m. Call for reservations.

Starving Artist Cafe, 5 p.m. 411 N. Main St., NLR. 501-372-7976. www.starvingartistcafe.net.

Trivia Bowl. Flying Saucer, 8:30 p.m. 323 President Clinton Ave. 501-372-7468. www. beerknurd.com/stores/littlerock.

Wiggle Worms: “Phases of Matter.” Pre-K program about solids, liquids and gases. Museum of Discovery, 10 a.m., $8-$10, free for members.

500 Clinton Ave. 396-7050, 1-800-880-6475. www.amod.org.

FILM

“Fresh.” Philander Smith College, 6:30 p.m. 900 W. Daisy L. Gatson Bates Drive.

“Hatari!” Market Street Cinema, 7 p.m., $5. 1521 Merrill Drive. 501-312-8900. www.marketstreetcinema.net.

“Thrive.” Faulkner County Library, 6 p.m., free.

1900 Tyler St., Conway. 501-327-7482. www. fcl.org.

LECTURES

Jessica Matthews. The co-founder of Uncharted Play Inc. will discuss her invention called the sOccket, an eco-friendly generator in the form of a high-quality, ultra-durable soccer ball. Clinton School of Public Service, 12 p.m., free. 1200 President Clinton Ave. 501-683-5239.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 32

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APRIL 4, 2012

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APRIL 4, 2012

ARKANSAS TIMES

‘AMERICAN REUNION’: No pies of any flavor or nationality were violated in the making of this film, which stars Jason Biggs, who we’ll next see in “American Colonoscopy,” due out in 2038.

Market Street Cinema times at or after 9 p.m. are for Friday and Saturday only. Rave showtimes are valid for Friday only. Breckenridge, Lakewood 8 and Riverdale showings were not available as of press deadline. Find up-to-date listings at arktimes.com.

NEW MOVIES American Reunion (R) – The old crew from “American Pie” is back together to stare into the gaping chasm of suicidal depression and imminent middle-aged irrelevance. Chenal 9: 10:15 a.m., 1:15, 4:15, 7:15, 10:15. Rave: 9:50 a.m. 10:50 a.m., 1:50, 2:50, 4:50, 5:50, 7:50, 8:50, 10:50, 11:50.

Pariah (R) – A coming-out tale about an AfricanAmerican teen-aged girl in Brooklyn. Market Street: 1:45, 4:00, 7:00, 9:00.

Titanic 3D (PG-13) – Cameron’s really rubbing our noses in it this time, huh? Just wait ’til they come out with 4D. You’ll be able to smell Leo’s greasy locks. Chenal 9:11:00 a.m., 3:00, 7:00.

Rave: 9:45 a.m. (2D), 11:00 a.m., noon, 2:15, 3:15, 4:15, 6:30, 7:30, 8:30, 10:40, 11:40.

We Need to Talk About Kevin (R) – Psychological thriller about a bad seed, with Tilda Swinton and John C. Reilly. Market Street: 1:45, 4:15, 6:45, 9:15.

RETURNING THIS WEEK 21 Jump Street (R) – Buddy cop comedy starring Jonah Hill and former male stripper Channing Tatum. Chenal 9: 10:45 a.m., 1:45, 4:45, 7:45, 10:45. Rave: 10:15 a.m., 1:00, 4:25, 7:40, 10:20, midnight.

Alvin and The Chipmunks: Chipwrecked (G) – That rascally Alvin is at it again, driving Dave crazy and making him scream “ALVIN!” Only this time it’s on a cruise ship. Also, Alvin raps.

Movies 10: 12:35, 2:55, 5:05.

Beauty and the Beast 3D (G) – It’s Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” and it’s in 3D. Movies 10: 12:20, 2:45, 4:55, 7:30.

Big Miracle (PG) – Drew Barrymore and John Krasinski rescue a family of noble gray whales from the encroaching Arctic ice. Movies 10: noon, 2:25, 5:00, 7:25.

Chronicle (PG-13) – A trio of teen-agers gain mysterious superpowers from a meteorite, but will they use their newfound abilities wisely?

Movies 10: 12:50, 3:00, 5:30, 7:55, 10:00.

Contraband (R) – Marky Mark has to return to his life of drug-running to save his boneheaded

brother-in-law from gangsters. Movies 10: 12:10, 2:40, 5:10, 7:40, 10:10.

Friends with Kids (R) – Two friends decide to try a nontraditional approach to starting a family.

Market Street: 2:15, 4:25, 6:45, 9:00.

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (PG-13) – Starring Nicolas Cage in a reprisal of his role as Marvel’s Ghost Rider. Also starring Idris “Stringer Bell” Elba. Movies 10: 12:05, 2:30, 4:45, 7:00, 9:15 (2D), 10:20 (3D).

Gone (PG-13) – Scary psychological suspensethriller starring the always freaked-out looking Amanda Seyfried as she tracks a kidnapper.

Movies 10: 12:45, 5:25, 9:50.

The Hunger Games (PG-13) – Teen-lit version of “The Running Man,” starring Jennifer Lawrence. Chenal 9: 10:00 a.m., 10:30 a.m., 1:00, 1:30, 4:00, 4:30, 7:01, 7:40, 10:20, 10:50.

Rave: 9:30 a.m., 10:30 a.m., 11:45 a.m., 12:45, 3:00, 4:00, 5:00, 6:30, 7:15, 8:15, 9:45, 10:30, 11:30, midnight.

The Iron Lady (PG-13) – Has Meryl Streep ever been bad in a movie? This movie about Margaret Thatcher hasn’t gotten very good reviews, but apparently Streep’s performance redeems it. Movies 10: 10:05 p.m.

Jeff, Who Lives at Home (R) – Jason Segel is a 30-year-old stoner who still lives in his mom’s basement, from directors Jay and Mark Duplass (“Cyrus”). Market Street: 2:00, 4:20, 7:00, 9:15.

John Carter (PG-13) – “Braveheart” goes to Avatarnia, based on the Edgar Rice Burroughs novel. Rave: midnight.

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (PG) – When you were watching “Land of the Lost,” did you find yourself wishing they’d cast The Rock instead of Will Farrell? Well, here you go. Rave: 9:40 a.m.

The Lorax (PG) – A 3D CGI adaptation of Dr. Seuss’ classic tale. Chenal 9: 10:05 a.m., 1:05, 4:05, 7:05, 9:45. Rave: 9:55 a.m., 3:50, 9:40 (2D), 12:30, 7:00 (3D).

Mirror Mirror (PG) – Retelling of “Snow White” with Julia Roberts as the Evil Queen. Chenal 9:10:25 a.m., 1:25, 4:25, 7:25, 10:25. Rave: 9:35 a.m., 11:10 a.m., 12:10, 1:35, 2:45, 3:35, 4:35, 7:05, 8:20, 11:10.

October Baby (PG-13) – Soft-focus, feel-good anti-abortion propaganda. Rave: 10:10 a.m., 1:10, 4:10, 7:25, 10:10.

Rampart (R) – Woody Harrelson plays the worst bad cop of all time. Movies 10: 7:15, 9:45.

Safe House (R) – A.k.a., “Doesn’t Denzel Washington Make a Scary Bad Guy?” Rave: 11:20 a.m., 5:10, 10:45.

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (PG-13) – Ewan McGregor plays a fisheries expert who must help the sheikh bring fly-fishing to the Yemen River. Market Street: 2:00, 4:15, 7:15, 9:20. Rave: 10:00 a.m., 12:55, 3:40, 6:45, 9:25.

Silent House (R) – Elizabeth Olson gets locked in her family’s lake house, then some terror happens. Movies 10: 3:15, 7:45.

This Means War (PG-13) – Tension, and deadly pranks, escalate between two beefy CIA dudes who discover they’re both dating Reese Witherspoon. One of the dudes is somehow British. Movies 10: 12:30, 3:05, 5:20, 7:35, 9:55.

A Thousand Words (PG-13) – Eddie Murphy becomes magically connected to a tree that loses one leaf for every word he says, and they’ll both die if all the leaves fall off, so he must not talk. Rave: 2:25, 8:00.

The Vow (PG-13) – Something sad and beautiful and sadly beautiful happens to the sad, beautiful Rachel McAdams and the former male stripper Channing Tatum. Movies 10: 12:25, 2:50, 5:15, 7:50, 10:15.

Woman in Black (R) – Man, now they’ve got that Harry Potter dude starring in horror movies about creepy old castles haunted by old-lady ghosts. Movies 10: 12:15, 2:35, 4:50, 7:05, 9:30.

Wrath of the Titans (PG-13) – A.k.a., “Is this a movie or a really long ad for a video game?”

Starring Liam Neeson as Zeus, because duh.

Chenal 9: 4:30 (2D), 10:00 a.m., 1:00, 4:00, 7:00, 10:00 (3D), 10:30 a.m., 1:30, 7:30, 10:30 (IMAX 3D). Rave: 10:00 a.m., 12:50, 3:30, 6:35, 9:10, midnight (2D), 11:50 a.m., 1:30, 2:30, 4:20, 5:20, 7:10, 8:10, 10:00, 11:00 (3D).

Chenal 9 IMAX Theatre: 17825 Chenal Parkway, 821-2616, www.dtmovies.com.

Cinemark Movies 10: 4188 E. McCain Blvd., 945-7400, www.cinemark.com.

Cinematown Riverdale 10: Riverdale Shopping Center, 296-9955, www.riverdale10.com.

Lakewood 8: 2939 Lakewood Village Drive, 7585354, www.fandango.com.

Market Street Cinema: 1521 Merrill Drive, 312-8900, www.marketstreetcinema.net.

Rave Colonel Glenn 18: 18 Colonel Glenn Plaza, 687-0499, www.ravemotionpictures.com.

Regal Breckenridge Village 12: 1-430 and Rodney Parham, 224-0990, www.fandango.com.

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BY SAM EIFLING

W

hat’s the ceiling on a movie called “Wrath of the Titans” anyway? The best you’re going to get, likely, is about half-decent, which is where this particular movie called “Wrath of the Titans” lands. There are a million ways to screw up a movie of this type, and this version commits only a few of them. For instance. The story sets up a nifty labyrinth, then wimps out on it.

The gods’ waning powers are attributed to ebbing human faith — pray and they’ll get stronger! — reducing Olympians to de facto Tinkerbells. The queen Andromeda, who is presumed to be Greek, has to ask who Hephaestus is, ostensibly on behalf of the audience, despite his status as one of the canonical ancient Greek gods. And perhaps it’s unavoidable when you cast Sam Worthington as the lead, Perseus, but the hero speaks in an Australian accent.

But it does far more right, for a movie that’s at least 30 percent video game. Fearsome monsters, clever battle sequences, a story that doesn’t get overcomplicated, ubiquitous CGI that doesn’t call undue attention to itself. In fact, it can be told in about three sentences. Perseus, the heroic half-human son of Zeus, is now a doting father. With the gods’ influence waning such that they’re actually mortal, Hades (the god) and Ares double-cross Zeus and hold him in hell to make way for Kronos, the mountain-sized father of the gods, to take over the world. With Zeus captive, Perseus reluctantly enlists the feckless half-human son of Poseidon (Toby Kebbell) to help him save Zeus and the world.

(Bonus synopsis line: Chimera fight!)

Everyone of note is back for this sequel to 2010’s “Clash of the Titans,” even those

you’d think would have better things to do: Worthington, Liam Neeson as Zeus, Ralph Fiennes looking like a de-dreaded Rob Zombie as Hades, and Danny Huston as Poseidon. The exceptions: They swapped Andromedas, trading Alexa Davalos (whose last film listed on IMDB. com is “Clash of the Titans”) for the perfectly enchanting Rosamund Pike, and Tamer Hassan has been replaced with Edgar Ramirez as the brutish, brooding Ares. Pegasus returns as the F-15 of horses. Jonathan Liebesman again directs, seemingly with an Xbox joystick, piloting the camera, if you can call it that during elaborate computerized sequences, over and around battlefields and mountains and cavern chambers as if channeling a Pegasus-eye view.

Apparently it’s easy to keep a cast together when your first go-round banks half a billion dollars, as “Clash” managed.

It would be easy to sniff that this goes to show that people love the classics. In fact, it does. The polytheistic Greek tales are every bit as crowd-pleasing as the Marvel universe or a saucy telenovela. The gods are petty, lascivious and cruel. The heroes are flawed and love to decapitate monsters. In “Wrath,” Perseus is too dutybound to be that much fun, but Worthington is hard to loathe. His foil in Kebbell keeps them both honest: Worthington brings the gravity, the rakish Kebbell brings a wink. The former keeps the film from devolving into a cartoon; the latter, from self-parody. Maybe that, ultimately, is the best you can hope for when you walk into a movie called “Wrath of the Titans”: That when you walk out, you don’t feel had. www.arktimes.com

APRIL 4, 2012

31

AFTER DARK, CONT. www.clintonschool.uasys.edu.

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the arkansas travelers open their sixth season at dickey-stephens park

opening day is thursday, april 5th! travs home for 6 straight 4/5 - 4/10 travs home easter sunday!

4:00 pm vs frisco roughriders free easter egg hunt for kids at 3:30pm $1 tickets available for kids (14 & under)

• 10 gam e starting mini-plans • smart at $70 • 15 un packs are bac da k! admissi ted general on ticke ts only $45

501-664-1555 www.travs.com call now for group outing and private party information

32

APRIL 4, 2012

ARKANSAS TIMES

SPORTS

Arkansas Travelers vs. Frisco RoughRiders.

Dickey-Stephens Park, 7:10 p.m., $6-$12. 400 W. Broadway St., NLR. 501-664-1555. www. travs.com.

Horse racing. See April 4.

THIS WEEK IN THEATER

“King of the Ice Cream Mountain.” Children’s theater. Laman Library, Tue., April 10, 9:30 a.m., free. 2801 Orange St., NLR. 501-758-1720. www. lamanlibrary.org.

“The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.”

The C.S. Lewis classic about four siblings who travel to the mythical land of Narnia. Arkansas Arts Center, through May 13: first Saturday of every month, 3 p.m.; Fri., 7 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m., 501-372-4000. 501 E. 9th St. 501-372-4000. www. arkarts.com.

“Next Fall.” In Geoffrey Nauffts’ play, a gay couple — one a fervent atheist and the other a devout Christian —must reconcile their convictions and confront family members after an accident complicates their lives. The Weekend Theater, through April 21: Fri., Sat., 7:30 p.m., $12-$16. 1001 W. 7th St. 501-374-3761. www. weekendtheater.org.

Red Octopus Presents: “Beyond The Valley of the Red Octopus.” The adult-appropriate sketch comedy troupe celebrates all things kitschy and campy with a variety of skits. The Public Theatre, April 6-7, 8 p.m.; April 12-14, 8 p.m., $8-$10. 616 Center St. 501-291-3896. www.thepublictheatre.com.

“The Red Velvet Cake Wars.” This comedy from the trio of Jones, Hope and Wooten concerns the three Verdeen cousins, Gaynelle, Peaches, and Jimmie Wyvette, and the mishaps that occur when they plan a family reunion. Murry’s Dinner Playhouse, through April 22: Tue.-Sat., 6 p.m.; Wed., 11 a.m.; Sun., 11 a.m. and 5:30 p.m., $15-$33. 6323 Col. Glenn Road. 501-5623131. murrysdinnerplayhouse.com.

“The Wiz.” The 1970s Broadway hit re-imagines “The Wizard of Oz” as a Motown musical.

Arkansas Repertory Theatre, through April 8: Wed., Thu., 7 p.m.; Fri., Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 and 7 p.m., $30-$60. 601 Main St. 501-378-0405. www.therep.org.

GALLERIES, MUSEUMS

NEW EXHIBITIONS, EVENTS

ARKANSAS FOODBANK, 4301 W. 65th St.: Tenth annual “Empty Bowls” auction of art and other prizes to benefit the foodbank, including work by Lori Weeks (live demonstration), 6-9 p.m. April 5, $65. 569-4317.

BOSWELL-MOUROT FINE ART, 5815 Kavanaugh Blvd.: New works by Guillermo Portieles and John Allison, through April 14; work by Jeff Faust, starting April 10.

664-0030.

MUSEUM OF DISCOVERY, 500 President Clinton Ave.: “Martin Cooper Day,” honoring cellphone engineer, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. April 7. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun., $10 ages 12 and older, $8 ages 1-11, free under 1. 396-7050.

RED DOOR GALLERY, 3715 JFK Blvd., NLR: First annual “Spring Fling,” celebrating 30 years in business, with featured artists Tod Crites, Patrick Cunningham, James Hayes, Amy Hill-Imler, KatEVa, TWIN, Joe Martin, Pat Matthews, Vick Matthews, Daisy McDonald and Betsy Woodyard, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. April 7, portion of sales proceeds to local charities. 753-5227.

THEARTISTS GALLERY/STUDIOS, 401 Main St., second floor, NLR: Opening of V.L. Cox studio, April 9.

ARKADELPHIA HENDERSON STATE UNIVERSITY: “XX,” large-scale paintings and monotypes by Gabrielle Ray, April 8-21, opening reception 2-4 p.m. April 10, Huie Library. gabrielleray@yahoo.com CONWAY UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL ARKANSAS: 2012 BA/BFA Senior Exhibition, April 5-21, receptions 5-7 p.m. April 6, 2-4 p.m. April 21. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri., extended to 7 p.m. Thu. 501-450-5792.

FAYETTEVILLE SUGAR GALLERY, 114 W. Central Ave.: “Marais des Cygnes,” MFA exhibition by John M. Orr, paintings, drawings, installation work, April 5-15, reception 6-8 p.m.

April 6 with music by Artistik Approach at 8 p.m. 2-6 p.m. Thu.-Sat., 10 a.m.-5 p.m.

Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS, Fine Arts Center: “Inspired Living,” Gongke Li’s MFA thesis exhibition, through April 6, main gallery; “Ant Tribe,” Yan Zhao’s MFA thesis exhibition, April 9-13, reception 4:30 p.m.

April 12; Baxter Knowlton, paintings, Fine Arts Center hallway gallery, through April 13. 9 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 2-5 Sun. 479575-7987.

FORT SMITH SECOND STREET LIVE, 1010 N. 2nd St.: “2012 Small Works on Paper,” April 5-22.

479-719-8783.

HOT SPRINGS Galleries on and off Central Avenue will be open 5-9 p.m. Friday, April 6, for the monthly gallery walk.

ALISON PARSONS GALLERY, 802 Central Ave.: Paintings by Alison Parsons. 501-6253001.

AMERICAN ART GALLERY, 724 Central Ave.: Paintings by Jimmy Leach, Jamie Carter, Ersele Hiemstra, Margaret Kipp, Kim Thornton, Sue Coon, Virgil Barksdale and others. 501-624-055.

BLUE MOON, 718 Central Ave.: “Lasting Impressions,” watercolors by Kay Morgan Aclin, through April. 501-318-2787.

FINE ARTS CENTER, 626 Central Ave.: “Sacred Texts,” photographs by Frank Rivas, ceramics and works on paper by Husny Dahlan, April 6-28. 11 a.m.-5 p.m.

Wed.-Sat. 501-624-0489.

GALLERY CENTRAL, 800 Central Ave.: Marian Kline, equine-themed paintings.

501-318-4278.

TAYLOR’S CONTEMPORANEA, 204 Exchange St.: H.M. Saffer, nature-themed paintings on paper and canvas, through May. 501-624-0516.

RUSSELLVILLE RIVER VALLEY ARTS CENTER, 1001 E. B St.: “Just Breathe,” paintings by D.J. Stone, through April. 479-968-2452.

SPRINGDALE ARTS CENTER OF THE OZARKS, 214 S. Main St.: 13th annual “Celebrate Art!” exhibition of work by K-8th graders, April 5-30, open house 1-3 p.m. April 7. 9 a.m.-5 p.m.

Mon.-Fri., 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Sat. 479-751-5441.

YELLVILLE P.A.L. FINE ART, 300 Hwy. 62 W: Jack Ryan, wood carvings, reception 5-7 p.m. April 13, wood carving classes 10 a.m. Saturdays. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 10 a.m.-noon Sat. info@ paletteartleague.org.

Dining

Information in our restaurant capsules

reflects the opinions of the newspaper staff and its reviewers. The newspaper accepts no advertising or other considerations in

exchange for reviews, which are conducted anonymously. We invite the opinions of

readers who think we are in error.

B Breakfast L Lunch D Dinner $ Inexpensive (under $8/person) $$ Moderate ($8-$20/person) $$$ Expensive (over $20/person) CC Accepts credit cards

BELLY UP Check out the Times’ food blog, Eat Arkansas arktimes.com

WHAT’S COOKIN’

Hunka Pie

250 Military Drive North Little Rock 224-1104

QUICK BITE For big eaters, the Whole Shebang is a really good deal. It’s a burger or other sandwich, with a side order such as fries or onion rings, a drink and a slice of pie for $10. You’ll likely be taking some of it home, and it’s worth taking.

HOURS 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 6 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sun.

BRIAN CHILSON

OTHER INFORMATION As of press time, only cash and checks were accepted. Acceptance of credit cards was said to be on the way. No alcohol.

FLAVORFUL BIRD: Hunka Pie’s turkey burger.

Hunka is not just for pie There are big beautiful burgers too.

BRIAN CHILSON

H

unka Pie has been around awhile, but it’s now in a new location, 250 Military Drive in North Little Rock, the old Starlite Diner property. They brought their pies with them, you bet.

Hunka is not just a pie place, but if you come specifically looking for pie, you won’t leave empty-handed. Hunka claims the “largest selection of handcrafted pie in Arkansas.” They’re not all available every day, but the handwritten list they gave us the day we were there looked to have close to 20 on it. And if there’s a special whole pie you want, made to order, call or e-mail (224-1104, chris@hunkapie.com).

The non-pie menu is big on burgers and other sandwiches. All of the burgers are one-third of a pound and are served on toasted buns. The turkey burger we had, in a rare concession to healthy eating, may have been the best turkey burger we’ve ever had, which means it actually tastes good, you don’t have to fake enjoyment. A chili-dog freak among us ordered the

RICH: The Almond Joy pie from Hunka Pie.

chili-cheddar hot dog, but the waiter came back with the news that there were no hot dog buns, so our man ordered a bacon-mushroom burger instead, and was not displeased. Now that we’ve seen the Hunka menu, we know we’ll have to go back and try The Bombay (“Garam masala-seasoned beef burger with greens, crispy onions and cilantro-yogurt sauce”), and the Greektown Burger (“Greek-seasoned beef patty topped with feta cheese and green olive tapenade with lettuce,

sliced tomato and onion on toasted buttery bun”). The onion rings here, fried in a spicy batter, are as good as any in town. The fries aren’t bad.

The Mile-High Reuben just about lived up to its name. Our companion found it tasty, but a little hard to eat because of its size and because the corned beef seemed to be pulled rather than sliced. (The corned beef is roasted on-premise, according to the menu.)

Though it’s no longer the Starlight Diner, the place still has the diner look and feel, with half a dozen booths, and six or eight stools at the counter. The service was quick and helpful.

Back to the pie. The Almond Joy Pie was delicious and very rich, almost too much for one person to eat. The person who ordered the French Blueberry wasn’t sure what he’d be getting, but he was sort of hoping for something juicy, and that’s not what he got. The filling was non-juicy, more custardy, thickened with corn starch or something similar. The person who ordered the pie was a little disappointed; another member of the group thought it excellent. The filling of the coconut custard was great, but between a thick crust on bottom and meringue on top seemed a tiny bit slighted.

The breakfast menu is served from 6 to 10:30 a.m. Monday through Saturday, and 6 a.m. through 1 p.m. Sunday. Besides the usual thing, the menu lists a “signature breakfast.” This is “The I-40 pileup – Crispy tortilla filled with hashbrowns, two eggs, bacon or sausage, topped with cheddar cheese.

Choice of gravy.” And, yes, you can get pie at breakfast.

JERRY BARAKAT is opening yet another restaurant on Rahling Road, in the space formerly occupied by Gaucho’s Grill. Oceans at Arthur’s (Arthur’s Prime Steak House is Barakat’s restaurant next door) at 27 Rahling Circle will have an oyster bar, sushi and other seafood dishes. We couldn’t pry the opening date out of the person who answered the phone (821-1838) but she said it was “very, very soon.”

She added that finishing touches were being put on the menu.

Oceans will seat about 120.

TRAVELERS TO AND FROM the

newly renamed Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport have a reason to smile: a new outlet of Little Rock’s outstanding Whole Hog Cafe barbecue joint, which opened in the airport food court Monday morning. Upside: Pulled pork, beef brisket and smoked chicken before a flight. Downside: You apparently have to go through the TSA shuffle to reach the restaurant from outside the airport.

Our advice: Just close your eyes and think about sweet, sweet pork while you’re getting the ol’ gropen’-poke from that government employee.

DINING CAPSULES

AMERICAN

65TH STREET DINER Blue collar, meatand-two-veg lunch spot with cheap desserts and a breakfast buffet. 3201 West 65th St. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-5627800. BL Mon.-Fri. ACADIA A jewel of a restaurant in Hillcrest.

Unbelievable fixed-price, three-course dinners on Mondays and Tuesday, but food is certainly worth full price. 3000 Kavanaugh Blvd. Full bar, CC. $$-$$$.

501-603-9630. D Mon.-Sat. CONTINUED ON PAGE 34

50% OFF 2ND ENTREE *

WITH PURCHASE OF FULL ENTRÉe Half off least expensive entrée

Breakfast • Lunch • Dinner Dine in • Take Out • Patio • full Bar Mon. -Fri. 10-10 • Sat. 9-10 Sun. 9-9

400 President Clinton Ave. (In the River Market)

Hours: 8 am 5:30 pm Mon - Sat 501-280-9888 372-6637 6820 Cantrell • 9am -10 pm The BesT AuThenTic MexicAn seAfood in Town Full Bar • Take out • Dine in For Gourmet Seafood lovers 501-868-8822 Monday • Friday: 10-10 • 18321 Cantrell Rd. • Hwy. 10 Saturday: 9-10 • Sunday: 9-9

*Must present coupon. One per party.

Not valid with any other offers. Offer Expires 4/30/12. www.arktimes.com

APRIL 4, 2012

33

CROSSWORD

DINING CAPSULES, CONT.

EDITED BY WILL SHORTZ Across 1 Noted handler of dogs 7 Mother of Helios 11 Tubes 14 Sports star who wrote 2009’s “Open: An Autobiography” 15 Whom Othello declares “is most honest” 16 Actress Charlotte 17 Security desk at a Broadway theater?

19 ___ de France 20 Starts at either end?

21 Certain Alaskan 22 Large bra feature 23 Simian on a Broadway set?

26 Challenge for a H.S. honor student 29 Author Dinesen 30 “Even ___ speak …”

31 ___ & Young (accounting firm) 34 Cancel 37 Understudy in a Broadway show?

41 Place with a waiting room: Abbr.

42 Gather 43 Son or grandson, say 44 Italian beloved 46 Greek peak SE of Olympus 48 Pessimistic Broadway investors?

53 Owns, in the Bible 54 Actress Rene 55 “___ made clear …”

58 Egg: Prefix 59 Nighttime Broadway wardrobe?

62 “The Simpsons” character who says “Oh geez” a lot 63 [Giggle]

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE G R A B A I D A B O O S K S T E E C O N T A D D R I A S F E L L L I P J O U S E T C H S T L O T O A D

D E B N I D A C K O M A S T I A T K E I T

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64 It’s awesome 65 Mac alternatives 66 Love god 67 ___ régime (pre1789 French government) Down 1 Whittle (down) 2 A long, long time 3 Plumbers’ wheels 4 D-Day craft, for short 5 Walt Disney had 26 of them 6 Color akin to plum 7 Emperor who completed the Colosseum 8 Author Bret 9 A star can have a huge one 10 CD mailer of the early 2000s 11 Bad conditions for playing hoops, say 12 Care about 13 Running slowly 18 “Sesame Street” supporter, in brief 22 Strands in a cell?

23 Will of “The Waltons” 24 Odds and ends: Abbr.

25 Bone: Prefix 26 Circus cries 27 Natl. Merit Scholarship qualifying exam 28 Minneapolis/St. Paul 31 Green org.

32 Literary inits.

33 “Stillmatic” rapper

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Puzzle by Kevan Choset

35 “Last one ___ a rotten egg!”

36 More, in adspeak 38 ___ avis 39 Slate, e.g.

40 Conductance units 45 Rhine whine?

46 Siege site of A.D. 72

47 ___ horse 48 Bite 49 Rack and ruin 50 Prefix with pedic 51 M.T.A. fleet 52 Subj. of a spaceto-Earth experiment on Apollo 14

55 Mine, in Amiens 56 “Me, too”

57 Library ID

59 Tony-winning role for Mandy Patinkin 60 ___ Lingus

61 “Desperate Housewives” network

For answers, call 1-900-285-5656, $1.49 a minute; or, with a credit card, 1-800-814-5554.

Annual subscriptions are available for the best of Sunday crosswords from the last 50 years: 1-888-7-ACROSS. AT&T users: Text NYTX to 386 to download puzzles, or visit nytimes.com/mobilexword for more information.

Online subscriptions: Today’s puzzle and more than 2,000 past puzzles, nytimes.com/crosswords ($39.95 a year).

Share tips: nytimes.com/wordplay.

Crosswords for young solvers: nytimes.com/learning/xwords.

THIS MODERN WORLD

BIG ORANGE: BURGERS SALADS SHAKES Gourmet burgers manufactured according to exacting specs and properly fried Kennebec potatoes are the big draws. 17809 Chenal Parkway. Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$.

501-821-1515. LD daily.

BOBBY’S CAFE Delicious, humungo burgers and tasty homemade deserts at this Levy diner. 12230 MacArthur Drive. NLR. No alcohol, No CC. $.

501-851-7888. BL Tue.-Fri., D Thu.-Fri. BUTCHER SHOP Several menu additions complement the calling card: large, fabulous cuts of prime beef, cooked to perfection. 10825 Hermitage Road. Full bar, All CC. $$$. 501-312-2748. D daily.

CAJUN’S WHARF The venerable seafood restaurant serves up great gumbo and oysters Bienville, and options such as fine steaks for the non-seafood eater. 2400 Cantrell Road. Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-3755351. D Mon.-Sat. COPPER GRILL Comfort food, burgers and more sophisticated fare at this River Market-area hotspot. 300 E. Third St. Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$.

501-375-3333. LD Mon.-Sat. DAVE’S PLACE A popular downtown soup-and-sandwich stop at lunch draws a large and diverse crowd for the Friday night dinner. 201 Center St. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-372-3283. L Mon.-Fri., D Fri. DIZZY’S GYPSY BISTRO Interesting bistro fare, served in massive portions at this River Market favorite. 200 River Market Ave. Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$.

501-375-3500. LD Tue.-Sat. THE FADED ROSE The Cajun-inspired menu seldom disappoints. Steaks and soaked salads are legendary. 1615 Rebsamen Park Road. Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-663-9734. LD daily.

FERNEAU Great seafood, among other things, is served at the Ice House Revival in Hillcrest. With a late night menu Thu.-Sat. 2601 Kavanaugh Blvd.

Full bar, All CC. $$$-$$$$. 501-603-9208. D Tue.-Sat. FRANKE’S CAFETERIA Plate lunch spot strong on salads and vegetables, and perfect fried chicken on Sundays. 11121 N. Rodney Parham Road.

No alcohol, All CC. $$. 501-225-4487. LD daily. 400 W. Capitol Ave. No alcohol, All CC. $$. 501-372-1919. L Mon.-Fri. FRONTIER DINER The traditional all-American roadside diner, complete with a nice selection of man-friendly breakfasts and lunch specials.10424 Interstate 30. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-565-6414. BL Mon.-Sat. FROSTOP A ‘50s-style drive-in has been resurrected, with big and juicy burgers and great irregularly cut fries. Superb service, too. 4131 JFK Blvd.

NLR. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-758-4535. BLD daily.

GRAMPA’S CATFISH HOUSE A longtime local favorite for fried fish, hush puppies and good sides. 9219 Stagecoach Road. Beer, Wine, All CC. 501-407-0000. LD. IZZY’S Wholesome, all-American food prepared with care, if rarely far from the middle of the culinary road. With full vegan and gluten-free menus.

5601 Ranch Drive. Beer, Wine, All CC. $$. 501-868-4311. LD Mon.-Sat. KIERRE’S KOUNTRY KITCHEN Excellent home-cooking joint for huge helpings of meat loaf and chicken-fried steak, cooked-down vegetables and wonderful homemade pies and cakes. 6 Collins Place. NLR. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-758-0903. BLD Tue.-Fri., BL Sat. MARKHAM STREET GRILL AND PUB The menu has something for everyone. Try the burgers, which are juicy, big and fine. 11321 W. Markham St. Full bar, All CC. $-$$. 501-224-2010. LD daily.

RED DOOR Fresh seafood, steaks, chops and sandwiches from restaurateur Mark Abernathy. Smart wine list. 3701 Old Cantrell Road. Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-666-8482. BL Mon.-Fri. D daily.

REDBONE’S Piquant Creole and Cajun food that’s among Little Rock’s best. The shrimp po-boy and duck and andouille gumbo are standouts.

300 President Clinton Ave. Full bar, All CC. $-$$. 501-372-2211. LD daily.

RIVERFRONT STEAKHOUSE Steaks are the draw here — nice cuts heavily salted and peppered, cooked quickly and accurately to your specifications, finished with butter and served sizzling hot. 2 Riverfront Place. NLR. Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-375-7825. D Mon.-Sat. SO RESTAURANT BAR Call it a French brasserie with a sleek, but not fussy American finish. Free valet parking. Use it and save yourself a headache.

3610 Kavanaugh Blvd. Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-663-1464.

TRIO’S Fresh, creative and satisfying lunches. Best array of fresh desserts in town. 8201 Cantrell Road. Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-221-3330. LD Mon.-Sat., BR Sun. YOUR MAMA’S GOOD FOOD Offering simple and satisfying cafeteria food, with burgers and more hot off the grill, plate lunches and pies.

220 W. 4th St. No alcohol, All CC. $. 501-372-1811. Serving:BL Mon.-Fri. ZACK’S PLACE Expertly prepared home cooking and huge, smoky burgers. 1400 S. University Ave. Full bar, All CC. $-$$. 501-664-6444. LD Mon.-Sat.

ASIAN

CHI’S CHINESE CUISINE Offers a broad menu that spans the Chinese provinces and offers a few twists on the usual local offerings. 5110 W. Markham St. Beer, All CC. $-$$. 501-604-7777.

FANTASTIC CHINA The food is delicious, the presentation beautiful, the menu distinctive, the service perfect, the decor bright. 1900 N. Grant St. CONTINUED ON PAGE 39

34

APRIL 4, 2012

ARKANSAS TIMES

BLUE CAKE

FRESH MARKET

Cupcakes Cupcakes on Kavanaugh Can a cupcake taste wholesome? Because this one did, but in a great way. Everything about this strawberry cupcake, with mostly chocolate and a dollop of strawberry buttercream frosting, smacked of just-milked, just-gathered, just-baked freshness. The cake was moist, moist, moist, in addition to being light, fluffy and barely sweet, and it completely allowed the icing to carry the sugar-ride. And what a ride! This was some uniquely excellent icing — thinner and creamier than most buttercreams, it spawned spontaneous images of happy cows in sunny pastures. Kavanaugh uses organic milk and local eggs — does that really make all the difference? This is one cupcake that doesn’t permanently lodge in your stomach post-consumption, making you regret your sugar-cave for the rest of the day. Extra points for being open on Mondays. Price: $2.95. 5625 Kavanaugh Blvd., 664-2253. Cupcakes on the Ridge, 11525 Cantrell Road, 224-2253. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-Fri.,10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sat. Brown Sugar This River Market-area bakeshop offers a daily repertoire of red velvet, chocolate, vanilla and strawberry cupcakes, along with two specialty surprises — anything from blueberry citrus to caramel pecan. (There are also interesting to-order flavors, such as maple bacon or Moscato. There’s something very Stepford Wives about an alcoholic cupcake!)

We chose Cherry Cheesecake a bit skeptically, but (and we’re sure your mom would agree), usually everything turns out OK in the end. The cake was adequately moist and not too heavy, the icing was a smooth, thick buttercream with a sharp cheesecake flavor, and the whole thing was sweetsweet, but it went down easily. Price: $2.50. 419 E. Third St., 372-4009, 10:30 a.m.-6 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 10:30 a.m.-5 p.m. Sat. Sweet Love Whether it’s a blueberry with cream cheese icing or an elaborate Black and White with chocolate and vanilla candy topping, Sweet Love does a good cupcake. We couldn’t choose, so we tried

both. We were surprised at how well the blueberry flavor muscles through the eggs and milk and all, but the icing is thinner and less fluffy — a little less rich — than the cream cheese varieties we are familiar with. (Have you ever tried a yogurtbased icing? That’s what it reminded us of.) Because it’s more traditional, we think the Black and White is probably a bigger crowd pleaser. What you get: both chocolate and vanilla swirled cake and icing, but the cake is stronger on the chocolate, and the icing, the vanilla. Moist cake with loose whirls of stiff buttercream and an allaround solid cupcake experience. There was also a Pancake Breakfast cupcake with maple cake and icing and a bacon bits topper. Sounded pretty interesting … maybe next time? Price: $2.75. 8210 Cantrell Road. 613-7780. 9 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Sat. The Root The downtown cafe has (usually vegan) cupcakes only on Fridays and Saturdays. We had a vegan something of a spiced, nutty persuasion, with creamcheese(ish) icing and crushed candied ginger on top. It tasted like winter holidays and spring picnics — both of which we love — but it was more of a heavily iced muffin than an honest-to-goodness cupcake. The texture was dense and a little crumbly, with bits of real nut and a nutmeg bite.

The icing was more granulated than buttercream or real cream cheese, but yummy all the same. Big plus: nothing about this cupcake was too sweet or too filling. Price: $2.50. 1500 Main St., 414-0423. 7 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 8 a.m-3:30 p.m. Sat. Tracy Cakes A filled lemon cupcake that we can actually get behind! Tracy Cakes’s Lemondrop looks pretty basic, but our specimen was fresh, with tangy buttercream icing and a spot of lemon curd.

Something about the hearty texture of the curd made it more palatable than a jelly or custard, and it always helps when a filling is used sparingly. This filling blended well with the cake, making a few choice bites seem extra moist and delicious. Overall,

THE ROOT

there was a strong but happy lemon flavor, and we’re eager to try other Tracy Cakes varieties. Price: $2.25. 10301 North Rodney Parham Road, 227-4243.

10 a.m.-8 p.m. Tue.-Sat. Dempsy’s Bakery Everything at Dempsy’s is gluten-free, and half of its offerings are vegan. We had a chocolate cupcake with shockingly pink vanilla icing that was gluten-free and dairy-free, but not egg-free.

For a cupcake lacking crucial ingredients, it did a good job passing as normal. The cake was sticky and dense, with a rich dark-chocolate flavor. The icing had a buttercream texture, but it was sweeter and lighter than true buttercream. Actually, the icing is a tad too sweet, and the cupcake was small to be so pricey. But dietary accommodations cost, and even for the non-restricted, this cupcake was a welcome change of pace. (FYI, unless it’s a special order, Dempsy’s cupcakes only come in chocolate and vanilla.) Price: $3.

323 S. Cross St., 375-2257. 10 a.m.-6 p.m.

Tue.-Fri., 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Sat. Fresh Market A step (and a buck) above an ordinary grocery, Fresh Market sells store-baked, pre-packaged cupcakes and decadent individual cupcakes in exciting but certainly not exotic flavors, such as Peanut Butter and Cookies and Cream. We tried a classic Red Velvet, which was huge and heaped with billowy cream-cheese icing. The icing was by far the best part, but if you’re not big on icing, you should probably avoid Fresh Market cupcakes altogether. The cake was chocolaty and wellflavored, but it was a little stale. We bought this cupcake in the evening, so most likely it sat all day. Perhaps we would have had better luck in the morning? Price: $2.99.

11525 Cantrell Road. 225-7700. 9 a.m.-9 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Sun. Rosalia’s Family Bakery Cupcakes are not really Rosalia’s thing. The Brazilian bakery does many things splendidly, but we found their cupcake to be a take-orleave experience. It has cupcakes only a few times a week — most consistently on Saturday mornings — and the flavors change according to bakers’ whims. Occa-

CHEREE FRANCO (4)

Natives Guide CUPCAKES ON KAVANAUGH

sionally Rosalia’s cupcakes are gluten-free, but call ahead to be sure. We tried a Peanut Butter and Chocolate mini-cupcake. The icing was delish — luscious, creamy peanut butter goodness — but the cake was much too dry. We’ll stick to the yucca cheese puffs from now on. Price: $1.50 (mini).

2701 Kavanaugh Blvd., 319-7035, 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Mon.- Sat. Blue Cake This shop is cute, and its display boasts some attractive cupcakes, so we were extra disappointed with our Pink Lemonade affair. The cake and even the buttercream icing seemed a little dry. The cake was dense and definitely pink, but it didn’t taste like much of anything. We’re not sure if it was strawberry or vanilla flavored or what. The icing had a slight lemon flavor and there was a sharp, lemon jelly filling. (Fruit fillings in cake are nearly always a mistake, in our opinion.) An employee had advised the Red Velvet cupcake. We should have gone with it. Price: $2.50. 14710 Cantrell Road. 868-7771. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Sat. Community Bakery Community Bakery is known for its bread, and there’s a reason for that. The cupcakes are depressingly basic. They come in chocolate and vanilla — no bells, no whistles. (Unfortunately, the plastic toothpick decor can’t quite liven up this party.) We tried the vanilla. The cake was dry, and there was a hearty pile of vanilla confectioner’s icing that couldn’t quite compensate. As confectioner’s icing goes, this was well-executed: creamy beneath a faintly crunchy exterior, not too stiff. Overall, this was an extremely forgettable cupcake — we’d give this vanilla a “C,” you know, average, but a few weeks later, we purchased a chocolate to see if Community could redeem itself. The chocolate was less dry, and again, the icing was the standout. The chocolate came from a morning batch; we purchased the vanilla in the afternoon. Maybe a few extra hours in the display box are what killed it? Price: $1.50. 1200 Main St., 375-6418. 6 a.m.-8 p.m. Mon.-Thu., 6 a.m.-9 p.m. Fri.-Sat., 7 a.m.-8 p.m. Sun. West Little Rock: 270 S. Shackleford Road, 224-1656. 6 a.m.-6 p.m.

Mon.-Sat., 7 a.m.-1 p.m. Sun. www.arktimes.com

APRIL 4, 2012

35

splish, splash

APRIL 4, 2012

BY BLAIR TIDWELL PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRIAN CHILSON

N

o store in Little Rock knows swimwear better than Barbara Graves Intimate Fashions. The locally owned shop has stayed on top of the trends since 1973 and this year is no exception. According to owner Barbara Graves, the swimwear for 2012 is “fun, colorful and has fashion flair.”

Shades of bright orange—spring’s catchiest hue in everything from clothing to home décor—will make a splash with solid suits in saffron, apricot, coral, sunset orange and other golden colors. Graves reports that blues are equally as important, with rich turquoise and navy in the spotlight. And of course, the slimming LBS isn’t going away anytime soon: “A swim wardrobe basic has always been the little black swimsuit, which should be alternated with wearing bright and bold pieces,” Graves says.

As for patterns, black-and-white combos made some of the most dramatic appearances on the run-

Trina Turk black one-piece with white beaded neckline, $148.

With Scala white and black wide brim sun hat, $35.

Koral K bikini with black belt: top $58, pant $80.

hearsay

Gossip Collection berry monokini, $70. With Elan International zigzagprint cover-up, $37.

L-Space apricot bikini: top $70, floral pant $70.

With Elan International mesh long-sleeve coverup, $80.

Nanette Lepore nautical one-piece, $144.

➥ It’s a big weekend for local fashion lovers. A pool of talented designers (most of them with an Arkansas connection) will showcase their newest looks at the fifth annual DESIGNERS CHOICE FASHION PREVIEW on Saturday, April 7 at 7 p.m. Models will strut down the runway at the Metroplex Event Center, sporting jewelry and apparel by designers such as Project Runway alums Korto Momolu and Jerell Scott.

Tickets are $35, VIP $50, with proceeds supporting the Timmons Art Foundation. ➥ Fresh spring fashions will also be on view at THE FASHION EVENT at Chenal Country Club on Thursday, April 5 at 6 p.m. Local boutiques outfit professional models as well as Easter Seals children and adults in the hottest ensembles of the season. Tickets are $50 with proceeds benefiting Easter Seals; call (501) 227-3700 for reservations. ➥ Already home to some of our favorite stores, THE PROMENADE AT CHENAL, announced a sweet new shop will open its doors this summer. APRICOT LANE BOUTIQUE will offer on-trend women’s fashion, jewelry, handbags, accessories, bath and body products, and home décor. They’ll also carry name brands, such as Rock Revival, Miss Me, 7 For All Mankind, Steve Madden Shoes and more.

36

APRIL 4, 2012

ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT TO ARKANSAS TIMES

Gottex opal blue one-piece with jewel embellishment, $188.

ways at fashion week. And in swim separates, “ethnic, vintage, florals, dots or stripes are being mixed with bold solid colors,” says Graves.

Low-slung hipster bottoms, paired with bandeau and halter tops still dominate the two-piece category. But structured, underwire tops are making a comeback with help from consumer demand and women who want more support up top. Onepieces continue to look less dowdy and more old-school glam. “Newness in one-piece swim has been shirred retro. Think Esther Williams!”

Graves says, referencing the 1940s competitive swimmer and movie star. “A straw or canvas hat paired with a jaunty cover-up completes the look,” says Graves.

Pack one of these styles from Barbara Graves for that summer vacation you’ve booked to a tropical paradise, or simply slip one on for your next afternoon of lounging poolside.

La Blanca black-andwhite dot tankini, $83. With Coco Rave hot pink skirted pant, $54.

Kechika floral underwire bikini top, $53.

With Kenneth Cole Reaction red skirted pant, $54.

Trina Turk multicolor bikini: top $92, pant $78.

➥ THE GREEN CORNER STORE has the scoop. In fact, they’ll have lots at the grand opening of their new soda fountain, a nod to the building’s original drugstore and soda fountain that claimed the space from 1905-1967. They’ll celebrate the grand opening with free mini cones of artisan ice cream and live music on Saturday, April 7 from noon-7 p.m. ➥ Drop by the restaurant at TERRY’S FINER FOODS and say “Bonjour!” to new manager Peter Donovan. The small French bistro inside the Heights-area grocery store welcomes the accomplished manager, who has previously been with Chenal Country Club, The Country Club of Little Rock and the Capital Hotel. ➥ Attention to all of our favorite local retailers! We’re planning our outfits for the OLD STATE HOUSE MUSEUM’S SEERSUCKER SOCIAL on Saturday, April 28 from 6-9 p.m, and we need tips on where to find the dandiest seersucker in town.

Have a suggestion? Let us know, so we can dress appropriately as we sip Mint Juleps and sample southern-style appetizers from Trio’s, all while socializing on the Old State House lawn. If you’ve got info for us, write to cue@arktimes.com and we will follow up.

or nt

Scrub a dub dub

W

inter can be rough on your skin. We all know that ladies take advantage of the covered-up season by letting it all grow out. But we tend to neglect our skincare, too. A few minutes with a razor takes care of any hairy situations, but getting your skin back into supple, beach-ready shape takes a little more work. Luckily, two scrumptious and locally made lines can help with that: Love & Light Salts & Scrubs and goods from the Bathhouse Soapery.

Jeri Warlick, a Little Rock jewelry designer and interior architect, has been blending bath salts and working with aromatherapy “forever,” she says, but only recently started selling her products at shops like The Green Corner Store, Box Turtle, The Galaxy & Shoppes on Woodlawn. Love & Light Salts & Scrubs is a line of hand-blended products made with sea salt, Epsom salt and organic all-natural essential oils. Warlick creates each of the eight blends to open up different chakras, even taking the effort to harness energy with crystals and blend each salt or scrub

Seafolly black-andwhite striped bikini: top $85, pant $62.

during certain phases of the moon.

If that all sounds a little hokey, don’t worry. “It’s a little too metaphysical for most people. And when I explain the process, they’re like ‘What?’” she says, laughing. “But whether you know the chakras system or not, the scrubs will still do something for you!” In fact, most of her customers love the blends for their organic oils and lack of preservatives.

When it comes to scrubbing up that winter-worn skin, Warlick recommends her biggest seller, the Luna Love Lavender, a soothing “cure-all” scrub created during the full moon. The scrub exfoliates, of course, but Warlick also mixes in baking soda which helps soften the skin, and grapeseed oil, a moisturizer that absorbs at a rate that skin can soak it up. Added bonus: The lavender scent is relaxing, helps clear your mind and promotes good sleep. Warlick also added a line of body oils recently, which includes a travel-friendly mist bottle, perfect for spritzing yourself straight out of the shower or moisturizing at the beach.

We’re also a fan of the Bathhouse Soapery, just a short drive away in downtown Hot Springs. Owner Charlene Simon handcrafts the quaint shop’s soaps, scrubs and lotions—all made with natural, organic ingredients when possible and never infused with sulphates, parabens or detergents.

Simon and her team constantly surprise with creative soap scents that range from the silly (Root Beer, Razorback-themed Hog Wash and Cookie Dough) to the understated

Lather up with watermelon soap from the Bathhouse Soapery in Hot Springs.

(Kelp & Oatmeal, Lemongrass, Sponge Bath). New this month, visitors will find signs of the season with Watermelon, Blueberry Verbena and Pink Lemonade. But for moisture, go with the Sweet Honey, a regular on the menu.

Before you leave, be sure to sidle up to the bar of shower scrubs to get a whiff of the exfoliating options. These are good for those who avoid oils, since the scrubs—which are sometimes made with sugar instead of sea salt—foam up when mixed with water. We love the sickly sweet-smelling Cupcake and the Mud & Minerals which has actual mud from the Dead Sea. But the new Cotton, Honey Pear and Badedas (with notes of basil, citrus, amber and musk) are also on our must-list.

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Designers ChoiCe Fashion Preview

All StAr

Show

2012

BeneFiting the timmons arts FounDation

SAturdAy, April 7

PresenteD By misrgo, stamP out smoking at uaPB & team summit

Show StArtS At 7:30pm Vip & mediA mixer beginS At 6pm

metroplex eVent center 10800 colonel glenn roAd office@designerschoicefashion.com

Trina Turk psychedelic pantsuit, $192.

generAl AdmiSSion $35 Vip $50

hoSted by model/actor/designer Boris kodjoe & Fox 16 news anchor Donna terrell

meet And greet with the hoStS And deSignerS (includeS open bAr, horS d’oeuVreS) And Vip SeAting

FeAtured deSignerS Korto Momolu and Erica Warren Kata Mari Brandi Tate Phalon Montgomery Snee Dismang

Krista Smith Nicole Mcgehee Leslie Pennel Candace Locke Ocie Collins Jerell Scott

korto momolu

Jerell Scott

Tickets can be purchased on eventbrite www.designerschoicefashionlr.eventbrite.com and locally at Jeante, One of One, Vogue Visage, Box Turtle, 4th Dimension Salon and Uncle T’s.

ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT TO ARKANSAS TIMES

APRIL 4, 2012

37

Ape real fool

S

ome pleasant reflections from last Sunday: The Supreme Court rules that everybody doesn’t have to buy health insurance but everybody has to have a shed.

The Latter Day Saints announce that Mormonism will henceforth go with something a little more plausible.

Every dog-peter gnat in the world perishes from a cause unknown.

The Duggars agree to try a different approach — something called restraint.

The United States says it will leave Afghanistan by the end of April if the bad guys there make a solemn promise that they’ll straighten up and fly right.

Op-ed insipidity is held to be a violation of the First Amendment; WSJ is first charged; second, cretins closer to home.

Department of Agriculture predicts big comeback this spring of big succulent tasty pink tomatoes.

A liberal psycho, too wimpy even to carry a gun, pulls out all of Karl Rove’s nose hairs on live TV. Mitt R. thinks better of equipping his lavish California pad with a high-dollar car elevator. Or his handlers think better of it for him, and go to Plan B.

Rev. Franklin Graham agrees to take a vow of silence after admitting that every time he’s BOB opened his mouth LANCASTER for several years now something stupid has come out.

Ann Coulter admits that just the thought of Joe McCarthy makes her hot.

Iran leaders give up fanaticism, return to sanity after successfully completing a Dale Carnegie course.

New York Times calls Bentonville “one of the most cosmopolitan small cities in the country”; Pine Bluff files complaint, says it, not Bentonville, deserves the accolade.

Mild winter results in overabundance of ticks, but hey — they’re an extra good source of protein. (Boil them first, of course, as a precaution against Lyme.)

State legislators who own and operate hallelujah Jesus schools admit it’s unconstitutional and unconscionable to ask taxpayers to finance them.

Kansas legislature votes to require resident females who have impure thoughts to have vaginas sewn up.

Confederate veterans organizations mull the bitter cup of finally acknowledging that the Civil War is over and was lost, but insist on sweetening the acceptance with a last word of encouragement to diehard partisans: We’ll get ’em next time. Another way of saying fergit hell.

Catholic bishops concede that there might be areas of human conduct that are none of their business.

Baseball hitches up its britches, spits, gets the bullpen going, turns on the corn popper, and preps for new season to be played out under the new MLB motto, Slow as molasses, but steroid-free.

Charles Krauthammer passes in front of a mirror that shows a reflection.

Stinky L. submits to the indignity of his weekly bath after his latest and proudest avoidance strategy, playing dead, fails to fool anybody.

Scientists say man-caused global warming is bad but could be worse as the human race has possibly 100 years left. At least 50.

Miss Jane passes, immediately takes up new post as a WalMart-style greeter at the Pearly Gates, telling new arrivals, according to her obituary, “Honey, come on inside. Let me introduce you to everyone’s best friend, Jesus Christ.”

The Easter bonnet with lots of frills upon it comes back into fashion. Wear one to the big Easter parade and you’re

sure to look demure in the rotogravure.

Spa flack calls Oaklawn slots loosest west of Tunica and east of Tahlequah.

Oaklawn brass thankful for the pub but say their machines aren’t slots. They may look like slots, sound like slots, whirr and flash like slots, and relieve you of your legal tender the same way, but they’re not slots. No, really. Call them slotnots if you must, but not slots.

Frogs return from edge of extinction to fill warm nights with hearty ribbets.

Bees still doing their Amelia Earhardt, however.

Texas schoolbook oversight board relents, admits Thomas Jefferson might have been as notable a historical figure as Phyllis Schlafly, and maybe as important a political thinker as Newt Gingrich.

Huckabuck asks to return as Arkansas governor just long enough to pardon a vanload of killers to take back to Florida as cheap labor finishing the gruntwork on his beachfront mansion.

Mark Pryor belatedly grows a pair but isn’t sure what they’re for.

House Speaker says he will devote congressional spring-break recess to working on his orange.

Jerry Lee Lewis, 76, who’s married as often as the Duggars have whelped, does it again; forecasts a whole lotta weddingnight shaking and great balls of fire.

Etc.

ARKANSAS TIMES CLASSIFIEDS ARkANSAS TIMES FLIPSIDE

HUGE ESTATE SALE STARTING

FRIDAY , APRIL 6TH & SATURDAY, APRIL 7TH AND EVERY FIRST FRIDAY & SATURDAY OF EACH MONTH THEREAFTER UNTIL ALL IS SOLD! 9 AM - 5 PM DIRECTIONS: LEAVING LITTLE ROCK GO TO 1-30 E TOWARD NORTH LITTLE ROCK; SLIGHT RIGHT TOWARD US167; MERGE ONTO I-40 E; SLIGHT LEFT ONTO US-67 N;GO PAST BALD KNOB, BEFORE NEWPORT; TAKE EXIT 80 (WALDENBURG); TURN RIGHT HWY 14 E, GO THROUGH AMAGON; 4 MILES TO JACKSON COUNTY LINE #15, POINTSETT COUNTY LINE ROAD; TURN RIGHT ON GRAVEL ROAD, GO 2 MILES, GO JUST PAST THE WATER TOWER AND THE SALE IS ON THE LEFT.

HOARDERS & COLLECTORS DREAM! - ANTIQUE TOOLD OF ALL KINDS - OLD MEDICINE BOTTLES & JARS - MOTHER OF PEARL BUTTONS - OLD MARBLES, SOME BENTLEY - STANLESS STEEL/ALUMINUM & CORNING WARE - ALL KINDS OF COOKWARE - CRYSTAL AND CHINA - LOTS OF WOOD CARVED ITEMS - OLD PARTS & WHEELS FOR CHILDRENS TRACTORS, TRICYCLES, & WAGONS - LOTS OF DIFFERENT ANTIQUE CAST IRONS - COKE, DR. PEPPER AND PEPS ANTIQUES CRATES - BRASS TEMPLATES THAT YOU CAN PRINT ON CRATES FOR ALL COKE PRODUCTS, AND SOME PEPSI & DR. PEPPER PRODUCTS

WATCH FOR SIGNS!

CONCESSION STAND ON SITE!

THERE WILL BE A PREVIEWING OF ITEMS ON THURSDAY, APRIL 5, 2012 FROM 1PM - 4M

FOR MORE INFORMATION CALL: 512-771-9939 OR 228-596-8877 ARKANSAS TIMES 38 April 384, 2012 APRIL 4, 2012 ARKANSAS TIMES

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DINING CAPSULES, CONT. Full bar, All CC. $$. 501-663-8999. LD daily.

LILLY’S DIMSUM THEN SOME Innovative dishes inspired by Asian cuisine, utilizing local and fresh ingredients. 11121 N. Rodney Parham Road. Beer, Wine, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-716-2700.

LD daily.

MT. FUJI JAPANESE RESTAURANT The dean of Little Rock sushi bars offers a fabulous lunch special. 10301 Rodney Parham Road. Beer, Wine, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-227-6498. LD daily.

10301 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-227-6498.

SEOUL A full line of sushi and soft tofu stews plus a variety of Korean dishes. 5923 Kavanaugh Blvd. Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-227-7222. LD Mon.-Sat. SUSHI CAFE Impressive, upscale sushi menu with other delectable house specialties like tuna tataki, fried soft shell crab, Kobe beef and, believe it or not, the Tokyo cowboy burger.

5823 Kavanaugh Blvd. Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$.

501-663-9888. L Mon.-Sat. D daily.

BARBECUE

CORKY’S RIBS & BBQ The pulled pork is extremely tender and juicy, and the sauce is sweet and tangy without a hint of heat. 12005 Westhaven Drive. Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$.

501-954-7427. LD daily. 2947 Lakewood Village Drive. NLR. Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-753-

3737. LD daily, B Sat.-Sun. WHITE PIG INN Go for the sliced rather than chopped meats at this working-class barbecue cafe. 5231 E. Broadway. NLR. Beer, All CC. $-$$.

501-945-5551. LD Mon.-Fri., L Sat. WHOLE HOG CAFE The pulled pork shoulder is a classic, the back ribs are worthy of their many blue ribbons, and there’s a six-pack of sauces for all tastes. 516 Cantrell Road. Beer, Wine, All CC. $$. 501-664-5025. LD Mon.-Sat. 12111 W. Markham. Beer, Wine, All CC. $$. 501-907-6124.

LD daily 150 E. Oak St. Conway. No alcohol, All CC. $$. 501-513-0600. LD Mon.-Sat., L Sun. 5107 Warden Road. NLR. Beer, Wine, All CC. $$. 501-753-9227.

EUROPEAN / ETHNIC

CAFE BOSSA NOVA A South American approach to sandwiches, salads and desserts, all quite good. 701 Kavanaugh Blvd. Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-614-6682. LD Tue.-Sat., BR Sun. DUGAN’S PUB The fried stuff is good. Try the mozzarella sticks. 403 E. 3rd St. Full bar, All CC. $-$$. 501-244-0542.

GEORGIA’S GYROS Good gyros, Greek salads and fragrant grilled pita bread highlight a large Mediterranean food selection. 2933 Lakewood Village Drive. NLR. Full bar, All CC. $-$$. 501-7535090. LD Mon.-Sat.

HIBERNIA IRISH TAVERN This traditional Irish pub has its own traditional Irish cook from, where else, Ireland. 9700 N Rodney Parham Road. Full bar, All CC. $$. 501-246-4340.

LAYLA’S Delicious Mediterranean fare that has a devoted following. 9501 N. Rodney Parham Road. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-227-7272.

LD daily (close 5 p.m. on Sun.). 612 Office Park Drive. Bryant. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-8475455. LD Mon.-Sat. TAJ MAHAL Offers upscale versions of traditional dishes and an extensive menu. Dishes range on the spicy side. 1520 Market Street. Beer, All CC. $$$. (501) 881-4796. LD daily.

ITALIAN

GRAFFITI’S The casually chic and ever-popular Italian-flavored bistro avoids the rut with daily specials and careful menu tinkering. 7811 Cantrell Road. Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-2249079. D Mon.-Sat. RISTORANTE CAPEO Authentic cooking from the boot of Italy is the draw. They make their own mozzarella fresh daily. 425 Main St. NLR. Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-376-3463. D Mon.-Sat. ROCKY’S PUB Rocking sandwiches and a fine selection of homemade Italian entrees, including as fine a lasagna as there is. 6909 JFK Blvd. NLR. Beer, Wine. $$. 501-833-1077. LD Mon.-Sat.

ZAZA Here’s where you get wood-fired pizza with gorgeous blistered crusts and a light topping of choice and tempting ingredients, call-your-own ingredient salads and other treats.

5600 Kavanaugh Blvd. Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$.

501-661-9292. LD daily. 1050 Ellis Ave. Conway.

Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-336-9292. BLD daily.

LATINO

CANTINA LAREDO This is gourmet Mexican food, a step up from what you’d expect from a real cantina. 207 N. University. Full bar, All CC. $$$. 501-280-0407. LD daily.

JUANITA’S Menu includes a variety of combination entree choices — enchiladas, tacos, flautas, shrimp burritos and such — plus creative salads and other dishes. 614 President Clinton Ave. Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-372-1228. L Mon.-Fri., D Thu.-Sat. ROSALINDA RESTAURANT HONDURENO A Honduran cafe that specializes in pollo con frito tajada. 3700 JFK Blvd. NLR. No alcohol, No CC. $-$$. 501-771-5559. LD daily.

TACO MEXICO Tacos have to be ordered at least two at a time, but that’s not an impediment. These are some of the best and some of the cheapest tacos in Little Rock. 7101 Colonel Glenn Road. No alcohol, No CC. $. 501-4167002. LD Wed.-Sun. www.arktimes.comAPRIL April 2012 47 www.arktimes.com 4,4,2012 39

Your Life. Your Style.

Come see what’s new for spring at The Promenade at Chenal. Browse a fabulous collection of stores filled with the latest fashions, hottest electronics, pampering services and more. Enjoy an array of restaurants and entertainment in one inviting location.

St. Vincent West Family Health Fest Saturday, April 14 • 10am – 2pm

FREE Event!

Bring the family and celebrate health! Get advice on exercise and healthy eating habits. Sample low-fat options from The Promenade at Chenal restaurants. Hear from St. Vincent experts on immunizations, heart health, breast cancer and more. Visit ChenalShopping.com for details.

• Ask the expert • FREE health screenings • Fun games, giveaways and prizes

Apple | J. Crew | Kenneth Edwards Fine Jewelers | Flirt Crazy 8 | Anthropologie | W by Azwell | Nike Factory Store Ya Ya’s Euro Bistro | Charming Charlie | Bravo! Cucina Italiana Chenal 9 Theatres with IMAX | & Much More

Chenal Parkway | Little Rock ChenalShopping.com