Arkansas Times - July 19, 2018

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3

COMMENT

Misleading

The highway department held a “public hearing” on July 12 at the Wyndham Hotel in North Little Rock about revised plans for Interstate 30 expansion. The options were called “action alternatives.”

It seems only a handful of special interests have anything to gain from I-30 expansion.

Anthony Newkirk North Little Rock

From the web

Mary Machen Boyce

From the web In response to the July 12 article “Rescue, rehab, repeat” about the Humane Society of Pulaski County:

South just want perfect pets. I can’t think of any other stupid reason as to why so many buy their dogs from breeders, when if they educated themselves just a little bit they would realize that this is the worst thing that they could do. Breeders, especially in Arkansas, are, at best, bad. And the worst? Arkansas is one of the all-time favorite states for puppy mills. Please adopt and save a life! And for God’s sake, at least spay and neuter your pets!

Randa Rives Fergus

There were many colorful posters about these action alternatives and eager In response to the July 12 cover story I have had the privilege of fostering representatives standing near them to “The Greatest Dog: Rufus von Schmufus”: two of these special babies. Both were answer questions. Paper and pens were blind to one degree or another, and provided to people so they could comI know Charles and Rufus. To see older. They both were adopted into ment. Comments can be submitted online them work together is heartwarming. wonderful homes, albeit sadly in Chito ARDOT by July 27.

I’m so glad he won! cago. It seems that people in our lovely But having an “open house” (those In response to the July 14 Arkansas were ARDOT’s own words) without a Blog item “NRA used shell company to funformal presentation was a strange way to nel millions to elect Tom Cotton, others”: present important information at a key stage in the “30 Crossing” project. No There’s a reason for the Rotten CotARDOT or Metroplan board members ton tag. were introduced. wannabee conservative A timeline on one poster indicated that actual construction is slated to begin Your tag may be wannabee but not sometime next year. mainstream. What has this man done Eye-catching charts and maps with to deserve your tag other than serve technical jargon notwithstanding, the his country (two combat tours) and get “presentation” came down to guesstimates elected? I understand snowflakes cannot about what things might be like if a lane tolerate those with other views or tell it is widened, curved or whatnot. like it is having seen problems up close Our sister paper El Latino is Arkansas’s only Except for a poster here and there, and personal, but everyone is entitled to weekly – audited Spanish language newspaper. there was no detailed information about their opinion without being belittled for Arkansas has the second fastest growing Latino population in cost. The number $631 million is banexpressing it. The NRA may have thrown the country and smart businesses are targeting this market as died around, but it comes without detail. money at his campaign, but ultimately it they develop business relationships with these new consumers.

Three companies that are candidates for was the voters who elected him. So far contracts were listed on another poster. he has not expressed any views that I AD U N ID I S CO M T But a light rail system was not offered disagree with and I strongly agree with TR A m GR A S E E N U a n s a s .c o OZ D rk L A V .e ll a ti n o a as one of the action alternatives. many others.

Maybe one borderline. www Although a meeting notice was posted Razorblade 7 IÓN on the ARDOT website, why was the IC D 7•E EN 1 LUM event given minimal publicity?

A big, unreported story is why folks • VO 017 2 O Y E MA The main attraction of the meetlike DullRazor, who claim to be patri25 D ing was a long-awaited Environmenotic Americans, have thrown in with tal Assessment prepared by the Federal Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. I mean, Highway Administration in cooperation we know Putin has something on @ with ARDOT. The report followed federal DraftDodgerDonald and @DDT has regulatory guidelines. become Putin’s poodle/lapdog. But why An announcement came out early last would those who have claimed to be month about the 45-day period for memanti-communist like DullRazor sudbers of the public to examine the report at denly switch sides? Blind allegiance to the Main Library. A copy was also availPutin’s poodle @DDT? Comrade Dullable at the meeting for inspection — all Razor, can you explain that to us? three volumes of it, with a 123-page sumP.S. Rotten Tommy Cotton is the 4 .

PÁG NOS mary and 18 appendices running to hunNRA’s lapdog.

MEXICA ON LA YA NO S DE LOS El Latino is a free publication available at ÍA dreds of pages. (I didn’t have the time to Sound Policy MAYOR MENTADOS U INDOC 185 pickup locations in Central Arkansas.

3 count how many.)

1 .

G Á P AY: www.ellatinoarkansas.com Why are we being given such a short Mr. blade: What has traitor Tom RIAL D MEMO OS LATINOS D 9 SOLDA IERON EN Facebook.com/ellatinoarkansas 1 time to study such a big (and important) Cotton done? Absolutely nothing that T A S g COMB AS GUERRA L . Pá can be praised. He is more of a bottom S TODAS document?

O T PÁG. 2 Contact Luis Garcia today for more information!

VEN Of course, upgrades to public roads are feeder than an Arkansas River catfish.

E E D AR L 201 E. Markham suite 200 • Little Rock essential. However, a suspicious person If he did anything on the two tours A MAN (501) 374-0853 • luis@arktimes.com E might come away with the notion that besides push a pencil, got a political S RIO A things are being hurried along in order bronze star, how about publishing his D EN to do something at public expense that DD 214? A shame on Yell County, the CAL most people in Central Arkansas oppose state and nation. in the first place — that is, those who’ve You have been brainwashed. been made aware of what’s going on.

Going for the record

WE SPEAK SPANISH, DO YOU NEED HELP?

L! AL” A R T N E S C DO NATUR A S N A K AR EL “ESTA A S O D NI RE ¡BIENVREMACIÓN SOB INFO E A Í U G .e lla www

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JULY 19, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

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25 DE om •

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Record, you clearly don’t have a clue about Cotton’s accomplishments. Or perhaps because of your background you don’t comprehend the significance of his military service.

1. As a law school graduate he could have gone into the JAG Corps, probably starting as a captain. Instead he choose the infantry as a 2nd lieutenant.

2. He volunteered for the U.S. Army Rangers and graduated the Ranger Course. Earning a Ranger Tab is no easy task.

3. He served a tour in Iraq as a platoon leader with the 101st Airborne Division, leading a 41-man air assault infantry platoon in the 506th Infantry Regiment. Soldiers are not awarded the Combat Infantryman Badge for “pushing a pencil.” He also earned the Air Assault Badge.

4. Cotton served as platoon leader for the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment at Arlington National Cemetery.

5. He then deployed to eastern Afghanistan and was assigned at a forward operating base as the operations officer of a provincial reconstruction team, where he planned daily counterinsurgency and reconstruction operations. In both Iraq and Afghanistan, he served “outside the wire.”

6. His awards include the Bronze Star Medal.

Razorblade Adolf Hitler served on the western front during WWI, was wounded in an artillery attack, was gassed by the British and won the Iron Cross, Second and First Class. So what’s the point? tsallernarng

I have a lot of respect for Tom Cotton serving in the military.

I have no respect for Cotton serving as a member of Congress!

I have no respect for Cotton lying on behalf of President Trump regarding whether Trump used shithole or shithouse.

RYD

Clarification Last week’s cover story, The Greatest Dog in Arkansas, omitted photo credits for the cover and an inside photograph of the winner, Rufus von Schmufus, running. Both were taken

by Charles Zook.

Send letters or comments to arktimes@arktimes.com. arktimes.com JULY 19, 2018

5

WEEK THAT WAS

Suit seeks to block ballot measure

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JULY 19, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

amendment. It would be foolish to think those political considerations won’t have some influence on the legal decision-making.

being expanded with public dollars, in the form of a tax on hotel rooms, and private dollars. The foundation has not yet announced the amount of private support it hopes to receive.

Arts Center director quits Todd Herman, the executive director of the Arkansas Arts Center, is leaving the institution for a job at The Mint Museum in Charlotte, N.C. His departure, effective Aug. 10, comes as the Arts Center is about to embark on a $70 million renovation and expansion of the building, part of which dates to the 1930s. The Arts Center will close in the fall of 2019 for construction and reopen sometime in 2022. The collection of more than 15,000 artworks will be moved into storage and offices will be found for employees. Details on where programming, such as the Children’s Theatre and the Museum School, will be held are being worked out.

Laine Harbor, deputy director and chief financial officer, will act as interim director until the position is filled. The Arts Center, which is a public institution that receives support from the city of Little Rock, is

Work rule doesn’t work for 26 percent

BRIAN CHILSON

A lawsuit was filed last week in Pulaski County Circuit Court saying Issue 1, proposed by the legislature, should be removed from the November ballot because it unconstitutionally proposes four separate constitutional amendments to voters in one ballot measure and fundamentally rewrites the balance of power in the Arkansas Constitution without informing voters of the fact.

The ballot measure would 1) set a $500,000 cap on noneconomic damages in tort cases such as medical malpractice and nursing home negligence; 2) limit attorney fees to a third of net recovery in tort cases; 3) allow the legislature to enact court rules, a reduction of power given in the Constitution’s judicial amendment; and 4) lower the vote percentage necessary for the legislature to change a court rule from two-thirds to 60 percent.

Retired Pulaski County Circuit Judge Marion Humphrey of Little Rock is the plaintiff in the case. His attorneys are Jeff Priebe, David Couch and David Williams. Judge Mackie Pierce will preside over the case. Secretary of State Mark Martin, who oversees elections, is the defendant. The suit seeks no damages, only an order that the proposed constitutional amendment not be certified for the ballot and votes not be counted.

The lawsuit presents some problems for the Arkansas Supreme Court, which must ultimately decide the case. Chief Justice Dan Kemp in a recent speech urged lawyers to oppose Issue 1 because of the rulechanging authority. Justice Shawn Womack insists he has no personal opinion on the issue, but was a sponsor as a senator of legislative tort reform measures similar to those in the amendment. He could hardly be viewed as impartial. Should either of these justices recuse, Governor Hutchinson would name replacements. He’s on record repeatedly over the years in support of tort reform measures.

Millions of dollars have already been contributed by the powerful business lobby, led by chambers of commerce, nursing homes and medical interests, to get Issue 1 on the ballot and approved by voters. Opponents, particularly trial lawyers, have raised significant sums to fight the

TODD HERMAN: Leaving the Arts Center.

As anticipated, thousands failed to report sufficient hours under the new work rule put in place in the Arkansas Works Medicaid program at the beginning of June. Some 7,000 people, or about 26 percent of those who are subject to the requirement at this point, didn’t satisfy the reporting mandate.

It takes three months of noncompliance to lose coverage for the rest of the year. A court has struck down a work rule in Kentucky. There’s still some thought that a legal challenge could be in the offing in Arkansas.

Some of those who didn’t report might not have been able to figure out the online-only reporting system in one of the least computerready states in the country.

OPINION

The Malvern connection

I

f you read the daily newspaper or Say what? the Arkansas Blog you might have Here’s some of seen reporting on activities of the the story.

Arkansas Teacher Retirement System.

S t e v e F a r i s , MAX BRANTLEY maxbrantley@arktimes.com Under the leadership of former another Malvern state Sen. George Hopkins of Malvern, homeboy who sucit has taken a role as plaintiff in about ceeded Hopkins in the Senate, introa dozen class-action lawsuits alleging duced the Labaton firm to ATRS in bad work by investment companies.

2007. He made the introduction on The practice came to light when a behalf of a friend, Tim Herron, who federal judge in Massachusetts com- works in Chargois’ law firm. missioned a special report that looked Herron worked in Arkansas, too. into attorney fees in one of the suits. His uncle, Gordon Powell, worked It produced a $300 million settlement for the House of Representatives durwith State Street Corp. (including $40 ing sessions. Powell also was board million for ATRS) and $75 million in president for Central Arkansas Teleattorney fees for the Labaton Sucha- phone Cooperative in rural Hot Spring row firm of New York, among others. County, outside Malvern. Faris was Belatedly, the judge learned Laba- employed there for a time as manager. ton had paid $4 million to a Texas Hopkins was the co-op’s legal counlawyer, Damon Chargois, as a “finder’s sel. Paul Doane was ATRS leader at fee” in the case. The judge’s eyebrows the time of first Labaton contact, but were raised by the likes of this note after Hopkins took over in 2008 the to Labaton from Chargois: class-action cases multiplied. Hopkins “We got you ATRS as a client after told the judge he’d gotten encourageconsiderable favors, money spent and ment from political leaders, includtime dedicated in Arkansas ... ” ing the governor’s office, to enter the

No sense of decency

J

uly 16 had all the attributes of the day when Donald Trump approached that “tide in the affairs of men” where they take the fateful step that leads on to either good fortune in life or misery. Good fortune, you sense, is not going to be the outcome this time.

It was the day that the president, with his own countrymen and the rest of the world watching, took the side of America’s biggest and oldest enemy against the institutions of his own government and some of the country’s proudest history. He fawned over the world’s most cunning tyrant and savaged modern American presidents going back indefinitely — to ... Reagan, Carter, Kennedy, Truman? They were mainly to blame for bad relations with Russia that he and his great chum Vladimir Putin were now going to fix. He had spent the previous five days denouncing his predecessors in the White House, America’s allies and

the global institutions the United States had created to preserve peace, democracy and freedom.

ERNEST A certain segDUMAS ment of the country has always found the candidate’s and president’s assaults on institutions and political and cultural leaders as invigorating and brave, but a week of wild episodes on the European stage seems somehow different.

It may not be reflected much in the tracking polls for a while, but there is a dawning recognition that the wouldbe leader of the free world is never what he claims — a “stable genius,” a world-class bargainer who outsmarts everyone, a shrewd man who knows history, business, economics and government like no one before him. He has finally exposed himself as none of those things, but a showman who

cases. Chargois apparently got fees in government committees, including the at least nine of them. It was perceived Arkansas Lottery Commission. After undercompensation in some cases that his tenure in the Senate and despite led to his email complaint to Labaton. being a Democrat, Faris was hired by The political involvement with Republican Michael Lamoureux to be Arkansas doesn’t end at George Hop- his right-hand man when Lamoureux kins’ door. The Labaton firm, Chargois, was Senate president pro-tem. Note: Herron and Hopkins and his wife con- While in the legislature, Lamoureux tributed tens of thousands of dollars was on the payroll of a political orgato the political campaigns of former nization and a phone company with State Treasurer Martha Shofner. She legislative agendas. He served briefly served then on the ATRS Board, which as Govermor Hutchinson’s chief of took votes on hiring law firms. staff, perhaps influencing HutchinThe Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s son’s appointment of Faris to the Chad Day reported in 2013, shortly Arkansas Public Employees Retirebefore Shofner went to prison for tak- ment System Board. Lamoureux has ing kickbacks from a bond salesman, since become a lobbyist and it’s also that Herron had provided an apart- been disclosed that he figured in the ment to Shofner rent-free for about long list of legislators who helped ship four years. The reporting then indi- state money (unconstitutionally) to cated Faris had hooked Herron up the corruption-enmeshed Preferred with Shofner.

Family Healthcare and affiliates.

Faris is something of the Zelig of A related tidbit: In 2012, eight memArkansas politics. I met him first as bers of the Labaton firm contributed gatekeeper for Secretary of State Bill $500 each to a successful candidate McCuen, who would die in prison for state legislature in Arkansas. His while serving a sentence for public name? David Kizzia. Hometown? Malcorruption. Years later, as a Senate vern. staff nabob, Faris landed a pied a Must you pay to play in Arkansas? terre in a converted steam plant on To quote what President Trump said the Capitol grounds set up during the of Vladimir Putin’s disavowal of elecMcCuen era. tion interference: The denials from all Faris has won seats on all sorts of involved are “extremely strong.”

is not adept at much of anything.

A few American leaders before Trump have faced the foredoomed moment in their affairs that Brutus captured in “Julius Caesar.”

For Joseph McCarthy, it came during the televised Army-McCarthy hearings on subversion in the officer corps in 1954 when the blundering senator attacked the patriotism of a young lawyer who had joined the firm of the Army’s attorney, Joseph Welch.

Welch finally cut him off with the famous rejoinder: “Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” McCarthy’s great popularity collapsed and soon afterward Sen. John L. McClellan of Arkansas led a walkout of Democratic senators from the hearings and Sen. J. William Fulbright sponsored a resolution that censured him and ended his career.

For Richard Nixon, it came the day that Judge John J. Sirica read from the bench a presentencing letter from James W. McCord Jr., who said he and the other convicted Watergate burglars had been pressured from the

White House to plead guilty and perjure themselves about the involvement of higher-ups in the break-in.

Sirica told the convicted burglars he would reduce their sentences if they revealed the roles of the higher-ups.

The revelations cascaded and the jig was up for the president.

Trump may never face that moment, but his monstrous deception about Russian interference in American elections and global conflicts put his army of reluctant defenders, including all six members of Arkansas’s congressional delegation, in impossible straits.

They had to issue statements denouncing his stands.

Although the Justice Department alerted him before he left for Europe, it is almost certain that Trump never read the detailed indictments of the 12 Russian officers who directed the infiltration of computers of national Democratic organizations and election systems in key states to affect the election of the president and members of Congress. Trump counts on Republican voters not reading them either, but a degree of knowledge is unavoidable.

Trump had promised to bring up the election interference, as he did

Follow Arkansas Blog on Twitter: @ArkansasBlog

CONTINUED ON PAGE 29 arktimes.com JULY 19, 2018

7

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Outmatched

I

t’s almost proverbial to say that every a freakish politibully is a coward at heart. But that’s cal accident, but wishful thinking. In politics, many they’re beginning strongmen are like Vladimir Putin: ruth- to wonder. Asked less, cunning and sadistic. As the world by CBS News to witnessed in Helsinki, a posturing blow- list A mer ica n GENE hard like Donald Trump is simply no foes, Trump’s first LYONS match for the Russian dictator. choice was “the Faced with a real thug, the trust-fund European Union.” poser cowered.

As for the farce in Finland, Sen. John Thankfully, Putin is also a bloody- McCain (R-Ariz.) put it succinctly: minded realist. Because the disgraceful “Today’s press conference in #Helsinki was spectacle of Trump belittling America’s one of the most disgraceful performances NATO allies, lying about it, and then cring- by an American president in memory. The ing before the Russian dictator might oth- damage inflicted by President Trump’s erwise tempt him to do something reckless. naivete, egotism, false equivalence, and If the U.S. president is weak, the Western sympathy for autocrats is difficult to caldemocracies are still far stronger than culate. But it is clear that the summit in Russia. But events are definitely moving Helsinki was a tragic mistake.” in Putin’s direction.

Former CIA Director John O. Brennan Breaking up NATO and the European tweeted: “Donald Trump’s press conferUnion has been the goal of Russian for- ence performance in Helsinki rises to & eign policy as long as those alliances have exceeds the threshold of ‘high crimes & existed. Trump has done everything he misdemeanors.’ It was nothing short of can to help. If he’s ever done one single treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comthing to make Putin unhappy, it’d be hard ments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket to say what it was. of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are Protesters in London took pains to say you???” they marched not because they dislike Hiding in the face of Trump’s high poll America, but because they love it. Trump’s numbers among the GOP base is where. visit to Britain began with a classic dem- Even the normally sycophantic Newt Ginonstration of his intellectual dishonesty. grich, however, said Trump had made “the First Trump gave an interview to the most serious mistake of his presidency.”

Sun — a London tabloid owned, like Fox Other Republicans made similarly cauNews, by Rupert Murdoch — trashing tious noises. Alas, it’s safe to say they’ll be Prime Minister Theresa May as weak and back on Team Trump within days. stupid. After that backfired, he praised Asked how he could take the Russian her leadership and denounced the Sun dictator’s word over his own intelligence as “fake news.” The newspaper then pub- director, Dan Coats, Trump said, “I don’t lished the entire audio recording of its see any reason why it would be” Russia. In interview with Trump, proving that its short, he hasn’t read the actual intelligence original story was completely accurate. assessments. That’s probably because he In the U.S., Trump followers routinely can’t. The president appears semiliterate swallow such lies whole. Disbelieving the at best, unable to parse detailed evidence. plain evidence of one’s senses is essential So he falls back on bluffing and play-acting. to political cults.

So now he says he misspoke. Yeah, right.

Brits, however, definitely noticed. Polls But why Russia? Why Putin, the head of there show disapproval of Trump at 77 per- a gangster state that invades its neighbors, cent, rivaling even Putin himself, whose shoots down domestic airliners, murders operatives are believed to have poisoned journalists and political rivals and assasEnglish citizens with nerve gas. Many sinates people in foreign countries with thousands marched in London, Glasgow radiation and nerve gas? and elsewhere, protesting Trump’s visit. A New York’s Magazine’s Jonathan Chait balloon float depicting Trump as an angry, makes an exhaustive and quite plausible diapered toddler was everywhere. case that Trump’s a kind of Manchurian The Washington Post’s invaluable for- Candidate whose suspect ties with Ruseign affairs columnist Anne Applebaum sia date back to 1987. He wrote, “ ‘Russians worries that “eventually, this dislike may make up a pretty disproportionate crosscoalesce into a more generalized anti- section of a lot of our assets,’ said Donald Americanism.”

Jr. in 2008. ‘We don’t rely on American Such misgivings are common among banks. We have all the funding we need America’s democratic allies. Most would out of Russia,’ boasted Eric Trump in 2014.” like to think that Trump’s presidency is Case closed? Not yet.

Party with the stars At Best of Arkansas: Hollywood Nights.

I

t’s been so long since the Arkansas Times celebrated the winners of our annual readers survey of the best people, places and things in Little Rock and beyond, no one here can accurately put a date on it. We’re getting old. But not too old to know that it’s time to revive the shindig in the splashiest way possible.

So, in that spirit, make plans to attend the Best of Arkansas: Hollywood Nights party on Thursday, July 26, presented by datamax. Why should you come? Let us count the reasons: 1) It’s a celebration of your favorite everything, as voted on by you in our COME AS YOU AREN’T: Costumes are readers survey, so you’ll have the oppor- encouraged; the bartenders from Loca Luna tunity to mix and mingle with everyone will be dressed as pirates. from your favorite artist, to your favorite jazz man, to your favorite chiropractor, to your favorite real estate agent. Just think reps dressed as the stars of “Sex and the of what you could learn if you come pre- City” making Smirnoff vodka and Bulpared to ask a lot of questions. Also, if leit Bourbon cocktails; Ciao Baci, dressed you’re so inclined, imagine the network- as mariachi gunfighters, serving Paloing possibilities! mas; Loca Luna folks saying “arrrr” a lot 2) The party is happening at the Albert in character as “Pirates of the Caribbean” Pike Masonic Center, the George Mann- and serving Black Pearl Punch made with designed mammoth Neo-Classical Revival Captain Morgan rum; and staff from Red building that occupies half a block at 712 Door channeling “Tombstone” and serving Scott St. Unless you knew the secret hand- a Johnny Ringo Old Fashioned. 109 & Co., shake and/or code words, for 90 years, Petit & Keet, Southern Table and others until 2014, the building and all its secrets will also be representing. were closed to you. So take advantage of 5) More about that food. Simply the this opportunity to get a peek inside and Best has gone whole hog with the theme: see what all the mystery was about.

It’ll serve Royale with Cheese Slid3) As you might’ve guessed, this is a ers (inspired by “Pulp Fiction”), Bubba themed party. You’re invited to wear cock- Gump Shrimp and Watermelon Ceviche tail attire (boring) or dress up as your (inspired by “Forrest Gump”), a “Nacho favorite movie character. If you’re having Libre” nacho bar, Fried Green Tomatoes, trouble coming up with ideas, here are a gazpacho shooters, potato sticks and all few suggestions: Willy Wonka, the scary sorts of gourmet popcorn. clown from “It,” Indiana Jones, Gandalf, 6) The Dizzy 7, featuring a three-man Ben Stiller’s character from “The Royal horn section and full rhythm complement, Tennenbaums.” does all the songs you like to dance to.

4) Admission — $40 per person or $75 When you’re not dancing, sponsor Southper couple; get tickets at centralarkansa- ern Branding will have mini-beach balls stickets.com — gets you a delicious menu all around that you can bounce around of on-theme food from Simply the Best and throw at your friends.

Catering (more below) along with a com7) The paparazzi will be out, natch. plimentary broad drink menu, including Colonial Wines and Spirits is sponsorbeer and wine from sponsor Glazer’s Beer ing the photo portion of the evening, so and Beverage and cocktails made from make sure you practice looking fierce at sponsors Johnnie Walker, Smirnoff, Tan- home in the mirror in the days leading queray, Crown Royal, Captain Morgan, up to the party.

Bulleit Bourbon and Baileys. Bar-tending Chris Harkins with Raymond James teams from local bars and restaurants and CHI St. Vincent are also sponsors. Get will be on hand, in costume, pouring spe- tickets now (centralarkansastickets.com); cialty drinks. They include 107 Liquor they’re limited! arktimes.com JULY 19, 2018

9

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10

JULY 19, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

hen you consider that about one-sixth of the NCAA Division 1 Football Bowl Subdivision coaching jobs turned over for the 2018 season, it is not that surprising that Chad Morris’ ascendancy to the job in Fayetteville has been somewhat beneath the proverbial radar. Morris’ modest 14-22 record over a three-season run at SMU plays some role in that, naturally, but his hiring was realistically obscured by splashier events (to wit, UCLA nabbing Chip Kelly, Nebraska getting its anointed golden boy Scott Frost and Texas A&M sending a Brinks truck to pick up Jimbo Fisher in Tallahassee).

Plus, Arkansas’s on-field product in 2016-17 was just so damned underwhelming. Changing defensive coordinators and schemes failed. Quarterbacks got drilled all the time. The team would fall bass-ackwards into leads in games but promptly lose those, and were blown out in a slew of others.

Morale, attendance and long-term confidence plummeted, all with the specter of Gus Malzahn feigning interest in coming back to a university that never had much use for him as a player or coach. Bret Bielema’s five-year reign was accordingly finished.

This is an oddly cyclical thing, too.

Amateurish numerology business notwithstanding, Arkansas football has been fiendishly consistent in one way: In years ending in 2 or 7, the Ozarks morphs into an inane epicenter of gridiron drama. What may appear to be novelty is really quite a pattern, and Morris needs to be mindful of it.

Let’s start with 1982, wherein Arkansas finished 9-2-1 with an Astro-Bluebonnet Bowl victory and a place in the Top 10. It was Lou Holtz’s fourth season of eight or more wins in six years, and he was revered by fans. So of course national politics became an unanticipated source of consternation for thenAthletic Director Frank Broyles: Holtz had dabbled in an unconscionable public defense of unrepentant bigot Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC), Arkansas ended up sinking to 6-5 in 1983, and Holtz was relieved of his duties in a move that Broyles would say later was a function of Holtz’s indiscretion.

To 1987 we go. Ken Hatfield nudged a little magic back into the program with the triple-option and with Greg Thomas being the first African American to serve as regular starting quarterback, but the Hogs were also getting

exposed badly against higher-level competition, including an ignominious 51-7 thrashing by Miami and a 2-point loss to hated Texas on the last play of the game. Both travesties unfolded before sellout crowds in Little Rock, and it was evident that fans and boosters were divided on whether Hatfield’s throwback methodology BEAU would ever produce WILCOX sustained success. The Hogs went 10-2 in 1988 and 1989, but two empty trips to the Cotton Bowl cemented Hatfield’s fate and he made tracks for Clemson, a decision again influenced by Broyles’ perceived lording over the program.

The 1992 season was the Razorbacks’ first as a member of the Southeastern Conference, and the bold decision looked like an immediate gaffe when I-AA (now FCS) The Citadel marched into Fayetteville that September to knock the Razorbacks off in the opener.

Hatfield’s successor, Jack Crowe, was an immediate casualty the next afternoon. Arkansas bravely limped through the rest of that inaugural year with interim head coach Joe Kines, but Broyles thought he found someone suitable for the enhanced competition when he hired Danny Ford, who had guided Clemson to a national title a decade earlier. Ostensibly, Ford was the most proven commodity that Arkansas had ever hired to be its head coach.

Well, five years later (seeing a pattern?), Ford had long worn out his welcome. He seemed utterly disinterested in being the head coach after his 1995 upstarts made a surprising run to the SEC Championship Game, shepherding the 1996-97 squads to only eight total wins and a passel of one-sided losses, and notably forgetting the names of players during his painful excuse for a coach’s TV show. A search committee was dispatched in the wake of Broyles’ decision to fire Ford, and a curious, controversial outcome — the hiring of one-time jilted Hog quarterback Houston Nutt, author of one unremarkable season at Boise State — was the result.

Nutt put an immediate charge into the program by getting some downtrodden upperclassmen to come back in 1998 with an enthusiastic approach, and it paid off … for a while.

By 2002, Nutt was fighting for his job. The Hogs had a listless 6-6 campaign in 2000 that ended with a thud in CONTINUED ON PAGE 28

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THE OBSERVER NOTES ON THE PASSING SCENE

Field trip

A

fter plentiful false starts and failures, “We’ll do it next year” years and “Screw it, let’s go to the beach” years and years when the financial situation around The Observatory conspired against Yours Truly and our inky wretch’s salary, The Observer and Co. are finally going to make it to Washington, D.C. The plane tickets are bought, the videos on how to use the Metro have been viewed, the luggage has been weighed, and our hotel, a little place close enough to the Folger Shakespeare Library to dang near throw a copy of “King Lear” and hit it, has been booked.

It’s Junior’s trip, really, the only thing he wanted as a graduation present upon matriculation from mighty Central High: to walk the halls of the Smithsonian and the grass of the National Mall, to stand in the shade of the Washington Memorial and the long shadow of Lincoln, to stroll the streets and sidewalks where his heroes once worked for a better tomorrow and villains conspired after baser alloys. That said, it’s also quite a thrill for Junior’s Old Man, who has dreamed of making it to D.C. since we were but a lad growing up in the darkest heart of Arkansas. It’s kind of a dumb dream, come to think of it, given that there’s direct flights to D.C. outta Little Rock every day, and the money has — for all our poor shouting — sometimes been there over the years. But it is and has been our dream unrealized. That’s strange to say, come to think of it, given that The Observer has actually been to D.C. before, back in January 2013, when we attended and reported on the inauguration of the last American president we could bring ourselves to call “president,” a kind and thoughtful and earnest man who was clearly much, much better than this nation ever deserved, given his pitiful successor. From Top Fiver to Absolute Worst in just four years! It’s a twist we hope doesn’t flower into a twist ending, friends. Keep your fingers crossed.

On that trip way back in 2013, we got to see history, of course, but not much more than that; just the inside of a sweltering bus for hour upon hour, and the

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inside of a beige hotel room way out in the boonies where we ate chain pizza and showered off the road, and the gift shop of the Museum of Natural History, where we bought our lone souvenir of the trip. This time, we’re going to treat ourselves to the Grand Tour.

And so, we return. What will we find there, besides the Hope Diamond and Dorothy’s slippers, Archie Bunker’s chair and a half smoke at Ben’s Chili Bowl? What we hope to find was something we picked up a hint of on our last trip through D.C., though we had no sense of how important it was at the time.

The Observer, like many who read this column, has been beyond dismayed over the past nearly two years, shocked by the daily assault on decency and integrity. There are times when the icy pressure of it all has seemed to crush our heart into a lifeless lump in our chest. As we write this, the hashtag #TreasonSummit is trending on Twitter, the product of Current Occupant staging a performance in Helsinki that couldn’t have been any more humiliating before the world for America if Putin had literally been holding Trump’s leash.

Still, we need to go to D.C. because we need to see the things that stay: the White House and the memorials and the great libraries, all the things that will endure long after Yours Truly and Current Occupant are long gone, as they have endured beyond the mortal lives of heroes and villains alike in the past.

It gives The Observer quite a bit of hope to think that the Statue of Freedom will still be atop the Capitol dome long after this country has shaken off our dalliance with Idiocracy like a case of the fleas.

So we return, to walk the streets with the tourists and gawk at the national treasure house. Mostly, though, we return in hopes of having our reservoir of faith in this country refilled by the great edifices and the ideas for which they will long stand, in one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for some.

We’re working on fixing that last part with all deliberate speed.

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arktimes.com JULY 19, 2018

11

Arkansas Reporter

THE

A deeper dive into a wider 30 A look at ARDOT’s environmental report.

T

he public has until Friday, July 27, to comment on the Arkansas Department of Transportation’s 3,992-page Environmental Assessment of the impact of its plan to widen Interstate 30 through downtown Little Rock and North Little Rock. At that point, the department will respond to the comments and submit them to the Federal Highway Administration in hope of getting a FONSI — finding of no significant impact — so it can begin the $360.7 million project to turn the six-lane interstate into 10 lanes (or more at some points in its 7-mile length). The Federal Highway Administration could, instead, order the highway department to complete a more thorough Environmental Impact Statement. At any rate, the highway department expects to hear from the FHWA by mid-August. If the FHWA approves the EA and no one sues seeking to force an EIS, a design-build contract would be let and construction would begin in 2019 and be complete by 2023.

The highway department maintains that I-30 needs to be widened to lessen the traffic at rush hours and reduce crashes. The project, referred to as 30 Crossing, includes replacing the I-30 bridge, which was built in the 1950s.

The report, which can be found on ARDOT’s Connecting Arkansas Program webpage, says its “preferred option” — it considered several, though anything short of widening the highway to 10 lanes was never supported by ARDOT — is to add four “collector-distributer” lanes to direct traffic on and off of I-30’s six “through lanes” via “split diamond” intersections. That would move the on-off ramps now located between Second and Third streets to Fourth Street.

The “preferred design” — called the “6-Lane with C/D with SDI” — has changed since the highway department held public hearings last year. It now includes a four-lane Second Street from 12

JULY 19, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

Cumberland Street to Mahlon Martin Street as a “relief” road. Second would bisect the green space conceived under the previous design and supported by Mayor Mark Stodola.

With the on-off ramps at Fourth under the split diamond design, persons wishing to go downtown or to Highway 10 could turn right on Fourth, on a new westbound third lane; take the Texas U-turn from the C/D lane under the interstate to Third Street and take a left; or take the frontage road to Capitol Avenue (which would not be the best way to Highway 10).

The report says the preferred design would require the following 10 modifications in downtown Little Rock: • Fourth, now an eastbound one-way, lanes in both the northbound and southtwo-lane street, would become three bound directions. Project director Ben lanes between Cumberland Street and Browning said the widening would not the collector-distributer lanes emptying affect the Historic Arkansas Museum southbound traffic into Little Rock. One property on the block, but would take lane would be westbound and two would out the traffic island on Cumberland. be east bound. That would require the • Traffic signals may be required at the removal of 29 on-street parking spaces. intersections of Second with River Mar• A “Texas U-turn,” a one-way ket Avenue, Sherman Street and Mahlon U-shaped lane, would be added to allow Martin; Third with River Market Avetraffic on the southbound I-30 off-ramp nue, the Texas U-turn and Mahlon to direct traffic onto Third.

Martin; Fourth with River Market and • Mahlon Martin would be widened Rock Street; and Capitol Avenue and and converted from a one-way roadway the frontage road emptying southbound to a two-way, four-lane roadway. traffic from I-30.

• Second would be widened between The project will also require filling Cumberland Street and Mahlon Martin 28.6 acre-feet (28.6 acres one-foot deep) to provide two lanes eastbound and two of wetlands, 11.2 acre-feet in Fourche lanes westbound. Six on-street parking Creek and 17.4 acre-feet in the Dark spaces along Second and 12 on-street Hollow floodplain. The highway departparking spaces along Ferry Street would ment would mitigate the fill by building be removed. ponds at the I-40/I-30 interchange and • A new road would be constructed in other areas. between Third and Fourth streets east The report said the preferred design of I-30 to connect Collins Street with would “improve mobility on I-30 and Mahlon Martin. The new road would I-40 in the design year 2041 by improvbisect Little Rock Newspapers Inc. ing travel speed and travel time over warehouse property. both the No-Action Alternative and the • Cumberland between Second and 8-lane General Purpose Alternatives.”

Third would be widened to provide two The highway department sought to

ARKANSAS DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION

BY LESLIE NEWELL PEACOCK

DOWNTOWN LITTLE ROCK CA. 2023: The highway department’s latest plan calls for a four-lane Second Street as an alternative “relief” route to I-30.

reject the eight-lane plan outright, but was instructed by the FHWA to include it in its analysis. In the report, the highway department claims the eight-lane alternative would create a bottleneck on Interstate 40.

However, Metroplan, the federally mandated planner for Central Arkansas, said the 10-lane plan would create bottlenecks at every juncture with the other interstates I-30 intersects — 40, 630, 440 and 530 — because of what’s known as induced demand, the increased traffic that wider highways attract. Metroplan said to handle the induced demand and remove the bottlenecks would require an investment of $4 billion in highway construction in the Little Rock/North Little Rock metro area. Nevertheless, the members of the Metroplan board, including Stodola and North Little Rock Mayor Joe Smith, approved planning changes that would allow 30 Crossing to move forward.

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The plan also says the split diamond design “would provide an added benefit to pedestrians by the addition of sidewalks along both sides of 2nd St. from Cumberland St. to Mahlon Martin St. as well as a safer pedestrian crossing at President Clinton Ave. and LaHarpe Blvd.” and that the bicycle and pedestrian “accommodations would mitigate and minimize the adverse impacts resulting from the proposed project.”

Asked about the latter mitigation claim, Browning responded by email that “The project does not introduce any new physical barriers to pedestrian and bicycle movements. However, the project does provide some improvements for these modes. The improvements are not extreme because this is an interstate project and pedestrians and bicyclists are prohibited from using an interstate facility ... . The improvements are focused primarily in the opening up of the area under the interstate between President Clinton and 3rd Street, improved sidewalks and bike lanes on the 6th and 9th street overpasses, reconstructed sidewalk throughout the project, and new traffic lights that provide for protected pedestrian movements.”

The 30 Crossing project is part of ARDOT’s $1.8 billion Connecting Arkansas Program, funded by a 10-year, halfcent sales tax. That tax expires in 2023.

In an editorial in Talk Business and Politics, Highway Commissioner Alec Farmer talked about the need for more funds to maintain the road improvements built under the Connecting Arkansas Program. “When the CAP funding ends the Arkansas Department of Transportation (ARDOT) will be left with only regular annual highway funding, and herein lies the problem for our highway system going forward,” Farmer wrote. “Due to several factors, including more fuel-efficient vehicles, no highway user fee since 2001 and construction costs growing by more than 150 percent during the last 20 years, our annual funding now only provides enough revenue to maintain about half (or 8,000 miles) of our entire 16,400mile state highway system ... .”

Farmer said without new money, options would include “converting selected highways into gravel roads, reducing the level of design, and requiring capital improvement projects to include local funding.”

THE

Inconsequential News Quiz:

Best Republican BIG The Money Can Buy PICTURE

Edition

$

Play at home, while praying for the profoundly unhappy souls of Merkin Fork, Ark. 1) A new report by Politico makes plentiful mention of U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas. What’s the report about?

A) The Bronze Star Medal Cotton claims he received while in the Army is actually made of foil-wrapped chocolate.

B) He’s the prime suspect in a series of snatch-and-grab birthday cake robberies in the D.C. area.

C) A two-month analysis of Cotton’s public speeches and statements by IBM’s “Watson” artificial intelligence supercomputer recently revealed that Cotton is just as big of an asshole as you suspect he is.

D) The National Rifle Association used a secret shell company to pump $19 million into a 2014 effort to flip three U.S. Senate seats from Democrat to Republican, including the seat Cotton won that year from incumbent Mark Pryor.

2) The news site Buzzfeed recently reported that Arkansas retail giant Walmart has received a patent for a new technology that critics say could have an adverse effect on Walmart employees.

What is it?

A) Transparent Plexiglas toilet stall walls in all bathrooms.

B) Walmeth, a product that makes Walmart employees work like mad and completely forget about their poverty-related hunger pains.

C) The Waltonizer, a brain ray that makes billionaires realize they’ve got at least 100,000 things to spend their money on OTHER than gutting the public education system.

D) An audio surveillance system that constantly records sounds, including conversations, in the checkout line, with the proposed system being used to evaluate an employee’s “performance metric.”

3) The Washington Post recently reported on a federal civil rights lawsuit by railroad employee Adam Finley over the behavior of Matthew Mercado, a Walnut Ridge cop who pulled Finley over in December 2016. Which of the following happened during and after the stop?

A) Mercado refused to believe Finley worked for the railroad, even though Finley presented him with his employee ID and was driving a truck full of railroad maintenance equipment.

B) As seen in Mercado’s own body camera video, after escalating the situation, Mercado forcefully threw Finley against his truck even though Finley wasn’t resisting arrest.

C) When Finley tried to file a complaint against Mercado, he was charged with two misdemeanor counts, and — despite the video evidence that Mercado aggressively escalated the encounter — local prosecutors took the case to trial, a move that Finley said directly contributed to his divorce. Finley was later acquitted on both counts.

D) All of the above.

4) A city in Arkansas recently ranked dead last in a Gallup survey designed to measure quality of life in cities across America, with residents there reporting rock-bottom levels of satisfaction with their financial security, physical health, community life and socialization. Which Arkansas town was named the unhappiest in the nation?

A) Merkin Fork.

B) Dookburg (Go Fighting Turds!).

C) Rapertville.

D) Fort Smith.

5) Speaking of Fort Smith, its happiness score may soon be on the upswing, with a recent city board of directors vote to overturn a ban that’s been in place there since 1953. What banned activity had residents feeling anything but footloose and fancy-free until recently?

A) Reading and such.

B) Bothering Marshal Cogburn while he’s occupyin’ the jakes!

C) Colluding with Russians.

D) Dancing.

Answers: D, D, D, D, D

LISTEN UP

arktimes.com JULY 19, 2018

13

Little Rock, cut low

The capital city lands on a ranking of the worst cities in the country.

BY LINDSEY MILLAR

14

JULY 19, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

BRIAN CHILSON BRIAN CHILSON

D

id you hear that Little Rock is one of the “50 worst cities to live in”? That’s what a list USA Today published last month said. The capital city is “the worst city to live in in the state and one of the worst in the country,” said the report, which was compiled by the website 24/7 Wall Street. The article placed Little Rock at No. 19, between Compton, Calif. (No. 20), and Gary, Ind. (No. 18). Detroit was atop the list — or on the bottom, from the city’s perspective — and Fort Smith was ranked 50th worst, but only because Las Vegas, the previous No. 50, pointed out a data error that got it removed from the list.

The technical term for these rankings in the world of statistical analysis is “bullshit.” Those who make the rankings use imprecise data, or data imprecisely, to cynically manipulate people’s insecurities about the places they live. And the ploy often works. These meaningless numerical concoctions grab the attention of the public and, sometimes, elected leaders.

So it went in Little Rock, where news of our city’s ignominy didn’t make it here until last week, when the Arkansas Times published an online squib on the rankings. The Arkansas DemocratGazette followed with an online article that included a humdrum defense from Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola: “I invite 24/7 Wall Street to come down and experience for themselves our downtown renaissance, generous and welcoming people, natural beauty and comfortable way of life. In the meantime, we’ll continue working tirelessly to build an even better Little Rock.”

On arkansasonline.com, the Democrat-Gazette’s website, many commenters appeared to confuse the capital city with the bleakest version of Gotham City. From a commenter named Slak: “Napalm followed by bulldozers would clear out most of the violence and property crime. There’s nothing of value; burn out the filth, clean up the debris, get a fresh start.” Perhaps in response to Stodola’s statement, CartoonDude said, “It is terribly irresponsible to suggest people come visit your downtown without warning them to always travel in a group, avoid alleys, and NEVER be downtown after dark.” Hawk1945 wrote, “We will not even go to Little Rock if at all possible, because of violent crime.”

arktimes.com JULY 19, 2018

15

BRIAN CHILSON

ALSO THE BEST ‘SMALL’ CITY: That’s how business-seeking Resonance consultant ranked Little Rock.

‘MAGICAL NUMBERS’: That’s what Joel Best, the author of “Damned Lies and Statistics,” calls the basis of city rankings.

16

JULY 19, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

BRIAN CHILSON

Did you know Wally Hall, the Demo- that its best “small” cities ranking — “citcrat-Gazette’s longtime sports editor and ing many more data points than many columnist, occasionally offers trenchant ‘other’ studies” — found Little Rock to social commentary, too? In a brief note be a great place to live. And, oh, by the last week, he said it was hard to argue way, Resonance would love to provide with Little Rock’s selection based on consulting services to the LRCVB, like the “crime number and jobs” the article it has for Visit Fayetteville, Destination quoted (it didn’t quote anything about Cleveland and Travel Portland. On the jobs), but that USA Today obviously Resonance list, Little Rock was No. 23, didn’t take into account the Arkansas between Wichita, Kan. (No. 22), and River Trail, Dickey-Stephens Park or res- Greenville, S.C. (24). Honolulu was No. 1. taurants like Corky’s or Doe’s.

Leading with Honolulu, a large city “Little Rock tends to live better, for a with all the requisite cultural amenities lot of us, than its data indicates,” John and known for its beaches, at least passes Brummett, the daily paper’s centrist the eye test. The No. 1 city in which to political columnist, wrote in another reside in the “best” city rankings from column. But he also said, “The city and 24/7 Wall Street? Carmel, Ind., a wellothers like it — where significant minor- to-do suburb where my sister-in-law ity populations have been abandoned, and her family live in a lovely house in a isolated and neglected — deserve to be lovely neighborhood that looks remarkjudged with appropriate harshness.” ably similar to many other lovely houses Others pointed out that Little Rock and lovely neighborhoods nearby. It has has often scored high in other similar nice parks and a new downtown with rankings. After all, Movehub.com put it all sorts of New Urbanist flourishes, but at No. 86 in its global ranking of “hipster its proximity to Indianapolis is the main cities,” which it determined by count- thing it has going for it. ing the number of vegan eateries, coffee University of Delaware Professor Joel shops, tattoo studios, vintage boutiques Best, the author of “Damned Lies and and record stores per 100,000 residents. Statistics: Untangling Numbers from the Meanwhile, one publication you may Media, Politicians, and Activists,” said the have actually heard of, U.S. News and first time he became aware of city rankWorld Report, had Little Rock as the 38th ings was when he was living in Fresno, best city in the country last year.

Calif., in 1984, and a geographer ranked After the recent media flurry around Fresno last among 277 cities considered the USA Today article, Resonance, a in a “Places Rated Almanac.” consulting company that owns the webBest remembers that The Fresno Bee site bestcities.org, tweeted at the Little newspaper “got very excited” over the Rock Convention and Visitor’s Bureau low ranking, in part because Bakers-

field, Calif., near Fresno and widely seen, according to Best, as “a terrible place,” was ranked higher.

“There was a powerful feeling something was amiss,” he said, laughing.

The trend of ranking cities coincided with the rise of the personal computer and spreadsheet software. Anyone with those tools could assemble an index aimed at ranking various criteria. “It became a game of figuring out what statistics were available and cobbling them in some sort of ranking … and predictably you get a lot of [media] coverage from cities that do well,” Best said.

The internet made such lists ubiquitous. Turns out readers can’t get enough of rankings coated in a veneer of math.

Legacy media organizations, like U.S. News and World Report and Time’s

Money magazine, seem to promote their best cities and colleges lists ahead of everything else they publish — surely because that’s what generates the most traffic and, in turn, advertising revenue.

That appears to be the same business model for 24/7 Wall Street, the Delawarebased website behind the worst cities list in which Little Rock figured. It churns out more than two dozen stories a day, including many that rank things, and has syndication arrangements with Yahoo!

Finance, The Huffington Post, USA Today and more. Everything the website publishes is transparently designed to generate maximum traffic to sell advertising against.

Then there are sites, like WalletHub, that compile endless “studies” on cities they distribute to media in a marketingas-content strategy in hopes that people will read a story about the fattest cities in America (this year: Little Rock/North Little Rock) and remember the name “WalletHub” when they’re looking for a site to help with personal finance.

The connective tissue among the endless city rankings? “They’re absolutely

meaningless,” according to Best, who’s spent much of his career writing about innumeracy — the mathematical equivalent of illiteracy — and how statistics are misused and misunderstood. Like U.S. News’ and other groups’ best colleges lists, the city rankings fit into a category Best calls “magical numbers.” “[W]e often turn to statistics for their magical ability to clarify, to turn uncertainty into confidence, to transform fuzziness into facts,” Best writes in his book “More Damned Lies and Statistics: How Numbers Confuse Public Issues.” “These statistics don’t even need to be particularly good numbers. We seem to believe that any number is better than no number, and we sometimes seize upon whatever figures are available to reduce our confusion.”

24/7 Wall Street explains that its methodology includes statistics that measure crime, demography, economy, education, environment, health, housing, infrastructure and leisure. It’s impossible to truly dissect how the website arrives at its rankings because, unlike its peers, it doesn’t explain how it weights individual categories. (After responding quickly to a question about methodology, 24/7 Wall Street Editor-In-Chief Douglas McIntyre didn’t respond to a followup about how categories weighted.) But even if we could see how the website determines its scores, it wouldn’t lend any authority to its conclusion because there aren’t datasets that comprehensively track any of its chosen categories.

The data 24/7 Wall Street and all other list makers are using is a proxy for what they claim to measure, and it’s often a bad proxy.

Take the “leisure” category in the 24/7 Wall Street list. Part of the scoring claims to quantify the number of leisure activities nearby, but outside, a city. To account for that it adds up the number of zoos, nature parks, ski resorts and golf courses in the counties surrounding a city. That conception of how leisure time works might make sense for large cities that constitute most if not all of a county, but in a mid-size city like Little Rock, few of us would travel outside Pulaski County to do any of those things (because, sadly, the I.Q. Zoo in Hot Springs is closed and Garland County is not immediately adjacent to Pulaski County). And why the seemingly arbitrary choice to track ski resorts and not beaches or lakes? Probably because the data on recreational bodies of water is messy or not readily available.

Even harder numbers like crime rates aren’t that great for determining how safe a city is. Crime isn’t uniformly distributed.

In Little Rock, what most of us would think of as violent crime is concentrated in the south and southwest parts of the city. In an interview, Mayor Stodola told the Times that about 60 percent of the violent crimes Little Rock reports are for misdemeanor theft of items valued at less than $1,000. For instance, in Stifft Station, where I live, it’s highly likely that, if I leave something valuable in my car and don’t lock it, someone is going to steal it. But it’s highly unlikely I’m going to be robbed or hit by stray gunfire.

“We’re like any urban city in the country; we have our challenges,” Stodola told

me. “But we also have our wonderful things we’re very, very proud of and we continue to work on all of them.”

The mayor has said he won’t seek reelection. So far, four candidates have filed to run to replace him: former Little Rock School District Superintendent Baker Kurrus, state Rep. Warwick Sabin (D-Little Rock), Little Rock banker Frank Scott and LRSD employee Vincent Tolliver.

Only Scott publically weighed in on the rankings, tweeting that as a Little Rock native it hurt him to see Little Rock place on the worst cities list. But, he said, a change was going to come: “I wouldn’t

be running for Mayor of #LittleRock if I didn’t believe in what’s possible for our city, and the path we can take to unite each corner, strengthen our infrastructure, create safer communities, and make basic quality of life essential for families and neighbors.”

And maybe that’s the ultimate takeaway from these endless rankings: They may not add up to anything, but, especially in an election year, there’s nothing wrong with getting provoked to debate all the ways in which Little Rock could be better.

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arktimes.com JULY 19, 2018

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Arts Entertainment AND

T

he resurgent popularity of vinyl records over the past 10 years shouldn’t surprise anyone.

Audiophiles vouch for what they call a “warmer” sound, and people are nostalgic for 12-by-12-inch artwork. Cassettes don’t usually hold the same kind of nostalgia — especially for people raised on LPs — but Joey Lucas fell in love with cassette tapes at an early age.

“I remember my mother taking me to get my first tape. I didn’t have a record player, but I had a tape player and there were just so many more tapes than records at the time,” Lucas said. Now, he’s carved out a niche for himself in the small-butmighty cassette industry, where the demand for physical media means that cassette manufacturers, like Nashville’s National Audio Co., actually operate with a backlog.

Lucas lives in Little Rock and operates a T-shirt store in Sheridan called Royal Blue T-shirts. Growing up here in the early ’90’s, Lucas was introduced to punk music. “My first tape that I bought on my own was at Been-Around [Records] and it was Misfits’ ‘Walk Among Us’ on cassette, and it kinda blew my mind.” Hearing it, Lucas said, was game-changing. “I had no idea who they were, I just saw a girl at school wearing the T-shirt and thought ‘She’s cool, she looks fun, I’ll buy that tape.’ ” Like a lot of blossoming punk fans, Lucas found his flock in junior high school, going to shows at Vino’s. “There were a lot of little cliques, and I was part of a straight-edge vegan group of friends in hardcore straight-edge bands, and hiphop, of course, was getting really big at the time. I remember when the first Wu-Tang album came out, ‘Enter the 36 Chambers,’ and I remember that being in my tape player constantly for a couple summers in a row.”

Years went by. And then, his business, Sleepcvlt, was born.

A friend introduced Lucas to “witch house” — Lucas likens the genre to “goth trap music” — and Lucas wandered around online in search of more. Often, the music he heard online wasn’t available as physical media, he said. “So I started making it myself.”

“I started out with the SoundCloud scene just because out of all the scenes that I was into, all the subcultures I was into, this is the only scene that didn’t have 18

JULY 19, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

VIVA CASSETTES! Joey Lucas of Little Rock’s Sleepcvlt talks tapes.

BY ANDREW MCCLAIN

GET IT ON TAPE: Little Rock’s Joey Lucas is part of a micro-industry breathing new life into an old medium: the audio cassette.

physical recordings of their music. It was all digital. I would ask these artists and they’d say that they’d never even thought about doing it. … I saw an opening and I saw how cheap it was to make cassettes, so I just went for it.”

SoundCloud has for several years been the dominant place on the internet for aspiring artists to post their music and

been instrumental in the rise of many of them. “SoundCloud rap” is considered a genre unto itself, despite the many variations within. So last summer, when SoundCloud laid off 40 percent of its workforce, it shook the online music community and made plenty of artists and fans nervous that the startup might go the way of Vine/ the dodo.

In the wake of artists like Lil Wayne and Gucci Mane (whose own work ethic emphasizes quantity over quality), artists like Lil B have inspired a whole generation of younger rappers from around the world to embrace the disposable nature of internet rap and flood the web with countless releases. Many of those get written off as ironic and low-effort, especially to fans of classic hip-hop, but it’s led to levels of experimentation that people like Lucas appreciate as its own kind of golden age.

Mid-2000s emo and hardcore began to feed into so-called internet rap, birthing a wave of subgenres: goth rap, witch house, darkwave and plenty of others. That proliferation of — and overlap among — subgenres didn’t surprise Lucas. Memphis hip-hop outfit Three 6 Mafia, after all, was labeled “horrorcore” during the first half of its career.

“So who else have you put out on the label?” I asked Lucas. He answered by producing a small briefcase, which he placed on our table at Andina Coffee & Roastery downtown, unzipping it to reveal 21 cassettes. Labels on the cassette shells bore unfamiliar names with stylized spellings like “smrtdeath,” written in Disney lettering. Another, “MarcyMane and WifiGawd” appeared in a font instantly recognizable to fans of the “Grand Theft Auto” franchise.

The names are often tongue-in-cheek or self-deprecating, referencing other artists with the “Lil” prefix or “Mane” suffix. “This one’s pretty hot,” said Lucas, pulling a cassette out. “Lil Toenail — he was just in Noisey for having one of the most ridiculous rap names,” Lucas said.

“Probably the most contentious one is this guy Ghostemane. He’s like an occult rapper and also in a black metal band. Lotta weirdos follow him.”

Lucas is sympathetic toward the budding wave of emo rappers, saying they’re eroding some of the classic machismo of mainstream rap. “A lot of these SoundCloud rappers live a dangerous, contentious kind of lifestyle. Some of it’s selfdefeating, self-loathing stuff, [but] I’ve seen a big wave in hip-hop now where people are talking about mental health.

You know, it’s a big issue now, which, even 10 years ago, if someone was rapping about how depressed they were, they would have been booed or told to ‘man up’ or whatever.”

Suits might call it bootlegging, but creCONTINUED ON PAGE 28

ROCK CANDY Check out the Times’ A&E blog arktimes.com

Find great events and buy tickets at CentralArkansasTickets.com

A&E NEWS ARKANSAS NATIVE GARRARD CONLEY’S 2016 memoir “Boy Erased” has been adapted for film and the trailer — released this week — is already generating buzz as a potential Oscar contender.

Lucas Hedges (“Manchester by the Sea,” “Lady Bird”) stars alongside Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe as Jared, the gay son of a Baptist pastor in Arkansas whose family sends him to conversion therapy to “cure” him of his sexuality. The Focus Features drama, directed by Joel Edgerton (“Loving,” “Midnight Special,” “The Great Gatsby”) is to be released in theaters on Nov. 2. For more about Conley’s work, visit garrardconley.com and check out our Q&A with Conley at arktimes.com.

SIBLING RIVALRY PRESS, an independent publishing house based in Little Rock and devoted to works that “disturb and enrapture,” has added two local authors to its stable: Randi Romo and Kai Coggin. Coggin, an educator and poet born in Bangkok and who is based in Hot Springs, will release her third poetry collection, “Incandescent,” in 2019 on Sibling Rivalry. “Othered” is the first book

by Romo, described in the publisher’s announcement as “a working-class Mexican-American, Southerner, former farmworker, organizer/activist, female, parent, grandparent, elder, and survivor.” The book is also the first in Sibling Rivalry’s Arkansas Queer Poet Series. For more, see siblingrivalrypress.com.

A 600-POUND BRONZE SCULPTURE

BY ARTIST KEVIN KRESSE, “The Ground Breaker,” has been donated to UA Little Rock and installed in front of the university’s Engineering Technology and Applied Science (ETAS) building. The sculpture was commissioned by Jack Kinnaman, founder of Kinco Constructors, and depicts a muscular railroad worker driving a stake into the ground, an homage to Kinnaman’s father. Kresse, a 1984 graduate of UA Little Rock, called the new placement “wonderful,” adding in a press release: “It’s all very fitting that my very first bronze sculpture is now at the school where I learned to make bronze sculptures.”

THE WALTON ARTS CENTER in Fayetteville announced several headlining performances to kick off its 2018-19 season.

“Late Night Catechism,” Sept. 6-9, kicks off the season, followed by jazz ensemble Mwenso & The Shakes, Sept. 14; the acclaimed Jessica Lang Dance company, Sept. 20; the classical Zukerman Trio, Sept. 21; “The Pump and Dump Show: 2018 Parentally Incorrect Tour,” Sept. 22; and folk rockers the Indigo Girls, Oct. 2.

For details, visit waltonartscenter.org.

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arktimes.com JULY 19, 2018

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TO-DO

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BY STEPHANIE SMITTLE AND LESLIE NEWELL PEACOCK

THURSDAY 7/19

SATIA SPENCER & FRIENDS 7:30 p.m. Wildwood Park for the Arts, 20919 Denny Road. $15 donation.

There just aren’t many people in the state who could convince and charm audiences as the sniveling Miss Hannigan in “Annie,” then turn around and bring life to Gershwin’s “Bess” arias or to rich, complicated characters like Tony Kushner/Jeanine Tesori’s “Caroline” in “Caroline, Or Change.” Satia Spencer — Arkansas County native, former U.S. Marine, single parent, music educator and cancer survivor — is one of those people, and her polished, buttery mezzo never disappoints. What’s more, she’s a dynamo of physicality under the spotlight even when she’s not singing: I once watched her elicit a wave of guffaws and giggles as the longsuffering “Contralto” in a UA Little Rock Opera Theatre production of Tom Johnson’s absurdist “The Four Note Opera,” and all she did (in that particular moment, anyway) was pick up a chair and move it across the stage. If you haven’t caught Spencer with Praeclara or Opera in the Rock and you’ve got even an ounce of affinity for opera, jazz or musical theater, don’t sleep on this concert. Tickets, which support scholarships for students at Wildwood’s summer program The Wildwood Academy of Music and the Arts, are available at wildwoodpark.org or by calling 501-821-7275. SS

THURSDAY 7/19

RICHARD SMITH 7:30 p.m. The Joint Theater & Coffeehouse. $25.

MEZZO/MARINE: Mezzo-soprano Satia Spencer takes the stage at Wildwood Park for the Arts’ Lucy Lockett Cabe Festival Theatre on Thursday evening.

THURSDAY 7/19

ELEPHANTOM

At a tribute to the late, great Jerry Reed in 2014, Richard Smith shucked off his southof-London Beckenham accent to mimic Chet Atkins’ Tennessee drawl. The event’s host had asked Smith what exactly it was Atkins said to him when the two joined each other on stage at Her Majesty’s Theater, back when Smith was still an 11-year old guitar prodigy.

(It was: “Play me somethin’ I know, there, Richard, so I can back you up on it.”) That story wouldn’t get told so often if Smith’s duetting had ended in his boy wonder days, but the fingerstyle picker has spent the decades since dropping jaws with his near-photographic musical memory, flashy approach and flatpicking/thumbpicking hybrid technique — as one of three brothers in the Richard Smith Guitar Trio, as the guitar muscle in swing outfit The Hot Club of Nashville and in whirlwind duets with his wife, cellist Julie Adams. Here, he takes center stage as a guest of the Argenta Acoustic Music Series. See argentaacoustic. com for tickets. SS

9 p.m. Stickyz Rock ’n’ Roll Chicken Shack. $6.

You’ll have to hurdle a few search engine results pertaining to a charming children’s book of the same name, but go find Fayetteville’s Elephantom, a psychrock quartet whose technicolor guitar distortion and falsetto “oo-wee-oos” are ear candy for anyone who (secretly, of course) counts “Magical Mystery Tour” among their frequently-spuns. Perfectly, Elephantom’s set is paired with one from Move Orchestra, a trio of brothers who weave complex accompaniments with cinematic visuals, and an opening performance from experimental cellist Christian Serrano-Torres, a member of the wildly imaginative Rozenbridge, who self-describes as “classical to the bone with fire in his tone.” SS 20

JULY 19, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

THURSDAY 7/19-FRIDAY 7/20

48-HOUR FILM PROJECT SCREENING 7 p.m. CALS Ron Robinson Theater. $10.

Every year, aspiring local filmmakers plunge themselves into the blistering July heat for a weekend to patch together short films as part of the 48-Hour Film Project. They’re allowed to have a crew assembled beforehand and scout out filming locations, but must complete all creative work — writing, rehearsing, set design, filming, editing — in two days. And, just to make sure nobody’s been too quick on the draw with all that, competition rules require every team to insert the same excruciatingly specific elements into their films.

This year, all films must include a character named Danny or Dani Childress who is a “newbie” at something, a bicycle as a prop and the line “You are unbelievable.” Films from 21 Little Rock area teams were created July 6-8, and those will screen over the course of two nights at Ron Robinson, with a few finalists advancing to the “Best Of” screening Friday, Aug. 3. The film that wins “Best of City” in Little Rock for 2018 will climb on up the project ladder, competing for a chance at a $5,000 prize and a screening at the Cannes International Film Festival’s Short Film Corner. For details, check out 48hourfilm.com/en/littlerock. SS

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IN BRIEF

THURSDAY 7/19

FRIDAY 7/20

3RD FRIDAY ARGENTA ART WALK 5-8 p.m. Downtown, North Little Rock.

Friday’s forecast is for a cold front: It’s going to be in the low 90s! Brrr! Anyway, galleries and other venues off and on Main Street in Argenta taking part in the monthly after-hours Argenta Art Walk have AC, so art-walking should be fine. July’s menu: Matthew Castellano’s surreal line drawings go up at Laman Library’s Argenta branch (420 Main St.) in a show called “Echelon”; Greg Thompson Fine Art (401 Main) continues its annual “Summer Show” of fine regional art; Argenta Gallery (413 Main) continues Don Byram’s “Midlife Crisis — The First 60 Years”; and Core Brewery (411 Main) serves up the Latino Art Project’s “Pop Art.” Impressionist Barry Thomas will paint at his studio (711 Main). The Arkansas Regional Innovation Hub (201 E. Broadway) will offer up art-making opportunities, like T-shirt printing, pottery and more, and local artists will have booths inside Galaxy Furniture’s Artist Universe (304 Main). As the Art Walk winds down, the Joint Theater & Coffee Shop winds up its theater-goers with its comedy troupe’s “Birthday from Hell” at 8 p.m. LNP

Melody masters/indie icons Modest Mouse play at the Walmart AMP in Rogers, with Mass Gothic, 7:30 p.m., $40-$62. The Arkansas Travelers take a second run at the Springfield Cardinals, 7:10 p.m. Thu.-Fri., 6:10 p.m.

Sat.-Sun., Dickey-Stephens Park, $7-13.

Sworn In and Kaonashi take the stage at Vino’s, 6:30 p.m., $13-$15. New popcountry ambassador Adam Hambrick gives a concert at the Rev Room, with Bree Ogden, 8 p.m., $10. Comedian/ guitarist Chris Killian performs at The Loony Bin, 7:30 p.m. Thu.-Sat., 10 p.m.

Fri.-Sat., $8-$12. Podcast network Big Rock Switchboard hosts Arkie Pub Trivia at Stone’s Throw Brewing, 6:30 p.m., free. The Whole Famn Damily, Awkward Peach and Nathan Perry share a bill at the White Water Tavern, 9 p.m. Chuck Pack plays a happy hour set at Cajun’s Wharf, 5:30 p.m., free, or come later and catch Roxy Roca, 9 p.m., $5.

FRIDAY 7/20 Big Dam Horns fill every inch of Four Quarter Bar with boogie, 10 p.m., $7. Or, go straight for the trumpet with Rodney Block, Bijoux, J-Phil and more at South on Main for “Junebug’s Jam Session,” 9:30 p.m., $15. Sage/guitarist Alvin Youngblood Hart returns to White Water, 9 p.m., $10. Arkansauce brings strings to the Rev Room, 9 p.m., $8-$21. Pop provocateur/poet Halsey lands at the Walmart AMP in Rogers, with Jessie Reyez, 8 p.m., $30-$105. Rochester, N.Y., indie darlings Joywave blend dance floor synth with “Doubt” and other vulnerabilities at Stickyz, with Grandson opening, 8:30 p.m., $15.

Catch The Electric 5 at the Oaklawn’s Silks Bar & Grill, 10 p.m. Fri.-Sat., free.

“Blues from the ’20s to ’80s” are on the bill for Bluesboy Jag’s set as part of the Sounds of Unity concert series, with Ten Penny Gypsy, Unity of Little Rock, 2610 Reservoir Road, 7 p.m.

Rockers Hell Camino join Down n’ Dirty and Exit from Dark for a bill at Vino’s, 8 p.m., $5. Chris DeClerk kicks off the weekend with a set at Cajun’s, 5:30 p.m., free, and later, Buh Jones takes the stage, 9 p.m., $5. The Cody Martin Band performs at Kings Live Music in Conway, 8:30 p.m., $5, with an opening set from Amber Wilcox.

SATURDAY 7/21 ‘DOING THE WASH’: This painting by Theora Hamblett can be seen at Greg Thompson Fine Art at the gallery’s Third Friday Argenta Art Walk reception.

Amasa Hines joins Rozenbridge for a show in the North Forest at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, 7 p.m., $10. Elsewhere in Northwest Arkansas, The Cate Brothers break up their “semi-retirement” for a show in Basin Spring Park, Eureka Springs, 6 p.m., free. Fellow blues guru Akeem Kemp entertains in Conway at Kings Live Music, with

CONTINUED ON PAGE 23

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arktimes.com JULY 19, 2018

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BY STEPHANIE SMITTLE AND LESLIE NEWELL PEACOCK

FRIDAY 7/20

QUINTRON & MISS PUSSYCAT, GHOST BONES 9 p.m. Maxine’s, Hot Springs. $10.

In the 1950s, Ernie Kovacs and Edie Adams mashed up gorilla costumes, fake commercials and marionettes with Bartok and Prokofiev.

In 2018, Quintron and Miss Pussycat play their dance set with psychedelic hand puppets, an organ/synthesizer hybrid with headlights and a “light activated analog drum machine which creates murky, low-fidelity, rhythmic patterns triggered by the rotation of recycled #10 pizza sauce cans.” They’re the genre tinkerers and the absurdist provocateurs of a post-punk rock era, prone to injecting their performance art with splattered paint, murky allegory, driving backbeats and cameos from the likes of Helen Mirren and Taylor Hackford. As guests of Low Key Arts, Quintron (Robert Rolston) and Miss Pussycat (Panacea Pussycat, owner of the now-dormant secret New Orleans nightclub Pussycat Tavern), they’ll likely put the black box/red light aesthetic at Maxine’s to great use for the powers of weird. Add to that Houma, La., electro trio Crush Diamond and Ghost Bones, the fantastically spooky Hot Springs rock quartet whose twitchy sonic disposition makes a flawless opener for this art rock show. SS HIGH PRIESTESS OF PUPPETS: Quintron and Miss Pussycat take their performance art rock to the stage at Maxine’s, with Ghost Bones and Crush Diamond.

FRIDAY 7/20-SATURDAY 7/28

‘BIG RIVER’ Maybe it shouldn’t be surprising that the dude who gave us “King of the Road” and “You Can’t Roller Skate in a Buffalo Herd” made the melodies in “Big River” such memorable ones. After all, Roger Miller’s own hardscrabble upbringing and penchant for hitchhiking as a kid probably resonated with Broadway producers trying to soundtrack the antebellum sojourns of Huckleberry Finn and Jim, with its “considerable trouble and considerable joy.” It also shouldn’t surprise us that director Brandon Box-Higdem was eager to put it up in The Natural State after staging the musical for a larger space in Omaha, Neb.: The soundtrack includes a number called “Arkansas,” enslaved character Jim’s home state. And, as Box-Higdem said in a promotional video for the ACT production, programming “Big River” in a city where a racially divided history manifests itself so deeply — and so often — can be a challenge. “We’re not gonna shy away from this content ... . This is a part of an American history that we do need to hold a mirror up to and say, ‘Look, this where we came from. And this is part of our American fabric. But what are we going to do about that?’”

The stage adaptation of Mark Twain’s novel goes up at Argenta Community Theater with Payton Justice (“Huck”) — a musical theater student at Boston Conservatory — and Little Rock community theater scene mainstay Jeremiah James Herman (“Jim”) at the core. For tickets, head to argentacommunitytheater.com or call 353-1443. SS

JULY 19, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

THE BODY 9 p.m. Stickyz Rock ’n’ Roll Chicken Shack. $10-$12.

8 p.m. Fri.-Sat., 2 p.m. Sun., 7 p.m. Tue.-Thu. Argenta Community Theater. $20-$30.

22

SATURDAY 7/21

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Portland-based duo The Body are rolling back into town, and allowing sound extremists (and expatriate Arkansans) Lee Buford and Chip King to fill your ears with existential dread is pretty much the most appropriate response you could form to the political and economic trajectory of America circa 2018. With an arsenal of instrumentation that may very well rumble hard enough to shake any unsecured artwork from the chicken shack’s walls, The Body’s latest, “I Have Fought Against It, But I Can’t Any Longer,” evokes the tortured and morbidly world-weary sentiment from which it takes its title, a phrase from Virginia Woolf’s suicide letter to her sister Vanessa Bell. Joining the bill are Lingua Ignota, a project from classically trained vocalist Kristin Harter that blends noise and liturgy with themes of gender and violence, and Little Rock’s own Or, whose “A Funeral” should help ease the transition between the dying light of Saturday evening and the abysmal depths of sonic dysphoria. SS

I HAVE FOUGHT AGAINST IT, BUT I CAN’T ANY LONGER.: The Body shares a bill with Or and Lingua Ignota at Stickyz Saturday night.

IN BRIEF, CONT.

SATURDAY 7/21

JENNIFER CASE 7 p.m. 421 Main St., Argenta District, North Little Rock.

Donations.

A memoir might seem like an odd choice for a writer’s first book — unless you’re Jennifer Case, in which your own childhood and family history involves a “migratory adulthood” and a set of grandparents who ran a fishing resort in northeastern Minnesota. With promises of seldom-fished lakes and trackless woods, Sawbill Lodge attracted city slickers and nature lovers alike when it opened in 1935, and its legacy serves as the centerpiece for Case’s debut novel of the same name — a work as much about displacement as it is about place. In a passage excerpted on a nonprofit magazine called “Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built + Natural Environments,” Case describes the dissolution of the resort’s founding family, The Argobusts, and how “the location that was always meant to keep the family together failed — just as it would fail to keep my family in one place decades later, as much as I wanted it to.

Sawbill was not the center of a series of concentric rings,” Case writes, “but rather one stop along a string of locations and homelands. In my romantic visions of the resort’s birth, then, I must remind myself of its end — of the comings and goings that have defined it all along.” Case, now assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Central Arkansas and the assistant nonfiction editor of Terrain.org, reads here as a guest of the monthly Argenta Reading Series. Her passages will be preceded by readings from Rhett Brinkley and ARS Director Guy Choate. Show up early for lively conversation and box wine from 107 Liquor. SS

opener Taylor Hyatt, 8:30 p.m., $5.

Adam Faucett & The Tall Grass kick off a set at Four Quarter Bar, 10 p.m., $7. Amp Out Alz, a rock concert benefiting Alzheimer’s Arkansas, kicks off at the Rev Room, 7 p.m., $25-$75.

The Serenade for Cystic Fibrosis kicks off at 6 p.m. at Nexus Coffee, $8-$10.

Wayne “The Train” Hancock takes his “juke joint swing” to the White Water Tavern, with Scott H. Biram opening, 8:30 p.m., $15. Bad Cop, Elephantom and Move Orchestra share an inventive bill at Maxine’s in Hot Springs, 9 p.m., $7. The Woodpeckers get the dance floor going at Cajun’s, 9 p.m., $5; Richie Johnson performs earlier at 5:30 p.m., free. Punk rocker turned author Matt Mauldin reads from his book of poetry, “Patterns of Reconciliation,” 5 p.m., Kollective Coffee + Tea, Hot Springs, free. Beloved Ozark Family Band Big Smith reunites for a show at George’s Majestic Lounge in Fayetteville, 9 p.m., $20-$25. Seether gets loud at Magic Springs Theme & Water Park, with Vail, 7 p.m., see magicsprings.com for tickets.

SUNDAY 7/22 Revered/reviled comedian Carlos Mencia lands at The Loony Bin for a special engagement, 7:30 p.m, $23-$45. Get your head right on a Sunday night at “Boofed Out,” with sets from Yuni Wa, the Klubhouse collective, Phatte 400 and more, 8 p.m., Rev Room, $5. The Stardust Big Band entertains in the Crystal Ballroom at the Arlington Resort Hotel & Spa, 3 p.m., $10.

MONDAY 7/23 Poet Su-Lauren Wilson and others congregate at the White Water Tavern for Dive Bar Poets, 7 p.m.

TUESDAY 7/24 East Texas rocker Koe Wetzel mashes up twang and crunchy rock guitar riffs at the Rev Room, 8 p.m., $15.

Michael Burks Tribute Friday • July 27 • 7 p.m. • $10

CALS Ron Robinson Theater Hear recollections and stories by family and friends, followed by a live performance.

Tickets available at ArkansasSounds.org.

Genealogy Workshop

Saturday• July 21 • 10 a.m.-3 p.m. • Free CALS Ron Robinson Theater Genealogists of all levels are invited to sharpen their skills.

Libraries Rock!

Saturday • July 28 • 10 a.m. • Free

Hillary Rodham Clinton Children’s Library & Learning Center Enjoy a day of musical activities and games.

The Greatest Showman Sing-Along Version (PG)

Monday • July 30 • 6 p.m. • Free CALS Ron Robinson Theater Teens and adults, this is the moment you’ve waited for.

Terror Tuesdays Tuesdays • $2 • 6 p.m.

CALS Ron Robinson Theater July 24: The Vampire Bat (1933/NR) July 31: The Little Shop of Horrors (1960/NR) CALS Ron Robinson Theater is located on the Main Library campus, 100 Rock St.

CALS.ORG

WEDNESDAY 7/25 L.A. rockers Dorothy take “Flawless” and other rock anthems to the stage at Stickyz, 9 p.m., with Charming Liars, $17-$70. A cappella mind-blowers Pentatonix perform at the Walmart AMP, 8 p.m., $35-$160. Disney’s live-action “Beauty and the Beast” (2017) is last up on the lineup for the summer Movies in the Park series at Riverfront Park, sunset (8:17 p.m.), free. Locals Pissin’ Comets and The Phlegms team up with Duluth, Minn., band Hard Feelings for a punk rock show at White Water, 8 p.m.

LOCAL TICKETS, ONE PLACE

CENTRALARKANSASTICKETS.COM Follow Rock Candy on Twitter: @RockCandies

arktimes.com JULY 19, 2018

23

Dining WHAT’S COOKIN’

SAVE THE DATE: Stone’s Throw Brewing has started selling tickets ($5) to its fifth annual Block on Rock street party, a benefit for the nonprofit Preserve Arkansas presented by Arkansas Rice. The event, 4-10 p.m. Saturday, July 28, at Ninth and Rock streets, will include the first Collaboration Fest: Ales for ALS fundraiser, put on by Stone’s Throw, Flyway Brewing, Fort Smith Brewing Co., Rebel Kettle Brewing Co., the Water Buffalo and Buffalo Brewing Co. and Diamond Bear Brewing Co. along with Damgoode Pies. The entertainment lineup: The Big Dam Horns (all ages) at 5 p.m., The Creek Rocks at 7 p.m., and the Big Dam Horns with Arkansas Circus Arts at 8:30 p.m. The food will be provided by foodtrucks Hot Rod Weiners, Loblolly Creamery, Reggae Flavas, Slader’s Alaskan Dumpling Co., Luncheria Alicia, Desiacs and Pappy Jack’s Street Pies. There will also be booths featuring the artwork of Adrian Quintanar and representing the Arkansas Arts Center, the Central Arkansas Chapter of the Arkansas Archeological Society, Preserve Arkansas and Arkansas Rice. (Preserve Arkansas, which works to protect and educate Arkansas’s architectural and cultural heritage, is also throwing a fundraiser from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Thursday, July 19: “A Century at the Cornish,” a tour of the historic Cornish House at 1800 Arch St. with drinks and snacks.

Tickets are $51.60 through app.etapestry. com and include a chance to win a threenight stay at the house.)

NEWSFLASH FOR COLLEGE STUDENTS: Conway has just gotten a Freddy’s Frozen Custard & Steakburgers restaurant, at 820 E. Oak St. The restaurant seats 100 indoors and more on the patio. There is also a drive-through. Hours are 10:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 10:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Warning: The caloric content of each item is posted on Freddy’s menus.

MORE CONWAY DINING: Burge’s Hickory Smoked Turkeys and Hams, the Lewisville-born and Little Rock-beloved eatery (5620 R St.) also known for its catfish, turkey salad, potato salad and cherry limeades, has branched into Conway, at 405 Dave Ward Drive. The restaurant, in a new building, will seat 100 inside and 20 in a covered area outdoors; a private dining room will be added later. The Conway eatery will have different hours from the Little Rock restaurant: 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. weekdays and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday in Conway. (Little Rock’s Burge’s is open 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday.) Burge’s is owned by Jeff Voyles.

FRATELLI’S ITALIAN GRILL, at 1008 W. Sunset Ave. in Springdale, which has been open a little over a year, has applied for a license to serve beer and wine, owner Alban Vrellaku told the Times.

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JULY 19, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

THIS ROOT’S NOT SQUARE: Vegetable Cracklins, gnocchi and summer cocktails.

The Root’s the rage Just like Grandma’s house — if your grandma is Michael Pollan.

L

ofty aspirations to cook “just, been a problem for The Root since the sustainable” food and a dogged “community through local food” restaudevotion to sourcing ingredients rant last year expanded its operations to locally is risky business. For one include full-service dinners Wednesday thing, there’s the food cost; even if con- through Saturday on top of its daytime sumers are ethically predisposed to food counter service. By the time we meandered that packs more of a nutritional punch in, on a sunny, 93-degree Thursday evening, and less of a carbon footprint, how do the parking lot was overflowing. We were you convince families on a budget to pay offered a nook by the concave window a little more for a plate that’s bound to be opposite the counter/cash register area smaller? Then there are the cruel vaga- until a table in The Root’s newish dining ries of farming: Do you 86 the frisee and room —repurposed shipping containers — fennel when everything in your USDA opened up. After a few moments perched Plant Hardiness Zone up and bolted after in what was undoubtedly the “Order Here” a record-breaking, hot, dry June? Even if window back when the building housed you can navigate that delicate farm-to- the Sweden Creme dairy bar, we decided table supply chain without running out switching to a table might be a lateral move, of half your menu items and writing off and that we were perfectly happy to dine unsold proteins for the next day’s soup on barstools in the sunny windowsill, surdu jour, there’s perception with which to rounded by all manner of kitsch: a pencil contend: How do you execute the whole cactus, an antique coffee mill, a jar of shims mission without being uppity or preachy for steadying wobbly chairs, a giant aloe when diners’ expectations are unrealistic? plant in a vintage potato chip canister and As far as we could tell, none of that’s a view of the patio and the oversized, sur-

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realist singing vegetables painted on a wall outside. It’s the sum of all these decorative touches — once-functional items now relegated to tchotchke status — that charm at The Root, and that keep it warmly in Grandma’s house-and-gingham territory, never desperate or modish.

Presented with a mini-menu of specials and a list of desserts (which landed on our counter with a preface: “Dessert! Order it later, order it now, order it in the middle, whatever”), we opted for the Seared Gnocchi ($9) to start things off. Gnocchi reads as cold weather food, but done right — and it was — it’s pillowy light. The Root’s is a succotash-like dish handcrafted to showcase summer produce. The tiny dumplings, seared to a dark brown on one side, are situated in a light tomato-y glaze among Sungold cherry tomatoes and charred corn kernels. We couldn’t resist the oddball allure of the Vegetable Cracklins ($4), and you shouldn’t, either. In fact, we’d put the fried, slightly peppery veggie rinds in front of a dogmatic carnivore any day and challenge them not to like it.

Serving cocktails is new this year for The Root and the ones we ordered were a little long in coming, but when they turned up, all was forgotten and forgiven. The Hard Blackberry Basil Lemonade ($7)

BELLY UP

Check out the Times’ food blog, Eat Arkansas

BETTER THAN RUNWAY.

arktimes.com

The Root Cafe 1500 Main St. 414-0423 therootcafe.com Quick bite

Ingenuity in the preparation of plantbased foods is as advanced as ever and, in the right hands, ingredients like cashew nuts and coconut milk can work textural magic. That said, it’s rare that we come across a dish that makes us eye the “vegan” label with hard skepticism.

Count The Root’s impossibly decadent Vegan Chocolate Brulee ($6) among them.

It’s the non-dairy dish for any vegans who’ve ever found themselves dreaming of verboten heavy creams and expensive butters — a dark cocoa confection bookended by a pool of sweet blackberry compote and a stiff sheet of torched sugar (none of this barely torched, slightly bubbly nonsense). Do it.

Hours

7 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, 8 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Saturday, 9 a.m.-2 p.m.

Sunday, 5:30 p.m.-8:30 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday.

Other info

Beer, wine, cocktails, credit cards accepted.

was an icy Rock Town Vodka concoction with a crisp tang and a fuschia tint to it.

Imbibers looking for a heftier or sweeter cocktail might think the drink’s balance leaned too watery, but served in a highball glass like this, the hydration was refreshing.

The Heirloom Mary ($7) was a surprise, but pleasantly so: The Rock Town vodka, clarified heirloom tomato and vermouth concoction arrived looking more like a crystal-clear Aviator — a transparent, airy cocktail garnished with a tiny, tender pickled okra, another orange Sungold and a lemon rind spiral. Seven dollars is a steal for handcrafted booze but, if the 33 percent Arkansas liquor tax irks you or your wallet, consider the flip side of the drink menu: nearly a page full of nonalcoholic teas, kombuchas, coffees, sodas and freshly squeezed lemonades, some flavored with syrups from Pink House Alchemy.

In any other universe, we’d have chosen the Pork Carnitas with shoulder sourced from Rabbit Ridge Farms ($15), but this was post-Fourth of July and porcine fatigue had set in hard. So, sizzling weather be damned (yet again), we went for the Homemade Chicken and Dumplings ($13), a hearty

bowl of stew with speckled (whole wheat flour, perhaps?) flat-rolled dumplings and carrots. The complex broth and the combination of dark meat and shredded light meat suggested The Root probably uses the whole chicken expeditiously, and good on ’em. The salad alongside would be familiar to (and likely beloved by) anyone who’s lunched at The Root. Tangy dollops of homemade dressing and julienned zucchini (or jicama, maybe?) atop a pile of the darkest greens gave us something to munch on while the unbelievably hot bowl of dumplings cooled a little.

The star, though, was the Smoked Shiitakes plate ($14), two dense cornbread cakes topped with a vinegary purple hull pea relish and shiitake mushroom caps smoked to a deep caramel and countered with a hefty serving of braised greens. For those strongly averse to sugar in their cornbread, note this: These cakes are not for you.

They’re unabashedly sweet, with arguably more kinship to a Greek halva than a salty hot water cornbread cake.

We couldn’t help but notice a little confusion to the workflow. Perhaps because we opted to stay seated in the anteroom, or perhaps because the crowd boomed just after we were seated, several people — friendly as they were — seemed to be sharing serving duties, making for some confusion about what had been taken care of where, at which table. On the other hand, The Root’s owners, Jack Sundell and Corri Bristow Sundell, who wandered through about an hour before closing time to greet customers and check in on the place, would likely be pleased at the meal’s through line: The hive of activity inside and outside our window view, one that made good on the “community” bit of the cafe’s mission statement. As the crowd of diners swelled even further, a host ventured out to the patio garden to retrieve a sprig of spearmint, an old man beaded with sweat sidled through the parking lot shielding his bald head with a wet towel, a woman approaching a sixtop on the patio looking for the restaurant entrance was met with a chorus of directional fingers extended toward the front (side) door, a ruggedly fit young man with a Hold Steady T-shirt sipped on a “Real” Coca-Cola out of a slim bottle and a young family at the next table tested flavors out on their toddler. It was proof that “In Defense of Food” author Michael Pollan was right: real food reaches “back to the land and outward to other people.”

ARKTIMES.COM

The Reverend Horton Heat w/ the P47’s

Monday,August 06, 2018 • 8:00PM

The Reverend Horton Heat will be returning to North Little Rock. Doors open at 6pm. Set-times will be announced! $25 Pre-sale Tickets • $30 Day of Show

Go to CentralArkansasTickets.com to purchase these tickets - and more!

Get Tickets Today!

centralarkansastickets.com

Open until 2am every night!

415 Main St North Little Rock • (501) 313-4704 • fourquarterbar.com

TOAST TOWN OF THE

FINALIST

arktimes.com JULY 19, 2018

25

MOVIE REVIEW

UPCOMING EVENTS JUL 19-22 26-29

The Studio Theatre The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas Argenta Community Theater Big River: A Night at Argenta Community Theatre for Wolfe Street

JUL

19 26

Albert Pike Masonic Center Best Of Arkansas 2018: Hollywood Nights

JUL 27-29 AUG 3-5, 10-12

The Weekend Theater Bare

JUL

AUG

Four Quarter Bar The Reverend Horton Heat

6

Skoggang In ‘Leave No Trace,’ exile’s not for everyone.

BY GUY LANCASTER

Turner-Ledbetter House QQA Summer Suppers: Turner-Ledbetter House

AUG

18

The Studio Theatre Opera In The Rock presents SOUVENIR: a Fantasia on the Life of Florence Foster Jenkins

AUG

17 & 19

Go to CentralArkansasTickets.com to purchase these tickets and more!

Arkansas Times new local ticketing site!

If you’re a non-profit, freestanding venue or business selling tickets thru eventbrite or another national seller – call us 501.492.3994 – we’re local, independent and offer a marketing package!

LOCAL TICKETS, ONE PLACE 26

JULY 19, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

A

s the novelist and historian land not yet brought into capitalist culVilhelm Moberg observed, tivation. We tend to view those outside traditional Swedish society, society with suspicion, something the despite (or perhaps given) main characters of “Leave No Trace” its penchant for social conformity, per- know well. Will (Ben Foster) lives with mitted individuals a form of voluntary his teenage daughter, Tom (Thomasin exile, marking them down in legal doc- Harcourt McKenzie), in Forest Park uments as skoggång (“gone to the for- outside of Portland, Ore. They gather est”). The vast Swedish wilderness of rainwater, collect plants and mushcenturies past “became an asylum for rooms, cook over a campfire, share a all who had unilaterally annulled their tent and practice concealment. Their contract with society,” be they politi- lives depend upon secrecy. When they cal refugees or lovers forbidden a life need other supplies, they go into town, together in town. Such exiles did not where Will gets prescriptions filled at exist outside the legal framework, for the VA hospital and then turns around they continued to have rights, the fore- and sells the pills for cash. Although he most being the right to be left alone. has trouble sleeping, waking up occaAmerica, however, is a different sionally to the sound of helicopters story. Perhaps this can be traced back in his ears, he doesn’t self-medicate. to our perpetual wars against Native All he needs is isolation, which Tom Americans, whose simple presence complements with careful devotion. made white settlers view the forest That soon changes when their camp as a threat. Too, runaway slaves often site is discovered and Will and Tom found refuge in the immense tracts of are brought into the system, with its

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CONCEALMENT AT ALL COSTS: From the director of “Winter’s Bone” comes “Leave No Trace,” the tale of a father and daughter living off the grid in the Pacific Northwest.

social workers and forms to be signed.

Their caseworkers do manage to find them a home together, getting Will a job harvesting Christmas trees. Tom settles into the rhythms of a “normal” life — especially the comfort of community. Soon, however, Will packs his rucksack to take Tom back into the woods, looking for a new place to set up camp. At each stop, they are rescued by the genuine kindness of strangers, which fuels the divide between Tom and her father all the more.

Writer/director Debra Granik offers in “Leave No Trace” a minimalist story stocked with only good-hearted people that still manages to be as tense as her previous movie, the Oscar-nominated “Winter’s Bone.” Granik exhibits such phenomenal skill and complete control over the story that she can relay more information with a moment of silence than other directors can with an impassioned speech. Ben Foster as Will never falls into the Hollywood stereotype of damaged veteran (a la John Rambo).

He is a normal man to most eyes, his pain so deep we only ever get hints of its presence. But even more impressive is McKenzie’s performance; she plays Tom as simultaneously nervous and

out-of-place but also wanting to belong, a young woman divided in her desires but filled with enough inner strength to set her own path.

As lush as the movie is, so filled with the jaw-dropping scenery of the Pacific Northwest, “Leave No Trace” avoids easy dichotomies between nature and society, rural and urban, for true kindness manifests itself wherever Will and Tom go. It is not the present evils of humanity that drive them further into the forest — it is Will’s own personal history. And as Tom eventually says to him, “Dad, what’s wrong with you ain’t what’s wrong with me.” While so many popular films depend upon the conceit that we can all be fixed — the shy girl can learn confidence, the tormented soul can find healing — “Leave No Trace” offers, instead, a narrative of learning how to deal with the various ways in which we are broken. Some broken people gather together in communities, while others annul their contract with society, at least for a time.

Granik casts no judgment either way; there is no final salvation in this world, only learning where we belong, and with that, perhaps, a bit of peace.

JULY 12 - 29

MUSIC & LYRICS BY CAROL HALL BOOK BY LARRY L. KING & PETER MASTERSON

320 W. 7TH ST. - DOWNTOWN LITTLE ROCK follow us on social media @studiotheatrelr arktimes.com JULY 19, 2018

27

PEARLS ABOUT SWINE, CONT. the Las Vegas Bowl, then followed that by returning to a frigid Cotton Bowl in 2001, only to register barely any offense at all in losing to defending national champion Oklahoma. The entire 2002 season was an amalgam of the bizarre and blissful: There was the notorious arrest of defensive tackle Jermaine Brooks on weapon and drug charges in the midst of a mercurial regular season that wrapped with the Miracle on Markham, which sent the Hogs back to the SEC Championship Game for the first time in seven years. They parlayed that into a beat-down by Georgia and a Music City Bowl clunker against Minnesota, which amplified the questions about Nutt’s acumen.

The 2007 season played out similarly, and as with Ford, a year ending in 7 was the long-delayed death knell for Nutt. The offseason debacle — in which Malzahn darted for a lower-tier coordinating job at Tulsa, Mitch Mustain transferred and Nutt caterwauled on the airwaves — overshadowed Herculean feats from the best backfield tandem in Razorback history, as even Darren McFadden and Felix Jones couldn’t get the Hogs to do better than 8-4, 4-4 even with a stunning three-overtime upset of No. 1 LSU in the season finale.

A&E FEAT., CONT.

Nutt’s reward for the team’s underperformance was getting pushed out of the airplane with a golden parachute.

He bolted for Ole Miss, and incoming Athletic Director Jeff Long punctuated another Lifetime Original miniseries of a season by hiring Bobby Petrino, who was so desperate to leave his new NFL job in Atlanta that he took a $2 million per annum pay cut just to get back in the college mix.

That brings us to 2012, in which Petrino and John L. Smith together said, “Hold my beer,” and made all this other aforesaid folly seem downright mundane. The former fell off a motorcycle, lied about it and the young female passenger on it, and was scuttled by Long in April; the latter was lured back on an interim basis, forgot what team he coached, had visible synaptic misfires in front of members of the media, and “led” the team to a disastrous 4-8 year.

That, in turn, had Long making the surprise move to coax Bielema from Wisconsin, and that half-decade played out comparatively tamely, if every bit as frustratingly mediocre on balance.

So there’s your history lesson, Coach Morris. I hope like hell you’re healthy, wealthy, accomplished and safe come 2022.

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atives like Lucas invariably see themselves as something else — a loose-knit federation of people who operate on the fringes, making things purely out of love for the music itself. A friend of Lucas’ who owns a T-shirt shop in Portland received a cease-and-desist letter from Joy Division’s bass player over a Joy Division T-shirt the shop had been selling. The friend ceased making the T-shirt, but framed the letter. “Sometimes it’s hard to get permission from artists,” Lucas said, “but if you’re persistent, I’ve found they usually give in ... because no one else is offering to put stuff out. Most of the time they’re very flattered.”

Lucas typically gathers the artwork for the cassettes and audio files into a template and sends it off to a facility in New York called Cryptic Carousel, which usually charges $400 for a limited run of 100-300 units. Often, Lucas will offer a “tape split,” sending half the run to artists for free so they can have merch to sell at shows. The other half Lucas sends to record stores around the country: Zion’s Gate in Seattle and Shangri-La, Goner Records and VHS in Memphis. Primarily, though, he enjoys the personal experience of selling his tapes on Instagram.

“It’s been really fun to do. I haven’t made a whole lot of money at it, but I have broken even, so I’ve been able to put a little money back in.” Lucas reinvests his profits into making stickers and T-shirts to promote the Sleepcvlt brand.

This year, Sleepcvlt has just rereleased “Hell Is a Door to the Sun,” renowned metal band Rwake’s 2002 album. “The lead singer, C.T. [Chris Terry], follows me on Instagram,” Lucas said, “and he just hit me up and said, ‘I love the way all the tapes look and I like your presentation and we would love to put some tapes out.’ A lot of their albums got released, but never on a wide scale like they should have been.”

“They’ve always been a huge thing here, even throughout [Rwake’s] hiatus, everybody kinda knows about them. I’ve talked to bigger metal bands from out of state, just through going to shows and stuff, and I’ll tell them that I’m from Little Rock, Arkansas, and they’ll be like ‘Holy shit, do you know those guys from Rwake?’ you know? I think they’re pretty much an underground darling that everybody knows and loves, they’re just not that active for years at a time sometimes.”

Find Sleepcvlt releases at sleepcvlt.com.

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JULY 19, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

DUMAS, CONT. in a previous meeting with Putin, the day Trump publicly called on Rusand the result was the same. Putin sia to hack into Hillary Clinton’s comsaid someone else did it and faulted puter or the day his family members Democrats, and Trump averred that and top campaign officials met with he believed Putin and not the Jus- Russians in Trump Tower to get “dirt’ tice Department, his own intelligence on Clinton, you come up with a strong agencies or Republican senators who circumstantial case for collusion, investigated the hacking. Dan Coats, based entirely on the words of Donthe former right-wing senator from ald Trump. His words and deeds also Indiana whom he installed as direc- form an evidentiary base for obstructor of intelligence, issued statements tion of justice. before and after the Putin summit that The president got a big boost from Putin directed the crimes against the a similar sellout to the emperor of United States and had to be punished. North Korea a month earlier and he Anyone who reads the indictments was emboldened to believe that Ameri— it takes 30 minutes — can have no cans were incurable suckers. Trump’s doubt about the Kremlin’s crimes. If mentor, McCarthy’s henchman Roy you overlay the dates of the hackings Cohn, never told him how Tail Gunwith the dates of known events, like ner Joe’s tide fell.

THEATER “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.”

The Studio Theater’s production of Frank Wildhorn’s musical. 7:30 p.m. Thu.-Sat., 2:30 p.m. Sun., through July 29. $20-$25.

320 W. 7th St. 501-374-2615.

“Big River.” Argenta Community Theater stages the Roger Miller musical. 8 p.m. Fri.Sat., 7 p.m. Tue.-Thu., 2 p.m. Sun., through July 28. $20-$30. 405 Main St., NLR. 501353-1443.

“Birthday From Hell.” The Main Thing’s summer production, a two-act “Fertle Family” comedy. 8 p.m. Fri.-Sat., through Aug. 31. $24. The Joint Theater & Coffeehouse. 301 Main St., NLR. 501-372-0205.

“Grease.” Murry’s Dinner Theater takes on the ’70s-by-way-of-the-’50s stage musical.

7:30 p.m. Tue.-Sat., dinner at 6 p.m.; 12:45 p.m. and 6:45 p.m. Sun., dinner at 11 a.m. and 5:30 p.m., through Aug. 25. $15-$37.

6323 Colonel Glenn Road. 501-562-3131.

OPERA IN THE ROCK PRESENTS

10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Sat. 870-536-3375.

ARTS CENTER OF THE OZARKS, 214 S. Main St., Springdale: “Our Natural State,” photography by Gary Cawood, Beverly Conley, Mike Disfarmer, Jim Dow, Rebecca Drolen, Ron Evans, Matthew Genitempo, Don House, Tim Hursley, Kris Johnson, Margaret LeJeune, Maxine Payne, Donna Pinckley, Sabine Schmidt, Jim Simmons, Alec Soth and Geoff Winningham, through Aug. 17, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Sat. 479-751-5441.

FRI, AUG 17, 7:30PM • SUN, AUG 19, 2:30PM AT THE STUDIO THEATRE • 320 W 7TH STREET • LITTLE ROCK Get tickets at centralarkansastickets.com

BUTLER CENTER GALLERIES, Arkansas Studies Institute, 401 President Clinton Ave.: “A Legacy of Brewers: The Paintings of Nicholas, Adrian and Edwin Brewer,” through Oct. 27; “Delta des Refuses,” works in all media, through Aug. 25; “Andrew Rogerson: Landscapes,” through Aug. 25. 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 320-5790.

August 3 • 5 - 9 pm Big Rock Family Fun Park Tickets $30

Lazer Frenzy Arcade Games Batting Cages

FINE ART, HISTORY EXHIBITS

MAJOR VENUES

ARKANSAS ARTS CENTER, MacArthur Park: “Art After Hours: Gallery Talk with Robert Baines,” reception 5:30 p.m., talk 6 p.m. July 19, free to members, $10 nonmembers, in conjunction with exhibition, “Robert Baines: Living Treasure and Fabulous Follies,” jewelry with narratives, July 20-Oct. 7; 60th annual “Delta Exhibition,” works by artists from Arkansas and contiguous states, through Aug. 26; 57th “Young Arkansas Artists Exhibition,” through July 22. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sat., 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sun. 3724000.

ARTS & SCIENCE CENTER FOR SOUTHEAST ARKANSAS, 701 S. Main St.: “Fire and Fiber,” works by metalsmith David Clemons and fiber artist Sofia Gonzalez, through July 28; “UAPB & ASC: Five Decades of Collaboration,” work by Tarrence Corbin, Earnest Davidson, Fred Schmidt, Dr. William Detmers and others from UA Pine Bluff in the ASC permanent collection, through Nov. 3; “Imaginate,” STEAM exhibit in the International Paper Gallery.

Aerial Maze Great Food Fun Prizes

ats Bumper Bo Go-Carts

ON TAP IN ARGENTA: Matthew Castellano

CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL MUSEUM VISITOR CENTER, Bates and Park: Exhibits on the 1957 desegregation of Central and the civil rights movement. 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m. daily. 374-1957.

Be Bright!

Get tickets NOW: MethodistFamily.org or 501-906-4209

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ARKANSAS TIMES

COX CREATIVE CENTER, 120 River Market Ave.: “Delta des Refuses,” works in all media, through Aug. 25. 918-3013.

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Words: Rock, Power & Politics,” through Aug. 5; permanent exhibits on the Clinton administration. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun., $10 adults, $8 seniors, retired military and college students, $6 youth 6-17, free to active military and children under 6. 374-4242.

CRYSTAL BRIDGES MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART, One Museum Way, Bentonville: “The Beyond: Georgia O’Keeffe & Contemporary Art,” through Sept. 3; “The Garden,” works from the collection, through Oct. 8; “How Do You Figure?” figurative work, through Aug. 20; American masterworks spanning four centuries in the permanent collection. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon., Thu.; 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Wed., Fri.; 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Sat.-Sun., closed Tue. 479-418-5700.

DELTA CULTURAL CENTER, 141 Cherry St., Helena/West Helena: “Over Here and There: the Sons and Daughters of Arkansas’s Delta at War,” commemorating the centennial of World War I. 870-338-4350.

ESSE PURSE MUSEUM & STORE, 1510 S. Main St.: “You May Kiss the Bride,” vintage wedding dresses and accessories, through Aug. 19; “What’s Inside: A Century of Women and Handbags,” permanent exhibit. 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Sun. $10, $8 for students, seniors and

2019; “Cabinet of Curiosities: Treasures from the University of Arkansas Museum Collection”; “True Faith, True Light: The Devotional Art of Ed Stilley,” musical instruments, through 2017; “First Families: Mingling of Politics and Culture” permanent exhibit including first ladies’ gowns.

9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 324-9685.

UA LITTLE ROCK, Windgate Gallery of Art and Design: “Works from the Permanent Collection,” including artwork by Herbert Gentry, Juan Logan, Moe Brooker, Mamma Andersson, Heidi Hogden, Helen Phillips, Alecia Walls-Barton, John Harlan Norris and others, Brad Cushman Gallery, through July 20. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri. 569-8977.

UA PINE BLUFF, 1200 University Drive: “Live or Not to Live, That Is the Question,” paintings by Markeith Woods, John Brown Watson Memorial Library, through August.

870-575-8896.

UA PULASKI TECHNICAL COLLEGE, 3000 W. Scenic Drive: “Champion Trees of Arkansas,” color pencil drawings by Linda Williams Palmer, through July 27, Windgate Gallery, Center for Humanities and the Arts (CHARTS), 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.Thu., 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Fri., 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Sat. 812-2760.

WALTON ARTS CENTER, 495 W. Dickson St., Fayetteville: “The Bleak and the

military. 916-9022.

FORT SMITH REGIONAL ART MUSEUM, 1601 Rogers Ave.: “The Essence of Place: David Halpern Photographs from the Gilcrease Collection,” through July 29. 18.

11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 479784-2787.

HISTORIC ARKANSAS MUSEUM, 200 E. 3rd St.: “Justin Bryant: That Survival Apparatus,” through Oct. 7; “Secret Stories: Anais Dasse and Holly Laws,” paintings and sculpture, through Aug. 5; ticketed tours of renovated and replicated 19th century structures from original city, guided Monday and Tuesday on the hour, self-guided Wednesday through Sunday, $2.50 adults, $1 under 18, free to 65 and over. (Galleries free.) 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 324-9351.

MacARTHUR MUSEUM OF ARKANSAS MILITARY HISTORY, 503 E. 9th St. (MacArthur Park): Closed through August for renovation. 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 1-4 p.m. Sun. 376-4602.

MOSAIC TEMPLARS CULTURAL CENTER, 9th and Broadway: “Don’t Touch My Crown,” artifacts that tell the story of the aesthetics and cultural impact of AfricanAmerican hair, curated by Stephanie Sims; permanent exhibits on African-American entrepreneurship in Arkansas. 9 a.m.-5 p.m.

Tue.-Sat. 683-3593.

MUSEUM OF DISCOVERY, 500 President Clinton Ave.: Interactive science exhibits and activities for children and teenagers.

9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun., $10 ages 13 and older, $8 ages 1-12, free to members and children under 1. 396-7050.

OLD STATE HOUSE MUSEUM, 300 W. Markham St.: “A Piece of My Soul: Quilts by Black Arkansans,” through fall

AT THE ARTS CENTER: Robert Baines jewelry, including this copy of an 11th century Iranian armlet, goes on exhibit Friday, July 20, in a show called “Living Treasure and Fabulous Folly.”

Burgeoning,” installation by Amber Cowan, Maysey Craddock, Leonardo Drew, Lauren Fensterstock and Judy Pfaff, through Oct. 7, Joy Pratt Markham Gallery. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-Fri., noon-4 p.m. Sat. 479-4435600.

SMALLER VENUES ARGENTA GALLERY, 413 Main St., NLR: “Midlife Crisis — the First 60 Years,” photography by Don Bryam, reception 5-8 p.m.

July 20, Argenta Art Walk. 416-0973.

ARTISTS WORKSHOP GALLERY, 610A Central Ave., Hot Springs: Paintings by Jan

ALSO IN THE ARTS CONT.

ARKANSAS TIMES MARKETPLACE TO ADVERTISE IN THIS SECTION, CALL LUIS AT 501.375.2985

ARKANSAS TIMES COMING TO CHARTS: The Windgate Gallery at the Center for Humanities and the Arts at UA Pulaski Tech is bringing the exhibit “American Perspectives on Modernism” to the campus Aug. 13. Jen Padgett, assistant curator at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, will give a gallery talk at the opening reception, 6-8 p.m. The works, including Oliver Chaffee’s “Rue de Paradis” (above), come from the Kalamazoo Institute for the Arts in Kalamazoo, Mich.

Briggs and Bonnie Ricci. 10 a.m.-5 p.m.

Mon.-Sat., noon-5 p.m. Sun. 623-6401.

BARRY THOMAS FINE ART & STUDIO, 711 Main St., NLR: Impressionist paintings.

10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat., reception 5-8 p.m.

July 20, Argenta Art Walk 912-6302.

BOSWELL MOUROT FINE ART, 5815 Kavanaugh Blvd.: New works by Hans Feyerabend and Elena Petroukhina. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Sat. 664-0030.

CANTRELL GALLERY, 8208 Cantrell Road: “The Value of Light,” recent paintings by Megan Lewis, through Sept. 1. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 224-1335.

CHRIST CHURCH, 509 Scott St.: Small paintings, mixed media by area artists.

375-2342.

CORE BREWERY, 411 Main St., NLR: “Pop Art,” group show by artists in the Latino Art Project.

DOWNTOWN SPRINGDALE: Third Thursday Art Walk, work by 27 artists at 1 Seventeen Create, The Gemini, Arts Center of the Ozarks and Shiloh Square, plus mural painting, fashion pop-up shop, demonstrations, farmers market. 5-9 p.m. July 19.

GALLERY 221, 2nd and Center Sts.: “Art as Speech,” works by area artists. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. weekdays, 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Sat. 8010211.

GALLERY 26, 2601 Kavanaugh Blvd.: Works by artist Jeanie Hursley and John Kushmaul, reception 7-10 p.m. July 21, show thorugh Sept. 8. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tue.Sat. 664-8996.

GALLERY CENTRAL, 800 Central Ave.,

Hot Springs: Work by artist Bob Snider and others. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 318-4278.

GREG THOMPSON FINE ART, 429 Main St., NLR: “Summer Show,” work by Robyn Horn, Richard Jolley, Dolores Justus and others, reception 5-8 p.m. July 20, Argenta Art Walk, show through Aug. 11.

10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Sat. 664-2787.

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LOCAL

HEARNE FINE ART, 1001 Wright Ave.: “Identity Theft,” mixed media and fired clay

by Chukes, through Sept. 1. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Sat. 372-6822.

HOUSE OF ART, 108 E. 4th St.: “At War With Myself: Uncensored,” work by Aya the Artist, through July 28.

JUSTUS FINE ART GALLERY, 827 A Central Ave.: Work by Virmarie Depoyster, Robert Fogel, Dolores Justus, Jill Kyong, Tony Saladino, Sandra Sell, Gene Sparling and Rebecca Thompson, through July. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Wed.-Sat. 321-2335.

L&L BECK ART GALLERY, 5705 Kavanaugh Blvd: “The Wild Ones,” work by Louis Beck, through July, drawing for free giclee 5:30 p.m. July 26. 660-4006.

LAMAN LIBRARY ARGENTA BRANCH, 420 Main St., NLR: “Echelon,” work by Matthew Castellano, reception 5-8 p.m.

July 20, Argenta Art Walk. 9 a.m.-6 p.m.

Mon.-Fri., 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Sat. 687-1061.

LEGACY FINE ART, 804 Central Ave., Hot Springs: Blown glass chandeliers

by Ed Pennington, paintings by Carole Katchen. 8 a.m.-5

PRESTIGE AUTO DETAIL

Regular Wash Inside/Outside: $40 Cars $60 Trucks/SUVs Outside or inside (ONLY): Car $20 Truck/SUVS $30 Wash and Wax: $100 Cars $140 Trucks/SUVs Full Detail: $180 All Cars $250 All Trucks/SUVs Headlight Restoration: $60 Engine Compartment Cleaned: $30 Odor Permanent remove: $10 Carpet/Seats Shampooing: depends on condition Acid Rain Removal: depends on condition Call or Text (Slim/Clarence) for quote or more details (501)-413-0931

M2 GALLERY, 11525 Cantrell Road: “Ink,” printmaking by Evan Lindquist, Warren Criswell and Neal Harrington, with photographs by Linda Harding and Austin printmaker Annalise Gratovich. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat., noon-5 p.m. Mon. 225-6257.

MATT MCLEOD FINE ART, 106 W. 6th St.: “Arkansas League of Artists Members Show,” juried show, through Aug. 24. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Sat. 725-8508.

REINVINTED VINTAGE, 1222 S. Main St.: Reopening party 2-5 p.m. July 22, refinished furniture, paint, art, items by local artisans. 10:30 a.m.-6 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 10:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Sun. 350-4769.

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