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VOLUME 43, NUMBER 34 ARKANSAS TIMES (ISSN 0164-6273) is published each week by Arkansas Times Limited Partnership, 201 East Markham Street, Suite 200, Little Rock, Arkansas, 72201, phone (501) 375-2985. Periodical postage paid at Little Rock, Arkansas, and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to ARKANSAS TIMES, 201 EAST MARKHAM STREET, SUITE 200, Little Rock, AR, 72201. Subscription prices are $42 for one year, $74 for two years. Subscriptions outside Arkansas are $49 for one year, $88 for two years. Foreign (including Canadian) subscriptions are $168 a year. For subscriber service call (501) 375-2985. Current singlecopy price is 75¢, free in Pulaski County. Single issues are available by mail at $2.50 each, postage paid. Payment must accompany all single-copy orders. Reproduction or use in whole or in part of the contents without the written consent of the publishers is prohibited. Manuscripts and artwork will not be returned or acknowledged unless sufficient return postage and a self-addressed stamped envelope are included. All materials are handled with due care; however, the publisher assumes no responsibility for care and safe return of unsolicited materials. All letters sent to ARKANSAS TIMES will be treated as intended for publication and are subject to ARKANSAS TIMES’ unrestricted right to edit or to comment editorially.

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COMMENT

Eye for an eye How the death penalty should work: The prisoners always complain about the execution. They complain it is cruel punishment. If the legislature would pass a law that they be executed in the same manner they killed their victims, [then] if by gunshot let them die by gunshot. They could, of course, opt for fatal injection or hanging. The warden should be the one to end their life. He could, of course, let one prisoner take care of the job and take five years off their sentence. The only way to curtail crime is to have swift and certain punishment. At least the governor has the balls to do the job. Douglas C. Lingo North Little Rock

by the fact that the 12.4 mills in question do not all go toward debt service, due to the fact that property values appreciate over time. Theoretically, if the district had been putting all of the annual revenue generated from the 12.4 mills into a fund for capital projects, there would be no need for a debt extension. However, that’s not practical. I could explain more if you want. Benji Hardy (Author of the Times’ piece)

In response to Sam Ledbetter’s support for the school millage posted on the Arkansas Blog: Mr. Ledbetter: “State control of the district is temporary ... .” I’ll believe it only when a new locally elected school board is actually in place. They’ve misrepresented and hidden their agenda all along. They took over the district over conditions that would not have triggered take over of other districts, the same conditions that are obviously NOT used

NEWLY RENOVATED

From the web In response to the April 20 cover story, “The Little Rock Millage Question”: This is such a difficult issue. I have two questions. 1) Why the urgency to pass the millage now, when it doesn’t expire for many years? We have this money now, correct, and passing the millage is essentially insurance to have it in the future? I welcome anyone who can clarify this for me. 2) I am curious, under state control, what specific changes or improvements were made to assist the schools that were deemed in distress? Elizabeth Wilson Rogers @Elizabeth Not quite. The extension of the debt will allow the district to immediately access $160 million in capital that it doesn’t currently have. Think of it as getting a second mortgage on a home that you own. The district can’t pay for new construction and improvements without having the cash in hand, and the debt extension will allow it to borrow that cash. (Just as a homeowner might refinance a mortgage or take out a line of credit in order to pay for a home improvement project.) So, the debt extension really is necessary for the district to find the capital necessary to do $160 million worth of construction right away. That’s the short answer. Whether the urgency of addressing facilities needs right away trumps the urgency of getting local governance returned ASAP is a matter of opinion. The picture is further complicated 4

APRIL 27, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

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to hold charter schools accountable. No local control — no local tax hike. The voters of Little Rock can always vote in a bond issue once local control is re-established. Perplexed Arkansas Times, Sam Ledbetter must be a friend of yours, since he continues to get a free pass for the deciding vote, but enough of turning PR flack for him with these continued blog posts. If you want to talk “out of touch,” that was Sam Ledbetter as the Walton Family Foundation’s “reform movement” was stealing a whole district right under his nose. Rev Pygsterio In response to the Arkansas Blog post “The Ledell Lee execution thread”: The problem with this country is that we insist that “killing” is somehow different than “letting die.” When an insurance company, in order to increase profits, denies coverage of life-saving treatments, their actions produce the death of people, just as sure as if they had used a gun or machete. We would demand the life of a terrorist who pours poisons into a public water supply, but we willingly accommodate the corporation that, again, in order to increase profits, did their storage of poisonous chemicals on the cheap so that toxins ended up in people’s drinking water, as happened in West Virginia a few years back. Governor Hutchinson will demand the life of the man who kills with knife or gun but will wine and dine those who kill through spreadsheets — murder for anger is a sin in his eyes, but God and his angels shine their light upon murder for profit, as does our government. Honestly, I could well support the death penalty if it meant those CEOs also risked their own lives when they destroyed ours, but in its current incarnation, the death penalty is nothing but a war upon the poor. It is class warfare, pure and simple. treeoftalking Question for you, plainjim, as a former prosecutor: What’s the No. 1 duty of a prosecutor? IMO the answer has to be being as sure as humanly possible that innocent people are not convicted for crimes they did not commit. My observations of prosecutors in general is they often seem to be more interested in getting convictions and clearing case files than in convicting

the guilty, no matter what that takes. Your response? Sound policy

In response to the Arkansas Blog post about the March for Science on Saturday:

Sound, the number one duty of a prosecutor is to make sure that the police have the right man before he goes forward with the prosecution. I have dismissed cases where I did not think I could prove guilt, as I am sure many other prosecutors have done. There are exceptions, but most prosecutors do not want to convict an innocent person, and in my opinion, this rarely happens. The fact that it happens at all is sad. plainjim

The most drastic increase in temperature by the nth degree just happens to coincide with the industrialization of the planet. If they’d be honest and just admit that they choose profits over a livable environment, I’d have at least some respect for them. But they are cowards just looking to stuff their pockets. And, of course, they are all members of the Regressive party. Those Regressives sure do like their money, don’t they? Won’t be able to pass it down to their great-grandchildren, however, if the planet is a

living hell by then. On current pace, this planet is not going to be a pretty place in 100 years. Slithey Tove Listening to the head of OMB discuss why they want to cut NASA earth satellites shows how totally uninformed these losers in Trump’s Cabinet are. Someone needs to sit Trump’s ass down and make him read about the hurricane destroying Galveston, because back then we didn’t have the capability to know about early warnings. Now that we do, anyone who purposely cuts down NASA and NOAA’s ability to predict should be indicted for any deaths caused by a hurri-

cane showing up without warnings. The idiot class thinks the weather and climate (which scientists know are NOT the same thing) are jokes, but Mother Nature is a bitch and she always wins. Wait until Trump’s little gilded whorehouse in Florida is under water. It is on an island, so it will be attacked from all sides, and it is not the business of government to protect a private, profit-making property. You would have thought that he learned something about that in Scotland and that seawall he wanted to build to protect his property while putting neighboring properties at greater risk. couldn’t be better

arktimes.com APRIL 27, 2017

WEEK THAT WAS

EYE ON ARKANSAS

Quote of the week

terrorists.” Asked to pin a letter grade on Trump’s first 100 days, Cotton said he’d award Trump a B for the Cabinet nomination process, but an A+ for the nomination of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. Overall, a much more sedate and formal experience than the raucous town halls Cotton has faced in recent months, but still pure, cocksure Cotton.

“I’m glad that chapter is closed.” — Lacey Phillips Manor after the execution of Jack Jones on Tuesday. After raping and killing Manor’s mother, Mary Phillips, in her bookkeeping shop in Bald Knob in 1995, Jones strangled Manor until she passed out and fractured her skull with a BB gun he was carrying, leaving her for dead. Jones told Manor and her family in his last words that he was sorry.

BRIAN CHILSON

Marching for science

Facebook post of the week “From 615 to 630 he prayed with the chaplain he has known and loved for over 20 years. That chaplain remained by his side throughout the evening. They continually reassured one another that because they were gathered in the name of the Father, He was there. At 630 he frantically began dividing his belongings, which fit in a cardboard box. He gave his potato chips to Stacey Johnson who continued to say uplifting messages to Ledell throughout the night. Ledell willed away his property, which included saltines, cups, and even his condiments. That moment was more than I could take.” — From a Facebook post by Lee Short, an attorney for Ledell Lee, who was executed on Thursday, April 20. Lee was sentenced to death for the murder of Debra Reese, 26, in Jacksonville in 1993. 6

APRIL 27, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

AFTER THE EXECUTION: Lynn Scott (left), sister of inmate Jack Jones, was embraced by a supporter after receiving word that her brother may have suffered during his execution.

After granting a stay in the execution of Stacey Johnson to allow for new DNA testing, the Arkansas Supreme Court declined to grant a stay in Lee’s similar claim. Lee claimed he was innocent.

Cotton on Trump’s first 100 days Once more unto the breach this week for Sen. Tom Cotton, who stopped by the Clinton School of Public Service on April 19 to answer questions about President Trump’s first 100 days in office. The talk, with Clinton School Dean Skip Rutherford moderating, had to be moved to the Robinson Center Performance Hall after demand for seats outstripped supply at the Clinton School. From the sound of the audience throughout the event,

most of those extra seats were filled by people who don’t fancy their senator’s being a rubber stamp for Trump. Cotton said he speaks on a weekly basis with Trump. He took a dig at Obama for inviting him to the White House only once, during what he called “the red line fiasco” over Syria. Among the issues on the agenda: the approaching government funding cliff April 28 (there will be no cliffhanger, Cotton said), Russian hacking (they’re looking into it), Trump’s tax returns (look instead at Trump’s candidate disclosure forms), the recent strikes on Syria (peace through strength, just like Reagan!), and the travel ban, with Rutherford taking the opportunity to lobby on behalf of international students, telling Cotton: “Don’t penalize the college students. They’re not

Motivated by the Trump administration’s moves to emasculate the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Institutes of Health so that corporations could prosper and more money would be available for tax cuts, hundreds of Arkansans joined the March for Science on the state Capitol on Saturday. Carrying signs saying such things as “Science is not a partisan issue” and “I’ve seen better cabinets at Ikea,” the crowd heard advocates for clean air, clean water, medical research, conservation of habitats and steps to ameliorate climate change warn that the U.S. was turning its back on science-based policymaking. Speakers included Glen Hooks, director of the Arkansas chapter of the Sierra Club, who said that though hunters, farmers and fishermen want natural resources protected, the state Legislature has exhibited indifference, and Haleigh Eubanks, a fifth-year doctoral candidate at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, who said she wanted to let President Trump know that “you cannot pretend to make America great if you threaten STEM research.” Other organizers were Dr. Michele Merritt of Arkansas State University and the Museum of Discovery, whose science whiz Kevin Delaney also gave a rousing speech criticizing those who ignore the evidence that human activity is causing climate change.

OPINION

Intracity tourism

am a proud member of Class XXX of Leadership Greater Little Rock. It was an awesome experience, and even though I was born and raised in Little Rock, I learned a lot about our town. During the program, my fellow Triple Xers and I discussed the prominent challenges that face Little Rock and ideas to combat those challenges. The issues that tug at my heartstrings are neighborhood stigma and neighborhood segregation, which are so prevalent in Little Rock. In my opinion, the solution to those problems is “intracity tourism.” I grew up in Southwest Little Rock and am a proud graduate of John L. McClellan High School. But until I enrolled in the UA Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law, I did not realize my level of ignorance in regard to Little Rock’s neighborhoods. Growing up, I have no memory of ever going north of Park Plaza. I did not know that neighborhoods called the Heights and Hillcrest existed. I remember multiple conversations with my law

school classmates about where they grew up, and the places that they frequented that were completely forANTWAN eign to me. It was PHILLIPS almost embarrassing to say, “I do not know how to get to Kavanaugh [Boulevard].” The embarrassment decreased when I realized that many people who did not grow up in Southwest Little Rock were ignorant of life south of Interstate 630, in the same manner that I was unfamiliar with life north of 630. I often hear people who live in one part of town explain why they never travel to a different part of town. In one respect, this is a compliment to the growth and development of some of Little Rock’s neighborhoods, in the sense that some neighborhoods have become self-sustaining and include all of the amenities (restaurants, grocery stores, bars, workout facilities, parks) that a person/family could need.

Workers stiffed

ow is it going with the great experiment to make the Republican Party the champion of the sons and daughters of toil instead of the oligarchs of wealth and business? Those are the catchwords we’re used to applying to the management-employee divide, although neither party has ever claimed total purity. Ever since Franklin Roosevelt declared that “no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country,” Democrats have claimed to be the shepherds of the working folks, although in a crunch they have been just as solicitous of management. But Donald Trump’s sudden populism during the campaign, reversing a career of virile antagonism toward workers, is supposed to have delivered millions of working stiffs, notably unemployed coal miners but also laborers in low-wage states like Arkansas, to the GOP. It’s time for an inventory, especially since the Arkansas legislature just completed the first session since 1881 in which the Republicans held not just a simple majority, but an extraordinary one in both legislative chambers and the executive branch. The experiment in Washington is not going so well with the Repub-

lican Congress struggling to meet Trump’s demand that some 24 million American workers and their ERNEST families be kicked DUMAS off health insurance so that taxes can be cut for wealthy and by 60 percent for corporations and so billions can be sent to the defense industry. But the judgment is in on Arkansas. If you are a hired hand in the private commerce or aspire to be, this is the most anti-worker legislature in modern times. Time will tell whether its deeds are mostly symbolic or will be deeply felt. To get a flavor, let’s list a few of the anti-worker and anti-consumer laws that were enacted and a resolution or two that in 2018 with your help will become permanently embedded in the constitution. • Act 1068 repealed the state’s old prevailing-wage law, which required governments to contract only with companies that paid its workers the prevailing wage in the community. The act went into effect immediately so that governments could get the word out that businesses could pay the lowest possible wages and get government contracts this year. • Act 734 reduces unemployment

On the other hand, it reinforces the insulation (or segregation) of the neighborhoods and the lack of engagement among Little Rock’s citizens. As a result of our neighborhood segregation, when I graduated from high school, I did not know many white people. I do not remember having the telephone number of any non-black person in my age range. But after enrolling in law school, I’ve been able to gain a thorough appreciation of and level of comfort with all of Little Rock. I believe that a concerted effort to encourage intracity tourism could decrease division and ensure that we engage and interact with all our city has to offer. I want to see efforts to encourage our citizens to visit neighborhoods beyond where they live. We are making progress in the right direction; the examples are endless: Visit Southwest Little Rock for authentic Mexican food or shopping at the outlet mall; visit West Little Rock for shopping at the Promenade; visit the newly named East Village for a local microbrewery; visit Midtown Little Rock to support the Little Rock Trojans; visit the Heights/Hillcrest for pedestrianfriendly dining; or visit SoMa [the South

of Main neighborhood] for the cornbread festival. I would be remiss not to mention that we need to be intentional about investing in our neighborhoods to make all neighborhoods “places of interest.” We also need to be intentional about increasing intracity tourism. For example, I think we can expand the concept of an awesome event like Taste of the Rock to include visits to select restaurants and bars in areas of the city that often get overlooked. This event could also include riding Rock Region Metro buses to reach those select restaurants and bars. For a reasonable fee, we could engage in intracity tourism and increase exposure to our city’s main public transportation system. This is just one idea. If you have others to help negate neighborhood segregation, please share with me. Every great town has great neighborhoods, and the greatness of Little Rock’s neighborhoods is relatively untapped. Let’s spend time visiting and investing in all of Little Rock. Antwan Phillips is a lawyer with the Wright Lindsey Jennings firm.

checks and the number of weeks a per- pay than the drink industry. son can get them from 20 to 16 weeks. • Act 946 outlaws class-action lawsuits Arkansas already was stingier than Mis- under the Deceptive Trade Practices Act, sissippi, Louisiana, Texas, Tennessee and which effectively means no corrupt busieven Oklahoma. Now we’re going to be ness will ever be sued again for chiseling even tougher on the shiftless louts. Unem- customers with phony promotions. An ployment is at a record low and Arkan- individual cheated out of a couple hunsas’s unemployment trust fund stands at dred dollars can’t afford a lengthy suit to $500 million. get his money back and now the remedy • Act 606, the anti-whistleblower law, of a class-action suit is gone, too. A nursallows businesses to sue workers who ing home magnate faced a class lawsuit for take pictures or videos to expose unethi- understaffing a nursing home. No more. • SJR 8 will amend the state Constitucal practices in the businesses and end up damaging their reputation and profits. tion in 2018 to weaken its guarantee that Exposing promotional scams like false people are entitled to a full remedy for advertising will not only get you fired, wrongs done to them. For that guarantee, but sued. it will substitute a limit on the payments • HB 1953, which reduced employers’ for injuries or damages to property that liability for workplace illnesses or acci- a court can award a person or his family dents, got a 61-18 vote in the House of — say, death in a nursing home from negRepresentatives, but that was a little short ligence — and discourage lawyers from of the extraordinary 67 votes needed to representing people by limiting their fees. weaken the act passed by Arkansas voters The amendment will be on the 2018 balin 1948 that set up the workers’ compen- lot, backed by a heavily funded campaign sation system. If they can push six more by industry. Democrats or weak-kneed Republicans There’s more — acts and amendments out of office in 2018, it will sail through. It making it harder for the poor, disabled would give them enough votes to weaken and elderly to vote, a punitive renter law the state minimum-wage law, adopted and such as that — but this gives you an overwhelmingly by Arkansas voters in idea of what populist Republicanism looks 2014. like. Meantime, savor Trump’s and Con• Act 141 cuts the tax paid by soda pop gress’s deeds for the sunburned sons of bottlers for the Medicaid trust fund since toil, as Gov. Jeff Davis used to call the 1993 and makes up for the state’s lost rev- hardy white men whom he, like Trump, enue by levying taxes on unemployment claimed to champion. checks. Jobless people are better able to Follow Arkansas Blog on Twitter: @ArkansasBlog

arktimes.com APRIL 27, 2017

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O'Reilly's fall

hom the gods would destroy, they first make TV stars. A familiar kind of madness too often follows: delusions of ratings-induced grandeur accompanied by the unmoderated sexual fantasies of 13-year-old boys. Unmoderated, that is, by that greatest of all civilizing agents: fear of the laughter of beautiful women. Soon enough, though, fame and money no longer suffice. Our hero takes to embroidering upon his personal myth. He transforms a comfortable suburban childhood into a Dickensian life of hardscrabble poverty. He begins fantasizing about athletic feats and martial glory. A successful Little League career becomes NCAA stardom; observing a distant war from a TV studio metamorphoses into a harrowing stint as a war correspondent. But who cares? Because Bill O’Reilly is a gifted bullshit artist, with a unique ability to embody the enthusiasms and resentments of his audience, the ratings and the money keep coming. It definitely takes a certain genius. Slate’s Justin Peters nailed it: “As a host, O’Reilly alternately channeled Mike Francesa, Mike Wallace, Krusty the Clown and everyone’s blowhard Uncle Frank.” A “War on Christmas,” for heaven’s sake. This in a country where it’s impossible to venture into a public space after Thanksgiving without hearing a Muzak rendition of “Oh Little Child of Bethlehem.” You could even call it a Horatio O’Reilly tale, as in Horatio Alger. But then came the women. Let The Daily Beast’s Pete Dexter and Jeff Nale deliver the punch line of the year: “O’Reilly became a very important man at Fox News, and this he took to heart. His show reached number one of cable news shows, and Mr. O started letting his penis do the thinking. It is not a smart penis.” Putting aside the question of whether such a thing exists, the star began to act like an eighth-grader prank-dialing the head cheerleader — talking dirty while emitting slapping and grunting noises suggestive of masturbation. In 2004, a Fox News producer named Andrea Mackris tape-recorded one of these calls and played it for Fox News lawyers. They gave her a reported $9 million to go away. Now me, I’d be reluctant to appear in public, much less on cable TV, after taking such a pratfall, but then I’m not star material. Also, my only direct encounter with sexual harassment came as a victim, rather than a perp.

Long ago and far away, I had an academic superior who delighted in telling people at parGENE ties and recepLYONS tions how I’d stood out among a rabble of otherwise undistinguished job applicants as a “hunk.” That is, my dashing good looks had gotten me the job. He particularly enjoyed narrating this tale in front of my “cute little wife” — as he invariably described her. I never really thought it was about sex. I’m far too conventional and unimaginative to be mistaken for gay. Also, these humiliations always occurred in quasipublic settings. There was no physical intimidation. I was a rugby player in those days. Unlike a woman, I didn’t need to fear being cornered. But I also knew that to complain would result in my being portrayed as crazy, homophobic or both. (New England academia was way ahead of the cultural curve.) Also that my tormentor had many powerful allies, while I was expendable. So I did what women have always done: I found another job and quit before I got fired. Without resorting to amateur psychoanalysis, I ended up thinking it had been all about power. Something about me irked my antagonist — maybe my boring conventionality and cute little wife — and he got off on making me squirm. But here’s the thing: I never took him seriously. See, that’s an unacknowledged aspect of the whole Fox News Dirty Old Man saga that nobody talks about. For all their power and notoriety, O’Reilly and recently deposed Fox Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes are 67 and 76 years of age, respectively. Sure, money can buy you love. All you need to do is look at President and Mrs. Trump to know that’s true. But there’s a limit. Granted the Fox News brand depends on old duffers in Barca-Loungers looking up women’s skirts and calling it news. But for a guy like Ailes, who looks like something that lives under a bridge in a Brothers Grimm fairy tale, to be putting moves on women like former Miss America Gretchen Carlson or Megyn Kelly strikes me as less offensive than comical. They’re out of your league, old man. Always were.

Forget the hairdo

GEORGE LEE COLEMAN, a featured profile in the

Arkansas Times 2016 “Arkansan Of The Year: The Newly Insured Arkansan” Introduces his book,

after her hair and y 4-year-old daughter loves makeup. She is seriously obclothing instead of critiquing her sessed. She sneaks into my for her politics. bathroom and reappears with lipstick I often wonder on her eyebrows, cheeks and all over her hands and tells she just put on “a how many women AUTUMN little bit.” A few weeks ago, she said choose not to run TOLBERT something new: “Don’t wear too much for office for this make-up or else the boys will get the very reason. I admit that I’m guilty. When I saw wrong idea.” Shocked, I asked her who told her that. She answered that it was the photo of Ted Nugent, Kid Rock and a line in a Disney movie she recently Sarah Palin in the Oval Office last week, watched. I explained to her that as she I snickered at Palin’s choice of outfit. grew up, she could wear as much or as Shame on me, as I, like all of us, have little make-up as she wanted and no worn something that others would conone would care, but even as I told her, I sider too youthful or too casual or too knew it wasn’t true. dressy or too ill-fitShe will be judged Let’s make a pact. As ting. Choosing the on her makeup, hair right outfit every we move closer to the and clothes, espesingle day can be a cially if she goes election, let’s call out chore. I understand into politics. why Clinton goes and try to end the with a uniform of As the 2018 races begin to heat up, we appearance-based solid pantsuits and see more and more why Merkel sports criticism of both men women running her no-nonsense for office. And as and women. With social haircut. more women run, men in polimedia and the constant ticsYes, we will see more hear it, too, but it of the seemingly flow of information, it is not as widespread. endless critiques of I don’t believe I’ve is easy to find a policy their appearances. ever heard any talk I could change the position or voting of Vice President line to, “Don’t wear Mike Pence’s choice record to praise or too much makeup of footwear or Govor else the voters criticize. Let’s leave ernor Hutchinson’s hairstyle. will get the wrong appearances out of it. idea.” Or don’t wear Most of the talk of too short a skirt or appearances centoo long a skirt or too much black or too ters around Canadian Prime Minister much color or too high a heel or too low Justin Trudeau and President Donald a heel. No matter what a woman wears, Trump, with Trudeau recently having someone will judge her on her appearmore attention paid to his looks and rear ance first and her accomplishments and end than his support of the Keystone policies second. Pipeline. Those who constantly ridicule Earlier this year, Bill O’Reilly (good Trump’s appearance undermine the riddance) criticized Maxine Waters’ real criticisms of his extremist policies. hair. German Chancellor Angela Merkel Let’s make a pact. As we move closer to is referred to as “plain.” When Hillary the election, let’s call out and try to end Clinton appeared late last year for a the appearance-based criticism of both speech with no makeup on, more attenmen and women. With social media and tion was paid to her face than to her the constant flow of information, it is words. In Arkansas, I’ve heard critieasy to find a policy position or voting record to praise or criticize. Let’s leave cism of Justice Courtney Goodson and Attorney General Leslie Rutledge for appearances out of it. We are all just having blonde hair, as if somehow hair doing the best we can with what we color affects their policies and decisions. have. Let’s give our candidates and poliI hope Maureen Skinner, who is running ticians a break on the things that don’t matter and hold them accountable on for Sen. Jason Rapert’s seat, has thick the things that do. skin, as there will be those who come

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APRIL 27, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

asketball season’s behind us, spring football practice hasn’t culminated yet, and baseball hasn’t quite revved up to the ever-beguiling postseason, so Pearls this go-round is a bit of a hodgepodge. But we’ll start by extending a belated commendation to Jeff Long for rectifying his worst mistake in a decade as Arkansas athletic director with what may prove to be his best hire. In this space three years or so ago, the sheer bewilderment at the hiring of Jimmy Dykes as women’s basketball coach was evident. This was, in a sort of roundabout way, a Houston Nuttcaliber decision, bringing in a wholly unproven rah-rah guy with Arkansas ties to try to reshape a program in tatters. For a spell, it seemed to work, but Dykes ultimately ended up with a 9-23 SEC mark the past two seasons because highly touted players transferred away and a woeful lack of depth caught the team flat-footed in a brutal conference that ended up boasting the national champion and runner-up. Dykes was gracious in his exit, thankfully, and even more impressive is that he effused proper praise for Long’s choice of successor. Mike Neighbors is sort of the roundball version of Gus Malzahn around these parts, except he’s exceedingly authentic and not some sort of charlatan opportunist. Neighbors’ roots here are well known: He’s a Greenwood native who rebuilt two high school programs as an up-and-comer in the 1990s (Bentonville and Cabot) before taking a shot at working his way up the collegiate ladder. And he did that handsomely as director of basketball operations at the UA for a spell before being a top assistant at Tulsa, Colorado, Arkansas again, Xavier and then Washington. There was an obvious pattern developing at all these stops, which is that recruiting and player development (areas where top assistants excel) all ticked upward. And Neighbors was accordingly rewarded in 2013 with the head-coaching job at Washington, and the program thrived. The Huskies made the NCAA Tournament the last three of those years, notched their first-ever Final Four berth in 2015-16, and boasted the all-time scoring champion in women’s college basketball in do-everything guard Kelsey Plum. It’s no wonder that Neighbors, with his approachable attitude and 98 wins over four years in Seattle, was Long’s top

target this spring when Dykes’ resignation under pressure created the vacancy. Getting back home BEAU meant a lot to WILCOX the 47-year-old Neighbors: He paid his former employer a $1 million buyout after barely earning that much over the four seasons he held the job, and gushed about the dream job he was taking. That’s kind of a big deal for Hog fans who feel like Long’s longdistance gambles in various coaching hires have fallen short. The hiring of Neighbors looks a little like the investment in Mike Anderson six years ago. It has plenty of regional cachet and it has that indescribable “right guy” feel to it, and it has the appearance of a long-term win for Long, who needed one desperately. Dave Van Horn has one of the most potent lineups in all of college baseball right now, but the Hogs’ two recent series losses to LSU and Auburn exposed the fact that their pitching arsenal isn’t necessary quality depth at this point. Being 32-10 and 12-6 in league play (best overall mark and tied for the second-best SEC record) remains an appreciable improvement from last year’s sub-.500 debacle. That said, Van Horn watched rather helplessly as Auburn, not one of the conference’s better hitting teams, pounded Arkansas’s starting pitchers to the tune of a whopping 15 runs over only fiveplus innings of collaborative work. The bullpen was roughed up Friday and Sunday in the two losses, too, and Auburn third baseman Josh Anthony, who entered the weekend without a home run and with a modest average of .258, raked nine hits in 12 at-bats including his first bomb on Friday and two singles and two doubles on Sunday. Arkansas has a lot of so-called live arms on the roster, but not many of them have considerable experience. The two most seasoned pitchers, Dominic Taccolini and Josh Alberius, have had their share of struggles, and that’s typically been a byproduct of control woes. Cannon Chadwick lost the closer’s job after a memorably bad ninth inning against LSU, then seemed to rebound against Auburn with a win in middle relief. Trouble is, he was gassed when he was summoned on Sunday again, and took the loss after failing to record an out.

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NOTES ON THE PASSING SCENE

usk comes to the State Police roadblock on Arkansas Highway 388, about a half-mile from the Cummins Unit, where two men will be put to death tonight. A cool spring evening here, the broad acre of Delta dirt near the turnoff to the prison as manicured as a golf course, other than the occasional fire ant mound, which the reporters step around like landmines. The two protester pens, pro- and antideath penalty, are made up of steel fence posts driven into the ground and strung with yellow caution tape. They face each other from opposite corners of the lawn, separated by 100 yards of grass and a wide gulf of belief. In one corner: The state shouldn’t kill. In the other: an eye for an eye. A pride of state trooper prowlers lounge at the roadblock in the shadow of the tidy brick sign that announces you have arrived at the prison. They are clustered around the mothership: a State Police Mobile Command Post built on a semi-truck frame, topped with a mast topped, in turn, by flashing blue lights. A green Army tent is set up nearby, cooled by whirring fans until the chilly dusk sweeps purple over the countryside. Later, several of the prowlers will rush away inexplicably into the night toward the distant highway, taillights trailing out like afterburners, Detroit V-8s growling across the fields in a dragstrip dream: BWAAAAAAAAAA … The state boys in their smart blue uniforms, stiff hats and shades, stand outside the tent as evening comes, chatting amiably. Occasionally, one breaks off to head to the port-a-potty at the edge of the field, roughly at the midpoint between the two protester pens, like a border patrol shack regulating travel between two countries. Through an iron gate near the pen for those here to protest the executions of Jack Jones and Marcel Williams, a helicopter, blades drooping, awaits orders in the same livery as the prowlers. Occasionally, the pilots, both in green jumpsuits, stroll to the helicopter from the Army tent as if to check on their charge. The Observer can’t help but imagine

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them whispering to the bird, stroking its aluminum hide, stilling the temperamental beast. There will be no protesters to cheer on the execution of Williams, but before the execution of Jack Jones, the family of Mary Phillips and her daughter Lacy assembled in the pen nearest the highway. In 1995, Jones entered the Bald Knob accounting office where Mary Phillips was working as a bookkeeper. He tied Lacy, then 11, to a chair before taking her mother into another room. There, Jones raped Mary Phillips before strangling her with a cord from a coffee pot. Then he came back, strangled Lacy unconscious and pistol-whipped her until her skull was fractured and he thought she was dead. The police who arrived at the scene thought the same until they started taking crime scene photos and the flash from the camera caused her to stir. At the moment Jones is scheduled to die, those there to protest his death begin to toll a bell on a post, hitting it with a five-pound sledge. Across the lawn, members of Phillips’ family appear to form a circle to pray. In a nearby car, Jones’ sister, Lynn Scott, sits with a friend, crushed and weeping. Later, when she learns that witnesses said her brother’s lips moved for up to two minutes after the drugs hit his system, she will stand in the road that curves toward the prison, and cry, and shout into her friend’s face that her brother was suffocated by the paralytic vecuronium bromide, that he died in agony. The attorney general will dispute this. True or not, though, that will always be a part of Scott’s memory of this night: her brother dying, gasping for breath like a fish yanked up from the deep. On her wrist, where she will see it every waking hour for the rest of her life, is a tattoo that is a copy of the way her brother signed his letters to her. For now, though, the bell tolls, and the cruisers lounge, and the reporters scribble in the gloaming as the sound of the bell spills out onto the fields to be found by distant ears. Do not ask for whom the bell tolls, a protester says into a megaphone. It tolls for thee. C

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Arkansas Reporter

THE

Watching an execution A reporter’s account of witnessing the execution of Marcel Williams. BY JACOB ROSENBERG

door with a large sign on its front, “EC” (execution chamber), and take a seat in the few rows of chairs that face four large rectangular windows. Some lights are on, but it is mostly dim. A black curtain is drawn behind the windows in front of us. We wait. Other witnesses play with their fingers or clasp their hands or touch their glasses. At 8:17 p.m., a staff member announces there is a stay of 20 minutes. As I would later find out, the stay was until 8:30 p.m. or further

see other witnesses, and myself, fidget. Sometime after 9 p.m., I hear ADC Director Wendy Kelley say, “I’m not letting you out.” Williams — we later learn — was strapped down in a gurney the whole time. ADC staff lets Williams use the restroom around 9:20 p.m., at which time we are brought back out to the van and left to wonder what is next. Within 10 minutes, we are back in the death chamber. We know, then, that the execution

APRIL 27, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

BRIAN CHILSON

ou know the turn for the Cummins Unit of the Arkansas Department of Correction is about to come up on your left when you see the Lincoln Memorial Lawn graveyard on your right. On Monday, for the third time in April, I carpooled down with another journalist and turned left down the road that leads to Cummins. Looking out both sides, we could see the stretching Delta farmlands on which prisoners work for no pay. A little way down the road, two ADC employees lean on a large white truck parked at the end of a gravel driveway that stretches back to an old colonial house, the front half caved in on itself. They give us our media passes. Behind them and the house, we see the Varner Unit, where Arkansas death row inmates live. Varner to Cummins, that’s the route they take to die. With our badges, we enter the Cummins parking lot, where TV reporters fan out and set up their lights for live interviews and reports. Other journalists go inside, giving up their cell phones. At first, a guard will not let me bring a recorder. We have a back and forth; I make him call someone. He lets it go eventually. Each time I enter this facility, going through the giant metal gates into the visitation center turned media room — with its vending machines among gray walls and small slit windows — I think of how I am part of the ADC’s bureaucratic task of killing someone. The law requires media witnesses to be present. The jockeying for position, as a reporter, adds to my unease. Reporting on executions is a crucial public service, but no one can pretend there is not an ugly underbelly. People are checking their retweets on last meals. The viewing of the death of Mar-

INSIDE CUMMINS: Members of the media wait for official word from Arkansas Department of Correction officials.

cel Williams comes down to a lottery between me and one other person. That’s the strange position: hoping to win a drawing to see someone die. My name is chosen. It’s surreal and mind-bending and uncomfortable. That feeling of my name being chosen is one of the oddest of my life. As a journalist, I want to be in the room. As a person, I just feel a tension in my stomach. We leave the media room to board a van that will carry us a short distance to the execution chamber. As we ride, an unbelievably red sunset crashes over the Delta landscape. Around 8:05 p.m., we pass through a

word from U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker, which came at 9:22 p.m. “Twenty minutes is up,” an ADC staff member whispers in the back of the room. Nothing changes. At 9 p.m. someone says, “still no news.” We wait. More than an hour passes from the time we first enter the viewing room. From the room behind the curtain, we can hear a low buzz of people chatting. Sometimes, a laugh rings out from inside the room. I simply look forward at the black curtain, knowing almost nothing about what is happening to Williams. The curtain creates a reflection of the room behind me, like a mirror. I can only

will happen. In Arkansas, witnesses do not get to see the placement of the IV for lethal injection. So, from that time we entered, at 9:34 p.m., until the curtain opens, I see nothing. We just stare forward at those windows, waiting for them to reveal Williams. The curtain swings open at 10:16 p.m. and the procedure begins. Yellow light from fluorescent bulbs cast a strange glow in the room in front of us. Williams’ eyes look up at the ceiling. He is on a gurney, tied down. His head is locked in place and the right side of his body is facing us, the viewers. He gives no final words. A long white smock rests

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over his body. We can see the IV sites. Witnesses don’t have an audio feed into the execution chamber and there are no announcements along the way. I try to follow along based on what I know of the procedure. The first drug is the sedative midazolam. Williams’ eyelids begin to droop and eventually close (the right one slightly lingers open throughout). His breaths appear to be deep. His back arches off the gurney as he sucks in air. I lose count of the number of times his body moves that way, rising off the gurney. The procedure says that 5 minutes after the introduction of midazolam there should be no movement. But, at 10:21 p.m., Williams still appears to be breathing heavily and is still moving. A man on the execution team checks Williams’ pulse and touches his eyes and says something inaudible. Then Williams’ breathing appears to become shallow. By 10:24 p.m., Williams looks completely still. At 10:27 p.m., an official runs his finger across Williams’ eyelids again. At 10:31 p.m., the official touches the IVs. He pulls out a stethoscope and puts it to Williams’ heart. He calls in a coroner. The time of death is marked at 10:33 p.m. Then the curtains close, and I can see the reflection again of all these people in this room, brought here just so Williams could be killed by the state. We were all required. We head back to the media room to tell others. The timeline is long. We were in there a while. It gets confusing. We try our best. Then, we take questions. Asked by a TV news reporter, if, in “layman’s terms,” Williams looked peaceful in his passing, I stress the use of a paralytic, the second drug in the execution protocol, which masks outward signs of suffering. Or I try to say that. I am at a podium and I have just watched a man die. I don’t know what I really said. What I wanted to say was that the use of a paralytic in lethal injection, like so much of the process, was designed to make the process look peaceful. We do not know what Williams felt when he died, and we should not guess based on a process that purposefully hides things for witnesses. It does not matter if it looked peaceful to a layman. Even if you witness an execution, there is still so much you don’t know.

THE

BIG PICTURE

Inconsequential News Quiz: ‘I GOT 177 MILLION REASONS’ EDITION Play at home, while sitting on your stolen moisture gauge!

1) The Arkansas Department of Health recently sent out an urgent alert about a hazard to public health. What was it? A) A 95-pound steamer-trunk-sized moisture gauge stolen from a Hot Springs business that contains “approximately 8 millicuries of Cesium-137 and 40 millicuries of Americium-241,” both of which are radioactive. B) The weekly “Expired Meat” discount night at the Malvern Western Sizzlin’. C) Legendary 1970s Fort Smith groupie Brandi “Critters” Merkin has been released from quarantine. D) The dangers of marijuana overdose, which can reportedly lead to the senseless murder of whole bags of Spicy Nacho Doritos. 2) Earlier this month, a pet named Speedy was hailed as a hero by officials in Poinsett County. What kind of animal is Speedy and what were the circumstances? A) A 10-foot reticulated python, which squeezed the midsection of his owner until a cocktail wiener the man had choked on was dislodged from his throat. B) A Doberman pincher, which stood snarling between Sen. Jason Rapert (R-Conway) and his cell phone for over six hours, thus preventing Rapert from soiling Facebook with his latest brain shart. C) A baby goat, who repeatedly jumped on the legs and chest of her sleeping 10-year-old owner to wake the girl enough to realize that her family’s home was on fire and quickly filling with smoke. D) A chicken from Hot Springs’ “IQ Zoo,” which perplexed a gunman with repeated games of Tic-Tac-Toe, giving the man’s hostages time to slip out the back. 3) After the Arkansas Supreme Court issued a stay April 19 that halted the execution of death row inmate Stacey Johnson, Sen. Bart Hester (R-Bedrock) did something surprising that could be seen as a rather petty attempt to take revenge against the court. What did Hester do? A) Snuck into the Supreme Court cloakroom with a pair of scissors and a sewing kit and gave Associate Justice Shawn Womack’s robe a shockingly short hem. B) Coated the justices’ chairs with baby oil, which caused all seven to simultaneously shoot under the bench the next time they sat down. C) Tweeted out Chief Justice Dan Kemp’s cell phone number, along with — weirdly — Hester’s own cell phone number. D) Wrote a letter to the court featuring an argument so dumb that it lowered the justices’ collective IQ score by 119 points. 4) Last week, Lubbock, Texas, resident Eliberto Cantu finally revealed himself as the holder of a winning Mega Millions lottery ticket worth $177 million, which he purchased March 30 while working construction near Hazen. What did Cantu say he plans to do with part of the money? A) Purchase the entire city of Jacksonville and bulldoze it for the good of all mankind. B) Not buy any work boots, that’s for damn sure. C) Do some traveling and build new sanctuaries for two churches. D) Get himself cloned three times so he can finally fulfill his dream of starting a one-man boy band. 5) During recent questioning in federal court, Arkansas Department of Correction Director Wendy Kelley admitted something rather odd about the state’s supply of potassium chloride, a deadly drug that’s one of three included in the state’s execution protocol. What’s the issue? A) The ADC stole it from Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards’ medicine cabinet. B) The drug was donated to the state. C) It’s sweetened with Splenda, with a pinch of ground nutmeg. D) For security, Kelley swallows the glass vial containing the drug and can regurgitate it on command.

Answers:

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APRIL 27, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

READ ABOUT MITCHELL PAGE

BRIAN CHILSON

SETTING THE PERIODIC TABLE: Mitchell Harvey, a student at North Little Rock High School, calls elements “amazing little things.” He’s building a display of the periodic table, to be fitted with elements of his own extraction, for the high school.

All-Stars class of

The 2017

BRIGHT LIGHTS

Academic

2017 Academic All-Stars

he class of 2017, our 23rd, is made up of athletes, coders, budding politicians and brain experts. There’s rarely a B on the

transcripts of these students — in not just this, their senior year, but in any year of their high school careers. Back in 1995, we created the Academic All-Star

Team to honor what we then called “the silent majority — the kids who go to school, do their homework (most of it, anyway), graduate and go on to be contributing members of society.” Too often, we argued then, all Arkansans heard about young people was how poorly they were faring. Or, when students did get positive attention, it came for athletic achievement. As you read profiles of this year’s All-Stars, it should be abundantly clear that good things are happening in Arkansas schools and there are many academic achievers who deserve to be celebrated. You should get a good idea, as well, of how these stellar students are busy outside school, with extracurricular activities, volunteer work, mission activities and more. They’ll be honored this week at a ceremony at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock with plaques and $250 cash awards. Many college plans listed here are not set in stone, as students await information on scholarships and acceptances.

CAROLINE COPLIN-CHUDY AGE: 17 HOMETOWN: NORTH LITTLE ROCK HIGH SCHOOL: MOUNT ST. MARY ACADEMY PARENTS: (GUARDIAN) DENNIS CHUDY COLLEGE PLANS: DUKE UNIVERSITY

aroline Coplin-Chudy has a 4.4 grade point average — high enough to rank second in her class at Mount St. Mary Academy — and lost her mother to leukemia during her sophomore year, something she told us came to be a source of inspiration and drive during her academic development. “It was a big adjustment. After my mom passed away, it was just my stepdad. It’s a weird realization coming to the idea that both of your parents are gone, and it’s just you. ... I still think of her every single day. She motivates me to do well in everything, because my whole life I wanted to make her proud.” Caroline is president of Mount St. Mary’s Investment Club and of SADD (Students Against Destructive Decisions). She’s also been a regular volunteer for several years at the Little Rock Compassion Center, whose recov-

ery branch provides meals and health resources to people suffering from addiction. Caroline said she found healing from her own grief in the friendships she forged there. As the recipient of a Questbridge scholarship, described by Caroline’s guidance counselor and nominator Amy Perkins as a program where lower-income students qualify for tuition to schools with which they “match” via an early decision process, Caroline will attend Duke University on a full scholarship. “I’m going to study biology and psych, with a minor in Spanish. My plan is to work at the Duke Center for Addiction [Science and Technology] helping people with drug addictions overcome that sort of thing. It’s something that I’ve had experience with, watching my family go through things like that.”

arktimes.com APRIL 27, 2017

2017 Academic All-Stars AVERY ELLIOTT AGE: 18 HOMETOWN: CABOT HIGH SCHOOL: CABOT HIGH SCHOOL PARENTS: DAN AND MELISSA ELLIOTT COLLEGE PLANS: UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS, MEDICINE

AXEL NTAMATUNGIRO AGE: 17 HOMETOWN: PINE BLUFF HIGH SCHOOL: SUBIACO ACADEMY PARENTS: SIXTE NTAMATUNGIRO AND SYLVANA NICITERETSE COLLEGE PLANS: RICE UNIVERSITY, NEUROSCIENCE

xel Ntamatungiro grew up among books and maps dispersed throughout his home that “paint[ed] the walls with nuanced shades of knowledge.” It shows. Not often can a high school senior explain, as Axel does, his love for studying the brain so easily. “Neuroscience is basically a neuron turning on and off,” he said. “The fact that you have billions of these combinations that lead to consciousness, that’s unbelievable.” To continue learning about the mind, Axel is headed to Rice University on a full ride as a QuestBridge scholar. Maybe medical school or graduate school after that. Axel said his parents taught him a “humble intellectualism” that helped him understand “the irrationality of life.” They always told him: “Work hard, but you need to realize you don’t always get what you deserve.” And life has been, at times, irrational and difficult for his family. Axel was the only member of his family born in the United States — in Little Rock in 1999. The rest migrated from Burundi in the early 1990s. They stayed here as the Rwandan genocide inflicted incredible damage in the area. That past was never hidden from Axel. “Instead of avoiding my questions, my parents levelheadedly answered [them], telling me about Belgian colonialism, Hutu-Tutsi tension and the systematic poverty afflicting Burundi,” he said. Maybe that is why Axel has never been afraid to ask big questions. He said it also helped to have a diverse group of friends who taught him new things. At his cafeteria table for lunch are kids from all over: Nigeria, Fort Smith, Japan, Bentonville and Russia. Everyone’s small stories add to a global perspective, something bigger from something small, kind of like those neurons. 16

APRIL 27, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

JADE DESPAIN AGE: 18 HOMETOWN: SPRINGDALE HIGH SCHOOL: HAAS HALL ACADEMY (FAYETTEVILLE) PARENTS: BRENAN AND TIFFANY DESPAIN COLLEGE PLANS: U.S. NAVAL ACADEMY, NUCLEAR ENGINEERING

or Jade DeSpain, the question, “Where’s your hometown?” isn’t necessarily as straightforward as it seems. The National Merit semifinalist, swimming star and Quiz Bowler spent much of her childhood in Beijing, where her parents — both fluent in Mandarin — taught her Chinese concurrently with English (and where, she notes, she acquired an “incredible prowess with chopsticks.”) “We’ve moved around so much that I don’t really have a ‘hometown,’ but Springdale is the closest I’ve ever gotten,” she said. She’s made her impact there, too, tutoring students free of charge through her volunteer work with the M&N Augustine Foundation and putting in time at the Arkansas Council for the Blind and the Springdale Animal Shelter. Jade is ranked second in her class, and her high school transcript is

full of aced courses in trigonometry, physics and calculus. She’s also the co-founder of Haas Hall Academy’s coding club, so a career in nuclear energy development — Jade’s field of choice — isn’t just an aspiration; it’s the plan. “I have a deep appreciation for nature,” she told us, citing Devil’s Den State Park as a spot to which she feels closely connected, and stressing the importance of preserving natural spaces and developing more long-term options for sustainable energy. On Christmas Day 2016, Jade checked her email to find that she’d attained something she’d wanted as early as age 12: acceptance to the U.S. Naval Academy. There, she’ll major in nuclear engineering and complete her five mandatory post-Academy years in the Navy, after which she hopes to acquire a Ph.D. in the field.

hough many of our All-Stars seem destined from birth for academic greatness, there is the occasional inspiring All-Star who has had to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds. One of those is Cabot High School’s Avery Elliott, who was born with nystagmus, a condition that causes involuntary eye movements that can make it hard for sufferers to concentrate and learn. Though it ’s hard to imagine it now, when she was in elementary school Avery found herself falling further and further behind her classmates in reading because of her condition. “That was difficult,” she said. “I was behind schedule until about third or fourth grade. I would have to go home and really work with my parents to keep up with the rest of the class.” Even though she struggled early on, Avery said that, in a way, the nystagmus contributed to her success and gave her a direction to follow. “I had to learn to really study even outside of school,” she said. “I learned some very good study habits. But I think it also really affected where I wanted to go as far as my career. … I really learned that a medical team can not only dispense medicine, but can really affect someone’s life.” A National Merit finalist who has volunteered extensively with Special Olympics and already completed 43 hours of college-level coursework, Avery has been awarded the University of Arkansas Fellowship. She plans to study medicine at UAMS after completing her undergrad degree, then practice in Arkansas. That goal has always pushed her to succeed academically. “I wanted to go into the medical field from an early age,” she said, “so I knew starting out in high school that I needed to make very good grades in order to get where I needed to. I had to really learn the material, rather than just trying to ace a test.”

HE RT of a TROJAN John Miller

Associate Professor and Social Worker

Congratulations to Dr. Miller, social worker of the year â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Arkansas Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers. He and other excellent faculty contribute to the community and to student success every day.

ualr.edu arktimes.com APRIL 27, 2017

2017 Academic All-Stars BENJAMIN KEATING

KATHERINE HAHN

AGE: 18

AGE: 17

HOMETOWN: FORT SMITH

HOMETOWN: HINDSVILLE

HIGH SCHOOL: SOUTHSIDE HIGH SCHOOL

HIGH SCHOOL: HUNTSVILLE HIGH SCHOOL

PARENTS: DRS. BILL AND JANICE KEATING

PARENTS: SHANNON HAHN

COLLEGE PLANS: UNDECIDED

I JARED GILLIAM AGE: 17 HOMETOWN: CABOT HIGH SCHOOL: CABOT HIGH SCHOOL PARENTS: DAN AND LEANNE GILLIAM COLLEGE PLANS: UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS, ENGINEERING

hen most young people say they want to change the world, it’s easy to believe that’s just pie-in-the-sky thinking by someone who hasn’t yet been through the Academy of Hard Knocks. When Jared Gilliam says he wants to change the world, however, there’s a good chance he might actually pull it off. Jared even has a plan: He’ll change the world through engineering. A National Merit finalist and AP scholar with a GPA of 4.18 and a perfect score of 36 on the ACT, Jared is well placed to do just that. A musician who plays percussion with the Cabot High Marching Band, Jared said his favorite subject in school is math. “I think I’m mostly interested in engineering because I’ve always been sort of a problem-solver,” he said. “I’ve enjoyed math and science, working through things and finding solutions to everyday problems. This year, I’ve been in robotics, so we’ve spent time working on a robot to perform various tasks. I’ve enjoyed that a lot. I think engineering is where my ability would best be used.” He’ll attend the University of Arkansas, which has offered him the Honors College Fellowship. He said the drive to excel academically has always been a part of his life. “I’ve grown up being encouraged to do well, and I guess I have my parents to thank for that and all my teachers,” he said. “I think knowing that I have the ability to do all of this, I feel compelled to do what I can to make a difference. I think life would be pretty boring if I didn’t go out there and do all the things I do. I don’t think I could settle for not being successful.”

APRIL 27, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

f you were looking for a ringing endorsement of Ben Keating’s character, you’d need to look no further than Amy Slater, the guidance counselor who nominated him for our Academic All-Stars roster and who said of Ben, “He is all the things I hope my son turns out to be. ... He really thinks about things, and he practices the trumpet and piano for hours a day. It’s crazy, his dedication.” Ben probably had something to prove here; he admits to some skepticism on the part of his mother when he announced he’d be pursuing a career in music. He’s certainly proved his mettle; Ben is band president at Southside, was a principal trumpet for the 2017 National Youth Honor Orchestra, first chair for Southside’s Wind Symphony and for the All-State Jazz Band and was ranked in the top-tier bands for All-State Band and All-State Orchestra each year from 2014-16. The accolades go on and on: Ben has received a Young Artist Award from the International Trumpet Guild, a Gold Medal from the National Piano Guild and superior ratings from the National Federation of Music Clubs competitions for over a decade. He plays for the Arkansas Symphony Youth Orchestra and as a volunteer musician for the Fort Smith Community Band. Ben is still deciding where to attend college, but wherever he goes, he hopes to continue playing with an orchestra. Eventually, he wants to teach at the university level. “Ultimately,” he wrote, “I want to use my passion to unite people of all different races, backgrounds and cultures. In today’s society that is politically and culturally divided, it is more important than ever to share the universal language of music.”

COLLEGE PLANS: MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, BIOCHEMICAL ENGINEERING

atherine Hahn is ranked first in her class at Huntsville High School, which she attends because her hometown of Hindsville is too small to support its own school system. The population of Hindsville is “about 75 people,” she told us. At Huntsville High, Katherine plays bass drum in the marching band and marimba/ xylophone in the concert band and runs with the Huntsville cross-country team. Her real passion, though, is science. “I think I’ve always wanted to go to a college that was sciencebased and researchbased,” she told us. Her high school principal, Roxanne Enix, noted her own surprise when Katherine announced that she’d take 10 credits her senior year, instead of the recommended eight. “I thought she had lost her mind,” Enix stated. Those credits, over half of which are in AP classes, are what Katherine hopes have prepared her for the rigorous workload at MIT. Aiming for a career in pharmaceutical development, Katherine plans to study biochemical engineering, something she said resonated personally with her as a result of her mother’s struggle with skin cancer. “Biology helps me understand why medicine does the things it does,” Katherine told us. “Whenever I first started out, I wanted to do environmental stuff,” she said, but turned her attention to drug delivery systems after observing so many friends and loved ones battling cancer. “I want to help stop people from being scared of losing people,” she explained. Katherine, a native of Tahlequah, Okla., who moved to Arkansas around fifth grade, has served on the Madison County Health Coalition as Youth Leader and was named Student of the Year in 2017 by the Huntsville Chamber of Commerce and Huntsville High School.

GEORGIANA BURNSIDE AGE: 18 HOMETOWN: LITTLE ROCK HIGH SCHOOL: LITTLE ROCK CHRISTIAN ACADEMY PARENTS: BOB AND ANN BURNSIDE COLLEGE PLANS: STANFORD UNIVERSITY, BIOLOGY AND PUBLIC POLICY

hen this reporter mentioned to friends at UAMS that she’d just spoken to an amazingly poised, optimistic and intelligent young woman with a spinal cord

MITCHELL HARVEY AGE: 17 HOMETOWN: NORTH LITTLE ROCK HIGH SCHOOL: NORTH LITTLE ROCK HIGH SCHOOL PARENTS: DAVID AND SUSAN HARVEY COLLEGE PLANS: LIKELY MISSISSIPPI STATE UNIVERSITY, CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

itchell Harvey is a big fan of the periodic table. “The elements are amazing little things,” he wrote in his Academic AllStar essay. “They make up everything, yet we hardly see them in their pure form in everyday life.” Mitchell decided they needed more exposure, so he started collecting examples of the elements and taking them to school for his peers and teachers to see. He extracted helium from an abandoned tank on the side of the road. He found zinc in wheel weights, grew crystals of copper with electrolysis and made bromine,

“blessing” no doubt goes further than UAMS, all the way to Denver’s Craig Hospital, where she spent “the most memorable two months in my life,” she said, and where she returns to continue her rehabilitation. What is a spinal cord injury? She answers that it is a) a life changed in a split second, b) finding out that a bad attitude is the true disability, c) a time to show off wheelchair tricks, and d) spontaneous moments of unfortunate incontinence. In her essay for the Arkansas Times, Georgiana

writes, “my physical brokenness has developed wholeness in my heart about the capacity life holds for individuals regardless of their disabilities.” In a phone interview, Georgiana, once a figure skater, talked about her work with Easter Seals, fundraisers for Craig Hospital, and giving talks and testimony about her faith. Georgiana has regained the ability to walk with hiking sticks and leg braces, thanks to the strength in her quads. And, thanks to support from the High Fives Foundation in Truckee,

Calif., which sponsors athletes with injuries and which has paid for some of her rehabilitation, Georgiana returned to the slopes over spring break, skiing upright with the aid of long forearm equipment. At Stanford, she’ll study to be a doctor, with a goal to return to Craig Hospital as a physician who’ll treat other injured youths who, though they may have, like Georgiana, at first believed their life was over, will learn they have “a unique role … enabling the advancement of society.”

injury, they said in unison, “You mean Georgiana Burnside.” Her reputation as a teenager who at 16 was paralyzed from the waist down in a snow skiing accident but who considers the event a

which he describes as “a blood-red liquid that fumes profusely,” from a “crude” homemade distillation setup and pool chemicals. Though you can buy sodium readily, Mitchell made his by melting drain cleaner (sodium hydroxide) with a blowtorch and then passing a current through it, separating the mixture into sodium metal, oxygen and water. His parents were OK with the procedure, he says, because he wore a Tyvek suit, three pairs of gloves, safety goggles and a face shield. While on a college visit in California last summer, Mitchell toured Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles and was impressed by the large periodic table display exhibit there. So he decided to build one for North Little Rock High. He got money from the school’s alumni group, the Wildcat Foundation, to pay for the supplies necessary to construct the 9-foot-by-6-foot display. He hopes to have it completed in the next two weeks and fill it with examples of elements he has collected, though he may need additional funding to pay for other elements. No. 1 in a class of 687, Mitchell scored a perfect 36 on the ACT. He’s also an Eagle Scout, and led a project to plant 800 native hardwood seedlings at Toltec Mounds Archeological State Park. After college, Mitchell said, he might start his own waste remediation business. “The business model I would be going for would be taking some byproduct that’s hazardous and turning it into something useful."

arktimes.com APRIL 27, 2017

2017 Academic All-Stars

REBECCA PARHAM AGE: 18 HOMETOWN: ALMA HIGH SCHOOL: ARKANSAS SCHOOL FOR MATHEMATICS, SCIENCES AND THE ARTS

CARSON MOLDER AGE: 18 HOMETOWN: MABELVALE

PARENTS: EILEEN AND RICK PARHAM

HIGH SCHOOL: BRYANT HIGH SCHOOL

COLLEGE PLANS: UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS OR HENDRIX COLLEGE

PARENTS: KEVIN AND RUBY MOLDER

COLLEGE PLANS: UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS

ot everybody plays the mellophone and likes to draw up better interstate exchanges, but Carson Molder does both. The University of Arkansas Honors College-bound student, No. 1 in his class, likes to create three-dimensional schemes in his head, and has been creating road designs since he was young. But as a musician who plays the French horn in his school’s orchestra and the mellophone in the Legacy of Bryant marching band, and who has won a band scholarship in addition to his Honors College reward to the UA, he said that one day he may be an audio engineer. “I’m going to put things together and see what sticks,” he said of his future. Meanwhile, Carson said the internet has been his Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria, taking him to new places that he otherwise could not get to. “I can count on my hands the number of times I have set foot outside Arkansas,” Carson wrote in an essay for the Arkansas Times. But with the internet, “I can gaze into the redwood forests of California and the skyscrapers of New York City without leaving my desk.” Without the internet, he said in a phone interview, “I would not be at the top of my class.” Carson added, “It’s not going to replace going out and visiting these things, but if you’re a kid and don’t have the money to go out, you can visit Yellowstone.” Carson, who describes himself as “really ambitious,” is looking forward to studying with Dr. Alan Mantooth, the director of the UA National Center for Reliable Electric Power Transmission. The UA, he said, “will provide me the tools” he’ll need to succeed in graduate school, which he hopes will be Stanford University. 20

APRIL 27, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

OLIVIA LANGER AGE: 18 HOMETOWN: JONESBORO HIGH SCHOOL: BROOKLAND HIGH SCHOOL PARENTS: KELLY WEBB AND JONATHAN LANGER COLLEGE PLANS: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA BARBARA, CHEMISTRY

ou might think that a student who is No. 1 in her class and a National Merit finalist with nary a B on her high school transcript might not consider one of her greatest achievements her selection as her high school’s drum major three years in a row. But here’s the thing: Schoolwork comes easy to Olivia Langer. “I never had to work hard,” she told us. In fact, her style of learning is “conversation-based,” she said; she enjoys “debate without argument.” But music was different: “I struggled at points, and had to put in extra work to be good.” Her selection as drum major was “something I know I’ve worked for,” she said, and she has enjoyed the responsibilities that come with

it. “I like to take care of people. The band calls me band mom,” she added. Beside numerous academic awards, Olivia also earned a 2017 state Horatio Alger scholarship for students who have overcome great obstacles. Hers, Olivia said, was financial: She’s always had a place to stay and food to eat, but she hasn’t been able to afford academic programs. “Honestly, I wasn’t able to visit any of the colleges I applied to,” she said. So she will see the UC Santa Barbara campus for the first time when she arrives this fall. She’s considering a double major in chemistry and anthropology; she’s interested in the evolutionary side of anthropology, and plans to seek graduate and post-graduate degrees.

n a visit to Hanamaki, Japan, with her school, Rebecca Parham noticed that once a month all the citizens would clean the front of their homes and shops. Folks would give each other gifts, too. “It was clear people tended to think for the whole,” she said. “I thought that was really nice.” An avid chemist, Rebecca did not just improve her Japanese on the trip, she brought those lessons of helping the community back to Arkansas. Her work has been at the intersection of heady science and community impact. In her robotics club, she noticed that girls were less likely to participate. “I decided that was not OK,” she said. So, she designed a day with LEGO kits to encourage women to pursue STEM education. That desire to make an impact goes beyond school, too. For her senior project, Rebecca designed a test for homebuyers to see if meth had been cooked on their property (yes, meth). Her parents, on hearing of this project choice, asked her to “please explain a little bit further … .” Here’s the gist: The method of meth production in rural areas has shifted to something called the Birch reduction; older testing kits would no longer work. But Rebecca thought she could produce one that could. She designed a flame test. It finds lithium compounds left behind. The process of invention was “definitely frustrating,” Rebecca said, but you “learn things you never thought of before.” Rebecca did not plan to spend senior year in her dorm late at night “searching online” how to identify meth production, but she has a driving curiosity toward science and how it “connects to the world.” She hopes to work in renewable energy — to be part of the global community, from Japan to Arkansas — making the world a nice place in which to live.

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Congratulations to Cabot High School’s 2017 Academic All-Stars

JARED GILLIAM and

AVERY ELIZABETH ELLIOTT

arktimes.com APRIL 27, 2017

2017 Academic All-Stars GRANT ROBINSON AGE: 18 HOMETOWN: SEARCY HIGH SCHOOL: SEARCY HIGH SCHOOL PARENTS: ERIC AND LISA ROBINSON COLLEGE PLANS: UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS

rant Robinson’s father is a cardiologist, and Grant long figured he would follow in his dad’s footsteps. But now he’s not so sure. Last summer, he was selected, among thousands of applicants from around the world, to participate in a Stanford University summer engineering program. He got to experience a taste of college life, to take advantage of Stanford’s decked-out labs and to tour the area to see results of civil engineering. The most memorable part of the program? Grant’s small group built a Rube Goldberg machine — a complicated gadget that performs a simple task in a convoluted way — that, by Grant’s estimation, was “the most complex and aesthetically pleasing” in the program. It included an electromagnet the group handmade and chemical reactions triggered by the machine. Grant’s academic achievements are the byproduct of a natural curiosity. He said he spends what little free time he has exploring YouTube, trying to figure out the way the world works. Another influence: His father, who pulled himself out of poverty to become a doctor, has always instilled in him the importance of hard work. The message clearly stuck. Grant is second in his class of 263, with a 4.27 GPA. He scored a 35 on the ACT. He’s a Presidential Scholar. His classmates voted him most likely to receive the Nobel Prize. He also participated in Project Unify (now known as Unified Champion Schools), an effort by the Special Olympics to get young people with and without special needs to come together for activities. Grant helped plan a basketball tournament as part of the project. In the fall, he’ll be rooting on the Razorbacks at the University of Arkansas.

APRIL 27, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

PRESTON STONE AGE: 18 HOMETOWN: BENTON HIGH SCHOOL: BENTON HIGH SCHOOL PARENTS: HALEY HICKS AND BREC STONE COLLEGE PLANS: UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS, PRE-MED

JOHN SNYDER AGE: 18 HOMETOWN: LITTLE ROCK HIGH SCHOOL: LITTLE ROCK CHRISTIAN ACADEMY PARENTS: JILL AND STEVE SNYDER COLLEGE PLANS: CORNELL UNIVERSITY, INDUSTRIAL AND LABOR RELATIONS

hatever you were doing by your senior year in high school, chances are you probably hadn’t already authored a book, much less a book on the complicated intersection of taxation and politics. John Snyder has, though. His book, “The Politics of Fiscal Policy,” explores the political aspects of economics, including the pros and cons of various governmental tax schemes and their effect on government spending. It’s for sale on Amazon right now. “It’s pretty concise,” John said, “but I wanted a way to express all my ideas in economic terms. That was a great way to do that.” A history buff who serves as vice president of his class, John has a stunning 4.49 GPA and is ranked first in his class of 129. Though he wanted to be a lawyer when he was younger, his plan now is to go into investment banking. “Ultimately I want to have my own hedge fund — this thing called an activist hedge fund — and eventually I want to be actively involved in politics, whether that’s in the midst of my business career or after … . I’d love to run for public office one day.” At Cornell University, John will be studying industrial and labor relations, a field that marries his love of multiple subjects. “Basically it ties in business, law, economics and history all into sort of one degree,” he said. “You can do limitless things [with the degree]. Some people go into law school, some go into banking, some go to politics. That’s why I chose that degree.” John said his philosophy is that we have only a limited amount of time on earth, and so we should try to make the most of our lives. “I think there are a lot of things I can do to change the way things currently are in society, whether it’s related to business or in academia or public policy,” he said. “If I don’t play a role in that and I’m not striving to do my best, I would feel like I’m wasting my potential.”

enton High School’s Big Man on Campus — No. 1 in his class, captain of the football team, an AP Scholar, straight As — can add to his resume the fact that he helped build his home. Preston, his two brothers and his mother bounced around a bit after her divorce, from Texas to Arkansas, living with grandparents and friends, Preston said. Then the family was selected by Habitat for Humanity, and he and his brothers pitched in to build their house. “It was the first place I could truly call home and it allowed me the stability I needed to grow into the kind of student I am today,” he wrote in his essay for the Arkansas Times. Preston, who also helped build a school outreach group called SERVE to help new or struggling students, also credits sports for giving him purpose. He recently volunteered to trade in the pigskin for a basketball, joining a team that played boys at the Alexander Juvenile Detention Center. “It was an awesome experience,” Preston said in a phone interview. “We were a little bit nervous at first” at the detention center, he said, but the team enjoyed the game — even though they lost to the Alexander team, formed to reward inmates with good behavior. “They practice every day,” Preston said. Preston has received a $70,000 Honors College scholarship at Fayetteville. He won’t be playing football with the Razorbacks. Instead he is thinking of following a pre-med track that will lead him to sports medicine. He plans to go Greek, as well.

SOUTHSIDE HIGH SCHOOL CONGRATULATES

CHARLES BENJAMIN KEATING We Are Proud Of You!

Preston Stone Congratulations KATHERINE MARIE HAHN Huntsville High School

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nwacc.edu 479.986.4000 | ONE COLLEGE DRIVE, BENTONVILLE, AR 72712

CHECK OUT OUR VIRTUAL TOUR AT nwacc.edu/tour arktimes.com APRIL 27, 2017

2017 Academic All-Stars KARINA BAO AGE: 18 HOMETOWN: LITTLE ROCK HIGH SCHOOL: CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL PARENTS: AMY YU AND SHAWN BAO COLLEGE PLANS: UNDECIDED

arina Bao embraces complexity. The Central High School valedictorian (in a class of 636) is a member of the school’s backto-back state champion Ethics Bowl Team, for which she said she spent hours “researching, discussing and

sometimes even arguing” case studies. Unlike debate, she said Ethics Bowl is “really about the back-and-forth and considering different caveats and nuances and considerations” in issues ranging from local food to gender identity. As president of the school’s

Brain Club, she leads discussions on brain diseases, disorders and anatomy. It’s a role for which she’s more than qualified: She placed first in the U.S. Brain Bee, a youth neuroscience competition in which contestants answer questions about anatomy and make

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diagnoses based on patient actors. Placing No. 1 in the U.S. competition landed Karina a trip to Copenhagen, Denmark, to the International Brain Bee, which happened to coincide with a Federation of International Neuroscientists conference, where Karina got to talk to scientists from all over the world about their groundbreaking research. She placed fifth in the international competition. A perennial outstanding delegate winner at Model United Nations competitions, Karina said Model U.N. has helped her to “not be scared of the complexity and interconnectedness of pressing issues we face today.” In her spare time, Karina volunteers on the oncology wing of Baptist Hospital. “You don’t get to do much,” she said. “But at least we get to talk to people and help them with whatever they need and be there to listen.” In her Academic AllStars essay, Karina echoed the same drive for understanding: “The stories other people share with me become not my own when I retell them, but a part of humanity’s collective spirit to understand each other. We grow from hours of listening and crying, to empathize, to have the strength and openness to pop each successive layer of the protective bubble that keeps us from seeing the very world in which we reside.”

Congratulations to the Catholic High School Class of 2017 (Our 87th Graduating Class)

“Remember the Lord in all that you do, and He will show you the right way.” Proverbs 3:6

CATHOLIC HIGH SCHOOL FOR BOYS

6300 Father Tribou St., Little Rock, Arkansas 72205

(501) 664-3939 www.lrchs.org

arktimes.com APRIL 27, 2017

2017 Academic All-Stars

2017

ALL-STAR FINALISTS

These students made the final round of judging for the 2017 Arkansas Times Academic All-Star Team.

WILLIAM DUKE Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts

LAUREN BROOKE CAMPBELL Conway High School

JACK HENRY HILL Lakeside High School

BILLY ZEKE LAIRD Prairie Grove High School

RACHEL MILNES Nettleton High School

CLAY SCHULER Episcopal Collegiate

TAYLOR REYANNE TOOMBS Jacksonville High School

BRYCE COHEA AGE: 19 HOMETOWN: GREENWOOD HIGH SCHOOL: GREENWOOD HIGH SCHOOL PARENTS: MIKE AND ROBIN COHEA COLLEGE PLANS: UNIVERSITY OF TULSA OR VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY, BIOLOGY

hough he grew up landlocked, far from the deep blue sea, Greenwood High School standout Bryce Cohea knew from an early age that he wanted to be a marine biologist. To reach that goal, Bryce had to start early. “In the ninth grade,” he wrote in his Academic All-Stars essay, “I began planning out all my classes for the next four years. I wanted to graduate top of my class, and in order to do that I would need to take every advanced placement class and get an A in every class.” That’s exactly what he did, too, making nothing less than a perfect grade in every class for his entire high school career. With a 4.25 GPA and a rank of No. 1 in his class of 275, Bryce has volunteered extensively with the Salvation Army and collected shoes for the homeless; he helps unload trucks and stock shelves at the food bank at his church. A National Merit semifinalist, he also has the distinction of having scored the first perfect ACT score of 36 in Greenwood High School history. “I’ve honestly been a good test-taker,” he said. “The first time I took it, I got a 34. After that, I got the test back and I worked on whatever I missed. After a few more tries, I got a 36.” Bryce was still deciding on which university to attend when we spoke to him, but he definitely plans to study science. The subject has always interested him, he said. “I’m planning on majoring in biology and then specializing after that,” he said.

IMANI GOSSERAND AGE: 16 HOMETOWN: ROGERS HIGH SCHOOL: ROGERS HIGH SCHOOL PARENTS: JAMES AND HYESUN GOSSERAND COLLEGE PLANS: UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE OR COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, COMPUTER SCIENCE OR ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE

mani Gosserand has a journal in which she organizes the many moving parts of her life — competitive gymnastics, AP classes, computer science, Young Democrats, volunteering — into lists. Personal stuff is in there, too: bucket lists, remembrances. The journal combines the creative and the organized; it is problem-solving with an artful flare, which is how Imani operates. “I really like being able to create something of my own,” she said of computer science. At a camp at Stanford University, in California, her team won the competition to program a car. Imani, not surprisingly, is good at math: She learned multiplication at age 4 and went on to skip two

grades. Imani thinks schoolwork is fun. “We had a huge packet of homework problems we had to do over one of our breaks,” she said. “And no one else was excited about it except for me. I was like ‘Oh, I’m so excited to do all these problems!’ ” She brings that enthusiasm for problem-solving to bigger issues, as well. “I feel like there are so many opportunities for me because our world relies on technology, so I think I could go into any field,” she said. She’s excited to explore and see where she can help. “I want to meet people from around the world and hear different perspectives.”

SOPHIE PRICE AGE: 18 HOMETOWN: FORT SMITH HIGH SCHOOL: SOUTHSIDE HIGH PARENTS: CLAIRE PRICE AND SCOTT PRICE

BRANDON TRAN Nettleton High School

MAKYNZI WATSON-WILLIAMS Little Rock Parkview Arts and Science Magnet High School

APRIL 27, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

COLLEGE PLANS: VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY, POLITICAL SCIENCE

“G

rowing up, I would always argue with everybody,” Sophie Price said. Sometimes it was just to play devil’s advocate, but mostly, it was because Sophie wants to find the capital-t Truth. Some of this digging for truth is class: seven AP course just this year and 12 during her time in high school. But, some of it is also talking with people, discussing issues. “The best way to improve your

argument is to hear the counters, to hear the other side,” Sophie said, and often she is willing to be convinced. She wants to do the right thing; she believes in justice. Which is why after college at Vanderbilt on a full scholarship, she wants to field arguments as a judge. “My whole life I’ve followed this ideal that you have to do what’s right,” Sophie said. “I want to be a judge so I can kind of decide that.” Vanderbilt

C.J. FOWLER AGE: 18 HOMETOWN: LITTLE ROCK HIGH SCHOOL: CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL PARENTS: BOBBI AND DUSTIN MCDANIEL AND CHRIS AND KIM FOWLER COLLEGE PLANS: YALE UNIVERSITY

.J. Fowler has long been around Democratic politics. His stepfather is former Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel. But C.J. said he decided to become more politically involved himself after he came out as gay. “The situation that I’m in is not great,” he said. “People are not always accepting. But it’s on me if I want to try to change that and make it better for the people who come after me. I have to make sure that my community and all marginalized communities have a seat at the table, because far too often a bunch of old gray white guys are making policies that hurt everyone else.” The student body president of Central High, C.J. said he’s tried to move the student council, a glorified dance committee, toward advocacy and activism for students throughout the district, whose future is being decided by those “people sitting in dark rooms.” He said

students too often get left out of the conversation about the district “because we’re too young to have opinions. But we’re not; we’re living it every day.” C.J. has been a fixture at Little Rock School District public comment periods. Though he can’t point to any policy victories, he said at least LRSD Superintendent Mike Poore knows who he is and that he disagrees with him. C.J., who is also the executive director of Young Democrats of Arkansas, sees the backlash against President Trump as encouraging. “We’re realizing that, if we’re going to go all in for progressive values, we need to go all in.” Rather than join the chorus of progressives in the Northeast after he finishes at Yale, C.J. says he wants to come back to Arkansas and possibly continue in politics. He admires state Sen. Joyce Elliott (D-Little Rock) and says he hopes if he ever holds office that he can follow her example.

beautiful campus and the intelligent people and these varying perspectives just sold me immediately,” she said. In a few months she was back at Vanderbilt for a camp where she studied law, and it cemented the deal. “There was something so exhilarating about being able to have this case and have the facts and kind of create your own narrative and really advocate for someone that drew me in,” she said. Watch out, because “everything I do, I want to give it a 120 percent,” Sophie said.

CONGRATULATIONS

North Little Rock High School Academic All-Star MITCHELL HARVEY

Caroline Coplin-Chudy, Duke University

was the only school to which Sophie applied. She knew it was the right one for her. She arrived in Nashville on a rainy day in January, but through the gloom, she knew. “Something about the arktimes.com APRIL 27, 2017

2017 Academic All-Stars

2017 Nominees Here are the students nominated to be Academic All-Stars. They are listed by their hometowns, as indicated by mailing addresses.

ALEXANDER

BRYANT

EL DORADO

MAPENZI “PENNY” SMITH Bryant High School

SCARLETT DACEY CASTLEBERRY The Baptist Preparatory School

CALEB MCCULLOUGH WESS West Side Christian School

HOT SPRINGS KRISTA HENDERSON Lakeside High School JACK HENRY HILL Lakeside High School

ALMA

CABOT

EUREKA SPRINGS

REBECCA PARHAM Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts

AVERY ELIZABETH ELLIOTT Cabot High School

JUSTIN ERMERT Eureka Springs High School

ERIK MICHAEL NIEMAN Hot Springs World Class High School

JARED GILLIAM Cabot High School

HEIDI KIRK Eureka Springs High School

TIRA NICOLE PORTER Hot Springs World Class High School

CAMDEN

FAYETTEVILLE

CADE TOENNIS Lake Hamilton High School

CAITLYN DEAN Harmony Grove High School

MEAGAN OLSEN Fayetteville High School

WALKER WALTHALL Harmony Grove High School

FORT SMITH

ATKINS SHARON DUVALL Sacred Heart Catholic School

BATESVILLE MICAH HERRON Batesville High School MAX RUCKER Batesville High School

BAY SYDNEY HIGGINS Bay High School

CAVE CITY

BENJAMIN CHARLES KEATING Southside High School

HOT SPRINGS VILLAGE KEELY MARIE STOFFER Lake Hamilton High

HOXIE

DAKOTA DALE Cave City High School

SOPHIE PRICE Southside High School

ROBERT HUMES Hoxie High School

LILLIAN PINKSTON Cave City High School

GASSVILLE

MEMORY LIGHT Hoxie High School

SAMANTHA HODGES Cotter High School

BEEBE

CENTER RIDGE

HALEY N. OWENS Beebe High School

MADISON GRACE BECK St. Joseph School

GENTRY

KATHERINE MARIE HAHN Huntsville High School

CONWAY

AMBER ELLIS Gentry High School Conversion Charter

ALEX PEMPERTON Huntsville High School

KYLE ANTHONY ROBERTS Beebe High School

BENTON

COLTON MATTHEW BRORMAN St. Joseph School

EMME EDMONSON Benton High School

LAUREN BROOKE CAMPBELL Conway High School

PRESTON STONE Benton High School

DANVILLE

BERRYVILLE AZZIAH BROTHERS Eureka Springs High School

BISCOE PAYTON LANDRY Des Arc High School 28

HENSLEY SEAN MORGAN FITZGERALD Sheridan High School

APRIL 27, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

LYDIA KRISTINE SULLINGER Danville High School

DOVER HIGH SCHOOL CALEB JACOBS Dover High School MADISON VAN HORN Dover High School

DEREK GERMAN Gentry High School Conversion Charter

GREENBRIER ALANA RIPPY Guy-Perkins High School

GREENWOOD Natalie Burklow Greenwood High School BRYCE COHEA Greenwood High School

HUNTSVILLE

JACKSONVILLE JOSEPH IRVIN CUMMINGS IV Jacksonville High School GRACE GROVE Abundant Life School TAYLOR REYANNE TOOMBS Jacksonville High School

JONESBORO LEIGH M. ALDRIDGE Valley View High School SAMUEL L. BRENZA

THANK YOU The Arkansas Times would like to thank the following sponsors for their support of the Academic All-star Team and its scholarship fund.

BENTON HIGH SCHOOL CONGER WEALTH MANAGEMENT HUNTSVILLE HIGH SCHOOLÂ MOUNT ST. MARY ACADEMY

NORTH LITTLE ROCK SCHOOL DISTRICT SOUTHSIDE HIGH SCHOOL

arktimes.com APRIL 27, 2017

2017 Academic All-Stars Valley View High School SAVANNAH CARLTON Crowley’s Ridge Academy MELANIE JACKSON Harrisburg High School OLIVIA LANGER Brookland High School

MAUMELLE BRETT JOHNSON Central Arkansas Christian School

MORRILTON

SABEN STRODE Brookland High School

BRISON DARLING Sacred Heart Catholic School

LITTLE ROCK

JOHN AMMON HOPKINS Morrilton High School

KARINA BAO Little Rock Central High School GEORGIANA BURNSIDE Little Rock Christian Academy CHRISTOPHER K. COBB The Baptist Preparatory School ALISHA DUVALL Episcopal Collegiate School C.J. FOWLER Little Rock Central High School HANNAH GRAY eStem High School JOSHUA MURDOCK J.A. Fair High School of College and Career Academies SAMUEL GUS RANEY Catholic High School for Boys MITCHELL ROTENBERRY Little Rock Parkview Arts and Science Magnet High School CLAY SCHULER Episcopal Collegiate School

MADISON K. KNAPP Morrilton High School

MOUNTAIN PINE STEVEN BENSON Jessieville High School

MOUNT VERNON ELIZABETH JONES Mount Vernon-Enola High School TOMMY WEBB Mount Vernon-Enola High School

MULBERRY CHEYANN ROSE FIELDS Mulberry High School

MABELVALE APRIL 27, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

RACHEL ROWLAND Paragould High School GRANT WILCOX Crowley’s Ridge Academy

PERRYVILLE HANNAH BRADFORD Perryville High School

PINE BLUFF WILLIAM DUKE Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts AXEL NTAMATUNGIRO Subiaco Academy

PRAIRIE GROVE TANNER BARNES Farmington High School BILLY ZEKE LAIRD Prairie Grove High School GRACE MERTZ Prairie Grove High School

CASSIE MICHELLE CLEMENT Sheridan High School KEREN KELLY Wilbur D. Mills University Studies High School

SHERWOOD KAELEI ATKINS Sylvan Hills High School JAMAR DESHAUN PORTER Sylvan Hills High School

SHIRLEY MARIANA LARSON Shirley High School

SILOAM SPRINGS MICHAEL LEAMAN GUFFEY Siloam Springs High School KAITLYN HALEY Siloam Springs High School

SPRINGDALE JADE DESPAIN Haas Hall Academy

ROGERS

VAN BUREN BRET PLUNKETT Van Buren High School

BRANDON TRAN Nettleton High School

BRYSON HORN Haas Hall Academy

DARIA WIEDERKEHR Van Buren High School

NORTH LITTLE ROCK

WILLIAM “ALEX” LARSON Rogers Heritage High School

WALNUT RIDGE

CAROLINE OLIVIA COPLIN-CHUDY Mount St. Mary Academy

CARSON MOLDER Bryant High School

PARAGOULD ZACHARY HOGGARD Paragould High School

IMANI GOSSERAND Rogers High School

JOHN SNYDER Little Rock Christian Academy

TOU XIONG Lincoln High School

SHERIDAN RYAN BOURGOIN Wilbur D. Mills University Studies High School

NETTLETON

DESTINY BRACY North Little Rock High School

CHLOE EMERSON Lincoln High School

Science Magnet High School

RACHEL MILNES Nettleton High School

DANIEL SMITH eStem High School

LINCOLN

MALVERN AMY HENDRICKS Glen Rose High School

KIANA FRIERSON J.A. Fair High School of College and Career Academies KATHERINE ELIZABETH GAMES Central Arkansas Christian MITCHELL HARVEY North Little Rock High School MAKYNZI WATSON-WILLIAMS Little Rock Parkview Arts and

REBEKAH TOWNSLEY Rogers Heritage High School

SEARCY ALEXANDRA BROWN Searcy High School GARRISON BLAKE HENDRIX Harding Academy GRANT SPENCER ROBINSON Searcy High School ALINA WESTBROOK Harding Academy

BAYLEE BURRIS Walnut Ridge High School

YELLVILLE LEE DAVENPORT Yellville-Summit High School JESSE VAN DUREN Yellville-Summit High School JOSIAH PIOTROWSKI Cotter School District

THURSDAY

Benefiting

MAY 4 | 6-9pm

Argenta Arts District

presents

river market pavilionS

Cash bar

D L SOUT O

Join the fun

as Don Julio, the world’s

Competing Bars & Restaurants

Food Available for Purchase from

109 & Co.

Loca Luna

first ultra-premium tequila, presents •

Thursday, May 4 at the Little Rock River Market for the first annual Margarita Festival

•

It’s a salute to the perfection of a great margarita

•

Sample tastings on the classic cocktail from the city’s best bartenders and VOTE for your favorites and crown one margarita best of the fest

NEW PARTICIPANT!

Big Whiskey Bleu Monkey Boulevard Bistro Cache Restaurant Cajun’s Wharf Copper Grill Ernie Biggs Loca Luna O’Looney’s & Loblolly The Pizzeria Revolution Taco and Tequila Bar Samantha’s Taco Mama Trio’s

Taco Mama

Latin Salsa tunes & Jimmy Buffett standards from Club 27 Little Rock Salsa

60 Only s e k tic t left!

TICKETS

Current Ticket Price: $35 Ticket price includes 15 three-ounce Margarita Samples. Frio Beer For Sale.

centralarkansastickets.com

Tickets are limited. Purchase early.

Club 27 Partner Sponsor

Photobooth Sponsor

Wristband Sponsor

Music Sponsor

ARKANSAS TIMES EVENT arktimes.com APRIL 27, 2017

Margarita Fest preview The inaugural competition is May 4.

up with the droves of singles at Cajun’s Big Swinging Deck parties is sure to perform well under pressure. The portions of margarita samples won’t have the heft of a mason-jar-sized Play-De-Do, but we’re expecting a signature twist. COPPER GRILL – Stephen WIlson Consistent quality is what keeps fre-

bar staff has earned a loyal following among regulars. Expect them to take no shortcuts and to settle for nothing less than excellence. REVOLUTION TACO AND TEQUILA BAR – In some ways, Revolution will be on home turf, as a tequila bar and music

109 & CO. – Derrick Hall Craft cocktails are the bread and butter of this downtown bar and lounge, and though its signature drinks tend to be whiskey- or gin-based, the possibility of a margarita from this sophisticated outfit sparks curiosity. BIG WHISKEY’S – Jana Miller The all-American vibe of this River Market staple restaurant and bar could yield a margarita that’s a crowd-pleasing contender. BLEU MONKEY GRILL – Ozzie 32

APRIL 27, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

YUANBIN DU

t 6 p.m. Thursday, May 4, bartending teams from 15 Central Arkansas restaurants and bars will face off in the River Market pavilions for the Arkansas Times' Margarita Festival, presented by Don Julio tequilas. During the live competition, each team will provide one sample of a unique margarita to each of the 500 festival-goers, who will be voting for their favorite cocktails via text message. The team with the most votes at the end of the night wins bragging rights for having the best margarita in the land — that is, until next year’s showdown. Loca Luna and Hot Springs' Taco Mama (two of the margarita competitors) will also sell food, and — lest anyone get too tequila-sodden — other beverage options, including FRIO and Captain Morgan Rum drinks will be available for purchase.. As if tequila tasting itself wouldn't be entertainment enough, there also will be salsa tunes and Jimmy Buffett standards from Club 27’s Little Rock Salsa, which almost certainly means there will be dancing (or, at the very least, some hip swaying). The festival will last until 9 p.m., and River Market neighbor Ernie Biggs dueling piano bar is the unofficial after-party spot; a festival wristband will waive your cover to go boogieing into the night. If you haven’t already purchased tickets to this year’s festival, you’ll have to wait for the 2018 event: All 500 tickets have been sold. This year’s cocktail competition will include entries from:

SWEET, SALTY AND COLD: Margaritas, competing Thursday, May 4, at the River Market.

Oseguera & Joey Godoy At this family-friendly Spa City restaurant with a Caribbean-inflected menu, margaritas — including some with distinctly tropical twists — top the list of specialty drinks. BOULEVARD BISTRO – Summer Blake Artisanal is the watchword at this longtime Little Rock lunch staple, which has been offering a dinner dining experience (and a full bar) for over two years now, so a carefully wrought recipe is a guarantee. CACHE RESTAURANT – Robby Wellborn Cache has earned its reputation as a downtown fine-dining go-to with its exquisite business lunches and sophisticated dinner menu, but the upstairs bar, lounge and balcony offer a great atmosphere and a place to cut loose. Expect a surprise from this team. CAJUN’S WHARF – Rick Flores Any bartending team who can keep

quent Copper Grill diners coming back time and again. And when they shake it up, it happens behind the bar.

venue in the River Market district, but no one’s betting on this team to play it safe.

ERNIE BIGGS Late-night crowds prove this team’s mettle on a daily basis, and classic cocktail recipes are its stock-in-trade. Though margaritas aren’t typically the first thing one might imagine drinking in a piano bar, the tequila does flow.

SAMANTHA’S TAP ROOM AND WOOD GRILL Reading a cocktail menu isn’t necessarily supposed to be fun, right? But that is somehow the case at the bar at Samantha’s. Will the bartenders seek inspiration from one of their signature drinks, or will they play a wild card?

LOCA LUNA – T.J. Spignert Satisfying the tastes of Little Rockers is what has made Loca Luna an institution here for over 20 years. O’LOONEY’S + LOBLOLLY (ALLIED FORCES) – Seth Barlow What happens when a boutique liquor store hooks up with a boutique ice cream joint? An imaginative entry that is sure to blow our minds. THE PIZZERIA – Dillion Garcia / The Perfect Margarita The craft cocktails at this bar are one of Little Rock’s treasures, and the skilled

TACO MAMA – Shane Bratton / Taco Mama's House Margarita Mexican food with real culinary chops needs a house margarita to do it justice, and Hot Springs’ Taco Mama does not disappoint. Let’s hope that’s equally true for the traveling team. TRIO’S - Merrick Fagan / Grapefruit Mint Margarita Say what you want about ladies who lunch and brunch, there’s no substitute for good taste, and this Little Rock favorite has it in droves — no doubt that holds true for its margaritas, too.

arktimes.com APRIL 27, 2017

Arts Entertainment AND

Cool blue A Q&A with author Katie Kitamura. BY STEPHANIE SMITTLE

est” and “The Longshot” were both in the running for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award, and who joins author Kevin Wilson (“Perfect Little World,” “The Family Fang”) for a talk Saturday, April 29, at CALS’ Main Library Darragh Center, 5:30 p.m. Your most recent work, “A Separation,” is set in a part of Greece in which you yourself spent time, specifically time spent coming to terms with the fact that your father PERFORMING EMOTION: Katie Kitamura’s latest novel, “A Separation,” depicts an unnamed narrator was very ill. Can you in Greece’s Mani Peninsula grappling with the terms of her dissolved marriage. Kitamura speaks talk about why you went about the novel Saturday evening as part of the 2017 Arkansas Literary Festival. there, and how those associations you had that would match that character, so it with the region may have informed landscape. I have very distinct memoreally all did come from that landscape your work? ries of being there, and it’s got a really in that part of Greece. striking landscape, as I’m sure you can My father had been very sick, and imagine. And when I got back home, I I had accepted that he wasn’t going to You are an art critic, and maybe for get better, which is very distinct from had this very distinct sense of a story accepting that he was going to die. So waiting to happen, of a drama waiting that reason, I took a third and fourth I had this sense of dread and anticipato emerge, and I had to let that sit for a look at the art for the hardcover vertory grief while I was there, and it was while until I found a character that could sion of “A Separation,” whose cool not located in the narrative, or in the match that in some way. Once I found blue strokes against the fiery reds that character, I tried to find the story story at all. That was all really in the and oranges gain meaning after the

MARTHA RETA

ver 70 authors, illustrators and humorists land in Little Rock this weekend for the 14th annual Arkansas Literary Festival, a project of the Central Arkansas Library System. If you’re a bookworm, you were likely delighted by the breadth of this year’s lineup: decorated writers like Deb Amlen, who writes the crossword blog for The New York Times; stand-up comedian Todd Barry (“Louie,” “The Larry Sanders Show”); quantum physicist Dominic Wallman (“Professor Astrocat’s Atomic Adventure”); Natalie Baszile, author of "Queen Sugar," adapted for television by writer and director Ava DuVernay; Therese Anne Fowler, author of “Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald”; and Arkansas-based authors like Ragan Sutterfield, Wendell Griffen, Kevin Delaney, Hussein Hussein, Trenton Lee Stewart, Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers, Rex Nelson, Celia Anderson, Michael Hibblen and others. The festival connects the public with workshops, signings, presentations and panel sessions on everything from meal plans to magical realism to military history, and nearly all of the sessions are free to attend. I talked with one of this year’s featured authors, Katie Kitamura, art critic for Frieze and Contemporary Magazine, whose novels “Gone to the For-

P RE S E N T E D B Y

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Advance Tickets On Sale Now at riverfestarkansas.com! 34

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ARKANSAS TIMES

ROCK CANDY

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

A&E NEWS HERE ARE A FEW more highlights of the Arkansas Literary Festival, taking place at various venues in downtown Little Rock April 27-30. Visit arkansasliteraryfestival.org for the full schedule, and check out our entertainment blog, Rock Candy, for an interview with Marita Golden, author of “Migrations of the Heart” and co-founder of the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation.

reader becomes privy to the story — the narrator’s cool demeanor intermingling with all the fires raging in the part of Greece where she lands. Did you have a hand in the art? I didn’t at all. I was kind of shown what was more or less a final version of that cover, and I think there were a lot of internal discussions. You know, Riverhead, the publisher, has this incredible art direction team. And there are requirements that are very specific to book design; they have their own aesthetic, but they also have quite a few practical demands and constraints that must make for a challenge. So, in a way, I think that maybe mixing in the author’s ideas of what they put on the cover is maybe not that helpful, but I was absolutely delighted when I saw it. I was keen to have a cover that would rely on text, and that would be relatively abstract. It’s a really smart cover. The book’s narrator has alternately been described as “cold,” “taut,” “observant,” noting her restraint in times when the reader might feel she should be emotional and demonstrative — when she reaches her missing husband’s hotel in Greece and hears that his belongings were left in disarray, for example. It is as if the passivity she says she loves about being a translator has seeped into her psyche. She interprets the events and landscapes that surround her, but does not directly experience them. I think the important thing about the character is that she’s in some state of grief, almost in a state of trauma when she arrives there. People and characters are constantly changing in the way that we interpret and react to situations, and when she arrives in Greece, she believes that she has moved on from the problems and the kind of break-up of her marriage, so she doesn’t allow herself to have this kind of emotional engage-

ment in what is happening. Then, of course, that’s not really the case, and her grief kind of comes up and takes her by surprise. There are some gender expectations at play, too. The narrator does not grieve in the way that society often expects women, specifically, to grieve. I think women’s emotions are monitored so carefully by society, and there’s this kind of pseudomedical term for it. You know, if you have too much emotion, you are “hysterical,” if you have too little emotion, then you’re frigid. In his last book [“White Tears"], my husband [Hari Kunzru, who will also be at the Arkansas Literary Festival] had a character that was loosely based on this English couple, and their 4-yearold daughter is kidnapped while they’re on holiday in Portugal. It was a very big story in Europe, and there was constantly pressure on the wife — not the husband, but on the wife — to be more demonstrative in her grief. People kept saying she should cry for the camera, that she should cry while she’s making this appeal for more information. “She just stands there, she’s so cold.” Of course, all grief looks different, but I was very interested in the idea that women are sort of called upon all the time to perform their emotions. I’m very cautious of that. The narrator of this book is not willing to perform her emotions. Is the term “affair” appropriate in describing the narrator’s relationship with Yvan? That’s an interesting question. I don’t think I do, but there’s a sense in which it must register as betrayal for her, despite the fact that she’s the one who has been betrayed more. This question of faithlessness is interesting. I like the idea of infidelity as a kind of faithlessness. In that relationship, Christopher is the one who has been unfaithful, but she is the

one who has been without faith. She’s been the one to step away from the relationship earlier. She’s the one who left him. So that kind of idea of where her loyalties lie is sort of unclear throughout the book, even to herself. There’s a single little line in your Wikipedia entry that says you trained as a ballerina early in life — someone who, quite literally, performs emotions. Do you think that skill set has given you any particular insight as a writer? You know, it definitely informed the first book I wrote [“The Longshot”], which is about mixed martial arts and cage fighting. At the time, I was very wary of writing anything that was autobiographical. I didn’t want to write a coming-of-age novel in which the character was clearly very similar to myself, so I thought I’d write a book about something that was completely removed from my own experience. It was really only after I finished writing it, and maybe after publication, that I found that there really was something in it of my training as a dancer, and what that training had taught me about discipline, but also … the wear and tear on the body is such a difficult thing, physically. In a funny way, even though dancers are very powerful, and some of them are in extraordinary physical condition, their bodies are under so much strain. The knees, the injuries. So, on the other hand, they’re incredibly fragile, and there’s something of that that went directly into the first book. The Arkansas Literary Festival takes place April 27-30 in venues throughout downtown Little Rock. For a full schedule of events, visit arkansasliteraryfestival.org.

THURSDAY 4/27 Therese Oneill reads from “Unmentionable,” an exploration of femininity during the Victorian period, Esse Purse Museum, 6:30 p.m. A screening of Stanley Kubrick’s “Lolita” at the Ron Robinson Theater, 8 p.m., follows a talk from the Boston Globe’s Alex Beam, author of “The Feud: Vladimir Nabokov, Edmund Wilson and the End of a Beautiful Friendship,” 6:30 p.m. FRIDAY 4/28 Senior archivist Brian Robertson gives a tour of photographs and letters in the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies’ veterans’ history project, noon, Arkansas Studies Institute, Room 124. SATURDAY 4/29 The Hillary Rodham Clinton Children’s Library hosts a Book Fair, 10 a.m. Chris Whipple discusses his interviews with all 17 living White House chiefs of staff for his book, “The Gatekeepers,” 10 a.m., the Ron Robinson Theater. Israeli author Dorit Rabinyan discusses her book “All the Rivers,” and she’s joined by Hari Kunzru, author of “White Tears,” 11:30 a.m., Darragh Center, CALS Main Library. Graphic memoirist Thi Bui discusses the comic as a “hybrid form of writing,” 1 p.m., Witt Stephens Jr. Central Arkansas Nature Center. Arkansas native Ian Purkayastha discusses the underbelly of the exotic food industry in “Truffle Boy,” 2:30 p.m., Cox Creative Center. Later at Ron Robinson, Cora Daniels and John L. Jackson Jr., authors of “Impolite Conversations: On Race, Politics, Sex, Money, and Religion,” discuss some so-called “third rail” topics, 5:30 p.m. SUNDAY 4/30 Rebel Kettle Brewing hosts a “flight of home-brewed literature” with local authors Kwadjo Boaitey, Bryan Borland, Claudia Cerna, Cobris, Kai Coggin, Karen Hayes, Lux, Jamee McAdoo, Ron McAdoo, Q-Squared and Seth Pennington, 1 p.m. After a screening of the film “Rain in a Dry Land” at 4 p.m. in the Ron Robinson Theater, Hendrix College professor Dr. Jay Barth and Americorps instructor Dale Pekar discuss immigrants’ transitions to new countries.

Follow Rock Candy on Twitter: @RockCandies

arktimes.com APRIL 27, 2017

THE

TO-DO

LIST

BY STEPHANIE SMITTLE AND TYLER NANCE

THURSDAY 4/27

‘DOWN DEEP: OPPRESSION, RECONCILIATION AND JUSTICE’

DACORI JONES

7:30 p.m. Staples Auditorium, Hendrix College. Free.

FRESH FROM THE GARDEN: Set up a blanket or lawnchair on the grounds of the Dunbar Garden, 1801 S. Chester St., for a performance from Sean Fresh and the Nasty Fresh Crew as part of the “Music in the Garden” series.

MUSIC IN THE GARDEN: SEAN FRESH

6 p.m. Dunbar Garden, 1801 S. Chester St. $5.

Dunbar Garden has been serving the community since its foundation in 1992, long before the term “urban farming” became hipster vogue. The two-acre teaching garden hosts nearly 700 students a month from nearby Gibbs Elementary and Dunbar Middle schools, partners with area schools to offer internship programs, hosts community workshops, participates in farmers markets and provides fresh organic produce (and hops!) to dozens of local restaurants and breweries. As though that weren’t enough, they also host a spring series of outdoor musical performances. Beloved local R&B crooner Sean Fresh (and his Nasty Fresh Crew) will be stopping here in the midst of his six-state “Fresh Forever Tour.” A finalist in the 2016 Arkansas Times Musicians Showcase, Sean Fresh and his band borrow elements of modern good vibe hip-hop a la OutKast and Black Star to provide a backdrop to Fresh’s vintage R&B trill. Also on hand will be the WunderBus food truck, serving traditional Eastern European dishes made of locally sourced meats and produce. Organizers advise bringing blankets or lawn chairs for this family-friendly event. TN

APRIL 27, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

FRIDAY 4/28

ALEXI KENNEY

THURSDAY 4/27

In a program note for “Down Deep,” an a cappella work for choir commissioned by Hendrix College Choral Director Dr. Andrew Morgan, composer Dominick DiOrio states the following: “I have no business setting the words of African-American women rooted in the struggle for civil rights. I am not black, and I have known substantial privilege as a white male. But I have also seen the struggle for marriage equality as a gay man, and I know that it is important for people in a place of privilege to speak up for people who are disenfranchised and who lack power, influence, and the ability to change the system. This work is my attempt to do so.” “Down Deep,” set to the words of a few of the Little Rock Nine — Minnijean Brown-Trickey, Car-

lotta Walls LaNier, Elizabeth Eckford and Thelma Mothershed-Wair — takes its title from a quote by U.S. District Court Judge Henry Woods, talking with The New York Times in 1985: “Down deep, many whites don’t want their kids sitting next to blacks. That’s what it comes to.” DiOrio, a 32-year-old tenured professor at Indiana University, visited Little Rock to work on the piece with the Hendrix choir in advance of its premiere this Thursday night. The remainder of the concert — conducted by Morgan and guest conductor Dr. J.D. Burnett (University of Georgia) — features Gwyneth Walker’s “Let Music Fill the Air,” Frank Ticheli’s “Earth Song,” “Steal Away” from Michael Tippett’s “A Child of Our Time,” Bob Chilcott’s arrangement of U2’s “MLK” and Craig Hella Johnson’s arrangement of Dolly Parton’s “Light of a Clear Blue Morning,” to be followed by a discussion with Hendrix faculty members Jay Barth, Dionne Jackson and Liz Lundeen. SS

7:30 p.m. Woolly Auditorium, Arkansas School for the Blind. $10$13.

The age minimum for a spot at Music@Menlo, an especially competitive summer program for young artists in the Bay Area, was 12 — that is, until Alexi Kenney auditioned. After reluctantly agreeing to hear a 9-year-old Kenney play, founders David Finckel and Wu Han not only accepted him, they created a new age category altogether. The violinist, an artist diploma candidate at the revered New England Conservatory in Boston, took top honors at the 2012 Yehudi Menuhin International Competition, the 2010 Mondavi Center Competition and the 2013 Kronberg Academy master classes, and was the recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant of $25,000 last year. Kenney coaxes fluidity and warmth out of an

instrument known for being unforgiving, and often does so unaccompanied (see Kenney’s masterful tightrope walk through Astor Piazzolla’s “Tango Etude No. 3,” which he recorded in 2015 for NPR’s “Performance Today”). For this concert, Kenney, 23, will join the members of the Arkansas Symphony Youth Orchestra, under the baton of ASO Associate Conductor Geoffrey Robson, for Sibelius’ “Violin Concerto in D Minor, Op. 47” and Tchaikovsky’s “Capriccio Italien, Op. 45.” The ASYO opens with the overture from Mozart’s opera “The Abduction from the Seraglio.” And, if you don’t make this concert, catch Kenney the evening before, when he performs Bach, Respighi and Schubert at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church as a guest of the Chamber Music Society of Little Rock, 1000 Mississippi Ave., 7:30 p.m. April 27, free-$25. SS

IN BRIEF

THURSDAY 4/27 Designer Linda Rowe Thomas headlines The Fashion Event at the Arkansas Regional Innovation Hub, 7 p.m. NAACP Image Award recipient ReShonda Tate Billingsley and Victoria Christopher Murray, authors of the new book “A Blessing & a Curse,” will be at Pyramid Art, Books & Custom Framing, 1001 Wright Ave., for a book signing, 6 p.m., free. The Downtown Little Rock Partnership hosts an Alley Party with music from The Going Jessies, craft beer and food trucks, 1212 Sixth St., 5:30 p.m. Raising Grey plays the happy hour at Cajun’s Wharf, 5:30 p.m., free, followed by Almost Infamous, 9 p.m., $5. Charlotte Taylor and her musical colleagues jam at the White Water Tavern, 9 p.m. The Museum of Discovery hosts “Anatomy Prom 2017” for its next “Science After Dark” series, 6 p.m., $5. Comedy hypnotist The Sandman works his magic on the crowd at The Loony Bin, 7:30 p.m. Thu.-Sat., 10 p.m. Fri.-Sat., $8-$12.

FRIDAY 4/28

1500 HORSEPOWER: Ami Houde, motocross stuntwoman and monster truck driver, gets behind the wheel of “Zombie” as part of Monster Jam 2017, which rolls into Verizon Arena Friday and Saturday night.

FRIDAY 4/28-SATURDAY 4/29

MONSTER JAM

7:30 p.m. Verizon Arena. $17$37.

If it weren’t for an episode of ABC’s “Wide World of Sports,” and a clip showing a Toyota driving its front tires up onto a row of half-buried cars, Navy vet Bob Chandler might have been content to keep his truck-tinkering habit within the confines of his circle of gearhead friends, for whom and with whom he’d fashion custom bumpers and modify 4X4s. Evidently, though, he turned to his wife and remarked that the truck he’d been customizing, “Bigfoot,” could run right

over the tops of those cars on the TV set. With that, the monster truck phenomenon was born, in 1981. “The first time we ever did it in public was in Jefferson City,” Chandler told the Missourian last fall. “Once we saw the way the crowd reacted, we all knew we had something there.” Initially a sideshow to mainstage motocross and mud-bogging events, monster truck racing is now a full-fledged industry, elevating its drivers to celebrity status and inspiring an Abrahamic family tree of Bigfoot ancestors: “Earth Shaker,” “Blue Thunder,” “Carolina Crusher,” “Ice Cream

Man” and, inexplicably, “Fluffy.” For this faceoff, drivers Krysten Anderson, Armando Castro, Camden Murphy, Justin Sipes, Bernard Lyte, Ami Houde, J.R. Seasock and Matt Cody catapult the mutant machines around on 66-inch off-road tires in the middle of Verizon Arena. Ten bucks will get you into something called a “pit party” before the show, 4:30 p.m., which is basically your chance to cozy up to “Pirate’s Curse” and “Monster Mutt Rottweiler” before they go leaping around the place. Pro tip: Monster trucks are loud; bring earplugs. SS

SATURDAY 4/29

ETSYFEST

11 a.m. Hillcrest Historic District. Free.

Little Rock’s EtsyFest went on hiatus last year, so the return of the Kavanaugh craft throwdown was so highly anticipated that the organizers had to cut off

their vendor applications sometime in February. A few of the 75 or so artisans who made the cut: Raiz Apparel, Blackbird Soap Co., Crying Weasel Vintage, Pure Soy Arkansas, Amelie’s Anomalies, Rad Reclaimed, Sally Nixon, Tiny Little Specks, The Flannel Fox, Upster, AR-

T’s. Food vendors like Kona Ice, Flyway Brewing and Loblolly Creamery will be around for sustenance, and the event page reports that streets will be blocked off between Spruce and Walnut to allow for safe foot traffic. Festivities wrap up at 6 p.m. SS

The Arkansas Travelers go up against the Springfield Cardinals at Dickey-Stephens Park, 7:10 p.m. Fri., 6:10 p.m. Sat. and 2:10 p.m. Sun., $7-$13. The Big Dam Horns convene with grooves at Four Quarter Bar, 10 p.m., $7. The Casey Donahew Band returns to the Revolution Room with barroom country anthems, 9 p.m., $20-$23. DeFrance brings its road-polished rock to the Town Pump, 8 p.m. The Diamond State Rodeo Association hosts the 26th Gay Rodeo at the Arkansas State Fairgrounds through Sunday, visit dsra. org for full schedule and registration. James McMurtry, son of “Lonesome Dove” author Larry McMurtry and mastermind behind Bush-era protest anthem “We Can’t Make It Here Anymore,” performs at Stickyz, 8:30 p.m., $16-$20. Urban Pioneers bring their rowdy Texas sound to King’s Live Music in Conway, with an opening set from Nate Kennedy, 8:30 p.m., $5. Elsewhere in Conway, The Lantern Theatre holds an open mic night celebrating the legacies of John Schenck and Robert Lloyd, 1021 Van Ronkle St., 7:30 p.m., $5 suggested donation. Saxophonist and clarinetist Oran Etkin and his ensemble pay tribute to a master with “What’s New? Reimagining Benny Goodman” at the Walton Arts Center’s Starr Theater, Fayetteville, 7:30 p.m., $30-$50. Longtime Canadian rockers Sum 41 perform at the Clear Channel Metroplex, with an opening set from locals I Was Afraid, 7:30 p.m., $25. Susan Erwin sings at Oaklawn Racing & Gaming’s Pops Lounge, 5 p.m., followed by Mayday by Midnight at Silks Bar and Grill, 9 p.m. through Saturday, April 29, free. Floyd Cooper, a decorated illustrator of children’s books like “Frederick Douglass: The Lion Who Wrote History,” will be at Pyramid Art for a meet-and-greet and book signing, 5 p.m., free. Soprano Maria-Fasciano and baritone Robert Holden join members of the Arkansas Choral Society, the University of Arkansas at Monticello Concert Chorus and the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra for Faure’s “Requiem,” 7:30 p.m., Calvary Baptist Church, 5700 Cantrell Road, $15-$20. Fire & Brimstone kick

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arktimes.com APRIL 27, 2017

THE

TO-DO

LIST

BY STEPHANIE SMITTLE AND TYLER NANCE

SUNDAY 4/30

POETRY ON PINNACLE

2 p.m. Pinnacle Mountain State Park. Free.

If you’re into poetry but haven’t made any of the indoor events asso-

ciated with The House of Art’s April Poetry Festival because the weather’s been so choice, the buck stops here. On Sunday afternoon, Chris James and his colleagues celebrate National Poetry

Month with a mountaintop poetry reading, followed by a descent to the bottom for some kickball and BBQ. If you can’t make it out Sunday for Poetry on Pinnacle, check out The House of Art’s key-

note poet — four-time Individual World Poetry Slam Competition winner (2007, 2012, 2013, 2016) Ed Mabrey — the day before, at the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center Saturday, at 6 p.m. April 29. SS

LIFE & LIVIN’ IT: The Sudanese, London-born, musician Ahmed Gallab — better known as Sinkane — lands at Stickyz in support of his 2017 release, “Life & Livin’ It.”

TUESDAY 5/2

SINKANE

8:30 p.m. Stickyz Rock ’n’ Roll Chicken Shack. $10 (advance) $12 (door).

Sinkane was born Ahmed Gallab in London and spent his childhood in the Sudan before his family took political refuge in Provo, Utah. Before the release of his first solo record in 2009, Gallab spent time touring and doing session work with Caribou, of Montreal and Yea-

APRIL 27, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

sayer. Gallab is also the band leader for Atomic Bomb! Band, a touring supergroup that highlights the repertoire of legendary Nigerian funk musician William Onyeabor, and whose roster has at times included David Byrne (of Talking Heads) and Damon Albarn (of Blur and Gorillaz), as well as members of Hot Chip, LCD Soundsystem, Bloc Party, The Rapture, Young Fathers and more. Gallab adopted the moniker Sinkane for his solo project after

mishearing a line referencing Amistad slave ship revolt leader Joseph Cinquè on a J. Ivey verse on Kanye West’s “Never Let Me Down.” He tells the story to Under the Radar magazine: “At the time I heard it as ‘Sinkane.’ The word sounded so African, so influential, so familiar to me. I would ask myself, ‘Who is Sinkane?’ Finally, I looked up the word ‘Sinkane’ on Google and, to my surprise, didn’t find a single thing about him. Matter of fact, the

word ‘Sinkane’ didn’t even exist.” Gallab has released six records since taking the name as his own and boasts a catalog influenced by everything from krautrock to dub to jazz to disco, all flavored with Sudanese pop. He’ll bring his band through Stickyz on Tuesday night hot on the heels of the February release of “Life and Livin’ It” on City Slang Records. Eric Slick of Dr. Dog opens. The show is for 18 and up. TN

IN BRIEF off the weekend at Cajun’s Wharf, 5:30 p.m., free, followed by Katmandu, 9 p.m., $5. PRINT

WEDNESDAY 5/3-SUNDAY 5/7

FANTASTIC CINEMA & CRAFT BEER FESTIVAL

Various times. Ron Robinson Theater. $10-$82.

There’s no question that the film world in Arkansas has been in flux over the last few years. There was the inauguration of the Bentonville Film Festival in May of 2015, the dissolution of the Little Rock Film Festival later that year and, more recently, the creation of Mortuus Pater Pictures and the Arkansas Cinema Society, using the talents of producer Kathryn Tucker and acclaimed Arkansan filmmakers Graham Gordy and Jeff Nichols. Here in Central Arkansas, you can count the Film Society of Little Rock, the nonprofit that brought an array of LGBT-focused and LGBT-created film to Little Rock last fall for the Kaleidoscope Film Festival and the group behind the Monday Night Shorts series at The Joint, as a factor in

that shift, too. The FSLR launches its Fantastic Cinema & Craft Beer Festival with a viewing of “All the Birds Have Flown South,” a psychological thriller directed by Little Rock natives Miles and Joshua Miller, produced by ACS’ Kathryn Tucker and starring North Little Rock native Joey Lauren Adams (“Dazed and Confused,” “Chasing Amy,” “Come Early Morning,” “Valley Inn”). That event kicks off five days of screenings, including a special one-night performance from film composer Alan Howarth (“Big Trouble in Little China,” “Christine”), 7 p.m. Saturday, May 6, followed by a screening of the 1920 silent movie “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” which Roger Ebert called “the first true horror film” and which will be accompanied with a live score from the band Mainland Divide, 9:40 p.m. Check out fantasticcinema.com for passes and a full schedule. SS

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Alice Cooper — classic rock radio host, avid golfer and the epicenter of the socalled 1969 “chicken incident” — performs at Robinson Center Wednesday night. Were it not for the staying power of fist-inthe-air anthems like “No More Mr. Nice Guy,” “School’s Out” and “Billion Dollar Babies” and ballads like “Only Women Bleed,” Cooper’s penchant for shock and gore might have been a passing novelty. Instead, Cooper (known only as Vincent Furnier until his band, Alice Cooper, split up and left him to appropriate the name for his stage persona) left an indelible mark on the aesthetic of heavy music, musically and cosmetically. There’s, of course, the obvious Alice imprint all over Marilyn Manson’s work, but Cooper’s influence reaches more broadly than just “Antichrist Superstar,” and a couple decades farther back in rock history. His style — a macabre mixture of cabaret, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Pink Floyd and Harry Houdini — cemented what would become a permanent bond between rock music and horror films, and he’s inspired public adoration from the likes of Salvador Dali, Dee Snider, Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley,

Groucho Marx, Mae West and Rob Zombie. (And, of course, Wayne and Garth.) Don’t worry — Cooper’s all too aware that bloody boa constrictors and black eyeliner don’t exactly hold the same shock value they did when he was terrorizing the Bible Belt in the 1970s. “That was in the ’70s when [David] Bowie and I did it,” Cooper told Mississippi’s The Clarion-Ledger last week. “If I cut my head off onstage in the early ’70s, that was shocking. But then all of a sudden you can turn on CNN and there’s a guy really getting his head cut off. Reality on television got more shocking than rock bands.” That said, Cooper’s still getting some mileage out of the theatrics: His tour these days is the sort of Busby Berkeley affair we long to see in the renovated Robinson Center Performance Hall, complete with a 50-foot Frankenstein monster, snakes, straightjacket escapes and an electric chair. And the 69-yearold’s makeup is still on point. Also, if the set list from last Friday’s show in Biloxi, Miss., is any indication, we won’t get to hear “I’m Eighteen” and the dismally prophetic “Elected” until he’s called back for an encore, so come ready to shout, and bring that friend of yours that always claps louder than everyone else. SS

Publication: Arkansas Times

ALICE COOPER

8 p.m. Robinson Center Performance Hall. $46-$77.

The Bridge to the Future Festival, a free student literacy event, is 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Clinton Presidential Park. Rapper 607 joins Selfmade Ent, Scrillabag Nuski, A1Nino, UFN, BMG and Lil James for a bill at Vino’s, 8 p.m., $8. Memphis-based rock quartet The Band Camino lands at the Rev Room, 8:30 p.m., $10. The THEA Foundation’s “Into the Blue” celebrates arts advocacy and honors the contributions of Judy Tenenbaum, 6 p.m., Pulaski Technical College’s Center for the Humanities and Arts, $100-$250. Vocalist Jasmine Janae performs her first show at South on Main, 9 p.m., $10. Austin-based art collective and party band Calliope Musicals brings its call-and-response joy brigade to Maxine’s in Hot Springs, with Landrest and The Phlegms, 9 p.m., $7. Dallas septet The Funky Knuckles stop for a show at Stickyz, 9:30 p.m., $12-$15. The historic Dreamland Ballroom hosts a silver anniversary celebration of The Weekend Theater, 6 p.m., $40. Bluegrass-informed string band Clusterpluck performs at Four Quarter Bar, 10 p.m., $7. Comedian and voice actor Ricky Smiley performs at Robinson Center Performance Hall, 8 p.m., $35. Singer-songwriter A.J. Croce lands at the Ozark Folk Center in Mountain View, 7 p.m., $25. Jkutchma and Aloud alight at the White Water Tavern, 9 p.m. Amina Gautier, in town for the Arkansas Literary Festival, is also the featured author at this month’s Argenta Reading Series, 6:30 p.m., Argenta United Methodist Church, 421 Main St., NLR, free. Ben Byers plays at Cajun’s Wharf, 5:30 p.m., free, followed by Jet 420, 9 p.m., $5. Job/Order #: 294001 Operator: cs

WEDNESDAY 5/3

SATURDAY 4/29

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IS IT MY BODY?: Vincent Furnier, better known as Alice Cooper, brings his macabre cabaret to Robinson Center Performance Hall Wednesday night.

WE DON’T JUST BREW BEER, WE BREW BEER FOR FRIENDS.

SUNDAY 4/30 Get your rugelach, klezmer and kosher hot dog fix at the Jewish Food and Cultural Festival, 9 a.m.-4 p.m., War Memorial Stadium, free. Then, head down to the River Market at 11 a.m. for the vendor booths, cultural programs and food at India Fest, free.

MONDAY 5/1 Bonnaroo darlings LANY stop off at Revolution ahead of the release of their debut album, with an opening set from fellow Los Angeles rockers Machineheart, 8 p.m., $15-$18.

WEDNESDAY 5/3 JJ Grey and Mofro, headliners at this year’s King Biscuit Blues Festival, stop over at the Rev Room, 8 p.m., $25-$28. Recycling and reuse specialist Betsy Spetich discusses the results of a two-year investigation into American consumer habits for “Tales from the Trash,” the next in CALS’ “Legacies & Lunch” series, noon, Main Library, Darragh Center, free. Texas singer-songwriter Adam Carroll joins Chris Carroll for a set at White Water, 9 p.m.

North Little Rock 501-945-8010 Russellville 479-890-2550 Little Rock 501-455-8500 Conway 501-329-5010

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arktimes.com APRIL 27, 2017

MOVIE REVIEW

LIMB BY LIMB: Brie Larson takes aim as “Justine,” an arms deal go-between in Ben Wheatley’s noir comedy “Free Fire.”

A shoot-’em-up Ben Wheatley’s ‘Free Fire’ is not much more. BY SAM EIFLING

udacious and raw, “Free Fire” works as a mashup between a shoot-’em-up Western, a bleakly comedic gangster noir and maybe an auteur’s curiosity experiment in tightconfines filmmaking. As in: They’re not really going to keep all these people in an abandoned factory the entire movie, are they? Turns out, yes, they are. Writer/ director Ben Wheatley (“High Rise”) strands a dozen or so characters (whose backstories are borderline inconsequential) who get sparked into a gun battle during an arms deal gone sour. And … that’s it. You could plausibly re-enact it by stuffing a jug with scorpions and giving a good, hard shake. Even if this mousetrap feels like something Guy Ritchie or Quentin Tarantino would’ve outgrown by his early 20s, give Wheatley this much: “Free Fire” is an uncommonly tightly blocked and shot movie that actually brings the fog of war into a coherent narrative. Apparently the director rendered the set first in the Lego-esque virtual world of “Minecraft,” and took cinematographic inspiration from first-person shooter video games. The result is a panicked sense of simultaneous confinement and exposure. Bullets fly around; the camera stays inches off the ground as char40

APRIL 27, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

acters, usually themselves shot a few times, clamber through dirt and debris; everyone is pinched between wanting cheap revenge and just wanting out of this hellhole. Start in the late ’70s, where a couple of Boston hired-muscle mooks meet up with a couple of IRA operatives (including Cillian Murphy) and an interme-

diary played by Brie Larson. They’re greeted by another dealmaker, played like a magazine-ad scotch drinker by Armie Hammer. They wander deep inside an abandoned factory to a large and strangely well-lit chamber that looks like downtown Aleppo writ small: Chunks of old concrete walls and steel beams jut out of the floor at intervals, like stalagmites. The floor is mostly dry dirt. It’s moody. Two arms dealers (one of them Sharlto Copley) emerge. They have machine guns. It becomes clear quickly that they’ve brought the wrong guns (AR-17s, not M-16s) and that Copley’s skeezy dealer has some sort of past with

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Brie Larson. Tensions, as they say, escalate when it becomes clear one of the dealer’s mooks has serious beef with one of the buyer’s mooks. Knowing there’d be no chaotic shoot-’em-up if no one ever pulled a trigger, it’s fascinating to watch Wheatley crank up the burner and harden two fractured groups of iffy mercenaries into easy-bake gangs — quipping and chipping at each other, everyone gets to hate someone else on the spot. No one wants to take a bullet for anyone else in the room. And yet, once someone does squeeze off that starter shot, it’s on like the proverbial Donkey Kong. “Free Fire” will, over the next hour, test your resolve to watch people shoot one another, yell, fight and loosely try to broker some kind of detente. (Setting the movie in present day, rather than 40 years ago, would’ve resulted in an entirely different feel: First person to get a cell signal wins.) A couple of lurid, pulpy deaths aside, “Free Fire” is content to pick its characters apart limb by limb. The wounded become the maimed; the maimed still have to keep attacking if they want to get out alive. Keeping things lively are the two or three characters who care so little about the consequences that they reliably stir up tornadoes of shit every time you feel a lull coming on. It would’ve been more fun had Wheatley found an extra gear — a few more twists, a deeper vein of narrative. But a tightly wound, immaculately crafted gun battle to the grisly end ain’t a bad consolation.

ALSO IN THE ARTS

THEATER

“The Graduate.” Terry Johnson’s adaptation of the 1967 film. 7:30 p.m. Thu.-Sat., 2:30 p.m. Sun. through April 30. $15-$20. The Studio Theater, 320 W. 7th St. 501374-2615. “Rough Night at the Remo Room.” The Main Thing’s two-act musical comedy. 8 p.m. Fri.-Sat., through June 17. $24. The Joint Theater & Coffeehouse, 301 Main St., NLR. 501-372-0210. “Smokey Joe’s Cafe.” Murry’s Dinner Playhouse presents the Lieber and Stoller tribute. 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 April 29. $15-$37. 6323 Colonel Glenn Road. 501-562-3131. “Rapunzel.” Keith Smith’s adaptation of the Grimm Brothers’ fairytale. 7 p.m. Fri., 2 p.m. Sat.-Sun., through May 12. $10$12.50. Arkansas Arts Center Children’s Theatre, MacArthur Park, 9th and Commerce streets. 501-372-4000.

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ARKANSAS TIMES

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FINE ART, HISTORY EXHIBITS MAJOR VENUES ARKANSAS ARTS CENTER, MacArthur Park: “Drawing on History: National Drawing Invitational Retrospective,” works from the permanent collection, through Sept. 24. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sat., 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sun. 372-4000. ARKANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY, Jonesboro: “2017 Senior Exhibition,” Bradbury Museum, opens with reception 5-6:30 p.m. April 27, show through May 12. Noon-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 2-5 p.m. Sun. 870-972-2567. ARTS AND SCIENCE CENTER FOR SOUTHEAST ARKANSAS, 701 S. Main St., Pine Bluff: “Resilience,” printmaking by Emma Amos, Vivian Browne, Camille Billops, Margaret Burroughs, Elizabeth Catlett, Barbara Jones-Hogu, Samella Lewis, and Rosalind Jeffries, through July 8. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.Fri., 1-4 p.m. Sat. 870-536-3375. ARTS CENTER OF THE OZARKS, 214 Main St., Springdale: “Celebrate Art Competition,” through April 28. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays, 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Sat. 479-751-5441. BUTLER CENTER GALLERIES, Arkansas Studies Institute, 401 President Clinton Ave.: “The American Red Cross in Arkansas,” artifacts covering 100 years, through July 1; “Angela Davis Johnson: Ritual II,” paintings, through April 29; “Bruce Jackson: Cummins Prison Farm,” photographs, West Gallery, through May 27, “The American Dream Deferred: Japanese American Incarceration in WWII Arkansas,” objects from the internment camps, Concordia Gallery, through June 24. 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 320-5790. 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. CLINTON PRESIDENTIAL CENTER: “Xtreme Bugs,” animatronic insects, through July 23; 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. CRYSTAL BRIDGES MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART, One Museum Way, Bentonville: “Roy Lichtenstein in Focus,” five large works, through July; 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. ESSE PURSE MUSEUM & STORE, 1510 S. arktimes.com APRIL 27, 2017

ALSO IN THE ARTS, CONT.

PARTY WITH A HEART Girls’ Night Out Dance Party

CORINTHIAN: New watercolors by Justin Bryant, a Pine Bluff native, go on exhibit May 11 at the Arts & Science Center for Southeast Arkansas. The works, like “Untitled No. 3” (above), combine architecture with African-American images — many selfportraits — to contrast separation of place and person. The show, “Color in Space,” runs through Sept. 9 at the arts center.

Saturday, April 29, 2017, 8:00 p.m. - 11:00 p.m.

Cocktail Attire, Argenta Community Theatre in downtown NLR $60.00 (includes full bar and food)

Limited tickets available. Buy now!

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Proceeds benefit our annual nonprofit partner, Literacy Action of Central Arkansas

For more information, email us @ info@partywithaheart.org Thank you to our sponsors! Arvest Bank, Arkansas Times, Ben E. Keith Foods, The Property Group, E.Leigh’s, Bailey Family Foundation, Inviting Arkansas, Legacy Termite & Pest Control, MADDOX, Kiewit Infrastructure, 107 Liquor, Allegra Marketing

APRIL 27, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

Main St.: “Reflections: Images and Objects from African American Women, 1891-1987,” through April; “What’s Inside: A Century of Women and Handbags,” permanent exhibit. 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Sun. $10, $8 for students, seniors and military. 916-9022. FORT SMITH REGIONAL ART MUSEUM, 1601 Rogers Ave.: “Gloria Garfinkel: Vibrancy of Form,” etchings, painted aluminum and oil on canvas, through June 18; “Through Darkness to Light: Photographs Along the Underground Railroad,” through May 28. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 479-784-2787. HISTORIC ARKANSAS MUSEUM, 200 E. 3rd St.: “The Great War: Arkansas in World War I,” study gallery; “Paintings by Glenda McCune,” through May 7; “Modern Mythology: Luke Amran Knox and Grace Mikell Ramsey,” mixed media sculpture and paintings, through May 7; “All of Arkansas: Arkansas Made, County by County”; “A Diamond in the Rough: 75 Years of Historic Arkansas Museum.” 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): “Waging Modern Warfare”; “Gen. Wesley Clark”; “Vietnam, America’s Conflict”; “Undaunted Courage, Proven Loyalty: Japanese American Soldiers in World War II. 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 1-4 p.m. Sun. 376-4602. MOSAIC TEMPLARS CULTURAL CENTER, 9th and Broadway: “Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Piece,” poetry event with special guest Ed Mabrey and the Foreign Tongues Troupe, 7 p.m. April 29, doors open at 6 p.m.; permanent exhibits on African-Amer-

ican entrepreneurship in Arkansas. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat. 683-3593. MUSEUM OF DISCOVERY, 500 President Clinton Ave.: 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. 3967050. OLD STATE HOUSE MUSEUM, 300 W. Markham St.: “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. TOLTEC MOUNDS STATE PARK, U.S. Hwy. 165, England: Major prehistoric Indian site with visitors’ center and museum. 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat., noon-5 p.m. Sun., closed Mon. $4 for adults, $3 for ages 6-12, $14 for family. 961-9442. UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS AT LITTLE ROCK: “Capstone Exhibition,” through May 5; “BFA Senior Exhibition,” through May 8; “Student Competitive,” Zina AlShukri juror, through April 30, Gallery I, Fine Arts Building. 569-8977.

RETAIL GALLERIES, OTHER EXHIBIT SPACES ARGENTA GALLERY, 413 N. Main St.: “FACES: Paintings by Stephano,” through May 15. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Sat. 258-8991. ARTISTS WORKSHOP GALLERY, 610 Central Ave., Hot Springs: Sheliah Halderman, landscapes and florals; Amaryllis J. Ball, expressionist paintings. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.Sat., noon-6 p.m. Sun. 623-6401. BOSWELL-MOUROT, 5815 Kavanaugh Blvd.: “Myths and Mysteries,” new works by Eliza-

beth Weber and Keith Runkle, through April 29. 664-0030. CANTRELL GALLERY, 8205 Cantrell Road: “The Making of an Artist: Creative Inspirations,” an exhibition of paintings by Jeffery Nodelman, through May 6. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 224-1335. CHROMA GALLERY, 5707 Kavanaugh Blvd.: Work by Robert Reep and other Arkansas artists. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays, 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Sat. 664-0880. CORE BREWERY, 411 Main St., NLR: “Downtown Throw Down,” fighting-themed work by members of the Latino Project, through May 13. COX CREATIVE CENTER, 120 River Market Ave.: “Little Golden Books,” from the collection of Jon Hughes. 8 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 9183093. DRAWL GALLERY, 5208 Kavanaugh Blvd.: Work by regional and Arkansas artists. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Sat. 2407446. FAYETTEVILLE UNDERGROUND, 101 W. Mountain St., Suite 222: “A Murder of Crows: The End Hate Collection,” installation by V.L. Cox, show through April. 10 a.m.-3 p.m., 5-8 p.m. Thu.-Sat. 479-871-2772. GALLERY 221, 2nd and Center Sts.: “Sleep Studies,” mixed media paintings by Kasten McClellan Searles, through April; work by William McNamara, Tyler Arnold, Amy Edgington, EMILE, Kimberly Kwee, Greg Lahti, Sean LeCrone, Mary Ann Stafford, Cedric Watson, C.B. Williams, Gino Hollander, Siri Hollander and jewelry by Rae Ann Bayless. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. weekdays, 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Sat. 801-0211. GALLERY 360, 900 S. Rodney Parham Road:

New work by Jason Blanchard, Matthew Castellano, Everett Gee and Jay King. GALLERY CENTRAL, 800 Central Ave., Hot Springs: Thoroughbred paintings by Bob Snider and Trey McCarley. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 318-4278. GREG THOMPSON FINE ART, 429 Main St., North Little Rock: “Spring Exhibition,” including works by Alan Gerson, Jed Jackson, Dale Nichols. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Sat. 664-2787. GOOD WEATHER GALLERY, 4400 Edgemere St., NLR: “Citrus on Pico,” work by Amy Garofano, through May 20, by appointment only. 680-3763. HEARNE FINE ART, 1001 Wright Ave.: Reception for Floyd Cooper, children’s book illustrator, 5 p.m. April 28; “With Feeling,” works on paper and wood by Louise Madumbwa, through May 20; “Beyond Magic: Black Women Artists Master Non-Traditional Media,” through May 20. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Sat. 372-6822. JUSTUS FINE ART GALLERY, 827 A Central Ave., Hot Springs: “Brotherhood,” paintings by Jason Sacran and John P. Lasater, reception 4-6 p.m. April 28, show through April. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Wed.-Sat. 321-2335. L&L BECK ART GALLERY, 5705 Kavanaugh Blvd.: “Spring Flowers,” paintings by Louis Beck, through April. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tue.-Sat. 660-4006. LAMAN LIBRARY, 2801 Orange St., NLR: 2017 “Small Works on Paper,” through April 28. 9 a.m.-8 p.m. Mon.-Thu., 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Fri.-Sat. 225-6257. LAMAN LIBRARY ARGENTA BRANCH, 420 Main St., NLR: “Twenty,” works by Neal Harrington and Tammy Harrington, through May 12. 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 9 a.m.-1 p.m.

d & Cultural

Sunday, April 30, 2017 • 9am-4pm War Memorial Stadium www.jewisharkansas.org/ jewish-food-and-cultural-festival

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Packaged meals • Soup • Peanut Butter • Cereal arktimes.com APRIL 27, 2017

CELEBRATE Cinco De Mayo with 20 of the best TACO restaurants in town!!!

On the heels of the (sold out) Arkansas Times Don Julio Tequila Margarita Festival on May 4th, we want to take the celebration to 20 restaurants in Central Arkansas. Stay tuned to the May 4 issue to see all the participants. Restaurants - if you think you have the best tacos outside of Mexico — call us to participate.

Five Commandments for Cinco De Mayo Arkansas Times readers: 1. Specials are good lunch or dinner, but get to the restaurant early – they will run out. 2. There will be a wait, we’ve been promoting this Taco week for over a month 3. Tip generously, you’re getting a great deal so show your appreciation to the server. 4. Buy a beverage, preferably the special or go for a good ole’ cold beer. 5. The week will fly by, stay updated with arktimes.com, Eat Arkansas, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and post about your experiences.

For more information contact phyllis@arktimes.com or 501.492.3994

www.arktimes.com • 201 E. MARKHAM, SUITE 200 LITTLE ROCK, AR 72203 • (501) 375-2985 44

APRIL 27, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

FAMILY OWNED AND OPERATED SINCE 1959!

ALSO IN THE ARTS, CONT. 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 p.m. Tue.-Fri. 762-0840. LOCAL COLOUR GALLERY, 5811 Kavanaugh Blvd.: Artists collective. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 265-0422. M2 GALLERY, Pleasant Ridge Shopping Center, 11525 Cantrell Road: “M2-X,” 10year anniversary exhibit of works by gallery artists Jason Twiggy Lott, Neal Harrington, Steve Adair, Robin Tucker, Catherine Nugent, Lisa Krannichfeld, Ike Garlington, Matt Coburn, Cathy Burns, V.L. Cox and others. 944-7155. MATTHEWS FINE ART GALLERY, 909 North St.: Paintings by Pat and Tracee Matthews, glass by James Hayes, jewelry by Christie Young, knives by Tom Gwenn, kinetic sculpture by Mark White. Noon-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat. 831-6200. MATT McLEOD FINE ART, 108 W. 6th St.: Paintings by Angela Davis Johnson, sculpture by Bryan Massey Jr., photographs by John David Pittman, multimedia work by David Clemons. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Sat. 725-8508. MUGS CAFE, 515 Main St., NLR: “Outside the Lines,” graphic work by Nikki Dawes, Kirk Montgomery, Dusty Higgins and Ron Wolfe, through May. 7 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 379-9101. RIALTO GALLERY, 215 E. Broadway, Morrilton: “Art for the Birds III,” April 28-May 8, reception 6-8 p.m. May 6. 477-9955.

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OTHER MUSEUMS JACKSONVILLE MUSEUM OF MILITARY HISTORY, 100 Veterans Circle, Jacksonville: “Welcome Home Veterans Day,” 10 a.m.-6 p.m. April 29, exhibits about Vietnam, live music, honor and remembrance ceremony, dinner ($10); also exhibits on D-Day; F-105, Vietnam era plane (“The Thud”); the Civil War Battle of Reed’s Bridge, Arkansas Ordnance Plant (AOP) and other military history. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. $3 adults; $2 seniors, military; $1 students. 501241-1943. MUSEUM OF AUTOMOBILES, Petit Jean Mountain: Permanent exhibition of more than 50 cars from 1904-1967 depicting the evolution of the automobile. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. 7 days. 501-727-5427. MUSEUM OF NATIVE AMERICAN HISTORY, 202 SW O St., Bentonville: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 479-273-2456. PLANTATION AGRICULTURE MUSEUM, Scott, U.S. Hwy. 165 and state Hwy. 161: Permanent exhibits on historic agriculture. 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. $4 adults, $3 children. 961-1409. POTTS INN, 25 E. Ash St., Pottsville: Preserved 1850s stagecoach station on the Butterfield Overland Mail Route, with period furnishings, log structures, hat museum, doll museum, doctor’s office, antique farm equipment. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Wed.-Sat. $5 adults, $2 students, 5 and under free. 479-968-9369. ROGERS HISTORICAL MUSEUM, 322 S. 2nd St.: “On Fields Far Away: Our Community During the Great War,” through Sept. 23. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 479621-1154. SCOTT PLANTATION SETTLEMENT, Scott: 1840s log cabin, one-room school house, tenant houses, smokehouse and artifacts on plantation life. 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Fri.-Sat. 351-0300. www.scottconnections.org.

FAMILY OWNED AND OPERATED SINCE 1959! There are many brands of beef, but only one Angus brand exceeds expectations. The Certified Angus Beef brand is a cut above USDA Prime, Choice and Select. Ten quality standards set the brand apart. It's abundantly flavorful, incredibly tender, naturally juicy. 10320 STAGE COACH RD 501-455-3475

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Hey, do this!

MAY

OXFORD AMERICAN AND SOUTH ON MAIN presents these excellent shows

THE MCCRARY SISTERS

[ARCHETYPES & TROUBADOURS SERIES] THURSDAY, MAY 4, 8:00 PM SOUTH ON MAIN, 1304 MAIN ST., LITTLE ROCK

DOM FLEMONS

DELBERT MCCLINTON performs live at the Center for Humanities and Arts on the Pulaski Technical College campus at 7:30 p.m. Tickets range from VIP reception for $109 or general admission for $29. Student tickets are $10. Blues Hall of Famer Doug Duffey opens the show. Purchase tickets online at www.centralarkansastickets. com. Standing room only tickets still available.

MAY 10

THE GIN BLOSSOMS perform live at 8 p.m. at Choctaw Casino in Pocola, Okla. Tickets are $29 and available online at www. ticketmaster.com.

COLONIAL WINE AND SPIRITS hosts an event from 4-7 p.m. pairing Korbel champagne and brunch options from Kemuri just in time for Mother’s Day. Colonial is located at 11200 W. Markham Street.

MAY 31-JUNE 25

Prepare for the groundbreaking rock musical GODSPELL, which draws from the gospel according to Matthew to shine a light on the weary world. The production runs from May 31-June 25 at the Arkansas Repertory Theatre. Tickets are on sale now at www.therep.org.

APRIL 26

MAY 12

LETTUCE GROW, a celebration of the St. Joseph’s Farm Stand, will take place from 6-9 p.m. at 6800 Camp Robinson Road. Tickets are $50 and include hors d’oeuvres from Chef Matt Bell of South on Main, libations, silent auction and live music. For tickets, visit www. centralarkansastickets.com.

MAY 1-18

MacArthur Military Museum hosts several events this month. The ARKANSAS GAME AND FISH EXPO takes place at MacArthur Park from 9 a.m.-2 p.m., May 1-4. On May 5 is the annual History on the Run 5K at 7 p.m. On May 9, Movies at MacArthur presents TIME OF FEAR at 6:30 p.m. The film is free and open to the public and includes popcorn and drinks. On May 18, the exhibition WORK, FIGHT, GIVE: AMERICAN WAR RELIEF POSTERS OF WORLD WAR II opens.

MAY 12

Oaklawn Racing and Gaming hosts the RIGHTEOUS BROTHERS live in concert. Tickets are $40 and $55 and on sale now. Visit www. oaklawn.com for more info. Check out more Hot Springs Happenings in this issue.

NOW THROUGH JULY 23

MAY 13

THE KING OF ROCK N ROLL: SEK LOSO performs live at 8 p.m. at Choctaw Casino in Pocola, Okla. Tickets are $35 and available online at www. ticketmaster. com.

MAY 4-7

DISNEY ON ICE takes place at Verizon Arena and features beloved characters from Toy Story to Cars to Frozen. Tickets are $16$61. Purchase online at www. ticketmaster.com.

MAY 4-JULY 8

RHYTHM, RHYMES AND YOUNG ARTISTS OF THE DELTA, the annual Pine Bluff High School exhibition, takes place at the Arts & Science Center for Southeast Arkansas in Pine Bluff. Featuring the work of Mrs. Virginia Hymes’ students, the exhibition opens on May 4 with a reception at 5:30 p.m. followed by a performance by the Pine Bluff Middle School orchestra at 7 p.m. The event is free and open to the public. For more info, visit www.asc701.org.

MAY 18

The Argenta Arts Foundation presents CLIVE CARROLL at the Joint from 7-10 p.m. This is part of the monthly music series that brings world class guitarists to the North Little Rock comedy club stage every third Thursday. Tickets are $27 and available online at www.centralarkansastickets. com.

Eureka Springs hosts its 30TH ANNUAL FESTIVAL OF THE ARTS with exhibits, demonstrations, free music in the park and the wildest street party -- the White Street Walk -- thrown by local artists. For more info and participating venues, visit www. eurekaspringsfestivalofthearts.com.

APRIL 27-30

ARKANSAS TIMES

MAY 5-6

Wild Wines for the Little Rock Zoo host two events: THE RESERVE ROOM EVENT ON FRIDAY, May 5 from 7-9 p.m. at the Little Rock Zoo, featuring special selections of wine from O’Looney Wine and Spirits with food from the Capital Hotel, Cache and SO ($150/ticket) and the GRAND TASTING EVENT on Saturday, May 6 at War Memorial Stadium with more than 250 wines to sample ($75/ticket). For tickets, visit www.centralarkansastickets.com.

MAY 26

THREE DOG NIGHT performs lives at 8 p.m. at Choctaw Casino in Pocola, Okla. Tickets are $49 and available online at www. ticketmaster.com.

ALSO THIS MONTH

XTREME BUGS have landed at the Clinton Presidential Center. This new exhibit explores some of the earth’s most fascinating insects. Twenty animatronic bugs appear larger than life in naturalistic settings through July 23. Admission is free. Groups are asked to RSVP to 501-748-0419.

Pulitzer Prize winning writers, Grammy Award winning artists, filmmakers, chefs and comedians are among the diverse roster er of presenters at the 14th annual ARKANSAS LITERARY FESTIVAL in Little Rock. The Central Arkansas Library System (CALS) LS)) Main Library as well as other venues downtown will host lectures, readings, workshops and other events. An annual favoritee is PUB OR PERISH, sponsored by the ARKANSAS TIMES, which will be held at STICKY FINGERZ on Saturday, April 29, at 7 p.m. m

APRIL 27, 2017

MONSTER JAM rolls into Verizon Arena for a two shows, Friday and Saturday night at 7 p.m. Tickets are $17-$37 and available at www.ticketmaster.com. The pit party takes place on Saturday at 4:30 p.m. and is an additional $10 per person for access to the pit and live music.

THE ARKANSAS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA presents several spring shows. On April 28, enjoy the sounds of violinist Alexi Kenney in residence with the ASO youth ensemble at the Woolly Auditorium at the Arkansas School for the Blind at 7:30 p.m. On May 4 is ASO Inc (Intimate Neighborhood Concert) at Christ Episcopal Church at 7 p.m. On May 7 is the ASO side-by-side performance with the ASO and ASO youth ensemble performing together at Robinson Center at 6 p.m. Experience Back to the Future like never before as the ASO brings the film score to the Robinson Center stage, May 13 at 7:30 p.m. and May 14 at 3 p.m. For tickets and more info, visit www.arkansassymphony.org.

14TH ANNUAL ARKANSAS LITERARY FESTIVAL AL

APRIL 28-29

APRIL 28-MAY 14

BOSTON brings their Hyper Space Tour to Verizon Arena in North Little Rock. The show starts at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $36-$79 and available at www. ticketmaster.com.

THE JEWISH FOOD FESTIVAL takes place at War Memorial Stadium from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Admission is free. Enjoy traditional food, dance, music and booths on Jewish and Israeli culture.

There’s still time to see the Tony Award nominated SMOKEY JOE’S CAFÉ at Murry’s Dinner Playhouse, now through April 29. The big-hearted comedy Southern Fried Funeral runs May 2-27 followed by the high-spirited Southern Crossroads from May 30-July 8. RSVP for dinner and a show online at www.murrysdp.com.

MAY 6

FUN!

APRIL 30

NOW THROUGH APRIL 29, MAY 2-27, MAY 30-JULY 8

The lineup for the KING BISCUIT BLUES FESTIVAL, OCTOBER 4-7, has been announced with Gov’t Mule as the headliner on Saturday night when the ARKANSAS TIMES BLUES BUS rolls into town. For more information, check out www.kingbiscuitfestival.com, and stay tuned for more info on how to ride with us.

Food, Music, Entertainment and everything else that’s

THURSDAY, MAY 26, 8:00 PM SOUTH ON MAIN, 1304 MAIN ST., LITTLE ROCK

APRIL 26

MARK YOUR CALENDAR

Four Quarter Bar in North Little Rock has a full live music calendar, including a Cinco de Mayo celebration with HENRY & THE INVISIBLES on May 5 starting at 10 p.m. For a complete list of upcoming events, visit www. fourquarterbar.com.

REBEL KETTLE’S PATIO is the place to be this springsummer and will soon host local music on its outdoor stage. “Like” Rebel Kettle on Facebook to keep up with announcements, and in the meantime enjoy daily food specials and delicious craft beer.

D DON’T MISS HOT SPRINGS HO H HAPPENINGS ON PAGE 50

k n i r D , ! Eat y r a r & Be Lite

Pub ! h s i Per

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Poetry, fiction and memoir readings, live in the big room at Stickyz Rock-N-Roll Chicken Shack.

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arktimes.com

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT SETH BARLOW AT SETHEBARLOW@GMAIL.COM Pub or Perish is a related free event of the Arkansas Literary Festival. arktimes.com APRIL 27, 2017

Dining WHAT’S COOKIN’

HAWGS IN THE NEWS: YEEHAWG IS THE name of a new venture by David Bass of Fayetteville, owner of Stir bar at 422 W. Dickson St. in Fayetteville. Bass has filed an application with the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Division for a private club permit for Yeehawg, which will be located at 402 W. Dickson St., in the space formerly occupied by Kracken Killer Seafood, which closed in February. Bass leases the space from Zac Wooden. HAWGZ BLUES CAFE opened April 14 at 5524 John F. Kennedy Blvd., the former home of Aydelotte’s. Smoked meats — ribs, ham, chicken wings, catfish — are the menu features, and there is a soulfood buffet on Sundays. A regular blues band performs from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday nights. Tina Pierce, the assistant manager, said the restaurant expects to get its liquor license May 18. Hours are 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday and Saturday, 10 a.m. to midnight on Friday and 10:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday. BACK TO FAYETTEVILLE: Martha Martin has applied for a liquor permit for the Southern Food Co. restaurant at 3575 W. Wedington Drive. The restaurant will serve Cajun food — jambalaya and blackened fish — along with Southern home cooking like beer battered green beans, fresh fried okra, corn bread and chicken fried steak, etc. It will also serve local business Onyx Coffee. Southern Food is advertising for cooks, servers, baristas and cashiers on its Facebook page, @southernfoodcompany, not to be confused with Little Rock’s Southern Salt Food Co. UP THE ROAD, in Bentonville, seasonal food truck TrickDilly will sell “fancy pants gourmet tacos” from a sit-down restaurant it opens this summer at 2500 S.W. 14th St. “No son los tacos de tu Papa” reads TrickDilly’s sign; meaning your father didn’t have General Tso tacos with fried chicken, rice, bean sprouts, sesame seeds and basmati rice, or the PorkDilly, smoked pork with apple, radish, goat cheese and chipotle aioli. Here’s what else TrickDilly says about its role in the cuisine of Bentonville: “The evolution of the taco in NWA may not be a new thing, but we are glad to have helped pioneer its evolution.”

APRIL 27, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

TAKE THE TACOS: You can them by the basket at Bucanas.

Bumbling through lunch at Bucanas Taqueria stumbles out of the gate.

ocial media has a way of making things seem better than they are. How does that jerk from high school have such a beautiful life? How did they afford that vacation? Why aren’t their kids smearing poop on the walls? A beautiful Instagram photo of someone’s lunch tells you little. You can’t taste it; you can’t smell it. But look how everything is perfectly arranged on the plate! A friend recently shared a photo of his lunch at Bucanas Billar and Taqueria at the Lakehill Shopping Center in North Little Rock — plates of tacos, rice and beans, baskets of chips, big margaritas and smiling faces. We hadn’t even heard of Bucanas, but we had the Follow Eat Arkansas on Twitter: @EatArkansas

distinct feeling we were missing out on something fun. Why weren’t we eating tacos and drinking margaritas? We decided to give it a try on a Sunday afternoon. A friendly manager greeted us. The music playing through the speakers competed with the infomercials playing on the TV, mingling into a din that was the opposite of inviting. A less enthusiastic server came to take our drink and appetizer order. We ordered a small guacamole ($2.99) to go along with our chips and salsa and two margaritas ($3.99 each). The chips and guac were great. The chips were freshly fried, sturdy, salty and crisp. The

guac was hearty and fresh with plenty of cilantro, chopped onions and jalapenos. The salsa was unfortunate. It had a mild flavor and soupy consistency. It wasn’t worth the hassle of trying to keep it on our chips. We feel terribly about sending things back to the kitchen, but one of our margaritas tasted as if it were made primarily of salt. Our waitress was more aloof than apologetic. A few minutes later, another arrived. The margaritas are standard fare but come at a price point that makes them go down easy. We chose an asada taco ($1.25) and a pastor sope, like a taco but with a thicker tortilla ($2.49), for appetizers. The asada taco was tasty. The charred steak had a great flavor, but unfortunately contained quite a bit of gristle. The sope came late after being confused by our server for a huarache (of the edible variety). It was worth the wait. The masa base was a bit spicy and cooked to a crisp, which we liked. The pork was tender, well seasoned and delicious. The sope was topped with shredded lettuce, beans and Cotija cheese. We’ve had a goodly number of sopes and this one ranks up near the top. Next we ordered a basket of tacos:

BELLY UP

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

DOE’S CELEBRATING 29 YEARS IN BUSINESS

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ALL CRAFT BEER10% OFF EVERY DAY! JOIN US FOR FOOD TRUCK WEDNESDAY WITH S&J MOBILE KITCHEN 11AM-7PM. WINE TASTING TOO! COME SEE US! • WE GLADLY MATCH ANY LOCAL ADS WEDNESDAY IS WINE DAY 15% OFF WINE CASE DISCOUNTS EVERY DAY!

LITTLE ROCK: 10TH & MAIN • 501.374.0410 | NORTH LITTLE ROCK: 860 EAST BROADWAY • 501.374.2405 HOURS: LR • 8AM-10PM MON-THUR • 8AM-12PM FRI-SAT •NLR • MON-SAT 8AM-12PM

B-SIDE BISTRO BREAKFAST * BRUNCH * LUNCH Eat Local at B-SIDE BIST RO GRILLED ASADA: A bit of gristle marred this otherwise tasty steak taco.

pastor, asada, pescado, papas con chorizo and carnitas. They’re street-style tacos, like those you’ll find at most taco trucks ($1.25 each). The pastor taco is well seasoned and the pork is tender. The potato and chorizo was one of our favorites and would make a great breakfast or brunch order. The carnitas taco was juicy and warm and was complemented well by the chopped onions and cilantro on top. The fish taco was our least favorite, probably owing more to the lackluster tilapia it was made from

Bucanas Billar and Taqueria 3824 JFK Blvd. North Little Rock 501-904-5630 Quick bite The guacamole is great, nearing perfection. Definitely splurge for the large. Otherwise, stick with the tacos and sopes over the plates. Other info Full bar, credit cards accepted (sometimes).

than the preparation. Our partner ordered the pollo asado with rice and beans ($8.99). Once again, something different came to the table — chicken breast pieces floating in cheese sauce with rice. We sent it back, and about 10 minutes later, our server brought us the pollo asado, which looked appetizing. The chargrilled chicken was covered in grilled onions and served with a side of Mexican rice and refried beans. The sides were perfectly fine, nothing memorable. The chicken was seasoned well and had a great flavor, raising our hopes that redemption came served on this very plate. Unfortunately, eating the chicken was like chewing on rubber, so after our second bite, we gave up. We asked for the check as soon as we could get our server’s attention. She seemed, as ever, inconvenienced. The lovely manager who greeted us when we arrived informed us that the restaurant’s credit card machine was down and could only accept cash, which we did not have. She apologized for the inconvenience told us we could just pay the next time we came by. We sought the help of an ATM a few blocks away to settle up because we didn’t know when that might be.

New owners. New menu. Sa me Favorites. 11121 N Rodney Parham (Marketplace Shopping Center) • Little Rock 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tues-Sun. • (501) 716-2700

You don't need to bring your passport to go "Around The World" when you order our specialty pizza, The ATW! Unless your photo is, like, really super cute and you want to show it around. Totally understandable.

5103 Warden Road | North Little Rock | HideawayPizza.com

arktimes.com APRIL 27, 2017

HOT SPRINGS HAPPENINGS may 2017 Hot Springs For a complete calendar of events, visit hotsprings.org.

WEDNESDAYS FROM 7-12P.M. IS HUMPDAY KARAOKE!

MAY 12-13TH, THE BEATLES TRIBUTE BAND, “BRITAIN’S

POP’S LOUNGE AT OAKLAWN. Enjoy half price drinks, singing to your favorites, and have some laughs with the coolest award-winning comedian and DJ, Chucky D!

FINEST,” 7:30 P.M. AT 315 PARK AVENUE. Please come out for a real treat to be intrigued by the greatest all-time hits from She Loves You to Sgt Pepper, the Beatles Tribute Band,“Britain’s Finest,”will arrive in Hot Springs for Mother’s Day weekend, May 12th and 13th. Their show features four costume changes and covers the era from 1963 to their break-up in 1969. They will be performing at the world famous Vapors/Tower of Strength building, 315 Park Avenue. Ticket Price: $25 | $ 35. For more information or order your ticket today please contact 501-318-4117

THURSDAYS FROM 7-9P.M. IS TRIVIA NIGHT IN POP’S LOUNGE AT OAKLAWN.

APRIL 28-MAY 7TH THE 3RD ANNUAL ARTS & THE PARK – Arts Festival at various venues throughout Hot Springs. The Hot Springs Area Cultural Alliance (HSACA) is pleased to announce the return of Arts & The Park. A ten-day festival in celebration of the arts, scheduled for April 28th – May 7th, 2017 in Downtown Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas. HSACA is excited about showcasing the thriving talent of local and statewide visual artists, musicians, dancers, poets, jewelers, potters, performers, authors, glass makers, sculptors and more in the events that will be held during Arts & The Park 2017. Studio Tours will be a highlight of this years festival being held Saturday April 29th and Sunday April 30th. On Saturday, May 6th and Sunday, May 7th, Arts & The Park 2017 will close out with Art Springs, a free two-day outdoor juried art festival and showcase bursting with Arkansas artists and artisans, held at Hill Wheatley Plaza in downtown historic Hot Springs. We invite you to visit our website, www. HotSpringsArts.org and become a member of the Hot Springs Area Cultural Alliance.

MAY 13TH HOT SPRINGS CRUISERS 22ND ANNUAL CAR

SHOW AT HOT SPRINGS MUNICIPAL AIRPORT. Music is provided by the host car club. No music or running engines is permitted during the show unless approved by the Hot Springs Cruisers Car Club. Possession or use of alcohol or any illegal substance is prohibited.

MAY 13TH, NOON TO 4 P.M. SUMMERFEST UPTOWN! is

a festival that takes place Uptown on Park Avenue. There are arts and craft vendors, kids games, great food and much more. There will be a BBQ cook-off, chili cook-off, music and many vendors. This is a fundraising event to purchase street lights to “Light Up Park Avenue” with street lights. Come on up to 315 Park avenue. For more info and rules go to http://www.summerfestuptown.com/

MAY 26TH, 11A.M.-8P.M. FOOD TRUCK FRIDAYS AT THE

APRIL 29TH 5-8 P.M. FARM-TO-TABLE TACO PARTY, 910

PARK AVENUE. The Art of Locally Grown Farm to Table Taco Party that is a fundraiser for the Hot Springs Area Cultural Alliance and the Park Avenue Community Association. It will be a part of the Arts & the Park festival. Stop by after studio tours and before the movie on the lawn. All profits go to the two organizations. Folks joining Itz Gud Fud for the event include Diana Bratton (Taco Mama), JV Farms (local grower), Ryan Sauders and Friends (musicians), and Karina Jo Martinez (artist). If you have questions please contact 501-318-8806 or email itzgudfud@gmail.com

APRIL 29TH, 8:30 P.M. METROPOLIS MOVIE SCREENING

WITH LIVE SCORE PERFORMED BY THE SHADOW ENSEMBLE. The Majestic Hotel Lawn at the corner of Park Avbe. & Whittington Blvd. Bring a lawn chair, blanket and a picnic basket to the Majestic Lawn for a free screening of the influential science-fiction film, Metropolis. Free and open to the public. MAY 12TH OAKLAWN FINISH LINE CONCERT SERIES kicks off with The Righteous Brothers on Friday, May 12th. Tickets are on sale now. Price $40 and $55. No Walk ups. Must be 21+. 50 APRIL 27, 2017 50 APRIL 27, 2017

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MAY 26TH, 4:30P.M. SLOW ROLL, A COMMUNITY

BIKING EVENT…this is not a race. All ages welcome! Come Early! The first 50 riders will receive an official Slow Roll t-shirt. SCHEDULE: 4:30 PM Round Up Begins. 5:30 PM Leave Spa City Cycling. 6:00 PM Arrive at Parkside Cycle. 7:00 PM Arrive at Farmer’s Market for Food Truck Friday and Live Music. Event Details, the event will start at Spa City Cycling (879 Park Avenue), and then roll down Park Avenue and around Whittington Avenue for a stop at Parkside Cycle (719 Whittington). The roll continues down Whittington and South on Central Avenue to the Farmer’s Market.

THIS IS NOT A RACE! ALL CYCLISTS OF ALL AGES ARE ENCOURAGED TO SLOW ROLL WITH US! HELMETS ARE REQUIRED.

MARKET. Hot Springs Farmer’s and Artisan’s Market. Head down to the Hot Springs Farmers & Artisans Market for the Food Truck Friday event. The May 26 bands for Food Truck Friday are Jacob Flores, lunch, and Good Foot for dinner.

MAY 28TH MEMORIAL DAY FIREWORKS DISPLAY OVER

LAKE HAMILTON. LAKE HAMILTON HIGHWAY 7 SOUTH BRIDGE. Fireworks will light up Lake Hamilton at sunset to celebrate the start of the summer season in Hot Springs. The fireworks will be shot from the middle of Lake Hamilton from barges located on the east side of Highway 7.

STAY TUNED FOR BIG ANNOUNCEMENTS ABOUT THE UPCOMING SPA-CON IN HOT SPRINGS!

We Have The #1 Customers In The State! MAY 12TH 8 P.M. SHONEN KNIFE (JAPAN) PERFORMS AT LOW KEY ARTS,

118 ARBOR. All agees welcome. Shonen Knife (Japanese: 少年ナイフ Hepburn: Shōnen Naifu?, literally “Boy Knife”) is a Japanese pop punk band formed in Osaka, in 1981.[2] Heavily influenced by 1960s girl groups, pop bands, The Beach Boys, and early punk rock bands, such as the Ramones, the trio crafts strippeddown songs with simplistic lyrics sung both in Japanese and English.[3]Despite their pop-oriented nature, the trio maintains a distinctly underground garage rock sound rooted in edgy instrumentation and D.I.Y. aesthetics, which over the course of their long career has earned them a solid, worldwide cult following and made avid fans out of seminal 1990s alternative rock bands such as Sonic Youth, Nirvana, and Redd Kross.[4] The band has been credited with making “the international pop underground more international” by “opening it up to bands from Japan”.[5] They have also performed as a Ramones tribute band under the name The Osaka Ramones.

Open Daily at 11am 7 Days A Week 210 Central Ave. Hot Springs 501.318.6054

rolandosrestaurante.com

BEST OTHER ETHNIC AROUND THE STATE

BEST OVERALL BEST DESSERTS BEST DOG FRIENDLY BEST GLUTEN FREE BEST IN HOT SPRINGS

HOT SPRINGS LIVE MUSIC CALENDAR April 27-May 31 ENJOY LIVE MUSIC ALL MONTH LONG ON ROLANDO’S RESTAURANTE OUTDOOR PATIO Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Enjoy Rolando’s this May for Nuevo Latino Cuisine, specialty drinks and live music on the patio. APRIL 27

MAY 3

Jeff Hartzell @ Rolando’s Restaurante on Central Avenue Larry Womack & Jackie Beaumont @ Arlington Resort Hotel Lobby & Bar, 7-11

Humpday Karaoke with Chucky D @ Pop’s Lounge, Oaklawn, 7-12

APRIL 28

Trivia @ Pop’s Lounge, Oaklawn, 7-9 Larry Womack & Jackie Beaumont @ Arlington Resort Hotel Lobby & Bar, 7-11 Jeff Hartzell @ Rolando’s Restaurante on Central Avenue

Jacob Flores @ TACO MAMA on Malvern Avenue Jeff Hartzell @ Rolando’s Restaurante on Central Avenue Susan Erwin @ Pop’s Lounge, Oaklawn, 5-9 Mayday by Midnight @ Silks Bar & Grill, Oaklawn, 10-2 Willie Davis & Company @ Arlington Resort Hotel Lobby & Bar, 8:30-12:30

APRIL 29 Aaron Balentine @ Rolando’s Restaurante on Central Avenue Susan Erwin @ Pop’s Lounge, Oaklawn, 5-9 Mayday by Midnight @ Silks Bar & Grill, Oaklawn, 10-2 Willie Davis & Company @ Arlington Resort Hotel Lobby & Bar, 8:30-12:30

MAY 4

MAY 5 Cinco De Mayo Party with Jacob Flores @ Pop’s Lounge, Oaklawn, 6-10 Mister Lucky @ Silk’s Bar & Grill, Oaklawn, 10-2 Jeff Hartzell @ Rolando’s Restaurante on Central Avenue Christine DeMeo for Cinco De Mayo @ TACO MAMA, on Malvern Avenue Willie Davis & Company @ Arlington Resort Hotel Lobby & Bar, 8:30-12:30

DRIVERS PLEASE BE AWARE, IT’S ARKANSAS STATE LAW: USE OF BICYCLES OR ANIMALS

Every person riding a bicycle or an animal, or driving any animal drawing a vehicle upon a highway, shall have all the rights and all of the duties applicable to the driver of a vehicle, except those provisions of this act which by their nature can have no applicability.

OVERTAKING A BICYCLE

The driver of a motor vehicle overtaking a bicycle proceeding in the same direction on a roadway shall exercise due care and pass to the left at a safe distance of not less than three feet (3’) and shall not again drive to the right side of the roadway until safely clear of the overtaken bicycle.

AND CYCLISTS, PLEASE REMEMBER...

Your bike is a vehicle on the road just like any other vehicle and you must also obey traffic laws— use turning and slowing hand signals, ride on right and yield to traffic as if driving. Be sure to establish eye contact with drivers. Remain visible and predictable at all times. ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT www.arktimes.com APRIL 27, 2017 51 arktimes.com APRIL 27, 2017 51

FOR ENTERTAINMENT?

MAY LINEUP

Sensory 2 @ Silk’s Bar & Grill, Oaklawn, 10-2

MAY 6

MAY 17

Moxie Unplugged @ Pop’s Lounge, Oaklawn, 6-10 Aaron Balentine @ Rolando’s Restaurante on Central Avenue Mister Lucky @ Silk’s Bar & Grill, Oaklawn, 10-2 Willie Davis & Company @ Arlington Resort Hotel Lobby & Bar, 8:30-12:30

Humpday Karaoke with Chucky D @ Pop’s Lounge, Oaklawn, 7-12

MAY 10 Humpday Karaoke with Chucky D @ Pop’s Lounge, Oaklawn, 7-12

MAY 11 Trivia @ Pop’s Lounge, Oaklawn, 7-9 Jeff Hartzell @ Rolando’s Restaurante on Central Avenue Larry Womack & Jackie Beaumont @ Arlington Resort Hotel Lobby & Bar, 7-11

THE�RIGHTEOUS�BROTHERS�|�MAY�� DETAILS�AT�OAKLAWN�COM

POP’S�LOUNGE

Every Saturday | �–�� p.m.

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Jacob Flores (Friday) Moxie Mayday by Midnight Sensory 2 Christine DeMeo

SILKS�BAR�&�GRILL

Friday & Saturday | �� p.m.–� a.m. �-� ��-�� -�� -��

Mister Lucky Sensory 2 John Calvin Brewer Band Moxie

AND JOIN US FOR KARAOKE EVERY WEDNESDAY, AS WELL AS LIVE TEAM TRIVIA THURSDAY AND FRIDAY NIGHT LIVE KARAOKE IN POP’S LOUNGE!

DAY P M U H AOKE

KAR

@OAKLAWNRACING @ Gambling problem? Call �-��-��-��. 52 APRIL 27, 2017 52 APRIL 27, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES ARKANSAS TIMES

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MAY 12 Karaoke with Corey @ Pop’s Lounge, Oaklawn, 6-10 Ryan Sauders @ Rolando’s Restaurante on Central Avenue Sensory 2 @ Silk’s Bar & Grill, Oaklawn, 10-2 Willie Davis & Company @ Arlington Resort Hotel Lobby & Bar, 8:30-12:30 The Righteous Brothers @ Oaklawn

MAY 18 Trivia @ Pop’s Lounge, Oaklawn, 7-9 Jeff Hartzell @ Rolando’s Restaurante on Central Avenue Larry Womack & Jackie Beaumont @ Arlington Resort Hotel Lobby & Bar, 7-11 May 19 Aaron Balentine @ Rolando’s Restaurante on Central Avenue Karaoke with Corey @ Pop’s Lounge, Oaklawn, 6-10 John Calvin Brewer Band @ Silk’s Bar & Grill, Oaklawn, 10-2 Willie Davis & Company @ Arlington Resort Hotel Lobby & Bar, 8:30-12:30

MAY 20 Aaron Balentine @ Rolando’s Restaurante on Central Avenue Sensory 2 Unplugged @ Pop’s Lounge, Oaklawn, 6-10 John Calvin Brewer Band @ Silk’s Bar & Grill, Oaklawn, 10-2 Willie Davis & Company @ Arlington Resort Hotel Lobby & Bar, 8:30-12:30

MAY 24

MAY 13

Humpday Karaoke with Chucky D @ Pop’s Lounge, Oaklawn, 7-12

Mayday by Midnight Unplugged @ Pop’s Lounge, Oaklawn, 6-10 Trey Johnson @ Rolando’s Restaurante on Central Avenue Sensory 2 @ Silk’s Bar & Grill, Oaklawn, 10-2 Willie Davis & Company @ Arlington Resort Hotel Lobby & Bar, 8:30-12:30

Trivia @ Pop’s Lounge, Oaklawn, 7-9 Jeff Hartzell @ Rolando’s Restaurante on Central Avenue Larry Womack & Jackie Beaumont @ Arlington Resort Hotel Lobby & Bar, 7-11

MAY 25

Ryan Sauders @ Rolando’s Restaurante on Central Avenue

8:04 p.m. Saturday, Lake Hamilton

Mayday by Midnight Unplugged @ Pop’s Lounge, Oaklawn, 6-10

MAY 26 Ryan Sauders @ Rolando’s Restaurante on Central Avenue Karaoke with Corey @ Pop’s Lounge, Oaklawn, 6-10 Moxie @ Silks Bar & Grill, Oaklawn, 10-2 Willie Davis & Company @ Arlington Resort Hotel Lobby & Bar, 8:30-12:30

MAY 27 Ryan Sauders @ Rolando’s Restaurante on Central Avenue The Christine DeMeo Band Unplugged @ Pop’s Lounge, Oaklawn, 6-10

Moxie @ Silks Bar & Grill, Oaklawn, 10-2 Willie Davis & Company @ Arlington Resort Hotel Lobby & Bar, 8:30-12:30 Mayday by Midnight @ Doc n’ Maggies Pizza Pub and Grub on Central Avenue

SUNSETS. STORIES. A PHONE FULL OF MEMORIES. f ind t his place.

MAY 28 The Christine DeMeo Band Unplugged @ Pop’s Lounge, Oaklawn, 6-10 Moxie @ Silks Bar & Grill, Oaklawn, 10-2

少年ナイ少年少年ナイフナイフフ

CHI St. Vincent’s Gastroenterology and Digestive Health clinics

olorectal cancer, or colon cancer, is one of the leading causes of cancer deaths in both men and women. Fortunately, one of the most effective ways to prevent colon cancer is to be screened for it. Timely colon cancer screening has been proven to save lives. Through screenings, physicians can identify precancerous polyps that can be safely removed before they turn into cancer. Also, if colon cancer is detected at an early stage through screenings, treatment can often lead to a full recovery. Since regular screening is essential to preventing colon cancer, adults age 50 and older are strongly encouraged to get screened. Adults younger than 50 may need to get screened early if they or a close relative have previously had colorectal polyps or cancer, if they have an illness like Crohn’s or ulcerative colitis or if they have a genetic syndrome such as familial adenomatous polyposis (FAP) or hereditary non-polyposis colorectal cancer (Lynch syndrome). Ask your doctor if and when colon cancer screening is right for you. CHI St. Vincent’s Gastroenterology and Digestive Health clinics offer a comprehensive range of services, including advanced colon cancer screenings. To find a physician and get screened, visit http://www.chistvincent.com/clinicalservices/gastroenterology

HotSprings.org. 1-888-SPA-CITY. ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT www.arktimes.com APRIL 27, 2017 53 arktimes.com APRIL 27, 2017 53

Can ihelp you? Learn to get the most from your Apple products at home or your office. • Learn to get the most from your Apple products at home or your office • Guide you to the perfect Mac or device for your needs and budget • Everything Apple: Macs, iPads, iPhones, Apple TV and Apple Watch

• Data Recovery & troubleshooting • Hardware & software installations • Organize and backup all your documents, photos, music, movies and email on all your devices with iCloud

Follow @MovingtoMac on Twitter and Like Moving to Mac Facebook for news and deals.

Call Cindy Greene Satisfaction Always Guaranteed

MOVING TO MAC

www.movingtomac.com

cindy@movingtomac.com • 501-681-5855

PASTURED OLD BREED PORK Our hogs are a cross between Large Black and Berkshire, old 19th century breeds. They are raised on our pasture and forage in the forest that adjoins our fields. They are never confined like industrial hogs. We do not use any kind of routine antibiotics. Our hogs live ARKANSAS GRASS were FED LAMB like they meant to. PRICE LIST FRESH RAW HAM $7 lb.

PORK LOIN $8 lb

HAM BREAKFAST STEAKS $7 lb

BREAKFAST SAUSAGE $9 lb

We offer first quality one-year-old lamb raised on our farm in North Pulaski County. Our meat is free of steroids or any other chemicals. The only time we use antibiotics is if the animal has been injured which is extremely rare. All meat is USDA inspected.

contains about eight ribs (lamb chops) $17 lb.

$10 lb

WHOLE LEG OF LAMBPORK BUTTS TANNED SHEEPSKINS, $10 lb SHOULDER (bone in, cook this slow, like a pot roast. Meat falls off the bone). $11 lb. $8 lb

$20 lb

LAMB BRATWURST LINK SAUSAGE

(one-lb package) $10 lb

NECKBONES

(for stew or soup) $5 lb

BABYBACK RIBS $12 lb

India Blue F a r m

12407 Davis Ranch Rd. | Cabot, AR 72023 Call Kaytee Wright 501-607-3100 alan@arktimes.com

12407 Davis Ranch Rd. | Cabot, AR 72023 Call Kaytee Wright 501-607-3100 alan@arktimes.com 54

APRIL 27, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES

Deadline to apply is May 5, 2017. Equal Opportunity Employer

❤ ADOPTION ❤

Child Psychologist & Successful Executive yearn for First Baby to Love & Cherish Forever. Expenses Paid. Abby & Jeff.

1-800-966-3065

May 5, 6, 12, 13, 18, 19, 20 and 21 $16 Adult $12 Student/Senior 7:30pm Thursday, Friday, Saturday 2:30pm Sunday For more information contact us at 501.374.3761 or www. weekendtheater.org

Our 24th Season Is Sponsored By Piano Kraft

Tweet shop LOCAL ARKANSAS TIMES

1001 W. 7th St. Little Rock, AR 72201

Interpretation and Written Translations (Spanish – Portuguese - French) Latino Cultural and Linguistic Training

(Our sheepskins are tanned in a Quaker Town, Pa. tannery that has specialized in sheepskins for generations.)

PORK TENDERLOIN BONELESS LOIN $12 lb TENDERLOIN

sip LOCAL

SPARE RIBS $9 lb

$100-$150

Responsible for general support to the Procurement staff. Must have a working knowledge of general office practices and procedures, including use of computer and Microsoft Office software. See full job listing at www.lrwu.com.

PANAMERICAN CONSULTING, INC.

HEARTS, LIVERS, KIDNEYS, $5 lb

(about 4 to 5 lbs) $12 lb.

PROCUREMENT CLERK

PORK BRATWURST $10 One pound package

You can pick up your meat at our farm off Hwy 107 in North Pulaski County (about 25 miles north of downtown Little Rock) or we can meet you in downtown Little Rock weekdays. All meat is aged and then frozen.

PORK STEAKS $10 lb PRICE LIST: RIB ROAST TESTICLES

ARKANSAS TIMES MARKETPLACE

ARKANSAS TIMES

MICHEL LEIDERMANN, President (Minority Business - AR State Vendor) mleidermann@gmail.com • Mobile: (501) 993-3572

arktimes.com APRIL 27, 2017

Congratulations to Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts senior Rebecca Parham of Alma on being named an Arkansas Times Academic All-Star!

It is a great honor for each student on this list to be recognized for his and her hard work and passion for learning. ASMSA celebrates not only the academic achievements of our seniors but also each member of Arkansas’ Class of 2017. As a high school junior, you can become a part of ASMSA’s community of learning. Join a group of peers from across Arkansas who are dreamers, thinkers and doers at the state’s premier public high school. Over the past ﬁve years, ASMSA has been ranked among the nation’s “Top 25” high schools by The Washington Post, Newsweek and The Daily Beast. Engage in courses designed to challenge bright minds. Grow as a student while earning more than a year of college credit. Discover who you can become at asmsa.org.

Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts

A Campus of the University of Arkansas System 200 Whittington Ave. • Hot Springs, AR 71901

APRIL 27, 2017

ARKANSAS TIMES