Arkansas Times - June 4, 2015

NEWS + POLITICS + ENTERTAINMENT + FOOD / JUNE 4, 2015 / ARKTIMES.COM

WHO IS

MIKE HUCKABEE? Populist. Personable. Provacateur.

Prevaricator. Unprincipled.

Complex. Presidential?

by Leslie Newell Peacock

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ARKANSAS TIMES

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VOLUME 41, NUMBER 39 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.

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COMMENT

From the web In response to Benjamin Hardy’s May 28 cover story about the lack of consequences for state Rep. Justin Harris (R-West Fork) after he moved two adopted daughters out of his house and into the home of a man who turned out to be a rapist: And as Harris still roams around freely participating in anything he chooses, we learned yesterday that he addressed a large group of teachers gathered for an end-of-year meeting. They were told there was no possible way that any kind of cost-of-living raise was forthcoming.

Harris then took the mic and quipped “guess you are really mad we voted ourselves a 117 percent pay increase.” Marie Antoinette couldn’t have said it better.

SHELLY SMITH Justin (and Marsha) Harris. The Duggars. Bart Hester. Mike Huckabee.

Gothard. Joseph Hutchens. Rapert.

There are just way too many “coincidental” ties that lead back to the abuse of young children, mostly girls.

This bunch believes that changing a baby’s diaper naturally arouses lust in a male. Or that seeing a young girl’s bare legs causes desire. There seems to be a general consensus in this fundamentalist bunch that it is entirely natural for an adult male to be attracted to young children. And that males cannot control themselves. IT IS NOT NORMAL. Why do they think it is normal?

The more that comes out, the more dots that can be connected, the more it seems that these right-wing ultra conservative religionists are a cult of pedophiles hiding in the folds of the robes of Jesus.

All the while they are out there lusting after prepubescent children (again, something they seem to think is “normal”) they are screaming loudly from every rooftop that gay people are the devil and have no place in a god-fearing society. And that men should rightfully control women and their bodies.

There is a group of conservative male Christians (concentrated, it seems, in Northwest Arkansas) that believes that it is natural and normal to be sexually attracted to children and that only the fear of a god of wrath keeps them from acting on their desires. They point to gay people as a societal scourge. Over there!

Look over there! They do their damnedest to prevent women from having reproductive control. Even little girls who are raped by their brother.

It is not natural for adult males to find themselves sexually attracted to children.

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ARKANSAS TIMES

They are trying to tell us that it is, and that only the wrath of God can prevent acting upon such desires. They claim incest is deserving of the death penalty. Until it’s one of theirs. But again — they think it is normal to be attracted to underage girls.

And have pretty much said so. And they believe that they can bypass secular law, answering only to a God who always tells them just exactly what they want to hear.

They need called out on it.

They need to be labeled for what they are.

VANESSA

In response to David Koon’s May 21 story about transgender Navy Reservist Rae Nelson: I would just like to take a quick moment to express how proud I am of Nelson! It truly takes courage to be yourself, and be unapologetic about it! Keep being yourself, and just live! I hope you can pursue your Naval Nurse aspirations soon!

Now normally I wouldn’t address or entertain the couple of haters that you have in the [online] comments but I feel the need as a friend and fellow Ship-

Proudly standing behind our results.

mate to address both of them, personally.

To THOMAS POPE & “UJI88888”: I’m pretty sure neither of you have served in the Navy with Nelson like many others and myself have. You know nothing about her other than the fact that she was born a male. You know nothing of her character, her devotion, and her utmost willingness to serve. Both of you clowns do realize that less than 0.5 percent of the total American population currently serves in the Armed Forces, right? Think about that, so for either of you to say anything so cowardly negative in the comments only makes you look like fools. She gladly does what the other 99.5 percent of Americans can’t do.

Additionally, Thomas Pope, Nelson is NOT delusional, she’s found herself and is comfortable. That would not affect how she served in the military. The Navy would be lucky to have a hardworking, caring, driven nurse such as Nelson. Furthermore, “UJI88888,” please don’t bring religion into your own twisted bigoted views. You are not the official spokesperson for all Christians. I can guarantee not all of them feel the same way that you do. I can also guarantee that plenty of “FAGS,” as you so eloquently put it, could save your ass if you were in trouble better than you could yourself. Think about that if you’re ever in a fiery car crash and someone on your rescue team is wearing a rainbow LGBT bracelet.

Proud of you, Nelson! Your body may be changing, but we will always be brothers or “siblings” in arms. Excuse my rant, but I just needed to call out the backwoods bigotry and plain ignorance of a couple of people.

JACOB TATE In response to Ernest Dumas’ column in the May 28 issue about “freedom of conscience” laws:

Central Arkansas Water’s annual Water Quality Report for 2014 can be viewed at www.carkw.com/water-quality-report.

The report highlights CAW’s efforts to comply with the monitoring, reporting, and water quality requirements of the federal Safe Drinking Water Act and Arkansas Department of Health in 2014. If you would prefer a paper copy of the report, please call Customer Service at 501.372.5161, select option 6, or send an email request to waterqualityreport@carkw.com and provide your name and address.

carkw.com

The issue is not about weddings … .

For example, take that legendary wedding cake baker who refuses to bake a cake for a gay wedding. Would he also refuse to sell a box of cookies so that the couple can celebrate their wedding anniversary? Or what about cupcakes for the adoption of their child? What if the baker not only does not believe in same-sex marriage but opposes interreligious marriage? Or biracial marriage?

Or remarriage? By opening a business that serves the public, you voluntarily take on the obligation to serve the whole public. When you open your doors to accommodate the public, you open them to the whole public. If you don’t believe that, just ask Woolworth’s ca. 1960.

PRESREVROB

www.arktimes.com

JUNE 4, 2015

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EYE ON ARKANSAS

WEEK THAT WAS

“That Josh Hastings would be involved in a police shooting of an African-American Little Rock citizen was as predictable as the sun coming up tomorrow. This was not a matter of if — this was a matter of when.”

—Attorney Michael Laux upon filing a federal civil rights lawsuit on June 1 against Hastings, the former Little Rock Police Department officer who was twice tried for manslaughter in the 2012 shooting death of 15-year-old Bobby Moore. Both criminal trials ended in hung juries. The new civil suit also names former LRPD chief Stuart Thomas and the City of Little Rock as defendants, alleging that the department should never have hired Hastings or retained him as long as it did. Sylvia Perkins, Moore’s mother, is the plaintiff.

Rising tide Swollen by weeks of rain, the Arkansas River — along with many smaller streams in the area — overflowed its banks over the weekend and into this week. In southern Arkansas, the Red River was approaching historic levels on Tuesday, and the water was still rising.

Still, Arkansas was spared the worst; in Texas and Oklahoma, at least 31 people were killed by weather and flooding in the last weeks of May.

Inviable from the beginning What a surprise: Roe v. Wade still stands. Last week, the 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed a lower federal court’s decision to overturn Arkansas’s ill-conceived ban on abortions past the 12th week of pregnancy, a blatantly unconstitutional law authored by Sen. Jason Rapert (R-Bigelow) and approved by the legislature in 2013 over the veto of then-Gov. Mike Beebe.

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ARKANSAS TIMES

BRIAN CHILSON

`Quote of the Week:

HOW HIGH IS THE WATER, MAMA? A view of the flooded, North Little Rock side of the Big Dam Bridge.

The opinion — written by a panel of three 8th Circuit judges, all of whom were appointed to the court by President George W. Bush — seemed to sympathize with the spirit of Arkansas’s 12-week ban. But even anti-abortion judges couldn’t uphold a statute that openly conflicts with the U.S. Supreme Court’s long-standing ruling that a woman has a right to choose an abortion before viability, which is generally around 24 weeks. Rapert, in true form, wrote on Facebook, “I submit to everyone that every single baby is viable if left in their natural environment which is the mother’s womb.”

Like oil and water Central Arkansas Water last week objected to a proposed settlement of the combined state/federal lawsuit against ExxonMobil over the 2013 rupture of an oil pipeline in Mayflower. The proposed consent decree, which was announced in April, would slap Exxon with $5.1

million in penalties — but CAW said the settlement would do little to protect against future accidents that could imperil Lake Maumelle and other water supplies. CAW wants the pipeline relocated from the Lake Maumelle watershed entirely, among other specifics.

Whether or not the objection goes anywhere, you’ve got to love the sight of our local water utility poking its nose into a gentleman’s agreement between Exxon, the U.S. Justice Department, the EPA and the state of Arkansas to demand a tougher deal. Sic ’em!

Tilting at bike lanes Little Rock Ward 1 City Director Erma Hendrix delayed a restriping of Chester Street out of her objection to the city’s plan to convert the thoroughfare to three traffic lanes with bike lanes on either side, a design similar to the one implemented on Main Street in 2013. Hendrix opposed that change as well, saying then (and now) that restriping downtown streets to make way for bikes was the work of a privileged white minority within the ward. The eventual compromise on Chester: The city moved ahead with a

three-lane plan that left ample space to accommodate cyclists, though without bike lanes specifically marked.

Land of (slightly lower than average) opportunity Mike Huckabee has become fond of claiming on the presidential campaign trail that Arkansas experienced a 50 percent growth in income on his watch as governor from 1996 to 2007. PolitiFact took a closer look at the numbers and found that while Arkansas income (before adjusting for inflation) did in fact rise 59 percent, the whole of the country went up 62 percent during the same time period. PolitiFact concluded, “So what Huckabee is touting as something special is actually something that was below the national average.”

OPINION

Asa’s blitzkrieg: Cause to gripe

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smiling Gov. Asa Hutchinson presided over bill signings Friday in the governor’s conference room.

The blitzkrieg special session burnished his early image as a seemingly moderate (well, not crazy) and successful leader.

Where many Republicans fought strenuously, but unsuccessfully, to block Gov. Mike Beebe’s plan to pump $125 million in corporate welfare into a startup steel mill in Mississippi County, not a single Republican in the House — and only three in the Senate — objected to Hutchinson’s plan to give an $87 million handout ($120 million counting interest) to help Lockheed Martin win a bid to build a light armored vehicle in Arkansas.

Lockheed’s budget dwarfs the state budget. It had announced years ago it would build its plant in Camden. It even closed a plant in supposedly more businessfriendly Texas to move the operation to lower-cost Arkansas. No state was bidding for Lockheed’s business. But it

wanted some kickback from Arkansas.

A consultant — and these consultants rarely find MAX a handout they BRANTLEY DON’T like — said maxbrantley@arktimes.com it would take 20 years or so for Arkansas to make its money back in taxes on new workers if Lockheed got the bid. It will be three years before production begins, so the loss will be particularly hard-felt in the early years, given a budget tightened by Hutchinson’s earlier income tax cut for all but the bottom 40 percent of Arkansas workers.

Some right-wingers, and the Kochfinanced Americans for Prosperity, echoed my criticism of the corporate welfare. Government shouldn’t be in the business of picking winners and losers, they said. The oddest event of the week

Limitless welfare for corporations

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couple of months ago this column predicted that the 2015 legislature would be one of the rare Arkansas assemblies that would claim a place in history, this time for having enacted the Republican Party’s entire political strategy, commonly known as God, guns, gays and tax cuts for the well-to-do.

That needs amending. Why mince words? This will be known as the Great Corporate Legislature of 2015.

The legislators — and not merely the Republicans — worked hard for that honorific and they should get it. In the regular session and the quick special session that followed it, the legislature made corporate welfare Arkansas’s first policy.

The evidence is not merely the $87.1 million debt (much more when you calculate 20 years of interest) that the state promised last week to incur to help Lockheed Martin win a big defense contract from the Obama administration against two smaller competitors. In one of

was Sen. Tom Cotton’s smiling appear- Republican for president. Mike Huckance with Hutchinson alongside a proto- abee is Hutchinson’s pick. There’s no type vehicle, seeming to tout the project. evidence beyond that it will 1) add to At the same time, Cotton’s former spokes- Arkansas’s stature in the election proman David Ray, now leading the Koch cess or 2) increase primary voter paraffiliate in Arkansas, decried such hand- ticipation. There’s solid evidence it will outs in language much like Cotton him- lengthen the campaign season, provide self has often used. A Cotton spokesman advantages to incumbent legislators and later explained to the Arkansas News complicate buying new voting machines.

Bureau that Cotton was merely touting Rep. Nate Bell of Mena, the Republithe Arkansas workforce. It would be up can firebrand and no soulmate of mine, to the governor and legislature to make fought the switch and ultimately declared policy decisions, she said. Funny. Cot- he was now an independent because of ton normally is happy to invoke prin- unreasonable party bosses.

Hutchinson also touted some minuciple and declare what policies others should adopt, whether about fighting tia — shuffling of a few tiny state agenin the Middle East or invading the sanc- cies — as small steps that could produce tity of women’s medical decisions. Here, $10 million in savings over five years. though, he went both ways.

Some of the savings are only on paper If Lockheed gets the contract, the fed- — elimination of jobs not currently filled. eral government and federal taxpayers Some savings have already been erased can thank poor Arkansas for contribut- by big raises the governor has given to ing OUR tax money to the Pentagon even political appointees. The Bledsoe GOP though, as one reporter put it, the $87 family alone – senator mother, Health million amounts to a “rounding error” for Department father and surgeon gengiant Lockheed. Sometimes companies eral son, are now knocking down nearly shake down states just because they can. a half-million a year in taxpayer pay Hutchinson also prevailed, where he and benefits thanks to the Hutchinson had not in the regular session, in mov- administration.

But my gripes will be quickly forgoting the Republican primary from May to March. The idea is to have a joint ten. The governor called; the legislature Dixie primary anoint the right sort of answered. Winners write the history.

subsidizing corporations like chambers of commerce with the taxpayers’ money.

A Pulaski County circuit judge ruled once more Monday that cities like Little Rock and North Little Rock that began subsidizing chambers of commerce a few years ago to compensate them for striving its last acts in the regular session in April, for “economic development” were doing the legislature referred a constitutional so illegally. Judge Mackie Pierce had amendment that will lift virtually all issued the ruling first in January and limits on the debt that the state can pile on the legislature inserted language in the amendment to overturn his ruling. taxpayers to help large corporations.

The Lockheed Martin subsidy and the It also will allow amendment that would put the taxpayers at risk of far greater burdens passed easily cities and counties to incur large debts in a legislature that enjoys the cachet and levy new “conservative” because they employ the ERNEST taxes to make new word “jobs.” The amendment will appear DUMAS and expanding on the ballot as “An Amendment to the industries more profitable. All of that Arkansas Constitution to Encourage Job will be done without a vote of the people, Creation, Job Expansion, and Economic which was once the constitutional Development.” Arkansas needs jobs — safeguard against such extravagance what state doesn’t? We are a generous but will be no more. people. Even if we have good jobs That is not all the amendment will ourselves, we want others to have them, do once the voters in 2016 approve it, as too. almost certainly they will when all the ads If Lockheed Martin wins the contract say the new law is essential to create vast for a new protective troop vehicle, it will numbers of new high-paying jobs that mean several hundred jobs in Ouachita will make us all richer. The amendment and Calhoun counties. But most new also will effectively repeal the 1874 law jobs that will be created in Arkansas that prevents cities and counties from are by small businesses rather than the

Lockheed Martins and they come from other investment streams. To use an unpopular example: Obamacare and the Medicaid expansion. Government labor statistics show that thousands of new jobs in the health care business have been created since the Medicaid expansion and insurance reforms were implemented in 2013.

That $87.1 million and interest for Lockheed are the taxpayer dollars that would be used starting in 2017 to pay the state’s small share of the jobcreating Medicaid expansion to poor adults. That is not nearly so popular in the conservative legislature.

Let’s not forget what the Lockheed Martin subsidy does. It guarantees a higher profit if the company beats out the other contractors. What the bidding is all about is who is willing to take the smallest profit. The Arkansas subsidy will allow Lockheed to lower its bid a trifle so that it is a shade under the others and still realize a marginally higher profit.

History shows these defense contracts are immensely profitable.

The 2016 amendment soared under the radar in the last days of the session because it was reported that legislators were so divided that they wouldn’t refer any constitutional amendments. SJR 3 CONTINUED ON PAGE 37 www.arktimes.com

JUNE 4, 2015

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lthough its passage went less smoothly than Republican leaders anticipated, the General Assembly voted last week to shift all Arkansas primary elections in 2016 to early March to coincide with the socalled “SEC Primary,” a mammoth set of primary elections across the South.

This alteration in the election calendar — meant to benefit former Gov. Mike Huckabee and to provide the state greater attention in the nomination process — marks just one in a series of shifts in the timing of Arkansas primary elections across recent decades, almost all tied to the presidential aspirations of Arkansas politicians.

Traditionally, Arkansas’s primary elections were a late summer affair, occurring near the end of August with runoffs taking place two weeks later in September. Although it made primaries tests of physical endurance for candidates and their staffs and volunteers, this schedule fit nicely with the life cycle in an agricultural state.

Moreover, the series of summer festivals provided perfect venues for the candidates for office to show off their speaking and backslapping abilities.

Because the Democratic primary was tantamount to election in almost every nook and cranny of the state, having it only weeks before the general election to simply verify its outcome also made sense.

This changed in the early 1970s. The overhaul of the national Democratic Party’s presidential nomination process required primaries or caucuses open to all Democrats and required that delegations be gender-balanced and more generally reflective of the state’s population. In 1972, Arkansas’s Democrats wanted to be certain that their delegates were seated at the national convention, because Congressman Wilbur Mills had acceded to being drafted for the nomination and needed the delegation as a base of support, so the state ultimately moved the primary to late spring.

This set the late May primary that has been the norm for over 40 years with only a couple of exceptions, also driven by the ambitions of Arkansas political elites. Seeing the importance of enhancing Southerners’ voices in the process to elect a moderate Democrat, the Democratic Leadership Conference pushed for a Super Tuesday primary in 1988. One of those moderate Democrats considering a run at the

time when the Arkansas General Assembly met in 1987 to make the shift: Arkansas’s Bill Clinton. In JAY 2008, another BARTH Super Tuesday was set and with Arkansans Hillary Clinton and Mike Huckabee seeking their respective nominations, participation was seen as positive for them and the state.

As in 1988, the “SEC primary” will shift all primaries (presidential, nonpresidential and judicial) to this exceptionally early date with a filing period concluding around next Thanksgiving. Because Arkansas will be among the smallest states to vote on March 1 and because, as in 2008, Huckabee and Clinton will dominate the contests, little attention from the national press or other candidates will flow to the state.

Who will be the most likely political winners from this latest Arkansas shift?

• The state Republican Party. The state GOP (with presidential filing fees set at $25,000 in 2012) will collect significant fees from candidates who must pay the fee in November, whether or not they are still viable in March. With a more competitive presidential primary than the Democrats’, it will also continue the party’s momentum in terms of turning out more Arkansas voters than Democrats and in terms of voter data to use in future elections.

• GOP legislative incumbents.

Because of the partisan gerrymandering of the Arkansas General Assembly, GOP incumbents are most threatened by primary opponents.

The early election will give prospective opponents less time to ramp up a campaign against them.

• Proponents of the private option.

The delay of the fiscal session until after the primary means Republicans will not have to vote on the private option before the primary.

That will bode well if the expected effort to extend the life of the program is before the General Assembly in the session.

The losers?

• Incumbents in swing districts.

While there are relatively few swing districts left in the state legislature (or Congress), the lengthened genCONTINUED ON PAGE 37

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ARKANSAS TIMES

Arkansas condones child abuse?

If Harrises and Duggars go unpunished, yes.

BY ANONYMOUS

H

ow is Justin Harris still in the state legislature? How is it that the governor and Republican leaders haven’t called for him to resign from office? Or at least press him to take a leave of absence while a transparent investigation takes place? Where are the West Fork citizens demanding his recall?

Because I was sexually abused as a child, the issue strikes close to home.

My abuse happened in a green room, down the stairs in a basement. I was 3 and 4 years old. The teenage sons of the woman who ran the daycare beat me until I took my clothes off. They did the same thing to a little girl about the same age. And they forced us to perform sex acts on one another that we didn’t understand as we sobbed. It happened repeatedly for a year.

I don’t talk about it much. For one, it does not define me. For another, my mother still does not know. I tried to tell her then but lacked the words to describe what was happening. Mom told the sitter that her sons were “mean” to me, and they beat me harder for tattling on them. Mom still makes jokes about how much I cried every time she dropped me off, but the sitter assured her I was happily playing the moment she left.

There is no reason now for my mom to know and carry that weight. It would devastate her.

So I write this piece anonymously. Perhaps cowardly, but I hope not.

I am shocked at the way the political system has failed to hold the Harrises and the Duggars accountable. Republican leaders should be denouncing them, and in Harris’ case forcing him from office.

It tells me all I need to know about the modern Republican Party that Mike Huckabee’s support for needed and popular tax increases for education, health care and parks will hurt his presidential bid more than his embrace of serial rapists, murderers and child molesters.

It tells me all I need to know about the Democratic Party that it cannot even muster the moral courage to stand against a child abuser in the halls of government. Justin Harris deserves more than a strongly worded press release. Can you imagine what the Republicans would do if the Democrats were coddling a child abuser?

I believe in redemption and penance. I have no ill will toward my abusers, and I believe Justin Harris and the Duggar clan

presents… deserve a shot at forgiveness. But my abusers are not running a preschool facility for children, and they are not denouncing gay and lesbian families as child molesters.

Beyond the legislature, how is it that Justin Harris and wife are still licensed to operate a daycare after what has been revealed?

How can a sane parent trust their child’s care to them?

Before rehoming their daughters to a rapist, the Harrises allegedly abused the daughters in isolation cells and forced exorcisms.

Newsflash for the Harrises: The genius of evil is that people do not need to be possessed. Evil seeps in to the self-righteous.

Evil disguises itself as morality. Evil is explained away as youthful indiscretion.

People claiming to have exclusive insight into God’s mind have committed the worst atrocities in humankind.

Evil does not seep in to 3- and 4- and 5-year-old little girls. That comes from the adults who abuse them. A demon did not possess the little girls entrusted to the Harrises. A demon wasn’t responsible for the Harrises’ actions.

The evil was in the poor judgment and lack of moral clarity in the Harrises themselves.

It was their sin and their responsibility, not anyone else’s. There is a legal term for the evil the Harrises’ performed — it’s called child abuse. It led to child rape.

The thing about being a survivor of abuse is it makes you forever question your normalcy and self-value. We learn to cope with it. We learn to heal from it. We even learn to use it as a strength. But it haunts our relationships and us for life. I am still haunted by much of my experience, especially that I failed to protect the little girl with whom I was forced to perform sex acts.

Those little girls entrusted to the Harrises will forever suffer for what was inflicted upon them there. The girls involved in the Duggar case will forever know they were molested and then violated again when adults did nothing.

Justin Harris should be forced from the legislature. He and his wife should lose their licenses to care for children. They should be prosecuted for child abuse and child endangerment. The Duggars should be exposed as child abusers.

That child abusers of any political persuasion should be held accountable used to be an Arkansas value.

Tim and Myles Thompson Thursday June 18 7:30 p.m.

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PEARLS ABOUT SWINE

Gardner Memorial United Methodist Church invites you to the historical drama

“The Man from Aldersgate” based on the journals of evangelist John Wesley.

Sunday, June 7 at 2:00 pm.

This event is free and open to the public.

Gardner Memorial United Methodist Church 1723 Schaer Street (18th at Schaer) North Little Rock, AR 72114 (501) 374-9520

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JUNE 4, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

Hogs return to the Hill

T

he Arkansas Razorbacks’ 2015 baseball team is still resembling the 2004 squad one week into the postseason in more ways than one.

This Razorback bunch went to Stillwater, Okla. and promptly took three close — and at times, quite harrowing — victories in three days. Arkansas battled a tough Oral Roberts team to an 8-6 victory in the Friday opener, then used an unlikely five-spot in the eighth inning against host Oklahoma State to perch itself in the catbird seat on Saturday night, capping the 7-5 win with two dominant innings of relief from righty fireballer Zach Jackson.

St. John’s, a quality fourth seed in the grouping, nudged the Cowboys out of the tourney on Sunday afternoon, and the Hogs more or less returned that favor in the clincher that evening. A ninth-inning run was expertly manufactured and Jackson gassed all three Red Storm hitters in the final frame to cinch the regional. Best of all, the Hogs parlayed all of this into a return to Baum Stadium for the Super Regional against Missouri State, and Arkansas fans lustily responded to the news by snatching up all Razorback Foundation and season passes available. Not many college baseball programs can boast of this kind of zealous following, but a public sale of tickets was rendered impossible, basically within a matter of hours.

Fans enthusiastically embraced that 2004 bunch, which was not coincidentally the last Arkansas team to host a Super Regional. Dave Van Horn was in his second year then, and Hog fans loved the quick resurgence to prominence that the feisty preseason also-ran symbolized. That squad had workhorse pitchers, a penchant for the dramatic, and a degree of coolness under duress that was pretty much unmatched.

The methodology is mirrored again.

Though Andrew Benintendi has the possibility of being the Golden Spikes winner in addition to the numerous accolades he’s already compiled, this is anything but a one-man show, and the fans respond to that. Tyler Spoon has matured into a true middle-of-theorder force, the corners are capably anchored by Bobby Wernes and Clark Eagan, and possibly nobody has been more clutch than senior outfielder Joe Serrano. He won the regional MVP nod for a passel of quality, produc-

tive at-bats, and that’s the kind of thing he demonstrated in 2012 when Arkansas last went to BEAU Omaha by way WILCOX of Houston and then Waco.

This Hogs team not only avoids the sweltering Texas heat this time, but returns to its sacred and beloved confines for a shot to get back to Nebraska for what is arguably college sporting’s finest and most consistently nervejangling postseason forum. Baum has been good to the Hogs for so many reasons over the years, but this weekend it is primed to be the epicenter of college baseball for the best of all reasons.

Missouri State is no slouch of a foe by any means, and the Bears did blank the Hogs 2-0 in Fayetteville earlier in 2015, but that loss feels like an eternity ago at this point. Arkansas surged from its early March DOA stature in all the proper ways. The defense has been so brilliant that when Michael Bernal made a wild throw leading to a run for St. John’s on Sunday, it felt incredibly foreign to the seasoned eye that has seen some of the program’s best infield glove work in decades. These slip-ups notwithstanding, few teams still with a pulse in early June have the combination of moxie and big-game composure that this team shows.

For Arkansas to get out of the Super Regional unscathed, Benintendi’s power may need to return and the likes of Rick Nomura and Tucker Pennell may have to continue to be unsung hitting heroes. The Bears’ pitching is top-flight at the front of the rotation and it appears evident that the Hogs will again be without workhorse Dominic Taccolini. But momentum is everything, and fan support may be something even greater. The ongoing, gradual crescendo of Arkansas consumer confidence may really hit a fever pitch Friday afternoon, and

by Saturday or Sunday, depending on outcomes, it might qualify as the best summer weekend on the Hill in over a decade. The 2004 Hogs dutifully vanquished Florida State that year, and have designs on pushing aside another highly respected program this weekend.

THE OBSERVER NOTES ON THE PASSING SCENE

Mailer’s ghost

A

few nights ago at the White Water Tavern, The Observer was deep in conversation with Max Brantley, former editor of the paper you are now reading, when the latter mentioned off-handedly, as though it were common (and uninteresting) knowledge, that Norman Mailer had once submitted a piece to the Arkansas Times, and that moreover he, Max Brantley, had rejected it. We have known Max a while — have known him to be a basically honorable and morally serious person — and so it was with no small amount of personal disappointment that we returned our beer to the table in front of us and replied, “Bullshit.”

Mailer, of course, was the novelist and television personality who leapt into public consideration with his first book, the now little-read World War II document “The Naked and the Dead.” He wrote many novels after it, most of them savaged by critics and ignored by readers, and did many other things in the service of performing his role as Great American Novelist: ran unsuccessfully for mayor of New York City, duked it out on television with Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley, nonfatally stabbed his second of six wives. One widely held take on his career, however, holds that it’s his nonfiction work that makes the best argument for his greatness.

Nowadays he’s listed in the front ranks of the New Journalism — for his early essays collected in “Advertisements for Myself,” his Gary Gilmore nonfiction-novel “The Executioner’s Song,” the Pulitzer Prizewinning “The Armies of the Night.” So where did the Arkansas Times come in?

Max, still nonplussed by the encounter decades later, explained that Mailer had written a long piece on the 1992 Clintonheadlining Democratic National Convention that had been rejected by its intended publication and thus offered by his agent to the Times. If we were interested, that is, which apparently we weren’t. Max waved it off, took another sip of his beer. It was 23 years ago, after all. The past. Among newspapermen, Max is unique for his aversion to all forms of nostalgia.

Back at home, we consulted the Mailer biography, J. Michael Lennon’s “Nor-

man Mailer: A Double Life,” and found this note: “His report on the Republican convention of 1992 was published in The New Republic. The companion piece on the Democratic convention was written but never published. Mailer felt that it was too obviously approving of Bill Clinton.”

Far be it from me to criticize a studiously researched and vetted biography of an American artist, but if Max’s account were to be believed, this was simply not true.

But was Max’s account to be believed?

The next morning we reminded Max of our conversation and before we could formulate a question he reached down into a low drawer and retrieved a stack of typewritten pages that had apparently been exiled there since 1992. A lost Mailer story! This was literary history, destined to gather dust in Max Brantley’s desk.

There was a note attached to the first page: “Dear Max Brantley: Per our conversation, here’s Norman Mailer’s piece on the Democratic Convention, ACT ONE OF THE RELIGIOUS WARS. I’m eager to hear your thoughts.”

The first surprising thing about the piece, other than its existence, is its length: It’s 49 pages long. Clinton himself doesn’t show up until page 32. The next surprising thing: It’s not actually all that great. It’s mostly a rote recitation of the convention proceedings, complete with interminable block quotes and often unsophisticated political commentary. There are moments of loveliness on the sentence level, as you’d expect from Mailer. “Clinton’s task,” he writes, was “to coax the worm of distrust off the surface of America’s raw and fevered brain.” Of the candidate’s New Covenant, he writes, “It came down on the ear … with as little joy as the title of a sermon on the outdoor notice-board of a church.” Mostly, though, it’s a bit of a slog.

Max claims he offered to carve out a small editorial from the story, and that Mailer’s agent wasn’t interested. And that was that.

Thus concludes another vanished chapter in the history of the Arkansas Times. If you’re a Mailer fan, come by the office sometime. We’ve got the story now, or anyway, we did. We think we put it in a drawer somewhere.

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11

Arkansas Reporter

THE

IN S IDE R

State Treasurer Dennis Milligan filed a batch of amended campaign contribution and expenditure reports late last week for his general election run for the office.

The reports omit Mike Huckabee’s name as an honorary chairman and drop Rick Meyer as campaign treasurer, according to a Milligan foe who’s been busily circulating news about problems in the treasurer’s office. Huckabee is running for president and doesn’t need the association with this controversy, presumably. Milligan has fallen out with Meyer, once one of his top supporters. Internal email from Milligan Chief of Staff Jim Harris has shown that it was believed Meyer was trying to exercise too much influence over the treasurer’s office.

The reports appear to address the earlier disclosure that payment to a campaign consultant included money sent to the consultant to pass along to Jason Brady, who did social media work for the campaign while an employee of the American Cancer Society. Email has shown Brady worked independently, but he wanted the pass-through used to keep his name out of campaign reports.

Brady is now a top official in Milligan’s office. The last amended report has scratched out the original payment to Your Ad Team Consultant and broken it down into separate amounts to YAT and to an unnamed “subcontractor” of social media.

The changes might reflect an Ethics Commission review of Milligan’s reports. There’s a rich touch of irony in all this. Among the “ethics reform” measures Sen. Jon Woods (R-Rogers) got the legislature to approve this year was an effective get-out-of-jail-free card for ethics violations. Under his legislation, candidates now have time after problems with their campaign reports are cited to make corrections and may be held harmless from ethical sanctions. It’s a free pass for fudging. The irony is that Woods was among the Republicans who backed Duncan Baird’s losing primary race for treasurer against Milligan. It became heated when Milligan tried to extort Baird out of the race by making something of a late-night visit to the Capitol made

The representation gap

the at-large directors are white. (Although Hispanics now constitute at least 5 percent of the city, the board has never had a Hispanic director.)

“The idea is to cancel out minority votes [on the board], so as to leave control in the hands of a handful of people in town. … It Hendrix study says ward-based elections give is a deliberate neglect, a lack of inclusion,” minorities and women a better shot at elected office. said Rep. John Walker (D-Little Rock), the civil rights attorney who’s been shouting for decades about the disenfranchisement of

BY BENJAMIN HARDY Little Rock’s black community. all of whom were elected at-large. or all that our cultural moment reThe Hendrix study doesn’t make any That blended system is convenient for veres localism in matters of food claims about such intent, but it does show and drink and commerce, city govsocial scientists, said Barth (who also regthat individual wards are much more likely ernment tends to remain an obscure arena ularly writes a column for the Arkansas to vote for a minority candidate than the even for the otherwise politically engaged.

Times), “because it provides both at play in city as a whole. Data from the past halfAs for the structure of municipal governthe same place. It introduces a lot of controls century of Little Rock city races reveals that, ment — how its institutions and political and allows us to look at variance between “about 87.6 percent of at-large elections have processes function — that initially sounds these two techniques for electing people resulted in the election of a white candidate, even more esoteric, the domain of academwithin the same city.” compared to about 59 percent of the ward ics and cranky neighborhood activists. Yet But some say the three at-large positions ones.” Bottom line: If we want the racial the truth is that how we elect local leadmakeup of our city leadership to more ers determines the sorts of people who closely reflect the demographics of Litwin office, which in turn determines the tle Rock, eliminate the at-large seats. course of the history of the city.

Gene Fortson, one of the city’s three That’s the importance of a recent at-large directors, acknowledged that study out of Hendrix College titled ward elections may result in more minority representation in general, “Governance in Little Rock, Arkansas: At-Large and District Elections and the but questioned whether the race of Impact on Representation,” authored elected officials should be such a matter of emphasis. primarily by Jay Barth and Kiril Kolev.

Both are faculty in the college’s politics “Sometimes I disagree with the basic department; anthropology professor assumption that people can only vote Brett Hill and Lora Adams, a student, for issues that happen to benefit people also contributed to the paper. After that have the same color skin they have. examining the results of 128 races for I’m supposed to represent an entire Little Rock city government between city, which is 48 percent minority, and 1957 and 2012, the authors conclude FORTSON: Doesn’t believe at-large city directors vote so if I’m going to do my job, I better be that a shift to a system in which rep- with any racial bias. colorblind,” he said. “I think the votresentatives are elected entirely based on effectively constitute a means by which the ing history of the at-large directors has not shown a history of a racial bias.” geographic wards — as opposed to citywhiter, wealthier segments of the city conFortson said the system allows for coopwide at-large races — would result in more tinue to exert undue influence on the board. minority and female members on the City It’s more difficult for minority candidates to eration between at-large and ward direcBoard of Directors and “create more vibrant, gain a foothold when running for citywide tors on projects. “There is an assumption seats, the argument goes, both because Litcompetitive, and less expensive elections that at-large directors would vote as a block, tle Rock’s racially divided electorate is less in the city.” which is not true, or that all of the at-large likely to vote for people of color in at-large There are two ways a city can elect its directors would necessarily vote in oppoleaders. Some cities (typically smaller ones) campaigns and because those elections are sition to something ward directors might choose from a slate of at-large candidates to larger and therefore more costly. The curneed. I’d love to see an academic study done over a multiyear period about votrepresent the entire city, while others georent composition of the City Board seems to graphically subdivide into wards, each of bear this out. The population of Little Rock ing records of at-large directors on specific issues compared to voting records of ward which elects its own representative(s). A few is about 42 percent African-American, and three out of the seven city directors elected cities, like Little Rock, do both. Out of the directors.” As examples of such cooperation, by ward are black. Among ward directors, 10 seats on the City Board, three are elected he cited the 12th Street police substation at-large and the other seven are elected by then, city leadership corresponds proporand the West Central Community Center ward. The hybrid model was approved by to be constructed on Colonel Glenn Road, tionally to racial demographics: The three Little Rock voters in the 1990s; before that, African-American directors represent 43 located respectively in the wards of directors the board was made up of seven members, percent of the board. However, all three of Ken Richardson and Doris Wright (both of

F

BRIAN CHILSON

Milligan moves to correct campaign filings

CONTINUED ON PAGE 21 12

JUNE 4, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

THE

BIG PICTURE

Bridging the White, by bike Clarendon group’s dream.

ENTRY TO THE BRIDGE: From the west, which will have to be substantially changed if the bridge is to be preserved.

WHEN THE BRIDGE WAS NEW: The double cantilever bridge was built in 1931.

BIKING HIGH: A still from the video made by the group working to save the White River Bridge shows the treetop level route the bridge would offer hikers and bikers.

A fledgling group working to save the White River Bridge at Clarendon, scheduled to be demolished when a new bridge opens in the fall, has created a website (whiteriverbridge.org) and a biker’s-view video of travel on the bridge to stir up interest in the cause. Besides creating a safe, scenic pedestrian/biking bridge high above the White and over an oxbow lake, the bikeway is seen as a potential economic boon to Clarendon and other small towns that would be along what cyclists hope will one day be U.S. Bike Route 80 from Little Rock to the Harahan Bridge in Memphis. The city of Clarendon and Monroe County support the idea to preserve the bridge but do not have the budgets to take possession of it from the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department, according to Porter Briggs, vice president of Friends of the Historic White River Bridge, so the group is creating a proposal for private and foundation support. That support will have to cover the expense of building a new entrance to the bridge from the west side, which is in the White River National Wildlife Refuge, to meet refuge demands. Briggs, a preservationist more than cyclist, said his passion to protect the bridge was heightened when he realized what it could do to bring tourist dollars to the area. The Coast Guard has agreed to waive its rule that the bridge be removed within 90 days of the opening of the new bridge, which will give the AHTD time to “be a good neighbor” to those seeking to preserve the bridge, AHTD spokesman Danny Straessle said.

Learn about the history of the bridge, built in 1931 and one of only two remaining double cantilever steel truss bridges in Arkansas, and the potential economic impact of saving it at the website. You can see the new route of the bridge at idrivearkansas.com. The new bridge will carry U.S. Hwy. 79 south of Clarendon; the current route enters the town.

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INSIDER, CONT.

by Baird and other Republican legislators that was recorded on Secretary of State security cameras and put into public distribution by Milligan’s campaign team.

Independent Nate Bell The state legislative web page now lists Rep. Nate Bell of Mena, previously a Republican, as an independent.

We’ve sent a question to Bell about the change indicated, but he long ago stopped talking to the Arkansas Times. He told KARK-TV, Channel 4, “I believe I can best represent my district and my values as an independent.”

We could speculate that Bell’s switch is an outgrowth of his unhappy and finally unsuccessful opposition to Gov. Asa Hutchinsonbacked legislation to shift the 2016 primary elections from May to March. Bell was right. The change will create hardships for election officials and limit nonmainstream candidates, particularly for local offices. There’s little in the way of proof the change will increase voter participation or make Arkansas a player in the Republican presidential primary. Also, March 1 could be a problem on account of weather. But major Republican figures wanted the change and they got what they wanted, despite dogged, crafty and almost-successful opposition by Bell and a few Democrats.

Since the battle, Bell has posted quite a bit about the fight. His Facebook page includes a link to his floor speech against the bill and a quote saying it is better to walk alone than with a crowd going the wrong direction. And there was this: “No party boss will EVER force me to vote for a bill that I believe is bad for Arkansas. Threatening me only strengthens my resolve to stand firm for conscience and principle.”

Party affiliation or not, we wouldn’t expect Bell to turn into a liberal when votes are counted. But he will break from orthodoxy now and then, and that’s refreshing in the days of a hyperpartisan Republican Party. Just recently he commented on Twitter that Republican State Treasurer Dennis Milligan never should have been elected “after the Krispy Kreme caper.”

www.arktimes.com

JUNE 4, 2015

13

BRIAN CHILSON

BACK TO ARKANSAS: Huckabee stumps for Republican banker French Hill, who won the 2nd District congressional seat in 2014.

The ‘bipolar’ Mike Huckabee Medicaid expander, Obamacare opponent. Man from Hope, mansion in Florida. Child health proponent, Duggar apologist.

BY LESLIE NEWELL PEACOCK

F

ormer Arkansas Gov. and would-be-U.S. President Mike Huckabee is no longer an unknown quantity to the nation the way he was in 2007-08, when as a candidate for the Republican nomination for president he charmed the pants off many in the national press. What a

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JUNE 4, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

gift of gab! What an affable man of the people! He plays bass and guitar! He seems so genuine! A man of the cloth!

We in Arkansas knew better. We knew he loved loot and Velveeta cheese, got his back up easily, didn’t think much of women’s rights or environmentalists and denigrated homo-

sexuals with references to “Adam and Steve.”

We knew about his “Action America” fund that channeled dollars from R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. to prop him up after his failed Senate race.

We knew he prevaricated. We knew about Wayne DuMond.

We knew the former Baptist preacher could be dismissive of the constitutional separation of church and state, recalling that as lieutenant governor he took advantage of Gov. Jim Guy Tucker’s out-of-state trip to the doctor to declare “Christian Heritage Week” in 1994. And that he could be silly, when as governor he demanded legislators replace the words “acts of God” from an insurance bill with “natural disasters” so as not to insult the Almighty.

We called him the Huckster, the Huck-a-buck, the Rev.-Bro.-Gov. Part of Huckabee’s appeal for the uninitiated back then was that, while he talked a lot about God, he

BRIAN CHILSON

KELLEY SUMBLES

seemed comparatively moderate. He even claimed to be a personal friend of Bill Clinton’s, said he could work with Democrats. He espoused a progressive bent toward foreign policy, suggesting the U.S. should put more “wing tips” on the ground than boots next time we thought about starting a war. That glibness didn’t offend; it amused.

Today, he’s still glib, but his message is more strident: “We will deal with jihadis just as we deal with deadly snakes” he posted on his Twitter account (a format made in Heaven for the former Baptist preacher) just the other day.

Is this a new Huckabee, or the old Huckabee unfettered, emboldened by the Tea Party, his own political instincts to stand out from the crowd and the rise of a populace that would elect an insect to office if it had an R after its name?

In 2008, Huckabee was mostly known as the former governor of Arkansas, another man from Hope, one who claimed to have grown up in a house with dirt floors. Now he’s the man from Santa Rosa Beach, Fla., living in a $3 million, six-bedroom, 8,224-square-foot beach mansion.

He’s claimed he and his wife, Janet, always wanted to live where they could dip their toes in salt water.

Water that laps the shores of a state that does not levy an income tax is especially alluring.

Once the failed presidential candidate Huckabee took a job with Fox News in 2008, he dropped the moderate mantle for the most part. Today he is as far out as he was once thought to be a middle-of-the-road populist, with a little Chuck Norris thrown in for machismo and Ted Nugent for … well, who knows why. When Huckabee surprised with his win in Iowa in 2008, the Washington Post described him as a “Disneyland Pat Buchanan,” a candidate “whose down-home folksiness makes [nomination foe Fred] Thompson look like David Niven.”

This year, however, after the former talk-show host said the “homosexual agenda” was out to destroy Christianity and shut every church in Christendom, even someone as right wing as the Post’s George Will called Huckabee “appalling.”

Huckabee really went off the rails recently when he decided to defend Josh Duggar after the news broke about Duggar’s teenage fondling of his little sisters and his molestation of an older girl. Duggar acknowledged wrongdoing and resigned from the anti-gay hate group the Family Research Council. Huckabee, who once compared Arkansas Times senior editor Max Brantley to Jeffrey Dahmer, attacked the “bloodthirsty press” for revealing Duggar’s history of sexual abuse, because, after all, Josh said he was sorry and look at what a good guy he’s become, promoting “family values” and going after heretical queers.

Huckabee’s Facebook-posted defense riled up several former supporters, their objections much like this one: “Our family met you and campaigned for you in Iowa in 2008 — we will not be supporting you in 2016 for the sole reason of your support of the Duggars. … Shame on you, a pastor, for dragging the name of Christ through the mud by focusing on and supporting the offenders rather than the victims.” And this one: “So much for God, guns, grits and gravy. Pffffft

family values. Sick just sick.” And this, by Caleb Rountree of Denver, formerly of North Little Rock: “Mr. Huckabee, do you remember signing a bill into law protecting child victims of sexual and physical abuse? I do. Because I was standing next to you when you signed it, as a victim of sexual and physical abuse in Arkansas. I am disgusted, hurt and personally offended by these comments. I thought you were better than this, but I was wrong.”

But, had they been paying attention, would they be surprised that Huckabee was more concerned about Josh Duggar’s reputation than the girls he fondled? Where were they when, in 2014, Huckabee spouted off that women who use birth control could not “control their libidos” and were so weak-minded that they could be brainwashed by Democrats into believing “they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription”?

Huckabee’s insensitivity to women’s issues is of long-standing: No change there.

In December 2006, as Huckabee first made real noise about a run for the Republican presidential nomination, the Times’ Brantley and Ernest Dumas wrote a “primer on the Huckabee tenure,” which they headlined “Ask us about our governor.” It outlined how Huckabee, who came into office declaring he was going to curb

INAUGURATION DAY, JANUARY 1999: Huckabee defeated Democrat Bill Bristow.

www.arktimes.com

JUNE 4, 2015

15

KELLY QUINN

RUNNING FOR LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR: Huckabee created the secretive Action America fund to pay for his 1993 campaign to fill the seat vacated by Jim Guy Tucker when Bill Clinton was elected president.

WAYNE DUMOND: The convicted rapist who killed and raped again after Huckabee persuaded the parole board to free him.

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JUNE 4, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

Medicaid spending (dollars that were going to irresponsible women who insisted on having children without the means to pay for them), encountered child advocate Amy Rossi on his road to Damascus and expanded Medicaid services to children under ARKids First.

Huckabee once espoused the need for health insurance for all Arkansans.

Now he wants to do away with the Medicaid expansion that is the Affordable Care Act. Though he’d rather folks didn’t know it, Huckabee also raised motorfuel taxes to pay for public education and fended off a bill to cut grocery taxes because there was no corresponding tax increase to make up for lost revenues.

Huckabee has taken flak from the right for his support of tax measures.

(In fact, thanks to taxes enacted under Huckabee, the state’s revenues grew 75 percent in 10 years, as Brantley and Dumas reported in their primer.) These days, Huckabee paddles mightily to muddy the waters of history, claiming he was the “first governor in the history of my state to ever lower taxes, the first one in 160 years.” Nonsense. Or as Dumas once wrote, “Bipolar politics has always been Huckabee’s strongest suit. No one is better at saying one thing, doing the opposite and getting credit for both, of talking small government and actually promoting big

government.”

On some issues, Huckabee seems to have mostly stayed the course. He is still drinking the brand of “Jesus juice” that makes him sympathetic to immigrant children, a position that famously put him at odds with the ultra-right in Northwest Arkansas. He makes up for this today by attacking border security as incompetent at keeping out the bad guys and saying companies that hire undocumented immigrants should be prosecuted.

It makes one wonder. As the Wall Street Journal, which once skewered Arkansans in its editorial pages, might ask, “Who is Mike Huckabee?”

Because some of his Facebook fans seem surprised that the Huck would take up for Josh Duggar and the way his parents handled the affair, we thought we’d, once again, look back at Huckabee’s 14-year career in public service in Arkansas.

Wayne DuMond and Maurice Clemmons Here was a man convicted of rape and allegedly involved in murder and another sexual assault. In 1996, then-Gov. Huckabee decided to commute his sentence. Maybe he was reacting to a Republican effort to cast DuMond as unfairly treated by Clinton, a relative of

DuMond’s victim, and Tucker, both of whom declined to commute the castrated rapist’s sentence. Maybe he was fooled by DuMond’s purported embrace of Christ. There was backlash from the rape victim, and Huckabee dropped the request for commutation, but still he lobbied the parole board to release him. DuMond was released in 1999, moved to Missouri, and within the year raped and killed at least one woman and maybe two. He died in prison.

Later, as a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, he said he’d fought DuMond’s parole, despite the evidence — in writing — that he supported it.

Another Huckabee commutation gone wrong: Maurice Clemmons.

Clemmons, sentenced to 108 years in prison for eight felonies he committed as a teenager, also played the Christian card, and though a prosecutor said Clemmons, who’d exhibited violent behavior, was extremely likely to commit more crimes, Huckabee commuted Clemmons sentence in 2000 and he was freed. He went on to rob and steal, but did not do time because the charges weren’t brought in a timely manner. He left Arkansas for Oregon in 2004, where he was arrested on child sex abuse charges. He killed four police officers as they sat in a coffee shop a week after he was allowed to make bond.

The 15-yearold raped by her stepfather In 1996, when a retarded 15-yearold child became pregnant after she was raped by her stepfather, Huckabee violated federal law and refused to allow Medicaid to pay the $430 cost of an abortion for her. She did eventually get an abortion, thanks to private funds.

In office, Huckabee was the subject of 16 complaints before the Arkansas Ethics Commission; five violations were found.

But consider the Huck on the stump: Huckabee, whose first entry into politics was a failed run against Dale Bumpers for the Senate in 1992, paid himself from campaign funds as a media consultant to his campaign and paid his wife and babysitter from those funds as well.

(During the campaign, he accused Bumpers of being a fan of pornography by not voting to defund the National Endowment for the Arts.

He also criticized Bumpers for his support of a woman’s right to have an abortion, saying many abortions were done for “gender selection.”)

The secretive Action America fund he created for his run for lieutenant governor paid Huckabee for the use of his own plane.

In 2008, Huckabee created Huck PAC, ostensibly to support Republican candidates. As in the past, Huck PAC has mainly benefited the Huckabees, with a payout of nearly $400,000 to family members (including daughter-in law Lauren, who also worked for his short-lived Vertical Politics Institute; niece Katherine Harris and daughter Sarah). In 2012, the fund’s contributions to candidates totaled $47,000. Which leads us to …

Huckabee and money Where to start? Mike and Janet Huckabee, coming from the parson tradition, believed they were due the many love offerings given them by their political backers. Like the $70,000 in furnishings for the Governor’s Mansion from Northeast Arkansas planter Boe Adams that they once claimed was theirs and not the Mansion’s. (Their lawyer corrected them on that, so they blamed Man-

BRIAN CHILSON

Ethical challenges on the campaign trail

sion Administrator Kamala Williams for the confusion.) Governor’s Office furniture from Little Rock businessman Jennings Osborne, which Huckabee took with him. Osborne regularly bought suits for the governor (he spent $23,032 on clothing and other niceties for the family in 1999); the inaugural fund bought the first lady’s dresses.

After Huckabee left office, the Mansion Commission had to send someone to the couple’s new home in North Little Rock to fetch a painting.

Apparently, artwork was not included in the “wedding registry” that Janet Huckabee set up for the couple at Target and Dillard’s to help them furnish their new 7,000-square-foot home in North Little Rock. “Have people never heard of a housewarming?”

Janet Huckabee huffed.

Advised by the governor’s chief of staff that the $60,000 the legislature set aside to run the Mansion was the governor’s to use as he pleased, the Huckabees spent the money on

personal items, including groceries, panty hose, dry cleaning for their jeans and buckets of Velveeta cheese.

He settled a lawsuit arising out of the expenditures.

Huckabee, in total, accepted 314 gifts. He did not have to provide the value for 187 gifts that came in during his first three years; his later gifts were worth more than $150,000, according to an Associated Press report.

These days, Huckabee makes more than half a year’s Mansion account dough with one speaking fee. No telling what his infomercials for a quack diabetes treatment have brought in.

THE REDDENING OF ARKANSAS: In 2010, Huckabee built on the animus toward Democratic President Barack Obama to campaign for Republicans in Arkansas.

A green governor One of Huckabee’s first moves as governor was to attempt to change the curriculum of Governor’s School, which conservatives had criticized for years as being too open-minded and liberal. He miscalculated the support for the school and its curriculum, www.arktimes.com

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with a program called “Sex Can Wait.”

Out went the high school health clinics and former Health Department Director Joycelyn Elders’ efforts to make birth control available to teens. Fallout: Arkansas has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the nation, along with Mississippi, Arizona and Texas.

How Huckabee really felt about Arkansas Just after he assumed office, thenGov. Huckabee and aide Rex Nelson announced a trip to D.C. to try to counter the bad press Arkansas was getting from editorial supporters of Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr, who was investigating the Clintons.

Four years later, he joked that when it came to politics, Arkansas was a “banana republic.”

Huckabee and bad taste A NEW COVENANT: Their church wedding apparently wasn’t enough for Mike and Janet Huckabee, shown here at their second wedding, when they got “covenant” married in Verizon Arena.

and backed off.

Huckabee also backed legislation that would have moved tax dollars to private schools and removed a requirement on home schoolers that they be tested as other public school children are. When a senator amended the bill to kill the transfer of tax dollars to private schools, Huckabee lost interest in the bill.

Another one of his first steps: to paint the original quarter-sawn wood paneling in his office at the state Capitol. Georg Anderson, the designer, cited his “European bloodlines” in suggesting the change, and Huckabee went through with the alteration. He thought it would be a good idea, too, to put an escape route in the office so he could leave it unseen. That did not work out.

Huckabee and airplanes In 1997, Huckabee and the State Police asked the legislature for $1.4 million to buy a King Air airplane for law enforcement purposes. As it 18

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turned out, Huckabee used the plane to make appearances all over Arkansas and beyond far more than the State Police did for law enforcement.

Huckabee didn’t always use the State Police plane, however. Ted Suhl, the director of the controversial Lord’s Ranch behavioral care facility for teenagers, which did business with the state, and who had been named to the Child Welfare Agency Review Board

by Huckabee, loaned a plane to the governor and his wife to travel to the North Carolina Republican Party convention. Last year, the Department of Human Services ended its contracts with Suhl after one of its employees was indicted for taking bribes from Suhl to steer patients to his facility.

Huckabee and sex As a new governor, Huckabee decided to usher in a new era of morality among teenagers, deciding that what Arkansas needed to do to replace teen pregnancy was not provide condoms and sex education, but promote abstinence, specifically

In 1992, the year he lost to Bumpers, Huckabee felt called upon to say that people suffering from AIDS — “the carriers of this plague” — should be “isolated.” Fifteen years later, as a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, he said he did not see how his remark could have been interpreted as calling for a quarantine.

When Don Imus asked him in 2006 about his weight loss, the governor quipped that he’d been in a concentration camp. Ha, ha.

Mike and Janet Huckabee, deciding that their marriage in a Baptist church was sanctified enough, cashed in a fundy movement to create “Covenant Marriages” and remarried in front of thousands in Verizon Arena. It was Valentine’s Day 2005; the bride wore red.

Covenant marriage, rather than being something one commits to in church, is a governmental decree: You promise the state of Arkansas that before you divorce you’ll get counseling and that you won’t get a divorce for certain reasons.

Before Arkansas passed its covenant marriage statute, Huckabee called other ministers to get their support. One of

I AM THE AEA oger Darren High joined the Star City High School faculty as the art teacher in the fall of 2011 where he teaches Art 1, Art 2, Art 3, and Advanced Placement Studio Art. Since becoming the art teacher for Star City High School, High has increased student performance on the Advanced Placement Studio Art exam and increased student participation and achievement at the Arkansas Young Artists Association competition.

High serves as advisor for the Star City High School Art Club as well as the Star City High School chapter of the Arkansas Young Artist Association. He has also founded a local chapter of the National Art Honor Society to recognize outstanding art students and serves as that group’s advisor.

Since 2012, High has served as the Vice President of the Star City Education Association, the local AEA affiliate. In 2014 High also became the Arkansas Art Educators Southeast Regional Director, and he coordinates the regional K-12 student art exhibit for ten counties.

High entered the teaching profession in 2005, becoming the first certified elementary art teacher for the Dermott School District. He taught art for the Dermott School District until 2011.

Since becoming a teacher, High has been awarded approximately $19,000 in grant money for educational programs and has helped implement 40 educational field trips to provide educational opportunities for his students. Field trips included visits to art galleries, plays, historic sites, cultural festivals, science museums, planetariums, zoos, parks, bridges, waterparks, amusement parks, movie theatres, riverboats, and nature centers.

High has been awarded a Target Field Trip Grant five times. In 2015, 2014, and 2013 he was awarded the grant which enabled students to tour art museums. He also received the grant twice when he served as the art teacher for Dermott Elementary School, each time funding a visit to an art museum.

What he enjoys most about teaching is the ability to introduce students to new ideas and new experiences that they have never had. The majority of his students have come from lower income families and have not had the opportunity to travel much.

Through the 40 cross curricular field trips he has been able to implement, he has been able to give students the opportunity to explore, observe, and investigate at educational sites, giving them first-hand experiences they would not have been able to have in a traditional classroom environment.

BA I L E Y M I L L ER

R

Roger Darren High enjoys teaching students through field trips and first-hand experiences

High also enjoys being able to use art to help students realize their creative talents. Visual art engages students in the development of creative problem-solving skills and a better understanding of human experience and other cultures.

High first joined the Arkansas Education Association when he began teaching. As a rookie teacher he wanted the opportunity to learn from experienced teachers from a professional organization. As a teacher with just a few years of experience he was able to serve with veteran teachers on an Arkansas Department of Education committee related to Benchmark exams and was one of 12 teachers from the state who helped develop the current teacher evaluation system. High says, “Being a member of AEA enabled me to have those valuable educational experiences and others like them. Being a member of AEA has provided me with the support and professional development that I need to be an effective teacher.�

1500 W. 4th St. Little Rock 501.375.4611 aeaonline.org www.arktimes.com

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PROMOTING CHILDREN’S HEALTH: Huckabee, here at Indian Hills Elementary in September 2004, put a focus on childhood obesity after his own successful weight loss program.

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them, an Episcopalian, told Huckabee politely, “Governor, in the Episcopal faith, marriage is a covenant.”

Covenant marriage did not catch on.

The last year the state Health Department, which keeps the statistics, had a record for, 2010, showed that 149 licenses were issued.

In Fort Smith, it’s the Janet Huckabee Nature Center. In Pine Bluff, it’s the Gov. Mike Huckabee Delta Rivers Nature Center. In Hope, there’s Huckabee Lake. At the Governor’s Mansion, there’s the Janet M. Huckabee Grand Hall (though it’s now referred to on the Mansion webpage as simply the Grand Hall). All were named while Huckabee was still in office — which is pretty tacky.

They were not pretty, Huckabee’s final days in office. The governor decided to give money appropriated for another purpose to the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences for cancer research and to endow a faculty position named for Dr. Philip Kern, the doctor who guided Huckabee’s weight loss program. When Alan Sugg, the president of the UA system, suggested the legislature should first approve the reappropriation, Huckabee got huffy and rescinded the directive to give the money to UAMS. He chided Suggs, writing him that his reluctance “to accept these funds due to a small number of legislative detractors makes it neces-

sary to take this action.”

Then Huckabee, using his emergency fund, famously crushed the computer hard drives in the Governor’s Office — state property, not the governor’s — while an office staffer looked on. It cost the state $335,000 to replace the hard drives. Incoming Gov. Mike Beebe had no emergency money for his first months in office, the last six months of the fiscal year.

The good Huckabee It must be said that good things happened during Huckabee’s tenure.

ARKids First was perhaps his shining moment. He also supported an amendment to make school funding more equitable, and his backing for school consolidation gave the General Assembly the nerve to address the problem of too many little school districts with sparse academic offerings and costly administrative budgets. He traveled the Arkansas River for four days in support of a 1/8-cent tax for Game and Fish and the state’s park and tourism agencies (getting the benefit of four days of television coverage in the deal). He fought a Bush administration move that would have cut Medicaid dollars for nursing home patients. Inspired by his own new health awareness (he lost 110 pounds while in office), he outlawed smoking

in public workplaces (despite all his Reynolds tobacco donations and restaurateur opposition) and got schools to chuck sodas and vending machine junk food to address growing childhood obesity. He wanted children of undocumented immigrants to be eligible for scholarships to Arkansas colleges and universities.

Yet the governor who proclaimed 1997 as a year in which Arkansans would “begin in each of our own lives to purpose in our hearts that we will not harbor anger, hostility, prejudice, bigotry and racism toward any person” has since put his finger to the neoracist wind. During President Obama’s first run for office, Huckabee compared the typical American boyhood of “Boy Scouts” and “Rotary Clubs” to Obama’s youth in “madrassas.” And the man who once played with Ted Nugent in a performance of “Cat Scratch Fever” (“I make the pussy purr with a stroke of my hand”) took Obama and his wife, Michelle, to task for not protecting their daughters from Beyonce’s lyrics and “choreography,” and suggested Beyonce’s husband, Jay Z, was a “pimp.”

When Huckabee dropped out of the presidential nominee race in 2008 to become a Fox News talkshow host, his religiosity got crazier, as revealed in his statement in 2011 that “I almost wish that there would be a simultaneous telecast and all Americans would be forced, at gunpoint, to listen to every [evangelist and phony historian] David Barton message.” The man who has over the years worked to supply musical instruments to school children, with his “Play It Again, Arkansas” program here and donated instruments to New York City schoolkids, could not bring himself to condemn the nation’s gun laws after the slaughter of elementary school kids at Sandy Hook, Conn. Instead, he said once you’ve taken prayer out of schools, what do you expect? “Carnage,” he said, was inevitable.

Who the heck is Mike Huckabee?

THE REPRESENTATION GAP, CONT. whom are African American).

Walker, though, sees Little Rock’s larger patterns of development as the product of a City Board whose composition is inclined to be sympathetic to westward white flight.

“Chenal and all that area out there represents movement of [city] institutions from downtown to the west,” he said. Walker argues that the city’s concerted investment in transportation infrastructure and city services in West Little Rock have worked to the detriment of neighborhoods closer to downtown and lower-income areas. “The tax revenue base is not out west. It’s basically the areas of the old city, and the industrial district near the port. … The use of the money in the inner city — they build police stations and call them community centers.

They don’t build up parks. The housing that they once promoted they now leave in despair.”

Walker has fought to eliminate the three at-large positions on the City Board both in court and in the General Assembly. In 2015, he sponsored legislation that would switch Little Rock to an all-ward system, but it went nowhere, as did a similar bill in 2011. In 2007, he filed a lawsuit claiming Little Rock’s hybrid system underrepresents minorities; although he withdrew the suit, Walker said he planned to move forward with similar litigation in the future.

***

In a city that continues to be de facto segregated by race, it makes intuitive sense that a ward system would be friendlier to minority candidates. A more surprising finding from the Hendrix study is that there’s an even stronger correlation between ward elections and female representation. The paper states that ward elections “reduce the likelihood of electing a male candidate from 81.1 percent to 51.9 percent.” (It should be noted that one of the three current at-large directors is female, while four out of the seven current ward directors are women.)

Barth said the higher cost of at-large races is the key driver. “If elections are cheaper, then political money doesn’t matter as much, and we know from a whole line of research that women do have special challenges when it comes to fundraising. In a ward election, networks of friends and neighbors are as valuable as advertising money.

Women disproportionately have a lot of those networks through both formal and informal organizations — churches, community groups, PTAs — where women have been central players over the long haul.”

(Why the gender gap in fundraising?

“Research indicates that through socialization, women tend to be a little bit more hesitant to ask for money,” Barth said, although this appears to be changing.)

The Hendrix study makes it clear that successful at-large campaigns are far more expensive: “Average total campaign expenditures for winners in at-large elections since 1992 has been about $50,227, compared to merely $8,767 in ward ones.

For runners-up, the two numbers are $26,061 and $3,993, respectively.”

Fortson, the at-large director, acknowledged that citywide campaigns are pricier, but said most city races of either category “are not won with advertising — they’re elected with face-to-face, door-to-door campaigning.”

The main argument advanced by proponents of at-large seats is that such directors may be more likely to look after the interests of the city as a whole. “There are occasions when a balanced view of a larger perspective sometimes can offset what can be a more narrow view of a ward perspective only,” Fortson said. “I think that has worked to the city’s advantage over the long haul, rather than one-on-one board competition.” He said it’s a “balancing act” analogous to the structure of U.S. Congress, in which members of the House of Representatives are elected by geographic subdivision of states, while members of the Senate are elected statewide.

Barth is careful to qualify that the Hendrix paper doesn’t address

that issue at all. Like any scientific study, it’s built to answer narrow, specific questions about cause and effect.

“This project doesn’t look at all at whether at-large elections might have some other benefits,” Barth said. “We really don’t investigate that normative debate at all.

And I think that’s a natural question — to what degree does this matter in terms of how these candidates vote on ordinances, on how resources are divvied up in the city? … How do you separate holistic thinking vs. provincial thinking?

All of those issues are really outside the scope of this.”

What the study does show is that wardbased elections are more likely to result in a City Board whose composition is consistent with the demographics of Little Rock as a whole. “I think we can with confidence say that ward elections do promote more gender diversity and more racial diversity,” Barth said.

Whether or not you think that indicates it’s time for another change in how Little Rock elects its directors probably depends on whether you tend to think of equitable racial and gender representation as an essential component of true democracy, or as a nice political lagniappe — all well and good when it happens, but hardly the point of governance.

our 2015 season unmasked

JUNE 10-27 Reynolds Performance Hall UCA, Conway SPONSORED BY

JUNE 19-28 Reynolds Performance Hall UCA, Conway

All Merry Wives Performances Are “Pay What You Can”

A One-Hour Family Shakespeare Adaptation

JUNE 4-13

The Village at Hendrix, Conway

JUNE 23-27 Reynolds Performance Hall UCA, Conway

JUNE 25-28

Argenta Farmers’ Market, North Little Rock

AS YOU LIKE IT ON TOUR! June 17 at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville June 19 at South Arkansas Arts Center, El Dorado June 20 at Winthrop Rockefeller Institute, Petit Jean Mountain

Tickets on sale NOW! 866-810-0012 • arkshakes.com www.arktimes.com

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Arts Entertainment AND

TRAGEDY AS COMEDY

Passionate ensemble brings dark comedy ‘August: Osage County’ to The Rep.

BY JAMES SZENHER

E

very family goes through dysfunction and even trauma, which is perhaps why, when we step outside of it, there’s something undeniably funny about seeing those dynamics played out in art. We might be exasperated or distraught in the midst of a situation where emotions run high and personalities clash, but later we can usually look back and laugh at the absurdity of it all.

This sort of cathartic humor is what makes Tracy Letts’ “August: Osage Count y” both an incredibly funny play and one with a lot of depth and drama that touches a nerve with audiences. It’s especially had an impact on the people involved in the Arkansas Repertory Theatre’s new production of the play. Director Bob Hupp has held the rights to the work for a few years, and he is excited to have it close out a superb season for the Rep. “There’s a tremendous power to the story. It follows in the tradition of great American storytellers, and it’s been a while since the Rep has had the joy of experiencing such a wellcrafted American play,” Hupp says.

“August: Osage County” places the

‘AUGUST’ IN JUNE: Starring, clockwise from top left, LeeAnne Hutchison as Barbara Fordham, Cassandra Seidenfeld as Johnna Monevata, Richard Waddingham as Charlie Aiken, Cliff Baker as Beverly Weston, Mary Katelin Ward as Jean Fordham, and Michael Patrick Kane as Little Charles Aiken

audience in the middle of a crisis within the Weston family, in which patriarch Beverly Weston has gone missing. Beverly’s wife, Violet, is in distress and their three daughters come home, along with their own families, to help.

With an abundance of conf licting personalities driven by Violet’s relentlessness (cast members describe her character as a “Tasmanian Devil”), the play builds and blows up like a pressure cooker. Each family member brings his or her own personal baggage to the equation, all trapped inside the house and struggling to stay civil. “It’s funny to see people put up a good front, to try to keep it together while everything is

falling apart,” says Kathy McCafferty, who plays Karen, the youngest of the three daughters.

As audiences watch the family unravel and reveal long-kept secrets, the play is not shy about approaching taboo subjects. “The button-pushing can get pretty extreme,” says LeeAnne Hutchison, who plays Barbara, the oldest daughter. “It crosses boundaries that most people might not experience in their lifetime.”

Despite the exaggerated nature of the drama, the characters are all still relatable. “You might not want to relate to these characters, but you find something within them that you see within yourself,” McCafferty says.

The play is set in Oklahoma, which

here is representative of the rural heartland of America. In this way it emphasizes the relatable nature of the characters, but also the notion that American culture can often push us to conceal the dark side of our nature. “Everyone has that fear of worrying, ‘If people really knew me, they might not like me,’ ” says Cliff Baker, who plays Beverly.

It’s important to note that while the film version received some criticism for missing a lot of the humor of the play, everyone involved is adamant that seeing it onstage is an entirely different and more enriching experience.

Brenny Rabine, who plays Ivy, the middle daughter, says, “There’s something about watching in a room with a few hundred CONTINUED ON PAGE 37

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A&E NEWS NEXT UP FOR THE ARKANSAS TIMES Film Series is Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 spy-thriller masterpiece “North by Northwest,” called “Hitchcock’s ultimate wrong-man comedy” by the Village Voice and “one of the most entertaining movies ever made” by the Chicago Reader. The screening will be at 7 p.m. Thursday, June 18. Tickets are $5. Looking ahead, we’ll be screening the cult favorite documentary “Hands on a Hard Body” on July 16.

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THE OXFORD AMERICAN announced last week that Roger D. Hodge, who took over as editor-inchief of the Little Rock-based magazine in late 2012, has stepped down to take a position as national editor of The Intercept, an online publication launched last year by Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill. Managing editor Eliza Borne will serve as interim editor of the Oxford American and Hodge will stay on as editor-at-large, according to a press release issued by the magazine.

Borne is a former Oxford American intern and has been an editor at the magazine since February 2013.

Previously she worked as an associate editor at BookPage.

“Roger’s contribution to the magazine has been tremendous,” publisher Ray Wittenberg said in the release. “I think he’s done some of his best work with us. He’s positioned the Oxford American as one of the premier literary magazines in the country. We’re excited about the coming transition but Roger will be missed.”

“I have loved editing the OA,” Hodge said. “Working with this talented community of writers, artists and editors has been among the most rewarding experiences of my career.

We’ve created an extraordinary magazine, and I look forward to reading the Oxford American for many years to come.”

The magazine released the details of its new Fiction Issue last week as well, which was guest-edited by the writer Jamie Quatro. The issue includes stories by David Means, Jill McCorkle, Antonya Nelson, Chris Drangle, Micah Stack and April Ayers Lawson, as well as nonfiction by Will Blythe, Wyatt Mason, Harrison Scott Key and Chris Offutt. The issue will be on newsstands June 9 but can be pre-ordered now at oxfordamerican. org. www.arktimes.com

JUNE 4, 2015

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THE TO-DO

LIST

BY JIM HARRIS, LESLIE NEWELL PEACOCK, AND WILL STEPHENSON

THURSDAY 6/4

CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH 9 p.m. Stickyz. $12 adv., $15 day of.

What a drag, a decade later, to still be saddled with the unwieldy name of your college rock band, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Worse than that: to still be saddled, a decade later, with the unwieldy reputation of your col-

lege rock band, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. The band made a good album in 2005 and has been punished for it ever since, becoming the go-to anecdote for think-pieces about the lost promise of independent music blogs or the dangers of independent music blogs or whatever. All because peo-

ple didn’t like their other albums as much, or something like that — I’ve forgotten, time passes, none of this is important. Anyway, that first record is still pretty good (reminds me of my brother: 10 years ago we lived in the same city and he played this a couple of times in the red Honda

Accord we shared, which he later traded in; I’d drive him to work in the car sometimes. He worked at an eBay store back then; I miss that car and I really miss my brother; 2005 seems like a long time ago) and I’m sure the others are fun, too. WS

THURSDAY 6/4-SUNDAY 6/28

ARKANSAS SHAKESPEARE THEATER Various venues.

MOUNTAIN MUSIC: The Wakarusa Music Festival takes place Thursday through Sunday on Mulberry Mountain, $109-$204.

THURSDAY 6/4-SUNDAY 6/7

WAKARUSA MUSIC FESTIVAL Mulberry Mountain. $109-$204.

If you are neither easily sunburned nor constitutionally discouraged by large crowds, if you’re inspired by the smell of uncut grass and sweat, if you are not averse to banjos and can handle your drugs: Wakarusa awaits. This year’s iteration of the outdoor music festival, held on Mulberry Mountain near Ozark, is headlined by Major Lazer, The Roots, Thievery Corporation, Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals, 24

JUNE 4, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

STS9, Young the Giant, Umphrey’s McGee, Galactic with Macy Gray and a number of other artists familiar mostly to the types of millennials who like to party but also sometimes find themselves curious about the meaning of life.

Especially promising is the appearance

by Chance the Rapper, the Chicago art-rap phenom who combines triumphant horn sections with an inimitable voice that can morph from speaking to singing to laughing in seconds.

“Acid Rap,” Chance’s 2013 album, was

a fantastic and strange record, which he topped (in unconventional ambition, anyway) just last week with the release of an album called “Surf,” credited to Donnie Trumpet and the Social Experiment (his friends; it’s a long story). It’s not an inexpensive weekend, but it’s a whole production — Burning Man for Southerners, with trippy art installations and performance troupes and Questlove and camping and infinite opportunities for conversations with tired, friendly, stoned strangers. WS

If you are a lover of Shakespeare, then the world’s your oyster: The Arkansas Shakespeare Theater opens its season with the comedy “The Merry Wives of Windsor” Thursday at the Village at Hendrix. Tickets are “pay what you can,” though a donation of $15 is suggested. The wives will be merry at 7:30 p.m. through June 6 and again June 11-12 at the Village before a run at the Argenta Farmers Market June 25, 26 and 28 (curtain also at 7:30 p.m.).

The Shakespeare Theater then turns from Falstaff, trickster wives and fairies to Broadway, with “Fiddler on the Roof” at the Reynolds Performance Hall at the University of Central Arkansas at Conway. “Fiddler” opens Wednesday with a performance at 7:30 p.m. Other dates are June 12, 14, 21, 24 and 27 with performances at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Sunday, June 21, and Wednesday, June 24.

All tickets are $28. Upcoming: “The Merchant of Venice,” June 19-20, 23 and 27-28, and “As You Like It,” June 23, 25-27, both at Reynolds. Rebekah Scallet is artistic director. LNP

IN BRIEF

THURSDAY 6/4

FRIDAY 6/5

FRIDAY 6/5

CELEBRATE THE GRAPE

TIM MCGRAW

6 p.m. Argenta Farmers Market. $30 adv., $40 d.o.e.

More than 300 wines from all over the world — ranging from high-end varietals to some hidden gems — will be featured at Friday’s third “Celebrate the Grape” event in Argenta. Sponsored by the Arkansas Times and benefiting the Argenta Arts District, the event features wines from eight distributors and food from eight restaurants and specialty caterers. Wine tents will be paired with restaurants, making it easy to try a wine along with the eats. Featured restaurant/caterers will be the Arkansas Ale House, Arkansas Fresh Bakery, Kent Walker Artisan Cheese, Cocoa Rouge Chocolates, Graffiti’s Italian Restaurant, So Restaurant-Bar, Two Sisters Catering and Cafe and Whole Hog Cafe in North Little Rock. Whole Hog will offer pulled pork sliders and slaw, with all six of its proprietary sauces. Graffiti’s will serve cold pasta salad at its table.

Arkansas Fresh Bakery will provide some basic bread concepts — Arkansas Fresh sourdough, ciabatta and cranberry pecan, along with an assortment of artisan breads — to pair with Kent Walker’s cheeses. Arkansas Ale House will have fresh-made brats with caramelized onions, house-made Wisconsin sharp cheddar beer cheese, whole dijonaise and jalapeno aioli; hummus with Greek olives and crostini; and a brie, artichoke and sun-dried tomato dip with grated parmesan. And Cocoa Rouge Chocolates will bring a variety of sweet delights.

You can drink your wine and eat it, too, with five variations of Mercer’s wine ice cream brought in by Glidewell Distributors in Fort Smith. Along with Glidewell, other distributors providing wines are Glazer’s, Moon, Central, Natural State, Custom Beverage, De Nux and Vino of Arkansas.

Jazz music will be performed by Little Rock Central High’s swing band Reunion. Tickets are available at arktimes.com/grape. JH

7 p.m. Verizon Arena. $43-$74.50.

Tim McGraw, best known for playing a NASA engineer in the recent George Clooney film “Tomorrowland,” is also the son of longtime New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Frank Edwin “Tug” McGraw, who received his nickname — according to Wikipedia — because of the “particularly aggressive way he breastfed.” The more you know! Tug was a closer, most often remembered for sealing up the 1980 World Series for the Phils, but he was also a sort of spiri-

tual center for the team, coining the rallying cry “Ya Gotta Believe,” which he later repurposed as the title of his highly readable autobiography. Asked whether he preferred grass or Astroturf, Tug famously replied, “I dunno, I never smoked any Astroturf.” He had a sense of humor about the game, in other words, as well as perspective: “Ten million years from now,” he is supposed to have said, “when then sun burns out and the Earth is just a frozen ice ball hurtling through space, nobody’s going to care whether or not I got this guy out.” Isn’t that the truth? WS

The 23rd Annual Southern Fried Poetry Festival, hosted by Rocktown Slam and Sibling Rivalry Press and featuring creative writing workshops, open mics and poetry competitions, continues at various venues (including the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center, the Historic Arkansas Museum, the Arkansas Arts Center and more) through Saturday, June 6. Times and more information at facebook.com/ sofried2015. Comedian Jim Short is at the Loony Bin at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, $7 (and at 7:30 p.m. and 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, $10). Comedy panel show Too Long Didn’t Read (TL;DR) is at The Joint at 8 p.m., $7. Cleveland metalcore band Ringworm plays at Revolution with Inrage, 8:30 p.m., $8 adv., $10 day of. Spero plays at the White Water Tavern with Marvin Berry and The Jaffe, 9 p.m.

FRIDAY 6/5 The Arkansas Film Commission and the Honorary Consulate of the Czech Republic presents the free Czech That Film Festival, featuring five Czech films, including Ondˇrej Sokol’s “Krásno,” at the Ron Robinson Theater Friday and Saturday night. Upscale Friday begins at IV Corners at 7 p.m. Athens, Ga., indie rock band Futurebirds plays at Stickyz with Roadkill Ghost Choir, 9 p.m., $8 adv., $10 day of. The Casey Donahew Band plays at Revolution at 9 p.m., $20. Handmade Moments are at the Afterthought, 9 p.m., $7-$12. Little Rock band Mojo Depot celebrates its 30th anniversary with a show at White Water (site of its debut) at 9:30 p.m.

HALL OF GAME: E-40 performs at Revolution 9 p.m. Tuesday, $22 adv., $30 day of.

TUESDAY 6/9

E-40

9 p.m. Revolution. $22 adv., $30 day of.

E-40’s career is as old as I am — no small feat in a genre that thrives on discarding history for novelty. Along with fellow Bay Area rap visionary Too $hort, with whom he collaborated on two excellent albums in 2012, E-40 (born Earl Stevens) has been making music for the better part of three decades. He has stood in the back of the room, with his thin-frame glasses and businessman’s demeanor (that make him look not unlike Proposition Joe from “The Wire”), and allowed generations of styles and trends and production aesthetics to float by, diving in to try something out whenever it suited him. He was an elder statesman to Tupac and Master P.

He worked with Lil Jon at the peak of his powers. He rode the thizz wave, embraced hyphy in all its vibrancy. He has appeared at the Gathering of the Juggalos and on a song by SNL troupe The Lonely Island.

He opened a Fatburger franchise, a Wing Stop and a nightclub in downtown San Jose called the Ambassador’s Lounge. He was an early investor in Microsoft. He has his own line of energy drinks, three blends of wine and a “premixed cocktail beverage” called “Sluricane.” This is all to say nothing of his music, which has been consistently fascinating and usually great. His voice is one of hip-hop’s most iconic — hyperarticulate (he makes you think about the relationships between syllables) and quick and funny, punctuated by grunts and guttural oohs and most at home accompanied by thick, playful basslines. WS

SATURDAY 6/6 Pink Floyd tribute extravaganza Brit Floyd returns to Verizon Arena at 8 p.m., $56-$66. Cadillac Jackson is at Stickyz with FreeVerse, 9 p.m., $5.

Little Rock band The See, following the release of its new album “Borealius” (available on Bandcamp), will play its final show at White Water with The Uh Huhs, 9:30 p.m. Ras Levi’s Jamaica Me Crazy Birthday Bash is at Revolution, featuring Tricia Reed, Mike Walker, Neff, Fire & Brimstone, DJ HY-C and more, 9 p.m., $12.

SUNDAY 6/7 The Little Rock Wind Symphony performs “Out and Back Again” at Second Presbyterian Church, 3 p.m.

Alexander Jones plays at the Afterthought at 8 p.m., free. Utah indie rock band Desert Noises plays at Stickyz with Consumers, 8 p.m., $8. Alt-country artist Whitey Morgan is at Juanita’s, 8 p.m., $12.

www.arktimes.com

JUNE 4, 2015

25

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

1 Alltel Arena Way, NLR. 501-975-9001. verizonarena.com.

Tyrannosaurus Chicken, Chris DeClerk. Another Round Pub, 6 p.m. 12111 W. Markham. 501-3132612. www.anotherroundpub.com.

Upscale Friday. IV Corners, 7 p.m. 824 W Capitol Ave. Wakarusa Music Festival 2015. Mulberry Mountain, through June 7, $204. 4117 Mulberry Mountain Loop, Ozark.

THURSDAY, JUNE 4

MUSIC

Arkansas River Blues Society Thursday Jam. Revolution, 7 p.m., free. 300 President Clinton Ave. 501-823-0090. www.rumbarevolution.com/ new/.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Stickyz Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicken Shack, 9 p.m., $12 adv., $15 day of. 107 River Market Ave. 501-372-7707. www. stickyz.com.

Hot Springs Music Festival. Hot Springs National Park Cultural Center, through June 13, $150.

Ozark Bathhouse, Hot Springs. 501-620-6715.

“Inferno.” DJs play pop, electro, house and more, plus drink specials and $1 cover before 11 p.m.

Sway, 9 p.m. 412 Louisiana. 501-907-2582.

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

Karaoke. Zack’s Place, 8 p.m., free. 1400 S. University Ave. 501-664-6444.

Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-3724782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com.

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

Open jam with The Port Arthur Band. Parrot Beach Cafe, 9 p.m. 9611 MacArthur Drive, NLR. 771-2994.

Pamela K. Ward (headliner), Jocko (happy hour). Cajun’s Wharf, 5:30 and 9 p.m. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. www.cajunswharf. com.

Ringworm, Inrage. Revolution, 8:30 p.m., $8 adv., $10 day of. 300 President Clinton Ave. 501-8230090. www.rumbarevolution.com/new/.

RockUsaurus. Senor Tequila, 7-9 p.m. 10300 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-224-5505.

Southeast Sound Machine. Another Round Pub, 7 p.m. 12111 W. Markham. 501-313-2612. www. anotherroundpub.com.

Spero, Marvin Berry, The Jaffe. White Water Tavern, 9 p.m. 2500 W. 7th St. 501-375-8400. www.whitewatertavern.com.

Ted Ludwig Trio. Capital Bar and Grill, 7:30 p.m., free. 111 Markham St. 501-370-7013. www.capitalbarandgrill.com/.

Wakarusa Music Festival 2015. Mulberry Mountain, $204. 4117 Mulberry Mountain Loop, Ozark.

COMEDY

Jim Short. The Loony Bin, 7:30 p.m. $7. 10301 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-228-5555. www. loonybincomedy.com.

Too Long Didn’t Read (TL;DR). The Joint, first Thursday of every month, 8 p.m., $7. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501-372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com.

EVENTS

Hillcrest Shop & Sip. Shops and restaurants offer discounts, later hours and live music. Hillcrest, first Thursday of every month, 5 p.m. P.O.Box 251522. 501-666-3600. www.hillcrestmerchants. com.

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JUNE 4, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

COMEDY

“I Love You But You’re Sitting On My Cat.” An original production by The Main Thing. The Joint, 8 p.m., $22. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501-372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com.

Jim Short. The Loony Bin, 7:30 p.m., 10 p.m., $10.

10301 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-228-5555. www.loonybincomedy.com.

DANCE

CZECH THAT FILM FESTIVAL: The Arkansas Film Commission will present five Czech films, including Ondřej Sokol’s “Krásno” (above), at the Ron Robinson Theater Friday and Saturday night, free.

POETRY

Southern Fried Poetry Festival. Mosaic Templars Cultural Center, through June 5, 6 p.m. 501 W. 9th St. 501-683-3593. www.mosaictemplarscenter.com.

FRIDAY, JUNE 5

MUSIC

All In Fridays. Club Elevations. 7200 Colonel Glenn Road. 501-562-3317.

Casey Donahew Band. Revolution, 9 p.m., $20.

300 President Clinton Ave. 501-823-0090. www. rumbarevolution.com/new/.

Club Nights at 1620 Savoy. Dance night, with DJs, drink specials and bar menu, until 2 a.m.

1620 Savoy, 10 p.m. 1620 Market St. 501-2211620. www.1620savoy.com.

Futurebirds, Roadkill Ghost Choir. Stickyz Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicken Shack, 9 p.m., $8 adv., $10 day of. 107 River Market Ave. 501-372-7707. www.

stickyz.com.

Handmade Moments. Afterthought Bistro & Bar, 9 p.m., $7-$12. 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501663-1196. www.afterthoughtbistroandbar.com/.

Hot Springs Music Festival. Hot Springs National Park Cultural Center, through June 13, $150.

Ozark Bathhouse, Hot Springs. 501-620-6715.

Katmandu. Cajun’s Wharf, 9 p.m. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. www.cajunswharf.com.

Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-3724782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com.

Mojo Depot. White Water Tavern, 9:30 p.m.

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

Route 66. Agora Conference and Special Event Center, 6:30 p.m., $5. 705 E. Siebenmorgan, Conway.

Ted Ludwig Trio. Capital Bar and Grill, 9 p.m., free. 111 Markham St. 501-370-7013. www.capitalbarandgrill.com/.

Tim McGraw. Verizon Arena, 7 p.m., $43-$74.50.

Ballroom Dancing. Free lessons begin at 7 p.m.

Bess Chisum Stephens Community Center, 8-11 p.m., $7-$13. 12th & Cleveland streets. 501-2217568. www.blsdance.org.

Contra Dance. Park Hill Presbyterian Church, first and third Friday of every month, 7:30 p.m.; fourth Friday of every month, 7:30 p.m., $5. 3520 JFK Blvd., NLR. arkansascountrydance.org.

“Salsa Night.” Begins with a one-hour salsa lesson. Juanita’s, 9 p.m., $8. 614 President Clinton Ave. 501-372-1228. www.littlerocksalsa.com.

EVENTS

LGBTQ/SGL weekly meeting. Diverse Youth for Social Change is a group for LGBTQ/SGL and straight ally youth and young adults age 14 to 23. For more information, call 244-9690 or search “DYSC” on Facebook. LGBTQ/SGL Youth and Young Adult Group, 6:30 p.m. 800 Scott St.

FILM

Czech That Film Festival. Presented by the Arkansas Film Commission and the Honorary Consulate of the Czech Republic. Ron Robinson Theater, June 5-6, free. 1 Pulaski Way. 501-3205703. www.czechthatfilm.com.

POETRY

Southern Fried Poetry Festival. Mosaic Templars Cultural Center, 6 p.m. 501 W. 9th St. 501-683-3593. www.mosaictemplarscenter.com.

SATURDAY, JUNE 6

MUSIC

Brit Floyd. Verizon Arena, 8 p.m., $56-$66. 1 Alltel Arena Way, NLR. 501-975-9001. verizonarena.com.

Brown Soul Shoes, Trey Johnson. Another Round Pub, 6 p.m. 12111 W. Markham. 501313-2612. www.anotherroundpub.com.

Cadillac Jackson, FreeVerse. Stickyz Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicken Shack, 9 p.m., $5. 107 River Market Ave. 501-372-7707. www.stickyz.com.

Club Nights at 1620 Savoy. See June 5.

Hot Springs Music Festival. Hot Springs National Park Cultural Center, through June 13, $150.

Ozark Bathhouse, Hot Springs. 501-620-6715.

Intruders. Afterthought Bistro & Bar, 9 p.m., $7-$12. 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-663-1196. www.afterthoughtbistroandbar.com/.

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

Karaoke. Casa Mexicana, 7 p.m. 7111 JFK Blvd., NLR. 501-835-7876. Zack’s Place, 8 p.m., free.

1400 S. University Ave. 501-664-6444.

Karaoke with Kevin & Cara. All-ages, on the restaurant side. Revolution, 9 p.m.-12:45 a.m., free. 300 President Clinton Ave. 501-823-0090. www.rumbarevolution.com/new/.

K.I.S.S. Saturdays. Featuring DJ Silky Slim. Dress code enforced. Sway, 10 p.m. 412 Louisiana.

501-492-9802.

Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-3724782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com.

Pickin’ Porch. Bring your instrument. All ages welcome. Faulkner County Library, 9:30 a.m. 1900 Tyler St., Conway. 501-327-7482. www.fcl.org.

The SEE, The Uh Huhs. White Water Tavern, 9:30 p.m. 2500 W. 7th St. 501-375-8400. www. whitewatertavern.com.

Soulution (headliner), R&R (happy hour).

Cajun’s Wharf, 5:30 and 9 p.m. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. www.cajunswharf.com.

Ted Ludwig Trio. Capital Bar and Grill, 9 p.m., free. 111 Markham St. 501-370-7013. www.capitalbarandgrill.com/.

Trivia Reed, Mike Walker, Neff, Msslim, Fire & Brimstone, DJ HY-C. Revolution, 9 p.m., $12.

300 President Clinton Ave. 501-823-0090. www. rumbarevolution.com/new/.

Wakarusa Music Festival 2015. Mulberry Mountain, through June 7, $204. 4117 Mulberry Mountain Loop, Ozark.

COMEDY

“I Love You But You’re Sitting On My Cat.” An original production by The Main Thing. The Joint, 8 p.m., $22. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501-372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com.

Jim Short. The Loony Bin, 7:30 p.m. and 10 p.m. $10. 10301 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-2285555. www.loonybincomedy.com.

EVENTS

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

Hillcrest Farmers Market. Pulaski Heights Baptist Church, 7 a.m.-2 p.m. 2200 Kavanaugh Blvd.

Historic Neighborhoods Tour. Bike tour of historic neighborhoods includes bike, guide, helmets and maps. Bobby’s Bike Hike, 9 a.m., $8-$28. 400 President Clinton Ave. 501-613-7001.

Little Rock Farmers’ Market. River Market Pavilions, through Oct. 31: 7 a.m. 400 President Clinton Ave. 375-2552. www.rivermarket.info.

Pork & Bourbon Tour. Bike tour includes bicycle, guide, helmets and maps. Bobby’s Bike Hike, 11:30 a.m., $35-$45. 400 President Clinton Ave. 501-613-7001.

FILM

Czech That Film Festival. See Jun. 5.

SUNDAY, JUNE 7

MUSIC

Alexander Jones. Afterthought Bistro & Bar, 8 p.m., free. 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-663-1196. www.afterthoughtbistroandbar.com/.

Desert Noises, Consumers. Stickyz Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicken Shack, 8 p.m., $8. 107 River Market Ave. 501-372-7707. www.stickyz.com.

Hot Springs Music Festival. Hot Springs National Park Cultural Center, through June 13, $150. Ozark Bathhouse, Hot Springs. 501-

620-6715.

Irish Traditional Music Session. Hibernia Irish Tavern, 2:30 p.m. 9700 N. Rodney Parham Road.

501-246-4340. www.hiberniairishtavern.com.

Karaoke. Shorty Small’s, 6-9 p.m. 1475 Hogan Lane, Conway. 501-764-0604. www.shortysmalls.com.

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

501-982-1939 ‎.

Little Rock Wind Symphony, “Out and Back Again.” Second Presbyterian Church, 3 p.m.

600 Pleasant Valley Drive.

Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-3724782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com.

Wakarusa Music Festival 2015. Mulberry Mountain, $204. 4117 Mulberry Mountain Loop, Ozark.

Whitey Morgan. Juanita’s, 8 p.m., $12. 614 President Clinton Ave. 501-372-1228. www. juanitas.com.

All American Food & Great Place to Watch Your Favorite Event

MONDAY, JUNE 8

MUSIC

Hot Springs Music Festival. Hot Springs National Park Cultural Center, through June 13, $150. Ozark Bathhouse, Hot Springs. 501620-6715.

Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-3724782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com.

Monday Night Jazz. Afterthought Bistro & Bar, 8 p.m., $5. 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-663-1196. www.afterthoughtbistroandbar.com/.

Open Mic. The Lobby Bar. Studio Theatre, 8 p.m. 320 W. 7th St. Richie Johnson. Cajun’s Wharf, 5:30 p.m. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. www.cajunswharf. com.

CLASSES

Finding Family Facts. Rhonda Stewart’s genealogy research class for beginners. Arkansas Studies Institute, second Monday of every month, 3:30 p.m. 401 President Clinton Ave. 501-320-5700 ‎. www.butlercenter.org.

SONNY DOES MORE THAN STEAK!

TUESDAY, JUNE 9

MUSIC

The Alpha Ray, Ghost Bones. White Water Tavern, 9:30 p.m. 2500 W. 7th St. 501-375-8400. www.whitewatertavern.com.

E-40, Stevie Stone, Nessasary, Cool Nutz, RodD. Revolution, 9 p.m., $22 adv., $30 day of. 300 President Clinton Ave. 501-823-0090. www.rumbarevolution.com/new/.

Hot Springs Music Festival. Hot Springs National Park Cultural Center, through June 13, $150. Ozark Bathhouse, Hot Springs. 501620-6715.

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

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

Karaoke Tuesday. Prost, 8 p.m., free. 322 President Clinton Blvd. 501-244-9550. willydspianobar.com/prost-2/.

Karaoke Tuesdays. On the patio. Stickyz Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicken Shack, 7:30 p.m., free. 107 River Market Ave. 501-372-7707. www.stickyz.com.

Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu.

O f W in e - 33 5 Se le ct io ns s - 35 By Th e Gl as ss ro m Ac - Fin e Sp ir its Fr o Th e Wo rl d o m Ev er y - Sc otc h Lis t Fr an d Re gi o n O f Sc otl Bo ur bo ns - 6 Sin gl e- Ba rr el

Free Valet Parking In The River Market District • 501.324.2999

s o n n y w i l l i a m s s t e a k ro o m . c o m www.arktimes.com

JUNE 4, 2015

27

AFTER DARK, CONT.

12th Annual

Conway Pride Parade & Festival Sunday, June 7

COMEDY

Stand-Up Tuesday. Hosted by Adam Hogg. The Joint, 8 p.m., $5. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com.

DANCE

2:00 pm

“Latin Night.” Juanita’s, 7:30 p.m., $7. 614 President Clinton Ave. 501-372-1228. www.littlerocksalsa.com.

Entertainment Food Vendors Fun! Parade Line-up: 1:00 pm at The Pink House (1605 Robinson Ave) Festival: Simon Park (805 Front St) Join us for “Sordid Lives” by Del Shores at the Lantern Theater June 4-6, 11-13

Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-3724782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com.

Music Jam. Hosted by Elliott Griffen and Joseph Fuller. The Joint, 8-11 p.m., free. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501-372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com.

Tuesday Jam Session with Carl Mouton.

Afterthought Bistro & Bar, 8 p.m., free. 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-663-1196. www.afterthoughtbistroandbar.com/.

EVENTS

Little Rock Green Drinks. Informal networking session for people who work in the environmental field. Ciao Baci, 5:30-7 p.m. 605 N. Beechwood St. 501-603-0238. www.greendrinks. org.

Trivia Bowl. Flying Saucer, 8:30 p.m. 323 President Clinton Ave. 501-372-8032. www.beerknurd.com/ stores/littlerock.

SPORTS

Special Guest Emcee: Queen Anthony James Gerard

Arkansas Travelers vs. Springfield. DickeyStephens Park, June 9-12, 7:10 p.m., $6-$12.

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

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 10

MUSIC

Acoustic Open Mic. Afterthought Bistro & Bar, 8 p.m., free. 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-663-1196. www.afterthoughtbistroandbar.com/.

Ben Lewis. Another Round Pub, 6 p.m. 12111 W. Markham. 501-313-2612. www.anotherroundpub.com.

Brian and Nick. Cajun’s Wharf, 5:30 p.m. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. www.cajunswharf. com.

Drageoke with Chi Chi Valdez. Sway. 412 Louisiana. 501-907-2582.

Grizfolk. Stickyz Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicken Shack, 9 p.m., $10 adv., $12 day of. 107 River Market Ave. 501-372-7707. www.stickyz.com.

Hot Springs Music Festival. Hot Springs National Park Cultural Center, through June 13, $150.

Ozark Bathhouse, Hot Springs. 501-620-6715.

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

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

Karaoke. MUSE Ultra Lounge, 8:30 p.m., free.

2611 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-663-6398.

Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-3724782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com.

The Muses. Music from “Guys & Dolls.” South on Main, 7:30 p.m., free. 1304 Main St. 501-2449660. southonmain.com.

Open Mic Nite with Deuce. Thirst n’ Howl, 7:30 p.m., free. 14710 Cantrell Road. 501-379-8189. www.thirst-n-howl.com.

Ted Ludwig Trio. Capital Bar and Grill, 7:30 p.m., free. 111 Markham St. 501-370-7013. www.capitalbarandgrill.com/.

COMEDY

The Joint Venture. Improv comedy group. The 28

JUNE 4, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

Joint, 8 p.m., $7. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com.

Vince Morris. The Loony Bin, June 10-13, 7:30 p.m.; June 12-13, 10 p.m., $7-$10. 10301 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-228-5555. www. loonybincomedy.com.

DANCE

Little Rock Bop Club. Beginning dance lessons for ages 10 and older. Singles welcome. Bess Chisum Stephens Community Center, 7 p.m., $4 for members, $7 for guests. 12th & Cleveland streets. 501-350-4712. www.littlerockbopclub.

LECTURES

Brown Bag Lunch Lecture: Andrew Jackson and Arkansas. Old State House Museum, 12 p.m. 300 West Markham Street. 501-324-9685. www.oldstatehouse.com.

POETRY

Wednesday Night Poetry. 21-and-older show.

Maxine’s, 7 p.m., free. 700 Central Ave., Hot Springs. 501-321-0909. maxineslive.com/shows. html.

SPORTS

Arkansas Travelers vs. Springfield. DickeyStephens Park, through June 12, 7:10 p.m., $6-$12. 400 W. Broadway St., NLR. 501-6641555. www.travs.com.

ARTS

THEATER

“August: Osage County.” Arkansas Repertory Theatre, through June 18: Fri., Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 and 7 p.m.; Tue.-Thu., 7 p.m. 601 Main St. 501378-0405. www.therep.org.

“Fiddler on the Roof.” Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre. Reynolds Performance Hall, University of Central Arkansas, Wed., June 10, 7:30 p.m.; Fri., June 12, 7:30 p.m.; Sun., June 14, 2 p.m.; Sun., June 21, 2 and 7:30 p.m.; Wed., June 24, 2 and 7:30 p.m.; Sat., June 27, 7:30 p.m., $28.

201 Donaghey Ave., Conway.

“The Merry Wives of Windsor.” Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre. The Village at Hendrix, June 4-6, 7:30 p.m.; Thu., June 11, 7:30 p.m.; Sat., June 13, 7:30 p.m., $15. 1040 Reynolds Ave., Conway.

NEW GALLERY EXHIBITS, EVENTS New shows in bold-face ARGENTA GALLERY, 413 Main St., NLR: Arkansas League of Artists’ “Spring Members Show,” through June 30, reception 6-8 p.m. June 5. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat. argentagallery.com.

ARKANSAS ARTS CENTER, MacArthur Park: “Conversation with Delita Martin,” 5 p.m.

June 7, hosted by the Friends of Contemporary Craft; “Drain Smart” storm drain paint project unveiling and fund-raiser, 5:30-7 p.m. June 9; “54th Young Artists Exhibition,” art by Arkansas students grades K-12, through July 26; “30 Americans,” works by African American artists from the Rubell Collection, through June 21; “Humble Hum: Rhythm of the Potter’s Wheel,” recent work by resident artist Ashley Morrison, Museum School Gallery, through June 21. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sat., 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sun. 372-4000.

THE-HOUSE OF-ART, 108 E. Fourth St.: “Champagne and Sugar Cookies,” paintings

MOVIE REVIEW

CIGARETTES ©2015 SFNTC (2)

‘SAN ANDREAS’: Carla Gugino and Dwayne Johnson star

Things go boom That’s the primary appeal of ‘San Andreas.’

BY SAM EIFLING

W

hat disaster highlight reel “San Andreas” lacks in wit or originality, it makes up for in scale.

You could have made an entire action flick that climaxes with the Hoover Dam getting smashed up and washed away — that’s a legit catastrophe-spectacle. Instead, in “San Andreas,” that all-world disaster is just the amuse-bouche. A couple of seismologists from Los Angeles rush over when little earthquakes start shaking the area. One of them is played by Paul Giamatti, and the other one doesn’t make it when the baby quakes give way and a 7-point-something blows the dam to smithereens, sending Lake Mead blasting through the concrete chasm. It looks great. Then so much other stuff gets toppled, pulverized, exploded, burned, tsunamied, earth-swallowed and generally God-smote that a puny dam here and there seems like small beer by the time the credits arrive to relieve you.

The indulgence is staggering. Los Angeles gets the treatment next, and thus enters Dwayne Johnson, a helicopter rescue pilot whose wife (Carla Gugino) is about to become his ex. Their daughter (Alexandra Daddario) heads off to San Francisco just as the big ones rock the fault line and split California wide open like a punched lip. If only we’d listened to Professor Paul Giamatti earlier!

Although that wasn’t really an option; he only just figured out how to warn people of impending quakes, and oddly, the movie never connects its two biggest stars’ storylines, other than to have the same reporter character interview them both.

In a way, you have to admire the straightforward honesty of “San Andreas.” The former pro wrestler with the neck-sized forearms is going to pilot his helicopter (and a stolen truck, and a borrowed plane, and a stolen boat) to find his daughter, while the nerds at CalTech explain just enough of these biblical events to lend a vague air of menace/ plausibility to the movie. What else were

you hoping they would contrive here?

Are you not entertained?

Directing here is Brad Peyton, veteran of one previous Dwayne Johnson vehicle and “Cats and Dogs 2: Kitty Galore,” and we can say this much for him: He doesn’t let proper good action-chaos get bogged down by a lot of character development.

The hero family is the sort that talks to one another respectfully and tries to consider one another’s point of view. Then, when everything is going to hell, they try really hard to help each other. A thing happened years earlier that often makes them sad, and they talk about that, with some coaxing. All in all they seem pretty well adjusted, even when they have to crash a helicopter into a shopping mall or crash a boat into a skyscraper or almost crash a pickup into a chasm or crash a plane into the ocean or talk about difficult feelings.

But the digital effects crew is on point.

Los Angeles gets trashed like a sand castle on a trampoline. Millions must’ve died, and although most of them are Angelinos, that’s still a human tragedy. Buildings practically melt around people, chunks disappearing at random, skyscrapers crinkling and then slumping over. San Francisco, the prettier city by far, gets shaken out like a rug, then flooded by a wave straight from the ocean planet on “Interstellar.” (A perfectly reasonable alternative title would have been “Just Like Godzilla, But Invisible.”)

And just when you think you’ve had enough, something else will catch fire and explode, and some lizard-Beavis corner of your brain will whisper, “Do it again.”

It would be tempting to call this mindless fun, and perhaps it is. But if “San Andreas” can save just one life, perhaps only by preventing someone from moving to San Francisco and being miserable, then all of its madcap hyperbole has to be considered worthwhile. When the whole state breaks off and floats toward Hilo, we’ll know we should have listened to “San Andreas” when we had the chance.

* Visit NASCIGS.com or call 1-800-435-5515 PROMO CODE 96075 *Plus applicable sales tax Offer for two “1 for $2” Gift Certificates good for any Natural American Spirit cigarette product (excludes RYO pouches and 150g tins). Not to be used in conjunction with any other offer. Offer and website restricted to U.S. smokers 21 years of age and older. Limit one offer per person per 12 month period. Offer void in MA and where prohibited. Other restrictions may apply. Offer expires 12/31/15.

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JUNE 4, 2015

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4/14/15 11:18 AM

TIME TO VOTE!

GOT AN OPINION? IT’S TIME TO CHOOSE THE BEST OF ARKANSAS.

➥ Since 1996 (that’s 19 years) when we first started the Best of Arkansas (frequently imitated). ➥ Voting is now 100% online ➥ Cast your votes online at arktimes.com/bestofarkansas2015 ➥ Vote for your favorite businesses in central Arkansas from May 14 until May 27 during our first round of voting. ➥ Then return on June 5 thru June 25 to cast your vote for the five finalists.

2015

➥ Results will be published in the July 30 Best of Arkansas issue

IPAD MINI

➥ WE’LL AWARD A RANDOMLY SELECTED WINNER AN To be included int he drawing, you must complete at least half of the ballot and provide your email address.

E T I R O V A F R U O Y !

R S O E I F R E O N G I E L 5 T N 1 A 0 O C 2 E s E T a S VO ALL THE tofarkans IN com/bes . s e m i t k ar

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JUNE 4, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

Artisan Crafter ______________________________ Decorator ________________________________ Music Equipment ____________________________ Bookstore ________________________________ Pawn Shop _______________________________ Funeral Home ______________________________ Retirement Community ________________________ Place To Take A Yoga Class ______________________ Chiropractor _______________________________ Tattoo Artist _______________________________ Investment Advisor __________________________ Company To Work For _________________________

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ENTERTAINMENT Musician Or Band ____________________________

DJ _____________________________________ Comedian ________________________________ Place For Live Music __________________________ Place To Dance _____________________________ Live Music Festival ___________________________ Neighborhood Festival _________________________ Late Night Spot _____________________________ Gay Bar __________________________________ Sports Bar ________________________________ Movie Theater ______________________________ Museum _________________________________ Performing Arts Group _________________________ Place To Gamble ____________________________ Place To See Someone Famous ____________________

FOOD AND DRINK __________ Food Festival ______________________________ French Fries _______________________________ Onion Rings _______________________________ Cheese Dip ________________________________ Ribs ____________________________________ Arkansas-Brewed Beer _________________________ Happy Hour _______________________________ Wine List _________________________________ Liquor Store _______________________________ Sushi ___________________________________ Salad ___________________________________ Business Lunch _____________________________ Brunch __________________________________ Cocktail _________________________________ Milkshake ________________________________ Vegetarian ________________________________ Bread ___________________________________ Caterer __________________________________ Outdoor Dining _____________________________

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AFTER DARK, CONT.

by Braylan Coffey, 8 p.m. June 6.

GALLERY 221, 221 W. 2nd St.: “ZEITGEIST,” work by David Bailin, Guy Bell, Elizabeth Bogard, Taimur Cleary, Amy Edgington, Tracy Hamlin, Kimberly Kwee, Mathew Lopas, Brian Madden, Victorial Gomez Mayol, Kasten Searles, Kat Wilson and Craig Wynn, reception 5-8 p.m. June 4, show through July 4. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 11 a.m.- 4 p.m. Sat. 801-0211.

HEARNE SOUTHERN AUCTION HOUSE, 1853 S. Ringo St.: Selected works from the M.J. Hewitt collection; Stella Jones Gallery, New Orleans; 70th Art Gallery, New York: onsite preview 10 a.m.-7 p.m. June 5, 8 a.m.-noon June 6, online auction through June 6, reception 5:30-7:30 p.m.

June 4, live auction 1 p.m. June 6. 349-6797.

EL DORADO SOUTH ARKANSAS ARTS CENTER, 110 E. Fifth St.: “Through Our Young Eyes,” black and white film photography by members of the Boys and Girls Club of El Dorado, Lobby Gallery, June 4-26; “Small Works on Paper,” Arkansas Arts Council traveling exhibit, June 4-25; receptions 6-8 p.m. June 5. 9 a.m.-5 p.m.

Mon.-Fri. 870-862-5474.

FAYETTEVILLE WALTON ARTS CENTER, 495 W. Dickson St.: “Remembered and Rendered: A Ceramic Garden,” created by Katie Sleyman in collaboration with Community Creative Center, June 11-27, Tyson Plaza. An Artosphere 2015 event.

HELENA DELTA CULTURAL CENTER, 141 Cherry St.: “The Arkansas Delta Duo: The Art of Tim Jacob and the Art of Norwood Creech,” paintings, through Aug. 22, reception 5-6:30 p.m. June 12.

9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat. 870-338-4350.

HOT SPRINGS ALISON PARSONS GALLERY, 802 Central Ave.: “The Art of the Tree, Route 66,” wire sculpture by Kevin Chrislip, June 4-July 3. Open for Gallery Walk, 5-9 p.m. June 5. 11 a.m.-4 p.m.

Wed.-Sat. 501-625-3001.

GALLERY CENTRAL, 800 Central Ave.: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 501-318-4278.

JUSTUS FINE ART, 827 Central Ave.: New paintings by Taimur Cleary, Dolores Justus and Emily Wood, through July; gallery will be closed June 7-20. Open for Gallery Walk, 5-9 p.m. June 5. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Wed.-Sat. 501-772-3627.

HOT SPRINGS FINE ARTS CENTER, 626 Central Ave.: “Airwaves,” June 5-Aug. 1. Open for Gallery Walk, 5-9 p.m. June 5. 10:30 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat., open until 9 p.m. every 1st and 3rd Fri. 501-624-0489.

CALL FOR ENTRIES The Arkansas Arts Council is accepting applications from performing, literary or visual artist who would like to join the Arts in Education Artist Roster. Call Cynthia Haas at 324-9769 or email Cynthia@arkansasheritage.org for more information. Deadline is July 10.

The Fort Smith Regional Art Museum is accepting entries for a show themed “Man versus Machine: The Art of Expression and the Wired World” to run July 31 to Nov. 1. Deadline is July 1. Submissions should be sent to FS RAM, 1601 Rogers Ave., Fort Smith 72901. Call 479784-2787.

CONTINUING GALLERY EXHIBITS

CANTRELL GALLERY, 8206 Cantrell Road: “The Quiet Hours,” paintings by John Wooldridge, through July 10. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 2241335.

GALLERY 26, 2601 Kavanaugh Blvd.: New work

by Robert Bean and Stephen Cefalo, through July 11. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tue.-Sat. 664-8996.

ARKANSAS CAPITAL CORP. GROUP, 200 River Market Ave., Suite 400: “Southern Curiosities,” work by Diane Harper, Dominique Simmons and Barbara Satterfield, through June 26. 374-9247.

BUTLER CENTER GALLERIES, Arkansas Studies Institute, 401 President Clinton Ave.: “Human Faces & Landscapes: Paintings by Sui Hoe Khoo,” “White River Memoirs,” artwork collected by canoist and photographer Chris Engholm along the White, through July 25; “A Different State of Mind,” exhibition by the Arkansas Society of Printmakers, loft gallery, through June 27; “Captured Images,” photographs from the permanent collection. 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 320-5790.

CHRIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, 509 Scott St.: “Plein Air Painters of Arkansas,” work by Victoria Harvey, Clarence Cash, Tom Herrin, Greg Lahti, Sean LeCrone, John Wooldridge and Diana Shearon.

CHROMA GALLERY, 5707 Kavanaugh Blvd.: Work by Robert Reep and other Arkansas artists. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 10 a.m.-3 p.m.

Sat. 664-0880.

COX CREATIVE CENTER, 120 River Market Ave.: Arkansas Society of Printmakers exhibition. 918-3090.

ESSE PURSE MUSEUM & STORE, 1510 S. Main St.: “What’s Inside: A History of Women and Handbags, 1900-1999,” vintage purses and other women’s accessories. 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Tue.Sat., $8-$10. 916-9022.

GINO HOLLANDER GALLERY, 2nd and Center: Paintings and works on paper by Gino Hollander.

801-0211.

GREG THOMPSON FINE ART, 429 Main St., NLR, and HEARNE FINE ART, 1001 Wright Ave.: National Silverpoint Invitational 2015 “Drawing with Silverpoint,” through June 27, works by Sherry Camhy, Jeannine Cook, Lori Field, Marietta Hoferer, Michael Kukla, Jeffrey Lewis, Tom Mazzullo, Susan Schwalb, Aj Smith and Marjorie Williams-Smith.

HEARNE FINE ART, 1001 Wright Ave: “Page Turners: Original Illustrations and Prints by Bryan Collier,” through June 13. 372-6822.

HISTORIC ARKANSAS MUSEUM GALLERIES, 200 E. 3rd St.: “(Everyday) Interpretations: Cindy Arsaga, Joe Morzuch and Adam Posnak”; “Suggin Territory: The Marvelous World of Folklorist Josephine Graham,” through Nov. 29; “Suyao Tian: Entangled Beauty,” through June 7; “Recent Acquisitions,” objects acquired between 2012 and 2014; “Arkansas Made,” ongoing. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 324-9351.

L&L BECK ART GALLERY, 5705 Kavanaugh Blvd.: “Go West, Young Man,” through June 30, free giclee drawing 7 p.m. June 18. 660-4006.

LAMAN LIBRARY ARGENTA BRANCH, 420 Main St., NLR: “Dennis McCann: A History.”

10 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-Fri. 758-1720.

LOCAL COLOUR, 5811 Kavanaugh Blvd.: Rotating work by 27 artists in collective. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 265-0422.

M2GALLERY, 11525 Cantrell Road (Pleasant Ridge Shopping Center): Watercolors by Lisa Krannichfeld, through June 12; also work by Bryan Frazier, Dan Holland and Sabine Danze, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sat. 9447155.

MUGS CAFE, 515 Main St., NLR: “From Stars to Sidewalks,” works by printmakers Jorey May and Regan Renfro. 442-7778.

RED DOOR GALLERY, 3715 JFK, NLR: Paula Jones, new paintings; Jim Goshorn, new sculpture; also sculpture by Joe Martin, paintings by Amy Hill-Imler, Theresa Cates and Patrick Cunningham, ornaments by D. Wharton, landscapes by James Ellis, raku by Kelly Edwards and other works. 753-5227. 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Sat. STEPHANO’S FINE ART, 1813 N. Grant St.: New work by Jennifer Wilson, Mike Gaines, Maryam Moeeni, Ken Davis, John Kushmaul and Gene Brack. 563-4218.

UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS AT LITTLE ROCK: “MA Thesis Exhibition,” photography by Brady Forrester, ceramics by Heather Beckwith, graphic design by Yihan Wang, through June 28. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri..

569-3182.

BENTON DIANNE ROBERTS ART STUDIO AND GALLERY, 110 N. Market St.: Work by Dianne Roberts, classes. 10 a.m.-9 p.m.

Wed.-Fri., 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sat. 860-7467.

BENTONVILLE 21C MUSEUM HOTEL, 200 N.E. A St.: “Duke Riley: See You at the Finish Line,” sculpture; “Blue: Matter, Mood and Melancholy,” photographs and paintings. 479-286-6500.

C RY S TA L B R I D G E S M U S E U M O F AMERICAN ART, One Museum Way: “American Encounters: The Simple

Pleasures of Still Life,” 10 still life paintings from the 17th and 18th centuries from the High Museum, the Terra Foundation, the Louvre and the Crystal Bridges collection, through Sept. 14; “Fish Stories: Early Images of American Game Fish,” 20 color plates based on the original watercolors by sporting artist Samuel Kilbourne, through Sept. 21; American masterworks spanning four centuries. 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. 479418-5700.

THE PRESSROOM, 121 W. Central Ave.: TRUCK/ART: “Structural Defiance: Ba’aler Abstraction,” new work by Louis Watts, in the parking lot behind the coffee shop.

Calico Rock CALICO ROCK ARTISAN COOPERATIVE, 105 Main St.: Paintings, photographs, jewelry, fiber art, wood, ceramics and other crafts. 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Tue.-Thu., 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Fri.-Sat., noon-4 p.m. Sun. calicorocket. org/artists.

Conway ART ON THE GREEN, Littleton Park, 1100 Bob Courtway: Paintings by Kristen Abbott, Eldridge Bagley, Nina Ruth Baker, Elizabeth Bogard, Steve Griffith, William M. McClanahan, Mary Lynn Nelson, Sheila Parsons and others. 501-499-3177.

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JUNE 4, 2015

31

Dining

Information in our restaurant capsules reflects the opinions of the newspaper staff and its reviewers. The newspaper accepts no advertising or other considerations in exchange for reviews, which are conducted anonymously. We invite the opinions of readers who think we are in error.

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

WHAT’S COOKIN’ FOLKS MAY BE SEEING FOOD trucks in North Little Rock soon. A task force hammered out amendments to the city’s food truck ordinance, lifting some of the onerous requirements that have kept rolling restaurants out of town, and the City Council passed the amended ordinance last week.

Donna Hardcastle, executive director of the Argenta Downtown Council, said requirements in the previous law were “way over the top,” requiring such things as city clerk approval, business plans and menus to be provided. Hardcastle said the food trucks will be good for nonprofits wishing to use them in fundraisers and will likely be welcome in commercial areas of low restaurant density. She said she didn’t think the city would permit street operations, but food truck operators would be able to operate on city-owned property with the city’s permission (and private property, with private property owners’ permission).

Cheesemaker Kent Walker, Geek Eats food truck operator Jeremy Rhodes and Southern Gourmasian food truck operator Justin Patterson took part in the task force with aldermen and other city employees, according to the Rock City Eats blog.

DAVID’S BURGERS WILL HAVE TO do some extensive remodeling before it can transform the former home of Boulevard Bread Co. in the River Market to another outlet of the homegrown burger and french fry emporium. River Market Director Diana Long said the lease is still being finalized; she’s thinking remodeling alone will take 60 days.

Still, August is as good a time as any for a burger.

Meanwhile, Boulevard moved Tuesday into Ottenheimer Hall, in a space formerly occupied by Coast Cantina.

David’s Burgers, owned by David Alan Bubbus, whose cousins own CJ’s Butcher Boy in Russellville and Patrick’s Butcher Boy in Fort Smith, serves freshly ground U.S. choice chuck and hand-cut french fries.

DINING CAPSULES

AMERICAN

1620 SAVOY Fine dining in a swank space, with a menu redone by the same owners of Cache downtown. The scallops are especially nice. 1620 Market St. Full bar, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-221-1620.

D Mon.-Sat., BR Sun. ADAMS CATFISH & CATERING Catering company in Little Rock with carry-out trailers in 32

JUNE 4, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

Desi Den Indian Restaurant 612 Office Park Drive Bryant 847-1818 desidenji.com

QUICK BITE Want to give Desi Den a try but just don’t know what to order? Take advantage of its small (but tasty) weekend lunch buffet available Friday through Sunday. It’s a great way for newbies to familiarize themselves with a variety of styles and find new favorites.

HOURS 11 a.m. until 10 p.m. daily.

PERFECT VERSION: Chicken Tikka Masala at Desi Den Indian Restaurant in Bryant.

Dizzy for Desi Den Bryant Indian restaurant worth seeking out.

T

alk about dining in Saline County and many foodies who haven’t spent much time there will scoff, but we’ve always thought the Benton/ Bryant area had some hidden gems.

From excellent authentic Mexican at Taqueria Azteca to the innovative deli fare at Arkansas Fresh Cafe, we’ve eaten plenty of good meals in the area, and the recent switch from “dry” to “wet” has only improved things. So when we started hearing rumors of good Indian food at a place called Desi Den right off state Highway 5 in Bryant, we were curious to see if another of these unsung culinary heroes had made a home in Saline County.

Of all the cuisines we eat during our culinary adventures, Indian is perhaps the one with which we are least familiar.

But while we may not know the technical ins and outs of every dish we had at Desi Den, we do know what tastes good — and given how tasty everything was, we foresee getting to know Indian cuisine a lot better.

The restaurant’s menu is large, and it has a little something for everyone: protein dishes featuring chicken and lamb, vegetable dishes (including some that are vegan-friendly), low-calorie “kebab

factory” meals and even gluten-free options. Service is polite and friendly, and despite a small dining room, we’d call it one of the best restaurants to take a larger group of people with disparate dietary needs in Central Arkansas.

So what’s good? Well, start off with an order of Vegetable Pakoras ($4.99), because these crispy vegetable fritters deep fried in chickpea batter were a huge hit with everyone at our table.

The little hushpuppy-sized bites were subtly spiced and chock-full of diced veggies, with a crispy-on-the-outside, tender-on-the-inside texture. Just as tasty were the Samosas ($2.99), filled with ground lamb or diced potatoes and peas — both versions are worth a bite, although the lamb was more to our liking. Can’t decide? Order up the Desi Platter ($7.99) and enjoy a full selection of appetizers beyond just our two favorites.

We decided to stick with chicken for our main courses. The Chicken Tandori ($11.99) was a wonderful combination of tender chicken and smoked paprika flavor, and the 24-hour visit to a yogurt marinade provides it with a delightful brightness while keeping it moist and delicious. This dish is on

OTHER INFO Beer and wine permit pending; all major credit cards.

the “low calorie” portion of the menu, but diners shouldn’t think “low calorie” means “no flavor,” because this dish was packed with it.

The dish that surprised us most was an order of Saag ($11.99), a spinach curry we honestly did not expect to like. Nothing personal to Desi Den with that expectation — we just usually prefer our spinach raw in salad form, finding that cooking the leafy green does little to help the flavor. Sometimes it feels good to be proven wrong, though, and this dish did so with flare. Like everything else we tried, the spices are present but not overwhelming, striking a compelling balance between savory, sweet and spicy.

The Chicken Tikka Masala ($11.99) might very well be the best version of the dish we’ve eaten, featuring perfectly cooked white meat swimming in a bright, vibrant sauce. Our mothers always told us that it was impolite to sop our plates in public with a piece of bread, but given the flavor of this tangy sauce, we imagine she’d forgive us for using an order of toasted naan ($1.99) to mop up every last drop. If we were to pick a favorite from our meals at Desi Den, this would be the one.

Almost as good as the tikka masala was the Chicken Makhini ($11.99), which again showed mastery of spice combinations on the part of the Desi Den kitchen. This version of the classic Indian butter chicken is served in a thick, creamy sauce that again had us reaching for the naan. The chicken is slowcooked to tender, fall-apart perfection.

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

T There were several dishes we spied on the menu that we didn’t get a chance to try but that are on our future dining agenda. Chicken and Lamb Vindaloo are both marked as “very, very spicy,” which we hope means the sort of headshattering Indian cuisine we’ve eaten at other places. Chicken, lamb and shrimp Biryani also caught our eye, and as a rice lover, we hope to spend more time exploring rice-based dishes such as these. Cheese-covered naan seems to be something right up our alley as well, and the selection of desserts includes

one called Gulab Jamun, which with its fried milk balls and cardamom syrup sounds like a great ending to any meal.

Is Desi Den worth a drive from Little Rock just to eat there? Our answer is an emphatic “yes.” The friendly staff is very welcoming, and the food is prepared with such skill that we’ve put it on “the list” we keep of destination restaurants. It’s a tasty experience that is sure to please eaters of all stripes — even folks who, like us, aren’t overly familiar with Indian food.

H

E

DED R FA OS R E S TA U R A N T E

1619 Rebsamen Rd. 501-663-9734

GREAT STEAK

LITTLE ROCK’S MOST AWARD WINNING RESTAURANT

DINING CAPSULES, CONT. Russellville and Perryville. 215 N. Cross St. All CC. $-$$. 501-336-4399. LD Tue.-Fri. ATHLETIC CLUB SPORTS BAR & GRILL What could be mundane fare gets delightful twists and embellishments here. 11301 Financial Centre Parkway. Full bar, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-312-9000.

LD daily.

B-SIDE The little breakfast place in the former party room of Lilly’s DimSum Then Some turns tradition on its ear, offering French toast wrapped in bacon on a stick, a must-have dish called “biscuit mountain” and beignets with lemon curd. 11121 Rodney Parham Road. Full bar, all CC. $$. 501-7162700. B-BR Sat.-Sun. BAR LOUIE Mammoth portions of very decent bar/bistro fare with an amazingly varied menu that should satisfy every taste. Some excellent drink deals abound, too. 11525 Cantrell Road, Suite 924. Full bar, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-228-0444. LD daily, BR Sat.-Sun. BIG WHISKEY’S AMERICAN BAR AND GRILL A modern grill pub in the River Market District with all the bells and whistles - 30 flat-screen TVs, whiskey on tap, plus boneless wings, burgers, steaks, soups and salads. 225 E Markham St. Full bar, all CC. $$. 501-324-2449. LD daily.

CAFE 201 The hotel restaurant in the Crowne Plaza serves up a nice lunch buffet. 201 S. Shackleford Road. Full bar, all CC. $$. 501-223-3000. BLD Mon.-Fri., BD Sat., BR Sun. CATFISH CITY AND BBQ GRILL Basic fried fish and sides, including green tomato pickles, and now with tasty ribs and sandwiches in beef, pork and sausage. 1817 S. University Ave. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-663-7224. LD Tue.-Sat. CHEERS IN THE HEIGHTS Good burgers and sandwiches, vegetarian offerings and salads at lunch, and fish specials and good steaks in the evening. 2010 N. Van Buren. Full bar, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-663-5937. LD Mon.-Sat. 1901 Club Manor Drive. Maumelle. Full bar, all CC. 501-8516200. LD daily, BR Sun. CHICKEN WANG & CAFE Regular, barbecue, spicy, lemon, garlic pepper, honey mustard and Buffalo wings. Open late. 8320 Colonel Glenn Road. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-562-1303. LD Mon.-Sat. COLD STONE CREAMERY This national chain takes a base flavor (everything from Sweet Cream to Chocolate Cake Batter) and adds your choice of ingredients or a combination of ingredients

it calls a Creation. Cold Stone also serves up a variety of ice cream cakes and cupcakes. 12800 Chenal Parkway. No alcohol, all CC. $. 501-2257000. LD daily.

DAVE AND RAY’S DOWNTOWN DINER Breakfast daily featuring biscuits and gravy, home fries, sausage and made-to-order omelets.

Lunch buffet with four choices of meats and eight veggies. 824 W. Capitol Ave. No alcohol. $.

501-372-8816. BL Mon.-Fri. DAVID’S BURGERS Serious hamburgers, steak salads, homemade custard. 101 S. Bowman Road. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-227-8333.

LD Mon.-Sat. 1100 Highway 65 N. Conway. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. (501) 327-3333 4000 McCain Blvd. NLR. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-353-0387.

LD Mon.-Sat. E’S BISTRO Despite the name, think tearoom rather than bistro — there’s no wine, for one thing, and there is tea. But there’s nothing tearoomy about the portions here. Try the heaping grilled salmon BLT on a buttery croissant. 3812 JFK Boulevard. NLR. No alcohol, all CC. $$. 501-7716900. L Tue.-Sat., D Thu.-Sat. JIMMY JOHN’S GOURMET SANDWICHES Illinois-based sandwich chain that doesn’t skimp on what’s between the buns. 4120 E. McCain Blvd.

NLR. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-945-9500. LD daily. 700 South Broadway St. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-372-1600. LD daily.

KITCHEN EXPRESS Delicious “meat and three” restaurant offering big servings of homemade soul food. Maybe Little Rock’s best fried chicken.

4600 Asher Ave. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-6663500. BLD Mon.-Sat., LD Sun. MARIE’S MILFORD TRACK II Healthy and tasty are the key words at this deli/grill, featuring hot entrees, soups, sandwiches, salads and killer desserts. 9813 W Markham St. No alcohol, CC. $-$$. 501-225-4500. BL Mon.-Sat. MARKETPLACE GRILLE Big servings of steak, seafood, chicken, pasta, pizza and other rich comfort-style foods. 11600 Pleasant Ridge Road.

Full bar, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-221-3939. LD daily.

MASON’S DELI AND GRILL Heaven for those who believe everything is better with sauerkraut on top. The Bavarian Reuben, a traditional Reuben made with Boar’s Head corned beef, spicy mustard, sauerkraut, Muenster cheese and marble rye, is among the best we’ve had in town.

400 President Clinton Ave. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$.

THE EVERYDAY SOMMELIER Your friendly neighborhood wine shop. #theeverydaysommelier

2012 FOXEN “BIEN NACIDO VINEYARD BLOCK 8” SANTA MARIA VALLEY PINOT NOIR REGULARLY $69.99 - SPECIAL $52.99 “94 points” – Robert Parker “This delicious wine is in your face with blackberry, cherry pie, and baking spices. Its one for the record books and will drink well over the next several years. With only 1000 cases produced, it is a hard to find gem at a delicious price.”

– O’Looney

Rahling Road @ Chenal Parkway 501.821.4669 • olooneys@aristotle.net • www.olooneys.com

Do more. Hurt less.

WE OFFER EXPERT ADVICE AND GUIDANCE • Strength and flexibility training • Corrective exercise for pain relief • Fitness programs for injury recovery • Biomechanical analysis of joint function and mobility • Massage therapy

REGENERATION FITNESS KATHLEEN L. REA, PH.D.

(501) 324-1414 117 East Broadway, North Little Rock www.regenerationfitnessar.com Email: regfit@att.net www.arktimes.com

JUNE 4, 2015

33

DINING CAPSULES, CONT. 501-376-3354. LD Mon.-Sat. MIDTOWN BILLIARDS You’ll find perhaps the city’s finest burgers in this all-night dive. But be prepared to smell like stale cigarette smoke and grease once you’re finished. 1316 Main St. Full bar, CC. $-$$. 501-372-9990. D daily.

MIMI’S CAFE Breakfast is our meal of choice here at this upscale West Coast chain. Portions are plenty to last you through the afternoon, especially if you get a muffin on the side. MiddleAmerica comfort-style entrees make up other meals, from pot roast to pasta dishes. 11725 Chenal Parkway. Full bar, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-2213883. BLD daily, BR Sun. MORNINGSIDE BAGELS Tasty New York-style boiled bagels, made daily. 10848 Maumelle Blvd.

NLR. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-753-6960. BL daily.

NEWK’S EXPRESS CAFE Gourmet sandwiches, salads and pizzas. 4317 Warden Road. NLR. Beer, all CC. $-$$. 501-753-8559. LD daily.

ORANGE LEAF YOGURT Upscale self-serve national yogurt chain. 11525 Cantrell Road. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-227-4522. LD daily.

SPORTS PAGE One of the largest, juiciest, most flavorful burgers in town. Grilled turkey and hot cheese on sourdough gets praise, too. Don’t want a burger or sandwich? They have good daily lunch specials. 414 Louisiana St. Beer and wine, all CC. $-$$. 501-372-9316. L Mon.-Fri., D Fri. SUFFICIENT GROUNDS Great coffee, good bagels and pastries, and a limited lunch menu.

124 W. Capitol. No alcohol, CC. $. 501-372-1009.

BL Mon.-Fri. 425 W. Capitol. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-372-4594. BL Mon.-Fri. SUGIE’S Catfish and all the trimmings. 4729 Baseline Road. No alcohol, all CC. $. 501-5700414. LD daily.

T.G.I. FRIDAY’S This national chain was on the verge of stale before a redo not long ago, and the update has done wonders for the food as well as the surroundings. The lunch combos are a great deal, and the steaks aren’t bad. It’s designed for the whole family, and succeeds. Appetizers and desserts are always good. 2820 Lakewood Village Drive,. NLR. Full bar, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-758-2277.

LD daily.

THE TAVERN SPORTS GRILL Burgers, barbecue and more. 17815 Chenal Parkway. Full bar, all CC. $-$$. 501-830-2100. LD daily.

TROPICAL SMOOTHIE CAFE Smoothies, sandwiches and salads in an art deco former YMCA. 524 Broadway. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 246-3145.

BLD Mon.-Fri. (closes at 6 p.m.) 10221 N. Rodney Parham Road. No alcohol, all CC. $$. 501-2242233. BLD daily 12911 Cantrell Road. No alcohol, all CC. $$. 501-376-2233. BLD daily.

WHITE WATER TAVERN Good locally sourced bar food. 2500 W. 7th St. Full bar, all CC. $-$$.

501-375-8400. D Tue., Thu., Fri., Sat.

ASIAN

CHI’S DIMSUM & BISTRO A huge menu spans the Chinese provinces and offers a few twists on the usual local offerings, plus there’s authentic Hong Kong dimsum available. 6 Shackleford Drive. Full bar, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-221-7737. LD daily. 17200 Chenal Parkway. No alcohol, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-821-8000. LD Mon.-Sat., D Sun. 3421 Old Cantrell Road. 501-916-9973.

CHINA TASTE Conventional menu with an online ordering system (though no delivery). 9218 Rodney Parham Road. No alcohol. $-$$. 501-2278800. LD Mon.-Sat. FAR EAST ASIAN CUISINE Old favorites such as orange beef or chicken and Hunan green beans are still prepared with care at what used to be Hunan out west. 11610 Pleasant Ridge Road. Full bar, all CC. $$. 501-219-9399. LD daily.

FORBIDDEN GARDEN Classic, American-ized 34

JUNE 4, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

Chinese food in a modern setting. Try the Basil Chicken. 14810 Cantrell Road. Beer and wine, all CC. $-$$. 501-868-8149. LD daily.

FU LIN Quality in the made-to-order entrees is high, as is the quantity. 200 N. Bowman Road. Full bar, all CC. $$. 501-225-8989. LD daily, BR Sun. IGIBON JAPANESE RESTAURANT It’s a complex place, where the food is almost always good and the ambiance and service never fail to please. The Bento box with tempura shrimp and California rolls and other delights stand out. 11121 N. Rodney Parham Road. Beer and wine, all CC. $$. 501-217-8888. LD Mon.-Sat. KIYEN’S SEAFOOD STEAK AND SUSHI Sushi, steak and other Japanese fare. 17200 Chenal Parkway. Full bar, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-821-7272.

LD daily.

KOBE JAPANESE STEAKHOUSE & SUSHI Though answering the need for more hibachis in Little Rock, Kobe stands taller in its sushi offerings than at the grill. 11401 Financial Centre Parkway.

Full bar, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-225-5999. L Mon.-Sat. D daily.

NEW FUN REE Reliable staples, plenty of hot and spicy options and dependable delivery. 418 W. 7th St. No alcohol, all CC. $. 501-664-6657. LD Mon.-Sat. PANDA GARDEN Large buffet including Chinese favorites, a full on-demand sushi bar, a cold seafood bar, pie case, salad bar and dessert bar.

2604 S. Shackleford Road. Beer and wine, all CC. $-$$. 501-224-8100. LD daily.

PEI WEI Sort of a miniature P.F. Chang’s, but a lot of fun and plenty good with all the Chang favorites we like, such as the crisp honey shrimp, dan dan noodles and pad thai. 205 N. University Ave. Beer and wine, all CC. $$. 501-280-9423. LD daily.

P.F. CHANG’S CHINA BISTRO Nuevo Chinese from the Brinker chain. 317 S. Shackleford Road.

Full bar, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-225-4424. LD daily.

SUPER KING BUFFET Large buffet with sushi and a Mongolian grill. 4000 Springhill Plaza Court. NLR. Beer and wine, all CC. $-$$. 501-945-4802. LD daily.

THE SOUTHERN GOURMASIAN Delicious Southern-Asian fusion. We crave the pork buns.

Made the transition from food truck to brick-andmortar in 2015 to rave reviews. 219 W. Capitol.

Beer and wine, all CC. $-$$. 501-313-5645. LD Mon.-Sat.

BARBECUE

CROSS EYED PIG BBQ COMPANY Traditional barbecue favorites smoked well such as pork ribs, beef brisket and smoked chicken. Miss Mary’s famous potato salad is full of bacon and other goodness. Smoked items such as ham and turkeys available seasonally. 1701 Rebsamen Park Road. Full bar, all CC. $-$$. 501-265-0000. L Mon.-Sat., D Tue.-Fri. FATBOY’S KILLER BAR-B-Q This Landmark neighborhood strip center restaurant in the far southern reaches of Pulaski County features tender ribs and pork by a contest pitmaster. Skip the regular sauce and risk the hot variety, it’s far better. 14611 Arch St.. No alcohol, all CC. $$.

501-888-4998. L Mon.-Wed. and Fri.; L Thu. HB’S BBQ Great slabs of meat with a vinegarbased barbecue sauce, but ribs are served on Tuesday only. Other days, try the tasty pork sandwich. 6010 Lancaster. No alcohol, No CC. $-$$.

501-565-1930. LD Mon.-Fri. MICK’S BBQ, CATFISH AND GRILL Good burgers, picnic-worth deviled eggs and heaping barbecue sandwiches topped with sweet sauce.

3609 MacArthur Drive. NLR. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-791-2773. LD Mon.-Sun. SIMS BAR-B-QUE Great spare ribs, sandwiches, beef, half and whole chicken and an addictive vinegar-mustard-brown sugar sauce unique for this part of the country. 2415 Broadway. Beer,

CC. $-$$. 501-372-6868. LD Mon.-Sat. 1307 John Barrow Road. Beer, all CC. $-$$. 501-224-2057. LD Mon.-Sat. 7601 Geyer Springs Road. Beer, all CC. $$. 501-562-8844. LD Mon.-Sat.

EUROPEAN / ETHNIC

ALI BABA A Middle Eastern restaurant, butcher shop and grocery. 3400 S University Ave. No alcohol, all CC. 501-379-8011. BLD Mon.-Sat. BANANA LEAF INDIAN FOOD TRUCK Tasty Indian street food. 201 N Van Buren St. No alcohol, CC. $-$$. 501-227-0860. L Mon.-Fri. KHALIL’S PUB Widely varied menu with European, Mexican and American influences. Go for the Bierocks, rolls filled with onions and beef. 110 S. Shackleford Road. Full bar, all CC. $$. 501-2240224. LD daily. BR Sun. STAR OF INDIA The best Indian restaurant in the region, with a unique buffet at lunch and some fabulous dishes at night (spicy curried dishes, tandoori chicken, lamb and veal, vegetarian). 301 N. Shackleford. Beer and wine, all CC. $$. 501-2279900. LD daily.

ITALIAN

DAMGOODE PIES A somewhat different Italian/ pizza place, largely because of a spicy garlic white sauce that’s offered as an alternative to the traditional red sauce. Good bread, too. 2701 Kavanaugh Blvd. Beer and wine, all CC. $$-$$$.

501-664-2239. LD daily. 6706 Cantrell Road. Beer and wine, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-664-2239. LD daily.

10720 Rodney Parham Road. Beer and wine, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-664-2239. LD daily. 37 East Center St. Fayetteville. Full bar, all CC. $$-$$$. 479-4447437. LD daily.

GUSANO’S They make the tomatoey Chicagostyle deep-dish pizza the way it’s done in the Windy City. It takes a little longer to come out of the oven, but it’s worth the wait. 313 President Clinton Ave. Full bar, all CC. $-$$. 501-374-1441.

LD daily. 2915 Dave Ward Drive. Conway. Full bar, all CC. $$. 501-329-1100. LD daily.

JAY’S PIZZA New York-style pizza by the slice. 400 President Clinton Ave. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$.

501-374-5297. L Mon.-Sat. LARRY’S PIZZA The buffet is the way to go — fresh, hot pizza, fully loaded with ingredients, brought hot to your table, all for a low price. Many Central Arkansas locations. 1122 S. Center. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-224-8804. LD daily. 12911 Cantrell Road. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-2248804. LD Mon.-Sat. NYPD PIZZA Plenty of tasty choices in the obvious New York police-like setting, but it’s fun. Only the pizza is cheesy. Even the personal pizzas come in impressive combinations, and baked ziti, salads are more also are available. Cheap slice specials at lunch. 6015 Chenonceau Blvd., Suite 1. Beer and wine, all CC. $-$$. 501-868-3911. LD daily.

VESUVIO Arguably Little Rock’s best Italian restaurant. The cheesy pasta bowls are sensational, but don’t ignore the beef offerings. 1315 Breckenridge Drive. Full bar, all CC. $$$. 501-2465422. D daily.

LATINO

CANTINA CINCO DE MAYO Friendly, tasty American-ized Mex. 3 Rahling Circle. Full bar, CC. $$. 501-821-2740. LD daily.

CASA MANANA Great guacamole and garlic beans, superlative chips and salsa (red and green) and a broad selection of fresh seafood, plus a deck out back. 6820 Cantrell Road. Full bar, all CC. $-$$. 501-280-9888. LD daily 18321 Cantrell Road.

Full bar, all CC. $-$$. 501-868-8822. LD daily 400 President Clinton Ave. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$.

(501) 372-6637. BL Mon.-Sat. CASA MEXICANA Familiar Tex-Mex style items all shine, in ample portions, and the steak-centered

dishes are uniformly excellent. 7111 JFK Blvd.

NLR. Full bar, all CC. $$. 501-835-7876. LD daily.

EL PORTON Good Mex for the price and a wide-ranging menu of dinner plates, some tasty cheese dip, and great service as well.

12111 W. Markham St. Full bar, all CC. $$.

501-223-8588. LD daily. 5021 Warden Road.

NLR. Full bar, all CC. $$. 501-753-4630. LD daily.

ELIELLA You’ll find perhaps the widest variety of street-style tacos in Central Arkansas here — everything from cabeza (steamed beef head) to lengua (beef tongue) to suadero (thin-sliced beef brisket). The Torta Cubano is a belly-buster. It’s a sandwich made with chorizo, pastor, grilled hot dogs and a fried egg. The menu is in Spanish, but the waitstaff is accommodating to gringos. 7700 Baseline Road. Beer, all CC. $. 501-539-5355. LD daily.

THE FOLD BOTANAS BAR Gourmet tacos and botanas, or small plates. Try the cholula pescada taco. 3501 Old Cantrell Road. Full bar, CC. $$-$$$. 501-916-9706. LD daily.

LA HACIENDA Creative, fresh-tasting entrees and traditional favorites, all painstakingly prepared in a festive atmosphere. Great taco salad, nachos and maybe the best fajitas around. 3024 Cantrell Road. Full bar, all CC. $-$$. 501-661-0600. LD daily. 200 Highway 65 N. Conway. All CC. $$. 501-327-6077. LD daily.

LAS PALMAS Mexican chain with a massive menu of choices. 10402 Stagecoach Road. Full bar, all CC. $-$$. 501-455-8500. LD daily 4154 E. McCain Blvd. NLR. Full bar, all CC. $-$$. LD daily.

LONCHERIA MEXICANA ALICIA The best taco truck in West Little Rock. Located in the Walmart parking lot on Bowman. 620 S. Bowman. No alcohol, No CC. $. 501-612-1883.

L Mon.-Sat. MARISCOS EL JAROCHO Try the Camarones a la Diabla (grilled shrimp in a smoky pepper sauce) or the Cocktail de Campechana (shrimp, octopus and oyster in a cilantro and onion-laced tomato sauce). 7319 Baseline Road. Beer, all CC. $-$$. 501-565-3535. Serving BLD Fri.-Wed. MERCADO SAN JOSE From the outside, it appears to just be another Mexican grocery store. Inside, you’ll find one of Little Rock’s best Mexican bakeries and a restaurant in back serving tortas and tacos for lunch. 7411 Geyer Springs Road. Beer, CC. $. 501-5654246. BLD daily.

MEXICO CHIQUITO Some suggest cheese dip was born at this Central Arkansas staple, where you’ll find hearty platters of boldly spiced, inexpensive food that compete well with those at the “authentic” joints. 13924 Cantrell Road. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$.

501-217-0700. LD daily. 1524 W. Main St. Jacksonville. No alcohol. $$. 501-982-0533. LD daily. 4511 Camp Robinson Road. NLR. Full bar, all CC. $$. 501-771-1604. LD daily. 11406 W. Markham. No alcohol, all CC. $$. 501-2170647. LD daily.

SUPERMERCADO SIN FRONTERAS Shiny, large Mexican grocery with a bakery and restaurant attached. 4918 Baseline Road. Beer, all CC. $$. 501-562-4206. BLD daily.

TAQUERIA SAMANTHA On Friday and Saturday nights, this mobile taqueria parks outside of Jose’s Club Latino in a parking lot on the corner of Third and Broadway. 300 Broadway Ave. No alcohol, No CC. $. 501-5685264. D Fri.-Sat. (sporadic hours beyond that).

TAQUERIA Y CARNICERIA GUADALAJARA Cheap, delicious tacos, tamales and more.

Always bustling. 3811 Camp Robinson Road.

NLR. Beer, all CC. $-$$. 501-753-9991. BLD daily.

300 Third Tower • 501-375-3333 coppergrillandgrocery.com

GYPSY BISTRO 200 S. RIVER MARKET AVE, STE. 150 • 501.375.3500 DIZZYSGYPSYBISTRO.NET

JUNE 12

THE 2ND FRIDAY OF EACH MONTH 5-8 PM

Opening reception for

Heather Condren & Miranda Young Year of Arkansas Beer continues with

Core Brewing and Distilling Co. (Springdale, AR)

L I V E M U S I C BY

SOUTHERN CURIOSITIES

A museum of the Department of Arkansas Heritage

AN EXHIBITION OF ARTWORKS

BY DIANE HARPER, DOMINIQUE SIMMONS, AND BARBARA SATTERFIELD

200 E. Third St. 501-324-9351 HistoricArkansas.org

200 RIVER MARKET AVE., STE 400 501.374.9247 • WWW.ARCAPITAL.COM ROBERT BEAN, CURATOR • MARGIE RAIMONDO, CATERER.

@HistoricArk

GALLERY 221 & ART STUDIOS 221

Don’t miss it – lots of fun!

MEET

THE WILL DON FROM THE ART OF

Free parking at 3rd & Cumberland

MEN’S CUTS

FREE TROLLEY RIDES!

EXPERT IN THE TONSORIAL ARTS HOT SHAVES $25 FROM 5PM-8PM 417 President Clinton Ave. Little Rock, Arkansas 72201 501-952-0719 Instagram/Facebook/Twitter: @barakatbespoke

These venues will be open late. There’s plenty of parking and a FREE TROLLEY to each of the locations.

Join Us 5-8pm

GROUP EXHIBITION: JUNE 4 - JULY 4 ♦ Fine Art ♦ Cocktails & Wine ♦ Hors d’oeuvres ♦ Pyramid Place • 2nd & Center St • (501) 801-0211

Free street parking all over downtown and behind the River Market (Paid parking available for modest fee.)

www.arktimes.com

JUNE 4, 2015

35

CONCERT REVIEW, CONT.

Forever Charlie Charlie Wilson wows at Verizon Arena.

BY KAYA HERRON

C

harlie Wilson, one of the greatest R&B artists of all time, came to Verizon Arena last Friday night and performed for a near-sold-out crowd as part of his Forever Charlie Tour with special guests Joe and Kem. Joe opened the show, Kem followed with a great set, and Charlie rocked the house. If you missed it, you missed out on something wonderful.

As always, I was running late to meet up with my date. We arrived at Verizon Arena 10 minutes after 8 p.m. and it was a sight to see. People walking up and down the street, dressed to the nines. Men all dressed in colorful suits, with matching shoes and hats; ladies in jumpsuits, dresses and classy jeans. It was some kind of amazing. There were black and brown people everywhere, candy-coated cars trying to find a place to park and a man on his Harley playing Uncle Charlie’s “Hey Lover” as the perfect background music to it all. After circling the block twice we found a spot and made a beeline for the arena.

Walking up the hill toward the entrance we passed a group of couples in their late 40s. One of them said, “Look at the babies” as we passed. That was the moment I knew we were likely going to be the youngest couple in attendance. But that didn’t matter to me one bit. I was here to see my Uncle Charlie, the man whose music has been played every day of my life, as the background to our summer cookouts, the slow jams in my cousin’s car, cleaning music on Saturday mornings, out on the boat at the lake and the music that grown folks always tell me “Y’all don’t know nothing about.”

As we made our way to our seats Joe was finishing up and asked the audience, “How you feeling, Little Rock?” The crowd responded with screams, hoops, hollers and whistles. The arena was still bustling with people coming in and out trying to find their seats and friends. Joe continued the show with a few of his hits, including, ‘More” and “I Want to Know,” both of which had all the women in the audience out of their seats, hands raised in the air, belting out notes that we couldn’t forget if we tried. During the brief intermission after Joe’s performance everyone raced to the concession stands to buy margaritas, popcorn and hot dogs. My date and I settled on water. The air in the arena was thick from the afternoon heat and moist from that evening’s rain. The stage crew finished setting up, the house 36

JUNE 4, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

lights went back down, and the band began to play as Kem made his way to the stage.

The crowd went wild as the spotlight shone on him. He wore a gray-and-white snakeskin suit tailored to his slim frame, and white sneakers with a golden emblem on the front. He looked good. Kem moved and grooved to the music, shaking his hips in time with the bass and was just feeling the funk. It was hard for me to sit still; I had to get up and dance with him. He sang some of his hits, including “Love Calls,” “Nobody” and “Loving You,” which had all the couples hugged up and swaying back and forth to the sound of his voice and vibrations of the guitar.

After a few songs Kem took a moment to talk to the audience. He said, “In case you didn’t know, you’re listening to grown folks music right now.” The crowd cheered.

“Do we have any grown folks in the house tonight?” The crowd roared, low hoops and hollers from the men, “woo woo woo,” and screams and cheers from the women with a few whistles. He showed off his outfit, saying, “Back in Detroit they called me high and tight,” in reference to his buttocks, which were on prominent display in his suit. He was cheeky. He straightened his pants legs so he could flash his shoes as well.

Kem said he was “all right in the Rock” and the crowd hooped and hollered.

“Ladies, how y’all feel? Brothas, how y’all doing? How many brothas are here with the woman they love?” The men erupted into a booming chorus of yeas, woos and whistles. Kem said the show was for the women and he was trying to help the fellas out. “I’m singing for the ladies, but I’m working for the fellas.” He told the men to pull the women close to them and sing and repeat after him, “Oh ... oh ... oh girl ... baby ... I love you ... I need you ... I’m gon’ buy you that $6,500 Louis Vuitton handbag tomorrow, when I wake up in the morning, it’s the first thing I’m gonna do.” The crowd erupted into laughter (and cheers from the women). The band eased back into “Share My Life.” Kem went on to sing “Dreamer,” “Promise to Love,” “Into You” and “You’re On My Mind.”

One of the highlights in the show was when Kem sang, “Find Your Way.” He chose to do a call and response with a man in the audience. He first chose an older black man, and instructed him that he would sing “How did your find you way?” and the man

GROWN-FOLKS MUSIC: Charlie Wilson of Gap Band and solo R&B fame had the Verizon crowd groovin’.

was to sing “Back in my life.” The man was off-key and mildly enthusiastic but though the crowd still cheered for him, he quickly returned to his seat. Kem said he was an “equal opportunity entertainer” and asked a middle-aged white man to come sing the same lyrics. The white man came to the edge of the stage, rocked and snapped to the beat of the song and sang with conviction, “Back in my life.” The crowd went wild. Kem had to take a second to regroup and then said, “You got soul brother; don’t think they were expecting that.” The crowd cheered them on as they continued to sing; the air was electric. Toward the end of his set Kem sat at the piano and sang “Why Would You Stay” and a few other songs. He finished by giving praise to God, thanking Little Rock and exiting the stage accompa-

nied by a beautiful guitar solo.

The house lights came up and there was another intermission. The big screens showed footage from Charlie’s tour and promotionals for his new album. The crew set up quickly, the house lights dimmed, and the band came on stage. The emcee introduced Charlie Wilson to the beat of the Gap Band’s “Party Train.” Charlie had on a shimmering suit jacket that looked like a disco ball and his dancers were dressed in short sequined dresses in primary colors and fedoras to match. They rocked it out in a line dance formation and moved across the stage like a funky disco train. The crowd was ecstatic and cheered through the entire song. He followed up with “Charlie’s Jam,” and played a good portion of his “Forever Charlie” album, including “Somebody Loves

of “There Goes My Baby” and the arena shook. There were shrieks and hollers coming from all around and an energy that was overwhelming. There were couples dancing in the aisles, swaying back and forth, Chicago stepping and kissing to the words of the song. The arrangement of the song was spot on for maximum crowd pleasure with a break in between the second chorus and the hook where Charlie got in line with the band and they “walked it out,” led by the bass guitarist and tailed by the saxophone. He broke out into the running man and followed with a soul train line with the dancers and the band. The song ended with a three-minute guitar and sax solo that kept the crowd going while Charlie and the dancers changed outfits backstage. The dancers came back out

in white suits and hats, for a teaser ode to Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal” and quickly transitioned into Charlie’s version of “Uptown Funk.” Their suits lit up and flashed LED dots of neon oranges, yellow, green, blue, pink and red. It was stunning.

Charlie changed into a sparkling black tuxedo and sang a few more Gap Band classics, including “Burn Rubber On Me (Why You Wanna Hurt Me),” “Outstanding” and “Yearning For Your Love.” He changed gears and played two of my favorites, “Magic” and “Charlie (Last Name Wilson)” to the delight of the crowd. He took a moment to catch his breath, sat down to wipe his face with a towel, and sang a tribute to Little Rock to the tune of Sam Cooke’s “You Send Me”: “Little Rock ... Can I hear

you scream babyyy.” The crowd roared.

“Darling you send me — you thrill me — honest you do, honest you do.” He said, “This is the best crowd I’ve had in a long time.” The audience cheered and hollered for over a minute while he looked on and smiled. He took a moment and asked the audience, “If you came to party with Uncle Charlie say yeah.” A resounding “yeah” rolled over the arena. “Well, go like me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and use #ForeverCharlie.” The crowd laughed and cheered. He mentioned his book, “I Am Charlie Wilson,” which goes on sale June 30, and asked everyone in the audience to support him and buy a copy.

He changed again into a crisp all-white suit and took a moment to praise God. He CONTINUED ON PAGE 38

DUMAS, CONT. then sailed out easily. Voters will know little about the amendment when they go to the polls except that it’s for jobs and was the work of their conservative Republican legislators.

If they knew, most would be horrified. Voters lifted the old restrictions on state indebtedness in 2004 when they approved the legislature’s amendment to allow the state to borrow money for economic development projects as long as the bonds did not exceed 5 percent of the state’s general revenues. The 2016 amendment removes the limit altogether so that, theoretically, the legislature could issue bonds

exceeding all the state’s general and special revenues. The corporate subsidies would come ahead of the state’s obligations to education, health, prisons and everything else. I perhaps raise a needlessly scary specter simply because it is only theoretically possible. You judge whether some constitutional protection is wise. City councils and county quorum courts could levy property taxes and other kinds of taxes to help industries.

Then there are the chamber subsidies. The state Chamber of Commerce sent local chambers a message in the 1990s: If you need

more money you don’t need to assess members higher fees, but go to your government leaders who are eager to listen to you anyway and ask them to compensate you for your historical role in business development.

Article 12, Section 5 of the Constitution seems to clearly prohibit it — the constitution writers in 1874 wanted to stop cities from subsidizing the powerful railroads — but who would dare question it?

What court would rule against both government and business leaders, especially when you say it’s for jobs and who would vote against jobs? In 2015, it’s a good question.

BARTH, CONT.

You,” “Touched by an Angel,” “Goodnight Kisses,” “Unforgettable,” “My Favorite Part of You,” “Hey Lover” and “Birthday Dress.”

He took it back for the “old schoolers” in the audience with “It’s Our Anniversary,” which prompted some touching and kissing by the couples in our section and across the arena. As far as the eye could see there were couples grooving to the beat and loving on each other, making me feel way too young to be there.

Charlie continued with some of his newer music, including, “Ooh Wee,” “Shawty Come Back” and “Can’t Live Without You.” He brought the youthful groove back as he sang a cover of “Beautiful” by Pharrell. The audience was up on its feet and swinging to the beat. Then the band transitioned into the opening notes

eral election campaign provides more time for challengers — typically outfunded and comparatively limited in name recognition — to build their case.

• Judicial candidates. The quirks of Arkansas’s judicial elections means

that the top two candidates in crowded fields have a “runoff” in the general election — months after the first primary, with a completely different election and electorate. This promises to make judicial elections costlier and more complicated.

So while the March 1 “SEC primary” is designed to benefit the Huckabee campaign and increase Arkansas’s national exposure, on a busy election day that includes much larger Southern state platforms, the bigger impact is more likely to be local.

TRAGEDY AS COMEDY, CONT. people, like we had all just gone through Thanksgiving dinner together.”

Michael McKenzie, who plays Barbara’s husband, Bill, says the humor is based on the idea that comedy is tragedy that happens to someone else: “It’s funny because you recognize and it and relate to it, but you’re saying, ‘Thank God that’s not me.’ ” The play’s ensemble extends beyond just the cast: “It includes the entire production team,” Baker says. Rabine says her discussions with the set designer

gave her a deeper understanding of the play. Hupp calls the house where the play is set “the 14th character.”

The house certainly takes on a life of its own, as it serves both as a puzzle box of secrets and as a prison of sorts, boxing in the characters and preventing them from avoiding conflict with one another.

Several cast members shared how watching the play for them was a lifechanging experience. “We want to give that experience to everyone else,” Hutchison says. “It’s interesting to find

the fine line where comedy and drama meet, and the dance across that line is challenging but rewarding.”

“August: Osage County” runs from Friday, June 5, through Sunday, June 21, with Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday evening shows at 7 p.m., Friday and Saturday shows at 8 p.m., and Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. There will be an afterparty Saturday, June 20, at Foster’s, the Rep lounge, following the play. Tickets are available at therep.org.

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Monday–Saturday Faith Dental Clinic · www.faithdentalclinic.com FOREVER CHARLIE, CONT. gave his testimony about being delivered from addiction and how good God has been to him and the blessings he has received in his life. He gave a shoutout to radio show host Broadway Joe Booker for helping make his Little Rock show happen and supporting him, and then asked the audience if they wanted to hear the song that stayed at No. 1 for 16 weeks. The crowd responded with cheers as the opening notes of “You Are” began to play. Two dancers came out in white trefoil shimmering butterfly wings and danced around him and across the stage.

He followed up with “I Wanna Be Your Man,” gave glory to God once again, and said goodnight to Little Rock.

The line of people trying to exit the arena was long and jumbled with the rain making it more difficult to navigate, but we eventually made our way outside and back to our car. We reveled in the magic of the evening, the fantastic performances and the overwhelming feeling of love that was present.

Charlie Wilson proved how great he is Friday night. The crowd was on its feet the entire performance with hands and voices

raised. There was kissing and hugging — entirely too much PDA for my tastes. But it was a beautiful sight to see: There was an energy that just could not be ignored.

The entire show was wonderfully choreographed with Charlie running, jumping, stepping, sliding and dancing across the stage with more enthusiasm and energy than most of today’s R&B crooners. He is a true performer, an awesome talent, with a stage presence that is electrifying. You better put it on your bucket list: Charlie Wilson live is spectacular.

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Photography by Nancy Nolan 40

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ARKANSAS TIMES