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INSIDE

An Original Music Docuseries

COVER P. 12 With passage of the Hemp

Farming Act of 2018 and Oklahoma’s history of farming hemp during World War II, the state is positioned to add a potentially lucrative cash crop to its economy.

By Matt Dinger Cover by Kimberly Lynch Photos by Alexa Ace

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NEWS 4 STATE Kendra Horn

6 ELECTION Ward 2 Oklahoma City

Council candidates

9 COMMENTARY Gov. Stitt’s prayer

service

10 CHICKEN-FRIED NEWS

THE HIGH CULTURE 12 COVER Hemp Farming Act of 2018

and CBD regulation

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8 EDUCATION OKCPS consolidation

$55

16 MARIJUANA legislative preview

EAT & DRINK

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19 REVIEW Cafe 501

20 FEATURE Osteria and Bar Cicchetti 22 GAZEDIBLES melted cheese

ARTS & CULTURE

FEATURING

25 ART Ansel Adams and the

Photographers of the West at OKCMOA

Emilio & Gloria Estefan at Civic Center Music Hall

Hall Theatre

George III at OCCC’s Visual and Performing Arts Center Theater

Golden Meatball at Lyric at the Plaza

26 THEATER On Your Feet! The Story of

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31 COMMUNITY Cosmic Con at Science

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32 CALENDAR

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Tower Theatre 36 EVENT Marty Friedman at 89th Street — OKC

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NEWS Congresswoman Kendra Horn answered questions in front of about 200 constituents at a town hall meeting last Saturday. | Photo Miguel Rios

conversations and make decisions based on what’s in the best interest of the greatest number of Oklahomans.”

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Head start

Rep. Kendra Horn was just sworn in at the beginning of January but is already preparing for the 2020 election as Republicans take aim at her seat. By Miguel Rios

Kendra Horn pulled off a surprising upset in November after defeating incumbent Rep. Steve Russell for the state’s 5th Congressional District. Horn defeated Russell on Nov. 6, making her the first female Democratic member of Congress in state history.

“I think we won because we met people where they were, because we went out to the communities, we knocked doors, we called people and we brought more voices into the narrative,” she said in an Oklahoma Gazette interview Saturday following her first town hall meeting since taking office at Cole Community Center, 4400 Northwest Expressway. “We reminded people that their voices are important and that they matter. … We ran on common-sense issues and things that matter to Oklahoma and Oklahomans.”

Horn, a fifth-generation Oklahoman, also adopted lessons she learned growing up for her campaign strategy.

“The bottom line that I heard all the time: one, we’re not allowed to say ‘can’t’ because that means you didn’t try, and two, if you see a problem in your community, you have to get to work to fix it.

Don’t complain; just roll up your sleeves and get to work and fix it. That’s the approach we took to the campaign, and that’s the approach that I’m taking to serving in this capacity.”

Now, only a few weeks into her role in Congress, Horn is using the same strategy for 2020 as the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) targets her seat, which is widely considered a toss-up for the next elec4

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tion. The NRCC is targeting 31 Democrats running in what they consider Donald Trump districts, according to an article on The Hill. The report says Horn’s 5th District is one of the most “ripe for the taking.”

“The seat is a very top target, but my number one priority is showing up to serve the people of Oklahoma’s 5th Congressional District and to be the best representative for every single person here that we can,” Horn said. “That looks like our office here in Oklahoma City being accessible and available to anybody who needs support and making sure that my staff is doing everything they can to be a part of the community.”

At the town hall, Horn briefed attendees on her time in Congress and answered questions from the audience.

She plans to remain visible in the OKC community and will do so despite being a target.

“Regardless of whether or not I had a big target on me or not, I would be here showing up and serving,” she said.

“That’s why I’m coming back to the district as much as I can, and that’s why we held our first town hall today and we will have ongoing events every single month. We will be in all parts of the district. I don’t think it changes who I am or what I’m doing. It might put a little more emphasis on it for people to pay attention.”

Though the NRCC already targeting her seat for 2020 does heighten the pressure, Horn said she plans to stay focused on her constituents.

“I ran because I wanted to help

people, and the best way that I know to do that is to listen to and understand their concerns and to address them and to be as accessible as possible,” she said.

Most people who attended her town hall meeting were supporters, but some critics were there to ask questions too.

Several people asked about the government shutdown and border security.

“In some places, that may include some form of a physical barrier. In many places, we need technology. There are sensors, there are drones, there are things we can do that will help to notify our border patrol agents on a more rapid basis,” she said.

She also talked about her frustration with the length of the 35-day government shutdown, which ended just one day before her town hall meeting. Horn said she was working on a solution to making sure government shutdowns would not happen in the future.

“I am every day speaking up and saying we have to fix this and we have to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

That is my priority. I am frustrated with you and for you, and please know I am speaking up. I am reaching across the aisle, and I will continue to do that,” she told a federal contractor who asked why Congress wasn’t willing to work with the president to reopen the government.

“We are in a position where we shouldn’t be. We should never have been there, and I’m concerned about that too. One of the things I’m working very hard to do with a number of different people is to find a pathway where we can make sure that this never happens again.”

Horn emphasized the idea of unity and working across the aisle and echoed her campaign platform of commonsense reform.

“We have a lot more that unites us than divides us, and it’s easy to forget that when we get really caught up into partisanship or posturing,” she said.

“It’s not about us versus them. Us versus them divides us, and that’s why it’s important to me to be a voice and to listen to everybody and to have the difficult

Horn, who was sworn in Jan. 3, was appointed to serve on the House Armed Services Committee and the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. Horn has previous experience with space and technology, having worked for Space Foundation in Washington D.C. and Colorado for several years. She said space infrastructure is crucial to many areas of our lives.

“I’m excited to be able to be on the least partisan committee in the Congress and to be able to support our armed forces, and that includes space and space programs, which are really important.

On the science, space and technology side, we’ve got NASA, we’ve got NOAA,” she said. “One of the things that gets forgotten oftentimes is the satellite infrastructure. We are incredibly dependent, as you might imagine. We’re talking on devices that are made possible by our satellites, we all use GPS to find our way around and from the weather perspective, NOAA weather satellites are what allow us to have the warning system that we have in place. … Space is fun and exciting, and it is also incredibly important, so I’m looking forward to doing a lot of good in that area.”

Despite having already started fundraising for 2020, Horn continues to focus on campaign issues and policies she believes in. One of her top priorities is education, though she also plans to address criminal justice reform and health care.

“Education and addressing pending student loan debt crisis is at the very top of my list. That’s critically important. We’re reaching a tipping point in people’s ability to pay their student loans and their ability to just do the basic things,” she said. “I’m working on some legislation on that front as well as supporting and making sure we were achieving the right balance in higher ed from our career tech system to our higher ed system and then making sure that we are sufficiently supporting our public education system from the federal perspective.

“I will also be working on a few other things, including some criminal justice reform measures. Health care is another thing. I think we’ve got to continue to address the significant cost of prescription drugs as well as a number of other critical issues. Those are just some of the top priorities, but I think that there’s lot that we’re going to be able to do in this Congress, and I am very much looking forward to it.”

Horn started a series of short videos titled Connecting with Kendra, in which she gives updates on what she has been working on in Congress. Videos are shared on her Facebook and Twitter pages.

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ELECTION

Suzanne Broadbent was born and raised in west Oklahoma but has lived in Ward 2 for 25 years, even serving as president of her neighborhood association. | Photo Alexa Ace

Taking a seat

With Ward 2 councilman Ed Shadid deciding not to run for reelection, five candidates aim to fill his seat on the city council. By Miguel Rios

Oklahoma City Ward 2 councilman Ed Shadid has held his position since 2011 but decided last year he would not seek a third term. Five candidates are vying to fill his spot.

Candidates with varying levels of experience in politics and activism will appear on the Feb. 12 election ballot, which could result in an April 2 runoff if none receive a majority.

The advocate

Suzanne Broadbent, 68, was born and raised in western Oklahoma, where she grew up on a ranch. She has served three terms as president of her church and was appointed by former mayor Mick Cornett to Oklahoma City Historic Preservation Commission.

Broadbent said some of the issues she would like to tackle would be the condition of schools, access to transportation and affordable housing.

“The city council is, in my opinion, largely responsible for the community surrounding those schools,” she said.

“The community outside those schools affects what those kids can do inside the school. Do they show up ready to learn or do they show up hungry, fearful, homeless, scared, unsure of what’s going to happen when they get out of school?”

Broadbent served as president of the neighborhood association in Putnam Heights, where she has lived for 25 years. She said the experience she brings to the table sets her apart from the other four candidates.

“The city council can be a really good bully pulpit for getting folks together to 6

James Cooper would make history as the city’s first openly gay city council person ever elected. | Photo Alexa Ace

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come up with solutions,” she said. “I’m willing to do the hard work and get things done. It’s fun to have ideas and chat about it, but it’s also fun to work at it and get it done, and that’s one of the things that I feel like I can bring to the council.”

Broadbent said she is also excited about the conversations that might arise out of MAPS 4 discussions. She said areas outside downtown are ready for attention, and she would like to see more sidewalks, better public transit and community centers.

“The senior wellness centers seem to be very beneficial, and I’d like to see them be intergenerational if that’s what people want,” she said. “In other words, a real community center. That intergenerational relationship-building and interaction is just so beneficial for everyone concerned … particularly in Ward 2, where we have such a community feel, where we do have neighbors of all generations, kind of like a small town.”

Marilyn Davidson founded Davidson Consulting a few months ago and would have to take a leave of absence if elected, which she hopes shows her passion for the city council. | Photo Alexa Ace

Oklahoma City is divided into eight Wards whose residents elect a council member to represent them on the city council. | Source data.okc.gov

want reliable public transportation to get to places that are farther away.

“I’m committed to doubling our bus fleet to ensure we have reliable public transportation. Buses running every 15 minutes — nonnegotiable, it has to happen,” he said. “The only way we’re going to have a reliable public transportation system is if we take the current 30-minute bus frequency down to 15 minutes.”

Cooper also wants all buses to run until 3 a.m. for those who work in restaurants or retail and might get off work late.

about four years ago, said he has knocked on about 4,000 doors since July 5 to talk to voters.

“I spoke to nearly 2,000 people over the last couple months now, and they always tell me that walkable neighborhoods are a priority for them,” he said.

“They want good streets, they’re tired of potholes and they want good sidewalks right out their front door.”

Millennials have told Cooper they want better sidewalks to walk to places like the grocery store, the park, bars and restaurants.

“Boomers want those sidewalks too, largely because they have made a pretty big decision that they want to age in place in the homes where they’ve made their memories,” he said. “They don’t want to move to nursing homes. So those sidewalks become so important because if they can walk to the grocery store, the post office, church, a restaurant safely then all those basic needs of the individual are right there within their reach.”

Both age groups, Cooper said, also

The consultant

Marilyn Davidson, 38, recently started her own consulting business for public and government affairs. She has worked at the state Senate as a legislative aide and most recently worked with Department of Corrections as a legislative liaison.

Davidson said she was motivated to run for city council after trying to report an issue on her street and being met with a slow, inadequate response.

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The educator

James Cooper, 36, teaches college preparation classes at Jefferson Middle School and film studies and English at Oklahoma City University. He was also appointed by Cornett to serve as a trustee of Central Oklahoma Transportation and Parking Authority (COTPA).

The biggest issue Cooper wants to focus on is reliable public transport and walkability within the city. Cooper, who ran for the Ward 2 city council seat

Mike Dover has lived in Ward 2 since 1982 and plans to be a full-time city councilman if elected. | Photo Alexa Ace

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Tracey Halley-Terrell has owned her bail bond company for nearly two decades and is the secretary of Oklahoma Bondsman Association.| Photo Alexa Ace

ture, safety and education as the ward’s biggest issues. She also said being in communication with residents will be a big focus for her.

“One of the first things I’m going to do is find ways where I can tear down those barriers of communication between the residents and myself,” she said.

Davidson, who has a son in second grade in public school, said raising a young family in Ward 2 makes her invested in ways other candidates might not be. She said it takes strong schools to build up good communities and neighborhoods and attract more businesses into the city.

“When it comes to funding our education, that’s a state-level issue, but as city council members, there are some things we can do to help support our local schools,” she said. “There are some creative ways we can kind of come together and help them do their job as they’re seeing less and less support from the state government.”

Despite having experience in government, Davidson acknowledges she is still fairly new to politics compared to some of the other candidates.

“I’m going to be able to come into the role with a fresh outlook on everything and fresh ideas because I haven’t been sitting there in a volunteer position or been involved in the decisions that have been going on for the last 10 years,” she said.

The adviser

Mike Dover, 70, is a retired social worker and former executive director of Variety Health Center. He chairs the Senior Health and Wellness Center subcommittee on the MAPS 3 Citizens Advisory Board and was appointed to serve on the OKC Bond Advisory Committee. He plans to be full-time council member if elected.

“I’m best prepared just because of my experience of serving in those roles. I’ve represented Ward 2 on those two committees as a volunteer, so I want to go to

the next level,” he said. “All of us running, I know we all love this city, and I know we all bring different talents and experiences, but I think I’m better prepared.”

Dover said public transit, education, streets and neighborhoods are things he’d work to improve if he was elected. Dover is particularly passionate about making sure all bus stops have shelters.

“I learned there are 850 bus benches without shelter. Close to 150 have bus shelters,” he said. “People who generally rely on the bus system in our city are low-income people, are disabled people, are elderly people and frankly people who don’t have a lot of choices to go warm up their car in the morning before they go to work. … And in this extreme weather we have here, it just breaks my heart.”

Dover advocates making the next MAPS more focused on neighborhoods.

“That’s why I decided to run for city council, because I want to be an advocate for quality of life for all families,” he said. “At the end of this next MAPS, there should not be a school that does not have a sidewalk that neighborhoods kids can walk to schools.”

The business owner

Tracey Halley-Terrell, 47, is a bail bondsman who is new to politics. She has owned her own bail bond company since 2001.

“As far as politics, this is brand-new to me. I’m completely green,” she said.

“I’ve been busy raising my family, building my business. I just feel, at this point, there’s things that need to be taken care of that haven’t been, and I’m willing to step up and try to do that for the community, for Ward 2.”

As a family woman and business owner without government experience, Halley-Terrell feels like she can represent the everyday people of Ward 2.

“It’s a council, so I can bring stuff to the table, but I’m going to have to work with everybody to make the decisions that need to be made,” Halley-Terrell said. “I’m here to represent everyone, not necessarily Republican, Democrat — highly educated, big money, no money, I’m here for everyone.”

She wants Ward 2 streets to be nicer, neighborhoods to be safer and schools to be better-funded and would also want to help the homeless population.

“We have awful streets,” she said.

“Downtown is growing and becoming so nice, but we have to go down all these bad streets to get to the good stuff. We should have good streets everywhere; there shouldn’t be an issue with that.

The same with our schools; we need to continue putting time and effort and money into schools to our future — the kids are our future.”

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Schools out

In an effort to increase school quality for students, Oklahoma City Public Schools plans to close at least 15 schools. By Miguel Rios Oklahoma City Public Schools superintendent Sean McDaniel presented three possible paths to majorly realign public schools to a packed Northeast Academy auditorium Jan. 22. | Photo Miguel Rios

Oklahoma City Public Schools superintendent Sean McDaniel announced last week three possible paths to realign facilities and resources with the district’s needs. The announcement is part of Pathway to Greatness, an OKCPS project that has been in the works for more than a year.

“The theme, the story that we want to tell, is a story that goes well beyond closing schools, although that is a part of what we’re going to talk about,” McDaniel said. “It is about how we’re offering school to our kids and to their families and if there’s a better way to do it that will result in more positive outcomes.”

Trading up

Before describing each path, McDaniel presented positive changes, or “tradeups,” coming to the school district based on recommendations from community members.

One of the recommendations was increasing the number of teachers in elementary schools. Two in five schools have grade levels with only one teacher, McDaniel said. Under Pathway to Greatness, all elementary schools would have at least three teachers per grade.

Every elementary school would have a dedicated STEM space, which only two of the current 54 schools have now. Every elementary school would also staff fulltime art, music, physical education teachers and at least one counselor.

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said. “Right now, only 18 of our 54 elementaries have those three things.

Through Pathway to Greatness, we’re saying every elementary will have all three, full-time every day.”

Pathway to Greatness would also realign grade bands to have most elementary schools serve pre-K through fourth grade and most middle schools to serve fifth through eighth grades.

The program would also reconfigure mid-high schools to only house ninth through 12th grades.

At middle and high school levels, each school would have a fully functional science lab and students would have more access to extracurricular activities.

In terms of class sizes, McDaniel said the program would reduce class sizes for kindergarten through grade six.

Addressing the student population at U.S. Grant High School specifically, McDaniel said all three paths would reduce overcrowding by as many as 600 students and lower class sizes.

School buildings that are closed will be repurposed for other uses, McDaniel said. He emphasized that new uses for the buildings would be more beneficial for neighborhoods than in the past.

Potential repurposing options include centers for community health, mentoring programs and early childhood education.

Closing down

“We’re going to go through some pain here; there are going to be school closures,” McDaniel said. “I’ve been saying that from the day I stepped into this eight months ago, and that is a fact.”

Closing schools and consolidating resources would save money and allow for even more trade-ups, he said.

“As we close a school, we don’t pay utilities, we don’t pay insurance, we don’t pay operation costs. We move that money into an investment bank and then we deploy it back out to get the trade-ups we’re talking about,” McDaniel said. “An important piece of this is without the closures and us stopping on [payments], we can’t get to these trade-ups we believe are so important. So it takes one to get the others.”

Under all three paths, at least 13 schools would definitely close: Edgemere Elementary, Edwards Elementary, Gatewood Elementary, Green Pastures Elementary, Horace Mann Elementary, Johnson Elementary, North Highland Elementary, Oakridge Elementary, Pierce Elementary, Putnam Heights

Elementary, Rancho Village Elementary, Sequoyah Elementary and Oklahoma Centennial Mid-High School.

Five elementary schools would become middle schools under all three paths: Capitol Hill Elementary, Greystone Elementary, Martin Luther King Elementary, Mary Golda Ross Elementary and Parmelee Elementary.

Additionally, West Nichols Hills Elementary would be reconfigured to house fifth and sixth grades and feed to Belle Isle, which would be reconfigured to house seventh and grades, creating a fifth-eighth grade band.

Northeast Academy and Classen School for Advanced Studies, both midhigh schools, would merge, making Classen strictly a middle school and Northeast a high school.

“In all three paths, Classen School of Advanced Studies becomes Classen Middle School only. We immediately double our seats there, and then the high school portion of Classen comes to [Northeast Academy]. So it becomes the Classen SAS High School,” McDaniel said. “I know there are going to be questions about names ... that it’s not simply the closure that causes us to be uncomfortable it’s, ‘What are you going to do with the name? Is there a way you can keep the Northeast name in it?’ So we will continue having those conversations. The same thing holds true with West Nichols Hills as they move into that Belle Isle fifth through eighth.”

If current Northeast Academy students choose to remain at what would be Classen SAS, McDaniel said seats would be guaranteed for them. The same is true for Northeast middle schoolers who would go to Classen Middle School.

Under all three paths, Emerson South Alternative School, KIPP Reach College Preparatory, Seeworth Academy, Harding Charter Preparatory High School and Harding Fine Arts Academy would be relocated. OKCPS is working with those school leaders to find a home for students.

“Those conversations are coming,” McDaniel said. “It’s a relocation, so kids who are housed in one building go to another building. We’re not talking about doing away with programs.”

Additional schools will close depending on the path that is chosen. In Path A, Hawthorne Elementary and Spencer Elementary would also close. In Path B, Linwood Elementary and Rogers Elementary would also close. Under both paths, Westwood Elementary becomes Emerson South Alternative School.

In Path C, Hawthorne Elementary, Shidler Elementary, Van Buren Elementary, Telstar Elementary and Westwood Elementary would also close; Wheeler Elementary would become Emerson South.

Each path also varies in terms of which schools feed into other schools.

“What we’ve tried to do is make very strong feeder patterns so there is no doubt if I go to this elementary I’m going

into this middle and I’m going into this high school,” McDaniel said.

Despite school closures and reconfigurations, McDaniel said they are committed to protecting the jobs of all employees.

“We expect for all employee groups that we are going to be able to protect employment,” he said. “It may look a little different, but we want to employ our people. ... We will move teachers and administrators and relocate them around our district.”

Paving the path

The trade-ups for all three paths are identical, but Paths B and C provide more reinvestment money for additional benefits, McDaniel said. Since Path C closes three more schools, it would yield the most money.

“If it’s just about building up your reinvestment bank, we would choose C,” he said, “but a question we wrestle with is, ‘Is the money we get in C worth all these additional things that have to happen: more changes in feeder patterns, more school closures, more disruption?’”

OKCPS wants input from the people affected to help make a decision, McDaniel said, so community meetings were hosted throughout January at various schools.

Most of the community meetings have already happened, with the final one scheduled at 6 p.m. today at Northwest Classen High School, 2801 NW 27th St. Members of the school board commended McDaniel on being open to feedback and working with the community. Gloria Torres, OKCPS District 6 board member and vice chair, said she was encouraged that specific concerns were addressed.

“Many of our concerns were heard such as the overcrowdedness in southside schools, the need for additional space and the need for our students to have access to more advanced programming, such as the Classen SAS model in south Oklahoma City,” she said.

Other board members acknowledged the difficulty of closing schools but said that seeing the trade-ups for students made it feel worth it.

“It doesn’t hurt any less when you see the list. It’s still a punch to the gut,” said Carrie Coppernoll Jacobs, District 3 board member. “However, seeing the trade-ups and knowing what our kids are going to get takes away the gutpunch. I’m so glad that our students are going to have the things they undoubtedly deserve.”

OKCPS plans to enact the changes for the upcoming school year. McDaniel will recommend one path on Feb. 19, and the board will vote on the recommendation March 4.

The district will begin work March 5 to put their goals into place, McDaniel said. Officials have already started looking at logistics and have outlined priorities of what needs to be done before school starts in August.

CO M M E N TA RY

Opinions expressed on the commentary page, in letters to the editor and elsewhere in this newspaper are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of ownership or management.

Prayer vigilant

Stitt’s post-inaugural prayer service spoke volumes about his narrow view of the faith community.

By Rev. Lori Walke

The inauguration of Oklahoma’s new governor, Kevin Stitt, was a series of celebratory events around the state. It ended with a prayer service the day after the inauguration that was timed as a way to symbolize how Stitt will put God first in his new administration.

As a preacher, I applaud the effort of the faith community to wish the governor well. It would be mean-spirited and counterproductive to hope he fails. But it wasn’t exactly “the faith community” that gathered to offer grace. The prayer service was not interfaith, much less interdenominational. At a past inaugural prayer service, one of our former governors expressed surprise that the rabbi approaching the lectern to offer a prayer was a woman. The idea that God calls women to ministry and their congregations ordain them was foreign.

This is a state where women have been described by legislators as “hosts.”

As a Christian pastor, I deeply appreciate the desire to receive a blessing

from one’s own tradition. But the citizens of Oklahoma are not exclusively Christian. Our traditions include Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Baha’i and Sikhism (to name a few), not to mention the atheists, agnostics and humanists. It remains to be seen whether or not Gov. Stitt will honor the traditions, beliefs and values of all Oklahomans. Of the messages the prayer service broadcast, one was certainly that white, male fundamentalist Christians are the only ones who matter.

It was no wonder that when Gov. Stitt took questions post-prayer service about how his faith influences what kind of legislation he wants to see, everyone who isn’t white-male-fundamentalistChristian held our collective breath.

The most troubling commonality among elected officials who target minorities and hamstring working families is that they all serve as deacons in white fundamentalist Christian churches. For many Oklahomans, the prayer service

came across as a dog whistle for more of the same bigotry and intolerance that so many of us have worked to end.

Much to our surprise and relief, Gov. Stitt offered us a little hope. He spoke of our state’s overwhelmed foster care system, our alarming high school dropout and teen pregnancy rates and the havoc wreaked by addiction in our communities. He did, of course, also note that he would sign any piece of pro-life legislation that crossed his desk. While white Christian fundamentalists usually mean “pro-birth” when they use the term “pro-life,” it is worth noting that Gov. Stitt pivoted quickly and firmly. I suggest we be cautiously optimistic that this indicates his awareness that many Oklahomans are interested in caring for people from conception to grave.

Gov. Stitt claims to be focused on turning around the economy, education and health care in our state. So let’s take the governor at his word and ask him to show us his faith by what he does.

Expand Medicaid so thousands of Oklahomans can get health insurance and help rural Oklahoma hospitals stay open. What could be more pro-life than that? Be a vocal and actual supporter of ending so-called conversion therapy for minors, which increases the likelihood of depression and suicide among teenagers. This could literally save lives. Lead the conversation to restore refunds for the earned-income tax credit, which can lift thousands of families out of poverty.

This would let him wave the pro-family banner with credibility.

Then, with or without a prayer service, Gov. Stitt’s message to all Oklahomans would be, “God bless us, every one.”

To that we could say, “Amen.”

Rev. Lori Walke, J.D., is associate minister of Mayflower Congregational UCC Church and a graduate of Oklahoma City University School of Law, Phillips Theological Seminary and Oklahoma State University. | Photo provided

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O KG A Z E T T E . C O M | J A N U A R Y 3 0 , 2 0 1 9

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chicken

friedNEWS

Moldy mansion

Remember a few years ago when former Gov. Mary Fallin’s daughter Christina received criticism for living in a trailer on the governor’s mansion property?

It turns out the trailer might’ve had better living conditions than the mansion itself. According to News 9, the mansion has fallen into such state of disrepair that it might not be ready for new Gov. Kevin Stitt and his family when they’re ready to move to Oklahoma City from Tulsa following the end of the school year.

Officials with the Office of Management and Enterprise Services (OMES) told News 9 that repairs to the mansion and two other structures on the premises will cost $8 million.

Stitt spokesperson Donelle Harder said the roof is leaking, which has caused flooding in the basement, and there is mold on the walls.

“Things that do not make the facility habitable for young children,” she said.

This is especially the case since Stitt said last year that he and his wife haven’t vaccinated all of their six children.

“We definitely pick and choose which ones we’re going to do,” Stitt said at a Tulsa political forum.

It’s still unclear whether Stitt meant they pick and choose which vaccines they use or which children get vaccinated. Maybe it’s a Hunger Games situation?

Stitt’s response last year said he’d given all of his children “various vaccinations required for school,” which is a funny way of spelling “all.”

According to News 9, OMES officials discovered problems with the mansion as far back as 2010, and action was delayed by Fallin in 2015 because the $4.2 million it would require for the repairs came during the $600 million budget shortfall.

Now the cost of the repairs has more than doubled. At least the state’s financial situation is in better shape as Stitt takes over, or at least until the next energy bust or likely round of tax cuts take effect.

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Walkout block-out

Last year’s nine-day teacher walkout made national headlines, drawing tens of thousands of teachers and supporters to the state Capitol where they demonstrated their support for increasing public education funding.

The monetary outcome fell far short of what educators requested, largely because legislators preferred to compare teachers to whining children rather than consider even for a moment raising taxes on oil companies. But momentum from the movement also inspired educators to run for office, resulting in 16 current or former educators being elected to the state Legislature in November. If

either of two of the 2,800 bills proposed for consideration in the next state legislative session becomes law, however, such a highly visible and influential grassroots movement might not be repeatable.

Senate Bill 592 states, in part, “Any organization or group of one hundred or more persons that engages in an organized protest at the State Capitol building shall be required to post a bond of Fifty Thousand Dollars ($50,000.00) with the Oklahoma Capitol Improvement Authority in order to offset the cost of additional security, clean up and repairs.”

The bill/American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit waiting to happen doesn’t state where the $50,000 figure came from, but it might be based on either: (a) calculating 136.6 percent of a teacher’s starting annual salary or (b) the exact amount of money former teacher and retired dentist James Young donated to save the Oklahoma State Science Fair from being killed by budget cuts in 2017. Coincidentally, we’re sure, Sen. Mark Allen, R-Spiro, who authored SB592, also happened to author Senate Bill 574, which prohibits teachers from discussing any political or “controversial subject matter” with students. Even more coincidentally, Allen, who chairs the senate’s Energy Committee, happens to own Arkoma-based oilfield-servic-

ing business Allen Rathole, Inc. Though Allen defeated a former social worker to win re-election in November, he’ll be term-limited out of office in 2022, when he’ll presumably return to his rathole.

House Bill 2214, meanwhile, cuts to the chase by making it illegal for teachers and other educators “to strike or threaten to strike or otherwise close schools or interfere with school operations.” If the bill became law, teachers who walk out would be

denied pay and have their teaching certificates permanently revoked.

The bill’s author, Rep. Todd Russ, R-Cordell, is a banker by trade but has clearly taken an interest in education.

He also authored House Bill 2208, which specifies strict rules for organizations collectively bargaining on behalf of educators, and House Bill 2228, which prohibits “coeducational housing” in college dormitories, a situation the bill declares an “emergency” threatening “public peace, health or safety.”

But last year, an education bill introduced by Rep. Jacob Rosecrants, D-Norman, authorizing school districts to incorporate "consent and healthy relationship education" into their curriculum seemed to confuse Russ.

"Help me understand what you mean by ‘healthy relationship,’” Russ asked, according to Tulsa World. "Is that like a snowflake thing?"

Like Allen, Russ will be term-limited out in 2022. Public education fans might want to make an advent calendar.

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COV E R

THE HIGH CULTURE

Harvesting hemp

2018’s Hemp Farming Act opens doors for farmers in Oklahoma but also raises questions of legality. By Matt Dinger

Oklahoma might soon see a return to its roots as a major hemp-producing state thanks to the 2018 farm bill.

Last year, Oklahoma passed the industrial hemp pilot program, which was covered under the 2014 farm bill.

Beginning in May, hemp growers would have to partner with a college or university to be able to farm hemp, a low-THC form of the cannabis sativa plant. The farm bill removed that restriction.

By law, hemp cannot contain more than .3 percent THC content. THC is the psychoactive element in cannabis that provides psychoactive effects.

Hemp instead produces larger quantities of cannabidiol, or CBD. “Hemp was considered the same as marijuana, a Schedule I drug, and all that language has been changed and you can take hemp across state lines, transporting it, all of those kinds of things, under the 2018 farm bill,” said Kenny Naylor, the director of Food Safety & Consumer Protection Services for the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry.

Under the 2018 farm bill, Naylor said, you do not have to have a university partner to grow hemp and can apply directly to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The Oklahoma Legislature is expected to approve the relevant components of the 2018 farm bill this session.

Oklahoma Senate Bills 554, 863 and 868 have already been introduced to incorporate those hemp-farming elements.

After those pass, the state agriculture department will apply to the United States Department of 12

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Agriculture (USDA). They should receive a response within 60 days of applying, Naylor said.

“The other program continues on, so they can still participate and grow hemp and do things under the industrial hemp pilot program,” he said.

Naylor said between May and January, there were 28 licensed growers with 445 acres of hemp planted outside and 80,000 square feet of indoor growing. The law does not make a distinction between hemp grown for CBD production and industrial purposes.

“I think at least most of the interest right now is in CBD, that there’s still a lot of interest in, you know, fiber and seed as well,” he said.

Hemp history

Oklahoma was one of the major hempproducing states through World War II. There were many uses for the plant, including it being used as fabric for military uniforms as part of the country’s Hemp for Victory program. Henry Ford also experimented with it for use as a material in automobile manufacturing in the 1940s.

Post-war regulation and re-scheduling took hemp out of Oklahoma agriculture’s hands, but the state might once again become a leading producer.

“There’s a lot of people who think we will, and I know in the past when it was growing here back in the ’40s, we were one of the bigger producing states,” Naylor said. “We’d like to try it and see if it’s something that can help give [farmers] another means of income as

THC

opposed to growing the traditional crops here,” he said.

While industrial hemp growing was abandoned, the plant still grows wild in the state due to its cultivation here three quarters of a century ago.

“We have wild hemp growing in Oklahoma that’s left from back during that time, and they have harvested some seed from it because they’re going to try to develop like an Oklahoma heritage variety, developing it from those wild crops that have been growing here since the ’40s or maybe before that,” Naylor said. “Obviously, it’s tolerated our heat and drought and wet and everything else that’s going on, so they’d like to get ahold of those genetics and maybe add some more modern variety genetics to it for other beneficial things, whether that be CBD or fiber production or whatever that may be.”

Naylor said wild hemp is more prevalent in western parts of the state and has been found growing in Caddo, Canadian and Dewey counties.

While some farmers might see the thick, dense leftover hemp as a nuisance, a new breed of farmers see opportunity.

“I just think that most of them are excited about all the potential uses of the crop, whether it’s insulation for houses or fiber in your concrete or plastic bags or CBD or products that come from seed,” Naylor said. “You know, they’ve got hemp seed on the shelf at Walmart right now that you can eat.”

Hemp regulation

The same day the provisions of the 2018 farm act were signed into law, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) released a lengthy statement regarding its production, marketing and usage.

“We’re aware of the growing public interest in cannabis and cannabis-derived products, including cannabidiol (CBD). This increasing public interest in these products makes it even more important with the passage of this law

The Hemp Farming Act of 2018 removes the Schedule I classification and makes hemp a normal agricultural crop. | Photo bigstockphoto.com

for the FDA to clarify its regulatory authority over these products. In short, we treat products containing cannabis or cannabis-derived compounds as we do any other FDA-regulated products — meaning they’re subject to the same authorities and requirements as FDAregulated products containing any other substance. This is true regardless of the source of the substance, including whether the substance is derived from a plant that is classified as hemp,” FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb wrote in the statement released Dec. 20.

We have wild hemp growing in Oklahoma that’s left from back during [the ’40s].

Kenny Naylor “In particular, we continue to be concerned at the number of drug claims being made about products not approved by the FDA that claim to contain CBD or other cannabis-derived compounds.

Among other things, the FDA requires a cannabis product (hemp-derived or otherwise) that is marketed with a claim of therapeutic benefit, or with any other disease claim, to be approved by the FDA for its intended use before it may be introduced into interstate commerce. This is the same standard to which we hold any product marketed as a drug for human or animal use. Cannabis and cannabis-derived products claiming in their marketing and promotional materials that they’re intended for use in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of diseases (such as cancer, continued on page 14

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THE HIGH CULTURE continued from page 12

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Alzheimer’s disease, psychiatric disorders and diabetes) are considered new drugs or new animal drugs and must go through the FDA drug approval process for human or animal use before they are marketed in the U.S. “Selling unapproved products with unsubstantiated therapeutic claims is not only a violation of the law, but also can put patients at risk, as these products have not been proven to be safe or effective. This deceptive marketing of unproven treatments raises significant public health concerns, as it may keep some patients from accessing appropriate, recognized therapies to treat serious and even fatal diseases.”

Gottlieb said that due to substantial public interest, the FDA would be holding meetings in which hemp stakeholders can share their experiences and challenges, and the agency will take the appropriate actions against products being unlawfully marketed.

“At the same time, we recognize the potential opportunities that cannabis or cannabis-derived compounds could offer and acknowledge the significant interest in these possibilities,” Gottlieb wrote.

“We’re committed to pursuing an efficient regulatory framework for allowing product developers that meet the requirements under our authorities to lawfully market these types of products.”

Jim Castor, co-owner of Life Organics Cannafé, is excited by the possibilities.

“We’re absolutely energized because it legalizes cannabis essentially. What that does is it allows our extraction processes to flourish,” Castor said. “The farm bill allows Oklahoma farmers to grow — well not only local farmers but everywhere — hemp, and our extraction processes is going to extract the cannabinoids from those and put them into

Hemp has a variety of uses including CBD products, pet food and clothing. | Photo Alexa Ace

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oils and vape carts, and with the farm bill, it allows us to ship it nationwide legally. So it’s a real shot in the arm for us because our extraction processes can do regular cannabis, medical marijuana, but it also can do hemp. It’s very difficult to extract, but our proprietary process does it just fine.”

The FDA’s stance does not particularly trouble Castor.

“They kind of put it out there that they reserve the right to regulate it as a drug,” he said. “I guess they’ve always reserved the right with cannabis to call it a drug. They’ve had cannabis scheduled as a Schedule I drug for years, and the FDA already regulates marijuana as a drug, so them reserving the right to classify the CBD that’s extracted from hemp, which is also cannabis sativa, really is no change at all from their perspective. Part of that farm bill is also that concentrates and extractions are legalized. I think the FDA would like to regulate everything if they could, but I’m not sure if that will hold water.”

It also alleviates some stress from CBD producers from a tax and banking perspective.

The Internal Revenue Code subsection 280E reads, “No deduction or credit shall be allowed for any amount paid or incurred during the taxable year in carrying on any trade or business if such trade or business (or the activities which comprise such trade or business) consists of trafficking in controlled substances (within the meaning of Schedule I and II of the Controlled Substances Act) which is prohibited by Federal law or the law of any State in which such trade or business is conducted.”

“From our perspective, one of the most significant things is the banking law. Prior to that, 280E from a tax perspective, even if you’re in the CBD business, could arguably be applied,” Castor said. “And now that it’s federally legal, no longer is anybody that is selling CBD or anything resulting from industrial hemp classified as a drug dealer.”

Legal issues

Ryan Vicedomini, founder and CEO of CBD Plus USA, agrees that the industry should be held to certain standards.

“Our industry itself should be regulated at least to the nutrition supplements standards to where general manufacturing practices, or GMP, are being upheld, clean environments are being upheld. ... Having FDA regulations over CBD is not necessarily a bad thing, and it will eliminate a lot of your riff-raff because of all the fraud out there in the labeling,” he said. “I think as long as the FDA doesn’t overstep its bounds and try to bring us to pharmaceutical grade and try to make it to where it’s similar to tobacco to get approved, like nobody ever gets approved, then it’s a whole new ballgame. If the FDA tries to put a halt to the industry, that’s how they’re going to do it, and that’s going to be because of big pharma money, and I don’t know how the hell that’s gonna happen.”

Chris Brady of Redbud Soil Co., though not as optimistic, still plans to begin growing hemp in 2019.

“All of my friends that have been growers have switched over to CBD and growing hemp,” Brady said. “Just legality reasons, regulation reasons, a lot of reasons. ... I have not personally ever farmed hemp, but I vicariously have learned through them. Now, with the passage of it federally being legal, it’s even easier because now you know you’re not going to get in trouble at all. It’s literally a few pieces of paper you’ll fill out and you’re legal and it’s, you know, $500, $750, depending on what state you’re in.

The oversight is very, very minimal. It’s not like trying to sell medical marijuana, recreational marijuana at all. Not even in the same stratosphere. But if you grow a very high-quality CBD flower, hand trimmed, that’s smokeable, it’s $500 a pound all day long. So you load up one acre with plants that are yielding a pound. Add that up.”

Brady’s reading of the farm bill is that

Jim Castor owns Life Organics Cannafé in Norman and believes the legalization of hemp farming will greatly help the CBD industry. | Photo Alexa Ace

it makes hemp legal nationwide but the lack of FDA approval of CBD still makes it federally illegal.

“So the way this law is, you can’t legally extract it, you can’t legally do anything with it other than grow it and sell it, and the only people that are legal to make CBD products out of it are pharmaceutical companies that have been approved by the FDA,” Brady said. “So all that happened with this law is that the pharmaceutical companies now have the ability to pay you pennies on the dollar for bulk hemp so then they can extract CBD and be the only ones to legally sell it in United States.

“There’s just too much money at stake. Of course, there’s going to be giant corporations that can come in and crush the little guy. It’s how America works. It’s unfortunate. I’ve always been drawn to marijuana, I’m drawn to hemp, I’m drawn to things like that because it’s something that the average person can grow, can be associated with, can open a business with or whatever, and support their family, not have to rely on anybody else. But all of that being said, there is a place for people that want to put in the work and produce high-quality products, whether it’s CBD or THC. It’s no different than a microbrewery or anything like that. People will shine.”

But Brady said a government agency isn’t going to stop him.

“I really don’t care about words on a piece of paper,” he said. “That’s what laws are, right? They’re words on a piece of paper. And it doesn’t mean I have to agree with it or anybody else has to agree with it. The FDA, they put words on a piece of paper and they say they’re in control? I don’t agree with that. I don’t agree that they’re in control of Mother Nature. If we all don’t abide by it, those words on that piece of paper mean shit, right? So that’s why I’m going to do it.”

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M A R I J UA N A

THE HIGH CULTURE

Green bills

THC

Dozens of bills introduced in the Oklahoma Legislature seek to refine and enhance marijuana laws. By Matt Dinger

The Oklahoma legislative session begins next week, with dozens of bills regarding the newly formed medical marijuana industry before lawmakers.

Many of them are shell bills, meaning they contain no meaningful language but serve as placeholders to be amended later.

Others make minor, expected changes to existing laws. For example, Senate Bill 887 would allow for counties to assess fees to certain licensees under a subsection allowing for individual counties to increase quantities of medical marijuana that patients are allowed to possess.

But some, like Senate Bill 325, would radically alter the scope of State Question 788. Voters overwhelmingly approved the measure by nearly 57 percent of the vote, a difference of more than 120,000 cast ballots, last June.

SB325 would allow individual counties to hold special elections to “restrict or prohibit the possession, consumption, transport, sale, cultivation or manufacture of marijuana or marijuana products, or any combination thereof.”

A petition signed by 15 percent of voters in the last gubernatorial election would get the measure on a ballot, or a board of county commissioners could call a vote on its own motion.

Sen. Casey Murdock, R-Felt, filed the bill. Murdock’s district includes the entirety of the panhandle as well as Dewey, Ellis, Harper, Major, Woods and Woodward counties. He won a special election last year after Sen. Bryce Marlatt, R-Woodward, resigned when charged with felony sexual battery.

All of the counties in Murdock’s district voted down SQ788, with a majority of voters ranging from 60 to 72 percent opposing the measure.

“I fully understand the uses for medical marijuana and the benefits there are,” Murdock told Tulsa World after the bill was introduced. “But my Senate district voted overwhelmingly against it. And since they voiced so heavily against it, I wanted them to have the chance to decide what to have in their local communities.”

The backlash online was swift and negative, with some leaving profane comments on Sen. Murdock’s Facebook page.

One of his opponents on the matter is one of Murdock’s own relatives.

Amber Murdock, who owns Headwinds Nursery, the only licensed cultivator and processor in Cimarron County, told Tulsa World she has already invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into her business.

Sen. Murdock also told the World

that he plans to amend the bill so licensees can still possess medical marijuana in counties that vote to opt out and to grandfather existing businesses so that a vote would not force them to close.

Senate Bill 1030, introduced by Sen. Lonnie Paxton, R-Tuttle, would also change several things set in place by SQ788.

As it stands, Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority (OMMA) does not retain patient information except for a digital photo, the county where it was issued, a 24-digit identification number and the expiration date of the license.

SB1030 would require them to keep all information gathered by patients.

It would also roll back the $400 fine for marijuana possession without a license and allow municipalities to restrict all public marijuana smoking and vaping from public places outside a residence.

SB1030 would also allow employers to discriminate against, penalize and/ or terminate employees with marijuana licenses in “safety-sensitive” positions, including but not limited to hazardous materials transport, commercial drivers, heavy machinery and power tool operators, machine repairmen, utility workers, law enforcement officers and armed security officers, firefighters, paramedics, patient care workers and food or medicine handlers, among others.

Retail concerns

A number of bills were introduced by Rep. Greg McCortney, R-Ada. McCortney chaired a bipartisan, bicameral committee on SQ788 last year.

Senate Bill 756 would require childresistant packaging for medical marijuana that would be plain, opaque and not depict any images or commercial logos.

Additionally, “medical marijuana packaging shall not bear a reasonable resemblance to any commercially available product. Medical marijuana products shall be packaged to minimize appeal to children and shall not depict shapes, images, text or designs appealing to children,” according to the bill.

Senate Bill 765, also introduced by McCortney, would restrict the public consumption of cannabis products, keeping in line with the state’s ban on tobacco products in similar spaces.

“No person shall smoke tobacco or marijuana in a public place, in any part of a zoo to which the public may be admitted, whether indoors or outdoors, in an indoor workplace, in any vehicle providing public transportation, at a meeting of a public body, in a nursing facility licensed pursuant to the Nursing Home Care Act, or in a child

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care facility licensed pursuant to the Oklahoma Child Care Facilities Licensing Act,” according to the bill.

Medical marijuana could not be consumed within 25 feet of an entrance of a municipal, county or state building.

The bill would exclude the smoking of marijuana in medical research or treatment centers if consumption of cannabis is integral to the research or treatment, the bill states.

The bill also modifies language excluding tobacco smoking from being prohibited in bars and taverns but does not specifically prohibit the smoking of cannabis in such businesses where tobacco is allowed.

Senate Bill 898, introduced by Sen. Brent Howard, R-Altus, would require a verification system confirming a valid license before dispensing products.

“Licensed dispensaries shall enter each medical marijuana license’s 24-character identifier into the license verification system at the point of sale to ensure that such license is valid. If the license is invalid, the sale shall not be occur,” the bill reads.

Senate Bill 959, authored by Nathan Dahm, R-Broken Arrow, would protect medical marijuana cardholders from being denied concealed carry licenses from the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation (OSBI).

“Nothing in this section shall be construed to allow the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation to deny an otherwise qualified applicant from obtaining a handgun license pursuant to the Oklahoma Self-Defense Act solely on the basis of the applicant being a lawful holder of a medical marijuana license,” according to the bill.

Conviction relief

But the most significant and far-reaching piece of legislation regarding can-

Rep. Jason Dunnington has co-authored legislation that would provide post-conviction relief to those convicted of marijuana possession before the passage of SQ780. | Photo Oklahoma House of Representatives / provided

nabis this session might be a bill to make State Question 780 retroactive.

Approved by voters in Nov. 2016, SQ780 reclassified certain drug and property crimes as misdemeanors instead of felonies. The maximum penalty now for simple drug possession — not limited to marijuana — is one year in county jail and a $1,000 fine.

House Bill 1269 would provide postconviction relief to those convicted before the passage of SQ780 but were punished more harshly than they would have been had it been enacted.

The legislation was filed by majority leader Rep. Jon Echols, R-Oklahoma City, and state Rep. Jason Dunnington, D-Oklahoma City.

“It is time for Oklahoma to get out of the business of arresting and prosecuting individuals afflicted by drug addiction,” Dunnington said in a news release. “We have Oklahomans that are labeled as felons, and their crimes would be legal or a much lesser crime today. These folks are disenfranchised, and their families are suffering. This legislation seeks to heal these wounds and continue Oklahoma down the road of responsible criminal justice reform.”

“The people of Oklahoma have spoken loud and clear on the issue of criminal justice reform,” Echols said in the release. “I look forward to working with members of both parties to find not Democratic or Republican solutions, but Oklahoma solutions to the issues facing this state. This bill will be a great step in that direction.”

Drafts of all proposed legislation and amendments can be found at oklegislature.gov.

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REVIEW

EAT & DRINK

Classen curved

Cafe 501’s menu full of standards doesn’t match its sleek decor and trendy Classen Curve location.

By Jacob Threadgill

Cafe 501 5825 NW Grand Blvd. hrgok.com/cafe-501-classen-curve 405-844-1501 WHAT WORKS: Anything from the bakery, especially sandwiches with housemade foccacia.

WHAT NEEDS WORK: The marinade on the poke bowl missed the mark.

TIP: Check out its seasonal wine dinners, like Feb. 7th’s Language of Love.

Cafe 501 is one of Edmond’s most venerable restaurants as it closes in on 25 years of operation. The Classen Curve location opened in 2010, and it was one of the first restaurants I visited when I moved to Oklahoma City in 2017 after seeing good online reviews and buzz.

The chic décor of the surrounding Classen Curve development impressed me, as did the sleek interior at Cafe 501, but a lunch menu of salads, wraps, sandwiches, pizza and tacos, while well-executed, didn’t leave a lasting impression.

As time has passed, I get busy checking out new restaurants, and sometimes the institutions fall through the cracks.

Peter and Sheree Holloway founded Cafe 501 in Edmond in 1995 after Sheree Holloway attended the prestigious École Lenôtre baking school in France.

The Holloways’ footprint has expanded over the decades to include Boulevard Steakhouse, the second 501 location, Martini Lounge in Edmond and an upcoming Italian concept later in 2019.

Fresh baked breads and sweet treats have become a hallmark of the Cafe 501 brand over the years. In doing re-

search, I was a bit disappointed to see that neither location serves midweek breakfast; there’s only the weekend brunch option.

Despite the lack of breakfast option, the bakery case at the entry is as tempting as anything in the city. It’s hard to think about what you might want to eat for lunch or dinner when you’re thinking about ricotta cookies, salted caramel butter bars or slices of pies and cake.

The colorful macarons are almost as good of a dessert option as Cafe 501’s bread pudding.

The first few times I went to Cafe 501 in Classen Curve was for lunch. I had a good experience, if not exactly very memorable. It offers a solid selection of toasted sandwiches, cold deli options and wraps. You’ll find the standards: chicken salad, BLT, California club, meatball — even the vegetarian options didn’t seem that inspired. It has grilled vegetable and grilled portabella sandwich options, which is the vegetarian equivalent of ham and cheese. How about using hummus for extra protein?

It has hummus on the dinner menu as an appetizer.

The best things on Cafe 501’s lunch menu are the Coyote Chicken Sandwich and Coyote Crunch Wrap: grilled chicken paired with caramelized onions and jalapeños. The wrap gets the addition of lettuce and tortilla strips, but it’s hard to beat the housemade focaccia bread. I’d recommend any of the sandwiches served on focaccia if you’re going carb-heavy.

As disappointed as I was with Cafe

501’s vegetarian sandwich options, the restaurant should be commended for offering one of the city’s most robust salad selections, w ith 14 options on the menu.

T h e strawberry and spinach salad has crispy goat cheese and hearts of palm, which is perfect for the summer. The fresh pear salad is perfect for colder months with spinach, blue cheese and bacon. I like the different salad options, but I was surprised to see that there is nothing vegan-friendly on the menu.

Every option would require the elimination of cheese or meat protein.

[Cafe 501] should be commended for offering one of the city’s most robust salad selections, with 14 options on the menu.

I wanted to check out how the kitchen handles dinner on a recent visit after extensive time with the lunch menu. I noticed a mixture of new items like a tuna poke bowl and Thai bowl which is the only vegan entrée option alongside standards like its Santa Fe chicken, which has been a staple for years. The cast-iron chicken is a great dinner option: red wine braised chicken in tomato sauce with roasted tomato sauce, creamy polenta and spinach.

I nearly ordered the short rib stroganoff because I almost always order a short rib on the menu.

This might be a controversial opinion, but give me a well-cooked short rib that ha s been infused with all sorts of flavors

Raw tuna was served atop warm sautéed kale, which was a less than ideal experience. | Photo Jacob Threadgill

during the braising process over a medium-rare rib-eye. I didn’t pull the trigger on the stroganoff because it inspired me to make one of my favorite recipes from Food Network’s Giada de Laurentiis. It’s short ribs seared and braised with roma tomatoes, beef broth, basil, a dark red wine (I use cabernet sauvignon) and Dijon mustard. When the sauce is blended together, it tastes a lot like stroganoff but doesn’t have the extra calories of heavy cream. You can easily add mushrooms for a heartier dish.

I ended up ordering the poke bowl because I wanted to see how the kitchen executed the latest food craze, and it was a miss. The tuna wasn’t cut very well, and a majority of the pieces had grisly fat. I couldn’t taste any discernable marinade beyond Sriracha. There was no soy sauce, rice vinegar or sesame oil to be found. The cold tuna was served on top of lightly sautéed kale, which heated up the tuna to an unpleasant temperature. I would’ve kept the kale raw, massaged it and paired it with ginger sesame dressing.

Poke is one of the hottest food trends across the country, but this was a lesson to order it at a sushi restaurant, Okie Pokie, The One Cafe or at Caeli’s Sweets Eats & Bar, places that have been serving poke for a long time and haven’t hastily added it to the menu based on trends.

I also tried the mushroom pizza, which was excellent. The crust was crispy and soft in the center, and the mushrooms were hearty with the right amount of balsamic vinegar and arugula for extra greenery.

I had good service for dinner, and I like that they offer a tropical version of unsweet tea, but I should’ve probably known better than to order the poke at a restaurant that doesn’t specialize in it.

Poke aside, I’ve never had a bad experience at Cafe 501, and its bakery it topnotch, but with a vegan-unfriendly salad menu and standard sandwich selection, it feels closer to 2010 than 2020.

left Santa Fe chicken is a great dinner option at Cafe 501. right cast-iron chicken | Photo Jacob Threadgill

O KG A Z E T T E . C O M | J A N U A R Y 3 0 , 2 0 1 9

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Italian expansion

As Osteria expands to lunch and brunch, its owners begin a new concept in Deep Deuce.

By Jacob Threadgill

The partnership that includes celebrity chef Fabio Viviani and local chef Jonathon Stranger — Osteria — expanded its offerings to midweek lunch and weekend brunch last week, but it’s only the beginning of the expansion between talented chefs.

The duo will join with other partners to open Bar Cicchetti in the old Urban Johnnie’s location at 121 NE Second Street in Deep Deuce later this year.

It will be the latest addition to Viviani’s collection of restaurants that total more than 20 across seven states.

His footprint has grown since he was voted fan favorite on the fifth season of Bravo’s Top Chef.

“Oklahoma City is where Detroit was five years ago, where Houston was 10 years ago,” Viviani said, seated at the bar during Osteria’s, 6430 Avondale Drive, first brunch service. “It’s the place where you can grow, have business and reasonable prices, and a lot of people are moving in. [OKC] is yet from being in the spotlight, which makes it, for us, very appealing for creating concepts. I can’t get the kind of land I can get here in Chicago and New York. The amount of people in the city, the quality of people, income bracket and eating habits justify somebody like us to come in and partner with a local rock star like Jonathon Stranger.”

Stra nger credited Viviani and his management tea m with operating a smooth transition at Osteria since it opened last November, 20

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The prosciutto crocchetta at Osteria. | Photo Maucieri Visuals Co. / provided

which has led to staff retention and easy expansion into lunch and brunch.

Through its first week of brunch and lunch service, 10 percent of all sales will be donated to Someday Soon Foundation, a local nonprofit focused on helping the homeless and run by Tommy Kelly.

“It’s almost like a Robin Hood situation,” Stranger said of Someday Soon.

“Every dollar that goes to Someday Soon, Tommy assesses the immediate needs of the needy and gets what they need. There is no administrative cost or marketing. It’s take the money, feed people if they’re hungry; if they’re cold, give them coats.”

Viviani — a native of Florence, Italy, who moved to the U.S. in 2005 — admitted that brunch is not an Italian tradition but said he has had fun designing the menu by putting Italian and Mediterranean twists on American classics like adding pesto to hollandaise or using pork belly instead of bacon.

“We’ve got a gigantic cinnamon roll

left The bloody mary is garnished with a tomato and fried cheese pierogi. right Shrimp and grits on the new Osteria brunch menu | Photos Jacob Threadgill

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A special section devoted to wedding & event planning that doesn’t have frosting; it has a pecan glaze because there are a lot of pecans in Italy,” Viviani said. “We love caramello, caramel sauce. There is a lot of infusion of Italian culture into a timeframe of the day where we’re not used to eating.”

The Chelsea’s cinnamon roll supreme ($12) is the size of a softball and is topped with macerated balsamic berries. During its preview service, the house-cured salmon with spiced mascarpone and cocoli — a fried Italian popover — was some of the best bites.

Stranger’s favorite on the brunch menu is the Calabrese breakfast pizza ($19), which uses farm eggs, potato and nduja — a spicy Italian sausage that is spreadable.

The brunch menu also includes oven-fired baked eggs pomodoro, shrimp and grits, tiramisu French toast, an open-faced prosciutto crocchetta sandwich, pancetta Benedict, avocado toast, yellow corn waffles and a sausage-and-pepper omelet.

There is a lot of infusion of Italian culture into a timeframe of the day where we’re not used to eating.

Fabio Viviani

The lunch menu places an emphasis on Osteria’s housemade pasta and wood-fired pizzas. It also has a wagyu beef burger and grilled chicken breast entrée. The restaurant is now open at 11 a.m. every day and serves until midnight Sunday-Thursday and until 2 a.m. on Friday and Saturday nights.

Viviani travels to Oklahoma City from his home in Chicago at least once per month.

“I got here on a Friday and didn’t The breakfast pizza features local eggs, potatoes and nduja, a spreadable Italian sausage. | Photo provided

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land until 10 p.m.,” he said. “When I got [to Osteria], it was packed. That’s what we want to do. We want to bring good entertainment and hospitality to people. When everyone else around you is dead and you’ve got 50 people in here, that’s the best.”

Stranger and Viviani’s relationship strengthened during Osteria’s delayed opening, due to the previous tenant — Starbucks — being delayed in its own move across Nichols Hills Plaza.

Stranger said they knew they wanted to do another restaurant together before Osteria officially opened.

After Urban Johnnie’s closed, they struck a deal. Stranger’s career in Oklahoma blossomed downtown after returning to his hometown, where he opened Ludivine and The R&J Supper Club and Lounge with Russ Johnson.

He’s excited to move back into the area and was attracted to the high residential density in Deep Deuce.

Viviani described Bar Cicchetti “as if a sports bar and Italian restaurant had a baby.”

Stranger said they will eschew lots of smaller televisions for one large movie theater-style screen that will come down for big games. “Cicchetti” typically means small plates and dishes, especially in the Venice region.

The menu at Bar Cicchetti is still a long way from being finalized, but Stranger envisions plenty of Mediterranean influence with familystyle plates and large appetizers. They are eyeing an opening in the third quarter of 2019.

It will mean more visits to Oklahoma for Viviani, who said he enjoys the state’s great outdoors.

“For me, whether it is hunting or fishing, hiking or shooting, I love it,” Viviani said. “There are a lot of activities here that you can do. We went driving ATVs last time. Next trip, we’re going helicopter hunting. I love to do what the locals do. Just sign me up.”

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GAZEDIBLES

EAT & DRINK

Melted cheese

Whether you’re looking for melted cheese on a sandwich or with pasta, these seven restaurants will answer that craving that is important yearround, but even more so during the winter. It’s a not-so scientific fact that melted cheese warms your soul.

By Jacob Threadgill with photos provided and Gazette / file

Off the Hook Seafood and More

1920 S. Meridian Ave. offthehookokc.com | 405-606-6040

Off the Hook has done something once thought to be impossible: make Oklahoma known for seafood. Its most popular menu item is the smothered seafood that tops rice or fries with a lobster sauce that includes shrimp, crawfish, lump crab, baby clams and, of course, cheese, bacon and green onions. The melted lobster sandwich combines lobster, Monterey Jack, roasted peppers and onions.

Café Cuvée

Scottie’s Deli

There are a lot of Canadians who will tell you that it’s not poutine unless it’s served with lukewarm cheese curds.

Luckily, we’re not bound by Canadian tradition. Café Cuvée’s new Poutine Pomme tops fries with red wine gravy, duck confit and melted Swiss cheese.

Why are you still reading this and not ordering it already?

There are six grilled cheeses on Scottie’s menu, which makes all of its bread inhouse. You can get fancy varieties like T’s Grilled Cheese with horseradish Havarti with chives, tomato and Dijon or the ham and pimento cheese, but ultimately, nothing gets the perfect pull like a classic with American cheese.

1200 N. Walker Ave. cafecuvee.com | 405-898-8120

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Tom + Chee

Vito’s Ristorante

Nashbird

Pizza 23

This national chain got a boost after appearing on ABC’s Shark Tank, and the first Oklahoma location opened off Memorial Road early last year. The menu is designed around the timeless connection between grilled cheese, soups and salad. You can build your own sandwich or choose from 10 house selections. Of course you always skip and go straight to dessert for a grilled doughnut and cheese.

Chef and owner Cathy Cummings’ sugo — classic meat sauce — is some of the best in the city, and when combined with melted mozzarella, it’s undefeatable. You can get it with a variety of dishes across the menu, and you can’t go wrong with any of them. The idea of watching the mozzarella melt under the broiler is one of the best feelings in all of cooking.

Nashbird will parlay its excellent take on Nashville hot chicken into a second location in Edmond later this year, but the restaurant is much more than just chicken. It’s worth checking out for its macaroni and cheese, which is available as an appetizer in popper form or as an entrée. Of course, you can get an entrée order topped with your favorite heat level of fried chicken or watch for a special that puts it all onto bread.

If you have a hard time choosing between pizza and pasta, why not choose both? The Bacon Mac-a-Delic at Pizza 23 is a carblovers dream. The crust is topped with Alfredo sauce, macaroni, bacon, mozzarella, feta and cheddar cheeses. Pasta on pizza is a relatively new topping, and there needs to be more combinations.

2116 W. Memorial Road tomandchee.com | 405-810-5152

7521 N. May Ave. vitosokc.com | 405-848-4867

1 NW Ninth St. nashbirdchicken.com | 405-600-9718

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1/9/2019 3:55:16 PM

ART

ARTS & CULTURE

Nature vision

An exhibit at OKCMOA features the work of internationally famous photographer Ansel Adams and those he inspired. By Jeremy Martin

Ansel Adams didn’t take photos.

“You make a photograph; you don’t take a photograph,” said Francesca Giani, curator of modern and contemporary art at Oklahoma City Museum of Art (OKCMOA). “There’s so much that goes into the creation of that image.

It’s an artifact, so the artist’s ability consists of looking at that scene, at that landscape and responding to his or her emotional reaction and finding the best way to translate that emotional reaction into the final image. And that is what Ansel Adams did in a successful way.”

Photos by Adams and others he inspired are on display in the exhibit Ansel Adams and the Photographers of the West FridayMay 26 at OKCMOA, 415 Couch Drive.

Adams was born in San Francisco in 1902 and became famous for his striking blackand-white photographs of the American wilderness and his outspoken environmentalism as director of Sierra Club.

“I think that the key in Ansel Adams’ success was the fact that first of all, he was an idealist,” Giani said. “He really believed in his work, and that inspires the images and the art he created. … And the technical quality of his work — he was a magician of the dark room. Photographers, people in the field, have always been able to recognize that he sort of pioneered things like the zone system and the idea of previsualization, things that were revolutionary at that point. He found a very effective way to convey his intentions when looking at a scene, his intentions of what he meant to portray in the photograph, and he managed to find technical ways to create that photograph.”

The zone system allows photographers to determine the right film exposure and development to achieve the effect they originally envision when taking a photograph. Though digital photography has in many cases made photo-editing software mastery more important than dark room magic, Adams’ guiding philosophy and the work he created are still relevant to modern photographers, Giani said.

Adams was born at the turn of the 20th century, and his philosophy was inspired by the past but considered the future.

“He was the visual heir in many ways of writers and thinkers like Henry David Thoreau and John Muir, these very early environmentalists,” Giani said. “He truly believed in the power of beauty and the uplifting moral dimension of beauty in nature. So he responded to the previous century, but he was also a very modern environmentalist. He was in the field, and he was a very active, serious environmentalist. He lobbied and rallied and put presidents on the spot.”

Wartime work

The exhibition features seven Adams photographs dating from the late 1920s to 1968 as well as photos from photographers he inspired.

“They all responded to Ansel Adams’ vision of nature and of photography, but they all did something different with their practice,” Giani said. “I’m not sure you can define an Ansel Adams school of photography, but many of these artists attended his workshops and learned directly from him.”

These photos include dye-transfer

Tree, Stump and Mist, Northern Cascades, Washington, 1958 | Photograph by Ansel Adams Collection Center for Creative Photography ©The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust / provided

Mount Williamson, the Sierra Nevada, from Manzanar, California, 1945 | Photograph by Ansel Adams Collection Center for Creative Photography ©The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust / provided

prints of Eliot Porter’s photos of the Grand Canyon region, which Giani described as “images of incredible power” with “very intense, very saturated colors.”

“It basically captures a region or an area that no longer exists in a sense,” Giani said.

“The tributary canyons of the Grand Canyon were flooded when a dam was built in between New Mexico and Arizona, and the biology of the place, along with some Native American sites, were lost forever.”

To Giani, Adams’ aesthetic and ethos are best conveyed in Mount Williamson, Sierra Nevada, from Manzanar, California, featured in the exhibit.

“There are some rocks in the very immediate foreground, and it basically looks like the camera was positioned on the ground or on a rock,” Giani said. “So imagine these rocks that are right on your face, and then you have this visual of this land of rocks and then at the end toward the horizon, you have the mountain. In between the mountains and behind the mountains, you have these clouds and the sunrays filtering through the clouds and through the mountains. It’s an incredibly evocative image. It’s something that hit him almost on the spot because he had seen the landscape before, but it was only when the storm arrived that he felt he could sort of capture the place and its beauty.”

The photograph was originally part of a series Adams shot at an internment camp for Japanese Americans during World War II. In Born Free and Equal, a book collecting these photographs, Adams wrote, “In these years of strain and sorrow, the grandeur, the beauty and quietness of the mountains are more important to us than ever before. ... The huge vistas and the stern realities of sun and wind and space symbolize the immensity and opportunity of America — perhaps a vital reassurance following the experiences of enforced exodus.”

The Born Free and Equal exhibit was briefly on display at the Museum of

Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City.

In a Jan. 18 Washington Post op-ed, Adams’ grandson Matthew Adams wrote, “It was wartime, and there was virulent anti-Japanese sentiment. The exhibition closed prematurely. The book was pulled from the shelves and burned. The U.S. government shuttered the internment camps and returned people to their homes the next year, before the end of the war and, significantly, before the Supreme Court had an opportunity to rule on the matter. The camps were illegal and immoral, and the government knew it.”

Mount Williamson is the only Manzanar photo on display at OKCMOA, but Giani said it captures Adams’ view of nature.

“The rest of the series depicts the daily life of the people imprisoned in the camp, but this photograph in particular depicts the landscape, the incredible view that you could see from the camp,” Giani said. “He was always very attracted to landscape and to nature. That was his life’s obsession, and almost immediately as the Great Depression hit followed by World War II, he experienced criticism from other photographers who were more socially engaged and would photograph breadlines and the suffering of people. So he always felt a sense of inadequacy … but at the same time, he firmly believed in the social value of the landscape and the social value of nature. … When wars and conflicts are over, nature will be there.”

Visit okcmoa.com.

Ansel Adams and the Photographers of the West Friday-May 26 Oklahoma City Museum of Art 415 Couch Drive okcmoa.com | 405-236-3100 Free-$12

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T H E AT E R

ARTS & CULTURE

Sound machine

On Your Feet! tells the story of Gloria and Emilio Estefan’s family and music. By Ian Jayne

Some songs and the musicals named after them are an open invocation to the audience, a call to live life to the fullest and overcome challenges. This is especially true with On Your Feet! The Story of Emilio & Gloria Estefan, presented by OKC Broadway Tuesday-Feb. 10 at Civic Center Music Hall, 201 N. Walker Ave. Tickets are $27-$86 and are available at okcbroadway.com.

On Your Feet! follows the lives of Gloria Estefan (Christie Prades) and Emilio Estefan (Ektor Rivera), tracing their musical journey to stardom but also the highs and lows of their personal lives and the lives of their closest family members.

Broadway veteran Nancy Ticotin is playing the role of Gloria Fajardo — Gloria Estefan’s mother — and she spoke to Oklahoma Gazette about her experiences on the stage and in On Your Feet!

Ticotin got her start in New York musical theater very early, coming from an artistic family. When she was a girl, Ticotin and her siblings would put on shows for their friends and neighbors, improvising everything and charging admission.

“It wasn’t like there was a question of it,” Ticotin said. “It was just a part of who we were as kids, and it was in our blood.”

Ticotin started dancing when she was 9 years old, attending summer dance classes as part of a program called Operation High Hopes in which she focused on jazz, ballet, flamenco, modern and ethnic dances. The summer culminated in a performance in the Naumberg Bandshell in Central Park.

On Your Feet! covers Gloria and Emilio Estefan’s lives, from courtship to their chart-dominating period. | Photo Matthew Murphy / provided

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Even after the summer, Ticotin continued to study dancing, acting and singing under the direction of Tina Ramirez, who founded Ballet Hispanico and Ticotin said worked to ensure that Hispanic children could find outlets for expressing their artistic talent.

“She saw that there was no place for us to go,” Ticotin said. “I did all of my dance training there, and I was a professional dancer with the company from the age of 13.”

Ticotin performed in the Broadway production of The King and I when she was 10 years old, later starring in West Side Story on Broadway and playing the role of Anita on its European tour. She would also reprise the role of Anita in Jerome Robbins’ West Side Story Suite and would later perform in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway production In the Heights.

Ticotin said that performance is ingrained in her.

“You don’t choose dance; dance chooses you,” she said, quoting Martha Graham.

Choices, cultures

On Your Feet! is a jukebox musical about choices — and, sometimes, the lack thereof. The show traces Gloria Estefan’s musical origins, including her choice to join Miami Latin Boys, the group in which Emilio performed that would later be renamed Miami Sound Machine. This choice helps launch her musical career, but it also creates a chasm between herself and her mother, who disapproves of this decision because it will take Gloria away from her father, José Fajardo, who contracted multiple sclerosis from Agent Orange after serving in the Vietnam War.

“When Emilio shows up, he’s taking her away from household duties, from all the things the mother had,” Ticotin said.

Fajardo’s own life was marked by challenges, both personal and professional.

“The mother in our story was a successful performer in her own right in Havana, Cuba,” Ticotin said. “We have a number in our show where she gets to sing and dance.”

In the song “Mi Tierra,” the entire band and dance company are onstage with Ticotin.

But in the middle of the number, Ticotin said, Fajardo’s husband comes in and warns the family that they must leave Cuba. He is imprisoned for two years in Cuba but eventually makes his way to the United States, where the rest of the family has fled. Gloria Fajardo, young Gloria and Gloria’s grandmother, Consuelo García, forge a life together in the Little Havana neighborhood of Miami.

Fajardo had to relinquish her dreams and her music in order to take care of her family, studying again for degrees in education studies that she had already received in Cuba.

“They tore up her degree before she left Cuba, so she came to the United States and had to get it again,” Ticotin said.

Ticotin described Fajardo’s character as stubborn, headstrong and incredibly knowledgeable, the family matriarch who worked hard to ensure her family’s success at the expense of her own.

“There’s some bitterness and resentment towards the situation with Gloria and Emilio because she wanted that,” Ticotin said. “That was supposed to be her opportunity, and she didn’t have it.

She loved the daughter, but she did not support her career.”

Fajardo would not speak to Gloria for two years, until the near-tragic 1990 car accident that left Estefan nearly paralyzed, Ticotin said.

When Fajardo travels to the hospital, she reconnects with her daughter and Emilio. Ticotin performs another song (“If I Never Got to Tell You”), written specifically for On Your Feet! The song began as a melody written by Estefan’s daughter Emily. The two composed lyrics for the show together.

Christie Prades center plays Gloria Estefan in On Your Feet! | Photo Matthew Murphy / provided

Responsible representation

Ticotin said portraying Gloria Fajardo was both complex and rewarding, marked by the challenge of representing a real-life person onstage while also drawing on her own talents and sense of self.

“I still had to be me and bring to the role my theatricality and my experience,” Ticotin said. “It’s a very complex character. The responsibility is great when it’s a real person, to portray who they are and get the gist of their energy and their spirit and who they are as a character, but I think I’ve done it, and I really enjoy what I’m doing. I’m very lucky.”

While Fajardo passed away before she could see On Your Feet!, Ticotin said she discussed her portrayal with Gloria Estefan and earned the seal of approval from Emilio — and even from a fire marshal at one of the show’s performances, whose sixth-grade teacher was Fajardo.

In addition to bringing complex, three-dimensional people to life, Ticotin said that performing On Your Feet! is also an exercise in responsibility and representation for the Hispanic community in the current political climate.

“We are adamant in showing the public that we are good people and we have families with tension, and issues and emotional stress just like everyone else,” Ticotin said, noting that the musical has resonated with audiences across the country. “At the end of the show, they’re all standing on their feet, just like the song says, and they’re applauding for us and the story of these two humans who had the American Dream.

They were successful at the American Dream, and they represent everybody.”

Visit okcbroadway.com.

On Your Feet! The Story of Emilio & Gloria Estefan Tuesday-Feb. 10 Civic Center Music Hall 201 N. Walker Ave. okcbroadway.com | 405-594-8300 $27-$86

T H E AT E R

All of the performers Oklahoma City Repertory Theatre and University of Central Oklahoma’s joint production of Hair are under age 30. | Photo University of Central Oklahoma College of Fine Arts and Design / provided

Youthful idealism CityRep and UCO’s theater department team up to perform Hair, a musical that only appears to be rooted in concerns of the past. By Jeremy Martin

Billed as The American Tribal LoveRock Musical, Hair opened in 1968 on Broadway, where it ran 1,742 performances, earned a Tony nomination and topped the Billboard charts. That wasn’t supposed to happen.

“It was not at all meant to be a big commercial Broadway musical,” said Oklahoma City Repertory Theatre (CityRep) founding artistic director Donald Jordan. “It was an experimental piece of avant-garde, cutting-edge theater. … It’s not exactly Hello, Dolly!, which is the kind of show that was running on Broadway at that time.”

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the revolutionary musical’s original Broadway run, CityRep is collaborating with University of Central Oklahoma’s (UCO’s) musical theater department to stage Hair Feb. 6-10 at the university’s Mitchell Hall Theatre, 100 N. University Drive, in Edmond.

Hair’s original cast recording spawned hit singles like “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In” and “Good Morning Starshine,” and Miloš Forman directed a film adaptation in 1979. A 2009 Broadway revival of the show won a Tony Award and a Drama Desk Award, and a live production is scheduled for broadcast on NBC in May. But the musical, which follows several diverse characters through 1960s counterculture and focuses on a young man’s decision about whether to burn his draft card, was originally shocking and divisive.

“It was very controversial,” Jordan

said. “It revealed the racism of the day, the sexual oppression and the sexual liberation of women. It was very strongly anti-Vietnam War. 1968 was sort of the nexus year in American history during that turbulent era of the ’60s. That was the year when so much of the turning point came and crises happened. Martin Luther King [Jr.] was assassinated. Robert Kennedy was assassinated. … There were riots. There was the Mai Lai massacre.

There was the Democratic convention in Chicago in 1968 and all the fights that went on there. There was the extension to the Civil Rights Act that President Johnson signed. Walter Cronkite went to Vietnam, and he talked about how what was happening in the real war was different from what the Pentagon had been telling the American people, and the mood of America changed about the war when they discovered the realities. It was a huge, monumental year in American history, and the play sort of reflects all of those tensions that were going on.”

Subsequent unconventional, zeitgeistcapturing musicals including Tommy, Jesus Christ Superstar, Rent, Spring Awakening and Hamilton might not exist in their current form without this “farout, way out there show,” Jordan said.

Though attitudes have changed in some ways since Hair debuted, Jordan wrote a caveat for modern audiences.

“Warning,” it reads. “This CityRep/ UCO co-production will include groovy hippies singing, cursing, smoking pot, dancing, getting naked, mocking societal

conventions, meditating, taking LSD, flaunting their sexuality, celebrating their race, promoting peace, justice, equality and creating a happening. Also, there will be audience participation.”

The CityRep and UCO production also marks the 10th anniversary of collaboration between the university and the theater. Though Jordan had his own experience of the events of 1968 to draw from when he performed in Hair in New York the ’90s, he said the cast for the upcoming production, many of them college students, began working on the play with much less historical context.

“There’s no one in the cast that’s over 30,” Jordan said. “Most of these artists are, more or less, born around the year 2000, so when I’m talking to you about how I remember 1968 and what an intense time that was, to them it falls into history in the same way that the Civil War might if we were doing a musical about that. … Part of the challenge is for young people to understand it, and as we talk about it, you see the artists working very hard to incorporate that information, and then you see how it impacts the emotional commitment they’re able to make and the specificity they’re able to bring to the play. Part of the unique quality of doing this play 50 years later is that the young people onstage were not alive then, but many of the people they will be performing the play for were alive then and, in fact, were the young people that the cast is pretending to be.”

Self-examination

For audience members who lived through the ’60s, the musical offers nostalgia but also a chance for self-examination.

“It’s about youthful idealism at the beginning of these people’s adulthood, and now, 50 years later, you can look back having gone through a life’s journey and think about the things that you believed then at the age of 18 and how powerful some of it was or perhaps some of it was

naïve and didn’t really get everything right,” Jordan said. “Every generation has to learn as it goes. That’s all right.”

The young cast, meanwhile, can see earlier versions of progressive movements for peace, environmental conservation and racial and sexual equality that have continued into the 21st century.

“What they have really discovered is the germ of what that generation was fighting for in this time, how those things have gone on to become powerful societal constructs,” Jordan said. “The idealism of that generation in 1968 changed the world and moved it. The power of their protest and movement is really what led to the end of the war in Vietnam.”

Hair remains relevant, in part, because the issues it discusses are still unresolved a half-century later.

“Here’s the thing,” Jordan said. “It’s 50 years later and we’ve made great progress, but no one would say that we have no racism in America. No one would say that we’ve achieved perfect equality between the sexes. Nobody would say that at this moment in time, we trust our government to be honest and transparent. … You see in this play the incredible idealism and patriotism of these young people to challenge these institutions, to challenge things to be better; when you look at it in the context of 2019, we have made progress, and at the same time we still have a long way to go.”

But the musical also remains inspirational, Jordan said, because it documents a time when youth successfully challenged convention in a way that many previously considered impossible.

“What extreme underdogs they seemed to be, to put it in Super Bowl terms,” Jordan said. “These were crazy, idealistic thoughts. Who would think that you could make the government stop a war? Who would think you could change people’s thinking about the environment?

Who would think you could put an end to this hundreds of years’ legacy of racism, and yet within that 50 years we’re talking about, we’ve seen marriage equality and we’ve seen Barack Obama come to be president. We’ve seen a whole different kind of accountability from our government about what happens militarily. It was the unfettered idealism of youth that in fact did change the world, the kind of thing that people either denigrate or laugh about. First they mock it, then they fear it and, finally, it comes to be.”

Tickets are $8-$30. Visit cityrep.com.

Hair Feb. 6-10 Mitchell Hall Theatre University of Central Oklahoma 100 N. University Drive, Edmond cityrep.com | 405-848-3761 $8-$30

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Pure Madness

Oklahoma City Community College screens National Theatre Live’s performance of The Madness of King George III. By Jeremy Martin

Critics raved. When the Adam Penforddirected production of Alan Bennett’s The Madness of King George III ran at England’s Nottingham Playhouse in November, The Guardian’s Kate Maltby called it “a technically excellent production of a modern classic” and wrote that actor Mark Gatiss (Mycroft Holmes in BBC’s Sherlock) delivered a “tour de force” performance in the title role, offering a “viscerally repulsive depiction of the gap between public and private life.” The Observer’s Clare Brennan, meanwhile, wrote, “Whether haughtily regal and mildly eccentric, or blubbering in his speech and wildly disordered in his movements, Mark Gatiss is sensational. Through him we feel George’s agonies of body and mind: a suppurating-skinned, sentient creature tortured by ill-judged ‘cures’; a king becomes a thing to his subjects.”

The Telegraph’s Dominic Cavendish wrote that audiences had the chance to “see Mark Gatiss come into his own as a leading theatre actor, like some bald eagle taking magnificent wing.”

The production closed last year, but Oklahoma City theatergoers will have the chance to see it 6 p.m. Sunday at Visual and Performing Arts Center Theater at Oklahoma City Community College (OCCC), 7777 S. May Ave. The play, a fictionalized account of the queen and prime minister’s efforts to 28

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conceal the king’s struggle with mental illness as rivals attempt a power grab, is presented as a prerecorded encore presentation of National Theatre Live’s worldwide broadcast, which was originally transmitted live via satellite to movie theaters in November. OCCC began screening prerecorded National Theatre Live plays for audiences in 2015 in a partnership with Oklahoma City Repertory Theatre (CityRep).

Linda Bosteels, performing arts series coordinator at OCCC, said the National Theatre Live program offers theatrical experiences that might be otherwise inaccessible.

“I think the real benefit is that people in the audience can see excellent plays for a reasonable price,” Bosteels said. “The normal person isn’t able to go to London’s West End to see Benedict Cumberbatch in Hamlet, so it gives the audience a wide perspective of different types of plays, different writers, different actors. It’s just a well-rounded production series of different plays.

Some of them are written by Shakespeare, others are written by Alan Bennett and there’s a number of directors that are doing this. And obviously each one is different, but I think one of the real interesting things is seeing different, shall we say, stars in different roles.”

In addition to Cumberbatch’s turns

CAPITOL INSIDER

Mark Gatiss right stars in National Theatre Live’s presentation of The Madness of King George III, screening 6 p.m. Sunday at OCCC’s Visual and Performing Arts Center Theater. | Photo National Theatre Live / provided

in Hamlet and Frankenstein, past National Theatre Live presentations at OCCC included Tony Award-winning The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and a production of Macbeth with acclaimed Shakespearian actor Rory Kinnear in the title role. Bosteels said the experience of seeing the play on the big screen feels more like attending a live production than sitting in a movie.

“It really seems like you’re watching the play,” she said. “It’s amazing to be there. They have several cameras filming the play at the same time, but it really feels like you are there in the audience.”

In an interview on Nottingham Playhouse’s YouTube channel, Gatiss said knowing the play would be “beaming out” to theaters around the world gave him “a curious combination of sort of first-night nerves and thrill,” but that he wouldn’t attempt to tailor his critically praised performance for the screen when it was broadcast for National Theatre Live.

“I think that’s where the madness lies, as they say,” Gatiss said in the interview.

“I think you have to just do it. … I think you can’t suddenly say, ‘This is for a film, so everything becomes really tiny.’ I think you have to just make it as close to the live experience as possible.”

In the same interview, Penford, the play’s director, did contend that preparing for a big-screen broadcast required some technical consideration.

“You usually have to make slight adjustments, particularly to props or wigs or makeup,” Penford said, “because onstage they look absolutely brilliant, but as soon as they are onscreen, suddenly you start to realize they need just a bit more definition.”

Set in 1788, the play, which originally opened in 1991, was adapted into a film

in 1994, but Gatiss said George III’s mental issues and the ramifications they had for the entire country are themes that still apply in the 21st century.

“Despite his sort of insistence on court etiquette, he really was a man of the people and knew what he was doing, I think,” Gatiss said in the interview.

“He had a sort of eye on the future, and this is how we must be. So the destruction of that, and the disintegration of that I find very exciting and also very moving. The people around him are going, ‘Don’t be ill. You’re not ill, are you?’ … It’s a different world. He’s not just a constitutional monarch exactly; there is a lot more riding on it than that.

It’s the health of the nation, isn’t it?

That sort of also rings true to this day as with the president or a head of state of any kind. That’s the country as we perceive it, and if the king is mad, the country is sick.”

Bosteels said OCCC purchased a special projector to screen the National Theatre Live presentations and the theater is equipped with Dolby surround sound. However, audiences for the screenings have been small.

“The people that have been there have really liked it,” she said, “but I don’t think many people know about it because we normally don’t have that many people come. It’s a 1,000-seat theater, so they’ve got the place all to themselves usually.”

In the interview for Nottingham Playhouse, Gatiss said he was surprised to hear that audiences in National Theatre Live broadcasts applaud at the end.

“I thought, ‘This is so weird, isn’t it?’” Gatiss said. “Of course you get no benefit from that because you didn’t get the ovation. It’s just remote.”

Audiences at OCCC will also have the chance to see Ian McKellen play in King Lear on March 10 in a performance The Guardian’s Arifa Akbar wrote “would make for a perfect swan song.” Playwright David Hare’s political drama I’m Not Running — which The Guardian’s Michael Billington wrote “pricks the mind and boasts a strong performance from Siân Brooke,” is “packed with sharp and witty apercus and highly quotable lines” and “shows Hare’s capacity to use theatre to take the moral temperature of the times” — is scheduled to screen April 28.

Visit tickets.occc.edu.

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ARTS DISTRICT

In the Paseo Art Space at 3022 Paseo:

Annual Members’ Show A juried exhibition from the Paseo Arts Association’s talented members.

Show runs Feb. 1-23 Local and national art, great food, art classes and plenty of shopping!

The Madness of King George III 6 p.m. Sunday Visual and Performing Arts Center Theater Oklahoma City Community College 7777 S. May Ave. tickets.occc.edu | 405-682-7579 $15

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ARTS & CULTURE

T H E AT E R

from left Elvie Ellis, Justin Larman, Gavin Guthrie, Greg Gore, Jenna Mozzoccoli and Bailey Maxwell perform in Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma’s production of Curious George and the Golden Meatball. | Photo KO Rinearson / Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma / provided

Curious friends

Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma’s Theatre for Young Audiences program presents Curious George and the Golden Meatball. By Jo Light

Young theatergoers will soon be able to enjoy the hijinks of a famous monkey and his human companion with the yellow hat when Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma, 1727 NW 16th St., stages Curious George and the Golden Meatball starting this month.

George’s onstage adventure begins on All-You-Can-Eat Meatball Day. George and his friend, Chef Pisghetti, cook for the crowd but are outdone when Phinneas T. Lightspeed starts up his Meatball O’Matic 9000. Discouraged, Chef Pisghetti decides to give up cooking, but George still wants to enter his recipe in the Golden Meatball contest in Rome. The characters’ journey teaches kids about friendship, determination and more.

The Golden Meatball comes to Lyric Theatre as part of the Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA) initiative, which aims to produce shows for children and their families. The target audience for this production is preschoolers to secondgraders, although all ages are welcome.

The show’s director, Matthew Sipress, said the theater has made a commitment to have at least one TYA production every year, and this is its third. 2017’s show was James and the Giant Peach, and 2018’s was Junie B. Jones: The Musical.

One of Lyric’s actors, Justin Larman, has participated in all three TYA productions so far. In The Golden Meatball, Larman is playing Chef Pisghetti, along with a couple of secondary parts. (Lyric’s TYA productions often utilize smaller casts, with actors filling multiple roles.)

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Larman said he auditioned for shows throughout his time at University of Central Oklahoma. Since getting cast for the first time in 2017, he has performed in five productions with Lyric. He is coming to The Golden Meatball after performing in a Colorado production of Elf. His own childhood involvement with live theater inspired his educational and career path.

“I remember there was a production of The Wizard of Oz at Jewel Box, in their outdoor theater,” he said. “And I think that we went four times to see that show.”

This memory is likely of Jewel Box Theatre’s 1994 production. Some time afterward, while looking at pictures of his younger self with the Wizard of Oz cast members, Larman realized that one photograph featured a performer who would later become a close friend.

“It’s just so crazy how much live theater can impact kids,” he said.

At Lyric, Larman is also in charge of leading the question and answer sessions after every TYA performance, which allows kids to ask questions about the actors and the production. He said he thinks engagement with the young audiences helps them retain the show’s lessons more firmly. He also loves to see their excitement at getting to interact with actors and said it is one of his favorite aspects of performing.

“Who knows; maybe we’re inspiring them to maybe want to get into theater,”

he said. “The Q&A is the educational aspect of it, where they get to learn about live theater and what we do as a job, what we all put into it. I think it’s super important.”

Important laughs

Larman pointed out that books have inspired all the previous TYA productions, which is another element that can benefit young theatergoers. Curious George originally appeared in children’s books by Margret and H. A. Rey. Larman said Curious George teaches readers about optimism, friendship and a world where anything is possible.

“A kid getting to read a book, and then [getting] to see those characters live onstage, is, I think, super fun,” Larman said.

Larman is looking forward to working at Lyric again, but the most important thing to him is entertaining the young audience members.

“I always joke around that actors are like Tinker Bell and we need applause to live,” Larman said. “Hearing the laughter of kids is just such a rewarding thing. It makes you feel like we’re doing a good job here. These kids are getting to see real people up on stage performing and singing live.”

The cast also includes Gavin Guthrie as Curious George, Greg Gore as The Man With the Yellow Hat, Jenna Mazzoccoli as Netti, Bailey Maxwell as the Doorman and Elvie Ellis as Phinneas.

Sipress also brings experience to his role as director. He has been with Lyric Theatre for 12 years and serves as company manager. He stressed the importance of the Theatre for Young Audiences program as well.

“Truly, they’re our next audience,” Sipress said. “If we can grab them now, let’s work their theater knowledge and get them coming early and learning how

to not just [see] shows, but learning how to be in a theater.”

Lyric Theatre strives to be accessible and offers shows to children who might have sensory sensitivities or need American Sign Language (ASL) translation. Sipress said the sensory-friendly performances are exactly the same content, but with no flashing lights, loud noises or total darkness. A quiet room is also provided to audience members who need to step outside.

“There are all kinds of kids out there, and we want to make sure that every kid can get the experience that they deserve,” Sipress said.

These performances are noted on Lyric’s ticketing website for those who are interested.

Sipress said Lyric’s version of the show is intimate, which he feels benefits their young audiences more than a larger-scale production.

“I think kids will react more positively to it because they’re closer to it,” he said. “It’s not a big, giant arena where they could be a literal city block away from the stage.”

Set design by Dawn Drake Toney will take the audience from San Francisco to Rome, and children will learn about maps and travel as Curious George decides to make his journey overseas.

The show’s music director is Mary Brozina Wierick, with lighting design

by Fabian Garcia and costume design

by Jeffrey Meek. The production has roughly an hour runtime.

Sipress expressed pride in Lyric’s contributions to the local theater scene and Oklahoma theater as a whole.

“Everybody’s got their area and their niche, and I think everybody is doing such good work,” Sipress said. “And the work is only improving year after year after year.

As we are. Not only are we adding our TYA component to our season, but for the past couple years, we’ve had our New Works component added to our season.”

Through New Works, Lyric Theatre develops and premieres new musical theater productions.

Curious George and the Golden Meatball runs Wednesday-Feb. 17, with all daytime shows. Concessions, including a Curious George Snack Sack that contains healthy snacks, juice, stickers and a pencil, will be available to purchase. Guests age 21 and older can enjoy limited bar service.

Visit lyrictheatreokc.com.

Curious George and the Golden Meatball Wednesday-Feb. 17 Lyric at the Plaza 1727 NW 16th St. lyrictheatreokc.com | 405-524-9310 $20-$25

C U LT U R E

Cosmic science

Science Museum Oklahoma hypothesizes that you are not, in fact, too old or too jaded to be amazed at the wonders of the natural world. By Charles Martin

Clint Stone is the sort of person who will greet you outside a restroom with a tarantula named Sputnik. Stone is the sort of person who will drive through a rainstorm to tell you about finding an avocado he found floating down a gutter.

Stone is the sort of person who will attempt to spin himself in circles while sitting in his desk chair by using a fire extinguisher and, failing adequate propulsion, tell you about his research into more powerful fire extinguishers, like a benevolent Wile E. Coyote.

Stone retains a beautiful and resilient wonderment about the world, making his employ as vice president of programs at Science Museum Oklahoma, 2020 Remington Place, a real peanut-buttermeets-chocolate win for the city. Stone wants to inspire more curiosity and glee among his peers through SMO 21: Cosmic Con, an adults-only night at the museum to give the older set a turn at hands-on experiments that illuminate the more bizarre and delightful aspects of our natural world.

“We play with kids all the time; you’ll see kids and families exploring the museum every day that we’re open, but if you’re an adult and here on your own, you might feel a little bit awkward,” Stone said. “If you are an introvert like me but still want to come out to the museum and don’t have that wingman, this is a great time to come out with other folks like you.”

SMO 21 is put on every other month, excluding December. All patrons must be at least 21 years old, hence the name.

These are the only times when one can imbibe while exploring the museum.

Alcohol plus science plus explosions — just think about that.

In addition to being a resident curiosity enthusiast, Stone is also an avid comics fan. Each SMO 21 has a theme with experiments and demonstrations designed around that theme. Cosmic Con is focused on superheroes and science fiction.

“We’ll have light saber duels no different than you would with your nephew or daughter,” Stone said. “But it’ll be with other adults so you can loosen up a bit. Maybe not swing at full strength, but hold back a little bit less.”

There will be experiments harnessing the power of magnetism and electricity, just like the superpowers of Magneto and Storm, albeit on a somewhat smaller scale. Patrons will also be able to explore the strange abilities of spiders that are the inspiration for a handful of web-slinging superheroes.

There will be liquid nitrogen on hand for some Iceman/Captain Cold demon-

strations as well as singing saws to show the fundamentals of Black Canary’s sonic powers.

Matthew Price sits on a panel featuring comics enthusiasts talking about the link between fantastical storytelling and their scientific roots. Price is the co-owner of Speeding Bullet Comics in Norman and co-wrote The Posthuman Project, a movie about superpowered teenagers. Price researched evolution and how environmental factors can lead to significant changes in human physiology to ground some of the story logic in reality.

If you are an introvert like me but still want to come out to the museum and don’t have that wingman, this is a great time to come out with other folks like you.

Clint Stone

“The genetic changes that result in the X-Men seem fantastical, and while I wouldn’t say they are now possible, scientists are getting more advanced every day at perhaps being able to make changes at the genetic level,” Price wrote in an email. “It also has been reported that a genetic mutation is likely what made humans into such good longdistance runners compared to other species. When you compare humans’ ability there to other species, it does seem like a kind of superpower.”

Cosmic heroes

Jeff Provine is the publisher of Okie Comics Magazine, a free metro publication that features short comics written and illustrated by Oklahomans. Provine will also be on the panel, as he likes to, whenever possible, infuse science into his own storytelling, whether cryptozoology or near-future technology. He believes comics have helped guide the imaginations of scientists currently transforming the world.

“I’d like to chat about the inspiration for actual inventions that come from comics, like Dick Tracy’s famous 2-Way Wrist Radio that was cutting-edge in 1946 but would be common fare in our modern days of cell phones,” Provine said.

“Another is the Iron Man suit, which has inspired a whole range of military-grade exoskeletons that are awesome for con-

struction. The military also set about creating a grappling gun like Batman’s, although it has so far proven to be much too bulky to fit on a utility belt.”

Science fiction franchises will also get their due, including a Star Trekthemed experience that lit Stone’s eyes up as he talked about it.

“In Star Trek, regardless of which version it is, one of the coolest parts of the show was when they set phasers to stun,” Stone said. “I kinda want to do that. So we are building a very special setting-phasers-to-stun experience, and I assure you that you will really feel it and you will really remember it. It’s going to be tremendously fun.”

Those who’ve grown up in Oklahoma might remember SMO’s previous iteration as The Omniplex but might not realize that the building has undergone an astonishing renaissance in the past two decades. Gone are the dusty exhibits with outdated technology and a high fail rate. Since rebranding as SMO, the venue has flourished with continued renovations and investment into new exhibits and programming to ensure the museum’s relevance to the state. The planetarium was recently upgraded and showing Tales of A Time Traveler hosted

by David Tennant during SMO 21.

Stone said that working at SMO helps stoke his own curiosity and creative energy, which he then pours into his side gig as an artist. He walks the museum intermittently throughout the day just for inspiration and to capture the spirit of one of his two favorite superheroes.

Science Museum Oklahoma’s Cosmic Con event gives adults the chance to explore the museum without children present. | Photos Science Museum Oklahoma / provided

“Sometimes I think I’d like to be The Thing and to have a very clear idea of what’s right, what’s wrong and when it’s clobbering time,” Stone said. “But I think I’d rather be Beast because I’d love to find solutions to things that seem right beyond our reach, to be brave enough and persistent enough to never stop, to keep going through all these failures.

“When I was a child, I developed my superhero persona, and I wanted to keep things simple. It was only the ability to fall great distances without getting hurt. After reading some comics like The Great Lake Avengers and working at the science museum, I realize I could’ve set my sights a little bit higher.”

Visit sciencemuseumok.org.

Editor’s note: Matthew Price is a contributing writer at Oklahoma Gazette.

SMO 21: Cosmic Con 6:30-10 p.m. Friday Science Museum Oklahoma 2020 Remington Place sciencemuseumok.org | 405-602-3760 $21-$25

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CALENDAR are events recommended

by Oklahoma Gazette editorial staff members For full calendar listings, go to okgazette.com.

BOOKS Brunching with Books a book club meeting every other week, with reading selections chosen by group preference, 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. Saturdays.

Buttermilk Paseo, 605 NW 28th St., 405-605-6660, buttermilkokc.com. SAT Constance Squires book signing the Oklahoma-based author will autograph copies of her short story collection Hit Your Brights, 6-7:30 p.m. Jan. 31. Best of Books, 1313 E. Danforth Road, Edmond, 405-340-9202, bestofbooksok.com. THU Gary Conrad book signing the author will autograph copies of his mystery novel Murder at Stonehenge, 2-4 p.m. Feb. 3. Full Circle Bookstore, 1900 Northwest Expressway, 405-842-2900, fullcirclebooks.com. SUN Oklahoma Voices hear featured poets read from their works at this monthly event, 2 p.m. the first Sunday of every month, 2 p.m. Dec. 2. IAO Gallery, 706 W. Sheridan Ave., 405-232-6060, iaogallery. org. SUN

FILM Paige Howard (2018, USA, James Ridley) a Video Hero film written by Nicole Jocleen with a soundtrack by WoRm, 7-9 p.m. Feb. 2. Tower Theatre, 425 NW 23rd St., 405-708-6937, towertheatreokc.com. SAT Persepolis (2007, France, Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi) an outspoken young girl sees the impact of Islamic fundamentalism in Iran in this animated film based on a graphic novel, 7:30-10 p.m.

Feb. 6. Oklahoma City University School of Visual Arts, 1601 NW 26th St., 405-208-5226, okcu.edu.

WED

VHS and Chill: Blockbusted Video riff along with comedians and film fans at this monthly movie screening where audience participation is encouraged, 7-9 p.m. first Wednesday of every month. The Paramount Room, 701 W. Sheridan Ave., 405-8873327, theparamountroom.com. WED Zodiac (2007, USA, David Fincher) reporters and investigators search for the elusive Zodiac Killer in San Francisco in the 1960s and ’70s, 7-9 p.m. Jan. 30. Tower Theatre, 425 NW 23rd St., 405-708-6937, towertheatreokc.com. WED

HAPPENINGS Board Game Day enjoy local craft beer while playing old-school board and arcade games with friends, 5-8 p.m. Sundays. FlashBack RetroPub, 814 W. Sheridan Ave., 405-633-3604, flashbackretropub. com. SUN Chicago Steppin Class learn how to do the popular dance at this free weekly class, 7-9 p.m. Thursdays.

L & G’s on the BLVD, 4801 N. Lincoln Blvd., 405-5242001, facebook.com/landgsontheblvd. THU

Coffee with Real Estate Investors network over coffee and discuss topics such as real estate investing, building a successful business and chasing the American dream, 7 p.m. Wednesdays. Starbucks, 5800 W. Memorial Road, 405-722-6189, starbucks. com. WED Conversational Spanish Group Meetup an opportunity for all experience levels to practice speaking Spanish, 7 p.m. Tuesdays. Full Circle Bookstore, 1900 Northwest Expressway, 405-842-2900, fullcirclebooks.com. TUE Craft Crafts for Everyone make a talking stick or a dream catcher at this workshop exploring Native American spirituality, 1-3 p.m. Jan. 30. Labyrinth Temple, 417 NW 25th St, facebook.com/labyrinthtempleokc. WED Downtown Recyclers Toastmasters practice your public speaking skills at this ongoing weekly meeting, noon-1 p.m. Wednesdays. Department of Environmental Quality, 707 N. Robinson Ave., 405702-0100, deq.state.ok.us/. WED Genealogy at the Library celebrate Black History Month by learning the history of African-Americans in Oklahoma at this workshop led by Ron Graham, vice president of the Black Genealogy Research Group of Oklahoma, 1 p.m. Feb. 2. Ronald J. Norick Downtown Library, 300 Park Ave., 405-231-8650, metrolibrary.org. SAT Governor’s Club Toastmasters lose your fear of public speaking and gain leadership skills by practicing in a fun and low-stakes environment, noon-1 p.m. Wednesdays. Oklahoma Farm Bureau Building, 2501 N. Stiles Ave., 405-523-2300, okfarmbureau. org. WED IAO 40th Anniversary Kickoff Party celebrate 40 years of Individual Artists of Oklahoma with snacks, music, drinks, games and poetry, 7-10:30 p.m. Feb. 2. IAO Gallery, 706 W. Sheridan Ave., 405-232-6060, iaogallery.org. SAT Medieval Japan: An Age of Faith & War Joshua Frydman, assistant professor of Japanese at University of Oklahoma’s Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Linguistics, will lecture on the lasting cultural impact of Japan’s first Shogunate, 6:15-7:30 p.m. Feb. 1. Pioneer Library System, 225 N. Webster Ave., Norman, 405-701-2600, pioneerlibrarysystem.org/norman. FRI Mindful Yoga Happy Hour practice mindful meditation with Bhante Santhapiya, followed by coffee, tea and conversation, 5-7 p.m. Fridays.

Oklahoma Buddhist Vihara, 4820 N Portland Ave., 405-810-6528, okbv.org. FRI Moore Chess Club play in tournaments and learn about the popular board game at this weekly event where all ages and skill levels are welcome, 1-4 p.m.

Sundays. Moore Library, 225 S. Howard. SUN Music Industry Networking Night a networking meetup for musicians, bookers, sound engineers and fans, 7-11 p.m. Jan. 30. The Root, 3012 N. Walker Ave., 405-655-5889, therootokc.com. WED Pet CPR Class learn how to care for your pet in an emergency medical situation at this humans-only class, 7-9 p.m. Jan. 31. Neel Veterinary Hospital, 2700 N. MacArthur Blvd., 405-947-8387, facebook.com/ neelveterinaryhospital. THU Pride Planning Potluck bring a dish and discuss programming, committee formation and other as-

The Roadkill Tour Three poets traveling between St. Paul, Minnesota, and Phoenix, Arizona, present their works on their self-described “adventure of poetry, punk and queerness.” Last year, Bettering American Poetry and Pushcart Prize nominee Adrienne Novy published her poetry collection Crowd Surfing With God, Valin Page released her spoken word album Bleed Through and E.J. Schoenborn’s poetry was nominated for Sundress Publications’ Best of the Net anthology. And now they’re all scheduled to stop

by OKC at this event presented by Red Dirt Poetry. The reading is 7-9 p.m.

Thursday at The Paseo Plunge, 3010 Paseo St. Admission is free, but donations are accepted. Call 405-882-7032 or visit paseoplunge.com. THURSDAY Photo provided pects of the upcoming Pride celebration over dinner, 6:30-8:30 p.m. Jan. 31. Expressions Church, 2245 NW 39th Street, 405-525-2903. THU

later at home, 10-11 a.m. Thursdays. Science Museum Oklahoma, 2020 Remington Place, 405-602-6664, sciencemuseumok.org. THU

Professional Bull Riders: Unleash the Beast see Ryan Dirteater, Kaique Pacheco, Jess Lockwood and more professional bull riders compete, 6:45 p.m.

Feb. 2. Chesapeake Energy Arena, 100 W. Reno Ave., 405-602-8700, chesapeakearena.com. SAT

Love Bugs learn about beneficial and colorful bugs and create insect themed Valentine’s Day cards at this event for children ages 6-10, 10-11:30 a.m. Feb. 2. Myriad Botanical Gardens, 301 W. Reno Ave., 405445-7080, myriadgardens.com. SAT

RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 4 Watch Party meet up with other fans to watch the popular reality show paired with a live drag show featuring local performers, 7-9 p.m. Fridays. The Boom, 2218 NW 39th St., 405-601-7200, theboomokc.com. FRI

Nick Bruel book signing the author will autograph copies of his children’s book Bad Kitty: Kitten Trouble, and All Paws Rescue will have cats available for adoption, 1-3 p.m. Feb. 2. Best of Books, 1313 E. Danforth Road, Edmond, 405-340-9202, bestofbooksok.com. SAT

Toastmasters Meeting hone public speaking and leadership skills in a move-at-your own pace environment, 7-8:30 p.m. Thursdays. McFarlin United Methodist Church, 419 S. University Drive, Norman, 623-810-0295. THU Wednesday Night Trivia test your knowledge on various subjects for the chance to win prizes, 8 p.m. Wednesdays. The Garage Burgers and Beer, 1117 N. Robinson Ave., 405-602-6880, eatatthegarage. com. WED

FOOD COOP Ale Works Seasonal Beer Release and Preview Party sample COOP’s rereleased seasonal double IPA Alpha Hive with a selection of pairings from local restaurants, including Capitals Ice Cream, OSO Paseo, Sauced on Paseo and more, 5:30 p.m.

Jan. 31. Tower Theatre, 425 NW 23rd St., 405-7086937, towertheatreokc.com. THU Pie It Forward enjoy pie and beverages at this fundraising event with a portion of the proceeds going to Filling Tummies, a nonprofit fighting hunger in Oklahoma, 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Jan. 30. Pie Junkie, 1711 NW 16th St., 405-605-8767, piejunkie.com. WED Taste of OKC sample a selection of foods from local restaurants and hear live music from Weekend All Stars at this annual fundraising event for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Oklahoma, 6:30-10 p.m. Feb. 2. Bricktown Events Center, 429 E. California Ave., 405-236-4143, chevyeventscenter.com. SAT Yukon Chocolate Festival sample sweets from more than 25 vendors and bid in a chocolate auction, 1-3 p.m. Feb. 2. Dale Robertson Center, 1200 Lakeshore Drive, Yukon, 405-350-7680, cityofyukon. gov. SAT

YOUTH Comic Book Art: The Chisholm Kid Appearing in the Pittsburgh Courier in the early 1950s, The Chisholm Kid was “The Lone Fighter for Justice,” a black cowboy comic-strip hero decades before Django Unchained and Black Panther busted blocks. Children and their parents will have the chance to learn more about artist Carl Pfeufer’s creation and an opportunity to create a comic character of their own at this family activity recommended for children ages 4-12. The event is 10 a.m.noon Saturday at National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, 700 NE 63rd St. Admission is free. Call 405-478-2250 or visit nationalcowboymuseum.org.

SATURDAY Image provided 32

J A N U A R Y 3 0 , 2 0 1 9 | O KG A Z E T T E . C O M

Academic Enrichment Reading Clinic children in grades 1-12 can receive free tutoring and homework help in reading, math and history and learn about nonviolent conflict resolution and success-building habits at this weekly clinic, 11 a.m.

Wednesdays through April 27. Nappy Roots, 3705 Springlake Drive, 405-896-0203, facebook.com/pg/ nappyrootsbooks. SAT Baby Signing Time: Series 1 an American Sign Language class with songs, stories and activities for children 0-3 years old and their parents, 11 a.m.-noon Fridays through Feb. 1. Thrive Mama Collective, 1745 NW 16th St., 405-356-6262. FRI Early Explorers toddlers and preschoolers can participate in fun scientific activities they can repeat

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Reading Wednesdays a weekly story time with hands-on activities, goody bags and reading-themed photo ops, 9:30-10:30 a.m. Wednesdays. Myriad Botanical Gardens, 301 W. Reno Ave., 405-445-7080, myriadgardens.com. WED Storytime Science the museum invites children age 6 and younger to hear a story and participate in a related scientific activity, 10 a.m. Tuesdays and Saturdays. Science Museum Oklahoma, 2020 Remington Place, 405-602-6664, sciencemuseumok. org. TUE-SAT

PERFORMING ARTS Barefoot in the Park a newlywed couple struggles with the realities of daily life in New York City in this Neil Simon comedy, Jan. 31-Feb. 17. Jewel Box Theatre, 3700 N. Walker Ave. THU-SUN Divine Comedy a weekly local showcase hosted

by CJ Lance and Josh Lathe and featuring a variety of comedians from OKC and beyond, 9 p.m.

Wednesdays. 51st Street Speakeasy, 1114 NW 51st St., 405-463-0470, 51stspeakeasy.com. WED Don Quixote Open Mic a weekly comedy show followed by karaoke, 7:30-9 p.m. Fridays. Don Quixote Club, 3030 N. Portland Ave., 405-947-0011. FRI Iliza Shlesinger the standup comic’s Elderly Millennial tour makes an OKC stop, 7 p.m. Feb. 2.

The Criterion, 500 E. Sheridan Ave., 405-308-1803, criterionokc.com. SAT Joel Forlenza: The Piano Man the pianist performs variety of songs made famous by Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra and of course Billy Joel, 5:30-8:30 p.m.

Tuesday-Saturday. Othello’s Italian Restaurant, 434 Buchanan Ave., Norman, 405-701-4900, othellos.us.

TUE-WED

Lumpy’s Open Mic Night play a song of your own or just listen to the performers at this weekly show hosted by John Riley Willingham, 9 p.m.

Wednesdays. Lumpy’s Sports Grill, 12325 N. May Ave., 405-286-3300, lumpyssportsgrill.com. WED OCU Stripped Presents: The Addams Family a new musical comedy based on the characters created by cartoonist Charles Addams, 8-10 p.m. Feb 1-2. Bass School of Music, OCU, 2501 N. Blackwelder Ave., 405-208-5227, okcu.edu. FRI-SAT The Root Open Mic hosted by Elecktra, this open mic has an open-stage, almost-anything-goes policy and a booked feature act, 6-11:30 p.m. The Root, 3012 N. Walker Ave., 405-655-5889, therootokc.com. MON Triple’s Open Mic a music and comedy open mic hosted by Amanda Howle, 7:30 p.m. every other

Wednesday. Triple’s, 8023 NW 23rd St., 405-7893031. WED Open Mic at The Deli hosted by Jarvix, this monthly show offers anyone the opportunity to sing or perform, 10 p.m.-1 a.m. first Wednesday of every month. The Deli, 309 White St., Norman, 405-3293934, thedeli.us. WED Othello’s Comedy Night see professionals and amateurs alike at this long-running weekly open mic for standup comics, 9 p.m. Tuesdays. Othello’s Italian Restaurant, 434 Buchanan Ave., Norman, 405-701-4900, othellos.us. TUE Paramount Open Mic show off your talents at this open mic hosted by musician Chris Morrison, 7 p.m. first Wednesday of every month. The Paramount Room, 701 W. Sheridan Ave., 405-887-3327, theparamountroom.com. WED Poetry and Chill Open Mic poets and spoken-word artists the stage to share their latest verses at this bi-weekly event, 9 p.m.-midnight Fridays. The Queen Lounge, 2306 N. MacArthur Blvd., 405-606-8616. FRI Public Access Open Mic read poetry, do standup comedy, play music or just watch as an audience member, 7 p.m. Sundays. The Paseo Plunge, 3010 Paseo Plunge, 405-315-6224, paseoplunge.org. SUN Rap and Jam Salon learn new musical skills in a variety of genres from local musicians at this monthly workshop, 4-6 p.m. first Sunday of every month. Your Mom’s Place, 919 N. Virginia Ave. SUN Real Comedians Tour a standup show hosted

by Tahir Moore, featuring Tony Baker and headlined

by KevOnStage, 7-9 p.m. Feb. 6. Ice Event Center & Grill, 1148 NE 36th St., 405-208-4240, iceeventcentergrill.eat24hour.com. WED Rebels & Royals Drag King Show hosted by former Mister USofA Damian Matrix-Gritte, this monthly show features local drag kings and special

ACTIVE

OKCU FILM INSTITUTE PRESENTS A FREE SCREENING OF

Co-ed Open Adult Volleyball enjoy a game of friendly yet competitive volleyball while making new friends, 6-8 p.m. Wednesdays. Jackie Cooper Gymnasium, 1024 E. Main St., Yukon, 405-350-8920, cityofyukon.gov. WED Monday Night Group Ride meet up for a weekly 25-30 minute bicycle ride at about 18 miles per hour through east Oklahoma City, 6 p.m.

Mondays. The Bike Lab OKC, 2200 W. Hefner Rd., 405-603-7655. MON Open Badminton hit some birdies in some morning pick-up games of badminton with friends, 10 a.m.noon Saturdays. Jackie Cooper Gymnasium, 1024 E. Main St., Yukon, 405-350-8920, cityofyukon.gov. SAT Wheeler Criterium a weekly nighttime cycling event with criterium races, food trucks and family activities, 5-8 p.m. Tuesdays. Wheeler Park, 1120 S. Western Ave., 405-297-2211, okc.gov. TUE Yoga Tuesdays an all-levels class; bring your own water and yoga mat, 5:45 p.m.-7 p.m. Tuesdays.

Myriad Botanical Gardens, 301 W. Reno Ave., 405445-7080, myriadgardens.com. TUE

VISUAL ARTS American Indian Artists: 20th Century Masters an exhibition of Native art from the Kiowa Six, Harrison Begay, Tonita Peña and more, through May 12. National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, 1700 NE 63rd St., 405-478-2250, nationalcowboymuseum.org. SAT-TUE The Art of Collection an exhibition of outsider and anonymous artworks from the Anonyma Fine Art collection owned and curated by Emily Ladow Reynolds, Jan. 31-March 14. [Artspace] at Untitled, 1 NE Third St., 405-815-9995, 1ne3.org. THU

SPRING 2019

JEFF TWEEDY SOLD OUT

03.01.19

SUPPER CLUB W/ KEVIN GRIFFIN

03.03.19

BEN RECTOR SOLD OUT

03.08.19

BEN RECTOR

03.09.19

JENNY LEWIS

04.04.19

BRONZE RADIO RETURN

04.05.19

BROTHERS OSBORNE

04.09.19

ST. PAUL AND THE BROKEN BONES

05.07.19

OLD 97s + BOB SCHNEIDER

05.09.19

JOHNNYSWIM

05.30.19

SUMMER 2019 SON VOLT

PersePolis (2007)

iran/France Wednesday, February 6 7:30 pm Norick Art Center 1601 NW 26th St Oklahoma City University FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

06.18.19

for more info: 208-5707, filmlit@okcu.edu

TICKETS & INFORMATION AT

THEJONESASSEMBLY.COM 901 W. SHERIDAN, OKC

Valentine Dinner cooking class This class taught by Ahmad Farnia, general manager of Museum Café at Oklahoma City Museum of Art, promises to teach you to cook a dinner “heavy enough to be satisfying, but light enough to leave some room for romance.” But if you and your intended don’t dabble in competitive eating, you might want to make room in the fridge for leftovers.

The menu includes chicken and mango salsa on a puff pastry, lobster bisque, roasted beets carpaccio with goat cheese and avocado mousse, veal parmigiana followed with citrus granita and something called a “chocolate outrageous dessert.” Bon appétit. The class is 6:30 p.m. Monday and Tuesday at The International Pantry, 1618 W Lindsey St., in Norman. Admission is $55.

Call 405-360-0765 or visit intlpantry.com. MONDAY-TUESDAY Photo bigstock.com guests 10:30 p.m.-12:30 a.m. Fridays. Frankie’s, 2807 NW 36th St., 405-602-2030, facebook.com/ frankiesokc. FRI Red Dirt Open Mic a weekly open mic for comedy and poetry, hosted by Red Dirt Poetry, 7:30-10:30 p.m. Wednesdays. Sauced on Paseo, 2912 Paseo St., 405-521-9800, saucedonpaseo. com. WED Sanctuary Karaoke Service don a choir robe and sing your favorite song, 9 p.m.-midnight Wednesdays and Thursdays. Sanctuary Barsilica, 814 W. Sheridan Ave., facebook.com/sanctuarybarokc. WED-THU Shuler King the standup comedian/funeral director will perform, 8 p.m. Feb. 2. Ice Event Center & Grill, 1148 NE 36th St., 405-208-4240, iceeventcentergrill.eat24hour.com. SAT The Skirvin Jazz Club a weekly live jazz show presented by OK Sessions, 7:30 p.m. Fridays. Park Avenue Grill, 1 Park Avenue, 405-702-8444, parkavegrill.com. FRI

Beautiful Minds: Dyslexia and the Creative Advantage an exhibition of artworks created by people with dyslexia including students from Oklahoma City’s Trinity School, through July 14. Science Museum Oklahoma, 2020 Remington Place, 405-602-6664, sciencemuseumok.org. FRI-TUE Couples Collaborative Painting partners can team up to paint a 16-inch-by-20-inch canvas at this workshop led by artist Kristen Polson, 6-8 p.m.

Feb. 1. Mustang Town Center, 1201 N. Mustang Road, Mustang, 405-376-3411, cityofmustang.org. FRI Cowboys in Khaki: Westerners in the Great War learn about the ways Westerners contributed to the US effort in World War I at this exhibit featuring military, rodeo and other historical memorabilia from the time period, through May 12. National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, 1700 NE 63rd St., 405-478-2250, nationalcowboymuseum.org.

SAT-TUE

continued on page 34

O KG A Z E T T E . C O M | J A N U A R Y 3 0 , 2 0 1 9

33

CALENDAR

List your event in than noon on Wednesday seven days before the desired publication date. Late submissions will not be included in the listings. Submissions run as space allows, although we

C A L E N DA R

Submissions must be received by Oklahoma Gazette no later

continued from page 33

pasnorman.org. FRI-SUN

Eggtion Figures an exhibition of sculptures by Norman-based artist Tomoaki Orikasa, Feb. 1-March 22. Paseo Studio Six, 3021 Paseo St., 405-528-0174, thepaseo. org. FRI

Testimony: The Life and Work of David Friedman an exhibition of portraits, landscapes and more by the artist and Holocaust survivor, through May 26. Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, 555 Elm Ave., 405-325-3272, ou.edu/fjjma. THU-TUE

Elevate Artist Talk: Angie LaPaglia the local artist and poet will discuss her work, including the Passages installation currently on display, 6:30-8 p.m. Jan. 30. 21c Museum Hotel, 900 W. Main St., 405-9826900, 21cmuseumhotels.com. WED

Welcome Home: Oklahomans and the War in Vietnam explores the impact of the war on Oklahoma families as well as the stories of Vietnamese families relocated to Oklahoma, Through Nov. 6. Oklahoma History Center, 800 Nazih Zuhdi Drive, 405-521-2491, okhistory.org. MON-TUE

strive to make the listings as inclusive as possible.

Submit your listings online at okgazette.com or email them to listings@okgazette.com.

Sorry, but phone submissions cannot be accepted.

An Affair of the Heart More than 30,000 visitors shop for contemporary crafts from more than 550 vendors each year at these juried shows where handmade goods are preferred. It began as a one-day event in Oklahoma City in 1985, and in the subsequent 34 years, it has grown into a traveling tradition, making stops in Tulsa and Springfield, Missouri, along with three annual appearances in OKC. This year, a new corporate partnership with Braum’s Ice Cream and Dairy Store means you can get free admission with receipts totaling $25 or more in Braum’s grocery purchases within the 2019 calendar year, but try not to give yourself an ice cream headache. The show runs 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Feb. 8-9 and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Feb. 10 at State Fair Park, 3001 General Pershing Blvd.

Admission is $10 for all three days. Visit aaoth.com. FEB. 8-10 Photo provided

NONAME + ORIGINAL FLOW AND THE FERVENT ROUTE

7p.m. Sunday, March 3, 2019 · $25 All Performance Lab tickets available at eventbrite.com

ACM@UCO PERFORMANCE LAB 329 E Sheridan Ave, Oklahoma City, OK 73104

UP NEXT AT THE LAB:

Feb 9: Literati Variety Show Feb 15: Horton Records - Helen Kelter Skelter / Shelter People / Golden Ones April 27: The Tallest Man on Earth May 1: Parker Millsap

(405) 974-4711 | acm-uco.com

Metro Music Series Sponsors

Inclusion in Art artists Rhiana Deck, Dead Feather, Skye Gant and Maria Wood will discuss their work and answer audience questions, 6:30 p.m. Feb. 1. The Art Hall, 519 NW 23rd St., 405-2315700, art.theriseokc.com. FRI Inspirations from Nature an exhibition of abstract paintings by Anthony Dyke and Susan Morrison-Dyke celebrating the beauty of nature and architecture, through Jan. 31. Myriad Botanical Gardens, 301 W. Reno Ave., 405-445-7080, myriadgardens.com. TUE-THU Joan Faught view paintings inspired by the Hubble Telescope, through Jan. 31. Porcelain Art Museum, 2700 N. Portland Ave., 405-521-1234, wocp.org. TUE-THU

J A N U A R Y 3 0 , 2 0 1 9 | O KG A Z E T T E . C O M

Whiteout at Campbell Art Park an outdoor artwork made by hundreds of transparent white spheres embedded with white LED lights and animated in large-scale patterns, through March 31.

Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center, 3000 General Pershing Blvd., 405-951-000, oklahomacontemporary.org. WED-SUN

Layered Lives an exhibition of artworks created

by Oklahoma artists Jena Kodesh of Tonkawa and Jill Webber of Stillwater, through Feb. 16. Cherokee Strip Regional Heritage Center, 507 S Fourth St., Enid, 580-237-1907. TUE-SAT Monsters and Madonnas view a series of photographs created by University of Central Oklahoma students and inspired by the work of William Mortensen, through Feb. 28. UCO University Library, 100 N. University Drive, Edmond. THU Paper Lithography Workshop learn how to make monoprints or augment screen prints with paper lithography at this workshop led by Mycah Higley, 1-4 p.m. Feb. 2. [Artspace] at Untitled, 1 NE Third St., 405-815-9995, 1ne3.org. SAT Paseo Arts District’s First Friday Gallery Walk peruse art from over 80 artists with 25 participating business for a night of special themed exhibits, refreshments and a variety of entertainment opportunities, 6-10 p.m. first Friday of every month.

Paseo Arts District, 3022 Paseo St., 405-525-2688, thepaseo.org. FRI Pop Stars! Popular Culture and Contemporary Art an exploration of contemporary pop art inspired by Andy Warhol, Nick Cave, R. Luke DuBois and others, through Feb. 28. 21c Museum Hotel, 900 W. Main St., 405-982-6900, 21cmuseumhotels.com.

SUN-THU

Resistance an exhibition of artist Don Holladay’s works created from burlap, string, house paint, joint compound, sand, collaged photographs, gravel and clothes pins, through Feb. 24. Norman Santa Fe Depot, 200 S. Jones Ave., Norman, 405-307-9320,

34

Westheimer Distinguished Visiting Artist Chair: Mildred Howard the mixed-media and sculptural artist creates works that explore socio-political topics such as sexism and racism in unconventional ways, through April 7. Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, 555 Elm Ave., Norman, 405-3253272, ou.edu/fjjma. FRI-SUN

Submissions must be received

by Oklahoma Gazette no later than noon on Wednesday seven days before the desired publication date.

Late submissions will not be included in the listings.

Submissions run as space allows, although we strive to make the listings as inclusive as possible. Fax your listings to 528-4600 or e-mail them to listings@okgazette.com.

Sorry, but phone submissions cannot be accepted.

For OKG live music

see page 33

GO TO OKGAZETTE.COM FOR FULL LISTINGS!

MUSIC

EVENT

Murder By Death’s new album, Other Shore, depicts an apocalypse that sends struggling Earth dwellers in search of life on Mars. | Photo Mara Battiste / provided

Off-world colony

Apocalyptic ballads of separated lovers enduring a barren wasteland and a lonely pilgrimage to Mars haunt Murder by Death’s latest concept album. By Charles Martin

Concept albums are Murder by Death’s thing. Named after a satirical comedy from the ’70s, the band likes to aim cinematic with stories of small Mexican towns beset by the devil and Dante-esque stories of sin. After a handful of runthroughs of Murder by Death’s newest effort, a space/Western concept album dubbed Other Shore, I attempted to mine frontman Adam Turla for further hints about the hidden plotline of lovers splitting paths as the Earth crumbles.

Murder by Death focuses the lens tight, preferring to delve into the intense emotions of two souls trying to navigate an apocalypse rather than getting mired in straightforward narration. It’s a smart decision, as many concept albums have been doomed by tedious, on-the-nose storytelling that drain the energy right out of the music.

The gloomy marches and anguished ballads create a rich atmosphere, leading the listener to knit

The Other Shore | Image Bloodshot Records / provided

their own narrative threads.

“I write in landmarks, but for me, the story is flushed out, with a few open ends,” Turla said. “Gotta have a little mystery.”

It all started, according to Turla, with the song “I Have Arrived,” which is about the end of a lovesick traveler’s long trip to Mars and “is a surprisingly extremely complex song, construction-wise,” he said. “I worked on it for two years, and the story emanates from there.”

Sarah Balliet’s cello is pushed forward, as it often is throughout the album, as almost a second vocalist, a haunting echo of a lost lover.

Turla said that it was a conscious effort by the band because “the cello is most similar to the human voice and can really create a lot of emotion.”

But despite my prying, Turla avoided dropping any firm clues on the hidden story. Not to be outdone, the following is my best guess at the plot of Other Shore.

Ahem.

A man — let us call him The Man — stares out across a dying farmland. The Daughter plays on a rusted and sunbleached play set, too young and too happy to recognize the encroaching creep of doom. The Man knows his limitations, that a more clever tender could have kept the farm alive a little longer or, failing that, would have already moved his family to more prosperous lands where The Daughter could have had a chance. If not on Earth, then somewhere beyond. His lover, who we will call The One Who Stayed, will not leave the family land. Not yet. Not while there is hope that the lands might one day be revived. Land is legacy; The One

Who Stayed believes this, another archaic idea choking for its final breaths as it is consumed by the Earth’s now endless sandstorms.

The Man clutches a flyer promoting jobs in Martian colonies for anyone who can make the trip and schools for the children who will one day transform the red planet into what Earth should have been.

The One Who Stayed says the Earth is not dead yet. The Man calls to The Daughter to pack her things. He turns back to the only person he’s ever loved.

“Maybe not, but alas I must go.”

The One Who Stayed watches their coughing pickup truck limp off into the distance and worries about the fallen cities swarmed by millions of people pleading for a pass off the planet. The farm is empty and light now. And the land will yield. The One Who Stayed knows this.

I write in landmarks, but for me, the story is flushed out with a few open ends.

Adam Turla On the road now, The Man and The Daughter venture into the maw of mankind’s panicked escape. The cities are burning. The military has retreated to the launchpads to protect their own way out. The next window to Mars approaches. The docks are flooded with screaming voices and desperate parents pushing their babies over the security fences. “Just give them a chance,” these parents plead to soldiers far too young for their uniforms.

The Man often longs for the cleverness of the One Who Stayed to guide them through the madness, but it’s too late for that now. The Man knows his limitations but still believes he can find a way. He must find a way. The Daughter must know hope at least once in her lifetime.

The One Who Stayed now knows the land is dead. A season has passed and

not even a weed can breach the ravaged soil. Nightmares come every night, calling The Man’s name out in confusion. Alone. Still alone. The forests burn endlessly on the horizon. The well has run dry, the pond evaporated long ago, even the brutal militias have withered and blown away.

The One Who Stayed packs light and sets course for the family that is surely somewhere in space by now. Maybe the spaceships have their own schools and maybe The Daughter is prim and poised in her new uniform while The Man toils in the engine room, thankful for the simple, cleansing reward of hard labor.

The cities are something different now. The One Who Stayed remembers the gleaming skyscrapers, the cultural centers, the feeling that the best days were ever ahead. But now they are only brutal way stations possessing slim entryways to the stars. Masses of starving humanity press forward as the uniformed boys warn them back.

Shots startle the crowd, then chaos.

The One Who Stayed is thankful for the riot and the fear and confusion. It was so easy to slip through while others clawed and died at the fence line. Surely it wasn’t this bad when The Man and The Daughter arrived so many months ago.

As The One Who Stayed looks back down at the melee, there is a familiar flash of blond hair, but surely not. Surely not.

The One Who Stayed must focus ahead, to the moment when the family is reunited. The labor that paid for the ticket is lonely and the vacuum of spacewalks only a dark reminder of the isolation of the dying farm, the lost legacy.

Four years tick by as the One Who Stayed inches closer to where The Man and The Daughter surely await, where they’ve built lives and maybe The Man still holds a spot in his heart for The One Who Stayed.

But back on Earth, The Man holds The Daughter close as the bones of the city snap and fall. Bright red plumes of fire streak across the sky as orphaned satellites reenter the Earth’s atmosphere. The boiling oceans and rivers now flood the barren lands. Humanity’s fight turns to a fatal resignation. The Man has his limitations, but at least he knows he tried.

The One Who Stayed steps onto Martian soil and wonders which direction to find the family unwittingly left behind.

Murder by Death with J Roddy Walston and The Business 8 p.m. Feb. 9 Tower Theatre 425 NW 23rd St. towertheatreokc.com | 405-708-6937 $20

O KG A Z E T T E . C O M | J A N U A R Y 3 0 , 2 0 1 9

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EVENT

MUSIC

Shred in Japan

Former Megadeth guitarist Marty Friedman found a new career combining genres overseas.

By Jeremy Martin

He has released albums called Speed Metal Symphony and Music for Speeding, but guitarist Marty Friedman said years have passed since he was impressed by quick fingers.

“When I was a kid, I was just blown away by people who could do something faster than I could do it,” Friedman said.

“If you’re learning to do anything and you see someone in front of you who can do something that you physically can’t do, it’s pretty mind-blowing. But as far as music goes, it’s really not important at all. … Being able to pull some of those fast things out of your bag is a good trait to have, especially when you’re playing guitar-oriented music.

A lot of fans want to see some of that stuff, but I would be certainly bored if it’s happening too much or all the time.”

Friedman, who formerly played in thrash-metal acts Cacophony and Megadeth, is scheduled to take the stage with his live band 7 p.m. Monday at 89th Street —

Friedman’s double album One Bad M.F. Live!! was released in 2018. | Image provided

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J A N U A R Y 3 0 , 2 0 1 9 | O KG A Z E T T E . C O M

OKC, 8911 N. Western Ave. The guitarist’s technical advice column and video series Full Shred appears regularly on Guitar World’s website, and his music is included on a plethora of compilation albums with the word “shred” or its variants in the title, but in a 2017 interview with the magazine, he said the word is a “lame-ass term” he associates with “a guy who plays fast meaningless shit all the time.” Instead of speed, Friedman — whose fascination with Japanese pop music led him to leave Megadeth to move to Tokyo after playing lead on seminal metal classics Rust in Peace, Countdown to Extinction and Youthanasia (and after learning Japanese from a University of Oklahoma correspondence course) — said he draws inspiration these days from the way new music combines genres and traditions from different countries.

“I think music is getting better and better all around the world, particularly in Japan,” Friedman said. “I guess it’s just because people have access to more musical information than ever. People tend to soak it up better. I feel there’s a lot more competent people and a lot more creative people in the musical gene pool now than there was, say, 10-15 years ago. … It comes from people having a lot of influences that are all over the place.

When people mix things up in an interesting way, that’s what kind of gets me excited. I listen to a lot of idol groups in Japan, idol singers, and what those groups often do is they have great producers and songwriters and musicians and they’re putting all kinds of things into the pot — everything from Beach Boys harmonies to dubstep beats to heavy metal guitar to dance music to soul music.

They’re mixing it in such a weird way.”

Performing his own music — which blends metal with classical and world music influences — live, Friedman said he often draws inspiration from unplanned moments and even mistakes.

“You try to do things that are not exactly like a recital of the music,” Friedman said.

“You try to improvise, you try to adlib and you just try to entertain the audience. And sometimes, when you do that, instead of just trying to play everything perfectly, sometimes they’re complete train wrecks, but for the most part, the accidents are really cool. When you have musicians in the band that have really strong personalities, when things don’t go as planned, hopefully they go in a cooler way than was originally planned. That’s why we like to do a lot of adlibbing, improvising and changing things on the spot.”

When choosing his band — bassist Kiyoshi, guitarist Jordan Ziff and drummer Chargeeeeee — Friedman said their personalities and showmanship were as important as their musical abilities.

“Image is so important,” Friedman said. “There’s already not very many people who are able to play my music properly, not because it’s all that difficult, but there’s very specific ways that I want it played and a specific kind of aggression that not a whole lot of people have, a certain kind of accenting that not a whole lot of people do. So it’s already limited, but I also wanted people who look like they are rock gods for a living. I didn’t want someone who’s a great player but looks like they have a job at the bank in the daytime; you know what I mean? I wanted people that you look at them for one second and you know the only thing they could possibly be doing was playing wild rock music.”

Hebimeta gaijin

Known as a TV personality as well as a musician in Japan, Friedman starred in comedy variety shows Hebimeta-san (Mr. Heavy Metal) and its spinoff, Rock Fujiyama. Parodying metal and rock star clichés helped him gain perspective.

“I was never a very serious type anyway,” Friedman said, “but it kind of

Metal guitarist Marty Friedman is scheduled to perform with his live band Monday at 89th Street — OKC, 8911 N. Western Ave. | Photo Maria Debiassi / provided

showed me that there’s a lot of fun to be had at the expense of the music that you’re making. Taking yourself too seriously is never a great thing. … A lot of people are afraid, especially nowadays, to say anything that’s going to ruffle anybody’s feathers, and a couple of the shows that I did in Japan were very, very much on the offensive side of things. We didn’t hold anything back, and we said exactly what we thought about everybody that we were talking about. Of course it was very good-natured, but there was really a lot of strong opinions that were very, very funny, and that’s why the show lasted as long as it did.”

Released in 2018, Friedman’s latest album, One Bad M.F. Live!!, captures a Mexico City concert from the tour supporting 2017’s Wall of Sound. Working to distill the concert into a double live album gave Friedman new inspiration for his shows.

“It kind of helped me learn about the pacing of it because our live set is two hours long, a little bit more than two hours, and I edited it to make the live album shorter, obviously,” Friedman said. “In doing that, I got a good idea of how to tighten things up and change orders around, leave space for audience participation, all that stuff.

So with that 75 minutes really tight, I decided to add a whole bunch of new stuff to the set list that we didn’t do on the last tour, stuff that people are going to be really surprised to hear us do on top of the entire live record, so it’s kind of an experimental thing that we’re going to do, and it’s going to be a lot of happy accidents, hopefully.”

Tickets are $20, and Texas metallurgists Immortal Guardian are scheduled to open. Visit 89thstreetokc.com.

Marty Friedman 7 p.m. Monday 89th Street — OKC 8911 N. Western Ave. 89thstreetokc.com | 405-463-9203 $20

LIVE MUSIC Johnny Black Band, 89th Street-OKC. ROCK

These are events recommended

by Oklahoma Gazette editorial staff members. For full calendar listings, go to okgazette.com.

Shotgun Rebellion/Arkhon/DRYVER, Oklahoma City Limits. ROCK/METAL Spence, Red Brick Bar. POP

SUNDAY, FEB. 3

WEDNESDAY, JAN. 30

Hosty, The Deli. FOLK

Abbigale Dawn & the Make Believe/Mad Honey, The Deli. FOLK

Rivals/Lights of Alora, 89th Street-OKC. ROCK

THURSDAY, JAN. 31

The Second After/Frenchie/Tribesmen, Red Brick Bar. ROCK

Chad Elliott, The Blue Door. SINGER/SONGWRITER

MONDAY, FEB. 4

C.J. Boyd/Alexander & Epona/Up By Sundown, Resonator. EXPERIMENTAL Don’t Tell Dena/Tripsitters, The Deli. ROCK Herobust, OKC Farmers Market. ELECTRONIC Shelly Phelps & Dylan Nagode, Jazmo’z Bourbon St. Café. ACOUSTIC

FRIDAY, FEB. 1 Brennen Leigh & Noel McKay, The Blue Door.

COUNTRY

Cosmic Wool/Carol Morgan, The Deli. ROCK Garrett Jacobson, Remington Park. JAZZ Hosty, Othello’s Italian Restaurant. FOLK The Hot Sardines, Civic Center Music Hall. JAZZ Mars Deli, The Art Hall. HIP-HOP Poolboy/Brother Gruesome/Locust Avenue, Opolis.

ROCK

Saint Loretto/Feeves/Swim Fan, 51st Street Speakeasy. POP

Pete Seeger Songfest with Jim Scott Bruce Springsteen called singer/ songwriter/activist Pete Seeger “a living archive of America’s music and conscience, a testament of the power of song and culture to nudge history along.” Seeger’s songs like “If I Had a Hammer,” “Turn, Turn, Turn” and “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” and his arrangement of the traditional “We Shall Overcome” are the soundtrack to the ’60s student protest movement, and as a supporter of labor unions, he chose to be charged with contempt of Congress rather than name names to the House Committee on Un-American Activities during the Red Scare in 1957. Join Jim Scott, guitarist for Paul Winter Consort, for a celebration of Seeger’s songs and legacy at a time when history desperately needs a nudge. The show starts 7 p.m. Friday at First Unitarian Church, 600 NW 13th St. Tickets are $15. Visit eventbrite. com. FRIDAY Photo / provided

SATURDAY, FEB. 2

Deli. HIP-HOP

Applied Music Program/Carly Gwin and The Sin/ Lacey Elaine, 51st Street Speakeasy. ROCK

Cindy Scarberry/Emily & Chase McCumber, Rodeo Opry. COUNTRY

Blueface/No Hezzo, Fresh Sound Lounge. HIP-HOP ChrisTheGodMCCain/Werdoze/TheCorrelation, The

Schat & the Skeleton Trees/Tribesmen/ Tripsitters, Bison Witches Bar & Deli.

PUNK/ROCK

Jason Hunt, Sean Cumming’s Irish Restaurant. FOLK

TUESDAY, FEB. 5 Country Clique, Friends Restaurant & Club. COUNTRY The Indigos, Saints. ROCK Kendrik McKinney, The Blue Door. JAZZ Terminus/Trial By Noise/Lucid Awakening, Blue Note Lounge. ROCK

Live music submissions must be received by Oklahoma Gazette no later than noon on Wednesday seven days before the desired publication date.

Late submissions will not be included in the listings. Submissions run as space allows, although we strive to make the listings as inclusive as possible.

Fax your listings to 528-4600 or e-mail to listings@okgazette.com.

Sorry, but phone submissions cannot be accepted.

GO TO OKGAZETTE.COM FOR FULL LISTINGS!

FREE WILL ASTROLOGY Homework: What’s the kind of joy you’re not getting enough of ? How could you get more of it?

FreeWillAstrology.com ARIES (March 21-April 19)

Here are your fortune cookie-style horoscopes for the next five months. FEBRUARY: You’ll be invited to make a pivotal transition in the history of your relationship with your most important life goals. It should be both fun and daunting! MARCH: Don’t waste time and energy trying to coax others to haul away the junk and the clutter.

Do it yourself. APRIL: The growing pains should feel pretty good. Enjoy the uncanny stretching sensations.

MAY: It’ll be a favorable phase to upgrade your personal finances. Think richer thoughts. Experiment with new ideas about money. JUNE: Build two strong bridges for every rickety bridge you burn. Create two vital connections for every stale connection you leave behind.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20)

Here are your fortune cookie-style horoscopes for the next five months. FEBRUARY: You have access to a semiawkward magic that will serve you well if you don’t complain about its semi-awkwardness. MARCH: To increase your clout and influence, your crucial first step is to formulate a strong intention to do just that. The universe will then work in your behalf. APRIL: Are you ready to clean messes and dispose of irrelevancies left over from the past? Yes! MAY: You can have almost anything you want if you resolve to use it for the greatest good. JUNE: Maintain rigorous standards, but don’t be a fanatic. Strive for excellence without getting bogged down in a counterproductive quest for perfection.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20)

Here are your fortune cookie-style horoscopes for the next five months. FEBRUARY: Be alert for vivid glimpses of your best possible future. The power of self-fulfilling prophecy is even stronger than usual. MARCH: High integrity and ethical rigor are crucial to your success — and so is a longing for sacred adventure. APRIL: How can you make the best use of your likability? MAY: Cheerfully dismantle an old system or structure to make way for a sparkling new system or structure. JUNE: Beginner’s

luck will be yours if you choose the right place to begin.

What’s a bit intimidating but very exciting?

CANCER (June 21-July 22) Here are your fortune cookie-style horoscopes for the next five months. FEBRUARY: Your sensual magnetism peaks at the same time as your spiritual clarity. MARCH: You want toasted ice? Succulent fire? Earthy marvels?

Homey strangeness? All of that is within reach. APRIL: Sow the seeds of the most interesting success you can envision. Your fantasy of what’s possible should thrill your imagination, not merely satisfy your sense of duty.

MAY: Deadline time. Be as decisive and forthright as an Aries, as bold as a Sagittarius, as systematic as a Capricorn.

JUNE: Go wading in the womb-temperature ocean of emotion, but be mindful of the undertow.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22)

Here are your fortune cookie-style horoscopes for the next five months. FEBRUARY: There’s a general amnesty in all matters regarding your relationships. Cultivate truces and forgiveness. MARCH: Drop fixed ideas you might have about what’s possible and what’s not. Be keenly open to unexpected healings. APRIL: Wander out into the frontiers. Pluck goodies that have been off-limits.

Consider the value of ignoring certain taboos. MAY: Sacrifice a small comfort so as to energize your ambitions.

JUNE: Take a stand in behalf of your beautiful ideals and sacred truths.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22)

Here are your fortune cookie-style horoscopes for the next five months. FEBRUARY: Master the Zen of constructive anger. Express your complaints in a holy cause. MARCH: You finally get a message you’ve been waiting to receive for a long time. Hallelujah! APRIL: Renew your most useful vows. Sign a better contract.

Come to a more complete agreement. MAY: Don’t let your preconceptions inhibit you from having a wildly good time. JUNE: Start your own club, band, organization, or business. Or reinvent and reinvigorate your current one.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22)

Here are your fortune cookie-style horoscopes for the

next five months. FEBRUARY: Be open to romantic or erotic adventures that are different from how love has worked in the past. MARCH: You’ll be offered interesting, productive problems. Welcome them! APRIL: Can you explore what’s experimental and fraught with interesting uncertainty even as you stay well-grounded? Yes! MAY: You can increase your power by not hiding your weakness.

People will trust you most if you show your vulnerability.

A key to this season’s model of success is the ability to calmly express profound emotion. JUNE: Wild cards and X-factors and loopholes will be more available than usual. Don’t be shy about using them.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21)

Here are your fortune cookie-style horoscopes for the next five months. FEBRUARY: The world may finally be ready to respond favorably to the power you’ve been storing up. MARCH: Everything you thought you knew about love and lust turns out to be too limited. So expand your expectations and capacities! APRIL: Extremism and obsession can be useful in moderation. MAY: Invisible means of support will become visible. Be alert for halfhidden help. JUNE: Good questions: What do other people find valuable about you? How can you enhance what’s valuable about you?

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21)

Here are your fortune cookie-style horoscopes for the next five months. FEBRUARY: You’ll have the need and opportunity to accomplish some benevolent hocus-pocus.

For best results, upgrade your magical powers. MARCH: Make sure the Turning Point happens in your power spot or on your home turf. APRIL: You should be willing to go anywhere, ask any question, and even risk your pride if necessary so as to coax your most important relationships into living up to their potentials. MAY: If at first you don’t succeed, change the definition of success. JUNE: You can achieve more through negotiation and compromise than you could by pushing heedlessly ahead in service to your single-minded vision.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19)

Here are your fortune cookie-style horoscopes for the next five months. FEBRUARY: A new phase of your

education will begin when you acknowledge how much you have to learn. MARCH: Initiate diplomatic discussions about the Things That Never Get Talked About. APRIL: Revise your ideas about your dream home and your dream community. MAY: You have the power to find healing for your oldest lovesickness. If you do find it, intimacy will enter a new Golden Age. JUNE: Solicit an ally’s ingenuity to help you improvise a partial solution to a complex problem.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18)

Here are your fortune cookie-style horoscopes for the next five months. FEBRUARY: Start a new trend that will serve your noble goals for years to come. MARCH: Passion comes back into fashion with a tickle and a shiver and a whoosh. APRIL: As you expand and deepen your explorations, call on the metaphorical equivalents of both a telescope and a microscope. MAY: This is the beginning of the end of what you love to complain about.

Hooray! JUNE: You’ll have an abundance of good reasons to celebrate the fact that you are the least normal sign in the zodiac. Celebrate your idiosyncrasies!

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20)

Here are your fortune cookie-style horoscopes for the next five months. FEBRUARY: You’ll have a knack for enhancing the way you express yourself and present yourself. The inner you and the outer you will become more unified. MARCH: You’ll discover two original new ways to get excited. APRIL: Be bold as you make yourself available for a deeper commitment that will spawn more freedom. MAY: What are the gaps in your education?

Make plans to mitigate your most pressing area of ignorance. JUNE: Your body’s ready to tell you secrets that your mind has not yet figured out. Listen well.

Go to RealAstrology.com to check out Rob Brezsny’s expanded weekly audio horoscopes /daily text message horoscopes.

The audio horoscopes are also available by phone at 1-877-873-4888 or 1-900-950-7700.

O KG A Z E T T E . C O M | J A N U A R Y 3 0 , 2 0 1 9

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PUZZLES NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE CROSSWORD PUZZLE

UNEMPLOYMENT LINES | 0203

By Randolph Ross Puzzles edited by Will Shortz ACROSS 1 Google Calendar, e.g.

7 In addition 13 Foundation author 19 Hit 2009 movie set in the 22nd century 20 Cry of exasperation 21 When Hamlet dies 22 Unemployed salon worker?

25 Venusians, e.g., informally 26 In base 8 27 Bob ____, 1968 record-setting

long jumper 28 Foreign title that’s an anagram of

its English equivalent 29 Unemployed nail polisher?

33 Most preferred 34 Coffee order 35 Jokester 36 Some TV drama settings, for short 37 Hot 38 Troublemaker since birth 41 Something paid to a hero 44 Cosby’s I Spy co-star 45 Jack-in-the-box part 46 Unemployed men’s clothier?

51 Wing it 54 Remote figure: Abbr.

55 Hydro-plant locale 56 Exam scored on a scale of 1 to 5, informally 57 Designer Geoffrey 58 ____ Live (onetime cooking show) 61 ____ tear (sports injury) 62 Jay preceder 63 Unemployed educator?

68 Media inits. before One, Two or Four 71 Wall Street order 72 Question after “I’m back” 73 Fish in a tank 77 Rubber 79 Article in La Repubblica 81 Kitty 82 Port Authority posting: Abbr.

83 Unemployed loan officer?

88 Watchdog org. established by Nixon 89 Salon supply 90 “No returns,” e.g.

91 “Extra! Extra!” shouter 94 Repeated word in a 1957 Harry

Belafonte hit 95 Fan noise 96 Cote call 98 ____ spell 99 It’s kept in a pen 100 Unemployed rancher?

107 Capt.’s guess 108 More balanced 109 Popular font 110 Airport near D.C. 111 Unemployed prestidigitator?

116 Efficient kind of shopping 117 Iconic 1950s-’70s female TV role

played by a male 118 Achieve something by merit 119 Like the lion slain by Hercules 120 Be short with 121 Peanut-butter choice

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“Cellphones & tablets” 5 One out?

6 Came before 7 ____ tea 8 Sheriffs, marshals, etc.

9 The Mary Tyler Moore Show character 10 Short snicker 11 Easy ____ 12 President during the Vietnam War 13 Straddling 14 Surgical tube 15 Suppositions 16 Like Feburary 17 Advertise excessively 18 It’s the truth 21 Used as a role model 23 Part of SOP: Abbr.

24 Beauty that’s seldom seen 30 Suffix with linguist 31 Okinawa port 32 “____ Rhythm” 37 Exec 38 Spill the beans 39 Second 40 Send in a different direction 42 Fast-food sandwiches introduced in

1985 43 “Bingo!”

44 They go down easily 47 Brave New World drug 48 Responded in court 49 Dash gauge 50 AAA suggestion: Abbr.

52 It borders Ky. 53 You can page through them 59 Like A Star Is Born, several times 60 A mean Amin 61 Blackjack combo 64 Maven 65 Locker-room shower?

66 Every which way 67 ____ center 68 Hospital unit 69 Two-masted sailing vessel 70 Longtime host of American Top 40 74 Source of a Boston “curse” 75 Defaulter’s comeuppance 76 Every 24 hours 78 Normandy invasion town 79 Marie and Donny Osmond, e.g.

80 It borders Ida. 84 Find with difficulty 85 Hon 86 Not very much 87 Produces a revival of 92 Royal Charlotte’s father 93 Abbr. in many an office address

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94 Failed, as a cellphone or car to its user 95 Estée Lauder competitor 97 “Evangeline” setting 100 Symbol of change 101 Young and Simon 102 Preceder of “Do I have to?”

103 Headgear for a knight 104 Padre’s hermana 105 Look for 106 Beethoven’s “Choral” Symphony 112 Suffix with expert 113 Code-cracking org.

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SUDOKU VERY HARD | N° 43303

Fill in the grid so that every row, column and 3-by-3 box contains the numbers 1 through 9. www.printmysudoku.com

Stumped? Call 1-900-285-5656 to get the answers to any three clues by phone ($1.20 a minute).

SKULLDUGGERY LANE By Ingvard Ashby

NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE CROSSWORD PUZZLE ANSWERS

Puzzle No. 0127, which appeared in the Jan 23 issue.

C H I C H I

L A S H E D

A S T U T E

M A H R E S

H O W S A R E A G O T C W H O R I E D E L T E E L S K Y S E W H A T A I R B I N K A F D I C S I N K 38

J A N U A R Y 3 0 , 2 0 1 9 | O KG A Z E T T E . C O M

S P A T E M A T A F R O S R O W H O O D O O M I T H A S S N H A O S E S N T A T O I D S R R S M S O B E S E A T R U S H V S O R E D E T S

C O A C H K

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N O L I E

G O A D

W A S I P S Y

T H R O N E

D A E D T A E R R E S C H L O A I N G T S T F E A R R N A B O N O S C X S T G H I N I D A N Y S T U H O P

P O S I T E D

S E E T H E

D R E A M

S Y N S

G R A A R E Y

S B O M P I S

E N R E A W S A D E P A R E D S L I I N C M H O O U O S M I A N I N G N E H C A S A N A R D Y H N O O P

I C I E R

B O R A T

S L Y L Y

A B O U N D I N

G O A S

A N T E

G E M E O W

A S L O P E

T O A M A N

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Email: healingtouchtherapy@gmail.com

O KG A Z E T T E . C O M | J A N U A R Y 3 0 , 2 0 1 9

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COME IN TODAY TO TEST DRIVE THE ALL NEW BMW 3 SERIES 2019 230i Coupe | $499/month*

2019 330i Sedan | $529/month*

2019 X2 xDrive 28i | $519/month*

2019 650i Gran Coupe | $1,069/month*

2019 X5 xDrive40i | $769/month*

2019 740i Sedan | $959/month*

IMPORTS 2019 X2 xDrive 28i, 36-month lease, $3,000 down, MSRP $42,295, Standard Terms 2019 330i Sedan, 36-month lease, $3,000 down, MSRP $45,545, Standard Terms 2019 740i Sedan, 36-month lease, $5,500 down, MSRP $86,345, Standard Terms

BMW

14145 North Broadway Extension Edmond, OK 73013 | 866.925.9885

2019 230i Coupe, 36-month lease, $2,750 down, MSRP $38,895, Standard Terms 2019 650i Gran Coupe, 36-month lease, $5,500 down, MSRP $84,195, Standard Terms 2019 X5 xDrive 40i, 36-month lease, $3,500 down, MSRP $63,395, Standard Term

Web: www.cooperbmw.com Email: rkeitz@cooperautogroup.com

Standard terms & Tag, Tax. 1st Payment, Aquisition fee, processing fee WAC *See dealership for details — offers subject to change without prior notice. *January prices subject to change. European models shown.