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ARKANSAS TIMES (ISSN 0164-6273) is published each week by Arkansas Times Limited Partnership, 201 East Markham Street, 200 Heritage Center West, P.O. Box 34010, Little Rock, Arkansas, 72203, phone (501) 375-2985. Periodical postage paid at Little Rock, Arkansas, and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to ARKANSAS TIMES, P.O. Box 34010, Little Rock, AR, 72203. Subscription prices are $42 for one year, $78 for two years. Subscriptions outside Arkansas are $49 for one year, $88 for two years. Foreign (including Canadian) subscriptions are $168 a year. For subscriber service call (501) 375-2985. Current single-copy price is 75¢, free in Pulaski County. Single issues are available by mail at $2.50 each, postage paid. Payment must accompany all single-copy orders. Reproduction or use in whole or in part of the contents without the written consent of the publishers is prohibited. Manuscripts and artwork will not be returned or acknowledged unless sufficient return postage and a self-addressed stamped envelope are included. All materials are handled with due care; however, the publisher assumes no responsibility for care and safe return of unsolicited materials. All letters sent to ARKANSAS TIMES will be treated as intended for publication and are subject to ARKANSAS TIMES’ unrestricted right to edit or to comment editorially.

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JULY 11, 2012

COMMENT

Fireworks failing In banning fireworks in Garland County, our GOP County Judge, Rick Davis, reminded folks of the burn ban in effect due to extreme drought (the highest level), lack of rain, low humidity, and tinderbox conditions. He even spoke about ashes (fortunately not live embers) falling on his Bonnerdale property — all the way from the Amity fire in Clark County miles away. Imagine my surprise, then, when I found out that this same Rick Davis — plus Sheriff Larry Sanders, Piney Fire Chief Tim McDorman and State Fire Marshal Lindsey Williams — had signed off on a public fireworks permit behind the scenes and without any public hearing or opportunity for neighbors to object. Although over the lake, the fireworks site is in a residential neighborhood and adjoins over 150 acres of scrubland and grown-up fields backing up to about 100 feet of Hot Springs Baptist Church. For two days I wrestled with these folks. No one seemed willing to take responsibility for their names on the firework application. Each and every one pointed the finger at someone else. I repeatedly pointed out the obvious: the extreme drought, the 150 acres of ready fuel, winds, lack of insurance in violation of state law, a fictitious entity (Lazy Lane POA, which neighbors on that street tell me does not exist). I pointed out that a risk is measured not by the possibility a fire will occur but by the potential disastrous consequences. Thus, if there is only a 5 percent chance of a fire, given the consequences the risk is much too great. Common sense, no? No. At least not according to our two elected officials, the Piney fire chief, and the state fire marshal. Fortunately, thank God, there were no fires. I am thankful that my fears were not realized. However, that does not mean that Rick Davis and Tim McDorman made the right decision. No way! The decision they made to permit a public fireworks for wealthy folks and ban fireworks (under threat of arrest, $2,500 fine, and a year in jail) for ordinary folks is simply not right or fair. I feel fervently that our elected officials let us ordinary Garland County citizens down and gave special preference to the moneyed and influential few. I feel that in permitting the fireworks to proceed these officials were derelict in their duties, abused their powers, and acted in a way that is tantamount to malfeasance in office. Had there been a fire, I was prepared to publicly call for resignations and, if necessary, to take 4

JULY 11, 2012

legal steps to remove them from office. I might add that I speak as the former research director for the Arkansas Republican Party, where I honed my political operative skills. I am now prepared to use my political skills against “God’s Own Party” (the GOP) in Garland County. The Republican Party here — excepting Pat McCabe and (until now) Rick Davis and a couple of others — is not Winthrop Rockefeller’s Republican Party. No, it is a captive of the Tea Party and the Religious Right. Cliff Jackson Hot Springs

Spider-man not like the poor Philip Martin of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette begins his review of “The Amazing Spider-Man” with an awfully conceived and drawn out 40-word sentence. The sentence is so complex that it contains two hyphens, a set of parenthesizes and words such as “hegemony.” There are few rules of decorum in the world of the written word. However, I feel there must be a rule against ridiculous comparisons. Martin claims that movies about superheroes will always be around “Like the poor …” The first words of Mar-

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tin’s sentence and review are “Like the poor” and then follows this outrageous connection between two unconnected things or at least two things that should never be connected. One cannot help but wonder how Martin crafted such an opening and wonder even more why an editor had no qualms with such an opening. Patrick Christopher Kangrga Conway

Stotsky needs to venture out Like all loyal conservatives, Dr. Sandra Stotsky (“Still can’t read, Johnny,” July 4) paints with a broad brush in order to accomplish her political and ideological agenda. This fact is no more evident than her current accusations regarding Arkansas public school teachers, and in particular, her over-generalized proclamations regarding phonics education in Arkansas’s colleges of education. Of course, by employing this approach she remains a darling of the right. Let’s consider just one important, but very troubling, example of what she has stated as absolute truth. Now I could critically analyze other statements of hers, but at this point in time I will just focus on just one! Dr. Stotsky proclaims that colleges of education in Arkansas do not teach phonics instruction to future teachers. If we believe what Dr. Stotsky is claiming, then either Dr. Deborah Owens, an associate professor of reading, and Dr. Tom Smith, dean of the College of Education at the University of Arkansas are at best, misinformed and at worst, just outright liars. I do not believe they are either, particularly because as an associate professor in the Department of Teacher Education at ASU/Jonesboro, I can, without fear of being wrong, comfortably invite anyone to e-mail me and we can set up a visit to our campus, visit reading classes, talk to the students who are taking these classes, and then allow whoever visits to make up their own minds! We can even go for barbecue at Demo’s! Now I would hope that Dr. Stotsky, and even the Arkansas Department of Education, who she says seems to agree with her, would take my invitation seriously. However, I doubt that will happen. Why? Because she admits that “she has not probed deeply on her own campus, not wanting to ruffle feathers in her own nest.” I would imagine if she can’t take a short jaunt to see her colleagues at the U of A, it is highly unlikely she will ride all the way down to Jonesboro and talk to Dr. Owens and see what our reading professors are doing! Dr. Thomas Fiala Associate Professor Teacher Education ASU, Jonesboro

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JULY 11, 2012

EDITORIAL

EYE ON ARKANSAS

The Chamber’s anti-gas-tax pitch

JULY 11, 2012

ARKANSAS TIMES

BRIAN CHILSON

ure enough, Sheffield Nelson and the Arkansas Municipal League reported enough signatures last week to clear the first hurdle for an act that will for the first time in history decently reimburse Arkansans and their descendants for the profiteering from vanishing natural gas resources. Now, the sponsors will have to withstand a legal attack on the petitions by the gas companies and their surrogate, the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce, and pick up a few thousand more signatures for insurance. Then they, and the voters, will have to fight off a classic disinformation campaign of the kind that has become the national standard on big policy issues. The campaign against the national health-insurance law in 2010 is the template. If you’ve got enough money and moxie you can make people believe anything — that the law will destroy jobs, freedom and the American way of life and pile onerous taxes and debt on all of us and our descendants. That is already the chamber’s and gas industry’s tack on Nelson’s initiated act, which would impose a 7 percent tax on the value of gas produced for the market in Arkansas. The rate would be close to what other states in the region tax gas at the wellhead. Since 2009, Arkansas’s rate averages a little over 1.5 percent. Other big gas-producing states levy taxes in different forms and at varying rates; Sarah Palin’s Alaska collects a tax of 22.5 percent. The severance tax in Alaska raises more than 77 percent of the state government budget, so Alaskans are almost tax-free. In Texas, the severance tax accounts for 6 percent of the state budget, in Oklahoma 13 percent, in Louisiana 9 percent and New Mexico 19 percent. What about the Arkansas budget? Severance taxes account for under one half of 1 percent. Our leaders, including the State Chamber of Commerce, have always loved the sales tax to pay for everything. In fact, that’s one reason they want to prevent a fair severance tax on natural gas. Most of the money from the tax would go to fix highways and bridges, city streets and county roads. The chamber and the gas industry want ordinary people, the middle class and the poor, to pay for interstate roads for the shippers and for the damage done to roads in gas exploration. Here is what you will hear: • The big companies will take drilling rigs out of Arkansas and it will cost tens of thousands of jobs. Not one rig will move — not because of the little severance tax anyway — and not one job will be lost. Have they moved out of Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Kansas, Alaska and elsewhere into Arkansas because of our low tax and their high taxes? Never happened. • You’ll pay higher taxes for your heating gas. Not true. The gas goes into interstate pipelines and is marketed nationally. Little of the shale gas stays in Arkansas. But never mind. They’ll have industry-financed studies showing all those horrors to be true.

STORMS A COMIN’: Storm clouds roll over the Arkansas River on Tuesday. Little Rock saw some much-needed showers Monday and Tuesday.

Ethics fight still on

riday was the deadline to submit signatures for initiated acts and constitutional amendments. Four proposals cleared the initial hurdle but still must be verified as to legitimate signatures of registered voters. Two would grant exclusive casino permits; one would legalize medical use of marijuana, and one would increase the severance tax on natural gas. The only petition drive motivated purely by principle failed to gather the 62,507 signatures necessary. It was the Regnat Populus 2012 ethics reform initiative, the brainchild of Catholic High teacher Paul Spencer. It would have ended direct corporate contributions to Arkansas political candidates, just as federal law prohibits such contributions. It would have imposed a so-called Walmart rule to outlaw gifts of any size to lawmakers, just as Walmart prohibits its employees from accepting gratuities from vendors. Finally, it would have set a two-year cooling-off period for lawmakers who want to become lobbyists. This would have invalidated the grandfather clause given to the current crop of term-limited legislators with plans to head straight to the lobby. The ethics drive didn’t fail on account of lack of enthusiasm. Only a corporate lobbyist or greedy legislator could oppose it. But the backers started late, with less than four months to gather signatures. They’d have fallen even shorter had not a bipartisan group of good-government angels raised at least $65,000 to pay a professional canvassing firm to gather signatures in the final six weeks of the effort. The canvassing firm, Terra Strategies, provided optimistic assurances up until the day before the deadline, leaving some unhappy ethics campaigners when they didn’t deliver. Paid canvassers got the job done in the other efforts. Regnat Populus 2012 learned much in its failed labor — procedurally, politically and otherwise — during a blistering hot summer. It had to overcome

efforts to block its canvassing in a public park at both Riverfest and, unbelievably, a celebration of Independence Day sponsored by the state’s largest newspaper. Petition for ethics on July 4 in a MAX public park? Not if the Arkansas BRANTLEY maxbrantley@arktimes.com Democrat-Gazette had anything to say about it. Spencer announced the shortfall with a note of optimism. “With this wisdom and a redoubled resolve, we will emerge from the crucible, composed of a stronger alloy of solidarity and purpose, determination and longing.” Others, too, said the drive could set the stage, as early as the 2013 legislature, for strides forward in ethics. I hope they’re right, though I’m pessimistic. Republicans were outspoken opponents of the measure. They live on corporate contributions. They sense a coming Republican majority and are anxious for the freebies that will come with greater power. Aware of how unseemly their whining about better ethics looked, some cooler Republican heads expressed an interest in ethics advancement after the drive failed, generally along the lines of support for full disclosure on contributions and expenditures. It’s empty rhetoric. Disclosure is already a failure. Witness all the ways lobbyists have found to evade full disclosure of their hog-slopping and the repeated failure of lawmakers to disclose free trips they’ve taken. Nor has any Republican yet called for full disclosure of the many ways in which money is spent independently in support of candidates. They like secrecy. The silver lining is that legislative repudiation of ethics proposals inspired the last great step forward in Arkansas ethics law more than two decades ago. Should lawmakers stomp on the public spirited again, it might be just the tonic Regnat Populus needs to try an initiative again. With an earlier start.

OPINION

Politics then and now: The court’s grand gulf

o you have the patience for another postscript on the weird but momentous U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare”? The big question, left unanswered by all the court’s opinions in the case and the millions of words of commentary, is the extent to which politics, not the law, determined how five of the nine justices came down on the healthcare law. It turns out that the people of Arkansas are in a better position to answer that question than anyone in America. More about that in a minute. First, as everyone knows, Chief Justice John Roberts shocked the Republican Party and his Republican colleagues on the court by straying from the fold on one of the three big issues in the case, which resulted in the court upholding the law by a vote of 5 to 4. As expected, Roberts had joined the four other conservatives in holding that the Constitution’s commerce clause did not allow the federal government to regulate health insurance by requiring the uninsured to buy insurance if they could afford it. But then, to

the others’ dismay, Roberts said the law was constitutional on a separate ground — that the mandate for people ERNEST to pay a small tax DUMAS if they refused to insure themselves was a permissible thing for Congress to do — so the mandate was constitutional after all. Since then, the conjecture has been that George W. Bush’s chief justice switched on the weird little tax question because he was concerned about the image of his court — that it decided things based on which political party favored them and not upon an impartial reading of the law. Surveys show that most people already believed it — the evidence, after all, was overwhelming — but that most people were OK with a political decision if they liked the result. And more people were hoping Obamacare would be thrown out than hoped it would be upheld. Now, to the question of whether this was, indeed, a political decision: All you really need to do is ask whether the five

Republican justices would have held that owner and business in Arkansas. the commerce clause forbade the insurance The Supreme Court — Scalia, Kennedy, mandate if Congress had passed essentially Chief Justice William Rehnquist (Justice the same law when Presidents Nixon and Roberts’ old boss and mentor) and others Ford proposed it in the 1970s or when, in — ruled in 1987 that the Federal Energy the 1990s, the Republican leadership of Regulation Commission (FERC) was perCongress proposed it. To ask the question fectly within its power under the commerce is to answer it. clause to make utilities in Arkansas and But we in Arkansas have a definitive Mississippi and their customers pay for answer to the question without resorting power they did not need and could not to speculation. In a quite similar case, with use so that utility investors could reap a far-reaching consequences for people and profit on their investment. FERC — this was business in Arkansas, the U.S. Supreme Ronald Reagan’s agency and not Obama’s Court upheld even more drastic federal — sided with Middle South Utilities, which power over what people were compelled wanted to make people in Arkansas, Missisto buy under the commerce clause. The sippi and Louisiana pay for a giant nuclear justices who led the way: Antonin Scalia power plant in Mississippi that the utilities and Anthony Kennedy, the only current built as a result of a monumental misjudgjustices who were on the court back in 1987 ment on the need for it and its cost. The liberals on that court, all gone now, when the case was decided. Scalia wrote the stinging opinion for the court last month thought the commerce clause restricted attacking Obamacare and claiming that the FERC’s power in such matters and that commerce clause prohibited such use of states could decide on their own if the federal power. Regulating “inactivity” by utilities were imprudent in building the consumers was going too far for the fed- plant and if people in Arkansas and Miseral government, Scalia, Kennedy, Roberts, sissippi could be forced to pay for elecSamuel Alito and Clarence Thomas said. tricity they didn’t need. It seemed manUnheard of, they said. ifestly unfair since Arkansas had built I’m sorry. We’re going to have to talk two nuclear units and giant coal-burning again about Grand Gulf, the big electricity units at White Bluff and Newark, and dispute that baffled the people of Arkansas Arkansas customers already were paying for 30 years and cost them at last count $4.5 high rates for them. billion — $6,500 on average for each homeCONTINUED ON PAGE 17

The Romney doll

elieve it or not, you can still buy a George W. Bush “Elite Force Aviator” 12-inch action figure — to commemorate his 2003 aircraft carrier “Mission Accomplished” photo op prematurely celebrating victory over Iraq. Amazon.com offers them for $74.99, plus shipping and handling. As Republican fetishes go, nothing will ever top it. So let’s say you wanted to market a Mitt Romney action figure to enhance the GOP candidate’s chances among voters who play with dolls. How would you dress the thing? No warrior poses, of course, because Romney sat out Vietnam as a Mormon missionary in Paris, where he learned to speak French but converted not a soul. Now he’s keen for war with Iran, about which one thing’s certain: no son or grandson of his will serve. A Governor Mitt doll could only resemble a statue of the Roman god Janus, usually depicted with two faces symbolizing his ability to see the past and the future. In Romney’s case, both faces would signify extremely flexible convictions. As Massachusetts governor, Mitt was all for government-imposed health insurance mandates; now he’s categorically opposed. It’s been fascinating watching the candidate explain how money paid to the Mas-

regardless of the criticism he’s received. lation. They don’t make things. They accuAnyone?” mulate wealth through stock speculation, You vote for Romney, you have NO tax arbitrage, currency manipulation, “outsachusetts DepartIDEA what you’re getting. However, there sourcing” and “offshoring” jobs, basically ment of Revenue are signs the candidate may actually ben- manipulating money with no regard for in lieu of buying efit from his sheer lack of conviction. the communities or companies affected. Successful investments are one thing. health insurance is Robert Draper reports in the New York a “penalty,” while Times Magazine that when focus groups But if there’s money to be made in buying money shelled out are informed that Romney champions a company, borrowing against its assets GENE to the IRS under Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget plan “and thus… and driving it into bankruptcy that’s OK LYONS identical circum‘ending Medicare as we know it’ — while too. A recent Vanity Fair article on Romstances is a “tax.” also advocating tax cuts for the wealthi- ney’s finances lists a half-dozen “formerly Who does he think he’s fooling? In 2009, est Americans, the respondents simply healthy companies” Bain treated that way when Romney wrote a USA Today col- refused to believe any politician would during his tenure. The scandal is what’s legal. umn urging President Obama to adopt do such a thing.” a health care mandate, he called it a “tax Then how about a Job Creator Mitt doll, Vanity Fair also documents that fully 55 penalty.” Show proof of health insurance depicting Romney as Romney wishes to be pages in Romney’s 2010 tax return — the or you pay a penalty. seen? Once again, costuming is a problem. only one he’s condescended to release — To be fair, Obama’s been similarly eva- I’m extremely fond of that PR publicity “are devoted to reporting his transactions sive. To be even fairer, the Massachusetts photo of Romney and his Bain Capital col- with foreign entities.” The candidate has tax penalty is much higher than “Obam- leagues grinning maniacally with $20 bills multi-million dollar bank accounts in such acare’s” — half the cost of a yearly health hanging out of their pockets and stuck in foreign tax havens as Switzerland, Luxeminsurance premium, assessed on state their ears. But there’s nothing duller than bourg, the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, etc. income taxes. a middle-aged stiff in a blue business suit. He’s got upwards of $100 million stashed Former Bush speechwriter Matt LarYou could dress him up like Scrooge in a tax free IRA supposedly limited to imer predicts that Romney can’t help but McDuck, top hat, pince-nez and spats, $30,000 yearly deposits. be “haunted throughout the campaign except that the Disney tycoon wore So here’s my suggestion: dress the Mitt by unforced errors to explain his various no pants. Besides, Romney’s avarice is Romney action figure in the national cosshifts: the weak evasions to questions, the of a distinctly contemporary kind. The tumes of the countries his money lives odd explanations, the bizarrely unneces- 19th and 20th century industrialists that — lederhosen for the Swiss accounts, a sary misstatements.” the Disney character was based upon actu- Jimmy Buffett beach-bum outfit for the “[N]ame a single controversial politi- ally built things — railroads, oil and mining Caymans, an all-white cricket uniform cal position Romney has taken in his empires, automobiles, etc. for the Bahamas, etc. career that he has stuck to,” Larimer adds Outfits like Bain Capital are products of Then win or lose, he can visit his money “regardless of the political consequences, the computer age, and of financial deregu- in style. www.arktimes.com

JULY 11, 2012

Book Sale July 13-15 Main Library Basement

100 Rock Street Friday & Saturday: 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. Sunday 1-4 p.m. $.50 paperbacks/ $1 hardbacks FOCAL members may enter at 9 a.m.

River Market Books & Gifts

120 River Market Avenue Friday & Saturday: 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. Sunday 1-5 p.m. FOCAL members enjoy 50% off “gently read” books at RMB&G!

FOCAL Member Early Shopping River Market Books & Gifts Thursday, July 12, 5-7 p.m.

Memberships available at the door. Teachers and librarians with identification will receive an additional 25% off purchases from the Main Library basement.

W O RDS

Jagoff nixed After the word “jagoff” appeared in an article on post-gazette.com, David Shribman, the executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, sent a memo to his staff: “Yes, I know I didn’t grow up here; and yes, I know it doesn’t mean what some people think it means; and yes, I know this email will be circulated and ridiculed; but, still … “The word ‘jagoff’ has no place in the Post-Gazette or on post-gazette.com.” A Pittsburgh source says many people assume incorrectly that jagoff is a corruption of a more familiar vulgarism, but “In fact, jagoff has its roots in the Northern British Isles, ‘where most of the original English-speaking settlers in this area came from,’ says Carnegie Mellon University professor Barbara Johnstone, the foremost expert on local speech patterns. There, the verb ‘to jag’ meant ‘to prick or poke’ – which is why thorn bushes are called ‘jaggerbushes’ hereabouts. A jagoff, similarly, is simply an annoyance.” A contributor to the on-line Urban Dictionary says that jagoff is “A Pittsburghese term for a person who is being a real jerk!” Another, more specific, says jagoff

is “Pittsburgh slang for anyone irritating, out of line, not in love with the Steelers or not drinking Iron City on a regular basis.”

DOUG SMITH dougsmith@arktimes.com

You need Joshua to fight the battle of derecho: “Nearly three full days after a severe line of storms, known as a derecho, knocked down trees and power lines in 10 states … ” It’s not well known, except maybe to weathermen. I couldn’t find derecho in a standard dictionary. NPR on-line, which felt a need to explain the word in connection with last week’s storms, says that the physics professor who coined the term for straight-ahead storms (way back in 1888) “decided to use the term derecho (Spanish for ‘direct or straight ahead’) to define these non-tornadic events since this term could be considered as an analog to the term tornado which is also of Spanish origin.” And forget about Joshua. NPR says the word is “pronounced similar to ‘deh-REY-cho’ in English.”

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ARKANSAS TIMES

SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE. Belatedly, the Arkansas Board of Education approved without dissent a proposed rule that would prevent use of state money to pay for religion in the Arkansas Better Chance program that provides tax money to pre-schools. Two Republican legislators, state Rep. Justin Harris and state Sen. Johnny Key, operate for-profit programs with tax money that have included Bible instruction and other religious trappings. Key has said his program has ended use of Bible verses. Harris has tried to say his religious indoctrination occurs outside the school day, though his operation is almost wholly funded — building and staff — by tax money. A Facebook post from Harris indicates hope that the legislature will override agency administrative rules, something that exceeds its authority technically, but which can happen in the review process. MAIN STREET IN LITTLE ROCK. The city of Little Rock announced at a news conference its receipt of a $900,000 federal grant — to be matched by more than $600,000 in city money — for a project in the 100-500 blocks of Main Street to test managing water runoff with “porous pavers, tree wells, rain gardens and other water filtration practices.” DR. JAY BARTH. Gov. Beebe tapped the distinguished professor of politics

and chair of the politics and international relations department at Hendrix to fill a seat on the state Board of Education. Barth also contributes a weekly column to the Times and arktimes.com.

It was a bad week for… KEN ADEN. The longshot Democratic candidate for 3rd District Congress — buffeted recently by reporting on his exaggeration of his Army record — dropped out of the race against incumbent Republican Rep. Steve Womack, saying he didn’t want to harm the Democratic effort and that he wanted to spend more time with family. Election rules prevent Democrats for fielding another candidate. The Green Party has nominated Rebekah Kennedy to oppose Womack. David Pangrac is the Libertarian candidate. ETHICS REFORM. The effort to get the Campaign Finance and Lobbying Act on the 2012 ballot fell short. Organizers’ efforts to gather signatures began late. Those working to gather signatures could be mobilized again and be better informed. We know from Lt. Gov. Mark Darr’s alarm and the grumbling corporate community that corporate Arkansas fears the people and loves how cheap it is to buy the Arkansas legislature. Or might there be elected representatives who’ll put their names on the line in the legislature for ethics reform?

TOP 9 reASOnS

THE OBSERVER NOTES ON THE PASSING SCENE

Dispatches from the farm THE OBSERVER IS RAISING about

700 heirloom tomato plants this year, along with sheep, goats, chickens and peacocks on his great-grandfather’s farm in North Pulaski County. The sheep and goats are in the custody of The Observer’s wife, referred to as the Goatessa when she is out of earshot. The other day she enlisted the help of Brandon, our energetic young neighbor who has a titanium leg from the knee down, thanks to an encounter with a drunk driver a couple of years back. Brandon and the Goatessa were ferrying fence parts down into the lower pasture in preparation for building paddocks for the animals. Brandon had parked his loaded fourwheeler along the fence line about 50 yards from Bayou Meto which runs through the Observer’s farm. Brandon had dismounted, his titanium leg firmly stuffed into a work boot, when he felt a repetitive vibration running up the metal and into his thigh. When he looked down he saw that his boot was firmly planted across the middle of a frantic, five-foot water-moccasin that was repeatedly striking the metal leg. Because he had stepped on to the snakes middle, it could not strike above the knee, but he realized that the moment he stepped off the serpent that would change. Brandon is a big man, but in a pivot and leap worthy of a ballet master, he was away and over the four wheeler. The cottonmouth, meanwhile, moved with equal alacrity in the opposite direction, headed no doubt to the more comfortable confines of Bayou Meto. IT HAS BEEN AN INCREDIBLE YEAR for heirloom tomatoes. The

mild winter and mild spring allowed for early planting and cool nights for solid fruit set. Starting the first week of June the Observer, wife and kids have been picking 500 pounds a week: large Goldies, Anais Noir, Carbon, Copia, and Oaxacan Jewel. These are huge old varieties, so full of flavor, yet thin skinned and vulnerable to every insect, fungus and skinsplitting moisture fluctuation known to mankind. For the past two years

stink bugs have decimated the crop, taking advantage of the Observer’s faltering resolve never to use chemical pesticides or fungicides. Neem oil, insecticidal soaps and chrysanthemum-based organic pesticides such as Pyganic get laughed out of the garden by the stink bugs. Last year we raised more stink bugs than tomatoes. But not this year. Many Arkansas readers are no doubt familiar with the 1930s era, Benton-based Niloak Pottery, which used kaolin clay to produce exquisite ceramics known for the beautiful blue swirl patterns in the body. Niloak is kaolin spelled backwards and kaolin was the secret ingredient of Niloak pottery. And now it is The Observer’s organic secret weapon in his ongoing war with the stink bugs. Once a week we load up the back pack sprayer with finely ground Kaolin clay dissolved in water. We coat the plants and fruit with a thin white clay film that the insects hate. Every fruit has to be wiped down but there is nary a stink bug. From afar it looks like we are raising a crop of flocked Christmas trees. THE OBSERVER AND THE GOATESSA

are new to the sheep- and goatraising business, buying our Katahdin and Hampshire meat sheep and Kiko goats about a year ago. Recently, the Goatessa had our first young ram slaughtered, dispatched by Brandon and a small caliber pistol. The Foodie mantra “Know where your food comes from” takes on a different meaning when there is literally blood on your hands. The Observer was at work that day in his air conditioned office, necessitating an unavoidable though not unwelcome absence from the killing field. Batman (yes, the ram had a name) was lassoed, pushed and pulled out of sight from the other sheep and then shot. When the Observer returned home that afternoon, and went in search of some ice cream, he found Batman, skinned and gutted, in his freezer.

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6/25/12 1:25 PM

Arkansas Reporter

THE

IN S IDE R

The Little Rock Technology Park Authority released Tuesday a summary of the criteria it wants alternative park sites to meet, and it does not mention a five-minute drive time requirement that the Authority board has said was crucial to success. However, the summary is only a “cover sheet” and not the full criteria, Authority board chair Dr. Mary Good said later in the day Tuesday. Good said the full criteria would be released this week. Because of the five-minute drive time, the board had considered only residential areas between the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Neighborhood opposition stirred the City Board to demand the Authority board — which is independent of the city but needs $22 million from a city sales tax to build — look elsewhere. In correcting the press release, Good said that what has been posted on the park website, lrtechpark.com, is a “cover sheet” and criteria are still be developed. The summary asks for the property owner’s name, a legal description, topology maps, description of utilities, aerial map, neighborhood map, transportation available, surrounding amenities and acquisition cost. The deadline for proposals is Aug. 31. Criteria were drawn up by board members Dickson Flake and Dr. Michael Douglas and reviewed by consultant Charles Dilks. Good said that Flake, who is a commercial real estate broker, will contact other brokers in Central Arkansas to let them know of the board’s interest in looking at other sites, a move the release called “proactive.” That word is key because UAMS and the city of Little Rock, two sponsors for the park, have withheld $25,000 installments due toward their $250,000 pledges to emphasize that the Authority board should more actively participate in looking for alternate sites. The neighborhoods, in Forest Hills and Oak Forest, “are not now being considered,” the news release said, but it added that a study it commissioned from Crafton Tull engineers on the three 30- to 60-acre sites “will be of use for whatever site is ultimately chosen.” The board is to discuss aesthetic and building issues recommended by the report at its Aug. 15 meeting. The Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce point person to handle tech park releases could not produce a copy of the Crafton Tull report, presented in June to the board, on Monday. In theory, this report will be posted to the park website. CONTINUED ON PAGE 11 10

JULY 11, 2012

ARKANSAS TIMES

BRIAN CHILSON

Criteria confusion

FUTURE TREE: Robert Lashley tastes a tiny leaf of one moringa tree, the small green plant at his feet.

African cukes, Siberian tomatoes Arkansas farmers shaking up their gardens. BY LESLIE NEWELL PEACOCK

uy Lancaster is best known, perhaps, for his work editing the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, a project of the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, but the kiwano he’s slicing into at his desk downtown is something new to Arkansas. The yellow-orange spiky skin of the fruit — a.k.a. the African horned

cucumber (Cucumis metuliferus) — protects a thirst-quenching gelatinous, limegreen pulp. Lancaster grows it in his home garden, along with a little husked tomato (Physalis pruinosa) that, like the kiwano, is heat-tolerant. Heat, you may have noticed, is what we have got this summer, in abundance. Most

of Arkansas has kissed goodbye its Zone 7 standing in the hardiness charts and is now in the embrace of Zone 8. Gardeners and small farmers are looking to the world’s hot zones to find plants that can thrive in our new climate. Lancaster passed along a kiwano to his friend Robert Lashley, who with his wife, Peg, owns Willow Springs Garden Market on Willow Springs Road in South Little Rock and is interested in experimenting with heat-tolerant species. “Climate change is here, isn’t it?” says Lashley, a retired nurse and native of Yorkshire, England. Lashley plants later in the growing season to avoid insects, so his kiwano have not yet set fruit, but the vines growing in his silty soil look healthy; the seeds “germinated like crazy,” he said. The soil, on the other hand, is dry as dust; Lashley runs it through his fingers. “Maybe this is an aberration,” he says, “but what if it isn’t? The spigot from heaven has turned off.” Lashley is experimenting with another African species: The moringa tree (Molinga oleifera). It’s known in Niger as a life-saver, offering valuable nutrition in a land of drought. So far, Lashley’s hardiest “tree” is about 2 inches tall, but the species will grow 20 feet in a season “if it’s happy,” he said. He’ll grow it as an annual, since as a Zone 9 plant it’s unlikely to winter over — or at least we can hope it won’t. The moringa is valued for its vitamin-packed leaves and seed pods; already, the tiny leaves are spicy like arugula and delicious. Only a few of his moringa trees are coming up; does that mean it’s too hard to grow here? No, he said; he should have planted more seeds. “There are no failures in gardening,” he said affably, “just experiments that don’t work.” (That would include the wasabi he tried to grow for Restaurant 1620, a plant he discovered needs wet conditions with little humidity.) Lashley has been farming for six years; along with the familiar — apples, tomatoes, sunflowers, blueberries, fall squash — he’s trying hand-pollinated pawpaw (a native cultivar) and jujube (Ziziphus zizyphus, an Asian tree) for their fruits, heat-loving red Malabar spinach, purslane (more omega 3 than flax seed, he says) and minutina, a green that loves cold as well as heat. Lashley, who farms only three acres, grows more unusual species because of competition with the bounty of big growers at the farmer’s markets. “I decided to grow something a little bit different” even if it’s CONTINUED ON PAGE 17

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INSIDER, CONT.

Buice buy on hold Brian Teeter, who is proposing to buy the building housing Buice Drug at 3011 W. Markham and an adjoining parking lot, may return to the Board of Adjustment to seek a new variance to allow off-street parking for a restaurant he hopes to put in the building, he said Tuesday. Teeter would only go back with the support of the neighborhood, he said. If he decides to go forward with the plan, he’ll meet with the Capitol View/Stifft Station Neighborhood Association first and ask that they provide a letter of recommendation for the board. Teeter had a variance to use the parking at Jett’s Service Station at 3101 W. Markham at night, but owner George Jett decided not to go through with the contract because of neighborhood opposition. The business may need up to 30 parking spaces, real estate agent Trey Prewitt said; there are only six or so in the Buice building parking lot. Teeter would buy and restore the building from the Coy D. Wimberly Living Trust. He said he had some support from the neighborhood for the idea but wanted to be “sensitive” to neighbors’ concerns. The restaurant group that owns Gusano’s and Grub’s in Fayetteville has been discussed as possible lessors of the space.

SNAIL THRIVES, OTHER SPECIES AT RISK

BIG PICTURE

AMPHIBIAN Ozark Hellbender

BIRDS Interior Least Tern Ivory Billed Woodpecker Red Cockaded Woodpecker Whooping Crane

CRAYFISH Benton County Cave Crayfish Hell Creek Cave Crayfish FISH Arkansas darter Yellowcheek darter

INSECTS American Burying Beetle

Chattanoogan regrets sale of family paper to Hussman

MAMMALS Gray Bat Florida Panther (presumed extinct in Arkansas) Indiana Bat Ozark Big-Eared Bat

MUSSELS Scaleshell Mussel Curtis Pearlymussel Snuffbox Fanshell Speckled Pocketbook Fat Pocketbook Spectaclecase Ouachita Rock Pocketbook Winged Mapleleaf Pallid Sturgeon Pink Mucket PLANTS Harperella Pondberry Running Buffalo Clover

PHOTOS COURTESY US FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE

THE

The Magazine Mountain Shagreen, a tiny snail found only on Magazine Mountain, is speeding — relatively speaking — toward a historic achievement. It is about to become the first invertebrate ever removed from the federal list of endangered species. The shagreen was placed on the list in 1989. Now, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the shagreen population is stable, threats to its survival have been eliminated or reduced, and adequate regulatory protection is in place. In the matter of “regulatory protection,” the shagreen chose its home wisely. The highest point in Arkansas, at a height of 2,753 feet, Magazine Mountain is owned by the U.S. Forest Service, which has designated the mountain as a Special Interest Area to protect the shagreen and its habitat. The Arkansas Parks and Tourism Department has a long-term lease for the state park atop the mountain. But other species found in Arkansas, or once found in Arkansas, remain on the endangered list. These include, according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service:

Roy Exum, a member of the family that sold its Chattanooga newspaper to Walter Hussman, publisher of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, recently penned a stinging editorial on The Chattanoogan, a web-only news outlet, after news developed of a possible drive to unionize employees at Hussman’s Chattanooga Times Free Press. Exum is no friend of unions, but he nonetheless urges people to get in touch with those working to unionize employees. Here’s how Exum says his family came to sell the paper to Hussman: “When the day came when we had to decide which offer to take, Walter Hussman (WEHCO) was picked because he promised to take care of our people, not just the long-time employees we loved but the Times writers and the benefits packages and the 'traditions,' for lack of a better word, that we felt our community deserved. Now that not one family member works at the Times Free Press any longer, I can say that selling to Walter Hussman’s crowd was the blackest day in my family’s history.” www.arktimes.com

JULY 11, 2012

VE I T A N K C O R E L T TH LIT R O N D N A N A E. M IF O L W S T R N E U T ID S S N D O O C O HOLLYW GGS DEFIES DEATH AND MONICA STA O B Y C HE R E E F R A N C

2004.

Monica Staggs stands on a ledge in Cabrera, Dominican Republic, surrounded by a paradise of tropical fauna. Cameras are rolling for “Love Wrecked,” and she’s doubling 18-year-old Amanda Bynes. Later Staggs will riff on the spray tan, 17 years and significant curves she has on Bynes, but at the moment, she’s too terrified to distract herself with humor. She takes a deep breath, glances at the stagnant water in a rock pool an impossible distance away, and mentally recites something Gary Wayton, her fiance and the “Love Wrecked” stunt coordinator, told her years ago: “It’s not fear, it’s adrenaline, because my body is prepping to do something extraordinary.” Usually this works like a charm. She takes a tentative step forward, reaches for a bird’s nest — her character is shipwrecked and in search of edible eggs — bends her knees and inadvertently jumps. “Shit, I jumped,” she thinks. She was supposed to stumble. Free-falling 50 feet takes longer than she’d expected. She has plenty of time to panic about having to do it again — to arch her back rather than absorbing the impact with her knees, so that her body slams into what she knows must be liquid but what feels like concrete. She shoots through the depths, and just as Newton’s third law promises, the pain rockets up — all the way up, through her spine, through her ribs. Frantically, she claws for the surface. She gulps the warm, welcome air, paddling towards a lifeguard, convinced that her back is broken. Either that, or she’s punctured a lung.

JULY 11, 2012

ARKANSAS TIMES

♦♦♦

shine,” and that, until another table opens up, we have to shout over the drone of an archaic air conditioner. When a group of tipsy older women gawk at her ballet skirt, she drapes her arm around me, obligingly posing for a photo. “Are you from out of town? Are you here for the literary fest?” one of them asks. “No, I’m here from L.A. I’m visiting her. She’s my best friend from college,” Staggs says, tilting her head into mine and smirking for the camera. This isn’t true. We’ve just met and though she doesn’t look it, Staggs is 10 years my senior. But there is something comforting and familiar about her. She laughs like a down-home girl — head back, mouth open, Virginia Slim wagging between two fingers. Her candor is endearing, and she brims with celeb-studded stories. She talks first and recants later, which is probably not the best method of dealing with Hollywood-sized egos. It also explains her anxiety about press. “Monica’s a straight-shooter. In a business where people are careful not to step on toes, she says what’s on her mind. She’s kind of like a female Rhett Butler,” said Noelle Retes, Monica’s Los Angeles manager, via phone. Her younger sister, Amy Staggs, puts it more bluntly: “Monica’s always had a crude sense of humor.” Staggs has been in Arkansas for several months. She came to spend Easter with her parents and to recover from persistent sinus infections. But Staggs will tell you that primarily, she came because she was invited to talk on the radio.

“It was

a huge mistake, a two-hour reset,” she said, recalling the event eight years later. “My wig had to be dried, curled, primped. My clothes had to be dried. We were in the Dominican Republic. It’s not like we could call anyone.” Wayton had hoisted her out, saying, “What the fuck was that?” She realized that her legs worked, so her back probably wasn’t broken. A take and a successful stumble later, Wayton drove her to a hospital, and she was X-rayed and handed a bottle of Vicodin. No one could tell her exactly what was wrong. No one spoke fluent English. Staggs has appeared in more than 100 films and TV shows, largely because the vast majority of her stumbles don’t require retakes. As a professional stuntwoman, she lives in Los Angeles with Wayton, whom she married in 2010, but she spent half of her life in North Little Rock. She graduated from Sylvan Hills High School in 1988 and did the college circuit for a few years, trying out the English and drama departments at the University of Arkansas in both Fayetteville and Little Rock and then at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway. In 1996 she dropped out of UA Fayetteville, three credits shy of graduation. She had just been hired as a stand-in for Brenda Bakke in “Shelter,” a low-budget gangster film being shot in Little Rock. Call times conflicted with class time, but Staggs’ gamble paid off. Bakke balked at riding shotgun in a reckless car, so Staggs volunteered for the gig. It was a rush, zig-zagging through woods, nearly torpedoing into a ditch. At the time, she didn’t realize two things: the car literally had no brakes, and this experience would jumpstart her career. Wayton, the driver of the brakeless car, was a seasoned stuntman, 12 years her senior. He was smitten with the 26-year-old leggy blonde, with her onset fearlessness and her off-set goofiness. When “Shelter” wrapped, Wayton hired Staggs for a Hollywood gig he was coordinating, stunt-doubling Sheryl Lee in “Angel’s Dance.” All she had to do was run off a ledge, turn midair and fire a shotgun. For a girl who once rode from North Little Rock to Missouri in the back of a flat-bed pickup, a leap and a few rounds were, as Staggs puts it, “cupcake.” She returned to Arkansas just long enough to break the news to her family — she was moving to California. Sixteen years later her credits include “True Blood” and “CSI,” doubling Sandra Bullock in “Crash,” doubling Charlize Theron in “The Italian

STAGGS: In a studio shot.

♦♦♦

It’s a

'DEATH PROOF': Sydney Tamiia Poitier, Jordan Ladd and Monica Staggs.

Job,” and doubling Daryl Hannah in “Kill Bill Vol. I” and “Kill Bill Vol. II.” Staggs is quintessentially Hollywood. She’s successful but insecure, brazen but paranoid (especially about stalkers), and she expects all media to come with stylists and contracts. She was two hours late to her Arkansas Times photo shoot. When she finally spilled out of her father’s tan sedan, alongside three suitcases of props, she was pale and

sparsely made up, her hair pulled back in a messy ponytail and her bottom half swathed in inexplicable pink tulle. At first impression, Monica Staggs is a train wreck. But 20 minutes later, on the crowded patio of a Hillcrest pub, Staggs is beaming and relaxed, despite the fact that the closest the waiter can produce to Reposa Tequila is something professionally labeled that he calls “moon-

Tuesday night and like most Tuesdays, Argenta’s Starving Artist Cafe is packed. Each week the nationally syndicated radio program “Tales from the South” is recorded here. Staggs waits in the hallway for her introduction, and then covers the restaurant in four determined strides. She defies every stereotype I have about what a stuntwoman should look like. She’s 5’9,” a willowy knockout in a flowing black top and dark jeans. She adjusts the mic and lifts her palms, raise-the-roof style. Her vocal range is incredible — her crowd greeting begins at a normal register and 10 seconds later, volleys somewhere between nose bleeding and glass cracking. “Hi. Hi, c’mon this is gonna be on radio, let’s make it loud,” she squeals. Then, for the next half hour, she sips a Rock Star and lobs self-deprecating CONTINUED ON PAGE 14 www.arktimes.com

JULY 11, 2012

recollections of her “redneck” childhood and the trashy beauty pageants of her teen years, alongside more recent anecdotes about being a “death doll” in that “100 mile high school” out west, L.A. In half an hour, she’s managed no less than five edited-for-radio beeps and titillated the crowd by labeling Quentin Tarantino something entirely unairable. Later, at the Hillcrest bar, she’s forgotten that she said it. “I didn’t call him that, did I?” she groaned. “OK, well, they’ll bleep it out, won’t they?”

falls, boxing, fire burns, some martial arts, will hit the ground hard.” That final quality, she confesses, is actually the most problematic. She hates getting hurt, but she rarely turns down a stunt. “I don’t want to be embarrassed, and I do pretty much think I can do anything,” she said. “You have to pretend you’re a little kid and that excitement you have when you’re about to do something gnarly, that’s all it is. You have to trick yourself, because if you walk off that set, that’s a big deal.”

♦♦♦

Staggs is

“I think

shesaysthings that are offcolor, and then she gets uncertain, especially in the context of Arkansas,” said sister Staggs. Two years Monica’s junior, Amy is now an internist in Denver, Colo. “When we were growing up, no one did anything off. It was very conformist, that hardcore ’80s, Izod thing. Monica wants to shock people, wants people to know exactly how she is. But when she thinks someone is going to sit back and judge her, that’s uncomfortable.” According to Amy, her sister never fit into any one clique. She was smart, but she was too much of a partier to qualify for nerd status. She was athletic, but she wasn’t a jock. She was too ornery to be the homecoming queen type. She was creative and in some ways, a classic rebel. “Our mom is a schoolteacher and a rule follower, and Mom’s expectations made Monica even more nonconformist,” Amy Staggs said. “But our parents were actually pretty good about letting her do stuff. They let her go to Spain, they let her move to Alaska and work in a fish factory. They were never like, no, you’re not doing that.” And Monica Staggs has always been resourceful. Once at an audition she was told that a dance needed to incorporate more isolation movements. So she went to a club, snagged the best pop-andlock freestyler on the dance floor, and told him, “I’ll give you $50 to teach me to pop in the parking lot.” He obliged. She crashed that same audition to land her third Hollywood role, that of Eve, the sexy alien-woman in “Species 2.” “It was supposed to be closed,” Staggs said. “You had to be with an agency, and I wasn’t. So I just went

JULY 11, 2012

ARKANSAS TIMES

GOOD COMPANY: Staggs with Quentin Tarantino before the Taurus World Stunt Awards.

“You have to pretend you’re a little kid and that excitement you have when you’re about to do something gnarly, that’s all it is. You have to trick yourself, because if you walk off that set, that’s a big deal.” in and signed the agency above me.” Later, Staggs received a call from an irate agent — “Who the hell are you, why did you put that you’re from my agency?” the woman thundered. Then she said, “But, sweetie, they want to see you back.” That same agent, Lyn Baldwin, still represents Staggs today. Wayton is still impressed by how quickly Staggs wedged herself into the competitive stunt-world. “She basically got a rep early on as, hey, she’s skinny, but she’s a ground-pounder. That really propelled her career,” he said. At the time, there were only a few other stuntwoman with a similar build, and years of dance lessons had instilled Staggs’ lanky frame with an uncanny agility. Her stunt training consisted of acing a driving course and trust-

ing her boyfriend. In the early years, Wayton brought her onto the sets he coordinated. Before each new trick, Wayton and Staggs practiced obsessively at home. In 2000’s “Four Dogs Playing Poker,” Staggs had to leap 12 feet between two rooftops, 70 feet in the air, with nothing but a furniture blanket and 15 feet of piled cardboard to break a potential fall. She dubbed it “the death jump.” Wayton set up the stunt in their living room, measuring the distance exactly. During practice, Staggs consistently made the leap, with exactly six inches to spare. On-set, just as in practice, she cleared the leap on the first take — by exactly six inches. There’s an “abilities” category on Staggs’s resume. It reads: “wire work, fights, driving, ratchets, stair falls, high

42, but she looks 25. Actually, in her Madonna “True Blue” era outfit (she’s tugged a ripped sweater over the tulle, and she’s wearing red fishnets), she looks about 16. She picks at her heart-of-palm dip and grows reflective. “Obviously, I didn’t mean to be a stunt woman. I meant to be an actress, but I lucked into stunts,” she said. And, despite her estimate that she’s had maybe 10 concussions over the course of her career, Staggs seems to mean this. The scary jobs have been padded with awesome jobs. She once doubled Angelina Jolie on U2’s “Evil” video. She was strapped into a harness and safely flown 75-feet overhead, while one of the biggest bands in the world performed just beneath her. She loves working on location because, “people get more looseygoosey, and there’s a big party every weekend because nobody has anything else to do. Everybody just bonds.” In the film “Iwitness,” cast and crew were put up in a five-star beach hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The hotel had an attached club that wasn’t being used, so the group threw their own dance parties, playing CDs over the sound system. Staggs and Portia de Rossi became regulars at a bar in Old San Juan. Any afternoon that they weren’t filming, they were they drinking, Staggs recalled. And there have been other perks too, such watching B-films in Tarantino’s private screening room and being the 2005 co-recipient of the World Stunt Award for Best Fight and Best Overall Stunt by a Stuntwoman, which she shared with Zoe Bell, for the opening fight in “Kill Bill 2.” Sometimes, the good and bad intermingle. During the taping of that renown fight, Staggs fractured a vertebra. When Bell, doubling Uma Thur-

man, swung off a bar and planted both feet on Staggs’s chest, Staggs flew backwards into a piece of stereo equipment that was supposed to break away. It didn’t. “I just thought she broke my ribs because it hurt like hell. I had heard from my other stunt friends that breaking a rib was no big deal. So it was just, OK keep going,” Staggs said. “And we had just started filming, too. It seemed like, in all of my stunts, I had to land on my back.” A year later, the healed fracture was discovered when she was X-rayed for another injury. “What were you doing this time last year?” the doctor asked her. But her worst injury had come three years earlier, in 2001, when, doubling Leelee Sobieski in “Joy Ride,” she busted the orbit of her skull and cracked the rest of the skull in three places after being slung off a moving semi-truck. “I wasn’t thinking about the stunt,” Staggs admits. “I had an audition the next day. We were shooting in Bakersfield, and

all I cared about was getting back to L.A. to try out for this improv group, or “Mad TV,” or something really badass.” She botched the landing, hitting the pavement head-first instead of tucking and rolling. That time, Staggs knew it was a big deal. Narcotics and a concussion are never a good idea, so Staggs was sober and mostly awake as doctors stitched first layers of muscle, then layers of skin back together. She remembers the blood, so much of it that it ran into gutters on either side of the road. A few weeks after her accident, Staggs was offered a gig dancing atop a moving train for an NSYNC video. She knew a hard whack to the skull would kill her. She also knew that in Hollywood, to stay visible is to stay viable. She took the job.

♦♦♦

Now

Staggs is at a career crossroads. She’s

CONTINUED ON PAGE 16

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BUNDLED UP: Staggs after falling backward into a creek for the film "Fool's Gold."

For more information, please contact Susan at daiseymaggie@yahoo.com. www.arktimes.com

JULY 11, 2012

been thinking a lot about the hazards of her job, in light of 92 concussionrelated lawsuits recently filed by over 2,450 NFL players. “We know that head injury is linked to many different types of diseases,” said Dr. David Hovda, director of the UCLA Brain Injury Research Center. “If you’re had traumatic brain injury, your chances of acquiring Alzheimer’s is higher, as is your chance of acquiring dementia, depression, post traumatic stress or Parkinson disease.” And for health care providers, getting a particular industry to admit the risk is nearly impossible. “It took me 20 years to get through to the NFL,” Hovda added. “Stunt people are just like athletes and soldiers — they lie. You ask them how they’re doing, they say ‘I’m fine.’ The movie industry doesn’t want to write a disability clause in the contract, and stuntmen and women don’t want to lose their jobs. So the best way is to get people in the industry to communicate to their colleagues that this is a problem. It may not be a real big problem, but nobody knows, because nobody’s taken the time to take the data down.” Zoe Bell, who may be the highest profile stuntwomen today, got her start on “Xena: Warrior Princess.” But on the set of “Xena,” she fractured a vertebra and continued to work for a week. Then a chair was broken over her back in another scene, and she became totally incapacitated. In 1995, another stuntwoman, Sonja Davis, was reluctant to attempt a 42-foot backward free-fall for “Vampire in Brooklyn.” Davis initially turned down the stunt, but once the studio raised her pay, she acquiesced. She performed the stunt perfectly, but her body bounced on the airbag, slamming into a building, and then into the ground. Davis died instantly. In recent decades, there have been cases of airbags splitting (“Love Serenade,” 1996), cables breaking (“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” 2009, and “Transformers 3,” 2010) and explosions gone wrong (“Charlie Wilson’s War,” 2007, and “The Expendables 2,” 2011), just to name a few. According to a 35-year veteran stuntwoman who asked to remain unnamed, in the past decade the number of catastrophic on-set accidents have increased, despite more regulations and better equipment. She thinks incentives that give productions bigger tax breaks to hire locals are directly responsible. “So many people are flying themselves to other states, staying there for a bit, maybe even renting an apartment and hiring themselves out as ‘locals.’ Because lots of films say, ‘local hire only.’ So you’re not getting the best, most experienced stuntmen,” 16

JULY 11, 2012

ARKANSAS TIMES

SPACE STILETTOS: Staggs as Eve in "Species 2."

she said. While she was working on “Green Lantern” in New Orleans, a man in special effects sustained internal injuries after being hit by flying debris. He is suing Warner Brothers. When she started working in the mid-’70s, she estimates that there were only about 25 stuntwomen, and everyone had a specialty. “If you were called for a horseback job and your specialty is motorcycles, you’d send them to the horsewoman. Now everyone thinks they can do everything, and there’s over a thousand people fighting for work. There’s way too many people and not enough jobs.” The most recent figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicate that there were four deaths in the Motion Picture industry in 2010 and 1,390 injuries. Yahoo Finance names stunt performer among the 10 most dangerous jobs in the U.S., with 2.5 on-the-job fatalities per every 1,000 workers. In

some ways, Staggs is lucky. Her “Joy Ride” catastrophe was similar to what happened that same year, on the set of “Exit Wounds,” when stuntman Chris Lamon struck his head while rolling from a moving van. He died six days later. “For about a year after the accident, I was mentally slow,” Staggs said — something Retes, her manager, and Amy Staggs, her sister, staunchly refuse to acknowledge they noticed. But in the years directly following the accident, Staggs worked as much as ever. Then in 2005, her lean frame — one of the key reasons she had been such a viable performer — began to thicken. “I don’t know why I was gaining weight. I wasn’t eating much,” she said. “My sister, the M.D., told me to write down everything that I ate. She said, ‘You’re eating more than you think. Something is making you fat,’ but then we looked at the list, and there was nothing.” From her usual 120, Staggs

ballooned to 157. “You can’t double many actresses if you’re a size 10,” she added. “I’ve seen young women with head injuries that have gained enormous amounts of weight,” said Hovda. He attributes this to pituitary gland and hypothalamus trauma that don’t always show up immediately. “The majority of head injury patients that were normal for a while, and then all of a sudden they get late symptoms, if they go to an endocrinologists and get a simple blood test … about 30 to 40 percent of these individuals can be aided by hormonal supplements. Depending on their age, their emotional problems go away, their weight problems go away.” Ultimately, Staggs decided that her body wasn’t betraying her; rather, it was protecting her. “It was letting me know, enough is enough,” she said. Staggs was constantly tired, irritable and depressed. These are symptoms of head trauma as well, according to Hovda, along with lethargy, headaches, dizziness, disorientation, sleep disturbances, emotional outbursts, anxiety attacks, vision problems and inner ear problems. “And if there’s an injury that they’ve had earlier in life, when they get around 35 or 40, the brain starts to atrophy, and you can have symptoms or deficits that suddenly appear. Maybe they were going to appear anyway, but because of the head injury, they appeared sooner,” he said. Staggs knows that stunt performers have an expiration date. “You can’t do stunts forever. Your body can’t take it,” she said. Since she’s been home, her parents have been incredibly protective. Staggs had to beg her dad to loan her the car rather than drop her at our second meeting, at 10 p.m. at Vino's. “My parents are so worried that something’s going to happen, and I’m going to hit my head again. My dad doesn’t even want me to do ground falls, where you just trip, because it jerks your neck. And last night, I lay down on my bed, and I was so tired, I rolled off and did hit my head. Today my skull feels mushy,” Staggs said, tentatively fingering the left side of her head.

♦♦♦

At Vino’s,

Staggs appears more put-together. She’s dressed in jeans and a blouse, and she’s coiffed and madeup. She was up early in the morning for doctor’s appointments and meetings, and she’s been attending a two-week real estate course. She plans to take her licensing exam in both Arkansas and California. “My husband wants me to hustle for Angelina

Jolie, since I’m thin enough again,” she said. “But I just want to do cupcake stunts. You’re not supposed to go around saying that, but I think I made it pretty clear at the last [Hollywood] function we had.” She’s also written a handful of screenplays, and as a former slam poet, she’s considering writing a loosely fictionalized poetry chapbook about stunting in Hollywood. She’d like to do more acting. She’s had bit roles, most recently in an indie flick called “Hesher,” starring Natalie Portman. But she’s never had a major acting gig, and according to her manager, it’s hard to break in once you’ve established yourself in another field. “Everyone thinks of Monica as a stuntwoman, so sometimes her other talents are overlooked,” said Retes. “And there are less roles for women in general, because there are less female writers.” It’s also harder for women to make the transition from stunting to coordinating. “Her husband does stunts too, and

now that he’s older, he can coordinate. You’d be surprised, all those shows on television, there’s a stunt coordinator, even though it may seem like there are no stunts,” Amy Staggs said. “Monica has coordinated a few things. She did ‘White Oleander’ because they made this big deal about making it all-women. But in general, those jobs automatically go to men.” Closer to home, Staggs coordinated 2007’s “War Eagle,” written by Arkansan Graham Gordy and shot in Eureka Springs. According to the veteran stuntwoman, “Monica is just at that age. She’s probably just finding out that this is when they start going, ‘Oh no, you’re not for stunts anymore.’ I do coordinating, and I got my D.G.A. (director’s guild) card, but even women producers will say, ‘Oh no, we can’t have a girl stunt coordinator.’ Producers just think it’s this big, groovy, macho deal. There have been a lot of women that have broken the industry’s glass ceiling — there used to be not be one

female camera person or grip — but it’s still really hard to get in, in some places.” Sometimes Staggs worries that she hasn’t accomplished anything. Amy Staggs wishes that her sister could recognize how impressive her life has been. “All the time, people text me to say they just saw Monica in a movie. L.A. is one of those places where 10,000 people are trying to get anywhere, and Monica has definitely gotten far. As someone that’s outside of it, I think Monica has been so lucky. But what’s hard is, she expects more of herself. But then, expecting more is the normal human condition,” Amy said. According to Hovda, everyone’s brain changes throughout their life. “You grow neurons and new connections. Your environment and experiences anatomically change the brain, and that results in new pathways and new skill-sets … Patients get frustrated because they want to be the way they were before. It’s really hard for them to accept the fact that I don’t want

you to be what you were before. I want you to be better and go forward.”

♦♦♦

An hour

and less than half a beer into our conversation at Vino’s, Staggs’s head and eyes grow heavy. She rests her forehead on her palm. After trailing off mid-sentence, for the fourth time, she grows annoyed. “Maybe I am brain damaged,” she said, with only a twinge of sarcasm. But more than anything, she just seems extremely, extremely tired, so we decide to wrap things up. Staggs promises she can make the 20-minute drive home, if she grabs a Rock Star from the convenience store first. I can’t help but root for North Little Rock’s mercurial superwoman. In Hollywood and beyond, her career isn’t over. These days, it’s just a bit more figuratively than literally up in the air.

AFRICAN CUKES, CONT. not as productive, he said. And, he says, you get tastier fruits and vegetables when you don’t grow for poundage: He uses a fraction of the nitrogen big farms use — his fish fertilizer has a nitrogen percentage of 2 compared to the 20 found in most fertilizers. Steve Whiteaker of Double Helix Farms in Conway is a tomato devotee looking in all directions, not just south, for new varieties, including heat-tolerant. Whiteaker is of the opinion that the more varied the DNA in the garden, the better. Without genetic diversity, we’re “opening ourselves up for calamity” (which could happen should American corn — which is genetically identical — ever meet a bug it couldn’t fend off). Whiteaker himself loves “tinkering with genetics”: He is “first and foremost a scientist. It’s the science that motivates me to garden.” His Mendelian urges have sent him

seed-hunting, from the University of California-Davis, which has “all the mutations that have ever turned up in a tomato for seed stock,” to Siberia, to offer the 200 tomato varieties he sells (along with seeds for melons, grains and greens) on his website, www.doublehelixfarms.com. Paradoxically, some of the Siberian varieties that carry a green flesh gene (or gf) are heat and humidity tolerant. The gf gene is a mutation that gives carbon and Cherokee purple and most other dark-skinned tomatoes their black color; Whiteaker said the mutation first appeared in the early 1950s, possibly from an American tomato grown in the Philippines. (The source is “kind of sketchy,” he said.) As all Arkansas tomato farmers know, this crucial ingredient of the BLT quits fruiting when temperatures reach the low 90s. That’s because heat makes the

pollen clump together, rather than drifting onto to the tomato flower’s female parts. Whiteaker has found that the gf gene raises the temperature at which pollen starts to clump just a few degrees, giving him a couple more weeks growing time. Whiteaker grows a lot of his tomatoes in pots in his own back yard. There, armed with scissors and tags and an electric toothbrush, he vibrates the pollen from one plant’s flower and applies it to the female part of another, with the goal of creating new varieties. He’s working on one tomato, an Arkansas Traveler that carries both the gf gene for heat tolerance and another gene that produces anthocyanin for its antioxidant properties. The result is a purple-topped pink that’s extraordinary to look at and one “that’s pretty darn healthy to eat.” Whiteaker says he’s catering to the

seed collector. “Tomato people are obsessed,” Whiteaker says. “If you don’t believe me, go to the Tomatoville message board. It has 10,000 members.” Josh Hardin of the organic Laughingstock Farm between Sheridan and Redfield is another farmer trying out something new to bring to Central Arkansas farmer’s markets: Hawaiian ginger. It will grow as an annual here, producing a thinskinned, strong baby ginger. In another two or three weeks, he thinks, his two 50-foot rows will yield 250 pounds of ginger, some of it destined for the Capital Hotel for ginger ale. Hardin comes from a long line of farmers, and he thinks the weather of late is an interval of “extreme patterns” rather than an indication of long-term global warming. “This is Arkansas,” he says. Planting for heat “is my whole crop plan.”

DUMAS, CONT. Arkansas, you may remember, was forced to pay for more than 32 percent of the Grand Gulf capacity and to subsidize Louisiana ratepayers to boot. Arkansas hopes to extricate itself from the FERC and Supreme Court orders next year by leaving the old Middle South (now Entergy) power pool and joining another. It is still nightmarish to read, but you

can follow Scalia’s and Kennedy’s views on the commerce clause back then and compare them to their ideas on the same issue last month. Scalia wrote in ’87 that Reagan’s agency “plainly” had the power under the commerce clause to find jurisdiction for itself in congressional statutes on energy regulation. The old liberals — Thurgood Marshall,

William Brennan and Harry Blackmun — scolded Scalia. The energy statute itself restrained FERC’s power without resorting to the commerce clause, they said. Let’s summarize. The conservative justices who thought it was fine under the commerce clause for the Reagan administration to require Arkansans to pay $4.5 billion to guarantee a profit for

Middle South and subsidize the electric rates of people to their south claimed in 2012 that the same clause barred Congress and the Obama administration from requiring uninsured people to buy insurance or pay a small tax to help the government pay for their unreimbursed medical care. What changed? No need to guess.

www.arktimes.com

JULY 11, 2012

Arts Entertainment AND

SUMMER BOOK PICKS Times staffers’ recommended reading.

es, it seems the crippling heat has broken — not for long, most likely — replaced by merely unpleasant heat. Still, spending some time in the AC with a good read is one of the best options for getting through the second-half slog of summer. Here are some picks from the Arkansas Times staff.

“DELTA EMPIRE: LEE WILSON AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF AGRICULTURE IN THE NEW SOUTH,” BY JEANNIE WHAYNE Strange the things that one remembers. Sometime in what must have been the late ’50s or early ’60s, a young man saw a network news program that included a segment on the Arkansas Delta. The host, the then-famous David Brinkley, said something like this: “Robert E. Lee Wilson III can walk outside, and look around, and everything he sees, he owns.” That must be something, the young man thought. Years went by, and he never learned much more about the Wilson family until he read “Delta Empire” by Jeannie Whayne, a history professor at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. The book is not about Robert E. Lee Wilson III, although he makes an entrance toward the end, but his grandfather, who built the empire that would allow his grandson to own everything he saw. Lee Wilson started with 400 acres in Mississippi that he’d inherited from his father, and he transformed it, with nerve and will, into a 50,000-acre lumber operation and cotton plantation. Wilson himself was described as a feudal baron, a farmer prince and a benevolent dictator. He gained a reputation for treating black people better than did other Southern white men of his time and class, but Whayne, who shows the whole man, suggests that this reputation was not entirely deserved. She describes in painful detail a mob’s burning of a black man that Wilson might have been able to prevent, but didn’t. For anyone with an interest in Arkansas and South18

JULY 11, 2012

ARKANSAS TIMES

ern history, “Delta Empire” is well worth reading. —Doug Smith

“JASMINE,” BY BHARATI MUKHERJEE I first came across Bharati Mukherjee’s 1989 novel “Jasmine” in an undergrad World Literature class taught by my old friend Byrd Gibbens at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. We slogged through eight books that semester, but this is the one that really never left me: the tale of a teen-age girl from India named Jyoti, who is bent on traveling to America so she can commit a spectacular suicide at the backwater Florida college her new husband had planned on attending until he was killed in act of religiously motivated terrorism. I won’t ruin the harrowing, heartbreaking quest that follows, but suffice it to say that “Jasmine” turns out to be an immigrant song about a surprisingly fierce heroine and her determination to stay alive, whole and free while remaking herself over and over on her own terms. With Independence Day just passed, isn’t that quest what America is really all about? —David Koon

“LOVE IS A MIX TAPE,” BY ROB SHEFFIELD “Love is a Mix Tape” is one of those grand books that you can read cover to cover in a single sitting, or that works equally well one random chapter at a time. For me, in just a couple of years it’s become an old friend. I pick it up both when I have 10 minutes to kill and when I want to spend an entire rainy Saturday wallowing in nostalgia. But it’s also fun, easy-going and upbeat enough to earn a spot in my beach bag. It’s got true romance, early indie-rock nostalgia, and the peculiar

charm of Southern hipsterdom. And it’s all chronicled in this touching, geeky-cool prose by Rob Sheffield, now a journalist at Rolling Stone. (It reached the lower echelon of the New York Times bestseller list, but Oprah never recommended it, if that helps.) In 1989, when Sheffield was a scrawny Boston-Irish music nerd at the University of Virginia, he met a punkrock Appalachian girl name Renee. Over the next seven years, they married, lived together in a leaky basement apartment full of records and craft projects, DJ-ed local radio shows, threw garden parties, attended local dive gigs, completed graduate degrees in English, freelanced for Rolling Stone and Village Voice and made each other mixtapes. Then one Sunday afternoon, Renee died suddenly, at only 31, the victim of a pulmonary embolism. This book, which takes its cues from a shoebox of mixtapes Sheffield and Renee made for each other, is Sheffield’s eulogy to his first soulmate. But it’s also his eulogy to a particular musical era and a pre-Internet, DIY means of processing love, life and loss that “creative types” in our 30s and 40s will instantly recognize. —Cheree Franco

“A FEAST OF SNAKES,” BY HARRY CREWS I first heard of the late Harry Crews from a friend who hailed from Crews’ adopted hometown of Gainesville, Fla., where he taught creative writing for many years. His eyes widened as he intoned the author’s name with the sort of hushed reverence one adopts when imparting some obscure and possibly dangerous information. But where to start? “Dude,” he said, “start with ‘A Feast of Snakes.’ It’s …” he said, trailing off with a chuckle. After reading it, I understand his loss for words. The story centers on a crew of despicable residents of Mystic, Ga., as they gear up for the annual Rattlesnake Roundup. I don’t want to give away too much, but trust me: These are hypnotic, fascinatingly depraved people who commit gruesome acts of cruelty to all manner of creatures (might want to skip this one if you’re a sensitive animal lover). The book contains what has to be one of the most richly deserved, if predictable, separations of man and manly appendage in all of fiction, as well as one of the foulest definitions

of “true love” ever proclaimed (echoed decades later, to some degree, in a Kevin Smith film, if that tells you anything). In short, it’s a feel-bad Southern Gothic novel of the first order. If the characters in Flannery O’Connor’s “Wiseblood” were a bit too charming and relatable for you, try “A Feast of Snakes.” —Robert Bell

“COLD COMFORT FARM,” BY STELLA GIBBONS Stella Gibbons’ book, first published in 1932, is perhaps one of the funniest ever written. It is English wit, which means it is absurd and as dry as vermouth, and perhaps not for everybody, but certainly for me. Gibbons prefaces the novel with a letter to her publisher in which she writes that for the benefit of readers “who are not always sure whether a sentence is Literature or whether it is just sheer flapdoodle, that I have adopted the method perfected by the late Herr Baedeker, and firmly marked what I consider to be the finer passages with one, two or three stars.” And so follows, with several star-marked passages, her story of young Flora Poste, who finds herself wanting for money on the death of her supposedly wealthy (but not) father and who decides to take up residence with her relatives the Starkadders on their “decaying” farm in Sussex. She finds there everything she expected — pessimistic cousin Judith, oversexed Master Seth; the willowy, wandering Elfine (“wild as a marsh-tigget in May”); the fox-eared cousin Urk; Elfine’s useless but poetic father Adam Lambsbreath, whose job it is to look after the cows — Feckless, Graceless and Pointless, who, unnoticed, are in want of a leg or two — and more delicious characters. We are introduced to the farm thusly: “**Dawn crept over the Downs like a sinister white animal, followed by the snarling cries of a wind eating its way between the black boughs of the thorns. The wind was the furious voice of this sluggish animal light that was baring the dormers and mullions and scullions of Cold Comfort Farm.” Flora, upbeat and undaunted, puts everything right at Cold Comfort, including persuading her old Aunt Ida Doom to rise from her bed, and is herself rescued in the end by a suitor who flies in just as the chaos is tamed. —Leslie Newell Peacock

Help Raise Funds For North Little Rock Friends Of Animals Pulaski County Humane Society

ROCK CANDY Check out the Times’ A&E blog

Grapes, Grains & Growls

arktimes.com

A&E NEWS DON’T ROCK THE JUKEBOX YA’LL, play a country song, because the Walton Arts Center just announced that Alan Jackson will play at the Arkansas Music Pavilion in Fayetteville on Sept. 14. That’s a Friday, so you know it’s gonna be a boot-scootin’ big time up there. Tickets go on sale Friday at 9 a.m. and they’re $35-$102. The news elicited some excitement on the WAC Facebook page, but also prompted a request for some more rock from one Dawn Williams, who wrote “Awesome... but can we PLEASE get some rock ‘n roll artists booked as well! We’re not all country here in NW Arkansas!! Great White, Winger, Tesla, Enuff ‘Znuff, Night Ranger, Cinderella, Foreigner, John Corabi, Kix, Poison, Def Leppard, Scorpions ... they are all touring. Just say’n ...” A lineup with Night Ranger, Scorpions and Def Leppard would be incredible if improbable, but hey, it never hurts to ask. Until that magical day, the AMP will tide over rock fans with Pat Benatar & Neil Giraldo on Aug. 19 and The Avett Brothers on Oct. 16. The AMP’s country offerings continue Aug. 17, with the Taste of Country Festival, featuring Miranda Lambert, The Pistol Annies, Randy Houser, Chris Knight, Adam Hood and Amanda Cramer.

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LITTLE ROCK’S WHALE FIRE RECENTLY RELEASED a new single into the world, and you can listen to it right now, for free at arktimes.com/whalefire. You can also download the track in any number of formats, also gratis. “Wild-Eyed Mistake” is the name of the tune, and it’s a very nice slice of jangly, reverb-drenched guitar pop that portends good things for these dudes. The song works quite well as a single, but it will also be interesting to hear it in the context of the forthcoming album they’re working on.

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Don’t be left out! Contact Michelle Miller • 375-2985 michelle@arktimes.com www.arktimes.com

JULY 11, 2012

THE TO-DO

LIST

BY ROBERT BELL

WEDNESDAY 7/11

EDEN’S EDGE

10 p.m. Shooter’s Bar & Grill. $10.

Waaaay back yonder, in the hazy days of 2006, a little country/bluegrass combo from Russellville called Eden’s Edge won the Arkansas Times Musicians Showcase, edging out singer/ songwriter Chris Henry for the top spot. “Lucky us that the five acts who made the Showcase finals all still make their homes in Arkansas and grace us with their music, though they should be eyeing a future in Nashville or New York or Los Angeles, if they haven’t already,” wrote Jim Harris, then entertainment editor at the Times. It was certainly a prescient observation in the case of Eden’s Edge, as the band

WEDNESDAY 7/11 decamped to Nashville the next year. According to the group’s online bio, they caught the ear of country songwriter and Fort Smith native Kye Fleming (“I Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool,” “Smoky Mountain Rain,” “Sleeping Single in a Double Bed”). Fleming convinced the trio to make the move to Music City, where they signed with Big Machine Records. They’ve toured with the likes of Lady Antebellum and Brad Paisley (with whom they got into The Great Door Mat Spat of 2011). Their debut album was released last month and they’ll soon hit the road with Rascal Flatts on the “Changed Tour,” so here’s your chance to see the home state kids done good in an intimate setting.

KING TUFF

8:30 p.m. Stickyz. $8.

On “King Tuff,” the latest elpee from the King himself — King Tuff, a.k.a. Kyle Thomas, of Vermont — there’s a sweetly twisted pop feel that reminds this listener of the sound that the late, great Jay Reatard spent the last year or so of his life mining. The opening song, “Anthem,” is no lie, friends. It lives up to the billing with a truly bitchin’ loopy guitar part and some sassy handclaps, and when the second guitar track kicks in with the triumphant harmony, it’s like, “Yes, this is an Anthem.” The second track, “Alone & Stoned,” cements the King Tuff M.O. thusly: “There’s nothing better than alone and stoned / listening to music

on your headphones.” Judging by the Internet’s reaction, that’s the lyric that jumped out the most on the whole album. But who is anyone to argue with the song’s core logic? “Bad Thing” is primo garage-pop — as good as any West Coast thing by your Ty Segalls or your Sonny and The Sunsets or your The Fresh and Onlys. Album closer “Hit & Run” is a bouncy rave-up that sounds like T. Rex all hopped up on goofballs and true love. Alas, these are but the album highlights as selected by me. Who knows what treats await the intrepid concertgoer inside the vault of King Tuff? The opening band at this 18-and-older show is Natural Child, a rock ’n’ roll trio that hails from Nashville.

FRIDAY 7/13

TWISTA

BYRON TAYLOR

8 p.m. Revolution. $20 adv., $25 day of.

IN THE BUFF: From left, Jacob Sturgeon, Justin Pike, Terry Harrison, Douglas Hammon, Jeremiah Herman and Frank Butler star in The Weekend Theater’s “The Full Monty,” which opens Friday.

FRIDAY 7/13

‘THE FULL MONTY’

7:30 p.m. The Weekend Theater. $16-$20.

Judging from the volume and pitch of the shrieking laughter the mere mention of the film “Magic Mike” elicited from a gaggle of ladies here at the office, there is a market for watching dudes take their clothes off. Of course, actor and former male stripper Channing Tatum is a good bit more chiseled than your average Joe. But per20

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ARKANSAS TIMES

haps the ladies might also be inclined to watch average Joes disrobe while gyrating to dance music. That’s the central premise of “The Full Monty,” a musical based on the 1997 hit British film. The stage version is in Buffalo, N.Y., but the story is similar: a group of unemployed blue-collar guys get their grooves back and earn a little scratch by taking it all off. According to director Bob Bidewell, the cast of The Weekend Theater’s production won’t be totally in the buff. “By law

we can’t ‘bare all’ due to ABC regulations. They do remove all garments but are covered by their police hats and a blinding light cue at the very end,” he wrote, “exactly as it was done at The Rep.” The show’s themes about unemployment, economic hardship and how these struggles affect the male psyche are certainly relevant, given the prolonged economic doldrums the country can’t seem to escape. Curtain is at 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2:30 p.m. Sundays through Aug. 4.

Chicago rapper Twista has been in the business for more than two decades now. His original handle was Tung Twista, which was appropriate considering how blazingly, mind-blowingly fast this guy can rhyme. Most rappers have to work for years to get as good as he was right out of the gate. Exhibit A is “Mr. Tung Twista,” one of his first singles, from 1991. It’s a vintage nugget of old school hip-hop that showcases a 19-year-old Twista spitting out syllables like a machine gun. The years haven’t RAPID RHYMER: slowed him down, Chicago MC either. In fact, his Twista comes to career really started Revolution Friday gathering speed in night. the mid-’00s. His scene-stealing turn on the 2004 tune “Slow Jamz,” with Kanye West and Jamie Foxx, is another notable example. “Do it faster baby, do it faster!” a woman pleads with Kanye. “Damn, baby. I can’t do it that fast, but I know somebody who can.” Cue Twista, who gets the song’s best line: “Lemme get your sheets wet, listenin’ to Keith Sweat.” Twista’s latest album, “The Perfect Storm,” finds the rapper in fine form, with guest spots from Chris Brown, Waka Flocka Flame, Raekwon, Yo Gotti and others. Opening the show are Rod D, Mob Money, TGE, 4X4 Crew and Epiphany.

IN BRIEF

WEDNESDAY 7/11

FRIDAY 7/13 AND SATURDAY 7/14

MOLE.FM SHOWCASE

9 p.m. Vino’s. $6.

Music Online Entertainment — known by its web address, Mole.fm — is the brainchild of Butch Stone, the longtime Arkansas concert promoter, band manager (he managed classic rock legends Black Oak Arkansas and the

Swiss headbangers Krokus) and allaround music industry veteran. Stone’s latest venture — described as a digital record label — finds him back in the role of artist management. Mole.fm features a diverse, all-Arkansas roster and this weekend, Stone is showcasing six of the bands on the label. Friday

night’s lineup is heavy on the hip-hop, with K-Dro, 4X4 Crew and Fayetteville’s genre-defying Revolution Butterfly. Saturday’s slate includes Little Phoebe, Northwest Arkansas Southern rock outfit Amsterdam and the pulsing, Lady GaGa-esque electro pop of Dylan Dugger.

grandiosity of their 2004 breakthrough “The Beautiful Letdown” and its follow-up, “Nothing is Sound,” to The Weezer-y “Oh! Gravity,” which found the band cranking the “quirk” dial to 11, with lots more bleeps and bloops and keyboard squiggles and reverbed

everything. That well-received album was their last for Columbia Records. The group formed lowercase people records and released an EP and two more albums, the latest of which, “Vice Verses,” finds the band playing a much louder, crunchier brand of earnest rock.

SATURDAY 7/14

SWITCHFOOT

7:30 p.m. Magic Springs’ Timberwood Amphitheater. $30-$65.

San Diego Christian rock band Switchfoot has evolved over the years, from the scrappy, sincere post grunge of their early albums to the big statement

Fleur Delicious Weekend, a five-day celebration of French-themed fun and cuisine, kicks off events at locations around Eureka Springs. Check fleurdeliciousweekend.com for details. Movies in the Park screens the summertime classic “Jaws,” starting at sundown, Riverfest Amphitheatre, 8 p.m., free.

THURSDAY 7/12

The summer series Live at Laman continues with The Amy Garland Band, Laman Library, 7 p.m., free. “The Greatest of All Time” Tribute Concert pays homage to Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Fela Kuti and Michael Jackson, with a special tribute to blues guitarist Michael Burks, featuring Rodney Block & The Real Music Lovers, with Joshua and Dee Davis, The Joint, 9 p.m., $10. Woodstock vet and ’60s folk icon Melanie plays at The Auditorium in Eureka Springs, with her son, guitarist Beau Jarred Schekeryk, 7 p.m., $22.50.

FRIDAY 7/13

If your Friday evening calls for a heaping of Pixies-esque guitar rock, Laundry for the Apocalypse has you covered, playing with Winston Family Orchestra, Town Pump, 9 p.m. Bicycle buffs should probably hit the road for Eureka Springs, which hosts the annual Fat Tire Festival, a bicycle events and competitions for all ages all over Eureka Springs, through Sunday. White Water Tavern has Tennessee roots/Americana outfit The Hardin Draw, 9:30 p.m., $5. Adam Faucett & The Tall Grass, The Nigh Ends and The Tricks play at Maxine’s, 8 p.m., $5 adv., $7 door.

SATURDAY 7/14

Miss Arkansas 2012 will be crowned at the Miss Arkansas Pageant, 7 p.m., $38, Summit Arena in Hot Springs. For something completely different, the legendary naughty rappers of 2 Live Crew play Discovery Nightclub, 3 a.m., $10. Stickyz hosts the 3rd Annual Midsummer Night’s Jam, and 18-andolder show with FreeVerse, War Chief and Chilly Rose, 9 p.m., $10. Iron Tongue, Venomous Maximus, Sound of the Mountain and Firing Order keep things loud and heavy at Downtown Music Hall, 8:30 p.m., $5.

BLUES CROWD: The Tedeschi Trucks Band performs at Robinson Center Music Hall Sunday night.

SUNDAY 7/15

TEDESCHI TRUCKS BAND

7:30 p.m. Robinson Center Music Hall. $35-$67.

The Tedeschi Trucks Band seems like a natural outlet for renowned blues artists (and married couple) Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks.

The band’s debut album, 2011’s “Revelator,” has a warm, classic ’60s/’70s sound and a soulfulness absent from a lot of trad blues acts. Of course, it doesn’t hurt when your band is stacked with nine other straight-up badasses, though. Oteil Burbridge (who, along with Trucks, also plays in The Allman

Brothers Band) is one of the finest bass players around. As Allmusic’s Thom Jurek wrote, “Revelator” “showcases Tedeschi as one of the finest vocal stylists in roots music, and Trucks has become the only true heir of Duane Allman’s bell-like slide guitar tone, his taste and restraint.”

TUESDAY 7/17

New Orleans oddballs Quintron & Miss Pussycat bring their eccentric keyboard jams and flamboyant stage show to Stickyz for an 18-and-older show, 9 p.m., $8 adv., $10 day of. It’s an evening of modern rock at George’s Majestic Lounge, with Drowning Pool and James Durbin of American Idol renown, $18, 8:30 p.m. Journalist Mara Leveritt will discuss her work in progress, “Justice Knot,” the follow-up to her highly acclaimed West Memphis Three book “Devil’s Knot,” Laman Library, 6 p.m. www.arktimes.com

JULY 11, 2012

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

WEDNESDAY, JULY 11

MUSIC

Acoustic Open Mic. The Afterthought, 8 p.m., free. 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-663-1196. www. afterthoughtbar.com. Ben Coulter. The Tavern Sports Grill, 7:30 p.m. 17815 Chenal Parkway. 501-830-2100. www. thetavernsportsgrill.com. Clutch. George’s Majestic Lounge, 8 p.m. 519 W. Dickson St., Fayetteville. 479-442-4226. Eden’s Edge. Shooter’s Sports Bar & Grill, 10 p.m., $10. 9500 I-30. 501-565-4003. www.shooterslittlerock.com. Forever the Sickest Kids, Plug In Stereo, Paradise Fears, It Boys. Juanita’s, 8:30 p.m., $13 adv., $15 day of. 614 President Clinton Ave. 501-372-1228. www.juanitas.com. Grim Muzik presents Way Back Wednesdays. Cornerstone Pub & Grill, 8:30 p.m. 314 Main St., NLR. 501-374-1782. cstonepub.com. King Tuff, Natural Child. 18-and-older show. Stickyz Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicken Shack, 8:30 p.m., $8. 107 Commerce St. 501-372-7707. www. stickyz.com. Les Racquet. Vino’s, 8 p.m., $6. 923 W. 7th St. 501-375-8466. www.vinosbrewpub.com. Mayday By Midnight. Cajun’s Wharf, 5 and 9 p.m., $5 after 8:30 p.m. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. www.cajunswharf.com. Ricky David Tripp. Rocket Twenty One, 5:30 p.m. 2601 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-603-9208. www. ferneaurestaurant.com. RockUsaurus. Senor Tequila (Maumelle Blvd.), 6 p.m., free. 9847 Maumelle Blvd., NLR. 501758-4432. Smokey. The Tavern Sports Grill, 7:30 p.m., free. 17815 Chenal Parkway. 501-830-2100. www. thetavernsportsgrill.com. Sychosys, Sangre, Jessica Seven, Adam. Downtown Music Hall, 8 p.m., $10. 211 W. Capitol. 501-376-1819. downtownmusichall.com. Ted Ludwig Trio. Capital Bar and Grill, 5 p.m., free. 111 Markham St. 501-374-7474. www.capitalhotel.com/CBG.

COMEDY

John Evans. The Loony Bin, 8 p.m.; July 12, 8 p.m., $7. 10301 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501228-5555. www.loonybincomedy.com. John Evans, David Beck, B.T.. The Loony Bin, 8 p.m.; July 13, 10:30 p.m.; July 14, 7, 9 and 11 p.m., $7-$10. 10301 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-228-5555. www.loonybincomedy.com. The Joint Venture. Improv comedy group. The Joint, 8 p.m., $5. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501-372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com.

DANCE

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

EVENTS

55th Annual Miss Arkansas Pageant. Summit Arena. 134 Convention Blvd., Hot Springs. 501321-3506. www.summitarena.org.

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ARKANSAS TIMES

SOUTHERN MEN: Truth & Salvage Co. might hail from the City of Angels, but the members all have Southern and Midwestern pedigrees. The group is scheduled to play Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Simple Man” cruise this fall,so that should tell you quite a bit about their style: soulful Southern rock with no frills, but probably a bit of fringe somewhere. Truth & Salvage Co. plays Juanita’s Friday with Swampbird, The FallDown Drunks and Shilo Brown, 10 p.m., $10 adv., $12 day of. Abraham Lincoln: Self-Made in America. This display of Lincoln’s life is on loan from the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum. William J. Clinton Presidential Library, Regular Clinton Museum Admission. 1200 Clinton Avenue. 501-374-4242. www.clintonlibrary.gov. Arkansas Foodbank Summer Feeding Sites. Two meals a day served at the Billy Mitchell Boys and Girls Club, Thrasher Boys and Girls Club, Penick Boys and Girls Club and Dalton Whetstone Boys and Girls Club in Central Arkansas, and the Boys and Girls Club in Benton in Saline County. Arkansas Foodbank, through Aug. 20: 8:30 a.m. and 12 p.m., free. 4301 W. 65th St. 501-565-8121. www.arkansasfoodbank.org. “Fleur Delicious Weekend.” Five-day festival includes a variety of French-themed fun and culinary events at locations around Eureka Springs. Downtown Eureka Springs. Downtown Eureka Springs, Eureka Springs. 479-253-6807. www.fleurdeliciousweekend.com.

FILM

Movies in the Park: “Jaws.” Film begins at sundown. Riverfest Amphitheatre, 8 p.m., free. 400 President Clinton Ave.

POETRY

Rock Town Slam. Arkansas Arts Center, 6:30 p.m., $5-$10. 501 E. 9th St. 501-372-4000. www. arkarts.com.

THURSDAY, JULY 12

MUSIC

Adam Faucett. White Water Tavern, 10 p.m. 2500 W. 7th. 501-375-8400. www.whitewatertavern.com. “After 7.” Includes open mic performances, live band, drink specials and more. Porter’s Jazz Cafe, 7 p.m. 315 Main St. 501-324-1900. www. portersjazzcafe.com. Dogtown Thursday Open Mic Night. Cornerstone Pub & Grill, 8:30 p.m. 314 Main St., NLR. 501-374-1782. cstonepub.com. Fire & Brimstone Duo. Browning’s Mexican Food, 6-9 p.m. 5805 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-6639956. www.browningsmexicangrill.com. “The Greatest of All Time” Tribute Concert. Tribute to Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Fela Kuti and Michael Jackson, with a special tribute to blues guitarist Michael Burks, featuring Rodney Block & The Real Music Lovers, with Joshua and Dee Davis. Call 501-442-0649 for reservations.

The Joint, 9 p.m., $10. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501-372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com. “Inferno.” DJs play pop, electro, house and more, plus drink specials and $1 cover before 11 p.m. Sway, 9 p.m. 412 Louisiana. 501-907-2582. Live at Laman: Amy Garland Band. Laman Library, 7 p.m., free. 2801 Orange St., NLR. 501758-1720. www.lamanlibrary.org. Mandy McBryde. Maxine’s, 8 p.m., free. 700 Central Ave., Hot Springs. www.maxinespub. com. Mayday By Midnight (headliner), Darril Edwards (happy hour). Cajun’s Wharf, 5 and 9 p.m., $5 after 8:30 p.m. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. www.cajunswharf.com. Melanie, Beau-Jerred Schekeryk. The Auditorium, 7 p.m., $22.50. 36 Main St., Eureka Springs. Port Arthur Band. Parrot Beach Cafe, 9 p.m. 9611 MacArthur Drive, NLR. 771-2994. RockUsaurus. Senor Tequila, 6 p.m., free. 10300 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-224-5505. Rodge Arnold. The Tavern Sports Grill, July 12, 8 p.m.; July 26, 8 p.m., free. 17815 Chenal Parkway. 501-830-2100. www.thetavernsportsgrill.com. Ted Ludwig Trio. Capital Bar and Grill, 5 p.m., free. 111 Markham St. 501-374-7474. www.capitalhotel.com/CBG. The Winter Sounds, The Tricks. Vino’s, 8 p.m., $7. 923 W. 7th St. 501-375-8466. www.vinosbrewpub.com.

COMEDY

John Evans. The Loony Bin, 8 p.m., $7. 10301 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-228-5555. www. loonybincomedy.com. John Evans, David Beck, B.T.. The Loony Bin, through July 13, 8 p.m.; July 13, 10:30 p.m.; July 14, 7, 9 and 11 p.m., $7-$10. 10301 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-228-5555. www.loonybincomedy.com.

EVENTS

55th Annual Miss Arkansas Pageant. Summit Arena, through July 14. 134 Convention Blvd., Hot Springs. 501-321-3506. www.summitarena.org. “Fleur Delicious Weekend.” See July 11. Little Rock Zoo” “Animals of Harry Potter. Main Library, 10:30 a.m. 100 S. Rock St. www. cals.lib.ar.us. Pleasant Ridge Town Center Shop & Sip. Pleasant Ridge Town Center, 5:30:30 p.m., free. Cantrell Rd., just west of I-430. www.schickels. com/directory.htm. Potluck and Ice Cream Social for Pastors for Peace Cuba Caravan. Unitarian Universalist Church of Little Rock, 6 p.m., Donations accepted. 1818 Reservoir Road. Wine class with Jonathan Looney. Attendees will learn how to identify their personal taste in wine by analyzing the complex layers of flavors. Eggshells Kitchen Co., 6 p.m., $50. 5501 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-664-6900. eggshellskitchencompany.com.

SPORTS

Arkansas Travelers vs. Tulsa Drillers. DickeyStephens Park, July 12-14, 7:10 p.m.; July 15, 6 p.m., $6-$12. 400 W. Broadway St., NLR. 501664-1555. www.travs.com.

FRIDAY, JULY 13

MUSIC

Adam Faucett & The Tall Grass, Nigh Ends, The Tricks. Maxine’s, 8 p.m., $5 adv., $7 door. CONTINUED ON PAGE 24

Military Night at the Travs Game Sponsored by Budweiser FREE Budweiser Hat and Koozie to First 500 people 21 and over! Monday, July 23rd • 7:10 pm at Dickey Stephens Park ©2011 Anheuser-Busch, Budweiser® Beer, St. Louis, MO

ART NOTES

Hit the road for ‘Lost Highway’ Rose exhibit at MOCA; 2nd Friday Art Night in LR. BY LESLIE NEWELL PEACOCK

hen it rains, those who get rain say, it pours. There’s a rain of art coming up Friday, July 13, that will require that gallery goers choose between Little Rock, where downtown galleries will be open late for 2nd Friday Art Night, and Hot Springs, where David Malcolm Rose’s “The Lost Highway: Constructions in Miniature” exhibit opens at the Museum of Contemporary Art. The last shall be first: “The Lost Highway” features Rose’s amazing scale models of the motels and gas stations and diners that once lined U.S. highways before the interstates took away the traffic and the business. Among the models: the funny turreted gas station in Rixey (“Gas”), a sunworn Navajo trading post, the Asher Avenue drive-in. Says the Hot Springs artist of the works on his website, davidmalcolmrose.com: “Who knows, in the future we may want to find our way back to the times when business leaders and community leaders shared common interests. If that happens, these models may be as useful to us as bread crumbs were to Hansel and Gretel.” The MOCA reception runs from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Nine galleries are taking part 2nd Friday Art Night, showcasing Civil War artifacts (Butler Center Galleries in the Arkansas Studies Institute), bracelets by Linda Bradley (Curran Hall), and Arkansas Pastel Society members’ work (Christ Church), landscapes by Jennifer Cox Coleman (Gallery 221). The Strojek family’s Barbie Doll collection is the focus and Steve Bates offers the music at the Historic Arkansas Museum. Interstate Buffalo will provide music at the Old State House, which is showing “Battle Colors of Arkansas,” an exhibition of 18 Civil War flags. StudioMain is pairing furniture designed by students in the Applied Design program of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock with Herman Miller chairs. Garbo Hearne will give a talk at 6 p.m. on col-

JULY 11, 2012

ARKANSAS TIMES

lecting at her gallery, Hearne Fine Art, which is showing “Montage 24,” an exhibit of work by 224 artists who’ve been with the gallery 24 years. ON SATURDAY, the Delta Cultural

Center is hosting a reception for artist John Ruskey, a Mississippi River canoe outfitter and guide who is also a painter and sculptor. “John Ruskey: The Downstream Painter” features watercolors of the Mississippi and its animals, handcolored maps and hand-carved canoes. THE ARKANSAS ARTS CENTER is

accepting entries for its 38th annual “Toys Designed by Artists” exhibition, which runs Nov. 21 through Jan. 6. Deadline to enter is Sept. 14. Artists may submit up to three entries; all must have been completed since 2010. Entry fees are $15 for first and $10 for each additional. For more information, go to www.arkarts.com or call 372-4000. ZEEK TAYLOR, the Eureka Springs artist known for his paintings of chimps, irises and chimps and irises, a source of great energy in the artistic hamlet, has won the 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award of the Arkansas Arts Council. Winning the Individual Artist Award was John Jeter, director of the Fort Smith Symphony. Other 2012 winners: Jeff Baskin, Laman Library director, Arts Community Development Award; Christen Burke Pitts of North Little Rock and Clayton Scott of Fayetteville, Arts in Education Awards; TRUE Marketing of Jonesboro, Corporate Sponsorship of the Arts Award; gospel singer/ songwriter Marty Phillips of Crossett, Folklife Award; Drs. Mack and Vern Ann Shotts, Patron Award; and retired ad man Jim Johnson, the Judges Special Recognition Award. Jurors were chairman Michael Tidwell, Husny Dahlan, Lana Hallmark, Mike Malek, Clyde Milner and Bob Pest.

AFTER DARK, CONT. 700 Central Ave., Hot Springs. www.maxinespub.com. Big Stack. 21-and-older show. Shooter’s Sports Bar & Grill, 9:30 p.m., $5. 9500 I-30. 501-5654003. www.shooterslittlerock.com. Blagg Out Entertainment. Cornerstone Pub & Grill, 9 p.m. 314 Main St., NLR. 501-374-1782. cstonepub.com. Bluesboy Jag and His Cigar Box Guitars. Dogtown Coffee and Cookery, 6 p.m., free. 6725 John F. Kennedy Blvd., NLR. 501-833-3850. www.facebook.com/pages/Dogtown-Coffeeand-Cookery. Brian Ramsey Trio. Flying Saucer, 9 p.m., $3. 323 President Clinton Ave. 501-372-8032. www. beerknurd.com/stores/littlerock. Chris Henry. The Tavern Sports Grill, July 13, 8 p.m.; July 28, 8 p.m., free. 17815 Chenal Parkway. 501-830-2100. www.thetavernsportsgrill.com. Crash Meadows. West End Smokehouse and Tavern, 10 p.m., $5. 215 N. Shackleford. 501-2247665. www.westendsmokehouse.net. Cult of the Flag, Killing Souls, Dirty Finger, Break the Silence. Downtown Music Hall, 8 p.m., $7. 211 W. Capitol. 501-376-1819. downtownmusichall.com. DJ Silky Slim. Top 40 and dance music. Sway, 9 p.m., $5. 412 Louisiana. 501-907-2582. Ed Bowman & The Rock City Players (headliner), Andy Tanas (happy hour). Cajun’s Wharf, 5 and 9 p.m., $5 after 8:30 p.m. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. www.cajunswharf.com. “The Flow Fridays.” Twelve Modern Lounge, 8 p.m. 1900 W. Third St. 501-301-1200. The Goodtime Ramblers. The Afterthought, 9 p.m., $7. 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-663-1196. www.afterthoughtbar.com. The Hardin Draw. White Water Tavern, 9:30 p.m., $5. 2500 W. 7th. 501-375-8400. www.whitewatertavern.com. Joecephus. Midtown Billiards, 12:30 a.m., $5. 1316 Main St. 501-372-9990. midtownar.com. The Josh Love Band. Faulkner County Library, 7 p.m., free. 1900 Tyler St., Conway. 501-3277482. www.fcl.org. Laundry for the Apocalypse, Winston Family Orchestra. Town Pump, 9 p.m. 1321 Rebsamen Park Road. 501-663-9802. Mole.FM presents K-Dro, 4X4 Crew, Revolution Butterfly. Vino’s, 9 p.m., $6. 923 W. 7th St. 501-375-8466. www.vinosbrewpub.com. Randall Shreve & The Sideshow. 18-and-older show. Stickyz Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicken Shack, 9 p.m., $6. 107 Commerce St. 501-372-7707. www. stickyz.com. Subdue. Denton’s Trotline, 9 p.m. 2150 Congo Road, Benton. 501-315-1717. Ted Ludwig Trio. Capital Bar and Grill, 9 p.m., free. 111 Markham St. 501-374-7474. www.capitalhotel.com/CBG. Truth & Salvage Co. Juanita’s, 10 p.m., $10 adv., $12 day of. 614 President Clinton Ave. 501-3721228. www.juanitas.com. Twista, Rod D, Mob Money, TGE, 4X4 Crew, Epiphany. Revolution, 8 p.m., $20 adv., $25 day of. 300 President Clinton Ave. 501-823-0090. revroom.com. “YOLO.” Featuring four DJs and beach volleyball, 18-and-older. Flying DD, $5. 4601 S. University. 501-773-9990. flyingdd.com.

COMEDY

John Evans. The Loony Bin, 8 and 10:30 p.m.,

$10. 10301 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-2285555. www.loonybincomedy.com. John Evans, David Beck, B.T.. The Loony Bin, through July 13, 8 p.m.; July 13, 10:30 p.m.; July 14, 7, 9 and 11 p.m., $7-$10. 10301 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-228-5555. www.loonybincomedy.com. The Main Thing. Sketch comedy show. The Joint, 8 p.m., $20. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501-372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com.

EVENTS

2nd Friday Art Night. Downtown Little Rock, 5 p.m. Downtown. 55th Annual Miss Arkansas Pageant. Summit Arena, through July 14. 134 Convention Blvd., Hot Springs. 501-321-3506. www.summitarena. org. Fat Tire Festival. Bicycling festival with a wide variety of events and competitions hosted all over Eureka Springs. Downtown Eureka Springs, July 13, 2 p.m.; July 14, 8 a.m.; July 15, 7 a.m. Downtown Eureka Springs, Eureka Springs. “Fleur Delicious Weekend.” See July 11. FOCAL used book sale. Main Library, July 13-14, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; July 15, 1-4 p.m. 100 S. Rock St. www.cals.lib.ar.us. Food Truck Fridays. Three food trucks on the corner of Main Street and Capitol Avenue. Main Street, Little Rock, 11 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Main St. 501-375-0121. LGBTQ/SGL Youth and Young Adult Group. Diverse Youth for Social Change is a group for LGBTQ/SGL and straight ally youth and young adults age 14 to 23. For more information, call 244-9690 or search “DYSC” on Facebook. 800 Scott St., 6:30 p.m. 800 Scott St. Picture the Past Film & Lecture Series. Guest Lecturer: Tim Mulvihill, Arkansas Archeological Survey, Fort Smith Winthrop Rockefeller Institute, 7 p.m. 1 Rockefeller Drive, Morrilton. 727-5435. www.uawri.org. “Quality + Quantity: A Conversation on Modern Furniture.” Featuring furniture designed by UALR Applied Design students and pieces from Workplace Resource and Herman Miller, with a wine and cheese tasting from Zin Wine Bar. StudioMain, 5 p.m. 1423 S. Main St.

SPORTS

Arkansas Travelers vs. Tulsa Drillers. DickeyStephens Park, through July 14, 7:10 p.m.; July 15, 6 p.m., $6-$12. 400 W. Broadway St., NLR. 501-664-1555. www.travs.com.

SATURDAY, JULY 14

MUSIC

2 Live Crew. Discovery Nightclub, 3 a.m., $10. 1021 Jessie Road. 501-664-4784. www.latenightdisco.com. 3rd Annual Midsummer Night’s Jam. 18-andolder show with FreeVerse, War Chief and Chilly Rose. Stickyz Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicken Shack, 9 p.m., $10. 107 Commerce St. 501-372-7707. www.stickyz.com. Aces Wild. Denton’s Trotline, 9 p.m. 2150 Congo Road, Benton. 501-315-1717. Audrey Dean Kelley. The Tavern Sports Grill, 8 p.m., free. 17815 Chenal Parkway. 501-830-2100. www.thetavernsportsgrill.com. Big Stack. West End Smokehouse and Tavern,

AFTER DARK, CONT. www.clintonpresidentialcenter.org. 2nd Annual Civil Rights Heritage Commemoration. Clinton Presidential Park, 9:45 a.m.:30 p.m., free. 1200 President Clinton Ave., NLR. 501374-4242. 55th Annual Miss Arkansas Pageant. Summit Arena, through. 134 Convention Blvd., Hot Springs. 501-321-3506. www.summitarena.org. Abraham Lincoln: Self-Made in America. See July 11. Argenta Farmers Market. Argenta, 7 a.m.-12 p.m. Main Street, NLR. Falun Gong meditation. Allsopp Park, 9 a.m., free. Cantrell & Cedar Hill Roads. “Fleur Delicious Weekend.” See July 11. FOCAL used book sale. Main Library, through July 14, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; July 15, 1-4 p.m. 100 S. Rock St. www.cals.lib.ar.us. Garden Gourmet. Cooking demonstrations will feature various recipes incorporating two Arkansas in-season produce selections. River Market Pavilions, July 14, 9 a.m.; Aug. 11, 9 a.m.; Sept. 8, 9 a.m.; Oct. 13, 9 a.m., free. 400 President Clinton Ave. 501-375-2552. www. rivermarket.info. Helena Second Saturdays. Art and music along historic Cherry Street in downtown Helena. Downtown Helena, through Sept. 8: second Saturday of every month, 5-8 p.m. Cherry and Main Streets, Helena. Hillcrest Farmers Market. Pulaski Heights Baptist Church, 7 a.m.-12 p.m. 2200 Kavanaugh Blvd. Little Rock Farmers’ Market. River Market Pavilions, through Oct. 27: 7 a.m.-3 p.m. 400 President Clinton Ave. 501-375-2552. rivermarket.info. Super Summer Saturdays. Free family event celebrating baseball. Clinton Presidential Center, through Aug. 11: 10 a.m., free. 1200 President Clinton Ave. 370-8000. www.clintonpresidentialcenter.org.

COMEDY

Nancy Robinson Lott and Regina L. Norwood. Meet authors of “Josephine: Celebrating the Life and Legacy.” Pyramid Art Books and Custom Framing, 1:30 p.m. 1001 Wright Ave. 501-372-6822. hearnefineart.com.

John Evans. The Loony Bin, 7, 9 and 11 p.m., $10. 10301 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-2285555. www.loonybincomedy.com. John Evans, David Beck, B.T.. The Loony Bin, 7, 9 and 11 p.m., $7-$10. 10301 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-228-5555. www.loonybincomedy.com. The Main Thing. Sketch comedy show. The Joint, 8 p.m., $20. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501-372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com.

DANCE

Little Rock West Coast Dance Club. Dance lessons. Singles welcome. Ernie Biggs, 7 p.m., $2. 307 Clinton Ave. 501-247-5240. www. arstreetswing.com.

EVENTS

2012 Arkansas Civil Rights Commemoration & Public Forum. Includes the community forum “Examining the Legacy of the Little Rock Nine” and speeches from Freedom Rider Bliss Ann Malone-Hunter and Dr. Terrence Roberts, of the Little Rock Nine. Clinton Presidential Center, 9:45 a.m. 1200 President Clinton Ave. 370-8000.

SPORTS

Arkansas Travelers vs. Tulsa Drillers. DickeyStephens Park, through July 14, 7:10 p.m.; July 15, 6 p.m., $6-$12. 400 W. Broadway St., NLR. 501-664-1555. www.travs.com. Soul Spirit Zumba with Ashan. Soul Spirit Zumba fuses Latin rhythms with soulful inspirational music. Canvas Community Art Gallery, 9:30-10:30 a.m., $5. 1111 W. 7th St. 501-4140368.

BOOKS

SUNDAY, JULY 15

MUSIC

Brandon Heath. Magic Springs’ Timberwood Amphitheater, 7:30 p.m., $30-$65. 1701 E. Grand Ave., Hot Springs. Irish Traditional Music Session. Hibernia Irish Tavern, first and third Sunday of every month, 2:30 p.m. 9700 N Rodney Parham Road. 501246-4340. www.hiberniairishtavern.com. Summer Concert Series: 4X4 Crew. Faulkner County Library, 2 p.m., free. 1900 Tyler St., Conway. 501-327-7482. www.fcl.org. Sunday Jazz Brunch with Ted Ludwig and Joe Cripps. Vieux Carre, 11 a.m. 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-663-1196. www.vieuxcarrecafe.com. Tedeschi Trucks Band. Robinson Center Music Hall, 7:30 p.m., $35-$67. Markham and Broadway. www.littlerockmeetings.com/convcenters/robinson. We Came as Romans, Like Moths to Flames,

Close to Home, At the Skylines, Through the Looking Glass. Downtown Music Hall, 6 p.m., $17. 211 W. Capitol. 501-376-1819. downtownmusichall.com.

EVENTS

Bernice Garden Farmers’ Market. The Bernice Garden, through Oct. 14: 10 a.m.-2 p.m. 1401 S. Main St. 501-617-2511. www.thebernicegarden.org. FOCAL used book sale. Main Library, 1 p.m. 100 S. Rock St. www.cals.lib.ar.us. “Live from the Back Room.” Vino’s, 7 p.m. 923 W. 7th St. 501-375-8466. www.vinosbrewpub.com. Tattoo Artist Demonstration. Tattoo artists Ryan and Brook Cook and Katie McGowan from Lucky Bella Tattoo Studio will give a live tattoo demonstration in conjunction with the exhibition “Tattoo Witness: Photographs by Mark Perrott.” Arkansas Arts Center, 2 p.m., free. 501 E. 9th St. 501-372-4000. www.arkarts.com.

SPORTS

Arkansas Travelers vs. Tulsa Drillers. DickeyStephens Park, 6 p.m., $6-$12. 400 W. Broadway St., NLR. 501-664-1555. www.travs.com. WWE Money in the Bank watch party. 18-andolder. Stickyz Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicken Shack, 7 p.m., free. 107 Commerce St. 501-372-7707. www.stickyz.com.

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MONDAY, JULY 16

MUSIC

7th Street Peep Show. Featuring three or four bands per night. Bands sign up at 6:30 p.m. and play 35-minute sets (including setup) on a first come, first served basis. House band is The Sinners. Solo artists, DJs and all other performers welcome. Vino’s, 7 p.m., $1. 923 W. 7th St. 501-375-8466. www.vinosbrewpub.com. Ashley McBryde. The Tavern Sports Grill, July 16, 7 p.m.; July 30, 7 p.m., free. 17815 Chenal Parkway. 501-830-2100. www.thetavernsportsgrill.com. The Diana Herold Quartet. The Afterthought, 8 p.m., free. 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-663-1196. www.afterthoughtbar.com. Music Remix Experience. Little Rock Fashion Week kickoff event. Cornerstone Pub & Grill, 7 p.m., $5. 314 Main St., NLR. 501-374-1782. cstonepub.com. Norma Jean. George’s Majestic Lounge, 9 p.m. 519 W. Dickson St., Fayetteville. 479-442-4226. Reggae Nites. Featuring DJ Hy-C playing roots, reggae and dancehall. Pleazures Martini and Grill Lounge, 6 p.m., $7-$10. 1318 Main St. 501-376-7777. www.facebook.com/pleazures. bargrill. Richie Johnson. Cajun’s Wharf, 5 and 9 p.m., $5 after 8:30 p.m. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-3755351. www.cajunswharf.com. Touch, Grateful Dead Tribute. Stickyz Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicken Shack, 8 p.m., $5. 107 Commerce St. 501-372-7707. www.stickyz.com.

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10 p.m., $5. 215 N. Shackleford. 501-224-7665. www.westendsmokehouse.net. Crash Meadows (headliner), Jeff Madden (happy hour). Cajun’s Wharf, 5 and 9 p.m., $5 after 8:30 p.m. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-3755351. www.cajunswharf.com. Damn Arkansan. Maxine’s, 8 p.m., $5. 700 Central Ave., Hot Springs. www.maxinespub. com. Dan Wagner. Flying Saucer, July 14, 9 p.m.; July 28, 9 p.m., $3. 323 President Clinton Ave. 501372-8032. www.beerknurd.com/stores/littlerock. Hellzapoppin’ Freakshow/Sideshow Revue. 18-and-older. Revolution, 9 p.m., $10. 300 President Clinton Ave. 501-823-0090. revroom.com. Interstate Buffalo. Midtown Billiards, 12:30 a.m., $5. 1316 Main St. 501-372-9990. midtownar.com. Iron Tongue, Venomous Maximus, Sound of the Mountain, Firing Order. Downtown Music Hall, 8:30 p.m., $5. 211 W. Capitol. 501-376-1819. downtownmusichall.com. “KISS Saturdays” with DJs Deja Blu, Greyhound and Silky Slim. Sway, 10 p.m. 412 Louisiana. 501-907-2582. La Chat. Cornerstone Pub & Grill, 8 p.m. 314 Main St., NLR. 501-374-1782. cstonepub.com. Mole.FM presents: Amsterdam, Dylan, Little Phoebe. Vino’s, 9 p.m., $6. 923 W. 7th St. 501375-8466. www.vinosbrewpub.com. Norma Jean w/ Ice Nine Kills, This or The Apocalypse. Juanita’s, 9 p.m., $14. 614 President Clinton Ave. 501-372-1228. www. juanitas.com. Pickin’ Porch at the Library. Faulkner County Library, through Aug. 4: 9:30 a.m., free. 1900 Tyler St., Conway. 501-327-7482. www.fcl.org. Shannon Boshears. The Afterthought, 9 p.m., $7. 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-663-1196. www. afterthoughtbar.com. Songwriters Showcase. Parrot Beach Cafe, 2-7 p.m., free. 9611 MacArthur Drive, NLR. 771-2994. Sunny Ledford. Shooter’s Sports Bar & Grill, 9 p.m., $10-$12. 9500 I-30. 501-565-4003. www. shooterslittlerock.com. Switchfoot. Magic Springs’ Timberwood Amphitheater, 7:30 p.m., $30-$65. 1701 E. Grand Ave., Hot Springs. Ted Ludwig Trio. Capital Bar and Grill, 9 p.m., free. 111 Markham St. 501-374-7474. www. capitalhotel.com/CBG. Weakness for Blondes. White Water Tavern, 9:30 p.m., $5. 2500 W. 7th. 501-375-8400. www. whitewatertavern.com.

EVENTS

Little Rock Fashion Week. Includes a variety of fashion-related events at venues around Little Rock. Check website for full schedule. Little Rock, various locations, July 16-21. Markham Street. littlerockfashionweek.com. Preservation Conversations: How to Find Your House’s History. Butler Galleries, Arkansas Studies Institute, 5 p.m., free. 401 President Clinton Ave. 501-320-5792. www.arstudies.org.

FILM

“Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban.” Main Library, 2 p.m. 100 S. Rock St. www.cals.lib.ar.us. CONTINUED ON PAGE 30

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JULY 11, 2012

MEDIA

Democracy goes electric An online experiment in governance. BY DAVID KOON

ou know things are really, really broken when people start thinking it would be easier to just start all over than to try and fix what they’ve got. While the hyper-partisan stalemate in Congress hasn’t gotten quite that bad yet for most folks, a team of Arkansas filmmakers is trying something completely different, in the form of an online project called Directing Democracy. Over the next month, the project aims to have an online community create and deliver to Congress the first “crowdsourced bill” — a piece of legislation conceived, debated and drafted online. The website for the project can be seen at directingdemocracy.com. Conceived by producers Gabe Gentry, Kody Ford, Mary Shutter and David Fowlkes, Directing Democracy is either going to be a triumph or a spectacular crash and burn. With a project this ambitious, there’s not a lot of wiggle room in between. At the website, which went live on July 4, visitors join a community message board. Over the four weeks that started July 9, that virtual community will determine the “threshold” issue of our time, debate the issue, determine what has worked and what hasn’t in current legislation, and then draft a bill by Aug. 6. After the bill has been drafted, the online community will then elect three representatives — one self-described liberal, one selfdescribed conservative, and one independent — from a pool of nine candidates chosen by the producers. The final step in the process will be loading the three reps into a van for a crosscountry road trip to Washington, D.C., stopping along the way at the homes of people who could be affected by the bill should it become law. The plan is to be in Washington by Sept. 10 when Congress returns from its summer recess, so the bill can be delivered to every member of Congress. The whole process will be filmed for a documentary that will premiere in spring 2013. Gabe Gentry is an executive producer for the project, which has a $14,000 budget raised through the website indiegogo.com. Gentry said the idea was first conceived in 2007, when he and his co-producers started talking about the political turmoil in Washington. “We were frustrated with what we

JULY 11, 2012

ARKANSAS TIMES

felt was a lack of candor and courage in Congress,” Gentry said. “So often, real, lasting solutions were sacrificed to what was politically expedient and safe. We were all kind of lamenting all that and talking about it and trying to figure out what the potential solutions were.” Originally called “Agents of Change,” the idea back then was for an 8-part PBS reality series in which three teams of three drove across the country in RVs investigating the political challenges facing America and drafting a bill. Gentry and his co-producers had gone so far as to get an agreement from two congressmen — Andre Carson (D-Ind.) and Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) — that they would introduce the legislation that was eventually drafted. “A reporter caught wind of it in D.C.,” Gentry said. “He did some digging, and brought in some former solicitor generals to make the point that any congressperson agreeing to introduce legislation in a contest manner was in violation of their ethics. It made it sound much more smarmy than it was, but nevertheless, all the participants backed out.” With the recent rise of crowdfunding sites like indiegogo.com, however, the project got a new lease on life, though with a bit less ambitious scope. Gentry’s frustration over the state of politics hasn’t dimmed. “I’ve voted in every election cycle that’s been available to me, and I’ve seen a pattern in which change is glacial,” he said. “I think we’ve entered a period of consequences for the nation after years of kicking the can down the road. I feel like there’s got to be a third way.” Gentry acknowledges the Directing Democracy project is ambitious, but he said his hope is that the shared experience of creating the bill and delivering it to Congress can lead to something different. He said it’s too dangerous to accept that the system is so broken that the public can’t have a say in the political process. “Everybody on the team that’s working on this is realistic as to its potentially limited effect,” he said. “That said, not one person who is on the project thinks it’s impossible to affect major change. Otherwise we wouldn’t be doing it.”

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MOVIE LISTINGS

JULY 13-14

ICE-AGE CRITTERS: A wooly mammoth and his friends embark on yet another quest to make Fox a bunch of money in “Ice Age: Continental Drift,” the fourth installment of the series. Market Street Cinema times at or after 9 p.m. are for Friday and Saturday only. Rave showtimes are valid for Friday and Saturday only. Lakewood 8 and Riverdale showings were not available as of press deadline. Find up-to-date listings at arktimes.com. NEW MOVIES Ice Age: Continental Drift (PG) – Latest iteration in the series about a crew of wacky animated animals. Breckenridge: 12:10, 2:30, 5:05, 7:35, 9:55 (2D), 11:30 a.m., 2:00, 4:25, 7:00, 9:25 (3D). Chenal 9: 10:15 a.m., 1:15, 7:15. Rave: 10:00 a.m., 11:45 a.m., 12:35, 2:15, 3:00, 4:45, 5:30, 7:15, 8:00, 9:45, midnight. RETURNING THIS WEEK The Amazing Spider Man (PG-13) – Already? It’s like, jeez, Tobey MaGuire’s Spider Man’s body ain’t even cold yet. Starring Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone. Breckenridge: 1:10 (opencaptioned), 4:20, 7:30, 10:30 (2D), 12:40, 3:50, 7:00, 10:10 (3D). Chenal 9: 12:30, 3:40, 6:45, 9:50 (2D), 10:00 a.m., 1:05, 4:10, 7:15, 10:20 (IMAX 3D). Rave: 10:10 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 1:15, 2:45, 4:20, 6:15, 7:30, 9:30, 10:45 (2D), 9:25 a.m., 11:45 a.m., 12:30, 3:15, 3:45, 5:00, 7:00, 8:15, 9:00, 10:15, 11:30, midnight (3D). Battleship (PG-13) – Action adventure film starring Rihanna. Movies 10: 12:45, 4:00, 7:00, 9:55. Bernie (PG-13) – Based on a murder in smalltown Texas, starring Jack Black, Matthew McConaughey and Richard Linklater. Market Street: 2:00, 4:15, 7:00, 9:15. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (PG-13) – British senior citizens go to India and learn that it’s OK to eat weird stuff and it’s all very heartwarming. Market Street: 1:45, 4:15, 6:45, 9:15. Brave (PG) – Animated fantasy tale of a Celtictype girl who must save her kingdom from something or other. Breckenridge: 2:05, 7:05 (2D), 11:35 a.m., 4:30, 9:30. (3D). Chenal 9: 10:05 a.m., 1:05, 7:05 (2D), 4:05, 9:55 (3D). Rave: 10:15 a.m., 1:25, 4:25, 7:25, 9:55 (2D), 11:20 a.m., 2:20, 5:15 (3D). Chimpanzee (G) – Beautifully shot documentary footage of majestic primates, but it’s narrated by Tim Allen. Movies 10: 12:35, 2:50, 4:50, 7:30, 9:40. Dark Shadows (PG-13) – Kinda like Dracula goes to “Austin Powers,” starring Johnny Depp 28

JULY 11, 2012

ARKANSAS TIMES

and Helena Bonham Carter, directed by Tim Burton. Nah, baby. Movies 10: 11:55 a.m., 2:30, 5:05, 7:40, 10:15. The Dictator (R) – Sacha Baron Cohen is a dictator from a fictional foreign country and he has a funny accent and so forth. Movies 10: 12:20, 2:40, 4:45, 7:15, 10:05. Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (PG) – When you were watching “Land of the Lost,” did you find yourself wishing they’d cast The Rock instead of Will Farrell? Well, here you go. Movies 10: 12:25, 4:55, 9:30. Katy Perry: Part of Me (PG) – Yeah, but which one? Breckenridge: noon (2D), 2:25, 5:00, 7:25, 9:50 (3D). Chenal 9: 4:00 (2D), 10:00 a.m., 1:00, 7:00, 10:00 (3D). Rave: 2:00 (2D), 11:10 a.m., 4:35, 7:20, 10:00 (3D). The Lorax (PG) – A 3D CGI adaptation of Dr. Seuss’ classic tale. Movies 10: 12:15, 7:20. Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted (PG) – The Dreamworks franchise rolls on, with Chris Rock, Ben Stiller and other people who make stupid amounts of money as talking animals. Breckenridge: 11:45 a.m., 4:15, 9:25 (2D), 2:10, 7:10 (3D). Magic Mike (R) – Former male stripper Channing Tatum stars as a male stripper in a story inspired by Tatum’s former life as a male stripper. Breckenridge: 12:15, 4:35, 7:25, 10:20. Chenal 9: 10:10 a.m., 1:10, 4:10, 7:10, 10:10. Rave: 9:35 a.m., 12:15, 2:50, 5:20, 7:45. Moonrise Kingdom (PG-13) – With Ed Norton, Bill Murray, Frances McDormand and Bruce Willis, from director Wes Anderson. Breckenridge: 12:05, 2:15, 4:40, 7:15, 9:35. Rave: 9:50 a.m., 12:45, 3:25, 5:50, 8:20, 10:55. People Like Us (PG-13) – Family drama/comedy about a twenty-something salesman who must confront a family secret after the sudden death of his father. Market Street: 2:15, 4:30, 7:15, 9:20. Pirates! Band of Misfits (PG) – Hugh Grant’s voice stars as an animated pirate captain, also starring Brendan Gleeson as “The Pirate with Gout.” Movies 10: 12:10, 2:20, 4:30, 6:40, 8:55 (2D), 1:15, 3:25, 5:35, 7:50, 10:00 (3D). Prometheus (R) – Shiny sci-fi from Ridley Scott. Supposed to be an “Alien” prequel. Chenal 9: Rave: 10:30 p.m. Savages (R) – A hippie and a former Navy SEAL take on Mexican drug lords, from director Oliver Stone. Breckenridge: 12:20, 4:10, 7:20, 10:05.

Chenal 9: 10:20 a.m., 1:20, 4:20, 7:20, 10:20. Rave: 10:25 a.m., 11:25 a.m., 2:25, 5:25, 8:25, 10:25, 11:25. Ted (R) – From the mind of the inescapable Seth MacFarlane, the story of a talking teddy bear named Ted. Breckenridge: 11:50 a.m., 2:20, 4:50, 7:45, 10:15. Chenal 9: 10:20 a.m., 1:20, 4:20, 7:20, 10:20. Rave: 11:40 a.m., 1:40, 2:40, 4:40, 5:40, 7:40, 8:40, 11:40. Think Like a Man (PG-13) – Based on Steve Harvey’s best-selling book. Movies 10: 1:10, 4:10, 7:05, 9:50. The Three Stooges (PG) – Yup, starring three guys you’ve never heard of. Movies 10: 2:45, 7:20. To Rome with Love (R) – Latest charmingly aimless Eurocentric comedy from Woody Allen, with Jesse Eisenberg, Alec Baldwin, Penelope Cruz, Ellen Page and Roberto Benigni. Market Street: 1:45, 4:00, 6:45, 9:00. Rave: 6:30 p.m., 10:20 p.m. Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Witness Protection (PG-13) – Latest product churned out by the Tyler Perry machine. Breckenridge: 12:30, 4:00, 6:50, 9:40. Chenal 9: 10:25 a.m., 1:25, 4:25, 7:25, 10:25. Rave: 10:10 a.m., 1:10, 4:10, 7:10, 8:10, 10:10, 11:10. What to Expect When You’re Expecting (PG13) – Film mines bestselling pregnancy book for attempt at comedy. If that’s what you were expecting, you were right. Movies 10: noon, 2:35, 5:10, 7:45, 10:20. Your Sister’s Sister (R) – Indie comedy about the romantic entanglements of attractive young people, with Emily Blunt. Market Street: 2:00, 4:20, 7:00, 9:00. Chenal 9 IMAX Theatre: 17825 Chenal Parkway, 821-2616, www.dtmovies.com. Cinemark Movies 10: 4188 E. McCain Blvd., 945-7400, www.cinemark.com. Cinematown Riverdale 10: Riverdale Shopping Center, 296-9955, www.riverdale10.com. Lakewood 8: 2939 Lakewood Village Drive, 7585354, www.fandango.com. Market Street Cinema: 1521 Merrill Drive, 312-8900, www.marketstreetcinema.net. Rave Colonel Glenn 18: 18 Colonel Glenn Plaza, 687-0499, www.ravemotionpictures.com. Regal Breckenridge Village 12: 1-430 and Rodney Parham, 224-0990, www.fandango.com.

MOVIE REVIEW

Risk-free familiarity ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ takes no chances. BY SAM EIFLING

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he Amazing Spider-Man” might be the movie most difficult to spoil, ever. In second place, “The Ten Commandments.” The last and the next iterations of “Romeo and Juliet.” Maybe that odious “Cat in the Hat” debacle of a few years ago. We’ve moved into the realm of canonical source material that simply cannot be over-shared. Call it a reboot if you want; fact is “The Amazing Spider-Man” can’t help but be a retread when a movie called “Spider-Man,” which featured many of the same characters along much of the same storyline, came out just 10 years ago. Two sequels followed. They got a little shrill. Sam Raimi, who directed those three movies, stepped off the carousel that would’ve led to three more sequels. Sony retreated again to the first chapter of the Book of Arachne. Now kids who were 4 when “Spider-Man” landed and who’ve been gorged on syndicated Spidey cartoons are of prime “Amazing Spider-Man” age. For everyone else, it’s the same hymn, different key. Moses splits the Red Sea, Juliet stabs herself, SpiderMan saves the day, now and evermore. Since Spider-Man debuted in 1962, you’ve come to know this tale. Boy meets girl. Spider meets boy. Boy’s uncle gets shot. Boy develops superpowers and a vigilante streak, dons skintight costume and swings on webs through the avenues of New York as Tarzan might commute vine-to-vine. If this hoary fable is your jam then familiarity be damned — this is a shipshape version of the Ol’ Webslinger’s origins. The gonzo horror auteur Raimi has been downgraded to a director named Marc Webb, whose bona fides (other than his surname) include “500 Days of Summer” and Green Day videos. Otherwise this baby carries some notable upgrades. For starters Andrew Garfield plays the dynamic, cocksure Peter Parker that Tobey Maguire never quite mustered. Nearly 29, Garfield is two years older even than Maguire was at Spider-Man’s release — yet he cuts the more convincing teen-ager, fidgeting, mumbling, shuffling through the hallways of his high school. He also has better chemistry with Emma Stone (as Gwen Stacy) than Maguire had with Kirsten Dunst (as Mary Jane Watson). The Stacey character is more fun anyhow. She’s a fearless science nerd with a cop dad (Dennis Leary — don’t get too attached) and more involved than Mary Jane was by “Spider-Man 3,” in which she seemed mostly to shriek as Venom dangled her off the side of a skyscraper.

2012

‘THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN’: Andrew Garfield stars.

Martin Sheen and Sally Field as Peter’s Uncle Ben and Aunt May are warm and believable. Stan Lee’s cameo might be the best of any Marvel movie yet. Spidey’s foil here is a villain called the Lizard, a burly, brilliant, dinosaur-like beast that results when Peter’s missing dad’s former partner, a geneticist named Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans), shoots himself up with a serum intended to graft reptile DNA onto his own. Naturally there’s a valid scientific reason why a respected researcher would subject himself to a highly volatile experimental mutagen in a late-night haste. Why, it’s so obvious we don’t even need to dwell on it. Besides, if that strikes you as implausible, just wait for the sequences in which Peter uses Bing to find quick, accurate search results. Will anything here astonish or inspire? Aside from the first-person vantage shots that made the trailers so striking, “The Amazing Spider-Man” won’t break much ground for older fans. (That is, anyone old enough ever to have smoked a cigarette.) Marvel identified this problem with its comics canon recently and in response created an entire parallel universe last year. Spider-Man didn’t emerge from that overhaul as a lanky, tousle-haired white dude. Instead, Peter Parker got whacked by the Green Goblin and was replaced by Miles Morales, a half-Hispanic, halfblack kid from the Bronx. Earlier, when Marvel set a line of comics in 2099, it was a buff Latino named Miguel O’Hara who adopted Spider-Man’s identity. Nothing against Garfield and Stone, but it’s hard to see marginal improvements on existing characters as more than an opportunity lost. This “Spider-Man” could’ve looked 87 years to the future. Instead, it rehashes a vision now 50 years old.

The Very Loud Ending of

LCD SOUNDSYSTEM LITTLE ROCK_SUP_0710 wEDNESDAY , JULY 18TH WITH SELECT ENCORE SHOWS ADDED BY DEMAND

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Meet the A 2012 Meet the MUSIC SECTION Ser 2012 Author Series Meet the Author Meet the Author Series 2012

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WEDNESDAY 07/11 1/8 PAGE ( 2.125” ) X 5.875” H E A L T H T R U E C R I M E Tues, July 17, 6 pm ALL.SUP.0711.ATEMAIL

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T R U E

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C R I M E

Meet the Author Ser Tues, July 10, 6 pm

2012

Dr. David Lipschitz “Dr. David’s First Health Book of MORE (Not Less)”

H E A L T H

Mara Leveritt “Devil’s Knot”

Meet the Author Series

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W I L L I A M F. L A M A N P U b L i C L i b r a r y S Y S T E M 2801 Orange St. • nLr 501-758-1720 LamanLibrary.Org www.arktimes.com

JULY 11, 2012

AFTER DARK, CONT.

TUESDAY, JULY 17

MUSIC

Brian & Nick. Cajun’s Wharf, July 17, 5 and 9 p.m.; July 24, 5 and 9 p.m., $5 after 8:30 p.m. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. www.cajunswharf.com. Brian Martin. Maxine’s, 8 p.m., free. 700 Central Ave., Hot Springs. www.maxinespub.com. Drowning Pool, James Durbin of American Idol. George’s Majestic Lounge, 8:30 p.m. 519 W. Dickson St., Fayetteville. 479-442-4226. Jeff Long. Khalil’s Pub, 6 p.m. 110 S. Shackleford Road. 501-224-0224. www.khalilspub.com. Lucious Spiller Band. Copeland’s, 6-9 p.m. 2602 S. Shackleford Road. 501-312-1616. www.copelandsofneworleans.com. Quintron & Miss Pussycat. 18-and-older. Stickyz Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicken Shack, 9 p.m., $8 adv., $10 day of. 107 Commerce St. 501-372-7707. www.stickyz.com. Ricky David Tripp. Rocket Twenty One, 5:30 p.m. 2601 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-603-9208. www. ferneaurestaurant.com. Rookie of the Year, Car Party, Eryn Woods. Juanita’s, 9 p.m., $8. 614 President Clinton Ave. 501-372-1228. www.juanitas.com. Top of the Rock Chorus rehearsal. Cornerstone Bible Fellowship Church, 7-10 p.m. 7351 Warden Road, Sherwood. 501-231-1119. www. topoftherockchorus.org. Tuesday Jam Session with Carl Mouton. The Afterthought, 8 p.m., free. 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-663-1196. www.afterthoughtbar.com. Tuesday Night Jazz/Blues Jam. The Joint, 8 p.m. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501-372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com.

EVENTS

Little Rock Farmers’ Market. River Market Pavilions, through Oct. 27: 7 a.m.-3 p.m. 400 President Clinton Ave. 501-375-2552. rivermarket.info. Little Rock Fashion Week. See July 16. LRFW Presents The Artist Statement. Little Rock Fashion Week event. The Art Loft, 6 p.m., free. 1525 Merrill Drive. Take a Break with LRFW. Little Rock Fashion Week event. Attend and receive tickets to “Little Rock and a Hard Place” comedy show. The Joint, 12 p.m., free. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501-372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com. “Voluntary Simplicity.” Discussion course hosted by the Ecumenical Buddhist Society of Little Rock. Ecumenical Buddhist Society, July 17, 7:15 p.m.; July 24, 7:15 p.m., $35. 1015 W. 2nd St. 501-376-7056. arkansasearth.org/2011/voluntary-simplicity.

FILM

Vino’s Picture Show: “D.O.A..” Vino’s, 7 p.m.,

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

$20-$25. 16311 Hwy. 62 W., Eureka Springs.

GALLERIES, MUSEUMS

BOOKS

D.M. Webb. Meet the author of “Mississippi Nights.” That Bookstore in Blytheville, 6 p.m. 316 W. Main St. Meet the Author Series: Mara Leveritt. Journalist Mara Leveritt will discuss her work in progress, “Justice Knot,” the follow-up to her highly acclaimed West Memphis Three book “Devil’s Knot.” Laman Library, 6 p.m. 2801 Orange St., NLR. 501-758-1720. www.lamanlibrary.org.

THIS WEEK IN THEATER

Auditions for “Daddy’s Dyin’ ... Who’s Got The Will?” There are roles for three men and five women, ages 30-80. Pocket Community Theater, Sun., July 15, 2 p.m.; Mon., July 16, 7 p.m. 170 Ravine St., Hot Springs. “Barefoot in the Park.” The Neil Simon comedy about a couple of newlyweds, their first apartment, eccentric neighbors and a meddling mother. Murry’s Dinner Playhouse, through July 22: Tue.-Sat., 6 p.m.; Wed., 11 a.m.; Sun., 11 a.m. and 6 p.m., $15-$33. 6323 Col. Glenn Road. 501-562-3131. murrysdinnerplayhouse.com. “The Full Monty.” A group of unemployed steelworkers find an unconventional way to make some money, revitalizing their selfesteem in the process. This musical is based on the hit British film of the same name. The Weekend Theater, July 13-14, 7:30 p.m.; Sun., July 15, 2:30 p.m.; July 20-21, 7:30 p.m.; Sun., July 22, 2:30 p.m.; July 27-28, 7:30 p.m.; Sun., July 29, 2:30 p.m.; Aug. 3-4, 7:30 p.m., $16-$20. 1001 W. 7th St. 501-374-3761. www.weekendtheater.org. “Hairspray.” Campy, fun musical about an unlikely teen dance idol, based on the John Waters film. The Public Theatre, July 13-14, 7:30 p.m.; Sun., July 15, 2 p.m.; July 20-21, 7:30 p.m.; Sun., July 22, 2 p.m.; July 27-28, 7:30 p.m.; Sun., July 29, 2 p.m., $14-$16. 616 Center St. 501-374-7529. www.thepublictheatre.com. Opera in the Ozarks: “A Little Night Music.” Stephen Sondheim’s romantic Broadway smash about the intersecting love lives of several couples. Inspiration Point, Wed., July 11, 7:30 p.m.; Fri., July 13, 7:30 p.m.; Thu., July 19, 7:30 p.m., $20-$25. 16311 Hwy. 62 W., Eureka Springs. Opera in the Ozarks: “La Boheme.” Puccini’s tale of bohemians living in Paris. Inspiration Point, Thu., July 12, 7:30 p.m.; Sat., July 14, 7:30 p.m.; Fri., July 20, 7:30 p.m., $20-$25. 16311 Hwy. 62 W., Eureka Springs. Opera in the Ozarks: “The Magic Flute.” Mozart’s masterpiece. Inspiration Point, Sun., July 15, 7:30 p.m.; Wed., July 18, 7:30 p.m.,

NEW EXHIBITS, ART EVENTS

BUTLER CENTER GALLERIES, Arkansas Studies Institute: “Invasion or Liberation? The Civil War in Arkansas,” letters, diaries, photographs, and artifacts, Concordia Hall, reception 5-8 p.m. July 13, 2nd Friday Art Night; “Pattern in Perspective: Recent Work by Carly Dahl and Dustyn Bork,” through Sept. 29; “Arkansas Art Educators State Youth Art Show 2012,” through July 28; “Small Town: Portraits of a Disappearing America,” through Aug. 25. 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.Sat. 320-5790. COURTYARD AT THE MARRIOTT, 521 President Clinton Ave.: ArtGroup Maumelle, 5-8 p.m. July 13, 2nd Friday Art Night. 975-9800. CURRAN HALL (Little Rock Visitor Center), 615 E. Capital: “Absolutely Fabulous Cuffs,” bracelets by Linda Bradley, open 5-8 p.m. July 13, 2nd Friday Art Night. 371-0076. CHRIST CHURCH, 509 Scott St.: Arkansas Pastel Society members show, through August, open 5-8 p.m. July 12, 2nd Friday Art Night, show through Aug. 30. 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Mon.-Thu. 375-2342. GALLERY 221, 221 W. 2nd St.: “Colors Abound,” impressionist landscapes, florals by Jennifer Cox Coleman, reception 5-8 p.m. July 13, 2nd Friday Art Night. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Mon.Fri. 801-0211. HEARNE FINE ART, 1001 Wright Ave.: Open 5-8 p.m. July 13, 2nd Friday Art Night, with gallery talk by Garbo Hearne at 6 p.m.; “Montage 24,” 24 artists with the gallery for 24 years. 372-6822. HISTORIC ARKANSAS MUSEUM, 200 E. Third St.: “Barbie Doll: The 11 ½-inch American Icon,” from the Strojek Family collection, reception 5-8 p.m. July 13, 2nd Friday Art Night, with music by Steve Bates, Loblolly ice cream tasting; “A Collective Vision,” recent acquisitions, through March 2013; “Creating the Elements of Discovery: Tim Imhauser, Jason Powers and Emily Wood,” sculpture, drawings and paintings, through Aug. 5. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 324-9351. OLD STATE HOUSE MUSEUM, 300 W. Markham: Open 5-8 p.m. July 13, 2nd Friday Art Night, with music by Interstate Buffalo; “Battle Colors of Arkansas,” 18 Civil War flags; “Things You Need to Hear: Memories of Growing up in Arkansas from 1890 to 1980,” oral histories about community, family, work, school and leisure. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 324-9685. STUDIOMAIN, 1423 S. Main St.: “Quality + Quantity, a Conversation on Modern Furniture,” furniture designed by students in the UALR Applied Design program, reception with wine and cheese tasting 5-8 p.m. July 13,

2nd Friday Art Night. info@studio-main.org. HOT SPRINGS MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, 425 Central Ave.: “The Lost Highway: Constructions in Miniature by David Rose,” opens with reception 4-7 p.m. July 13, show through Oct. 13. 501-609-9966.

CONTINUING EXHIBITS

ARKANSAS ARTS CENTER, MacArthur Park: “Tattoo Witness: Photographs by Mark Perrott,” 25 large-scale black and white photographs of tattoed men and women, documenting tattoos over 25 years, with murals painted by Arkansas tattoo artists Robert Berry, Richard Moore, Caleb Pritchett, Chris Thomas, Brooke and Ryan Cook, Nancy Miller and Scott Diffee, through Sept. 9; “The Rockefeller Influence,” 57 works donated or loaned by the Rockefeller family, through Aug. 19; “11th National Drawing Invitational: New York, Singular Drawings,” through Sept. 9, curated by Charlotta Kotik; “The New Materiality: Digital Dialogues at the Boundaries of Contemporary Craft,” through Aug. 5; 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sat., 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sun. 372-4000. UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS AT LITTLE ROCK: “Works from the UALR Permanent Collection,” including paintings by Al Allen and Karen Kunc, photographs by Timothy Hursley, woodcut by Kathe Kollwitz, prints by Takeshi Katori and David O’Brien, and more, through July 20, Gallery I. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri. 569-3182.

ONGOING MUSEUM EXHIBITS

CLINTON PRESIDENTIAL CENTER, 1200 President Clinton Ave.: “Play Ball! The St. Louis Cardinals,” memorabilia, including World Series trophies, rings and Stan Musial’s uniform, through Sept. 16; “Dorothy Howell Rodham and Virginia Clinton Kelley,” through Nov. 25; “Abraham Lincoln: SelfMade in America,” replicas of artifacts from the Louise and Barry Taper Collection, through July 17; permanent exhibits about policies and White House life during the Clinton administration. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. $7 adults; $5 college students, seniors, retired military; $3 ages 6-17. 370-8000. MUSEUM OF DISCOVERY, 500 President Clinton Ave.: “Extreme Deep: Mission to the Abyss,” through July 29; “Astronomy: It’s a Blast,” through Sept. 17; “Wiggle Worms,” science program for pre-K children 10 a.m.-10:30 a.m. every Tue., 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun., $10 ages 12 and older, $8 ages 1-11, free under 1. 396-7050. More gallery and museum listings at www.arktimes.com.

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ARKANSAS TIMES

PEARLS ABOUT SWINE

Smith’s money troubles no cause for concern

ere this a stage production of plussed when “Razorbacks 2012: A FootSmith hasn’t run ball Odyssey,” the act where out of the tunnel John L. Smith dutifully and matter-ofas head coach yet. This same, factly discloses his personal financial how-much-isturmoil should probably be the one the BEAU too-much issue playwright excises first from the draft. WILCOX memorably surOnly in the context of the most bizarre off-season in Hog history faced in 2007 when Houston Nutt’s would the head coach’s soured investphone records were procured via an innocuous Freedom of Informaments be taken under the microscope at all. Smith’s inability to turn profit tion Act request. By that time, Nutt’s welcome was already worn thin, the on a bunch of parcels in Kentucky has fan base was almost irretrievably disonly drawn ink because of the freakish business that has preceded it. The gusted with marginal performance sports editor of the statewide daily and shows of petulance. When text elected to parlay this little episode messages and calls to a female news into an opportunity to serve up amaanchor turned up, we collectively teurish observations on the economy; howled about the utter impropriety the musings here will conversely, and of it all, blamed the team’s lackluster performance on a coach who had lost appropriately, be more reserved. The fact that John L. Smith may, in focus on the program, and cried for his fact, find himself among hundreds of head. Ole Miss helped facilitate that thousands of bankruptcy filers nationdream months later. wide over the next Smith also apparyear is not troubling ently did not fudge John L. Smith would at all. At one time, he any details when tellhave never found his commanded a subing Jeff Long about finances subject to stantial head coachthis little fiscal faux such public scrutiny pas, as Long said it ing salary and sought prior to the dawn of to build wealth as was disclosed when many of his socio- Hogville or the age of Smith was being Twitter. approached about economic class would the job. We are all do, in a manner that well aware of the importance that enriched many before him. Not only Long places upon candor. Petrino did the real estate market tank, Smith lost the job that gave him the financial was revealed as both winner and liar, resources with which to make those the latter trumping the former. Smith investments. Getting a special teams earned himself the chance to be the coach gig in Fayetteville back in 2010 next winner by simply being honest, a was hardly going to be a cure-all for fact that was lost on a fringe element that. of the fan base that still holds out hope We are firmly entrenched in an era for Petrino’s redemption and return. of information overload and the comFor all the tumult that has surmentary portion of that excess is overrounded the program since Petrino ripe and under-informed, to be kind. smiled and confidently hoisted the This is not to pick on message boards Cotton Bowl trophy in January, there or blogs, which have their utility, but is solace to be had. Smith arguably to once again call attention to a rather left Weber State in a precarious position but with his financial pressures jarring cultural shift. John L. Smith would have never found his finances mounting, taking the Arkansas job subject to such public scrutiny prior was even more logical than previto the dawn of Hogville or the age of ously thought. There’s a substantial Twitter. I never cared that Robert Bork gulf between what Petrino did in a rented “Ruthless People” back in ’87, moment of inexcusable selfishness and I don’t care that John L. Smith and what Smith did years ago in the needs his personal debts reorganized hopes of creating a nest egg for his now. If he does what he was hired to family. Perhaps this off-season and its do, then he can direct half his salary melodramatic undertones have now to building a Joan Van Ark shrine or given way to a morality play. a retaining wall out of Old MilwauAnd maybe Joe Adams will win an kee tallboys. ESPY. I’d rather we have that statuette Naturally, it is easy to be this nonthan a Tony.

JULY 25 - JULY 28

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/,9%:5-;:9%59-<,=01,00>. 03%895/1!6%!14!5.!. Full of interesting voices and colorful portraits of 17 Little Rock and North Little Rock neighborhoods, this book gives an intimate, block-by-block, native’s view of the place more than 250,000 Arkansans call home. Created from interviews with residents and largely written by writers who actually live in the neighborhoods they’re writing about, the book features over 90 full color photos by Little Rock photographer Brian Chilson.

WANT TO KNOW WHAT LY THE FEDERALLY LTH MANDATED HEALTH NGES INSURANCE CHANGES ? MEAN FOR YOU? You can receive an update and provide your comments at a meeting to be held in your area on:

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!"#$%!&'("')"*+ !%,-./012%03%!14!5.!.% A compilation of stories published in the Arkansas Times during our first twenty years. Each story examines a fragment of Arkansas’s unique history – giving a fresh insight into what makes us Arkansans. Well written and illustrated. This book will entertain and enlighten time and time again.

Arkansas Insurance Commissioner Jay Bradford and Health Benefits Exchange Partnership Division Director, Cynthia Crone, will provide an update on planning for the Federally-facilitated Health Insurance Exchange Partnership in Arkansas. Arkansas Insurance Department 1200 West Third Street, Little Rock, AR 72201 (501) 683-7231 or Toll Free 1-800-282-9134

!67!5!8%03%!14!5.!.%,-./012 This unique book offers an offbeat view of the Natural State’s history that you haven’t seen before – with hundreds of colorful characters, pretty places, and distinctive novelties unique to Arkansas. Be informed, be entertained, amaze your friends with your new store of knowledge about the 25th state, the Wonder State, the Bear State, the Land of Opportunity.

Payment: CHECK OR CREDIT CARD Order by Mail: ARKANSAS TIMES BOOKS P.O. BOX 34010, LITTLE ROCK, AR 72203 Phone: 5013752985 Fax: 5013753623 Email: ANITRAARKTIMES.COM

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

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

MICHAEL ROBERTS

WHAT’S COOKIN’

BUNS OF PORK: Southern Gourmasian’s steamed pork buns.

Down-home fusion Southern Gourmasian adds Asian twist to dumplings and more.

e’d ventured out into the scorching June afternoon for lunch, and the shade provided by the newly erected blueand-white striped tent at the University Market at 4 Corners was welcome, but barely adequate, relief. For us, there’s only one answer to the stifling heat and painful light that’s been a constant this summer — find something even hotter to eat, and keep eating it until everything else is cool by comparison. It’s for this reason we found ourselves at a plastic picnic table on one of the hottest days of the year shoveling down chicken and dumplings ($7.50) from Little Rock’s newest food truck, Southern Gourmasian. And before you count out dumplings as something you’d neither want to eat A) outside in the summertime nor B) from the aluminum and steel box that is a food truck kitchen, please bear with us for just a little while longer, because the Gourmasian’s chicken and dumplings, like the rest of the food, is not quite what it appears to be at first glance — they’re from one of the most exciting new menus in town. As the name implies, Southern Gourmasian’s food is classic Southern as seen through the flavor palate of Asian cuisine. Chef Justin Patterson, burned out with his work at the Pleasant Valley Country

Southern Gourmasian

Mobile food truck; various locations thesoutherngourmasian.com @SGourmasian on Twitter 954-0888 QUICK BITE Order a lunch and you’re likely to get a S’mores cookie as a freebie. These crisp, chewy cookies make a nice sweet end to any of the savory offerings available. HOURS 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. daily for lunch. Occasionally 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. and 7 a.m. to noon for breakfast on Saturdays. OTHER INFO Accepts credit cards

Club, decided to dive into the burgeoning Little Rock food truck scene with the idea, and name-checks David Chang, the superstar chef and founder of New York’s Momofuku restaurant group as an inspiration. When we mention our admiration for Chang’s “Momofuku Cookbook,” Patterson smiles and says he’s read it “at least seven or eight times.” But it’s easy to say that you’ve drawn some inspiration from a big name chef for your menu; it’s even pretty easy to just take recipes from a book like “Momofuku” and serve up copycat versions — what’s hard is taking an idea

and making it your own. Lucky for us, Patterson has done that. Which brings us back to those dumplings, a spicy mixture of mochi (sliced cakes made from pounded rice), shredded grilled chicken, shitake mushrooms, grilled onions, and a savory ramen broth. These rice cakes have some fabulous qualities to them, as they take well to both boiling and frying, and Patterson makes the most of these attributes by crisping them lightly in oil and then letting them bathe in the ramen broth. The result is a dumpling that approaches the consistency of a seared scallop, with a neutral flavor and chewy texture that not only makes it the perfect vehicle for the peppery broth but also provides a nice contrast to the tender grilled chicken and mushroom mix. This dish could honestly survive just as a dish with seared rice cakes in sauce (which is a Chang recipe), but by adding the smoky chicken and mushrooms, Patterson adds the warm feelings that come from a classic comfort food staple like chicken and dumplings. This same playful nature is present in the second dish we tried, the shrimp and grits ($8.50). Now shrimp and grits is one of our all-time favorite dishes, and we were interested to see what Southern Gourmasian’s take on it would be. Upon first sight, we weren’t sure of anything except that we had a container piled high with five large crispy coconut shrimp. Where were the grits? Upon eating the first shrimp, we saw them — a crisp fried cake of grits nestled just under our mountain of shrimp. It’s an excellent idea, especially from a food truck; we’ve never considered shrimp and grits to be an on-the-go dish, but having a solid cake of grits with the shrimp makes it possible. The shrimp were crunchy on the outside and tender on the inside and the grits were coarse ground with a slightly smoky flavor. We thought that the dish could have used more spice. A little more heat would really do a lot to set off the tasty mango gastrique drizzled over the top of the shrimp. The items on the menu that we think will make Southern Gourmasian a staple of the Little Rock dining scene are the steamed buns. Again, while an obvious nod to the famous pork belly steamed buns at Chang’s Momofuku Noodle Bar, there are some major — and we think better — differences that make these buns pure Southern eating, and those differences have more to do with the barbecue pit CONTINUED ON PAGE 34

RESTAURATEUR JERRY BARAKAT, who seems to revamp and reboot his restaurant concepts annually, is relaunching his Brazilian restaurant Gaucho’s, according to a Facebook post on his Oceans at Arthur’s page. The restaurant will reopen within a “few short weeks” in its former home, 3 Rahling Circle. SOMETIME IN LATE 2012, The Promenade at Chenal will welcome its seventh restaurant, Fulin’s Asian Cuisine. Fulin’s is a regional chain, with eight locations in Tennessee and Alabama. The extensive menu offers lots of sushi and Japanese entrees, with a handful of vegetarian options. There will be weekday lunch specials starting at $8 and evening drink specials starting at $5. WHITE WATER TAVERN has reopened its kitchen with local musician and food industry vet Jonathan Wilkins doing the cooking. Wilkins wants his kitchen to be a “common sense” affair, he tells Eat Arkansas, drawing on over 15 years of restaurant experience from here to his hometown of St. Louis to know “what works and what doesn’t.” He’s also committed to using local ingredients whenever possible, including beef from Youngblood Grass Fed Farm in Grannis, cheese from Rose Bud’s Honeysuckle Lane Cheese, and vegetables from Little Rock’s own Dunbar Garden and Victory Garden Project. The new menu includes a caprese, a smoked bologna sandwich and burgers, and Wilkins would like to remind everyone that “bacon can be added to every sandwich, and is, in fact, encouraged.” The kitchen is open 5 p.m. until 1:30 a.m. Tuesday through Saturday. White Water is located at 2500 W. Seventh Street. The phone number is 375-8400.

DINING CAPSULES

AMERICAN

4 SQUARE CAFE AND GIFTS Vegetarian salads, soups, wraps and paninis and a daily selection of desserts. 405 President Clinton Ave. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-244-2622. BLD daily. APPLE SPICE JUNCTION A chain sandwich and salad spot with sit-down lunch space and a vibrant box lunch catering business. With a wide range of options and quick service. Order online via applespice.com. 2000 S. University Ave. No alcohol, All CC. $$. 501-663-7008. CONTINUED ON PAGE 34 www.arktimes.com

JULY 11, 2012

DINING REVIEW, CONT.

JULY 11, 2012

ARKANSAS TIMES

ARGENTA MARKET A deli featuring a daily selection of big sandwiches along with fresh fish and meats and salads. 521 N. Main St. NLR. Beer, Wine, All CC. $-$$. 501-379-9980. L daily, D Mon.-Sat., B Sat., BR Sun. ARKANSAS BURGER CO. Good burgers, fries and shakes, plus salads and other entrees. 7410 Cantrell Road. Beer, Wine, All CC. $-$$. 501-663-0600. LD Tue.-Sat. ASHLEY’S The premier fine dining restaurant in Little Rock marries Southern traditionalism and haute cuisine. 111 W. Markham St. Full bar, All CC. $$$. 501-374-7474. BLD Mon.-Sat. BR Sun. BELWOOD DINER Traditional breakfasts and plate lunch specials. 3815 MacArthur Drive. NLR. No alcohol, No CC. $. 501-753-1012. BL Mon.-Fri. BRAVE NEW RESTAURANT The food’s great, portions huge, prices reasonable. 2300 Cottondale Lane. Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-663-2677. LD Mon.-Fri. D Sat. BURGER MAMA’S Big burgers and oversized onion rings headline the menu at this downhome joint. 7710 Cantrell Road. Full bar, All CC. $-$$. 501-225-2495. LD daily.

CAPITAL BAR AND GRILL Big hearty sandwiches, daily lunch specials and fine evening dining all rolled up into one at this landing spot downtown. 111 Markham St. Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-374-7474. LD daily. CAPITOL BISTRO Offers breakfast and lunch items, including quiche, sandwiches, coffees and the like. 1401 W. Capitol Ave. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-371-9575. BL Mon.-Fri. CATERING TO YOU Painstakingly prepared entrees and great appetizers in this gourmetto-go location. 8121 Cantrell Road. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-664-0627. L Mon.-Sat. CATFISH HOLE Downhome place for wellcooked catfish and tasty hushpuppies. 603 E. Spriggs. NLR. Beer, All CC. $-$$. 501-758-3516. D Tue.-Sat. CHEEBURGER CHEEBURGER Premium black Angus cheeseburgers, with five different sizes and nine cheese options. 11525 Cantrell Rd. No alcohol, All CC. $$. 501-490-2433. LD daily. CIAO BACI The focus is on fine dining, though excellent tapas are also available. 605 N. Beechwood St. Full bar, All CC. $$$. 501-6030238. D Mon.-Sat.

CRAZEE’S COOL CAFE Good burgers, daily plate specials and bar food amid pool tables and TVs. 7626 Cantrell Road. Full bar, All CC. $-$$. 501-221-9696. LD Mon.-Sat. CUPCAKES ON KAVANAUGH Gourmet cupcakes and coffee, indoor seating. 5625 Kavanaugh Blvd. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-664-2253. LD Tue.-Sat. 11525 Cantrell Road. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-224-2253. LD Tue.-Sat. DEMPSEY BAKERY Bakery with sit down area, serving coffee and specializing in gluten-, nutand soy-free baked goods. 323 Cross St. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-375-2257. DIVERSION TAPAS RESTAURANT Hillcrest wine bar with diverse tapas menu. From the people behind Crush. 2611 Kavanaugh Blvd., Suite 200. Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-4140409. D Mon.-Sat. DOE’S EAT PLACE A skid-row dive turned power brokers’ watering hole with huge steaks, great tamales and broiled shrimp, and killer burgers at lunch. 1023 W. Markham St. Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-376-1195. LD Mon.-Fri., D Sat.

BRIAN CHILSON

than with anything Asian. The buns are available in orders of three with Shredded Pork Shoulder ($7), Balinese Chicken ($7) and Braised Beef Short Rib ($8). Each meat is slow-cooked to the point of maximum tenderness and served on a soft, chewy steamed bun with sauce and pickles. The result is like a miniature barbecue sandwich with just a slight kick of ginger, hoisin or lime. Each bite is a perfect little package of intense flavor, and Patterson’s buns pass what is, for us, the most serious of barbecue tests: The sauce accentuates but does not overpower the meat. The freshly fried potato chips on the side were a nice change from bagged chips as well. On a follow-up visit, we caught up with Southern Gourmasian’s bright yellow truck at the Hillcrest Farmer’s Market to sample its breakfast menu. While not as groundbreaking as the items we tried for lunch, we were still impressed with the quality of the ingredients used and the fast, efficient way that the food was served. We started with the Country Hash ($7.50), a tangy mixture of Yukon gold potatoes, poblano peppers, shredded pork and topped with a fried egg. The hash itself was good, although the sauce was a touch too strong for the delicate flavor of the pork and potatoes. Mixing the fried egg into the hash helped balance the flavor, but we found ourselves still wanting to taste the pork more. The Smoky Country Benedict ($6) was a much more balanced dish, with salty ham and a fluffy biscuit holding up two eggs and a nicely flavored hollandaise — and while the Asian element of the menu was completely absent from this one, we have to mention it solely for the fact that we can now say that the two best poached eggs we’ve ever eaten in Little Rock came from the back of a food truck. We followed up our eggs with a large piece of Monkey Bread ($4), and the cinnamon-sugar pull-apart treat was just like we remembered from childhood. Ultimately, it’s that ability to invoke nostalgia for traditional dishes while shaking things up with new and interesting flavors that makes Southern Gourmasian such a stellar success. Patterson and his crew are obviously very comfortable in the kitchen, and this confidence shines through in every dish served. The concept of quick, friendly service isn’t lost on the guys at Gourmasian, either, as they’re always ready with a quick smile and a kind word that tells you that they’re excited that someone has decided to eat their food. They had a rocky start with some mechanical issues on their truck, but now that things are up and running, we’re hoping that this food sticks around for a long time. Southern Gourmasian parks regularly in the University Market and the Hillcrest Farmer’s Market, and they’re available for catering. Like many of our trucks, they’re active on social media, so look for them on Twitter and Facebook for daily specials and details.

DINING CAPSULES, CONT.

UPDATE

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MARISCOS EL JAROCHO Mariscos means “seafood” in Spanish, so that’s what we got on a recent visit to this small cement-block restaurant across the street from La Regional in Southwest Little Rock. The Cocktail de Campechana, billed as a mix of shrimp, octopus and oyster in a spicy, cilantro and onionlaced tomato sauce, was the star. We’ve traveled South of the border a number of times, and there is a particular blend of ingredients — cilantro, onions, tomatoes, spices we can’t identify — that always calls to mind our Mexican adventures. This cocktail, though lacking anything we could identify as an oyster, had that flavor. The shrimp and octopus tasted fresh, too. Another standout: the Camarones a la Diabla, grilled shrimp covered in a smoky peppersauce. The sides of rice and beans weren’t much to speak of, but we were fond of the green sauce that’s kick was mollified a bit by what tasted like avocado. A few of our colleagues were less fond with their more traditional Mexican fare. Their flautas seemed to have stayed in the grease a bit too long, to the point that they were dark brown and the wrappers hard as brickbats. The meat inside was tasty, but the bitterness of the overdone wrapper took away a lot of that good feeling. The Steak Milanese was merely OK, another proclaimed. To which we said, that’s what you get for not ordering seafood at a seafood restaurant, dude. 7319 Baseline Road. Beer. CC. $$. 565-3535. BLD Wed.-Mon.

DINING CAPSULES, CONT. EJ’S EATS AND DRINKS The friendly neighborhood hoagie shop downtown serves at a handful of tables and by delivery. The sandwiches are generous, the soup homemade and the salads cold. Vegetarians can craft any number of acceptable meals from the flexible menu. 523 Center St. Full bar, All CC. $-$$. 501-666-3700. LD Mon.-Fri. FLYING FISH The fried seafood is fresh and crunchy and there are plenty of raw, boiled and grilled offerings, too. The hamburgers are a hit, too. 511 President Clinton Ave. Beer, Wine, All CC. $$. 501-375-3474. LD daily. GRUMPY’S TOO Music venue and sports bar with lots of TVs, pub grub and regular drink specials. 1801 Green Mountain Drive. Full bar, All CC. $-$$. 501-225-3768. LD Mon.-Sat. HOMER’S Great vegetables, huge yeast rolls and killer cobblers. Follow the mobs. 2001 E. Roosevelt Road. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-3741400. BL Mon.-Fri. THE HOUSE Traditional fare like burgers and fish and chips alongside Thai green curry and gumbo. 722 N. Palm St. Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-663-4500. D daily, BR and L Sat.-Sun. JIMMY’S SERIOUS SANDWICHES Consistently fine sandwiches, side orders and desserts for 30 years. Chicken salad’s among the best in town. Get there early for lunch. 5116 W. Markham St. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-666-3354. L Mon.-Sat., D Mon.-Sat. (drive-through only). KRAZY MIKE’S Po’Boys, catfish and shrimp and other fishes, fried chicken wings and all the expected sides served up fresh. 200 N. Bowman Road. Beer, All CC. $$. 501-907-6453. LD daily. LOCA LUNA Grilled meats, seafood and pasta dishes that never stray far from country roots, whether Italian, Spanish or Arkie. 3519 Old Cantrell Rd. Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-663-4666. L Sun.-Fri., D daily. LULAV Comfortably chic downtown bistro. 220 A W. 6th St. Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-374-5100. BL Mon.-Fri., D daily. MILFORD TRACK Healthy and tasty are the key words at this deli/grill. Hot entrees change daily and there are soups, sandwiches, salads and killer desserts. 10809 Executive Center Drive, Searcy Building. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-223-2257. BL Mon.-Sat. OYSTER BAR Gumbo, red beans and rice, peel-and-eat shrimp, oysters on the half shell, addictive po’ boys. Killer jukebox. 3003 W. Markham St. Beer, Wine, All CC. $-$$. 501-666-7100. LD Mon.-Sat. OZARK COUNTRY RESTAURANT Specializes in big country breakfasts and pancakes plus sandwiches and several meat-and-two options for lunch and dinner. 202 Keightley Drive. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-6637319. B daily, L Mon.-Fri., D Thu.-Sat. PORTER’S JAZZ CAFE Nice takes on Southern cuisine are joined by chicken wings and a fabulous burger. Reasonably priced. 315 Main St. Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-324-1900. D Thu-Sun. PURPLE COW DINER 1950s fare — cheeseburgers, chili dogs, thick milk shakes — in a ‘50s setting at today’s prices. 8026 Cantrell Road. Full bar, All CC. $$. 501-221-3555. LD daily, BR Sat.-Sun 11602 Chenal Parkway. Full bar, All CC. $$. 501-224-4433. LD daily, BR Sat.-Sun. 1419 Higden Ferry Road. Hot Springs. Beer, All CC. $$. 501-625-7999. LD daily, B Sun. SALUT BISTRO This bistro/late-night hangout does upscale Italian for dinner and pub grub until the wee hours.1501 N. University. Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-660-4200. L Mon.-Fri., D Tue.-Sat. SCALLIONS Reliably good food, great desserts, pleasant atmosphere, able servers — a solid lunch spot. 5110 Kavanaugh Blvd. Beer, Wine, All CC. $-$$. 501-666-6468. L Mon.-Sat. SHORTY SMALL’S Land of big, juicy burgers, massive cheese logs, smoky barbecue platters and the signature onion loaf. 1100 N. Rodney Parham Road. Full bar, All CC. $$. 501-224-3344. LD daily. SONNY WILLIAMS’ STEAK ROOM Steaks, chicken and seafood in a wonderful setting in the River Market. Steak gets pricey, though. 500 President Clinton Ave. Full bar, All CC. $$$. 501-324-2999. D Mon.-Sat. STAGECOACH GROCERY AND DELI Fine po’ boys and muffalettas. 6024 Stagecoach Road. Beer, Wine, All CC. $-$$. 501-455-4157. BL daily. D Mon.-Fri. TERRI-LYNN’S BAR-B-Q AND DELI High-quality meats served on large sandwiches and good tamales served with chili or without. 10102 N. Rodney Parham Road. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-227-6371. LD Tue.-Sat. (10:30 a.m.-6 p.m.). UNION BISTRO Casual upscale bistro and lounge with a new American menu of tapas and entrees. 3421 Old Cantrell Road. Full bar, All CC. $$$. 501-353-0360. WEST END SMOKEHOUSE AND TAVERN Its primary focus is a sports bar with 50-plus TVs, but the dinner entrees are plentiful and the bar food is upper quality. 215 N. Shackleford. Full bar, All CC. $$. 501-224-7665. L Fri.-Sun., D daily.

CROSSWORD EDITED BY WILL SHORTZ Across 1 With 65-Across, part of a record … or what each of this puzzle’s five long Across answers has? 5 Actress Knightley 10 “___, vidi, vici” 14 Prefix with sphere 15 Get all A’s 16 Big name in paperback publishing 17 Puerto Rico, affectionately, with “the” 20 Last Whig president 21 Mixologist’s unit 22 Basketball Hall of Fame coach Hank 23 What the Mars symbol symbolizes 25 Malady named after a Connecticut town

30 Does a prelaundry chore 31 Rapa ___ (locale of many monoliths) 32 Stereo parts 36 London’s West End, e.g. 40 Repairs, as a golf green 41 What makes Shrek shriek? 42 ___-Loompa (chocolate factory dwarf) 43 Record collector’s curio 46 City with a U.F.O. museum 50 Jet ___ 51 Stop, as a launch 52 State with just three counties 57 Lucasfilm aircraft 60 “Ah, ’twas not to be” 61 Big name in coffeemakers 62 Righty Hershiser

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE O B I S

P A T H

I N S O

A C T A S

T H E M E

F A R E R

S O Y O U E N T A G A

E D G A R

S O L A C V E A R I I A A N N C A E R S P

O B I E T A N D T A G O B O M B A T I A T Z T E A N D C A N L S W O S H W A N E N D A N D I C A L E

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

G E T

A R E S T S T K S

63 Arts and Sciences dept. 64 Sumptuous fur 65 See 1-Across Down 1 Feudal estate 2 Actress Anderson 3 With: Abbr. 4 Science fiction writer Frederik 5 Obi-Wan ___ 6 Over 300,000 of these appear in “Gandhi” 7 Frozen beverage brand 8 Like a matador’s cape 9 Successor of Muhammad, to Shiites 10 Appraiser’s figure 11 Maiden name of Harry Potter’s mother 12 Present occasion 13 Rear of many a book 18 In the heart of 19 Only 23 Wailuku is its county seat 24 Sale tag condition 25 W.W. II naval vessels: Abbr. 26 Disney tune subtitled “A Pirate’s Life for Me” 27 TV star who homered off Koufax in a 1963 episode 28 Airport postings, for short 29 Bring a relationship to a close

19 21

22 26

43 46

59 62

Puzzle by Gary Cee

32 Yankees’ #13, to fans 33 “La Bohème” role 34 Psychedelic drugs, for short 35 Quick and detached, in mus. 37 Train travel 38 Abbr. on the bottom of a business letter 39 Morgue ID

43 Animals with collars, often 44 Of service 45 Winterize, as a coat 46 Indian ruler 47 Printing daggers 48 Cokes and such 49 Pulse-taking spot 52 Dull

53 “___ calling?” 54 Longfellow bell town 55 Clarinetist’s need 56 Writer ___ Stanley Gardner 58 Conan O’Brien’s network 59 Celestial altar

For answers, call 1-900-285-5656, $1.49 a minute; or, with a credit card, 1-800-814-5554. Annual subscriptions are available for the best of Sunday crosswords from the last 50 years: 1-888-7-ACROSS. AT&T users: Text NYTX to 386 to download puzzles, or visit nytimes.com/mobilexword for more information. Online subscriptions: Today’s puzzle and more than 2,000 past puzzles, nytimes.com/crosswords ($39.95 a year). Share tips: nytimes.com/wordplay. Crosswords for young solvers: nytimes.com/learning/xwords.

THIS MODERN WORLD

ASIAN

HANAROO SUSHI BAR One of the few spots in downtown Little Rock to serve sushi. With an expansive menu, featuring largely Japanese fare. 205 W. Capitol Ave. Beer, Wine, All CC. $$. 501-301-7900. L Mon.-Fri., D Mon.-Sat. CONTINUED ON PAGE 39

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JULY 11, 2012

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hearsay ➥ VESTA’S in the Pleasant Ridge Town Center is hosting a Beer & Boots Showdown at 6 p.m. July 12 to promote their latest shipment of Old Gringo boots. There will be a drawing for a pair of boots, along with new items from Johnny Was Clothing and three jewelry designers present. You’re invited to “boot scoot and drink cold beer.” ➥ Feel like unveiling a new look when you go on vacation? You might want to take advantage of MEMENTO MORI SALON’S July special: 20 percent off color treatments, including highlights, color blocking, allover color and peek-a-boo highlights. Color choices for peek-a-boos include blood orange, yellow, pink, fuchsia, lime green, indigo, purple, lilac and pale pink. To book your appointment, visit www.mementomorisalon.com. ➥ Support the troops and cheer on the ARKANSAS TRAVELERS on July 23 during Military Night. The event is sponsored by BUDWEISER and includes $1 tickets for military members and their families who show military ID. For everyone else, the first 500 will receive free Budweiser hats and/or koozies. Game time is 7:10 p.m. at Dickey Stephens Park in North Little Rock. ➥ Take a visit to the WINTHROP ROCKEFELLER INSTITUTE in Morrilton to brush up on your culinary skills. The institute’s “Made from Scratch” workshops offer participants an opportunity to test out and develop new skills and techniques by attending a hands-on cooking class. Upcoming events include a class on the backyard barbecue July 14. Taught by Robert Hall, the class will teach barbecue basics, from gas to charcoal and from aluminum foil to Dutch oven. The classes are from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Cost is $80 per participant per class. Classes are limited to 18 participants and you must register in advance. For more information, visit www.livethelegacy.org. ➥ WHOLE FOODS will host a community giving day July 16. The store will donate 5 percent of the day’s sales to the Centers for Youth and Families. There will also be live music, contests and free samples from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and from 4-7 p.m. ➥ SECOND FRIDAY ART NIGHT is this Friday the 13th with over 11 participants. New this month is Curran Hall 615 E. Capitol with Linda Bradley a jewelry artist presenting. Studio Main on SOMA has the UALR Student Furniture Show and Historic Arkansas Museum has a fantastic Barbie Doll collection and exhibition. Lots of free music and refreshments at all locations. We’ll see you there.

Fashion that’s

JULY 11, 2012

right on time BY JANIE GINOCCHIO

rom sundials to cellphones, man has always needed something to help him keep the time. And while smartphones like the Droid or iPhone are the go-to clocks for many, there are still some of us that appreciate a well-crafted timepiece or a bright, fun accessory. TOKYObay watches are a blend of East and West – they’re stylish and elegant, yet with details that can put them on the cutting edge. You can choose from designs like the Angel ($84), Century ($70) and Ascot ($79) at Box Turtle . A If you’re looking for a high-end watch but can’t afford the retail price tag, check into buying vintage, like this men’s Rolex at New Orleans Antiques. B Tulips offers a fun selection of Geneva watches, all priced at $40. C With football season just a couple of months away, show your Razorback loyalty with these hog-themed watches ($19) from Lewis Lighting and Home in Benton. D A new trend is the Slap Watch, which incorporates the silicone watch craze with those slap bracelets popular in the 1990s. There are 15 band colors with interchangeable faces, so you can mix and match. Prices range from $19.95 to $29.95 and you can order them from www. slapwatch.com. E If you appreciate a classic timepiece but can’t stand anything on your wrist, local artists like Renee Williams at Gallery 26 are incorporating watches in their work. She’s taken an old wristwatch and turned it into a 3-D shadowbox for a portrait ($68). F If you like a little jewelry/watch combo find these at Design Inspirations in the River Market District. G Whatever your preference in watches, there’s a retailer out there that can help you find what your looking for, even if you’re short on time.

SUMMER SALE IN PROGRESS! 2616 Kavanaugh 661-1167 M-F 10-6, SAT 10-5, SUN 1-5

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JULY 11, 2012

Off with his head!

nless you rely exclusively on the local daily for your news, you probably saw the account last week of a rodeo over at Greenwood that concluded with an effigy of a black man being brought out, abused for a time by bulls and clowns, whereupon an announcer issued an altar call of sorts, inviting spectators to come on down and join the ritual lynching. “Who wants to rip Obama’s head off?” he said. Not surprising, this being Arkansas. A little shocking to some of us who lived through the Assassination Era, the 1960s, but not surprising, the Natural State still largely attitudinally recognizable as Faubusland a half-century on down the road. Who wants to rip Obama’s head off? Do you reckon more audience hands shot up than didn’t? I have more acquaintances who are ’necks than not. Most of them would have raised a hand, I’m fairly certain, and those who didn’t would’ve hesitated only out of a sense of natural reserve — not shyness but an eschewal of public demonstrativeness, and not from any objection to the idea of ripping the president’s head off. Vicarious participation would’ve pleasured them no less than the active kind. In the days following, I consulted a number of these Einsteins, eavesdropped on others, hoping they might collectively

enlighten me on how we’d come to this pass. Again. Did they really hanker to see the president’s head ripped BOB off, or was that just LANCASTER some unfortunate hyperbolic metaphor? Was their appetite for a good presidential head-ripping-off exclusive to this particular president? And exclusive to him because he’s black? Or because he’s black and doesn’t know his place? Or because he shows no respect for their opinion concerning what or where his proper place might be? (Would it even be possible to be president and Stepin Fetchit at the same time?) And how do you rationalize being involved in such a spectacle, even as a cheerleader with no symbolic blood on your hands afterward, or as a conscientious objector content to stay mute and look the other way? I think that’s what I wanted — a rationalization I could understand. Not necessarily one I approved of. One that was merely comprehensible, not utterly vile, and a maybe little less crazy than Wilkes Booth’s Sic Semper Tyrannis on the broken leg. That’s what I wanted but this is pretty much what I got —

OK, first, it’s not that we hate niggers. Some of our best friends are niggers. Well, maybe not our best friends, but some of our best football players. We had to let them in there so we could compete with the teams that had let them in earlier. Otherwise we were dead meat and couldn’t beat the Henderson Reddies. But that’s the thing, we let them in there to play ball. They didn’t just barge in without our consent or acquiescence. They might’ve been the stars on the field but that didn’t de-nigger them any as far as their rightful place in the larger scheme. They got some civil rights and access, and there was an occasional appointed nigger judge or constable, but that was of no greater concern than that of “The Cosby Show” undermining the old comforting nigger verities of Amos and Andy — and it certainly didn’t suggest the impending peril of a nigger actually going and getting himself elected president. That eventuality sort of snuck up on us. That is, we knew it was possible, but who would’ve really thunk — ? So we let our guard down and the nigger wriggled in there. He got in there and nothing we could do but wait him out. Four years is a long time to have this big an indignity stuck in your craw, but there it was. There was some impeachment muttering, but most of the impeachment ammo and impeachment zeal had been used up trying to oust ol’ Clinton, the real first nigger pres-

ident, and the arguments for impeaching the nigger nigger were always pretty flimsy — the birth certificate deal and what else? You can’t impeach somebody for melanin. So we hunkered down, temporized, swallowed some Sean Hannity camels, some Limbaugh horse hockey, tore the heads off of blackface scarecrows, or thought about it, and did some tall talking that maybe amounted to some rhetorical spitting on of pickininnies. But that was about it. We could mouth. Mouth and bide our time and meantime make league with the orange weasel opposition as it filiblustered, obstructed, voted no, no, a thousand times no. Make league with them knowing they’d sell us out to the first billionaire that got out his checkbook and uncapped his pen. They did it, too, sold us out, and had no qualms because they knew our options by then were down to two — go hat-in-hand back to nigger-loverdom or into denial. Mouth and bide our time and hope like hell that this time they’d come up with a more credible opponent with less swarth — one not a laughing-stock, not a total gander, not a stalwart in one of the dopier cults, not the only honky out there among 50 million of them that the nigger, alas, would be almost a cinch to beat. You know how that worked out. Enough to make an ol’ boy want to rip off somebody’s head, you betcha, garontee.

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DINING CAPSULES, CONT. LEMONGRASS ASIA BISTRO Fairly solid Thai bistro. Try the Tom Kha Kai and white wine alligator. 4629 E. McCain Blvd. NLR. Beer, Wine, All CC. 501-945-4638. LD Mon.-Sun. MR. CHEN’S ASIAN SUPERMARKET AND RESTAURANT A combination Asian restaurant and grocery with cheap, tasty and exotic offerings. 3901 S. University Ave. $. 501-5627900. LD daily. PHO THANH MY It says “Vietnamese noodle soup” on the sign out front, and that’s what you should order. The pho comes in outrageously large portions with bean sprouts and fresh herbs. 302 N. Shackleford Road. No alcohol, All CC. $$. 501-312-7498. SEKISUI Fresh-tasting sushi chain with fun hibachi grill and an overwhelming assortment of traditional entrees. Nice wine selection, also serves sake and specialty drinks. 219 N. Shackleford Road. Full bar, All CC. $-$$. 501-221-7070. LD daily. SHOGUN JAPANESE STEAKHOUSE The chefs will dazzle you, as will the variety of tasty stir-fry combinations and the sushi bar. 2815 Cantrell Road. Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-6667070. D daily. TOKYO HOUSE Defying stereotypes, this Japanese buffet serves up a broad range of fresh, slightly exotic fare as well as more standard shrimp and steak options. 11 Shackleford Drive. Beer, Wine, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-2194286. LD daily. WASABI Downtown sushi and Japanese cuisine. For lunch, there’s quick and hearty sushi samplers. 101 Main St. Full bar, All CC. $-$$. 501-374-0777. L Mon.-Fri., D Mon.-Sat.

BARBECUE

CHIP’S BARBECUE Tasty, if a little pricey, barbecue piled high on sandwiches generously doused with the original tangy sauce or one of five other sauces. 9801 W. Markham St. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-225-4346. LD Mon.-Sat. DIXIE PIG Pig salad is tough to beat. It comes

with loads of chopped pork atop crisp iceberg, doused with that wonderful vinegar-based sauce. 900 West 35th St. NLR. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-753-9650. LD Mon.-Sat.

EUROPEAN / ETHNIC

ARABICA HOOKAH CAFE This eatery and grocery store offers kebabs and salads along with just about any sort of Middle Eastern fare you might want. 3400 S. University Ave. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-379-8011. LD daily. CREGEEN’S IRISH PUB Irish-themed pub with a large selection of on-tap and bottled British beers and ales, an Irish inspired menu and lots of nooks and crannies to meet in. Specialties include fish ‘n’ chips and Guinness beef stew. 301 Main St. NLR. Full bar, All CC. $$. 501-3767468. LD daily. ISTANBUL MEDITERRANEAN CUISINE This Turkish eatery offers decent kebabs and great starters. 11525 Cantrell Road. No alcohol, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-223-9332. LD daily. L E O ’ S G R E E K C A S T L E Wonderful Mediterranean food plus dependable hamburgers, ham sandwiches, steak platters and BLTs. 2925 Kavanaugh Blvd. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-666-7414. BLD daily. ZOGI’S EURO ASIAN BISTRO Our reviewers were impressed by soups, including the borscht (beets, beef, carrots, sour cream), and some of the main courses, including the Tsuivan — steamed wheat noodles stir-fried with beef, fried potatoes and veggies. Well worth a visit. 11321 W. Markham St. All CC. $-$$. 501-246-4597. LD Mon.-Sat., L Sun.

ITALIAN

CAFE PREGO Dependable entrees of pasta, pork, seafood, steak and the like, plus great sauces, fresh mixed greens and delicious dressings, crisp-crunchy-cold gazpacho and tempting desserts in a comfy bistro setting. Little Rock standard for 18 years. 5510 Kavanaugh Blvd. Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-663-5355. LD Mon.-Fri., D Sat.

CIAO Don’t forget about this casual yet elegant bistro tucked into a downtown storefront. The fine pasta and seafood dishes, ambiance and overall charm combine to make it a relaxing, enjoyable, affordable choice. 405 W. Seventh St. Full bar, All CC. $$. 501-372-0238. L Mon.-Fri., D Thu.-Sat. GRADY’S PIZZAS AND SUBS Pizza features a pleasing blend of cheeses rather than straight mozzarella. The grinder is a classic, the chef’s salad huge and tasty. 6801 W. 12th St., Suite C. Beer, Wine, All CC. $-$$. 501-663-1918. LD daily. IRIANA’S PIZZA Unbelievably generous handtossed New York style pizza with unmatched zest. Good salads, too; grinders are great, particularly the Italian sausage. 201 E. Markham St. Beer, Wine, All CC. $-$$. 501-374-3656. LD Mon.-Sat. PIERRE’S GOURMET PIZZA CO. EXPRESS KITCHEN Chef/owner Michael Ayers has reinvented his pizzeria, once located on JFK in North Little Rock, as the first RV entry into mobile food truck scene. With a broad menu of pizza, calzones, salads and subs. 760 C Edgewood Drive. No alcohol, No CC. $$. 501-410-0377. L Mon.-Fri. U.S. PIZZA Crispy thin-crust pizzas, frosty beers and heaping salads drowned in creamy dressing. Count on being here for awhile. It takes half an hour to get your pizza, since it’s cooked in an old fashioned stone hearth oven. 2710 Kavanaugh Blvd. Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-663-2198. LD daily. 5524 Kavanaugh Blvd. Beer, Wine, All CC. $$. 501-664-7071. LD daily. 9300 North Rodney Parham Road. Beer, Wine, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-224-6300. LD daily. 3307 Fair Park Blvd. Beer, Wine, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-565-6580 ý. LD daily. 650 Edgewood Drive. Maumelle. Beer, Wine, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-851-0880. LD daily. 3324 Pike Avenue. NLR. Beer, Wine, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-758-5997. LD daily. 4001 McCain Park Drive. NLR. Beer, Wine, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-753-2900. LD daily. 5524 John F Kennedy Blvd. NLR. Beer, Wine, All CC.

$$-$$$. 501-975-5524 ý. LD daily. ZAFFINO’S BY NORI A high-quality Italian dining experience. Pastas, entrees (don’t miss the veal marsala) and salads are all outstanding. 2001 E. Kiehl Ave. NLR. Beer, Wine, All CC. 501-834-7530. D Tue.-Sat.

LATINO

BROWNING’S MEXICAN FOOD New rendition of a 65-year institution in Little Rock is a totally different experience. Large, renovated space is a Heights hangout with a huge bar, sports on TV and live music on weekends. Some holdover items in name only but recast fresher and tastier. Large menu with some hits and some misses. 5805 Kavanaugh Blvd. Full bar, All CC. $-$$. 501-663-9956. LD daily. CANON GRILL Tex-Mex, pasta, sandwiches and salads. Creative appetizers come in huge quantities, and the varied main-course menu rarely disappoints, though it’s not as spicy as competitors’. Happy hour from 3 p.m.-6 p.m. on weekdays and all day on Sat. and Sun. 2811 Kavanaugh Blvd. Full bar, All CC. $$. 501-6642068. LD daily. COTIJA’S A branch off the famed La Hacienda family tree downtown, with a massive menu of tasty lunch and dinner specials, the familiar white cheese dip and sweet red and fieryhot green salsas, and friendly service. 406 S. Louisiana St. Full bar, All CC. $$. 501-244-0733. L Mon.-Sat. LAS MARGARITAS Sparse offerings at this taco truck. No chicken, for instance. Try the veggie quesadilla. 7308 Baseline Road. No alcohol, No CC. $. LD Tue.-Thu. LA REGIONAL A full-service grocery store, it’s the small grill tucked away in the back corner that should excite lovers of adventurous cuisine. The menu offers a whirlwind trip through Latin America, with delicacies from all across the Spanish-speaking world. Bring your Spanish/English dictionary. 7414 Baseline Road. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-565-4440. BLD daily. www.arktimes.com July 11, 2012 39

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JULY 11, 2012

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