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DECEMBER 24, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

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VOLUME 42, NUMBER 16 ARKANSAS TIMES (ISSN 0164-6273) is published each week by Arkansas Times Limited Partnership, 201 East Markham Street, Suite 200, Little Rock, Arkansas, 72201, phone (501) 375-2985. Periodical postage paid at Little Rock, Arkansas, and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to ARKANSAS TIMES, 201 EAST MARKHAM STREET, SUITE 200, Little Rock, AR, 72201. Subscription prices are $42 for one year, $74 for two years. Subscriptions outside Arkansas are $49 for one year, $88 for two years. Foreign (including Canadian) subscriptions are $168 a year. For subscriber service call (501) 375-2985. Current 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.

DECEMBER 24, 2015

COMMENT

WWJD The masses of people who followed Jesus around to hear his teaching and witness his miracles represented some of the poorest and sickest segments of society during that time and place. Jesus was aware that those who followed him and his disciples were not in a good position to provide for themselves, primarily due to the conditions of oppression and poverty that ran rampant throughout their homeland. The Bible tells us that Jesus felt, and practiced, compassion towards those disheartened individuals by feeding and healing them. His disciples asked him how they could possibly help all these people, but Jesus didn’t tell them to line up to first determine eligibility before providing relief. Jesus didn’t obsess over who may, or may not, have deserved help. It’s interesting that so many these days who claim to be followers of Jesus oppose the very thing Jesus did so often. Lucky for us, Jesus didn’t ask God to provide him with a list of eligible recipients before coming to Earth to offer himself as a sacrifice, or else we’d all be screwed. Richard Hutson Cabot

commit violence with those guns. Now, if we could just keep those guns out of the hands of people who want to use them to commit violent acts. That’s right. Those other people: the mentally ill and those shady folks from places we can’t locate on a map who have beliefs we know absolutely nothing about. Those people who have been “radicalized,” whatever magical spell that means. So, Mr. President, get Tinker Bell out of your pocket and you get this problem done with — you hear? If we truthfully believed that such a phenomenon as “mental illness” existed, we would recognize that wanting to own a gun is the primary indicator of mental instability and disconnection from reality (or, at the very least, exaggerated gross immaturity) and the most obvious and best reason for denying gun ownership. Of course, we don’t subject beliefs to a truth test. We just believe and our beliefs become our reality. Our fanciful trust in a fantasy world where all of us having an armory of weapons aimed at each other makes us safe will continue

More guns

DECEMBER 24, 2015

Questions If I could talk one-on-one with my Arkansas senators and representative, these are the questions I would explore: Why do you hate your grandchildren? Why do you oppose all efforts to avoid the global catastrophe that is climate change? Is it worth campaign contributions to betray future generations? Is it worth a plush future job

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If you are listening to the current electronic media cacophony and the bb in your head hasn’t permanently rolled off its contact, you must be confused. The 24-hour bleat tells us that what we want is for everyone to have as many guns and as much ammunition as we can obtain and we have to be free to carry around all that armament anywhere and anytime we please. And, be afraid; be very afraid. At the same time, we believe it is unacceptable for anyone, anywhere in our country or countries where they look like us (northern, white European ancestry — yep, we’re still that way) to be shot, ever. Unless we (northern, white European ancestry who have never shot anyone and most likely never could) are the ones who shoot ’em. Our “solution” for gun violence is that more of us (northern, white — you get it now, right?) need to have more guns and have them with us everywhere and be ever ready to 4

until we learn to be honest with ourselves and each other about who we are, i.e., homo sapiens, and what it means to be who we are. On the other hand, we could continue to devote our energy to maintaining our fantasies. That’ll give us a lot more time for target practice. We will also have time to become a country filled with what Tom Robbins describes as people who will sell you anything they have, which is nothing, and shoot anything they don’t understand, which is everything. David Stedman Damascus

ARKANSAS TIMES

RESERVED SEATING

as a lobbyist to betray future generations? Is it worth acceptance into a clique of ideological and misinformed colleagues to betray future generations? When I write you to plead for your vote for bills to reduce pollution, your answers are predictable. Why do you claim economic losses and job losses without considering the vastly greater economic losses and job losses that will result from climate change? When will the total economic and human consequences enter your equation? When will the specter of a global migration that dwarfs today’s migration enter your consciousness? Are we doomed because Congress can only behave like petulant children? Are we doomed because of a knee jerk reaction to oppose anything put forward by the president? Are we doomed because of a lack of intellectual capacity to understand what our leading scientists are saying? Are we doomed because of the fraudulent misrepresentations of a group of corporations that promote climate change denial? Today, I am asking you: To approve the Paris COP21 agreement. To urge further reductions in greenhouse gasses. To pledge more funds to climate mitigation and aid to affected nations. To investigate and hold accountable those corporations and institutions that were aware of climate change and promoted climate change denial to deceive the public. Al Brooks Waldron

From the web In response to the item in the Dec. 17 cover story “Big Ideas” about doing away with one-way streets:

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Shop shop LOCAL ARKANSAS TIMES

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DECEMBER 24, 2015

EYE ON ARKANSAS

WEEK THAT WAS

Quote of the Week: “We’re dealing with the cards that have been dealt to us … . We’re making the best decision for Arkansas right now. If Congress makes different decisions, we’ll deal with those circumstances at that time.” — Gov. Asa Hutchinson, answering (in the loosest definition of the word) a reporter’s question last week about what would happen to low-income people currently insured by the Obamacare-funded Medicaid expansion in the event that congressional Republicans one day succeed in repealing Obamacare. In the meantime, Hutchinson has asked the state legislature to keep the Medicaid expansion, known in Arkansas as the private option.

Kenneth Dewitt, a former chaplain at the McPherson Unit, the women’s prison in Newport, was charged last week with 50 counts of third-degree assault for having sex with three inmates over the course of about two years. Dewitt, 67, resigned his position last year after admitting he’d had a physical relationship with a subordinate, herself a parolee. These new allegations are on another level, though: For an Arkansas Department of Correction employee to have sexual contact with current inmates under his or her control and trust is a crime, not merely unethical. A broader investigation of the McPherson Unit continues.

BRIAN CHILSON

Abuse of power

FOLLOW UP: Arkansas’s Moses Kingley(33) tries to tip in a missed shot against Mercer on Saturday night at Verizon Arena. The Razorbacks fell in overtime, 69-66.

winning: Last week, Oklahoma’s Capitol gave the pole the go-ahead.) In a rejection letter, Martin’s office cited a number of problems with Stephens’ request, including a “lack of specifics in application concerning anchoring of stand.”

Tough love The women’s volleyball coach at the University of Arkansas resigned last week after multiple players complained of verbal abuse. According to the Arkansas Traveler, the UA’s student paper, Robert Pulliza called female players “bitch” and once told a student he wanted to punch her. Pulliza first denied that he’d used threatening and demeaning language against the young women he coached, while conceding that his coaching style entailed “tough, but fair, love.” Then, he stepped down.

The airing of grievances Arkansas Secretary of State Mark Martin recently denied a request by a Florida man to erect a rainbow-colored festivus pole on the state Capitol grounds alongside other holiday displays. Chaz Stephens of Jupiter, Fla., has been taking his festivus fight to statehouses around the country, targeting states with a record of discrimination against LGBT people. (And sometimes 6

DECEMBER 24, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

Westward ho Little Rock School District Superintendent Baker Kurrus announced this week that the LRSD will open a new middle school in West Little Rock, with sixth-grade classes starting next fall. The school, which will eventually serve grades 6-8, will be located in the former Leisure Arts building on Cantrell Road. It’s a victory for West Little Rock parents

who’ve been pushing for years for a middle school on their side of town, but a new campus in a predominately white and higher-income part of the city inevitably raises concerns about equity and resegregation. Kurrus is also moving ahead with plans to build a new high school in economically and ethnically diverse Southwest Little Rock, although that project will take years to come to fruition.

Trojans broken After an 84-57 win over Northern Arizona on Sunday, the Little Rock Trojans were 10-0 for the season — a new record for the school. But on Tuesday, the UALR men’s basketball team was beaten by Texas Tech, 65-53, on the road in Lubbock, Texas.

Congrats to Chelsea Chelsea Clinton announced on Twitter that she’s pregnant with her second child: “Next summer, Charlotte is going to be a big sister!” she tweeted on Monday. Hillary and Bill both tweeted back their congratulations — though we hope the grandparents were also notified beforehand, perhaps in a non-

tweet format.

And congrats to Leslie, too Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge married Boyce Johnson, a farmer from Marion, on Saturday at the Lafayette Building in downtown Little Rock. It’s the first marriage for both. After the AG’s communications director, Judd Deere, tweeted the news — “Congrats to Mr. & Mrs. Boyce Johnson” — we asked if Rutledge would be taking the new name professionally. “The handle @AGRutledge is not changing,” Deere replied.

OPINION

Merry Christmas, but what about the new year?

egislators and the governor rushed to get before TV cameras last week at a feel-good media

event. They’d brought Christmas gifts to distribute to the 4,600 or so Arkansas children in foster care. Leave it to me to be the Grinch. Politicians beamed in camera lights the same week the governor rolled out yet another task force, this one aimed at making the Department of Human Services “more efficient.” This behemoth of an agency, mostly financed by U.S. dollars, has a nearly impossible task of serving the vulnerable young, the infirm elderly, the physically and mentally challenged, the sick and the poor. Undoubtedly, there is waste. Undoubtedly, there is some duplication. Indisputably, mis-

takes sometimes are made, sometimes with awful human results. But the continuing theme of MAX Gov. Asa HutchinBRANTLEY son is that the maxbrantley@arktimes.com agency is rife with overspending. The state can do more with less. Already, children are suffering from our current effort. The number of children in foster care is rising. Some case workers have been added, but their number remains far below a sufficient level and the pay contributes to the lack of allure for an already difficult job. The same week, another Hutchinson task force also recommended the continuation of Arkansas’s use of Obamacare

Follow the money to Ecclesia, etc.

t is time — far past it, really — to revisit the General Improvement Fund (GIF), better known as the legislative slush fund or the surplus kitty, which the Arkansas Supreme Court declared eight years ago to be an illegal abuse of the taxpayers’ toil. Legislators didn’t take kindly to the judicial branch meddling with their feast and, far from shutting down the illegal spending, they have ramped it up nearly every year. After all, lots of voters as well don’t believe that court orders have to be obeyed unless you like them. A rare and largely ignored legislative audit this year is what compels a fresh look at legislators’ practice of quietly designating your tax dollars for groups back in their districts that might show their gratitude by bestowing support and votes in the next election. It may also compel another lawsuit, for all the good that court orders seem to have on the legislative branch.

The investigative audit, requested by a legislator who has since left office, showed rampant ERNEST misuse of GIF and DUMAS other state, federal and foundation funds by the Northwest Arkansas Economic Development District, which the legislature directed to disburse tax funds (very discreetly) to friendly programs and towns in the nine counties in the state’s northwest corner. The planning district last year spent $637,000 of GIF funds, improperly if not illegally, to pay an old debt to a wholesale grocer in Springfield, Mo. — money legislators intended to be spent on projects in their districts. The grocer doesn’t vote in Arkansas. But the audit also itemized more than $11.3 million that the district did spend on legislators’ favored beneficiaries in 2013-14, including $592,000

to expand Medicaid coverage for poor working families. But a condition for Hutchinson will be to make the program more punitive and to effectively drive some people off coverage, whether with new fees or other disincentives. He also promises to cut some $800 million from existing state programs for the needy — not because the money isn’t available, but just, well, because. Inevitably, some share of those savings won’t be in loss of profits for nursing homes or salaries for health care workers, but services lost to families least able to find other ways to obtain them. The legislature learned, too, last week of the rising number of mothers who’ve given birth to children who tested positive for drugs (two-thirds of them marijuana). This new law can lead to removal of still more children from homes, in theory when other complicating factors are found. The randomness is striking to me. Alcohol testing is not done on newborns, by the way. When you find sick and abused children, you find disproportionate poverty. So the Christmas gifts rang somewhat hollow to me from politicians who left the bottom 40 percent of wage earners in Arkansas out of the 2015 income tax cut and who

also rejected a state earned income tax credit for poor working families. Against all this is a backdrop of raging debate about child protective services. Cases abound of system failures, none more high-profile and politically tinged than that of Rep. Justin Harris (R-West Fork), who gave away adopted children to the home of a sexual predator. Still, some legislators argue that the state moves too aggressively in removing children and that parents are punished, for example, for education deficiencies that aren’t of their making. Culturally, Arkansas is more inclined to turn to paddles and punishment than therapy and education when it comes to children in need. We are a national leader in defense and use of battery of children (corporal punishment). Sunday, Chad Day of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette wrote of the appalling number of judges who lock up young status offenders with young criminal offenders as a recipe for dealing with truancy, parental disobedience and runaways. So, thanks for the Barbie dolls and basketballs, politicians. But what you do the other 364 days of the year is a whole lot more meaningful. If only the cameras were always rolling.

in that period alone and by now much more, on an obscure religious school called Ecclesia College where you can get a degree in Bible studies, Christian counseling, Christian leadership, communication or music ministry, business, or sports management. You also can earn an emphasis in pastoral leadership or worship ministry. Never mind the establishment clauses of the U.S. and Arkansas constitutions, which once were thought to prevent either support of or antipathy toward any spiritual institution. We’ll get back to that audit, but first a little history. In the old days, the legislature appropriated money every two years for capital projects, typically on state college and medical campuses, which would be disbursed by the governor at his discretion if there were any surplus funds in the treasury at the end of any fiscal year. When Gov. Mike Huckabee took personal credit for these gifts, the then-Democratic legislature insisted on splitting the surplus kitty. Legislators would divvy up much of the surplus among themselves. They filed hundreds of bills appropriating sums for do-good programs in their districts — nonprofits like Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops, Boys and Girls Clubs,

riding clubs, a club for old-engine fanciers, local museums, Lions and Rotary clubs, or small towns around the district for a traffic signal or parking. Or private colleges and church groups, or just the neighborhood elementary school. Mike Wilson, a conservative watchdog who served 23 years in the House of Representatives in the good old days, sued the state in 2005 contending that the state Constitution prohibited such spending by barring local and special legislation — laws that applied to just one place. Twice, in 2006 and 2007, the Supreme Court unanimously said Wilson was right. A spending bill did not have to have statewide impact to be constitutional, but if it gave money to one local project, like a Scout troop or a town, there had to be a rational basis for giving it to that troop or that town and not all the troops and towns in the state. A lawmaker’s political survival was not a rational basis. The legislature fixed that with a clever ruse. It would enact large appropriation bills to each of the state’s eight planning and development districts, which are conduits for millions of federal, state and foundation dollars for aging, transportation, workforce CONTINUED ON PAGE 36 www.arktimes.com

DECEMBER 24, 2015

Help Homeless Neighbors

Feed Their Pets

The Pet Food Pantry provides dog and cat food to neighbors who are homeless or struggling to feed their pets. Please help by contributing: • Dry dog or cat food of any brand, flavor or type. • Empty 3 lb – 7 lb dog and cat food bags. • Plastic shopping bags. • Funds to purchase food.

For more info, contact Quapaw Quarter United Methodist Church at office@qqumc.org or call 501-680-3436.

A Stronger Workforce. Throughout central Arkansas, many students rely on the affordable transportation of Rock Region METRO. With major routes to some of Arkansas’ most popular academic institutions, our buses provide students the access needed to advance their learning and better prepare for their future careers. THERE’S A LOT RIDING ON PUBLIC TRANSIT.

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DECEMBER 24, 2015

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The Times fakes it

n my experience, you can fool a golden retriever exactly twice with the old hidden ball trick. Our late golden Big Red was as exuberant an animal as ever lived. I used to say that if he wasn’t wet, cold and hungry, Red was happy. Once I had to rescue him from the Arkansas River during a winter sleet storm. He’d plunged in to chase ducks but couldn’t clamber back up the steep, slippery bank on his own. Coated in mud with icicles hanging from his coat, Red remained optimistic. See, after his walk came supper. His eyes shone like a puppy’s all the way home. Anyway, that dog would fetch his beloved tennis ball until your arm ached from throwing it. Prank him with a fake toss and he’d charge off and search eagerly before returning with a quizzical look. A second fake drew less assiduous searching. After that, he kept his eyes riveted on that ball. No fooling him anymore. Big Red would have been over-qualified to edit the New York Times. Responding to the Washington bureau’s latest front-page blunder, Times executive editor Dean Baquet appeared to agree with the newspaper’s public editor, Margaret Sullivan, that something needed to be done about “the rampant use of anonymous sources” who turned out to be blowing smoke, or worse. A second senior editor, Matt Purdy, alibied that “we got it wrong because our very good sources had it wrong. … That’s an explanation, not an excuse. We have an obligation to get facts right and we work very hard to do that.” Reporters Matt Apuzzo and Michael S. Schmidt were absolved from blame. They’d simply written down what their excellent sources told them. OK, that was a ball fake. The above quotes don’t actually appear in Sullivan’s analysis of the latest New York Times bogus blockbuster. They’re from her July 27 article headlined “A Clinton Story Fraught With Inaccuracies: How It Happened and What Next?” Perhaps you remember the original headline: “Criminal Inquiry Sought in Hillary Clinton’s Use of Email.” Reporters Schmidt and Apuzzo had cited “senior government officials,” hinting that the former secretary of state was in immediate legal peril. Except, uh-oh, as Mother Jones’ blogger Kevin Drum summarized, “virtually everything about the story turned out to be wrong. Clinton was not a target. The referral was not criminal. And as the story itself noted, the emails in question had most likely not been classified at the time

Clinton saw them.” It was, in short, a total journalistic failure, although you can still hear pundits predicting GENE Hillary’s imminent LYONS indictment in the nonexistent criminal probe. The newspaper’s latest failure, involving as it does a matter of national security, is far more significant. “U.S. Visa Process Missed San Bernardino Wife’s Online Zealotry,” a Dec. 12 front-page headline read. But again, the Times had only pretended to throw the ball. This time, ace reporters Schmidt and Apuzzo had found unnamed “American law enforcement officials” who claimed that San Bernardino terrorist Tashfeen Malik had “talked openly on social media about her views on violent jihad,” and that U.S. immigration officials had failed to check her Facebook page. The implication was clear: Had they done so, 14 innocent Americans might still be alive. Once again, the reporters’ secret insiders were wrong. There was nothing open about Malik’s crazed musings. Written in Urdu under a pseudonym, as FBI director James B. Comey subsequently made clear, they’d been sent as private messages not visible to the public. No way investigators could have found them without a search warrant. Evidently, the Times’ trusted sources (the same individuals?) didn’t know enough about how Facebook and similar social media sites work to be aware of these issues. Reporters and editors seemingly didn’t know enough to ask. Also once again, the newspaper dragged its feet for most of a week before admitting error. Absent the insistence of Washington Post blogger Erik Wemple, it might never have done so. The Times’ stalling had the effect of giving Republican presidential candidates time to falsely blame everything on the Obama administration’s “political correctness.” Editor Baquet, just back from snuffling in the brush for his missing tennis ball, told Margaret Sullivan that he “rejected the idea that the sources had a political agenda that caused them to plant falsehoods.” He did allow that she was correct that the Times needed more stringent reporting procedures. Gosh, you think? Otherwise, isn’t it past time people started saying out loud that the newspaper’s vaunted Washington bureau has a serious problem?

Trump shows need for a woman president

was determined to take a break from writing about GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump and then he went and pulled out the “schlong.” In Grand Rapids, Mich., on Monday evening, Trump drew his now-typical arena audience of 7,500 — a scene equal parts Ross Perot ’92 and George Wallace ’68. There, he carried out a long and bizarre attack on Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. Much of it was focused on her delay in returning to the stage following a commercial break during the Democratic debate on Saturday. Trump continually described Clinton’s bathroom break — a fairly routine part of life — as “disgusting”: “I know where she went, it’s disgusting, I don’t want to talk about it. No, it’s too disgusting. Don’t say it, it’s disgusting.” Such disgust with normal activities of the female body was, of course, reminiscent of Trump’s suggestion that Fox News commentator Megyn Kelly was driven to tough questioning of him because she was menstruating (“You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her — wherever.”). Those comments are the latest in a long line of demeaning statements Trump has made about women over the years, the basis for Kelly’s challenge to Trump in that first debate that agitated him so thoroughly. Monday’s comments went to a new, sexualized level as Trump described Clinton as being “schlonged” by Barack Obama in their 2008 primary battle: “… [S]he was gonna beat Obama. … But she was going to beat — she was favored to win — and she got schlonged.” Suggesting that Clinton’s perceived inevitably is overstated based on her past performance is a fair, if unoriginal, attack, but using a term better suited to a Penthouse Forum to do so makes clear anew that the woman who would be the nation’s first female president hits real psychosexual buttons. Some will say that we should “have a sense of humor” about Trump’s comments. The problem is not Trump’s failed attempt at humor (in contrast, the “Saturday Night Live” weekend sketch that brought together 2015 Hillary, 2008 Hillary and Sarah Palin included some brilliant gender humor), but the dispiriting tone toward women with which it was said.

The crass, sexist comments were yet another reminder of Trump’s unsuitability for pubJAY lic office. More BARTH importantly though, his comments are a reminder about why it’s crucial that the ultimate glass ceiling be broken and that America finally grapple with true gender equality. Raised in a home where “women’s lib” was both promoted and practiced, I saw my mother face challenges in the newly emerging field of computer programming starting in the 1960s, and the limitations my smart and creative grandmother faced made me a feminist before I had a word for it. The operating assumption of the early 1970s was that gender disparities in the United States — in both life and in law — were nearing their end. While naive in retrospect, it was generally expected that a woman would have held the nation’s highest office — with all its symbolic power — within a generation. Forty-plus years later, we’re still waiting. Hillary Clinton is an imperfect candidate. Despite the personal warmth described by friends, Clinton lacks authenticity as a candidate. Her long, polarizing history on the national stage makes her a poor agent for political conciliation. And, her coziness with Wall Street is out of step with the domestic issue of this age: economic inequality. Despite these flaws, she has many strengths: She is strong, smart and has a depth of command of domestic and foreign policy issues that is unmatched. This ambidextrousness is crucial during a campaign where the issue of the week could come from absolutely any direction and any part of the globe and makes her a highly suitable candidate for the Oval Office. The most important aspect of her candidacy, however, is that her electoral success would affirm, once and for all, that gender does not define one’s future in America. Let’s be clear. Just as Barack Obama’s presidency has flared up expressions of base racism across the nation, a Hillary Clinton presidency will pull to the surface misogynistic sentiments of the sort we see in Trump’s remarks from this week. But, it will also remake America for future generations of girls — and boys. www.arktimes.com

DECEMBER 24, 2015

PEARLS ABOUT SWINE

Liberty Bowl preview No pressure, Hogs.

ou’re only one game better than your Liberty Bowl dance partner, record-wise, but the doubledigit spread that swings in your favor suggests a blowout is more likely than a nail-chewer. Also, the program’s history in Memphis for this game is spotty, to say the least, with only one win in four tries and that coming in 2010 against East Carolina in a remarkably excruciating affair full of missed field goals, frostbite and blown opportunities. Then there’s the “state of the program” aspect of the game. A win cements Bret Bielema, in all truth, as the correct hire despite all the speed bumps along the way. He’d be 2-0 in bowl games here, his record will have improved progressively over a three-year span, and his ability to attract top-flight talent will be enhanced further by the possibility of a season-ending Top 25 ranking. A loss? Back-to-back 7-6 seasons capped by a depressing segue into 2016 won’t smell that fresh. The best possible forecast for this game is a literal one: If the weather conditions are such that Dan Enos can direct the same resurgent offense that had the Hogs within a blocked field goal of an unbeaten back half of the season, instead of the one that struggled to finish over the first six games, then this will be the kind of swan song that Brandon Allen, Sebastian Tretola and a couple of likely early departing juniors had probably envisioned well before this mercurial campaign began. In early 2010, Bobby Petrino brought his downfield attack to Memphis and it was more or less rendered punchless by frigid conditions and East Carolina’s front seven. Those Hogs needed to stay ahead of the chains and find holes in the zone, and instead they went 0-for-13 on third down and managed only 81 rushing yards. Had it not been for four missed field goals by the Pirates and a momentum-changing interception return, the Hogs might’ve limped back home that night with the 7-6 record that this squad is hoping to avoid. Clearly, Enos leads an offense that is better equipped to deal with adversity, even after a layoff. Allen’s more 10

DECEMBER 24, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

than comfortable throwing it around to what has developed into a steady group of weapBEAU ons, but in wins WILCOX against LSU and Missouri, he reined it in so Alex Collins and Kody Walker could perfect the ball-control methodology behind their stout blockers. Walker had nearly half of his season’s total rushing output in those two games, averaging 5.3 yards per carry, and Collins rolled up 271 yards and five touchdowns as the lead carrier. Against Kansas State, which struggles to contain anybody defensively, it’s probably safer and smarter for the Hogs to employ the two-headed tailback monster primarily. Kansas State sits 101st in total defense nationally, making the Razorbacks’ maligned 72nd-rated unit seem dominant by contrast, but at least Arkansas fares extremely well against the run. K-State, conversely, is basically inept all the way: The pass defense is exceptionally porous, yielding nearly 290 yards per game, but the run defense is not exceptional either. The Wildcats will try to mitigate their deficiencies with their usual run-oriented option attack, but it’s going to be hard. Joe Hubener completes less than half of his passes, and unlike in prior years where a Daniel Thomas or Darren Sproles could be counted on to secure the pace of the game, there is not a game-changing weapon anywhere on the field. Charles Jones and Deante Burton, the leading rusher and receiver respectively, had only three games of 100-plus yards from scrimmage between them. In short, it’s not an imposing K-State offense, which should inspire good works again from the Razorbacks’ inconsistent front seven. Early in the game, there should be a chance or two for Deatrich Wise, Taiwan Johnson, Tevin Beanum or DeMarcus Hodge to make a seismic impact in the backfield. We’ll bet on Beanum to be the standout in this one, as he’ll be taking advantage of a size and speed mismatch on the edge. Razorbacks 37, Wildcats 23.

12/23-1

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2/29

THE OBSERVER NOTES ON THE PASSING SCENE

Resolutions 2016

he Observer takes this end of year stuff seriously, along with our New Year’s resolutions. They’ll all be broken within three weeks of making them, of course, the gym membership card burned on the lawn of Shipley Donuts, the skinny jeans once again exiled to the back of the closet with our “Keep on Truckin’ ” and “Free Tommy Robinson!” T-shirts, the speeding tickets we’d sworn to pay stuffed unceremoniously back into the glove box of the Mobile Observatory. The ritual isn’t fulfilling New Year’s resolutions, of course. The ritual is making them. We’re fine with that. Makes us feel temporarily on the ball and with it. So, as God is our witness: No more making box macaroni and cheese for company, putting it in grandma’s china, sprinkling on some Parmesan, and passing it off as the homemade. No more fighting with the neighbors over skeet shooting in the side yard, because that message just ain’t getting through, man. No more name-dropping of historical figures. No more disparaging the good names of the folks at the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department for their plan to cluster-F Little Rock in perpetuity by turning the east end of downtown into some kind of concrete radial hell velocity funnel railgun to shoot people up Park Hill in North Little Rock at the speed of sound. No more saying “facade” as if the e on the end isn’t silent, just to sound sophisticated. No more praying that the Quapaws go ahead and put up their neon-bedecked casino down by the river, so we can actually land some some gatdamn jobs dealing blackjack and picking up elderly retirees’ cigarette butts for the little people. No. More. No more leaving the cheese wrappers on the counter. No more walking around town with a big stack of George Washingtons, flashing our jelly roll to make people think we’re a whale on the prowl until we step to the counter and have to peel off a bunch to buy a bag of Fritos. No more taking life for granted. We mean that one. No more of our stubborn refusal to buy one of those three-

wheeled motorcycles with one wheel in the front and two in the back, like a road-going snowmobile, so we can look like an absolute road-going tool with the rest of the folks who own them. No more arguing with the microwave: “Push power, then 1, right? What? I PUSHED POWER! Why are you beeping! DAMN YOUR MECHANICAL HEART!” No more going to Kroger and examining each egg for flaws with a jeweler’s loupe. No more racing for pinks. Definitely no more saying we’ve got a Hemi when all we’re packing is a measly four-banger. No more chances to llamas, because they have proven themselves unworthy of our trust. No more promising to raise grandpa from the dead, because that’s just cruel to grandma even if the road to hell is paved with good intentions. No more answering the phone with “Jello?” “Cello?” “Pocatello?” “Portabello?” or “Hidey-hidey-hidey ho?” No more abusing the spirit of No-Shave November. No more drawing big spots around our boo-boos with a green highlighter, then asking Spouse: “Does this look infected to you?” What a fool we’ve been! No more wearing that T-shirt that makes us look like a fugitive just pulled from his spider hole by U.S. marshals. No more open carry of a banana, even in a holster. No more knocking on dressing room doors and saying: “Are you almost done? I gotta go real bad.” No more stowing away in Brantley’s luggage like a damn freeloader when he heads off to Zimbabwe on vaykay. No more calling people “Old Sport,” because even the Great Gatsby couldn’t pull that one off, and we’re surely no Great Gatsby. No more being creeped out by boots with the fur, the art at Goodwill, candied yams, the musical stylings of Lady Gaga, or Alexander Hamilton. No more watching that video on Youtube called “Star Trek + Nine Inch Nails = Closer” because some people might get the wrong idea about Yours Truly for watching it four or five times a day. No more sympathy for the Devil. So long, 2015! Bring it on, 2016! Our resolutions may fall away, but not our resolve to endure.

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www.arktimes.com

DECEMBER 24, 2015

Arkansas Reporter

THE

IN S IDE R

Arkansas native civil rights leader dies at 90 Ozell Sutton, an Arkansas-born drum majors for civil rights, died Saturday in Atlanta at 90. He held a Congressional Gold Medal as one of the first African Americans to serve in the Marine Corps. He was a retired community relations director for the Justice Department in Atlanta. His Arkansas past is well remembered by the Encyclopedia of Arkansas. Notably, the Gould native was the first black reporter to work for a whiteowned newspaper in the state when he was hired by the Arkansas Democrat in 1950, after he graduated from Philander Smith College. The encyclopedia said he took his concerns about racial justice to his editors at the Democrat, and that it was at his insistence that the paper began to address African Americans as “Mr.” and “Mrs.” He was on hand at Central High in 1957, and he marched with Martin Luther King Jr. From 1961 to 1966 he was assistant director of the Arkansas Council on Human Relations. He later served as an assistant to Republican Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller, leaving Arkansas to work for the Justice Department in the early 1970s. He was a mediator in many of the familiar racial hot spots in succeeding years. A notable episode in Sutton’s time in Arkansas occurred in 1964. His effort finally broke the color line at the state Capitol cafeteria. It had been turned into a private club to avoid service to blacks. Turned away in 1964, he and the NAACP sued. Violent reaction broke out in subsequent student efforts to use the cafeteria. Finally, in April 1965, a federal judge ruled that barring Sutton was unconstitutional. “On April 29, Secretary of State Kelly Bryant announced that the cafeteria would reopen to the public the following morning at 7 a.m.,” the Encyclopedia of Arkansas recounted. “The next day, Sutton returned alone to the cafeteria where he had been refused service 10 months earlier. He joined the line, collected his food, and ate lunch without incident.” Here’s another detail of that episode from an Arkansas Times article by John Kirk, director of the Institute of Race and Ethnicity at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock: “On Wednesday, July 15, 1964, Ozell Sutton went by Secretary of State Kelly Bryant’s office at the Arkansas State

Medicaid and politics Task force says keep expansion, but make major cuts. BY DAVID RAMSEY

he Health Reform Legislative Task Force wrapped up nearly a year of meetings last week, issuing its final recommendations. Those recommendations basically boil down to two things: 1) the private option should continue, with some conservative bells and whistles added to the policy and 2) the state should seek reforms to the traditional Medicaid program that will save $835 million over five years, a benchmark set by Gov. Asa Hutchinson. How should those savings be achieved? On that politically thorny question, the task force and the governor kicked the can down the road. As it happens, these are the same two goals Hutchinson has articulated since coming into office and the same courses of action he asked for when he spoke to the task force last week. The task force was ostensibly created to make recommendations to the governor, but in practice, it rubber-stamped the governor’s recommendations. What we are seeing now is the political wheels grinding along to achieve Hutchinson’s big objectives: keep Obamacare money flowing into the state to fund the private option and pull off the major Medicaid reforms that eluded his predecessor, particularly changing the way that the program offers long-term services and supports for its costliest patients. Let’s take a step back and take a look at how we got here. You might recall that Hutchinson, shortly after taking office, had a bright idea about the future of the Medicaid program in Arkansas. Back in 2013, Arkansas chose to accept billions of dollars in federal Obamacare money to offer health insurance to more than 200,000 low-income Arkansans. It did so under a unique

RUBBER STAMPED: Hutchinson’s recommendations move on.

privatized version of Medicaid expansion developed by Republican lawmakers, which became known as the “private option.” The private option cut the state’s uninsured rate in half, saved hospitals hundreds of millions of dollars in uncompensated care, and poured billions of federal dollars into the state economy. Perhaps most importantly for Hutchinson, who had visions of tax cuts dancing in his head, the private option saved hundreds of millions of dollars for the state budget. For all of those reasons (not to mention the political nightmare of kicking hundreds of thousands of Arkansans off of their health insurance), Hutchinson wanted to keep the private option around. Politically, that was a problem. The private option needs annual approval from three quarters of the legislature, and a whole lot of Republican legislators had just been elected by running against Obamacare — many of them loudly and explicitly opposing the private option. “The phrase ‘private option’ itself has become politically toxic,” the governor fretted in a major health care speech shortly after taking office in January. “So much so that it’s almost impossible to have a constructive conversation about health care reform without passions rising and folks taking sides.” The governor’s bright idea: Create a task force! Hutchinson got the Obam-

acare-hating legislature to approve the private option for two more years (2015 and 2016); the task force, he promised, would come up with some sort of alternative to the private option for 2017 and beyond. Since the task force was supposed to recommend a plan that would maintain coverage for those currently covered by the private option, there was no mystery about where all of this was heading. There’s just no affordable and workable way for the state to cover those folks without accepting the billions of dollars in federal Medicaid expansion money. Unless Arkansas lawmakers wanted to send out a couple hundred thousand cancellation letters, they were going to have to learn to love Obamacare. And sure enough, after spending more than a million dollars to hire a consultant, the Stephen Group, and after countless hours of meetings and hundreds of pages of reports, the task force arrived at the conclusion that was obvious when it began. The private option is a great fiscal deal for the state and getting rid of it would blow a hole in the state budget. And there is no magic alternative, no secret plan, no stone unturned: If you want to maintain coverage for all these folks, Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion is the only way. Surprise, surprise. That’s not to say that the task force was without value. After years of promising that there was a “better way,” opponents of the private option were forced to put up or shut up. The task force offered the opportunity to name and detail alternative plans. Predictably, they came up empty. The task force process forced lawmakers to dig in to the numbers themselves and take ownership of policy choices. The result: Lawmakers like Rep. Joe Farrer (R-Austin), Rep. David Meeks (R-Conway) and Sen. John Cooper (R-Jonesboro) — previously diehard opponents of the private option — recommended that the governor begin negotiations with the federal government to continue the private option in 2017 and beyond. Mind you, neither Hutchinson nor Meeks and company will call it the private option, that “politically toxic” moniker. Instead, the governor has rebranded the program “Arkansas Works.” In order to make it politically palatable to Republican lawmakers, Arkansas CONTINUED ON PAGE 36

DECEMBER 24, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

THE

BIG PICTURE

THE ARKANSAS TOP 10 Our picks for the year's best Arkansas albums.

Over the years our system for determining the top Arkansas albums of the year has grown increasingly rigid, exacting and scientifically unassailable. We are tireless. We take voluminous notes, peruse our weekly blog posts, email archives, diary entries. We solicit the opinions of our friends, relatives, acquaintances, enemies. We consult experts and paste up flyers. We traverse the state in vans, knocking on doors and exploring dusty attics. We sit on barstools late into the night, eavesdropping on the conversations of strangers. We pay attention to the stars, to the rumblings of our guts. We grow arrogant, we are humbled, we come only to listen and to learn. We go to concerts, take photographs, print them out and then draw them out of hats. We lay awake at night wearing headphones. We hire interns. We vote. We ask our parents. We don't know. Here’s a list:

The Wandering Lake — Wend to Why

Lo Thraxx — Sharkansas

Nouns — Still

TOP

Iris Dement — The Trackless Woods

Goon des Garcons — YOUNGDIRTYBASTARD

Pagiins — Opium Den Pool Party

Gibberish — Winter Coat

Love Ghost — Skies Are Grey

Cuz Lightyear — CUZ

J Fernandez — Many Levels of Laughter

LISTEN UP

Tune in to the Times’ “Week In Review” podcast each Friday. Available on iTunes & arktimes.com

INSIDER, CONT. Capitol in Little Rock to collect copies of maps and current voter registration rolls for his work on the Arkansas Voter Project (AVP). He finished around lunchtime and headed down to the basement cafeteria to get some food. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which required the desegregation of public facilities and accommodations, had become law just two weeks earlier on July 2. Sutton entered the food line, picked up a tray and silverware, and was perusing the salads when cafeteria manager S. Edris Tyer, who had operated the business on a lease from the state since 1947 (first with her late husband and for the past seven years on her own), approached Sutton and told him, ‘We don’t serve Negras here!’ Sutton recalled that he quipped, ‘That’s all right lady, I don’t eat them either, so you don’t need to serve me any Negras. You need to serve me some roast beef!’ “That would take nine months to be served.” A biography of Sutton at the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame writes that he served as a “decoy” to distract the mob when nine black students attempted to desegregate Central High School in 1957, their entry finally achieved only with federal court and troop assistance. Ebony magazine regularly listed him among the 100 most influential African Americans.

Clemency denied Former Times editor and author Mara Leveritt reports that Rolf Kaestel, imprisoned for 34 years for a $264 robbery in Fort Smith, has been informed that he’s been denied clemency by Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who’s drawn attention of late for his support of restoring equity to sentencing as one means of reducing a bulging prison population. Kaestel is not a prisoner in Arkansas. He was shipped to Utah, coincidentally after appearing in a documentary film on a blood plasma selling scandal in Arkansas prisons and also after providing reporters with information about prison security lapses. Kaestel used a water pistol to rob a taco stand. He got a life sentence because of prior convictions. His victim has made a video urging Kaestel’s release. Parole boards in both Arkansas and Utah have recommended clemency. Gov. Mike Beebe refused a pardon request last year. Hutchinson’s refusal means Kaestel can’t request clemency again until he’s 70, six years off. www.arktimes.com

DECEMBER 24, 2015

tarting anything new is tough sleddin’, and that’s especially true of whole new years. The one we’re coming to the tail end of, 2015, has been a real humdinger in general and a landmark around the somewhat messy halls of the Arkansas

Times. We’re still here, and we hope you survived it unscathed as well. The end of the year means its time again for the Best and Worst issue, our annual attempt to stick a fork in 365 days with a roundup of all the news that was important, shocking, noteworthy or just plain dumb enough to bubble up out of the general miasma of information constantly streaming past our faces. There’s plenty to see here, Dear Reader, including Duggar dalliances, Tom Cotton’s love of birthday cake, a $145,000 pooch gone to hound heaven, Sen. Jason Rapert’s itchy trigger finger, the rare 11th Commandment, the worst four days in jail in the history of the world, a dog that is apparently trying to eat the world one random object at a time, a final boast about giant tonsils, Mike Huckabee’s fear that Syrians are coming for your cable, and criminal idiots of all stripes, from the very dumb to the so dumb they probably shouldn’t be allowed outside without a leash. Yeah, it’s a lot to take in. But look on the bright side. At least it’s nearly over. There’s more stupidity to come in 2016, but let’s close the books on 2015 for now. BY DAVID KOON ILLUSTRATIONS BY HANNAH CARPENTER

BEST ANGEL Thanks to a snippet of a taped interview broadcast on NPR by the oral history project StoryCorps (a broadcast followed up by a Jan. 8 cover story in the Arkansas Times and later the BBC, among other news outlets), the world was reminded of the heroism of Ruth Coker Burks, a woman from Rogers who, in the 1980s, cared for hundreds of men dying of AIDS after their families abandoned them. As revealed in the story, Burks eventually buried the ashes of more than 40 men in her small family cemetery in Hot Springs after their loved ones refused to claim even their remains.

WORST DEFENSE MECHANISM In January, police said, a 44-yearold Bryant woman who was allegedly shoplifting at a Little Rock Kohl’s store peed on a store security guard who stopped her as she tried to leave the premises with nearly $350 in merchandise.

SECOND WORST DEFENSE MECHANISM A 33-year-old Hot Springs woman was arrested in January after police said she bit off one of her significant other’s eyebrows during an argument that led to an altercation. She was charged with domestic battery and public intoxication.

BEST IF GUNS COULD 14

DECEMBER 24, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

TALK

was already facing charges that he’d shot his cousin in August 2014, had his bond revoked over the parade incident and faces charges of aggravated assault, endangering the welfare of a minor and drug possession.

During a North Little Rock traffic stop on Jan. 3, a search of a man’s car turned up, according to the police department, several baggies of pot, a digital scale and a .38 caliber Smith & Wesson revolver that had been reported stolen in New York in 1967, with the gun disappearing for 48 years and traveling 1,230 miles before its rendezvous with Johnny Law.

WORST DISAPPOINTED

SECOND BEST IF GUNS COULD TALK During an August traffic stop, officers with the Little Rock Police Department recovered a Glock handgun belonging to LRPD Chief Kenton Buckner, which Buckner had reported missing after moving to a new home over the Memorial Day weekend. Buckner, who was disciplined by City Manager Bruce Moore over the loss of the handgun, had previously said he believed it was thrown out with the trash during the move. Apparently not, as it somehow wound up in the possession of two men who were eventually charged with theft by receiving, possession of a firearm, possession of a controlled substance and possession of an instrument of crime. Buckner later issued a statement saying he had no connection to the two men.

WORST BAD APPLE A Russellville woman who called police in January to report that she’d been assaulted by her boyfriend was arrested after a roommate showed police a video of the woman repeatedly hitting herself with an apple in a tube sock to cause injuries consistent with her story. After being shown the video by officers, the woman allegedly admitted she wanted to have the boyfriend arrested because he planned to file a theft charge against her mother.

BEST MONEY FOR NUTHIN’ Soon after taking office in January, Arkansas Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin — an office holder whose only regularly required duty is to periodically preside over the state Senate and to take charge of things while the sitting governor is out of state — announced that he was working on a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow the governor to remain in charge via electronic devices even when

WORST ADDICT

During an April interview with The New York Times, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton admitted that he and his wife eat birthday cake almost every day of their lives. “Early on, when my wife and I were dating,” Cotton told the Times, “we went to the grocery store, and I told her that sometimes I just buy birthday cakes, and I eat them. And she said, ‘Really? I do, too!’ ” away on business. The legislature later referred the amendment to the November 2016 general election.

BEST GRAND TOTAL IF YOU’RE A THIEF A January review of 2014 residential and commercial burglaries in Little Rock by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette found that the city’s thriving community of fivefinger discounters made off with a staggering $4,426,677.90 in cash and property in the previous year.

WORST DISCRETE Officers arrested two men in January after, police said, patrolmen driving by a Little Rock gas station in a marked police car allegedly saw one of the men dancing next to a gas pump while waving a handgun in the air in time with the music from his

car’s stereo system. Both men were arrested on several charges, including drug possession and possession of a firearm by a felon.

WORST MISSING THE POINT OF THE MLK PARADE In January, middleweight boxing champion Jermain Taylor was arrested after a woman told police that during Little Rock’s annual parade honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Taylor pulled a gun on her family after he dropped one of his championship belts and tried to blame it on the woman’s 5-year-old. According to the woman, after Taylor dropped the belt, he pulled out a pistol and fired two shots into the air before putting the gun to her husband’s head and threatening to kill him and the woman’s three children, ages 5, 3 and 1. Taylor, who

In a video posted to Jermain Taylor’s Facebook page the day after the incident, Taylor, sitting in a bathtub, apologized for disappointing his fans before ranting that marchers in the MLK parade didn’t throw candy to the kids along the route, telling parade organizers, “Y’all need to get it together. I had my little girl out there, and nobody had no candy. ... If you’re disappointed in me, I’m disappointed in you, too.” Taylor was already facing charges that he’d shot his cousin in August 2014. He was later charged with battery after being accused in May of hitting a fellow patient at a rehab center. In December, he pleaded guilty in all three cases and agreed to a condition that could allow him to return to boxing. He is scheduled to be sentenced in April.

BEST DISAPPOINTED In January, the Knights Party of the Ku Klux Klan said in a press release they were disappointed in state Rep. Nate Bell (R-Mena) for filing a bill that would abolish the state holiday in honor of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s birthday, with a KKK spokesman saying, in part, that Bell was part of “a growing trend toward the vilification of white heroes.” We’d call that a mark in Bell’s favor, but the bill eventually failed in committee on a voice vote.

WORST GRASP OF HISTORY The KKK press release tut-tutting Bell’s bill also said that one reason Arkansans revere Robert E. Lee — who, as you might have heard, helped lead a bloody, four-year rebellion that nearly split the United States in two forever — is for his “defense of the founding principles of the United States, from which our nation has strayed.” No, we are not making that up.

WORST PAPERWEIGHT A person cleaning out a desk at the Fayetteville home of the late www.arktimes.com

DECEMBER 24, 2015

BEST CLOSE BUT NO CIGAR

Lauren and David Adamski of Cabot welcomed a healthy baby boy into the world a few days after Valentine’s Day after Lauren went into labor in the middle of a February storm that covered much of Central Arkansas in a solid sheet of ice. With the couple unable to get to the hospital in time because of the weather, the baby — who they named Brennan — was born in the cab of David’s truck, which was sitting at the time in the parking lot of North Little Rock’s Springhill Baptist Hospital.

Dr. Cecil Cogburn, a professor of nuclear engineering at the University of Arkansas who died in June 2013, called in the Arkansas Department of Health in January after finding a glass jar containing a small quantity of uranium-235, the same stuff used in nuclear bomb cores. A search of the home also discovered a vial filled with radioactive uranium dioxide. A report on the samples said that the amount of radiation being emitted was not a danger to human health, and both were secured by the university.

Sen. Jason Rapert (R-Conway) was out to an early lead to retain the title in 2015 with his mid-February Facebook suggestion that what the U.S. really needed to do was drop a nuclear bomb on the Islamic militant group ISIS. Wrote Rapert: “A strategically placed nuclear weapon would save the lives of our soldiers and quickly turn things around. It is time for the insanity to be stopped.” Sure! Why not? Dropping the third nuclear bomb ever deployed in combat on a Middle Eastern country could only make things better, right?

WORST FINGER TO HAVE ON THE BUTTON

BEST EPITAPH

Perennial Best and Worst favorite 16

DECEMBER 24, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

Bruce Sinofsky, the filmmaker who, with creative partner Joe

Berlinger, created the “Paradise Lost” documentary trilogy on the West Memphis Three that led, in turn, to the worldwide groundswell of outrage that freed Jessie Misskelley, Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin after 18 years in prison, died on Feb. 21 at the age of 58 from complications related to diabetes. “Humanity,” wrote Berlinger of his friend, “is on every frame of the films that he leaves behind.”

WORST JAKE AND ELWOOD The day before Valentine’s Day, two men were arrested in Benton County after police pulled over their car. The issue: The car, a Ford Crown

Victoria, had been made over into a passable facsimile of a police cruiser, complete with a black and white paint scheme; “Police” and “Dial 911” stickers on the fenders, trunk lid and doors; a red-and-blue light bar on top; and a push bumper on the front. The men, one a convicted felon, soon found themselves getting a ride in the real thing and faced several charges, including criminal impersonation of an officer and unauthorized use of emergency lights.

WORST WINE BAR State Rep. Dan Douglas (R-Bentonville) pushed a bill in the legislature in March that would have

outlawed wine imports from any state that imposes a “substantial burden” on Arkansas agriculture, a poultryindustry-fueled shot over the bow of the state of California, which requires all eggs sold there to come from hens who have enough room to extend their wings and turn around. The bill passed the House, but Douglas eventually pulled it, saying it had served its purpose as a message to West Coast lawmakers.

5, was often locked alone in a bare bedroom for hours on end with no toys or other diversions and where she was monitored at all times by a video camera.

WORST WHEN ANIMALS ATTACK PEOPLE

BEST WTF?

A White County judge was so severely attacked by a pet zebra in mid-March that he required weeks of hospitalization.

WORST WHEN PEOPLE ATTACK ANIMALS (WITH JUSTICE SMACKDOWN GOODNESS) Also in March, a jury in Lincoln County awarded $145,000 to the owner of Buck, a coon dog that was killed in 2012 after straying onto private property to tree a raccoon. According to eyewitnesses, once the dog crossed out of the White River National Refuge onto privately owned land, the irate property owner arrived and demanded that he be allowed to shoot the dog for trespassing. After Buck’s owner refused and began to lead the leashed dog away, witnesses said, the property owner leveled his rifle and calmly shot the dog dead. That was a doggone bad idea on his part, as the jury awarded Buck’s grieving owner plenty of hunnerts to dab his tears, including $5,000 for personal injury, $25,000 for tort of outrage, $5,000 for destruction of personal property, and a whopping $100,000 in punitive damages.

SECOND WORST PARENT In March, Arkansas Times broke the story that Bible-beating state Rep. Justin Harris (R-West Fork) and his wife, Marsha, had insisted on adopting two emotionally troubled girls, only to later “rehome” the children with another family, in part because Justin and Marsha Harris believed the girls to be possessed by demons and capable of communicating telepathically. A former babysitter for the Harris family later told reporter Benjamin Hardy of the Times that one of the girls, age

WORST PARENT Eric Cameron Francis, the father in the Bella Vista home in which the Harrises rehomed their adopted daughters, later raped the older of the two girls.

Justin Harris is still, as of this writing, an Arkansas state representative. He has, however, said he will not run for re-election. We’ve got that going for us, at least.

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WORST ‘COURAGEOUS’ In August, with the controversy over the rehoming of Rep. Justin Harris’ adopted daughters still swirling, the Family Council Action Committee — a far-right group that works for conservative goals in the state — announced that Harris would receive the group’s “Power of Courage” award. The presentation of the award at the Republican Party’s Lincoln Day Dinner in Van Buren was canceled, however, likely at the urging of the campaign of Sen. Ted Cruz, who appeared at the event. Family Council president Jerry Cox said that Harris would get the award at a later date.

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WORST FRESHMAN Fewer than 100 days into his first term as one of Arkansas’s two U.S. senators, Tom Cotton touched off a firestorm of criticism (and the long-trending Twitter hashtag #47Traitors) after he penned a letter to the government of Iran and had 46 fellow Republican senators sign it. The letter, which included Cotton condescendingly explaining the American system of government and telling the Iranians that any deal cut by U.S. diplomats could be undone by the next president “at the stroke of a pen,” was apparently designed to scuttle the Obama administration’s efforts to keep Iran from obtaining the materials for a nuclear bomb. The talks went ahead anyway, and Iran eventually signed a historic deal.

WORST GRASP OF GEOGRAPHY In an appearance on “Face the Nation” soon after sending the letter, Cotton defended his decision to make

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an end run around Obama by saying of Iran: “They already control Tehran.” Lest you think Iran has overwhelmed and conquered that city recently, recall your third-grade geography and the fact that Tehran has been the capital of Iran for over 200 years.

In April, a former inmate of the Saline County Jail filed a federal lawsuit against Saline County and jail officials, alleging that while he was incarcerated there in 2012, deputies refused to take him to the hospital for medical treatment even though a footlong section of his colon was hanging outside of his body. According to the lawsuit, the man was only able to seek medical help upon his release, after four full days with his innards outwards.

WORST LEGISLATION In March and April, a firestorm erupted over House Bill 1228, a bill that purported to protect religious freedom, but which critics said would legitimize discrimination against LGBT Arkansans in housing, employment and public accommodations.

WORST GLASSHOUSE-RESIDING STONE THROWER

BEST GRASSROOTS By the end of March, with daily protests at the state Capitol, civic leaders and major corporations — including Apple and Walmart — coming out against the bill, and the state of Indiana getting raked over the coals because of a similar measure, Gov. Asa Hutchinson held an April Fool’s Day press conference in which he asked the legislature to recall and modify HB 1228. The legislature eventually did so, crafting a somewhat narrower “religious freedom” bill that was eventually signed into law.

BEST 2022 CANDIDATE FOR ARKANSAS GOVERNOR During the press conference in which he asked for changes to HB 1228, Gov. Hutchinson revealed that a petition asking him to veto the bill had been signed by his son, Seth Hutchinson, who is a union organizer and diehard progressive currently living in Austin, Texas.

WORST EXAMPLE FOR THE KIDS In April, the blog Blue Hog Report broke the news that the 2009 doctoral dissertation of former Little Rock School District Superintendent Dexter Suggs contained verbatim repetitions of passages found in the dissertations of other academics. In other words, plagiarism, an academic no-no that any seventh-grader should steer clear of, much less a superintendent. Suggs lost his LRSD job soon thereafter, and Indiana Wesleyan University later revoked his doctorate of education.

WORST BAR During the protests in Indiana and Arkansas over “religious freedom” legislation that LGBT rights advocates said could be used to discriminate 18

DECEMBER 24, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

SECOND WORST ADDICT

According to a paper published in April in the New England Journal of Medicine, doctors at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences traced the kidney failure of a 56-year-old Arkansas man to his habit of drinking over a gallon of iced tea every day. According to the paper, after the man complained of symptoms including fatigue and body aches, doctors found that his kidneys were gummed up and inflamed to the point of failure by a chemical called oxalate, which occurs naturally in black tea. Eventually, the man told doctors that he drank around 16 eight-ounce cups of tea every day, and had done so for many years. against gays and lesbians, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Eally Likes Birthday Cake) told CNN that the protestors needed to “get perspective,” saying, “In Iran, they’ll hang you for the crime of being gay,” revealing that his personal bar for how America should treat LGBT folks is apparently set at: “Somewhat Better Than Iran.”

into two distinct prohibitions: a 10th commandment prohibiting a person from coveting his or her neighbors’ house, and an 11th forbidding a person from coveting “thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his cattle, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s.”

BEST THOU SHALT NOT MAKE TYPOS

An Arkansas truck driver was sentenced by a Memphis judge in April to one year of inpatient drug treatment and six years of probation after he was convicted of trading the tractortrailer rig he was driving — including a refrigerated trailer containing over $50,000 worth of chilled lunch meat — to two men he met at a Tennessee gas station in exchange for crack cocaine.

In April, a Kentucky blogger noted that the language of a law authorizing the construction of a “historic monument” to the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the Arkansas state Capitol actually includes 11 Commandments, with the commandment against “coveting” split

WORST TRADE

In May, InTouch magazine published a story revealing that Josh Duggar — who spun his family’s reality show fame into a career as a professional morality scold and well-paid Washington lobbyist for the far-right Family Research Council — had been investigated by police in Northwest Arkansas after he molested several young girls as a teenager, including his own sisters.

WORST ROLE MODEL Then, in August, hacked data from the extramarital affair-promoting website ashleymadison.com revealed that Josh Duggar had a secret account there, seeking sexual encounters. That revelation prompted Duggar to issue a statement in which he said he had a pornography addiction, had cheated on his wife and would be entering treatment for an undisclosed condition.

BEST TRUE STATEMENT IN THE HISTORY OF THE WRITTEN WORD Duggar’s statement in response to the discovery of his Ashley Madison account began with the sentence: “I have been the biggest hypocrite ever.”

SECOND WORST GLASS HOUSERESIDING STONE THROWER In April, the Arkansas Times broke the news that Acra Lee Turner — a Eureka Springs preacher seen in a video calling for the repeal of the city’s broad LGBT anti-discrimination ordinance — is the same man who confessed to a series of violent sexual assaults in Oklahoma in 1977, including the rape of an 80-year-old woman who

It's the return of the annual Arkansas Times

MUSICIANS SHOWCASE with performers competing for an array

of prizes worth over $2500! TO ENTER GO TO arktimes.com/showcase16 OR send a link to Facebook, ReverbNation, Bandcamp or Soundcloud to showcase@arktimes.com and include the following: Band Name Hometown Date Band Was Formed Age Range of Members (All ages welcome)

Contact Person Phone

Submission deadline: December 31, 2015 Acts must perform

Semifinalists will compete the

30 minutes of original

last week in January and

material with

throughout February at

LIVE INSTRUMENTATION.

Stickyz. Weekly winners will

All musical styles are welcome.

then face off in the finals at 2015 Winner Ghost Bones

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DECEMBER 24, 2015

was reportedly beaten so badly that she was unrecognizable. Turner, who was released from prison in August 2000 over the objections of his victims’ families, eventually made his way to Eureka Springs, where he soon rose to the pulpit of one of the city’s biggest Baptist congregations.

dirt road home,” clearly a reference to … well, never mind.

BEST HEROES In May, a group of bystanders who saw a man trying to force a woman into a car at a Benton convenience store stepped in and rescued the woman, who later told police she’d been abducted by the man she was riding with. After fleeing the scene, the man was taken into custody by officers and later charged with criminal attempt to commit kidnapping, among other charges.

BEST WIN In spite of the objections of Pastor Turner and the efforts of outside groups, Eureka Springs city voted May 12 to keep its LGBT antidiscrimination ordinance by a margin of more than 2 to 1.

WORST DUSTER

WORST REASON TO VOTE AGAINST CRITICALLY NEEDED LEGISLATION In May, after Rep. Jana Della Rosa (R-Rogers) proposed a bill to improve campaign finance reporting by requiring statewide and legislative office candidates to file online reports of their campaign contributions to the secretary of state, Rep. Bob Ballinger (R-Hindsville) publicly opposed the legislation, in part because he said he has “an old accountant” who doesn’t understand computers all that well. The bill went on to fail on the House floor, 48-33.

BEST DENIAL During the Jade Helm 15 military exercises in Texas, training maneuvers the tinfoil hat brigades spun up into a plot by President Obama to somehow take over Texas, Arkansas-based Walmart issued a statement to the website Talking Points Memo refuting conspiracy theorists’ claims that the U.S. military was digging secret tunnels under five Walmart stores, which were to be used to “house the headquarters of invading troops from China,” as they worked to disarm all Americans. “There’s no truth to the rumors,” Walmart spokesman Lorenzo Lopez told TPM via email. Whew. Thanks for clearing that up, dude. We were worried there for a second.

WORST WISENHEIMERS Parental and administrative outrage was cranked to “turbo” in May after the Russellville High School yearbooks came out, with senior photos of several students accompanied by wiseass quotes, including a white student saying, “I was born a poor black child,” and another photo accompanied by “When the red river flows, take the 20

DECEMBER 24, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

In June, a 41-year-old woman was arrested in Jonesboro on charges of DWI and driving with a suspended license after, police say, she responded to police officers trying to wake her in a recently crashed Cadillac by briefly sitting up, spraying a can of air duster in her face, inhaling deeply and then falling back over.

WORST SNACK

A veterinarian in Mountain Home had to operate in May to save the life of Benno, a 4-year-old Belgian Malinois who had been rushed to the vet after eating a whole box of live, high-caliber rifle ammunition. The vet eventually removed 23 heavily chewed rounds from Benno’s stomach. Rather than open him up again after X-rays found an additional two rounds lodged in Benno’s esophagus, the vet decided to allow them to be ejected from the breech, which they were within the following week.

BEST LIST

According to a report in the Baxter Bulletin, Benno’s owner supplied a partial list of items the dog had eaten before the live ammo that included stuffed animals, rubber chew toys, coins, Styrofoam peanuts, cheese wrappers, rocks, wax paper, aluminum foil, shirts, socks, underwear, a complete brassiere, tennis shoes, a length of rope, nylon straps, a hank of plastic weed trimmer string, a gasolinesoaked lawnmower air filter, blankets, marbles, plastic bags, quilt batting, straight pins, plastic soda bottles, magnets, bottle lids, a television remote, broken glass, a loaf of bread with the wrapper still on, a nylon hairbrush, Lego blocks, a travel-size bottle of hand lotion, wooden baseboards and a section of drywall.

BEST FINGER LICKIN’ CONSPIRACY A man shot and killed in June after brandishing a rifle while trying to enter the gates of the Little Rock Air Force Base in Jacksonville had earlier told deputies with the Pulaski County Sheriff’s Office that his house was being bugged by an Air Force officer named Col. Sanders, apparently referring to “Colonel” Harlan Sanders, of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame.

BEST HEADLINE A June story in the DemocratGazette sports section about retired football coach Larry Lacewell included a photo of the rather prominent-bellied coach and the headline: “Football lingers inside Lacewell.”

WORST NOT MY PROBLEM Somehow, the May 31 rupture of the Texas Eastern natural gas pipeline under the Arkansas River near the Clinton Presidential Center went unreported for a full day, even though the force of the pressure from the break sent giant gouts of water shooting high into the air, eruptions that could be clearly seen (and, in one case, photographed) from the Interstate 30 bridge and the upper floors of downtown buildings. One witness later said he thought a large passenger jet had crashed into the river. Nevertheless, the break was only noticed by pipeline operator Spectra

Entergy after a barge company called on June 1 to complain that concrete and debris thrown loose by the rupture had damaged one of its tow boats.

BEST HOLY SHIT MOMENT Mike Metzler, general manager for the company that directs barge traffic out of the Little Rock Port Authority, said that soon after the pipeline break, he received a frenzied call from a boat captain who was on the river downstream from the rupture. Metzler told the Arkansas Times blog: “At first he thought the dam had broke. From where he was, about two miles [downstream], he no longer could see the bridges. He was terrified — just trying to make sense of what his eyes were seeing. He called us and said that this big wave of water was coming and we were all going to get washed away.”

BEST DAY June 26, when a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court brought the longsought dream of full marriage equality for LGBT couples to Arkansas and the rest of America.

BEST IMPOTENT RAGE That has to be a Facebook message left by a man angry with the decision legalizing same-sex marriage, in which he attempted to shame Little Rock NBC affiliate KARK-TV, Ch. 4, for changing their logo to “the colors of the gays,” not realizing, of course, that the NBC logo has been a rainbowfeathered peacock since 1956.

WORST GRASP OF CIVICS Team Baptistaliban MVP Sen. Jason Rapert (R-Conway) was in full effect following the SCOTUS ruling granting LGBT people marriage equality, at one point replying to a Facebook user who correctly said that the civil rights of minority groups cannot be overruled by the whims of the majority with: “We, the majority, grant you rights by choice.” The comment, which likely caused immediate, blinding migraines in civics teachers statewide, brought down a blizzard of scorn and mockery on Rapert’s head, with posters from across the political spectrum piling on to set him straight.

WORST MOTIVE

In July, a Jonesboro woman allegedly stabbed her boyfriend with a pair of scissors during an argument over whether he could make a grilled cheese sandwich.

WORST PROTECT AND SERVE

covered wagon flipped on the bridge over the Arkansas River, blocking all eastbound traffic. At the time, the wagon was being towed to the annual Labor Day chuck wagon races at Clinton.

In July, an officer with the Lowell Police Department resigned his position and was charged with DWI over a June 17 incident in which, the department said, he crashed a marked Lowell PD police cruiser into another car while driving intoxicated.

BEST SLOW A Harrison woman received a letter in July containing a postal money order mailed to her from Des Moines, Iowa on May 26, 1998. Still unknown: whether it was snow, rain, heat of day or gloom of night that caused a piece of mail to take 17 years to cover 360-odd miles, but we’re sure the U.S. Postal Service will figure it out. Eventually.

BEST THROWBACK Traffic on Interstate 30 at Little Rock was stalled for more than an hour on the last day of August after a

BEST MUGSHOT This one, taken in September, of an inmate at the Saline County Jail. The man had reportedly been booked into the Chateau Ironbar Saline on three counts of failure to appear, but doesn’t really seem all that distressed about it.

WORST PREDICTABLE The police investigation into the murder of a 21-year-old North Little Rock woman in September found that in the hours before her boyfriend allegedly shot her to death, the woman

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had taken and posted to social media cell phone photos of her boyfriend jokingly pointing a handgun at her, including one in which he was holding the gun to her head.

WORST HUCKABEE In September, officials in Ashland, Ky., closed five schools and allowed over 1,000 kids to lose a day of public education because Republican presidential also-ran and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee wanted to hold a rally for homophobic Kentucky clerk Kim Davis outside the jail there, and officials feared traffic congestion would interfere with getting kids to school.

NO WAIT … THIS IS THE WORST HUCKABEE In February, the website Buzzfeed unearthed columns written by a young Mike Huckabee for a weekly newspaper called “The Baptist Trumpet,” in which Huckabee counseled teens against dancing (“mainly because some people would just not be able to respect a person who attended dances,” a.k.a. the “Footloose” conundrum), soap operas (“I literally hate them!”), smoking (“For the Christian it can damage — even ruin — your witness”) and dating “lost people.”

NO, ON SECOND THOUGHT … DEFINITELY THE WORST HUCKABEE

BEST PLAY FOR SYMPATHY In August, former state Treasurer Martha Shoffner was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison for accepting bribes from a Little Rock bond broker in exchange for state business. One of the things her attorney Chuck Banks did during his final plea for a more lenient sentence was to show the judge a photo of Shoffner's late dog, Fred, which was inscribed: "Thanks, Chuck. Your friend, Fred."

Huckabee said in July that the reason for our drawn-out wars in the Middle East since 9/11 is clear: Our $500 billion-plus per year military just isn’t “fierce” enough. The communique from Commander Huckabee: “When we have a threat … we [need to] make it very clear that we plan to push back and destroy that threat to us. And we won’t take 10 years doing it, we hopefully won’t even take 10 months. It will be like a 10-day exercise, because the fierceness of our forces would mean that we can absolutely guarantee the outcome.” NOW he tells us! If only we’d sent our troops into Iraq and Afghanistan with rifles and tanks instead of ticklesticks and goose down pillows!

OK, OK ... BUT COULD THIS BE THE WORST HUCKABEE? In September, speaking in St. Louis 22

DECEMBER 24, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

before the far-right Eagle Forum conference, Huckabee questioned the motives of the tide of desperate refugees fleeing war-torn Syria — many with nothing more than the clothes on their back — rhetorically asking: “Are they really escaping tyranny, are they escaping poverty, or are they really just coming because we’ve got cable TV?”

WORST HOBBY In Mountain Home, a man was arrested on charges of indecent exposure and criminal mischief in October after police said he was twice spotted tied to a tree while naked in a park on the shores of Amon’s Lake.

WORST GIRLFRIEND During the second sighting of the bound and naked man in Mountain Home (an encounter during which, a witness told police, the man was wearing only a small dishcloth over his junk), police said the man told passersby that he was naked because his girlfriend had stolen his clothes.

BEST TONSILS In October, the nearly 3,000-word obituary for Austin Z. Hanner, 91, of Pearcy (Garland County), made the following memorable boast: “While attending Duke University, he got sick and had his tonsils removed. This is nothing abnormal, except these tonsils were on display for many years, and may still be, due to their large size.”

BEST SQUIRRELRELATED MISHAP In October, officials with the Polk County Emergency Management Office said that a one-acre grass fire was started by a squirrel that jumped on top of an electric transformer and shorted it out, with the resulting electrical explosion dropping sparks that ignited dry grass below.

WORST STRAIGHT OUTTA CONWAY Sen. Jason Rapert’s kookiness went viral again in September, when he posted a cryptic message to Twitter that said: “Not smart to come up and harass somebody in a parking lot who’s carrying a handgun. Better be glad you decided to walk away. #armedandready.” Lo and behold, the person he was apparently talking about, Lance White, knows how to use social media, too. White saw the tweet from Rapert and responded with his own post, saying that the “harassment”

amounted to him asking “a complicated question regarding government,” which Rapert allegedly answered by saying: “I don’t answer questions to smarty pants like you,” before jumping in his truck and leaving. “Didn’t know asking government/law questions [of] a legislator qualified me for getting shot,” White wrote.

BEST DENIAL As the story spread, Rapert again took to social media to deny that White was, in fact, the person he was talking about in his “#armedandready” tweet, leading to the obvious question: How many times a day does Rapert get harassed in parking lots to the point of thinking he might need to whip out his shootin’ iron?

WORST ‘THE END’ On the last day of September, the founders of the consistently excellent Little Rock Film Festival announced the event was ending its run after nine years.

BEST BACKWARD HAIL MARY In November, the Razorback football team needed to convert a 4th-and-25 against Ole Miss to stay alive in overtime. Quarterback Brandon Allen found tight end Hunter Henry well short of the firstdown marker, but Henry managed to hurl the ball behind him as he was tackled. Offensive lineman and giant Dan Skipper leaped to tip the ball and running back Alex Collins picked it up and ran for the first down. The Hogs went on to win the game. It was easily the most exciting and unlikely play in college football all year.

WORST ADVICE In Union County in November, a woman was arrested after police said she followed her mother’s advice that she should give alcohol to her 10-month-old toddler, who was crying because of teething pain. The child

WORST ABUSER OF CASUAL FRIDAY At the Springdale Municipal Airport in July, the airport's on-duty air traffic controller was arrested on charges of public intoxication after police say he was found passed out drunk with his shirt off in the airport control tower. was later taken to a hospital with a blood alcohol content of 0.19, more than twice the legal limit considered drunk for drivers in Arkansas, but recovered with no ill effects.

BEST T-SHIRT In the mugshot of the woman arrested in the incident above, she is wearing a green T-shirt with the words “YOU’RE AN IDIOT” written across the chest.

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In December, the Arkansas Times blog published an essay by Tulsa resident Sarah Vestal about returning to Little Rock to attend the 40th reunion of the 1975 class of Little Rock’s Catholic High School for Boys, her first reunion since transitioning to female after attending the school as Charles Vestal. Though Vestal was nervous about what her classmates’ reactions would be, she was moved to tears by their continued love and respect for her, writing: “[my] acceptance

was summed up by a classmate’s subsequent Facebook posting: ‘You were brave, but as it turned out, we’re a pretty accepting group of guys. As I told someone, having adult children makes a difference in what is a big deal and what isn’t. Proud of you, and proud of my class.’ Recognized authenticity is a wonderful experience.”

BEST APPROPRIATE Employees of a Little Rock supermarket told police in December that a man with a tattoo of a horseshoe on his face entered the store and attempted to steal a horseshoe used as decoration in the store. After clerks tried to stop him from leaving the premises with his oddly appropriate prize, the man told them he was God before fleeing on foot. God, who was described by witnesses as a 5-foot-5, 120-pound Latino man, is still at large at this writing.

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Arts Entertainment AND

his holiday edition of the Arkansas Times, we’re giving this space over to Brasher and Rowe, who write a weekly column of the same name for the Rock Candy blog on the Times’ website. Brasher and Rowe is not an award-winning column, and both Brasher and Rowe are not the Salieri to Jennifer Christman’s Mozart. Yes, Virginia, the annual tradition of newspaper folks phoning in content over Christmas continues, with this phoned-in special edition of Brasher and Rowe:

Holiday survival guide By Jeremy Brasher and Matthew Rowe

BRASHER: It’s Christmastime in Hollis, Arkansas. Stockings hung by the chimney and all that. We come together to honor the true reason for the season, baby Luke Skywalker in a manger on Uncle Owen’s moisture farm with Aunt Beru and the Womp rats. Because Christmastime is all about force — the obligatory force that compels us to deal with our families. Unless your family was killed on Alderaan, and in that case, our condolences. ROWE: No matter where you stand on the war on Christmas, it’s the time of year that you, as an individual who has had personal growth, personal victories and personal space, can take stock of those changes. Now you must balance that (or hide it) so you can visit people and places that have an expectation that you’re still the same person that left oh-so-long ago. So this holiday season, familiarize yourself with these scenarios and prepare for the holiday gauntlet. BRASHER: My holiday gauntlets are Fur Trimmed +1 vs. Grinches. ROWE: If you find yourself alone on Christmas, it’s OK. No big deal. It happens. What you must remember to not do is to type “what to do when you’re alone on Christmas” into a search engine because it will produce the bleakest set of results this side of a Sarah McLachlan-sung commercial for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Do not search this phrase unless you want to be bummed out for days, and doing anything on these lists may result in

jail time. The top result on Google for that search phrase will take you to a site called lonerwolf.com and its 51 ideas for how to spend your holiday alone. The temptation to feel sorry for yourself is amplified by a thousand with ideas such as: 1. Spend the morning in self-deprivation, and spend the evening in selfindulgence. 4: Have a conversation with yourself all day. 34. Collect items that represent your feelings and thoughts about Christmas Day. Put them in a time capsule box and bury them in your backyard. 50. Wrap up strange items and drop them on the doorsteps of every house you can find. Hide and wait for the response. 51. If it’s snowing, sneak out early in the morning and make a family of Christmas men, positioning them mysteriously all over town. Take my advice as a non-attorney

spokesperson and do not do any of these. Get on Tinder or Grindr or whatever the app is where you can find people to play Magic: The Gathering with and do that. If that doesn’t pan out, whatever. Please don’t bury anything, wait for responses, or build a silent army of “Christmas men.” BRASHER: Yeah, don’t despair in your loneliness. There are plenty of things you could do without a special someone on Christmas. Thanks to the miracle of the Internet there is no shortage of Christmas-themed pornography to peruse. On second thought, that’s weird, don’t look at that. Maybe stick to leather themes or stuff where people wear freaky animal masks, because at least that is fairly secular. Christmas, after all, is a religious holiday, and if you start mixing up sex and religion, next thing you know you’re Catholic or worse. ROWE: There’s a group of people who have to work over the holidays. Their work ensures that America

stays great. That also means that they have to be with their co-workers over the holidays. Imagine being with a mix of people that have somewhere better to be, or nowhere better to be, that have no feelings toward the people they’re with, have too many feelings toward the people you’re with — all of that. Oh wait, that’s also what it’s like being with an extended family: The only difference is that children are added to the mix. BRASHER: Children, children everywhere. So, looks like you got stuck with the kids, huh? If you have a car and you’re on your home turf, you can always take them to see some Christmas lights. With any luck the drive there or back will put them to sleep so you can pop half a bar in the den while you watch reruns of “Elf” in peace for once. Thinking about Christmas lights takes me back to my own childhood. The Osborne display along Cantrell Road was always a mainstay of the family lights trip when I was growing up. I even recall when it first began. Cantrell was fairly chichi in those days, which is hard to imagine now that it is merely an escape thoroughfare for people doing crimes on Reservoir Road. But alas, the display eventually burned too hot and too bright for this city and had to be exported to a less gaudy location: Disney World. Without those lights I fear this town may forget all about Christmas and that other day Jennings so prominently illuminated. ROWE: God Bless America and George W. Bush. BRASHER: Lights are how the Christmas spirit enters your eyeholes. But there are many other orifices for Christmas to penetrate as well, namely your ears. Which brings us to the Christmas jams. ROWE: Look, there are two sets of Christmas music: traditional and modern. Traditional Christmas music has had the benefit of having the wheat and chaff separated. Modern music, not so much. As a general rule, all modern Christmas music is CONTINUED ON PAGE 33

DECEMBER 24, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

ROCK CANDY

Unique FINDS at the CLINTON MUSEUM STORE

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

inside the Clinton Presidential Center

A&E NEWS MUSICIANS! THIS WEEK is your last chance to apply for the 2016 Arkansas Times Musicians Showcase, in which performers will compete the last week of January and throughout February at Stickyz for an array of prizes worth over $2,500. Acts must perform 30 minutes of original material with live instrumentation. All styles are welcome. To enter, send a link for Facebook, Reverbnation, Bandcamp or Soundcloud to showcase@ arktimes.com and include band name, hometown, date band was formed, age range of members (all ages welcome), contact person, phone and email. Submission deadline is Dec. 31. NEXT UP IN THE ARKANSAS TIMES Film Series, on Jan. 21, we’re partnering with Arkansas Sounds to host the U.S. premiere of Tav Falco’s ambitious and fascinating new film “Urania Descending” at the Ron Robinson Theater. Falco was born on a farm in rural Arkansas and today lives in Vienna, where he writes books, directs films and records music with the cult art-rock band Panther Burns, which released its most recent album, “Command Performance,” in March. For many years, Falco lived in Memphis, where he befriended and collaborated with a cast of now-iconic characters that included the producer Jim Dickinson, the photographer William Eggleston and Big Star front man Alex Chilton. He is a true Arkansas character and a genuine artist, and we are proud to present his latest work. Influenced by the German Expressionist cinema of Fritz Lang and F.W. Murnau, the film follows a young woman from Little Rock who travels to Vienna, where she “becomes embroiled in an intrigue to uncover buried Nazi plunder.” Part fable and part tone poem, it’s an eerie and powerful experiment from one of Arkansas’s most distinctive native artists. The film, Falco’s first full-length feature, has been screened at David Lynch’s club Silencio, in Paris, but Falco has held off on American showings until he could premiere the movie in Little Rock. Falco will attend the premiere and participate in an audience discussion after the screening, which is free and open to the public.

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THE TO-DO

LIST

BY LINDSEY MILLAR, LESLIE NEWELL PEACOCK AND WILL STEPHENSON

THURSDAY 12/24-THURSDAY 12/31

SATURDAY 12/26

‘ROOM’

SMOKE UP JOHNNY

Various times. Riverdale 10 Cinema. $8.

One of the year’s best-reviewed and most widely anticipated films comes to Little Rock this week: “Room,” directed by Lenny Abrahamson and based on a novel by the Irish-Canadian author Emma Donoghue. Based on a harrowing true story, it’s about a woman (Brie Larson) who emerges from captivity with her 5-year-old son, both of them having been imprisoned by an older man in a shed for seven years. Winner of the Peo-

ple’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival and named one of the year’s 10 best films by the American Film Institute, it’s been nominated for a Best Picture Golden Globe award and mentioned in all the conversations about Academy Award contenders that happen at this time of the year. The L.A. Weekly called it “shattering,” the Chicago Sun-Times called it “one of the best movies of the decade,” and the Los Angeles Times called it “exhilarating and then frightening and exhilarating all over again.” WS

10 p.m. White Water Tavern.

Matt Floyd got married this year. He also came by my house to haul off this ’60sera refrigerator we’d been using to store booze, but had to get rid of to make room for children, to display his crafts and furniture in his forthcoming booth at Mid-Towne Antique Mall. Meanwhile, Alan Disaster draws illustrations of grumpacantigriffitaurcores and such for our online column Brasher and Rowe. Jon Rice has children. Corey Bacon presides over a shoe empire. In other words, the members of Smoke Up Johnny — once Little Rock’s best and surliest barroom rockers — have grown old and

respectable. Maybe the people who used to drunkenly sing along to songs like “Shit Faced on Life” and “12th St.” have, too. But on the day after Christmas, everyone will remember and appreciate the formula that made the band’s live shows so great, as front man Alan Disaster told me back in 2007 when I profiled the band: “We play goodtime music. We play late at night. Everybody gets drunk.” Plus, if you used to live in Little Rock and go to White Water and are back visiting family, this semiannual reunion — in the tradition of The Big Cats and Ashtray Babyhead seasonal shows of yore — is the place to go to see old, familiar faces. Also, you need to get out of the house. LM

LION KING: Alexander Lacey and his big cats are featured in Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, at Verizon Arena this weekend, various times, $10.

SATURDAY 12/26-SUNDAY 12/27

RINGLING BROS. AND BARNUM & BAILEY CIRCUS

11 a.m., 3 and 7 p.m. Sat.; 1 and 5 p.m. Sun. Verizon Arena. $10.

Alexander Lacey is 39 years old, the son of a British zoo director and his wife who for many years toured together performing daring stunts with lions and tigers. The Laceys have trained 11 gener26

DECEMBER 24, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

ations of lions — Alexander played with lion cubs as an infant, stepping into their cage for the first time at the age of 12. He speaks to his lions in English and in German, communicates commands via subtle hand signals, and can tell them apart by their roars. “When I’m asleep and I wake up in the night and hear the males calling out to the females, I can tell

who’s talking to one another,” he once told a reporter. His brothers have also continued in the family business: Martin Jr. (a veritable star in the big cat community) and Richard. Lacey wakes up at 6:30 a.m. each morning to feed his cats — they consume around 8 to 16 pounds of meat daily — and to serve them warm milk and liver oil, which helps sustain

their shiny coats. He is often pictured in photographs kissing a particular lion or tiger on the mouth. This weekend, as the holiday spell begins to wear off, to be replaced by the groggy, free-floating anxiety of the new year, consider taking your family to see the circus, where Lacey will bring out his cats and they will try their hardest to impress. WS

IN BRIEF

SATURDAY 12/26-FRIDAY 1/1

KWANZAA

Little Rock venues. Free (feast for purchase).

Five Little Rock venues will host the seven-day celebration of Kwanzaa, the pan-African heritage tribute, with artists and community leaders as special guests starting Saturday. Adjoa Aiyetoro, professor at UALR’s William H. Bowen School of Law, and jazz pianist Julia Buckingham kick things off Saturday, the day dedicated to the principle of unity (umoja), at noon at Pyramid Art, Books and Custom Framing, 1001 Wright Ave. Stylist Chanelle

Brooks and poet Chris James will be at the House of Art, 108 E. Fourth St., North Little Rock, at 2 p.m. Sunday (self-determination, or kujichagulia); businessman Al Moore and performers Outloud Artistry will be at the Better Community Development offices at 3604 W. 12th St. at 2 p.m. Monday (collective work and responsibility, or ujima); Beverly Young and the Black Business Profile will be the guests at Pyramid at noon Tuesday (cooperative economics, or ujamaa); activist Dr. Anika Whitfield and teachers Juain Young and Phil Mouton will be at the

Mosaic Templars Cultural Center, Ninth and Broadway, at noon Wednesday (purpose, or nia); Jamie and hiphop artist Leron McAdoo and opera singer Nisheedah Golden will appear at Pyramid at noon Thursday (creativity, or kuumba); Children International Director Ryan Davis and Imam Johnny Hasan will be guests at 3 p.m. Friday (faith, imani) at Simply Najiyyah’s FishBoat, 1717 Wright Ave., where there will be a special meal and the ending “harambee” (let’s pull together) singing. Ojima Robinson is the official drummer for the celebration. LNP

Go out to Pinnacle Mountain State Park and meet up with a park interpreter, who’ll entertain you as you summit Pinnacle Mountain with stories about the history of the mountain, what unique plants grow there, and what animals live there. The terrain is rugged, which is just what you

need to shed the extra weight from the Christmas fudge, but the view from the top, of the Arkansas River Valley, is beautiful. Those jeans won’t feel so tight, and you’ll feel so virtuous that folks who stayed at the bottom won’t be able to stand your boasting. Bring water and wear sturdy shoes. LNP

SUNDAY 12/27

HOLIDAY HIKE

9 a.m.-noon, Pinnacle Mountain. Free.

You’ve eaten pumpkin pie and drunk egg nog until you’re swole up like Santa’s own self. Here’s a way to burn off some calories and be distracted from the pain at the same time:

TUESDAY 12/29

ADAM FAUCETT & THE TALL GRASS 9:30 p.m. White Water Tavern.

One of last year’s very best Little Rock albums was Adam Faucett’s “Blind Water Finds Blind Water.” I’m still not sure it found the audience it deserved. Faucett is a longtime Arkansas songwriter in his mid-30s, with a rangy beard and a deadpan sense of humor. “For the last seven years it seems most of my time has been spent in my van,” he told us last year. His music is a sort of grunge-country hybrid; an old Arkansas Times profile compared it to “Mark Kozelek or Gordon Lightfoot.” There is an unhinged, mountain-yodel wildness to his voice that may remind you of the species of weird Ozark country-folk recently highlighted on the archival compilation “Corn Dodgers and Hoss Hair Pullers.” Faucett’s vocal range is always wider than you expect. The album is good, but it’s gripping to see him live — one of those things. He and his band look like a black-metal group playing Neil Young songs for fun. Sooner or later you’ll see them and probably like them; either way, they’ll keep doing it. “I know damn well what it means to keep shining when nobody sees,” Faucett sings on a song called “Living on the Moon.” It’s a great song. WS

SATURDAY 12/26 Featured on “Mystery Science Theater 3000” and occasionally slandered as one of the “worst films ever made,” 1964’s “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians” — about a plot by the government of Mars to abduct Santa Claus — screens at Vino’s at 7:30 p.m., free. Comedy troupe The Main Thing (featuring performers whose work has been featured on “Saturday Night Live,” MTV and Off-Broadway) perform its Christmas production, “A Fertile Holiday,” at the Joint in Argenta, 8 p.m., $22. The Sandman, billed as the world’s No. 1 comedian-hypnotist, performs at The Loony Bin at 7:30 p.m. and 10 p.m., $10. Jam band Cooper’s Orbit plays at Stickyz at 9 p.m., $5. Canvas plays at Cajun’s Wharf, 9 p.m. Fayetteville party band Funk Factory plays at George’s Majestic Lounge, 9 p.m. The Heat is at the Afterthought, 9 p.m., $7. Songwriter Ryan Saunders plays an album release show at Maxine’s in Hot Springs, 9 p.m., $5. Local favorites Tragikly White play at Revolution at 9:30 p.m., $10.

SUNDAY 12/27

DAY DRINKER: Adam Faucett & The Tall Grass play at White Water Tavern with Conway punk band Headcold, 9;30 p.m. Tuesday.

Jamaican dancehall artist Thugsy Malone performs at Power Ultra Lounge with Butterfly and Irie Soul, 8 p.m., $10-$20. Revolution hosts an adults-only funk showcase, featuring performances by The On Call Band and Mike Walker & The Unfair Advantage, 8:30 p.m., $10 adv., $15 day of. www.arktimes.com

DECEMBER 24, 2015

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

$15 day of. 300 President Clinton Ave. 501823-0090. www.rumbarevolution.com/new. Thugsy Malone, Butterfly, Irie Soul. Power Ultra Lounge, 8 p.m., $10-$20. 220 W 6th St. 501-374-5100.

COMEDY

The Sandman. The Loony Bin, 7:30 p.m., $10. 10301 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-228-5555. www.loonybincomedy.com.

SATURDAY, DEC. 26

MUSIC

Canvas (headliner), Fire & Brimstone (happy hour). Cajun’s Wharf, 5:30 and 9 p.m. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. www.cajunswharf.com. Cooper’s Orbit. Stickyz Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicken Shack, 9 p.m., $5. 107 River Market Ave. 501372-7707. www.stickyz.com. Funk Factory. George’s Majestic Lounge, 9 p.m. 519 W. Dickson St., Fayetteville. 479442-4226. The Heat. Afterthought Bistro and Bar, 9 p.m., $7. 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-663-1196. www. afterthoughtbistroandbar.com. Karaoke at Khalil’s. Khalil’s Pub, 7 p.m. 110 S. Shackleford Road. 501-224-0224. www. khalilspub.com. Karaoke. Zack’s Place, 8 p.m., free. 1400 S. University Ave. 501-664-6444. Casa Mexicana, 7 p.m. 7111 JFK Blvd., NLR. 501-835-7876. Karaoke with Kevin & Cara. All ages, on the restaurant side. Revolution, 9 p.m.-12:45 a.m., free. 300 President Clinton Ave. 501-823-0090. www.rumbarevolution.com/new. K.I.S.S. Saturdays. Featuring DJ Silky Slim. Dress code enforced. Sway, 10 p.m. 412 Louisiana. 501-492-9802. Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-372-4782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com. Pickin’ Porch. Bring your instrument. All ages welcome. Faulkner County Library, 9:30 a.m. 1900 Tyler St., Conway. 501-327-7482. www. fcl.org. Ryan Saunders (album release). Maxine’s, 9 p.m., $5. 700 Central Ave., Hot Springs. www. maxinespub.com. Smoke Up Johnny. White Water Tavern, 10 p.m. 2500 W. 7th St. 501-375-8400. www. whitewatertavern.com. Ted Ludwig Trio. Capital Bar and Grill, 8 p.m., free. 111 W. Markham St. 501-370-7013. www. capitalbarandgrill.com. Tragikly White. Revolution, 9:30 p.m., $10. 300 President Clinton Ave. 501-823-0090. www. rumbarevolution.com/new.

COMEDY

“A Fertile Holiday.” An original production by The Main Thing. The Joint, 8 p.m., $22. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501-372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com. The Sandman. The Loony Bin, 7:30 p.m. and 10 p.m., $10. 10301 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-228-5555. www.loonybincomedy.com.

EVENTS

Artist for Recovery. A secular recovery group for people with addictions. Quapaw Quarter United Methodist Church, 10 a.m. 1601 S. Louisiana. Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey. Verizon Arena, 1 and 5 p.m., $10. 1 Alltel Arena Way, NLR. 501-975-9001. verizonarena.com.

MONDAY, DEC. 28

MUSIC

FERTILE HOLIDAY: Comedy troupe The Main Thing (featuring performers whose work has been featured on “Saturday Night Live,” MTV and Off-Broadway) perform their Christmas production at the Joint in Argenta, 8 p.m. Sunday, $22. a.m., $8-$28. 400 President Clinton Ave. 501613-7001. Pork & Bourbon Tour. Bike tour includes bicycle, guide, helmets and maps. Bobby’s Bike Hike, 11:30 a.m., $35-$45. 400 President Clinton Ave. 501-613-7001. Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey. Verizon Arena, Dec. 26, 11 a.m., 3 and 7 p.m.; Dec. 27, 1 and 5 p.m., $10. 1 Alltel Arena Way, NLR. 501-975-9001. verizonarena.com.

FILM

“Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.” Vino’s. 923 W. 7th St. 501-375-8466. www.vinosbrewpub.com.

SUNDAY, DEC. 27

DECEMBER 24, 2015

TUESDAY, DEC. 29

MUSIC

Irish Traditional Music Session. Hibernia Irish Tavern, 2:30 p.m. 9700 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-246-4340. www.hiberniairishtavern.com. Karaoke. Shorty Small’s, 6-9 p.m. 1475 Hogan Lane, Conway. 501-764-0604. www.shortysmalls.com. Karaoke with DJ Sara. Hardrider Bar & Grill, 7 p.m., free. 6613 John Harden Drive, Cabot. 501-982-1939. Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-372-4782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com. The On Call Band, Mike Walker & The Unfair Advantage. Revolution, 8:30 p.m., $10 adv.,

NOW TWO CONVENIENT LOCATIONS LITTLE ROCK • NORTH LITTLE ROCK

EVENTS

Falun Gong meditation. Allsopp Park, 9 a.m., free. Cantrell and Cedar Hill Roads. Hillcrest Farmers Market. Pulaski Heights Baptist Church, 7 a.m.-2 p.m. 2200 Kavanaugh Blvd. Historic Neighborhoods Tour. Bike tour of historic neighborhoods includes bike, guide, helmets and maps. Bobby’s Bike Hike, 9 ARKANSAS TIMES

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Amy Jo Jackson. Studio Theatre, 7 p.m. 320 W. 7th St. Left Behind, Conviction, Levels, Good Monday. Low Key Arts, 7 p.m., $8. 118 Arbor St., Hot Springs. Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-372-4782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com. Lucious Spiller. Afterthought Bistro & Bar, 8:30 p.m. 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-6631196. www.afterthoughtbistroandbar.com. Monday Night Jazz. Afterthought Bistro & Bar, 8 p.m., $5. 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-6631196. www.afterthoughtbistroandbar.com. Open Mic. The Lobby Bar. Studio Theatre, 8 p.m. 320 W. 7th St. Richie Johnson. Cajun’s Wharf, 5:30 p.m. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. www.cajunswharf.com.

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

MUSIC

Adam Faucett & The Tall Grass. White Water Tavern, 9:30 p.m. 2500 W. 7th St. 501-3758400. www.whitewatertavern.com. Jeff Ling. Khalil’s Pub, 6 p.m. 110 S. Shackleford Road. 501-224-0224. www.khalilspub.com. Jim Dickerson. Sonny Williams’ Steak Room, 7 p.m. 500 President Clinton Ave. 501-3242999. www.sonnywilliamssteakroom.com. Karaoke Tuesday. Prost, 8 p.m., free. 322 President Clinton Blvd. 501-244-9550. willydspianobar.com/prost-2. Karaoke Tuesdays. On the patio. Stickyz Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicken Shack, 7:30 p.m., free. 107 River Market Ave. 501-372-7707. www. stickyz.com. Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-372-4782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com. Music Jam. Hosted by Elliott Griffen and Joseph Fuller. The Joint, 8-11 p.m., free. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501-372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com. Tuesday Jam Session with Carl Mouton. Afterthought Bistro & Bar, 8 p.m., free. 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-663-1196. www.afterthoughtbistroandbar.com.

COMEDY

Stand-Up Tuesday. Hosted by Adam Hogg.

The Joint, 8 p.m., $5. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501-372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com.

DANCE

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

EVENTS

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

WEDNESDAY, DEC. 30

MUSIC

Acoustic Open Mic. Afterthought Bistro & Bar, 8 p.m., free. 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-6631196. www.afterthoughtbistroandbar.com. Brian and Nick. Cajun’s Wharf, 5:30 p.m. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. www.cajunswharf.com. Drageoke with Chi Chi Valdez. Sway. 412 Louisiana. Jim Dickerson. Sonny Williams’ Steak Room, 7 p.m. 500 President Clinton Ave. 501-3242999. www.sonnywilliamssteakroom.com. Karaoke at Khalil’s. Khalil’s Pub, 7 p.m. 110 S. Shackleford Road. 501-224-0224. www. khalilspub.com. Karaoke. MUSE Ultra Lounge, 8:30 p.m., free. 2611 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-663-6398. Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-372-4782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com. Open Mic Nite with Deuce. Thirst n’ Howl, 7:30 p.m., free. 14710 Cantrell Road. 501-3798189. www.thirst-n-howl.com.

COMEDY

The Joint Venture. Improv comedy group. The Joint, 8 p.m., $7. 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 and Cleveland streets. 501-350-4712. www. littlerockbopclub.

POETRY

Wednesday Night Poetry. 21-and-older show. Maxine’s, 7 p.m., free. 700 Central Ave., Hot Springs. 501-321-0909. maxineslive.com/ shows.html.

ARTS

THEATER

“The Little Mermaid.” Arkansas Repertory Theatre, through Jan. 3: Wed.-Sun., 7 p.m.; Sat., Jan. 2, 2 p.m. 601 Main St. 501-378-0405. www.therep.org. “Out of Order.” Murry’s Dinner Playhouse, through Dec. 27: Tue.-Sat., 6 p.m.; Sun., 5:30 p.m. 6323 Col. Glenn Road. 501-562-3131. murrysdinnerplayhouse.com. “Peter and the Starcatcher.” Walton Arts Center, through Jan. 3: Sat., Sun., 2 p.m., $10-$25. 495 W. Dickson St., Fayetteville. 479-443-5600.

NEW GALLERY EVENT

HEARNE FINE ART, 1001 Wright Ave.: “Treasure,” works by Mason Archie, Phoebe Beasley, John Biggers, Ludovic Booz, Bisa Butler, Robert Carter, Kevin Cole, Alfred Conteh, Chukes, Dean Mitchell, Lawrence Finney, Sam Gilliam, Samella Lewis, Betye Saar, Marjorie-Williams Smith and TAFA; “Contemporary Folk Art; Four Decades of Creativity: My Way,” works by Melverue Abraham, Willie Earl Robinson, Sylvester McKissick, Sondra Strong and Kennith Humphrey, reception 5 p.m. Dec. 31, Kwanzaa “Kumba” Day of Creativity. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Sat. 372-6822.

GALLERY EXHIBITS

ARGENTA GALLERY, 413 Main St., NLR: “Revelation,” 18 pastel and mixed media works by Virmarie DePoyster, through Jan. 4. 912-6567. ARKANSAS ARTS CENTER, MacArthur Park: “Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art,” 93 works by 72 artists from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, through Jan. 17; “Life and Light: Photographic Travels through Latin America with Bryan Clifton,” through Feb. 14. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sat., 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sun. 372-4000. ARKANSAS CAPITAL CORP., 200 River Market Ave., Suite 400: “Longevity,” artworks by Emily Wood, Melissa Gill, Joli Livaudais and Sandra Sell. www.arcapital.com. BOSWELL MOUROT FINE ART, 5815 Kavanaugh Blvd.: “Drawing Value,” trompe l’oeil charcoal drawings by Trevor Bennett, 20 percent of sales benefit the Friends of Contemporary Craft. 664-0030. BUTLER CENTER GALLERIES, Arkansas Studies Institute, 401 President Clinton Ave.: “Earth Work: Photographs by Gary Cawood”; “Arkansas Pastel Society National Exhibition,” both through Feb. 27; “Photographic Arts: African American Studio Photography,” from the Joshua and Mary Swift Collection, “Gene Hatfield: Outside the Lines,” both through Dec. 26. 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 320-5790. CHRIST CHURCH, 509 Scott. St.: Paintings, mixed media and printmaking by Diane Harper, through December. 374-9247. CHROMA GALLERY, 5707 Kavanaugh Blvd.: Work by Robert Reep and other Arkansas artists. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Sat. 664-0880. DRAWL, 5208 Kavanaugh Blvd.: “The Flatlander,” depictions of the Delta by Norwood Creech. 240-7446. GALLERY 221, Second and Center streets: “Fall into Art Show and Sale,” annual gallery artists exhibition. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Sat. 801-0211. GALLERY 26, 2601 Kavanaugh Blvd.: 21st annual “Holiday Art Show,” work by 66 Arkansas artists, through Jan. 9. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tue.-Sat. 664-8996. GINO HOLLANDER GALLERY, 2nd and Center: Paintings and works on paper by Gino Hollander. 801-0211. GREG THOMPSON FINE ART, 429 Main St., NLR: “Charles Harrington — The Journey,” landscapes, through Jan. 9. 664-2787. HEARNE FINE ART, 1001 Wright Ave.: “Treasure,” works by Mason Archie, Phoebe Beasley, John Biggers, Ludovic Booz, Bisa Butler, Robert Carter, Kevin Cole, Alfred Conteh,

Chukes, Dean Mitchell, Lawrence Finney, Sam Gilliam, Samella Lewis, Betye Saar, Marjorie-Williams Smith and TAFA; “Contemporary Folk Art; Four Decades of Creativity: My Way,” works by Melverue Abraham, Willie Earl Robinson, Sylvester McKissick, Sondra Strong and Kennith Humphrey, receptions 5 p.m. Dec. 31, Kwanzaa “Kumba” Day of Creativity. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Sat. 372-6822. HISTORIC ARKANSAS MUSEUM GALLERIES, 200 E. Third St.: “Growing Up … In Words and Images,” paintings by Joe Barry Carroll, through Jan. 3; “Art. Function. Craft: The Life and Work of Arkansas Living Treasures,” works by 14 craftsmen honored by Arkansas Arts Council. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 324-9351. L&L BECK ART GALLERY, 5705 Kavanaugh Blvd.: “Religious Art,” through December. 660-4006. LAMAN LIBRARY, 2801 Orange St.: “Beyond Words,” 34 illustrations from the International Book Fair for Children and Youth, through Jan. 25. 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Mon.-Thu., 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Fri.-Sat. 372-6933. LAMAN LIBRARY ARGENTA BRANCH, 420 Main St.: “36th Street Art Exhibition,” show and sale of work by the clients of the United Cerebral Palsy Education Center, through Jan. 1. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 687-1061. LOCAL COLOUR, 5811 Kavanaugh Blvd.: Rotating work by 27 artists in collective. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 265-0422. MATT MCLEOD FINE ART GALLERY, 108 W. Sixth St.: Work by McLeod, J.O. Buckley, Taimur Cleary, Kathy Strause, Alice Andrews, Max Gore, James Hayes, Harry Loucks and Angela Davis Johnson. 725-8508. MUGS CAFE, 515 Main St., NLR: “Blue Lines and Black Ink,” original comic book art by John Lucas and Dusty Higgins, through Jan. 13. 7 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 960-9524. RED DOOR GALLERY, 3715 JFK, NLR: New work by Matt Coburn, Paula Jones, Theresa Cates and Amy Hill-Imler, new glass by James Hayes, ceramics by Kelly Edwards, sculpture by Kim Owen and other work. 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Sat. 753-5227. STEPHANO AND GAINES FINE ART, 1916 N. Fillmore St.: Carved wood sculpture by actor Tony Dow, through Feb. 8; work by gallery artists. 563-4218. TRIO’S PAVILION ROOM, 8201 Cantrell Road (Pavilion in the Park): “Wet Nose Series,” works by Stephano Sutherlin. ARKADELPHIA HENDERSON STATE UNIVERSITY: “125th Anniversary Alumni Art Exhibition,” work by Beverly Buys, Jonathan Cromer, Carey Roberson, David Dahlstedt, Meghan Hawkes, Sara Dismukes, Nicole Brisco, Lana Taliaferro, Chrystal Seawood and V.L. Cox, Russell Fine Arts Gallery. 870-230-5000. BENTONVILLE CRYSTAL BRIDGES MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART, One Museum Way: “Picturing the Americas: Landscape Painting from Tierra del Fuego to the Arctic,” more than 100 paintings by Bierstadt, Church, Cole, Heade, O’Keeffe and others, from the Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada, through Jan. 18, “Alfred H. Maurer: Art on the Edge,” 65 works spanning the artist’s career from the Addison Gallery of www.arktimes.com

DECEMBER 24, 2015

G N I D EN

AFTER DARK, CONT. Phillips Academy, through Jan. 4; American masterworks spanning four centuries in the permanent collection. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon., Thu.; 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Wed., Fri.; 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Sat.-Sun., closed Tue. 479-418-5700.

Pike, also a gift shop. 8 a.m.-3 p.m. Mon.-Fri., audio tour available at no cost. 212-5215. ARKANSAS SPORTS HALL OF FAME MUSEUM, Verizon Arena, NLR: 10 a.m.4:30 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 663-4328. CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL MUSEUM VISITOR CENTER, Bates and Park: Exhibits on the 1957 desegregation of Central and the civil rights movement. 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m. daily. 374-1957. CLINTON PRESIDENTIAL CENTER, 1200 President Clinton Ave.: “Coca-Cola: An American Original,” the art and history of Coca-Cola advertising and bottles, antique Coca-Cola delivery truck, artist’s installation of 3D-printed bottle designs, through Feb. 15; Anne Frank Tree, new installation on the grounds; permanent exhibits on 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. ESSE PURSE MUSEUM & STORE, 1510 S. Main St.: “Oh What Fun!” holiday exhibit, featuring vintage decorations and ornaments, through Jan. 3. 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Tue.Sun., $8-$10. 916-9022. HISTORIC ARKANSAS MUSEUM, 200 E. 3rd St.: Refurbished 19th century structures from original city, guided tours Monday and Tuesday on the hour, self-guided Wednesday through Sunday, $2.50 adults, $1 under 18, free to 65 and over. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 324-9351. MacARTHUR MUSEUM OF ARKANSAS MILITARY HISTORY, 503 E. Ninth St. (MacArthur Park): “Waging Modern Warfare”; “Gen. Wesley Clark”; “Vietnam, America’s Conflict”; “Undaunted Courage, Proven Loyalty: Japanese American Soldiers in World War II. 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 1-4 p.m. Sun. 376-4602. MOSAIC TEMPLARS CULTURAL CENTER, 9th and Broadway: Permanent exhibits on African American entrepreneurship in Arkansas. 683-3610. MUSEUM OF DISCOVERY, 500 President Clinton Ave.: “Wiggle Worms,” science program for pre-K children 10 -10:30 a.m. every Tue. Hours: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun., $10 ages 13 and older, $8 ages 1-12, free to members and children under 1. 396-7050. OLD STATE HOUSE MUSEUM, 300 W. Markham: “Lost + Found: Saving Downtowns in Arkansas,” photographs of eight projects completed or renovated by Cromwell Architects Engineers; “Different Strokes,” the history of bicycling and places cycling in Arkansas, featuring artifacts, historical pictures and video, through February 2016. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 324-9685. WITT STEPHENS JR. CENTRAL ARKANSAS NATURE CENTER, Riverfront Park: Exhibits on fishing and hunting and the state Game and Fish Commission. 907-0636.

C S E D IA

BENTON DIANNE ROBERTS ART STUDIO AND GALLERY, 110 N. Market St.: Work by Dianne Roberts, classes. 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Wed.-Fri., 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sat. 860-7467.

N O C A L A URm by TAV F a Fil

arkcatfish.com t-shirts, back issues and more

7 P.M. THURSDAY, JANUARY 21

RON ROBINSON THEATER

100 RIVER MARKET

WE’RE SHOWING

tav falco’s “urania decending”

FOLLOWED BY POST-SCREENING Q&A WITH TAV FALCO

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

USA

v E R E I 6 M 1 0 E 2 R M M P P P : 7 v 2 1 s t Ja n . hT ur. FAYETTEVILLE LOCAL COLOR STUDIO GALLERY, 275 S. Archibald Yell Blvd.: Drawings and paintings by Diane Stinebaugh. 5:30-8 p.m. Mon.-Fri. 479-461-8761.

FORT SMITH REGIONAL ART MUSEUM, 1601 Rogers Ave.: “Resonance and Memory: The Essence of Landscape,” 25 works by eight contemporary artists, through March 6. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 479784-2787.

HOT SPRINGS JUSTUS FINE ART, 827 Central Ave.: “Delta in Blue,” photographs by Beverly Buys, also work by Dolores Justus, Laura Raborn, Tony Saladino, Rebecca Thompson, Dan Thornhill and others, through December. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Wed.-Sat. 501-321-2335.

R R E E G G G E E S S I I E E R R R R E E T T E E P s s P r r e e r e h e h I g t g t u a u a L e e e l e IV A KaAatotoggrraapphhyy::RRicichhaarrdrdrPLPLalakkaaooss CChthtalaerrlRilieeoFcFk AR

JASPER NELMS GALLERY, Church Street: Work by Winston Taylor, Don Nelms, Pamla Klenczar and Scott Baldassari. 870-446-5477.

PERRYVILLE SUDS GALLERY, Courthouse Square: Paintings by Dottie Morrissey, Alma Gipson, Al Garrett Jr., Phyllis Loftin, Alene Otts, Mauretta Frantz, Raylene Finkbeiner, Kathy Williams and Evelyn Garrett. Noon-6 p.m. Wed.-Fri, noon-4 p.m. Sat. 501-766-7584.

o o d d Li n n a e a S S u n r r e e l l ve s s i i A e e t r r e K K k FFrrititzz iver Mar

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PINE BLUFF ARTS AND SCIENCE CENTER FOR SOUTHEAST ARKANSAS, 701 S. Main St.: “Arkansas Women to Watch: Organic Matters” work by Dawn Holder, Sandra Luckett, Katherine Rutter and Melissa Wilkinson selected by the Arkansas committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, through Jan. 21; “Pictorialist and Modernist: Howard Stern Photographs from the Permanent Collection”; “Pine Bluff Art League Exhibition”; “Exploring the Frontier: Arkansas 1540-1840”; STEAM Studio and Tinkering Studio. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.Fri., 1-4 p.m. Sat. 870-536-3375.

100 R

USA

ARKANSAS TIMES

CALICO ROCK CALICO ROCK MUSEUM, Main Street: Displays on Native American cultures, steamboats, the railroad and local history. www. calicorockmuseum.com.

v PREMIERE v Thur. 21st Jan. 7:PM 2016

ARKANSAS INLAND MARITIME MUSEUM, North Little Rock: The USS Razorback submarine tours. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Fri.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 371-8320. ARKANSAS NATIONAL GUARD MUSEUM, Camp Robinson: Artifacts on military history, Camp Robinson and its predecessor, Camp DECEMBER 24, 2015

1 7220

URANIA DESCEND a Film by TAV FALCO

MUSEUM EXHIBITS

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ENGLAND TOLTEC MOUNDS STATE PARK, U.S. Hwy. 165: Major prehistoric Indian site with visitors’ center and museum. 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat., noon-5 p.m. Sun., closed Mon. $3 for adults, $2 for ages 6-12. 961-9442.

‘NEST’ IN THE NEW YEAR: Gallery 221 at 221 W. Second St. will open an exhibition of mixed media paintings by Kasten McClellan Searles on Jan. 4. There will be a reception from 5-8 p.m. Jan. 8, 2nd Friday Art Night. Also at the gallery: work by Tyler Arnold, Kathi Couch, EMILE, Greg Lahti, Sean LeCrone, Elizabeth Nevins, Cedric Watson, C.B. Williams, Gino Hollander, Siri Hollander and jewelry by Rae Ann Bayless.

JACKSONVILLE JACKSONVILLE MUSEUM OF MILITARY HISTORY, 100 Veterans Circle: Exhibits on D-Day; F-105, Vietnam era plane (“The Thud”); the Civil War Battle of Reed’s Bridge, Arkansas Ordnance Plant (AOP) and other military history. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. $3 adults; $2 seniors, military; $1 students. 501-241-1943. MORRILTON MUSEUM OF AUTOMOBILES, Petit Jean Mountain: Permanent exhibit of more than 50 cars from 1904-1967 depicting the evolution of the automobile. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. 7 days. 501-727-5427. PINE BLUFF ARTS AND SCIENCE CENTER FOR SOUTHEAST ARKANSAS, 701 S. Main St.: “Exploring the Frontier: Arkansas 1540-1840,” Arkansas Discovery Network hands-on exhibition; “Heritage Detectives: Discovering Arkansas’ Hidden Heritage.” 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 1-4 p.m. Sat. 870-536-3375. POTTSVILLE POTTS INN, 25 E. Ash St.: Preserved 1850s stagecoach station on the Butterfield Overland Mail Route, with period furnishings, log structures, hat museum, doll museum, doctor’s office, antique farm equipment. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Wed.-Sat. $5 adults, $2 students, 5 and under free. 479-968-9369. ROGERS ROGERS HISTORICAL MUSEUM, 322 S.

2nd St.: “A Rogers Christmas,” Hawkins House, through Jan. 3; “Fun and Games,” the history of golf, roller skating, bowling, tennis and swimming in Rogers. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon., Wed.-Sun., 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Tue. 479-6210-1154. SCOTT PLANTATION AGRICULTURE MUSEUM, U.S. Hwy. 165 and state Hwy. 161: Permanent exhibits on historic agriculture. 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 9611409. SCOTT PLANTATION SETTLEMENT: 1840s log cabin, one-room school house, tenant houses, smokehouse and artifacts on plantation life. 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Thu.-Sat. 351-0300. www.scottconnections.org.

CALL FOR ENTRIES The Arkansas Historic Preservation Program and the Arkansas Humanities Council are sponsoring a filmmaking contest for high school students. Films must be between five and 15 minutes long and be about an historic site (including archeological sites, buildings, or other places with historic significance at least 50 years old or older) for AETN’s “Student Selects: A Young Filmmakers Showcase.” Winning films will be screened in May 2016 at the Ron Robinson Theater. Deadline is March 18, 2016. Find more information at www.aetn.org/ studentselects.

UCA PUBLIC APPEARANCES PRESENTS:

on Tour is offering a chance to win two free tickets to this fantastic concert on Friday, January 22, 2016. Quantities are limited. Musicians include:

• Raul Midon, vocals & guitar • Nicholas Payton, trumpet • Ravi Coltrane, tenor & soprano saxophone • Gerald Clayton, piano, music director • Joe Sanders, bass • Justin Brown, drums Send your entry via email to phyllis@arktimes.com with Monterey Jazz Fest Tickets in the subject line and include contact information. Winners will be announced and contacted on January 1. uca.edu/publicappearances www.arktimes.com

DECEMBER 24, 2015

MOVIE REVIEW

NEW FACES IN GOOD VS. EVIL: Resistance fighters Rey (Daisy Ridley) and Fin (John Boyega) are on the run in “The Force Awakens.”

Tour de Force New chapter reclaims the myth of ‘Star Wars.’ BY JAMES MATTHEWS

nless you live on a planet at the far edge of the galaxy, then you already know that the newest “Star Wars” — “Episode VII: The Force Awakens” — has been declared a commercial and critical success, by everyone from RogerEbert.com (3.5 stars) to Rotten Tomatoes (95 percent) to the guy at my office who went opening night (“crazy good”). Even staid NPR only occasionally interrupted its “Star Wars” opening-weekend coverage for updates on national politics and federal interest rates. It seems to have made everyone happy, except, I would guess, a handful of Republican presidential candidates, who must be horrified that Americans are hourly cheering for an AWOL soldier, a desert scavenge and a group of rabblerousers who dare resist domination and have a penchant for blowing things up. And don’t even get them started on Princess Leia’s having become a general. So it’s established: The new “Star Wars,” directed by J.J. Abrams, is a success. But why? For one reason, it’s the overwhelming sense of relief it brings — relief that the “Star Wars” franchise has been rescued from the drecky prequels of the early 2000s. We are now free to forget Jar Jar Binks and Hayden Christensen’s Anakin. (I half expected 32

DECEMBER 24, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

the movie to open with Han Solo waking up and turning to Leia, Bob Newhartstyle, and saying, “I just had the strangest dream ... .”) “The Force Awakens” hews more closely to the original movies, in both feel and storyline. Without giving too much away — and that assumes there is still someone who hasn’t yet seen it — the latest episode picks up 30 years after the Empire and its second Deathstar were destroyed, in “Return of the Jedi.” The Resistance is still fighting, only now its enemy is the First Order, the worst of what was left of the Empire. The First Order has its own phalanxes of storm troopers, its own Vader-like up-andcomer, Kylo Ren (played by Adam Driver in a role he seems to have been chiseled for), and it even has its own Deathstar (called Starkiller Base because it sounds more ominous than Deathstar III). In the face of this new enemy, the Resistance must find Luke Skywalker, the aging Jedi. The movie is full of other “Star Wars” must-haves. There’s a swashbuckling pilot, a follow-along droid (complete with holographic message), light sabers, Jedi mind tricks and father-son tension. The marionette strings of misleading relationships in the original episodes: Who is Luke’s father? (Spoiler alert: It’s Vader), and who is the other Jedi, Leia or

Han? (Spoiler alert: It’s Leia) — are still being pulled, some revealed by movie’s end, other questions to be answered in future installments. And a John Williams score undergirds it all. No doubt you’ve heard that there are appearances by other beloved characters from the originals, like Chewbacca and Admiral Ackbar. The obvious question: Would they merely be trotted out for cameos, or would they be full-fledged characters again? Take Han Solo. A generation’s Odysseus, the quick-witted wanderer. We sense at the end of “Return of the Jedi” that Han has finally found a home. The new episode could have left him there, a marginal character for the fanboys to cheer. Instead, we find Han, like Odysseus after his travels, unable to stay put and aching for new adventures. It’s refreshing to see our heroes age along with us. Lest you think this is merely a nostalgia machine, there is a slate of new characters, thankfully unfamiliar as actors, who will ably carry the franchise into the future. Daisy Ridley as Rey, the scrappy, self-reliant girl from a distant outpost; John Boyega as Fin, the storm trooper who deserts his post and finds his humanity; and Oscar Isaac as Poe, the genius X-wing fighter pilot. Though the catalyst for the movie is the need to find Luke Skywalker, the quest serves as a torch-passing to this new generation. And it works, I think. We connect with the new characters as much as their predecessors. But all of that does not fully explain why “The Force Awakens” is so good, why it can leave you feeling better about

the world when you leave the theater. I believe there is a clue to its power in the movie itself. Several times, the younger characters, upon learning that a person or an event is real, exclaim, “I thought that was just a story!” Luke and Han and Leia and their exploits have already passed into myth. They are stories told by the Resistance and First Order alike, stories of unlikely heroes, the allure of power and, ultimately, the possibility of redemption. Thirty years ago, after the original Star Wars movies, journalist Bill Moyers sat down with mythologist Joseph Campbell at George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch for a conversation aired on PBS (and later published as the book “The Power of Myth”). The setting was not incidental; George Lucas had acknowledged his debt to Campbell’s work on hero stories. During the conversation, “Star Wars” and its characters came up repeatedly. Moyers said of the original movie, “It wasn’t just the production value that made that such an exciting film to watch. It was that it came along at a time when people needed to see in recognizable images the clash of good and evil. They needed to be reminded of idealism, to see a romance based upon selflessness rather than selfishness.” The same could be said of “The Force Awakens.” It is this sense of myth, so lacking in the prequels, that the latest episode has recaptured. It allows us, the viewers, to see ourselves in the characters on screen (and with a more diverse cast, even more of us can see ourselves there) and imagine a world of hope, new beginnings and the possibility of redemption.

HOLIDAY SURVIVAL GUIDE, CONT. terrible. And the genres — a good chunk of them are about the genrebending of Christmas music. Rock ’n’ roll Christmas novelty songs from the late ’50s are still dominating Christmas playlists. Even worse are new genres doing a Christmas song. BRASHER: Real talk here, when it comes to novelty, the John Waters Christmas compilation is the only Christmas record anyone needs forever. So go look that one up before you drop any dough on “AVICII Presents Trans-Siberian Orchestra: The Remixes Ibiza 2015,” or Fetty Wap’s “Trap Christmas,” or “A Very Special Downhome for the Holidays” with Imagine Dragons. And speaking of downhome for the holidays ... ROWE: Returning to where you came from is a perilous proposition. Even Jesus couldn’t play Nazareth, and there’s no reason to think that any old friends or old haunts will be very impressed with you. Speaking of old haunts, every place you liked growing up has now been replaced by Sonic. But if you do find a place where you and your old friends can get together, do it. Also, don’t talk about starting a brewery with any of them. This is a trap. BRASHER: You have killed my brewery dreams before they could even ferment. ROWE: Returning to visit family you haven’t seen or spoken with in awhile will open you up to a barrage of predictable questions based on your stage in life. These family members are connected with you mainly by major life changes or commitments, so they are primarily only concerned about these things. BRASHER: Let’s call it the relationship spectrum interrogation. ROWE: It’s just something you should come to expect every family gathering: Single? = When are you going to see someone? Seeing someone? = When are you going to get married? Married? = When are you going to have kids? Have kids? = Don’t you wish you were still single? Of course, there are a few members of your family who understand

that all lives are different and will ask you a different series of questions based on your stage in life. Single? = Do you know that Obama is the antichrist? Seeing someone? = Do you know that Obama is the antichrist? Married? = Do you know that Obama is the antichrist? Have kids? = Will you ask your kids to be quiet so I can watch Neil Cavuto? BRASHER: It must be a bittersweet time for those folks; I mean, it’s the last holiday season ever to be presided over by the antichrist. I guess in the future they can just throw on Anton LaVey’s holiday album and reminisce about those years when it really seemed like the chief prince of Meschech and Tubal was going to kick off the end times. I mean it was so close, right? Merry Christmas anyways, I guess, until next year when those same people are convinced that the next president is the antichrist. ROWE: Everyone will have a different experience. Getting together with people who have known you their entire lives means that they will need to share their secret for life with you. Most times, that advice is built on how those people see the world, which may be different from how you see the world, so it feels unnecessary. However, like most Millennial Americans, I believe that I have a singularly different experience from everyone else. I must be particularly lucky that my parents, those wonderful people who birthed me in this world, both want the best for me, but also want me to make decisions on my own. They have, however, given me the most important thing to share on Christmas, so I will share that with you: Watch out for deer on the drive home. BRASHER: I’m officially an uncle now so I feel like I should be on the supply side of life secrets, but since I’m new to this I’ll have to defer to those with more experience. The oldest living person on the earth said that the great secret of her longevity was Miller High Life. If you think about it, the Christmas holiday also celebrates a person with a secret to longevity: the secret of resurrection from the dead. I’m not holding out for that one, so I guess Miller will have to do. In the meantime, Christmas is kind of the Champagne of Holidays after all.

ARKANSAS FAMILY CAREGIVERS DESERVE OUR SUPPORT. More than 450,000 Arkansans care for older parents or loved ones, helping them live independently and safely at home — where they want to be. But these caregivers often lack the resources and support they need to provide that care. That’s why our state needs to support family caregivers and provide services for seniors at home and in their communities.

Learn more about how AARP is fighting to support family caregivers and their loved ones.

Visit aarp.org/ar Facebook.com/AARPArkansas @ARAARP aarp.org/AR

Mount Magazine State Park

ENJOY

A HIKE

ON NEW YEAR’S DAY

In step with America’s State Parks’ “First Day Hikes” health initiative, state parks around Arkansas will host guided hikes on January 1. It’s a great way to get outside, connect with nature, and start the new year on the right foot. Visit ArkansasStateParks.com for a participating state park close to home.

ArkansasStateParks.com My park, your park, our parks

#ARStateParks

www.arktimes.com

DECEMBER 24, 2015

Dining

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

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

WHAT’S COOKIN’

Jerky’s

THE WATER BUFFALO, the beer, wine, cheese and gardening supply store at 106 S. Rodney Parham Road, will start construction in January on a small brewery. Owner Nolen Buffalo says he expects to have 12 to 18 taps, featuring his own brews along with other Arkansas beers. He will serve growlers-to-go and pints in store. He hopes to have the new brewery operation open by April or May. The Water Buffalo’s website is thewaterbuffalo.com and the phone number is 725-5296.

521 Center St. 246-3096 jerkys.net QUICK BITE You can get Jerky’s meats in about any quantity with sides or no sides. Based on our first trip there, we’d say the meat’s the thing, and the sides don’t measure up. HOURS 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. weekdays, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday. OTHER INFO Credit cards accepted.

WHAT’S THE BEST DESSERT in Arkansas? According to restaurant guide experts Zagat’s, it’s the Karo Nut Pie at Franke’s Cafeteria. Is it the dead-level best dessert in the state? Well, there’s no way to really make an objective decision about that, of course, but we don’t have an issue with this choice. Franke’s is a Little Rock institution — and it is possibly the oldest restaurant in the state.

DINING CAPSULES

AMERICAN

1515 CAFE This bustling, business-suit filled breakfast and lunch spot, just across from the state Capitol, features old-fashioned, buffetstyle home cookin’ for a song. Inexpensive lunch entrées, too. 1515 W. 7th St. No alcohol. $-$$. 501-376-1434. L Wed.-Fri., D Mon-Sat. ANOTHER ROUND PUB Tasty pub grub. 12111 W. Markham. Full bar, CC. $-$$. 501-313-2612. D Mon.-Thu., LD Fri.-Sun. FIVE GUYS BURGERS & FRIES Nationwide burger chain with emphasis on freshly made fries and patties. 2923 Lakewood Village Drive. NLR. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-246-5295. LD daily. 13000 Chenal Parkway. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-225-1100. LD daily. GREEN LEAF GRILL Cafeteria on the ground floor of the Blue Cross-Blue Shield building has healthy entrees. 601 S. Gaines. No alcohol, CC. 501-378-2521. HERITAGE GRILLE STEAK AND FIN Upscale dining inside the Little Rock Marriott. Excellent surf and turf options. 3 Statehouse Plaza. Full bar, all CC. $$$. 501-399-8000. LD daily. IRA’S PARK HILL GRILL Inventive and toothsome fine dining in a casual setting. 3812 JFK Blvd. NLR. Full bar, CC. $$-$$$. 501-771-6900. L Tue.-Fri., Sun.; D Tue.-Sat. BR Sun. JERKY’S SPICY CHICKEN AND MORE Jerk chicken, Southern fried chicken, Southern fried jerk chicken, along with burgers, sandwiches, salads. 521 Center St. No alcohol. $-$$. 501-2463096. LD Mon.-Sat. LE POPS Delicious, homemade iced lollies (or popsicles, for those who aren’t afraid of the trademark.) 5501 Kavanaugh Blvd. Ste. J. No alcohol, CC. $. 501-313-9558. LD daily. NEXT BISTRO AND BAR Live music, on the 34

DECEMBER 24, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

THE WAY TO GO: Jerk chicken and ribs at Jerky’s.

The secret spice Jerky’s chicken, burgers stand out.

erky’s is kind of quirky. After closing at the end of July in its location on Roosevelt Road, where it opened in 2013, there was a brief early-September soft opening on Center Street, followed by months of being closed, with brown paper over the windows, before finally opening for good in late November. The place itself is kind of odd — painted Jamaican-style art on the walls (including admonitions to “aim straight” and “flush or suffer the consequence (sic)” in the men’s restroom) — but classic rock vs. reggae on the sound system. The menu is huge and all over the place — the unifying theme being “jerk,” the spicy style of Caribbean cooking, that is applied to chicken, ribs, shrimp and burgers. Every table was taken at 11:45 a.m. on a Tuesday, and by a little after noon diners were streaming upstairs to the additional seating area. We started

with jerk chicken spring rolls ($7.99), a fairly odd application for jerk chicken, we thought. The four spring rolls were cut in half on the bias, and filled with typical spring roll vegetables. We really couldn’t discern the chopped meat as jerk chicken, but a bit of heat and barbecue taste did appear on the finish. Our sampling of four main courses suggests jerk chicken — whole, not chopped — is the best choice, followed by the ribs. You can get chicken or ribs in about any quantity — two to 20 on chicken and three to a rack of ribs — with zero, one or two sides. The three-piece jerk chicken dinner ($11.99) featured ample, tender, marinated, flavorful and spicy (but not overwhelmingly so) breast fillets. The accompanying fried okra and baked beans were decent but not transcendent. The ribs are advertised as “mouth-

watering fall off the bone,” and while our four ribs ($10.50 with no sides) were certainly tasty, they were only slightly tender. But that was fine. They were meaty and the jerk was prominent but not dominant, a nice balance. We really liked the accompanying thin, spicy, vinegar-based barbecue sauce, which was not jerk-influenced, but was certainly tasty. We recommend the hot over the medium. Our friend’s burger ($8.50 with one side and a drink) was excellent — a 1/3-pound hand-patted burger with, again, just the right amount of jerk applied. The fries were crisp and hot but pretty standard otherwise. The only loser in the bunch was the jerk chicken baked potato ($7.99), a huge potato with the usual fixings and an insignificant amount of the chopped chicken. We’re sure the chopped jerk chicken is just a cutup version of the fillets we enjoyed so much, but for whatever reason it seemed less flavorful with the potato and certainly not as moist. We ordered banana pudding ($3.25) and were surprised to see it come in a to-go cup, but that’s just the way it’s served, our waitress told us. It was a puny portion with too high a vanilla wafer v. pudding quotient and no banana chunk. Luck of the scoop, we suppose. Jerky’s sits next to the very popular EJ’s in a busy stretch of the financial district, and early crowds appear strong. We’ll sample other items on the large menu on our next trip back — maybe a chili dog … or jerk shrimp pasta … or a salmon salad … or jerk chicken tacos — but we expect the jerk chicken fillets to be tough to beat.

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

THE EVERYDAY SOMMELIER

arktimes.com

DINING CAPSULES, CONT. outdoor patio in nice weather, bar with specialty drinks like house sangria. No cover 2611 Kavanaugh Blvd. Full bar, all CC. 501-663-6398. ONE ELEVEN AT THE CAPITAL Inventive fine dining restaurant helmed by Jöel Attunes, a James Beard award-winning chef. 111 Markham St. Full bar, all CC. $$$. 370-7011. BD daily, L Mon.-Fri, BR Sun. THE OYSTER BAR Gumbo, red beans and rice (all you can eat on Mondays), peel-andeat shrimp, oysters on the half shell, addictive po’ boys. Killer jukebox. 3003 W. Markham St. Beer and wine, all CC. $-$$. 501-666-7100. LD Mon.-Sat. THE ROOT CAFE Homey, local foods-focused cafe. With tasty burgers, homemade bratwurst, banh mi and a number of vegan and veggie options. Breakfast and Sunday brunch, too. 1500 S. Main St. Beer, all CC. $-$$. 501-414-0423. BL Tue.-Sat., BR Sun. SANDY’S HOMEPLACE CAFE Specializing in home-style buffet, with two meats and seven vegetables to choose from. It’s all-you-can-eat. 1710 E 15th St. No alcohol, No CC. $. 501-3753216. L Mon.-Fri. SONNY WILLIAMS’ STEAK ROOM Steaks, chicken and seafood in a wonderful setting in the River Market. Steak gets pricey, though. Menu is seasonal, changes every few months. 500 President Clinton Ave. Full bar, all CC. $$$. 501-324-2999. D Mon.-Sat. SOUTH ON MAIN Fine, innovative takes on Southern fare in a casual, but well-appointed setting. 1304 Main St. Full bar, CC. $-$$. 501-244-9660. L Mon.-Fri., D Tue.-Sat. WEST END SMOKEHOUSE AND TAVERN Its primary focus is a sports bar with 50-plus TVs, but the dinner entrees (grilled chicken, steaks and such) are plentiful and the bar food is upper quality. 215 N. Shackleford. Full bar, all CC. $$. 501-224-7665. L Fri.-Sun., D daily. WHICH WICH AT CHENAL Sandwiches in three sizes, plus cookies and milkshakes, online or faxed (501-312-9435) ordering available. Also at 2607 McCain Blvd., 501-771-9424, fax 501-771-4329. 12800 Chenal Parkway, Suite 10. No alcohol. 312-9424. WING LOVERS The name says it all. 4411 W. 12th St. $-$$. 501-663-3166. LD Mon.-Sat. WING SHACK 6323 Colonel Glenn Road. No alcohol. 501-562-0010. WINGSTOP It’s all about wings. The joint features 10 flavors of chicken flappers for almost any palate, including mild, hot, Cajun and atomic, as well as specialty flavors like lemon pepper, teriyaki, Garlic parmesan and Hawaiian. 11321 West Markham St. Beer, all CC. $-$$. 501-224-9464. LD daily.

ASIAN

A.W. LIN’S ASIAN CUISINE Excellent panAsian with wonderful service. 17717 Chenal Parkway H101. Full bar, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-8215398. LD daily. BIG ON TOKYO Serviceable fried rice, teriyaki chicken and sushi. 400 President Clinton Ave. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-375-6200. BLD Mon.-Sat. MR. CHEN’S ASIAN SUPERMARKET AND RESTAURANT A combination Asian restaurant and grocery with cheap, tasty and exotic

offerings. 3901 S. University Ave. CC. $. 501-5627900. LD daily. NEW CHINA A burgeoning line of massive buffets, with hibachi grill, sushi, mounds of Chinese food and soft serve ice cream. 4617 John F. Kennedy Blvd. NLR. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-753-8988. LD daily. 2104 Harkrider. Conway. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-764-1888. LD Mon.-Sun. OISHI HIBACHI AND THAI CUISINE Tasty Thai and hibachi from the Chi family. 5501 Kavanaugh Blvd. Full bar, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-603-0080. 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.

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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. Better known for the incredible family recipe pies and cheesecakes, which come tall and wide. 9801 W. Markham St. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-225-4346. LD Mon.-Sat.

CATFISH

SWEET SOUL Southern classics by the proprietors of the late, great Haystack Cafe in Ferndale: Chicken fried steak (just about perfect), catfish, collards, cornbread, blackeyed peas and fried chicken. 400 President Clinton Ave. No alcohol, all CC. 501-374-7685. L Mon.-Fri.

EUROPEAN / ETHNIC

ARBELA MIDDLE EASTERN GRILL Excellent Middle Eastern fare. Try the falafel. 323 Center St. No alcohol, CC. $-$$. 501-374-2633. L Mon.-Fri. CREGEEN’S IRISH PUB Irish-themed pub with a large selection of on-tap and bottled British beers and ales, an Irish inspired menu and lots of nooks and crannies to meet in. Specialties include fish ‘n’ chips and Guinness beef stew. Live music on weekends and $5 cover on Saturdays, special brunch on Sunday. 301 Main St. NLR. Full bar, all CC. $$. 501-376-7468. LD daily. ISTANBUL MEDITERRANEAN RESTAURANT This Turkish eatery offers decent kebabs and great starters. The red pepper hummus is a winner. So are Cigar Pastries. Possibly the best Turkish coffee in Central Arkansas. 11525 Cantrell Road. No alcohol, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-223-9332. LD daily. KEBAB HOUSE Turkish style doners and kebabs and a sampling of Tunisian cuisine. Only place in Little Rock to serve Lahmijun (Turkish pizza). 11321 W Markham St. No alcohol, CC. $-$$. LD Mon.-Sat.

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

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DECEMBER 24, 2015

DINING CAPSULES, CONT. Blvd. Full bar, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-663-5355. LD Mon.- Fri, D Sat. CIAO ITALIAN RESTAURANT 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. $$. 501-372-0238. L Mon.-Fri., D Thu.-Sat. THE PIZZERIA AT TERRY’S FINER FOODS Tasty Neapolitan-style pizza and calzones from the people who used to run the Santa Lucia food truck. 5018 Kavanaugh. Full bar, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-551-1388. Tue.-Sat.

LATINO

BAJA GRILL Food truck turned brick-andmortar taco joint that serves a unique Mexi-Cali style menu full of tacos, burritos and quesadillas. 5923 Kavanaugh Blvd. CC. $-$$. 501-722-8920. LD Mon.-Sat. CANON GRILL Tex-Mex, pasta, sandwiches and salads. Creative appetizers come in huge

DUMAS, CONT.

quantities, and the varied main-course menu rarely disappoints, though it’s not as spicy as competitors’. 2811 Kavanaugh Blvd. Full bar, all CC. $$. 501-664-2068. LD daily. CHIPOTLE MEXICAN GRILL Burritos, burrito bowls, tacos and salads are the four main courses of choice — and there are four meats and several other options for filling them. Sizes are uniformly massive, quality is uniformly strong, and prices are uniformly low. 11525 Cantrell Road. All CC. $-$$. 501-221-0018. LD daily. CILANTRO’S GRILL The guac, made tableside, margaritas and desserts standout at this affordably priced traditional Mex spot. 2629 Lakewood Village Plaza. NLR. Full bar, CC. $-$$. 501-812-0040. LD daily. COTIJA’S A branch off the famed La Hacienda family tree downtown, with a massive menu of tasty lunch and dinner specials, the familiar white cheese dip and sweet red and fieryhot green salsas, and friendly service. 406 S. Louisiana St. Full bar, all CC. $$. 501-244-0733. L Mon.-Fri.

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DECEMBER 24, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

of Information Act query produces some insight. Take the many Ecclesia College grants, which are continuing this fall and probably into next year. Nearly all the Republican legislators in the nine counties, led by the now retiring Sen. Jon Woods of Springdale, where the little school is located, pitched in to raise more than half a million dollars to buy nearby land with old family houses that are now listed as dormitories and for what apparently is just operating money. Woods, who ran for the Senate on the promise that he would “rock the boat,” pulled out of his re-election race at the filing deadline last month, and explained that he needed to spend more time with his family. That’s rarely a good omen. Mike Wilson, who never minded stepping on toes (his last suit went after and killed one of his own brotherin-law’s projects), let it be known this summer that he about had enough and that he might sue again. A grinch taxpayers might toast this Christmas.

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training, solid-waste and other community services. Rather than sponsor little bills, legislators by memo or telephone now contact the planning districts, which are governed by boards made up mainly of county judges and mayors, and tell them the groups they want paid from the big GIF appropriations and how much. The planning boards allocate the money and legislators’ fingerprints aren’t supposed to be on it. The checks are mailed with accompanying identification of the legislators who should be appreciated. Legislators get letters thanking them for their generosity that are suitable for framing or ads. With the public not watching and there being no accountability, not even an independent audit, the spending got even more egregious. The little audit of the northwestern district, which has been given to the prosecuting attorney, shed light on the practice for the first time, although the auditor, to be charitable, was restrained in his revelations about how GIF money is parceled out with no accountability. A Freedom

Works will feature some tweaks to the policy. Beneficiaries will have carrotand-stick incentives to participate in best wellness practices (like visiting a primary care physician after signing up) and work referral or job training programs. Certain beneficiaries who fail to participate could be subject to small monthly premiums. The governor also plans to initiate a complicated scheme to tie the private option to employer-sponsored insurance for certain beneficiaries. None of this is new. These are the conservative add-ons that Hutchinson pitched way back in January and that everyone understood would be necessary in order to get Republican support for continuation of the policy. Indeed, these are precisely the sorts of incremental conservative changes that the Republican backers of the private option publicly envisioned when they pushed the original law back in 2013. This isn’t a change in course; it’s a continuation of the plan. Some of the governor’s proposals are bad or counterproductive policies that could create more bureaucracy and harm access to care for poor people. In many cases, they’ll create real burdens for real people for no good reason. But in the context of a multibillion-dollar coverage expansion, this is really just fiddling at the margins. The governor and the legislature can call it whatever

they want, but make no mistake: This is still the private option. It’s still Medicaid expansion. And the whole thing is still funded by ... Obamacare. The governor has to get approval for all of these bells and whistles from the federal government, and negotiations will now commence. In some cases, the governor will make the pitch on ideas he likes but that the feds will refuse — the Obama administration has been clear that it will not allow an asset test for eligibility or a requirement that beneficiaries have a job. Hutchinson knows that these are going nowhere, but he’ll make a show of asking, for the benefit of rightwing legislators whose votes he needs. Once the governor hammers out a deal, the legislature will convene for a special session, some time after the primaries in March. Getting approval to keep Obamacare money flowing and continue the private option will always be an uphill climb given the makeup of the legislature and the supermajority requirement, but the governor has set his plan in motion. He now has the stamp of approval from the task force, featuring seven prominent lawmakers who voted against the private option in the past. And he’s pushing his rebranding effort hard, telling anyone who’ll listen: “Please understand very carefully that on Dec. 31, 2016, the private option ends.” Next spring, legislators who prom-

ised to kill the private option get to kill the “private option” and vote for “Arkansas Works” instead! Meanwhile, Hutchinson is also seeking significant reforms to the traditional Medicaid program (that is, the pre-existing program, everything other than the private option). For political reasons, Hutchinson is trying to tie this objective to the private option coverage expansion, but they’re really separate issues. Certain high-cost populations — longterm care for the elderly and the severely disabled, care for the developmentally disabled and behavioral health — make up three quarters of spending in the traditional Medicaid program. Completely aside from the state’s decision on Medicaid expansion, the Department of Human Services has been noting for years, dating back to the Beebe administration, that Medicaid spending on these high-cost populations was on an unsustainable path. In many cases, providers reimbursed on a fee-for-service basis may have been incentivized for treatments that helped their bottom line even if they weren’t best practices in terms of high-quality care for patients. The Stephen Group report convincingly makes the case that beneficiaries are often ending up in more expensive nursing-home institutions when they would they would prefer to be in homeor community-based care more appropriate to their needs. The report found that “rebalancing” for these high-cost populations — shifting Medicaid investment from institutional care to homeand-community-based care — would save hundreds of millions of dollars. The solution endorsed by the Stephen Group is a move away from the current fee-for-service model: more care coordination, incentives for providers to provide cost-effective and high-quality care, and moving away from overreliance on nursing homes via “rebalancing.” DHS under the Beebe administration tried to take some steps in this direction, but lobbyists for provider groups — particularly the powerful nursing home lobby — proved adept at dodging reforms whenever new rules and regulations worked their way through the legislative process. The Stephen Group report found that using managed care companies to initiate these reforms for the high-cost populations would save nearly $2 billion over five years; an alternative approach implemented and coordinated by state agencies (and vendors they subcontract with) would save around $700 million, the report found. The governor and DHS officials backed the managed care path, but this proved highly controversial among some

lawmakers — particularly a group of five legislators on the task force who are providers themselves. If you want an idea of the nursing home lobby’s political muscle, consider that when it initially appeared that the task force might endorse the managed care plan, Hutchinson cut a side deal to carve out the nursing homes and allow them to come up with their own plan for savings. In the end, Hutchinson opted to punt on the managed care question. Instead, he gave a target: $835 million in savings between 2017 and 2021. That amounts to $250 million in savings for the state coffers (the feds cover 70 percent of these costs). Hutchinson claimed, dubiously, that these savings were necessary to pay for the private option. In fact, the Stephen Group found that the private option saves money for the state on net, even when the state has to start paying its full 10 percent share. Hutchinson is plowing the current savings into tax cuts, without a thought to the state’s share of private option costs down the road. The truth is that the governor wants to achieve savings in the traditional Medicaid program because he wants to achieve savings in the traditional Medicaid program. It has nothing to do with whether the state continues the private option or not. As to the question of how to get those savings, the governor said that he was “agnostic.” The savings had to be “credible” and ensure high-quality care for beneficiaries, he said. And they have to hit his $835 million benchmark. The means to reach that goal? To be determined. The task force, in other words, answered the obvious questions, but left the hard questions for 2016. While there are compelling policy arguments for reforming the ways that the traditional Medicaid program offers care to these high-cost populations, there’s no getting around the fact that hundreds of millions in savings means hundreds of millions of dollars less in health care spending. Current stakeholders are going to fight for their piece of the pie. How will an effort at “rebalancing,” for example, impact nursing homes’ bottom lines? That’s worth keeping in mind next year as provider groups offer their own plans for meeting the governor’s benchmarks. For all of the fireworks over the private option, it’s actually just one piece of the state’s Medicaid spending. Next year’s fight will be over the shape of the Medicaid program for its costliest and neediest beneficiaries, with billions of dollars at stake. The political battles ahead will be fierce. Cue the lobbyists. Support for health care reporting made possible by the Arkansas Public Policy Panel.

NEW YEARS EVE WITH RAMONA SMITH

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Ease into the new year with the sultry jazz vocals of Ramona Smith at Copper Grill. Enjoy a special holiday menu accompanied by Ramona’s mellow rhythm and blues sound. Performance from 7 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. Enjoy one of Little Rock’s best wine lists.

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www.arktimes.com

DECEMBER 24, 2015

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ARKANSAS TIMES MARKETPLACE ASPEN COLORADO WINTER VACATION RENTAL Fantastic 2 bedroom 2 bath condo. New remodel. Top of the line everything. Heart of downtown. 100 feet to gondola, walk to everything. Best location in town available Jan 23- March7. $2500 week including tax.

501.772.8780

ARKANSAS TIMES

The City of Maumelle will be accepting applications for the position of Director of Public Works to oversee all aspects of the day-to-day operation of the Department of Public Works, Street, Sanitation and Animal Service.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES: Supervision of Department supervisors to ensure proper operation within the department. Assist street maintenance supervisor with reviews of construction plans and conduct pre-construction meetings, required inspections, and final construction inspections to the City. Ensure Maumelle Transfer Station has State and Federal required forms and bonds prior to street dedication. Maintain responsibility of Building Maintenance supervisor of proper operation of traffic signals on Maumelle Blvd., oversee construction and keep records of cost, employee, materials and equipment, design and construct all signage for City of Maumelle, perform traffic studies, and inspection of sidewalks, and handicap ramps in the construction phase to ensure compliance with ADA requirements. Responsible for funds, property and equipment and supervisory of employees in accordance with the City’s policies and applicable laws include interviewing, hiring, training, planning assigning and directing work. Complete other duties and tasks as needed or assigned. EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE: Applicants must have an Associate’s degree or equivalent from an accredited college or technical school; and seven (7) years related experience and/ or training or equivalent combination of education and experience, and four (5) years of managerial experience-governmental accounting experience is preferred. STARTING SALARY: Commensurate with education and experience that exceed the minimum qualifications may be considered for a higher starting salary. The application process will begin immediately. Applications must be received, post marked, email or fax dated no later than Friday, January 15, 2016. NOTE: Online applications and Resumes will not be accepted by themselves. A City of Maumelle Employment Application must be completed. Please go to the City of Maumelle web page (www.maumelle.org) and click on the Human Resources Department to print an application. Completed applications should be mailed to: City of Maumelle – Human Resources Department – 550 Edgewood Drive, Suite 555 – Maumelle, Arkansas 72113. For questions, you may contact the Human Resources office at (501) 851-2784, ext. 242 between the hours of 7AM and 5PM Monday-Friday . EOE – MINORITY, WOMEN, AND DISABLED INDIVIDUALS ARE ENCOURAGED TO APPLY. This ad is available from the Title VI Coordinator in large print, on audio, and in Braille at (501) 851-2785, ext. 233 or at vernon@maumelle.org.

DECEMBER 24, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

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drivers Please be aWare, it’s arkansas state laW: Use of bicycles or animals

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

overtaking a bicycle

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

yoUr cycling friends thank yoU! http://www.arkleg.state.ar.us/ Go to “Arkansas Code,” search “bicycle”

ARKANSAS TIMES

MARKETPLACE TO ADVERTISE IN THIS SECTION, CALL LUIS AT 501.375.2985

ARKTIMES.COM/RESTAURANTS16

ENDS JANUARY 31 2016 marks 35 years that the Arkansas Times first started the Restaurant Readers Choice Awards. You can walk in some restaurants and see a wall full of posters. Voting is all online - arktimes. com/restaurants16 - and the final round ends January 31. Each category has been narrowed down to the top four vote-getters and the winner from last year, making

a total of five restaurants. Arkansas has some great restaurants, nowâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the time to show your love. Winners will be announced March 17 and an awards celebration party sponsored by our good friends at Ben E. Keith will be held at the Pulaski Technical Culinary and Hospitality Institute on March 15. Final Round January 4 through January 30.

www.arktimes.com

DECEMBER 24, 2015

Come Celebrate New Years Eve and New Years day with us! We will be serving our regular menu with champagne specials, good times, and more. Open on New Years Day at 3 pm.

322 Main Street 501.379.8019

www.samstap.com Holiday Hours Closed Christmas Eve and Christmas Opening Dec 26th at 3 PM Complimentary Valet Services 40

DECEMBER 24, 2015

ARKANSASâ&#x20AC;&#x2C6;TIMES