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CAESAR GOES ELECTRIC

UA Prof. David Fredrick has a radical idea: teaching history through immersive video games, made entirely in Arkansas BY DAVID KOON

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COMMENT

Pro Planned Parenthood As a Southern woman, with a strong Christian mother, what I’m about to say might surprise you, but I’m a full-fledged supporter of Planned Parenthood. I was raped during college, my first sexual encounter ever, and turned to Loving Choices for help. Instead of receiving compassionate care after my traumatic experience, I was asked if I believed Jesus could forgive ME. After this uncomfortable experience, I left feeling

numb, betrayed, alone and hurting. I had gone to Loving Choices looking for compassion and support, but I got wrong information and condemnation for a sin that I had no consent in. After some time, and looking for new health services without judgment, I turned to the local Planned Parenthood. I sat in the waiting room with the other women feeling a sense of community and support. The staff was respectful, helpful and really cared about my well-being. When told I might be pregnant due to an error in birth control usage, I broke

down in tears. I was broke, alone, far from family and had just broken up with my significant other. My doctor treated me with kindness and respect and asked if I had resources available to me if I decided to continue the pregnancy. She gave me resources, emergency contraception and hope that I would have options and affordable and accessible health care. Unlike Loving Choices that only offered Christian forgiveness and condemnation as a solution, Planned Parenthood offered real compassionate care and solutions to the prob-

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lems I faced. Contrary to the attacks that many politicians might use, Planned Parenthood helped me take control of my health and life. Defunding Planned Parenthood is a mistake. Marie Quinn Bentonville

From the web In response to “Rapert wary heartbeat rules not implemented” (Oct. 1): Whether or not a woman hears a heartbeat, whether she knows one exists, whether she knows there is a good statistical chance she can carry to term, whether she is forced into watching an ultrasound (which in some cases is the sheer height of cruelty), it has been statistically proven over and over and over again to make no difference and have no impact whatsoever on any woman’s decision to abort. Radical right-wing belief to the contrary, women do NOT make this decision lightly. They don’t go to get their hair or nails done and pass a clinic and go in on impulse. They don’t schedule an abortion because pregnancy will ruin their “look” at a formal social event. They don’t terminate because they are going backpacking in the Rocky Mountains or skiing in Colorado. (I’ve heard all of these spewed from anti-abortionists parroting “LifeSite News.”) Rapert is not pro-life. He isn’t even pro-fetus. He is pro-forced birth, no matter what the cause of the pregnancy or the state of the woman’s health or the state of the health of the fetus, and will use any means he can to force women into childbirth. And it has nothing at all to do with being “pro-life” and everything to do with slut-shaming women for ever having sex in the first place. Pregnancy and childbirth are punishment for having sex and any women who gets out of that, either by aborting or by taking contraception, is escaping her just desserts. And it’s double down if she is aborting because the pregnancy either threatens her life or is because the fetus has congenital deformities, because then she obviously deserved that punishment. Cait McKnelly I would say that Rapert is Arkansas’s biggest embarrassment, if not for the competition from the likes of Duggar and Harris. But he’s trying hard. Doc

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OCTOBER 8, 2015

EYE ON ARKANSAS

WEEK THAT WAS

Quote of the Week

Another brick in the wall Coming soon to the Little Rock School District: A renewed fight on the subject of facilities, specifically the likely purchase of a former office building and warehouse to house a new middle school for West Little Rock. Last week, LRSD Superintendent Baker Kurrus signed an $11.5 million conditional contract to acquire the former Leisure Arts building on Cantrell Road. LRSD has six months to study the property and determine whether it’s feasible to retrofit as a school. The district will simultaneously begin planning a new high school in Southwest Little Rock to replace the existing McClellan campus. The two projects will “move along parallel tracks,” said Kurrus. (See column, opposite page.) West Little Rock has long clamored for a middle school, and understandably so. Still, new investment in majority-white, mostly affluent West Little Rock raises hauntingly familiar questions about racial and socioeconomic segregation within the district. After all, the LRSD was taken over by the state Education Department in January because of lagging student performance, and the district’s low scores are concentrated in the schools that serve predominately lower-income and minority neighborhoods. Here’s a secret: Those neighborhoods generally aren’t in West Little Rock.

The Asa-Obama-Castro axis Gov. Asa Hutchinson last week trav6

OCTOBER 8, 2015

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BRIAN CHILSON

“This is something we should politicize. It is relevant to our common life together, to the body politic. ... This is a political choice that we make — to allow this to happen every few months in America.” — President Obama, speaking after yet another mass shooting, this one at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore., last Thursday. Nine people were killed and another nine wounded before the gunman, a 26-year-old student at the school, shot and killed himself. BEAUTY AND THE BEAST: Carleigh Tackett, the Arkansas State Fair junior queen, takes a selfie with new friend Zora the camel.

eled to Havana to promote trade with Cuba, which is a potentially major market for rice, chicken and other agricultural products that Arkansas does well. For once, Hutchinson is on the same page as President Obama, who has worked to thaw diplomatic relations with the Communist nation over the objections of grandstanding Republicans like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (or our own Sen. Tom Cotton). The business interests of Tyson and Riceland trump even GOP orthodoxy, it seems.

The price of oil Two and a half years after the Mayflower oil spill, a federal agency fined petroleum giant ExxonMobil for safety violations in its operation of the ruptured Pegasus pipeline. The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration assessed a civil penalty of $2.63 million on Exxon for being out of compliance with regulations regarding inspection protocols. PHMSA also ordered Exxon to improve its system for assessing the potential failure of weld-

ing seams used in its pipe. A ruptured seam — the product of a known manufacturing defect — was the immediate cause of the Mayflower spill.

Picking on Planned Parenthood Federal Judge Kristine Baker issued a preliminary injunction on Friday that would stop Arkansas from cutting off Medicaid reimbursements to Planned Parenthood. The order was narrowly tailored to apply only to three anonymous plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging Gov. Hutchinson’s attempt to defund the medical provider; Baker did not extend her injunction to all Medicaidqualified Planned Parenthood patients. Yet even so, the state is appealing that ruling, as well as barring any other Medicaid recipients from getting health screenings, contraceptives and other medical services provided by Planned Parenthood. (Note: Not abortion, because Medicaid does not pay for abortions, as per federal law, except in the case of rape, incest or to save a mother’s life.) Planned Parenthood on Monday filed a motion asking that the case be treated as a class action.

Anne Frank tree finds home at Clinton Library Bill Clinton stopped by Little Rock last week to celebrate the installation of a new memorial at the presiden-

tial library bearing his name: A sapling from the horse chestnut that stood outside the Amsterdam house where Anne Frank and her family sheltered from the Nazis. It’s one of 11 saplings the Anne Frank Center USA has distributed across the country; another is to be planted at Central High. In her diary, written while she was confined in the house’s attic for more than two years, Anne Frank wrote of gazing out upon the chestnut tree and dreaming of a better future.

OPINION

Little Rock’s divide

t is a measure of the Little Rock public school dilemma that an announcement by School Superintendent Baker Kurrus last week drew unhappy responses from both sides of the economic and racial divide that has troubled the district for more than half a century. Kurrus, designated to lead the district after a split state Board of Education fired the local school board, moved forward aggressively on long-promised facility improvements. He said he’d signed an $11.5 million conditional contract to use a former manufacturing facility on Highway 10 for a middle school and potentially a high school in northwestern Little Rock, perhaps for use by sixth graders as early as next year. He said he’d begin immediately the planning process for a new high school in Southwest Little Rock and he said that project, which could take as long as five years, would go forward no matter if the old Leisure Arts plant

proved feasible for a school or not. What’s not to like? The significant contingent still MAX unhappy about BRANTLEY maxbrantley@arktimes.com the school district takeover is not at all happy that the first tangible contract in state receivership is aimed at creating a new school in the white, upper-income part of town in a district taken over for academic, not facility, shortcomings. They are also not happy it adopts an idea suggested by Gary Newton, who draws about $150,000 a year, primarily from Walton sources, to work through two nonprofit organizations to tear down the Little Rock School District (he’d dearly love to end Central High School’s reputation for excellence), promote charter schools and get schools to serve western Little Rock separate from the underclass.

Guns, God and gays

any more mass shootings like the one last week in Roseburg, Ore., will stain the future and no law will pass that might reduce the carnage. That is not a prediction but a fact of life that is immune even to Hillary Clinton. See, the U.S. Constitution ordains it, or at least a substantial body of the American electorate now believes that it does, just as a substantial number of them — often the same ones — believe that the Constitution guarantees that a person’s casual religious ideas trump the law of the land. Kim Davis, the Kentucky marriage registrar, and her advocates share with gun-control foes the certitude that the Constitution is behind them. But until recently — the late 1970s in the case of gun rights and much more recently in the case of triumphant religious liberty — those ideas about the first two amendments, if they existed at all, were quaint rather than customary. Now the country

is caught in a maelstrom over modern interpretations of religious and gun rights. James MadiERNEST son, who designed DUMAS the First Amendment’s prohibition against the government establishing religion or preventing people from exercising their particular ways of worship, meant to stop the government from ever favoring one religious sect like Anglicanism or disfavoring others, as his own state of Virginia was trying to do. But Davis, backed by a couple of Republican presidential candidates and a large national following, takes the position that because her apostolic church says that homosexuality is ungodly she can use her station in government to deny same-sex couples’ their lawful right to marry. This all started in 1990 with the now-famous peyote-smoking case, and

Newton’s aunt, Diane Zook, was among the most aggressive state Board of Education supporters of the Little Rock takeover. Her husband, Randy Zook, head of the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce, has been a director of one of the organizations Newton uses to lobby for the Walton agenda, which included an unsuccessful bill in the last legislative session to turn the Little Rock School District over to private charter school management corporations. Walton money has provided about a halfmillion a year through one organization Newton leads to work on related school matters through the political consulting firms Impact Management and Southern Meridian. Still, Newton grumped about Kurrus’ plan. He didn’t seem to like Kurrus’ promise for progress in lower income Southwest Little Rock but a less than ironclad commitment to do something NOW for northwestern Little Rock. Newton wants to provide expeditiously a new middle and high school home for the people now in the successful Roberts Elementary in western Little Rock. Roberts is about 27 percent black, where the district is 66 percent black. About a fourth of its students are poor enough to qualify for school lunch

assistance. District-wide, that figure is 63 percent. Henderson, the closest middle school to this part of town, is virtually 100 percent black and low-income. It’s a failure, the state and Newton have proclaimed. So the Waltons helped Newton start a majority white charter middle school in ritzy Chenal Valley to provide an alternative and used the low scores at Henderson (and five other of the district’s 48 schools) to justify the state takeover of the entire district. That Henderson’s scores are higher than many other schools in the state that have NOT been taken over is a fact likely to be developed if state Rep. John Walker files a threatened lawsuit over racial motivation in a range of activities public and private in the Little Rock School District. This would include the city board’s long-ago decision to give much of Little Rock’s growth area to the Pulaski County Special School District and the pitched battle to prevent putting all of the county south of the Arkansas River into one school district. It’s Walker’s contention that city and state officials and power players continue decades of racially motivated actions. The Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce orchestrated the campaign — augmented by the Walton billions, along

it was the great constitutional originalist, Justice Antonin Scalia, who warned about such predicaments as Davis’ if the First Amendment were ever interpreted as allowing people to disobey any law they thought collided with a spiritual belief. Scalia’s court ruled that a drug-control agency did not violate the religious freedom of two Native Americans by firing them from their drug-counseling jobs because they smoked the hallucinogen peyote in their church’s services. Scalia suggested an array of violations of the public interest that could follow the two men’s interpretation of religious freedom. Scalia, a good Catholic himself, could have speculated that such an interpretation might lead a good Catholic government official to refuse marriage licenses to people like Kim Davis because of her multiple divorces. Congress moved to annul Scalia’s decree by passing a law that strained to let people follow their conscience whenever possible in the face of general laws. Several states, including Arkansas, followed suit this year. But even it does not permit government officials to claim religious exemptions from following the law. The religious-freedom furor is recent and momentary, a product of unpopular

judicial and legislative acts recognizing the equality of gays, lesbians and other sexual minorities, and it will subside. But gun worship, which is the essence of the national crisis, will not go away easily and no gun regulation that would spare some of the future slaughter will occur as long as it is a bedrock principle of the nation’s dominant political party. It was the glory of bearing arms against a sea of enemies that inspired Christopher Harper-Mercer to grab six of his 14 guns and kill nine people at his college. He admired others who had done it, including the religious and nationalist terrorists of the Irish Republican Army. His mother shared and taught him admiration of guns and gunplay. In an online forum she ridiculed states that regulated gun ownership, and she advocated open carry everywhere. She boasted of her son’s and her own prowess with guns and she seemed almost eager to use them against a foe. “I keep two full mags in my Glock case,” she wrote. “And the ARs & AKs all have loaded mags. No one will be ‘dropping’ by my house uninvited without acknowledgment.” When a neighbor rushed upstairs to tell her that a nut was loose with guns at her son’s school, she rushed to protect

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OCTOBER 8, 2015

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o hardly anybody’s surprise, it turns out that the “vast right wing conspiracy” has been right in front of our eyes. Always was, actually. Or maybe you thought a seventh Benghazi investigation lasting as long as the Pearl Harbor and JFK assassination probes combined was exactly what America needed. And no, Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s politically disastrous admission wasn’t wrung out of him by a trick question. “The question I think you really want to ask me,” he volunteered to Fox News lunkhead Sean Hannity, “is how am I going to be different?” As Speaker John Boehner’s successor, that is. McCarthy answered himself: “What you’re going to see is a conservative speaker that takes a conservative Congress that puts a strategy to fight and win. And let me give you one example. Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable.” No, that’s not a word. But then words aren’t McCarthy’s strong point. His meaning, however, was clear enough. The man was bragging. The only purpose of the House Select Committee on Benghazi is to inflict political damage on the leading Democratic presidential contender. Your tax dollars at work. Never one to miss a chance, Clinton pounced on the “Today” show: “This committee was set up, as they have admitted, for the purpose of making a partisan, political issue out of the deaths of four Americans,” she said. “I would never have done that, and if I were president and there were Republicans or Democrats thinking about that, I would have done everything to shut it down.” Her campaign has already released a 30-second TV ad featuring McCarthy’s boasting. She added that having admitted the committee’s partisan agenda, Congress should shut it down. Everybody knows that’s not going to happen. Look,” Clinton added, “I’ve been around this whole ‘political situation’ for a long time, but some things are just beyond the pale. I’m happy to go, if it’s still in operation, to testify. But the real issue is what happened to four brave

Americans.” Chairman Trey Gowdy would be well advised to invest in a pair of super absorbent GENE Depends when LYONS Hillary testifies before his committee on Oct. 22. All he’s got is a handful of long-disproved conspiracy theories and selectively edited witness transcripts leaked to the news media to create a false impression. So he’s an ex-federal prosecutor. Whoop de doo. Arkansas was overrun with them during the late “Whitewater” investigation. All but one of Kenneth Starr’s leak-o-matic staff turned out to be subpar trial lawyers. That one was clever enough to give a closing argument pointing out that Bill Clinton wasn’t on trial because the defendant — his former real estate partner — had swindled him and Hillary. “The office of the Presidency of the United States,” he thundered, “can’t be besmirched by people such as Jim McDougal.” Any chance of prosecuting either Bill or Hillary over Whitewater pretty much ended right there in May 1996. (The whole story’s told in Joe Conason’s and my e-book “The Hunting of Hillary,” available for free from Nationalmemo.com.) But no, of course it wasn’t in the newspaper, because Washington scribes were stuck to Starr like ticks to a dog’s ear. He successfully diverted attention to subsequent “Whitewater” trials, every one of which they lost. Until Bill Clinton bailed them out by taking his pants down in the Oval Office, that is. But I digress. As the Washington Post’s GOP-oriented columnist Kathleen Parker points out, McCarthy has “tried to cram the bad genie back into the bottle, but the damage has been done and can’t be undone … any previous suspicions that Republicans were just out to get Clinton have cleared the bar of reasonable doubt.” Meanwhile, if Gowdy doesn’t already know that Hillary Clinton’s a lot smarter and tougher than he is, he’s about to find out. Truthfully, they’d be better advised to fold the committee and file some weasel-worded report. Then there’s our esteemed national CONTINUED ON PAGE 29

One person, one vote (2015 style)

he United State Supreme Court began its new term Monday, a year in which we are likely to get definitive decisions on the future of affirmative action in higher education, mandatory union dues, and possibly (if the Court accepts a major case from Texas) abortion. It is also a term in which the Court will spend time with a case that resembles a highly theoretical class discussion in one of my American Constitutional Law courses. As unlikely as it was to ever make it this far up the judicial food chain, Evenwel v. Abbot could begin a trend that would decidedly shift electoral power in the United States. A Texas-based group founded in 2005 to challenge preferences grounded in race and ethnicity through litigation, the “Project on Fair Representation,” is the chief proponent of Evenwel, a case that questions a key assumption of a series of precedents now celebrating their halfcentury anniversary: the “one person, one vote” cases of the 1960s. Those cases assumed a “person” to be anyone identified by the U.S. Census as a resident, no matter their age, their citizenship status, or any other aspect of their eligibility to be a voter. The “one person, one vote” cases were decided at a time when the percentage of foreign-born Americans was still relatively small; that is no longer the case in an increasingly diversified nation. Because noncitizens tend to be clumped in urban areas, the voting residents of their districts actually end up with slightly more electoral power than rural and suburban areas with smaller numbers of those ineligible to vote. The question in Evenwel is whether those disparities present a legitimate Equal Protections concern. Although the case only involves state Senate apportionment in Texas, the logic will likely quickly be expanded to congressional district line drawing as well if the proponents of change prevail (as was the case in the 1960s, when the redistricting revolution begin with state-level litigation) and, ultimately, to the apportionment of the Electoral College. It is clear that a victory for the plaintiffs would mean that noncitizens and (more evenly distributed) minors would both be excluded from the count for apportionment purposes. It is less clear how far the logic would extend. For instance, most assume felons who have yet to regain their voting rights would also

be eliminated from the apportionment counts. However, it is quite logical that only registered voters JAY would be counted BARTH (although, because of the constantly changing number of registered voters, that becomes quickly messy to implement). Whatever the case, if the “Project on Fair Representation” advocates win in the Evenwel case, the elegant “one person, one vote” principle would become decidedly less tidy. While much remains unclear even if there is a victory for the plaintiffs, what is clear is that political winners and losers would emerge from a new way of apportioning legislative districts. Across the nation, urban areas would obviously lose power. It would also become more difficult to draw majority-minority districts meaning that the number of representatives of color would decrease at all levels. Finally, certain states (such as California, Arizona, Texas, Florida and New York) would lose power in Congress and in the Electoral College as a result of the shift. The benefits to Republicans would not be universal, but conservatives would generally win from an Evenwel victory. Interestingly, while that result would be beneficial for conservative interests nationally, in Arkansas a different pattern would be shown. The relative losers in the battle in Arkansas would be the most Republican portions of the state. At the congressional district level, while three of the four congressional districts would remain at or about 545,000 eligible voters (not taking into account the more complicated felon disenfranchisement issue), Northwest Arkansas’s Third Congressional District would hold only about 508,000 eligible voters. Two of the three counties who would lose the greatest share of their total population in such a reapportionment scheme are the large Northwest Arkansas counties of Benton and Washington (Yell County would also lose more than a third of its population count in the shift). This means that the 3rd Congressional District (and key legislative districts in that area) would have to gain more geographical turf. Because of the overarching Republicanism of the state at present, the electoral ramifications would be minor, but Northwest Arkansas would lose some of its growing CONTINUED ON PAGE 46

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OCTOBER 17, 2015

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here was certainly a surreal quality to Bret Bielema’s long-awaited first true Southeastern Confernce road win as Arkansas’s head coach. And, no, it wasn’t just the fact that his maligned charges actually got that win at a place that had bedeviled the program completely since its inaugural year in the SEC. The fourth quarter was a predictable, mind-numbing comedy of errors on both sides. The Hogs, for the fourth time in five games, failed to score a touchdown in the final period, and in fact couldn’t even nudge a slim lead upward because of one blocked field goal and another fake that was horribly ill-timed and ill-conceived. Tennessee, much to the chagrin of a crowd that looked neither interested nor alarmed, managed to be worse. The Razorbacks fell behind 14-0 on a 96-yard kickoff return and a wellorchestrated touchdown drive. This was the kind of start that used to mean a quick death for visitors to Neyland Stadium. (See, e.g., Arkansas at Tennessee in 2000, when the Hogs were down 35-0 within the first 15 minutes of an eventual 63-20 shellacking.) Newcomers threatened to outdo the established guys. Dominique Reed finally had an impact play at wideout, scoring on a 33-yard catch and run. Rawleigh Williams III finally got loose for some long runs. End Jeremiah Ledbetter finally shined in his best defensive effort so far. The game was viewed as two desperate teams with a practically allergic disposition toward closing ballgames trying to get off the ventilator. In the end, the Volunteers proved to be the one that simply wanted it least. Arkansas eked out the 24-20 win in a manner than was more cathartic than convincing. On a night that Florida drummed Ole Miss and just after Alabama steamrolled Georgia, the Hogs’ matchup with the Vols was neither sexy nor particularly compelling other than on a neighboringstate basis, but there’s a chance that it wrought as much of an indelible effect on the standings in the SEC as the other two games. Bielema cannot be overly elated to be at the helm of a 2-3, 1-1 ship, given all the expectations that preceded the season, but he’s also much more secure than Butch Jones is right now, and if winning a road game by a whisperthin margin gives his squad the resolve and roadmap to do it again a few more times, there’s a fleeting chance that all

the early failings will have ended up being worth it to some extent. Alex Collins is running with pasBEAU sion and purpose WILCOX again after a listless showing — at least as a runner — against Toledo. His third straight game of 150 yards or more was huge, as he ripped off lots of decisive gains of varying lengths, but Williams’ emergence with a 44-yard run early and 100 yards on the nose by night’s end means that offensive coordinator Dan Enos can and should rely more on the true freshman going forward. Kody Walker’s back at the top of the fullback depth chart now, too, which should permit a few additional touches for the oft-ailing junior. Quarterback Brandon Allen had his least accurate passing performance yet (11 for 24), but he stayed clean behind a resurgent offensive line, and again showed a level of comfort with Drew Morgan that makes the possible return of Keon Hatcher a potential November boon. Morgan snuffed the Vols’ building momentum when he turned a mediumdepth completion into the team’s longest pass play since the opener against UTEP, a 52-yard scamper that showed his versatility and breakaway ability. Hunter Henry even got loose for a 51-yarder late that hopefully will restore the tight end’s swagger and big-play tendencies, which had disappeared in recent weeks. On the other side, Josh Dobbs was a strange combination of poised and punchless: The junior quarterback hung in the pocket nicely and threw for 236 yards without turning it over, but also netted only seven yards on seven carries a week after torching Florida for 136 on the ground. Having clearly wrested some momentum from snuffing out Texas A&M for most of the prior week’s game, Robb Smith’s group looked like it had that turning point moment for this fall by holding the Vols to less than 100 total yards after the break. Arkansas hasn’t won at Tuscaloosa since 2003, or against Bama at all since Nick Saban took the reins of that program in 2007. As bizarre as the first five weeks have been, though, it’s not a fabrication to say that literally anything is possible, and now the Hogs benefit from the primacy and recency effect of away-game satisfaction that simply hasn’t been there in years.

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NOTES ON THE PASSING SCENE

Little boxes

he Observer has been thinking a lot about houses recently. Junior graduates from high school in a little under three years, and so Spouse and Her Loving Man have been talking about acquiring new digs. Big houses, small houses, houses on wheels, condos on the lake, cabins in the hills, shanties down by the river where the cattails grow, little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky tacky, little boxes on the hillside, little boxes not quite all the same. We bought The Observatory on Maple Street some 13 summers back, and the place has been good to us, even with the annual, mid-August ant attacks and plumbing issues, even with the lack of insulation and the old floor vent grate that has become a black hole, sucking in dust and dirt, crumbs and Legos, the cat’s foot once, and assorted batteries from The Observer’s recorders, requiring us to periodically risk fingernails and tetanus to hoist it up and vacuum underneath it. Still, even the best home has to be passed on someday, so we’re looking. A few nights back, we watched a documentary on Netflix about the tiny house movement, wherein folks downsize to a home that wouldn’t make middling olive oil cellar or gift-wrapping room in one of the gate-secluded megalomansions out in West Little Rock. The Observatory is just over 1,000 square feet and suits us fine, so it’s clear we don’t mind cozy. With Junior out of the nest, it seems like we wouldn’t have to downsize that much to fit into 800 square feet, or even 500. When you start talking about some of the truly tiny houses, though, built on a double-axle trailer and topping out at 200 square feet, you’re probably just asking for trouble. Spouse has been with Yours Truly through thick and thin, dumb and dumber, but we have lived in enough apartments over the years to know that marital happiness and square footage are often correlated. Too, the first time The Observer rolled over in the middle of the night and pushed Spouse out of our tiny house sleeping loft and headfirst into the chemical toilet, we’d likely be in need of the number for a good divorce attorney. There is thick and thin, and then there is thin ice. All this talk of little houses made The

Observer recall a narrow, Victorianesque two-story job up in Eureka Springs, with a bricked foundation, a tiny bay window capped with an onion dome, a steep roof, gingerbread trim and a balcony no bigger than a washing machine. Maybe 10 feet wide and three times as tall, the house looks like something out of a storybook, and it is, bar none, The Observer’s favorite house in the Arkansas (or at least it has been since the church across from Oaklawn in Hot Springs bulldozed one of the few Art Moderne houses in the state and built a hideous barn full of God in its place). The tiny house in Eureka seemed to have fallen into some disrepair last time we saw it. We hope it hasn’t been leveled for a new Target store. Such things happen. If you’ve watched this space, you know The Observer has been threatening to decamp to the tranquil burg of Eureka for years, to live out our days among our tribe, The Weirdoes, driving a cab or saying stuff like “Adam and Eve on a Raft and Wreck ’Em!” while working the grill at the local cafe, shushing folks at the Carnegie library or spinning a part-time job as the town’s lone gumshoe into a series of bestselling detective novels. Now that The Observer knows that Spouse is down with living in a tiny house, we may have to look into who owns that cozy little cartoon Victorian up in Eureka, because we can honestly say that it would suit Yours Truly just fine to squeeze his big rump through the door and live there in peace with our Lovely Bride until The End. We would be That Little House Guy. People would marvel and cheer when we emerged onto the Lilliputian balcony in our epaulet jacket, to deliver our weekly address to the populace. “Good morning, Citizens of Eureka Springs!” we would say. “As your Designated Observer, we are not immune to the snares of rumor and gossip. As such, we have heard that there is currently wafting through our fair city a hurtful tale wherein some claim that Yours Truly stole a ceramic creamer cow and several small pitchers of maple syrup from our beloved Mud Street Cafe by stuffing them under our coat! We can assure you that these rumors, both vile and slanderous, are mostly false ... .”

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OCTOBER 8, 2015

Arkansas Reporter

THE

IN S IDE R

Dickey sorry for stifling gun research Former U.S. Rep. Jay Dickey now says he’s sorry about his namesake 1996 legislation that has stifled gun research. From Huffington Post: “When he helped pass a restriction of federal funding for gun violence research in 1996, the goal wasn’t to be so suffocating, he insisted. But the measure was just that, dampening federal research for years and discouraging researchers from entering the field. “Now, as mass shootings pile up, including last week’s killing of nine at a community college in Oregon, Dickey admitted to carrying a sense of responsibility for progress not made. “ ‘I wish we had started the proper research and kept it going all this time,’ Dickey, an Arkansas Republican, told the Huffington Post in an interview. ‘I have regrets.’ ” The NRA wanted to shut down research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention because of the rising evidence that gun ownership had a decided impact on public health. The daily toll of accidental shootings bears ample witness. Dickey rode to Congress, succeeding Rep. Beryl Anthony, after Anthony got knocked off in the Democratic primary by an opponent, Bill McCuen, who depicted Anthony, an avid hunter, as soft on guns because he supported legislation to ban cop-killer bullets. At the time of the legislation, Dickey and the NRA claimed such research was advocacy, aimed at promoting “sympathy” about gun violence. The result: no research. “[Dickey] said the law was over-interpreted,” the Huffington Post reported. “Now, he looks at simple advances in highway safety — safety barriers, for example — and wonders what could have been done for guns. “ ‘If we had somehow gotten the research going, we could have somehow found a solution to the gun violence without there being any restrictions on the Second Amendment,’ Dickey said. ‘We could have used that all these years to develop the equivalent of that little small fence.’ ”

Kanis development decried Fletcher Hollow wrong place for density, neighbors tell LR planners. BY LESLIE NEWELL PEACOCK

anis Road, from its intersection with Chenal Parkway, past the city limits and into Ferndale, is one of Pulaski County’s most scenic little two-lanes. It’s banked by wooded high ridges on both sides, and the trees come right up to the narrow roadway, creating a canopy. Part of the road is in what’s known as Fletcher Hollow, named for a family that settled there in the 19th century, ancestors of state poet laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner John Gould Fletcher and heroine of the 1957 desegregation crisis Adolphine Fletcher Terry. Fletcher Creek drains these Ouachita Mountain foothills; Kanis crosses the creek on a new bridge, with bike lanes, just before its intersection with Walnut Grove Road. On the north, most of the land is undeveloped, much of it owned by Deltic Timber. On the south, set far back from the road, are subdivisions with generous five-acre lots, including Chenal Downs, Ferncrest and Iron Horse. With the exception of large homes on vast lots, Walnut Grove Road north and south of the intersection with Kanis looks much as it must have

years ago. South on Walnut Grove is a one-room clapboard church built in 1885 and an old cemetery; north is the rustic Camp Okatoma, reached by a one-lane bridge, the county’s only covered bridge. It is a singularly pretty bit of the county, and many of the people who live there want it to stay that way. But a portion of Kanis, while in the county, is within the city’s extraterritorial planning jurisdiction, and legal precedent says the city can’t use the area’s bucolic nature to stop development as long as it satisfies R-2 zoning requirements. So, on Thursday, Oct. 8, as this paper is distributed, the Little Rock Planning Commission is almost sure to approve a new 154-acre subdivision along this stretch of Kanis that will have 266 homes at full build-out. The development, The Trails, will include large lots along the ridge closest to Kanis, construction that will require that 30 feet be shaved off the top of the ridge for one-and-a-quarter miles. Lots will range in size from 7,000 square feet to 98,000 square feet, or 2.2 acres. The Planning Commission staff has

recommended approval for The Trails as long as the developer, Wayne “Oz” Richie, meets setbacks, easements, stormwater detention ordinances, street grading and so forth. He will not have to meet city requirements on clear-cutting, however, since the city’s land alteration rules don’t apply extraterritorially. Ironically, Richie’s first application, for a planned residential development that would have preserved large areas of forest and trails (hence the name), was not recommended by department staff because it included 4,000-squarefoot lots for “cottage homes.” The city’s minimum lot size is 7,000 square feet; Richie would have needed a variance for the PRD to be approved. Instead, he dropped the PRD plan and went with a simple R-2 zoned subdivision application instead, bumping up lot sizes by removing the wooded areas. The development still contains a bike trail along its boundary, greenways on the west and east, and four pavilions. Richie, who also developed Ferncrest to the south, insists that despite the high density, the tree buffer will keep the development from altering the scenic nature of Kanis. There is still a possible block to the development. Richie will have to build and homeowners will have to maintain a private sewage treatment plant, which will require approval by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality and meet federal Environmental Protection Agency guidelines. The Planning Commission will first have to issue a conditional use permit for the sewage treatment plant. CONTINUED ON PAGE 28

A Democratic House candidate Is all lost for Arkansas Democrats? Well, there has been a scattering of signs of hope for a comeback, particularly in some fresh faces for candidacies in the legislature. Here’s another: Lesa Wolfe Crowell, a parole agent from Dardanelle, will run as a Democrat to try to take back the District 12

OCTOBER 8, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

THE TRAILS: Image shows how the plat would differ from the surrounding area of five-acre lots and undeveloped woods.

THE

BIG PICTURE

LISTEN UP

New glory You may remember the story we ran in July about Phillip Scholtes and Jordan Little’s idea that Little Rock needs a new flag. The old one is fussy, featuring what one supposes to be Pinnacle but which looks more like a crawdad hole in the center, and Scholtes (a programmer) and Jordan (a designer) think the city should dump it in favor of a simpler, more symbolic design. The Arkansas Times liked the idea of giving the city a flag we could all wave, so we asked folks to contribute designs. Here are five submissions:

Designer: Dino Buturovic Twitter: @bdino74

Designer: Brian Hodges Twitter: @brian_d_hodges I WANTED TO KEEP THIS CONCEPT AS SIMPLE and clear as possible while following the five principles of good flag design. The red and blue fields reflect the colors in the Arkansas flag and the U.S. flag. The diamond is a nod to the Arkansas state flag as well. The star in the middle signifies Little Rock as the state capital.

MY PROPOSAL IS BASED on the current flag of Arkansas (same 2:3 ratio and same color scheme) with colors inverted and a single star, which symbolizes Little Rock as the capital and the most important city in Arkansas, as well as its central location within the state. The shape of the diamond on this flag can be understood to represent the shape of Arkansas, with Little Rock at its center.

Designer: Bryan Moats Twitter: @Moats

Designer: Jordan Little Twitter: @iamjordanlittle

I USED FOUR COLOR FIELDS to represent Little Rock and its location: An aqua blue triangle, which represents the Arkansas River and in shape alludes to the uppermost tip of a star, since Little Rock is the capital city; the red triangle, giving a hint of notable neighbor North Little Rock and balance to the design; the yellow field, which implies the vibrancy of spirit that Little Rock continues to strive toward, and the sky blue rectangle, the horizon and future.

IT'S BASED HEAVILY ON THE IDEA of "a kid can draw it," so I started off on paper with a 3:2 rectangle that I bisected diagonally in both directions. I knew I wanted a star smack-dab in the center. The star is intersected at two of its middle points: I thought it looked better to have the star "rising" out of the blue. The star in the center of the flag also represents Little Rock's geographic location within Arkansas: The middle. The blue can be seen as the river and the foundation of the city and flag.

Designer: Matthew Rowe Twitter: @mattyrowe I’VE SHOWN THIS TO SOME FOLKS and they don’t understand why I’d put fraternity in there. I mean it in the way that de Tocqueville means fraternity. He said “all the citizens are independent and feeble [and] ... therefore, become powerless if they do not learn voluntarily to help one another.” I think that’s what Little Rock can unite under. Cheese dip, wigs, plasma, taekwondo — these are all forms of fraternity, of brotherhood. At least when they’re practiced right. Instead, I think most people assume I’m talking about fraternity in the Kappa Sigma way, but the future Chambers of Commerce leaders of Arkansas probably don’t need a flag.

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

INSIDER, CONT. 73 seat won two years ago by Republican Mary Bentley of Perryville. Crowell, an Army veteran who served as a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne, is a certified law enforcement instructor and Arkansas Tech graduate. She says: “I am not a single-issue candidate. Issues on the state level, such as prison overcrowding, have a tremendous impact on local law enforcement, and I want to bring those concerns to Little Rock from a first person perspective. Another primary focus of mine will be the correlation between high school dropout rates, drug use and recidivism, but I will also bring the voices and concerns of rural farmers and factory workers with me when elected. District 73 has abundant natural resources and a large diverse workforce, so cultivating new job opportunities for the people in this area will be another objective.”

Ashdown school officials defend prayer exercises

Shreveport’s KTBS News reports on yet another public school district — this time in Ashdown — that thinks it has found a way around court dictates against organized prayer activities in public schools. The issue arises because the Freedom from Religion Foundation wrote the school district objecting to a student’s report that the school band director was leading prayer and about public prayers at football games. School Superintendent Jason Sanders said he’d consulted the Alliance for Defending Freedom, a group founded by right-wing evangelists that promotes prayer at public events, and said the district had been assured what the district was doing was legal. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled, however, that organized prayer, even if studentled, is not permissible at football games. Sanders said the band director would no longer lead prayer at events, but students would. If it’s a school-controlled event, this would still appear to be a problem. At the last Ashdown football game, dozens of students gathered on the field for prayer before the game, somewhat akin to the gather-at-the-flagpole voluntary prayer exercises organized at many schools before classes. From KTBS.com: “ ‘It’s encouraged the students to understand that they can in fact pray in many different ways and different times,’ said Butch Riddle, First Baptist Church pastor. Riddle says while still following the law, the letter has spurred students to step up more with their faith, commitment and convictions.” www.arktimes.com

OCTOBER 8, 2015

Gaming the past at UA Professor’s radical idea: to teach history, myth and game design through courses that virtually immerse students in the ancient world.

BRIAN CHILSON

BY DAVID KOON

n this age of whiz-bang gadgets, when most everyone has a supercomputer in their pocket, cars are smarter than the family dog, and the combined span of human knowledge is available in milliseconds via Google, Greek and Roman history and myth might seem like the deadest of dead subjects. Ovid? “The Iliad”? Trying to keep Aphrodite, Artemis, Athena, Andromeda, Ares and Achilles straight? While a classical studies education is the unblemished marble foundation the university experience is built upon, it’s understandable that a lot of people in 2015 A.D. might assume that a degree in Greek history and $4.50 will just about get you a venti mocha at Starbucks. If you’re lucky, they might have a “help wanted” sign. One person working to change 14

OCTOBER 8, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

both that perception and the marketability of students coming out of his classes is University of Arkansas Classical Studies Prof. David Fredrick. With a small team, all plucked from the courses he teaches, Fredrick started the Tesseract Studio for Immersive Environments and Game Design in 2010. Since its inception, Tesseract has been taking history from the lecture hall to the digital plain. Starting with virtual models of houses in Pompeii, Fredrick moved on to teaching game design, then to building historically based video games that are conceived, scripted, animated, voice-acted and scored entirely on campus. These games form the core of Fredrick’s wildly popular online classes that allow students at UA to learn about ancient history by playing a video

game over the course of a semester, fully immersing themselves in the period. It’s an idea that’s apparently unique, for now, to the University of Arkansas. The course constructed around one game, “Mythos Unbound,” has been taught at the university since the fall semester of 2013. The game puts students in the sandals of a Roman slave, working his way to freedom while learning about mythology. The journey sometimes requires students to play the game as the mythological figure they’re learning about, from Hermes to Hercules. A second game, the even more ambitious “Saeculum,” teaches students about ancient Roman culture by following members of a single family through several hundred years of Roman history.

In addition to giving Tesseract employees and student interns (many of them drawn from the humanities) valuable, real-life experience in 3-D modeling and game design, Fredrick is providing students with insights on ancient history, architecture and culture that they’d never get from a traditional lecture.

My own, private Pompeii

Educated as a classicist, Fredrick had been teaching Roman history, Greek and Latin at UA for over a decade when the Mother of Invention came knocking in 2006. One point of his research is the great houses of Pompeii, once-luxurious townhouses and villas that had been largely preserved when nearby

GRAFFITI: Fredrick points out details in a virtual Roman house.

Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D., burying the town in a layer of ash and pumice up to 20 feet high. The biggest houses in Pompeii contained intricate murals, mosaics, fountains, reflecting pools and other decorative features. These features, Fredrick knew, were laid out so that they formed a kind of visual dialogue with each other. Decoding that artistic and architectural conversation in full meant getting inside the houses and seeing them as someone might have before the eruption. To do that, Fredrick approached colleagues in the University of Arkansas architecture department and the Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies. Together, they started building three-dimensional digital representations of a few of the larger Pompeiian houses. As the

project progressed, Fredrick and his colleagues noticed their work looked remarkably like a level in a video game. “In trying to recreate those environments, I started getting involved in 3-D technology,” he said. “Eventually, that led to a game engine. As I started trying to put those house environments together to figure out how the art worked together with the fountains and the sculpture and the space … I was really struck by how powerful it would be for a lot of other things.” Fredrick said while he’s never been much of a gamer, he saw the potential for video games to make the jump from time-killer to educational tool almost immediately. For one thing, modern games are often information-dense, requiring play-

ers to learn and remember multiple storylines and skills. Too, games are efficient at teaching basic rules and concepts in a short amount of time so the player can get on with his goal, which is to play the game without being frustrated by the rules. If a game could be made that used real history, students could learn a large amount of information in a short amount of time, while feeling like they were actually a part of the culture and world depicted on screen. “There’s been a lot of national discussion about the power of video games to transform education, and I think there is still a lot of work to be done there,” he said. “The only thing I could think of was, well, in order to force myself to learn about this and in order to explore what this game engine can do, I’m just going to teach

game design. I had a research associate with a very strong programming background. I was already doing a lot of what was game art. I didn’t know it, but I was making assets that could go in the 3-D environment. So I already had a pretty good 3-D modeling skillset by that point. So we put ourselves together and taught game design, which wasn’t being taught in any sustained way on our campus.” The original game design course asked students to read a mythological text and then create a video game around that text. Fredrick said a survey of Southeastern Conference colleges found that, like Arkansas, none of them offered a major in game design. “I really sort of got on a soapbox at that point,” he said. “I started teaching game design and became pretty passionate about the www.arktimes.com

OCTOBER 8, 2015

MYTHOS UNBOUND: A screenshot from a Tesseract game.

importance of it as an interdisciplinary thing to do for a state school.” Lynda Coon, dean of the Honors College at UA and a professor of medieval history, and Fredrick taught an interdisciplinary course together for many years. Coon said Fredrick has always been interested in moving undergraduate education far beyond the status quo. “He always used visual culture, material culture,” she said. “This was even back in the ’90s. He was always ahead of the game in terms of mak-

ing the experience the students were having in the ancient world sort of over and beyond the stale lecture. I’m not surprised by anything he’s doing, because I saw the origins of it back then.” The brilliance of the game-based approach, Coon said, is that it is an example of classical studies meeting online education at a high level. Though some might assume a gamebased course would be a cakewalk, Coon said Fredrick’s classes are known for being challenging. “These

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OCTOBER 8, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

online courses have a reputation of being extremely rigorous,” Coon said, noting that the courses have what she called “an ambitious writing component” stressing analytical skills and critical thinking. Though Coon was a believer early on, Fredrick said that it was a long process to convince some in administration that teaching game design and, later, a video-game-based history course was a good idea. A lot of the issues he ran into revolved around the fact that to build a modern, 3-D video game on campus — an effort that requires expertise from a host of departments, including theater, computer science, music, architecture, visual arts and others — required the somewhat disparate clans to unite around a single idea. “For any institution, certainly not for just the UA but for any state school, to move in this direction is very hard,” he said. “Traditionally, it’s not been easy for state schools, especially the big ones, to cooperate across disciplines. They get in their silos, and it’s hard to talk. In my mind, what we’ve done is actually really fast. We’ve done really well with that, and I think we’re poised to do a whole lot more. It was a hard sell at first for sort of institutional reasons.” Over time, Fredrick got the ball

got rolling, with crucial assistance from the Global Campus, a division of UA that provided instructional design support for Fredrick’s online classical studies courses, and UA Honors College grants for course development. He created the “Digital Pompeii” course, then his game design course. Soon, Fredrick had enough current and former students of game design to start thinking bigger. In a video on the Tesseract website (online at tesseract. uark.edu), Fredrick explained: “It’s like, we kind of have a thing here. A thing like a studio. What do we call it?” Tesseract Studio — named for a fourth-dimensional representation of a cube — was born.

‘Togas are really hard’

Originally crammed into a narrow bowling-lane of a room in the J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc. Center for Academic Excellence on the UA campus, Tesseract Studios recently moved to a new and larger lab space across the hall, giving employees there at least some leg space. The lab is a mix of the old and new, with six-sided, cutting-edge gaming computers (bought to support virtual reality, which is the next big step) sharing space with white plaster busts of historical figures.

BRIAN CHILSON

MYTH MAKER: Keenan Cole.

One of the students working in the lab on a recent Wednesday morning was Amy Richter, an art major who is interning with Tesseract. With just four full-time employees, Tesseract often relies on student interns to do the heavy lifting on 3-D modeling — stuff that’s only ever going to be really noticed by players if it screws up. Ten to 15 interns work on the project. “A lot of the development is done by student interns,” Fredrick said. “I put a huge emphasis on that, because that’s a key place where kids can learn by building the game. They’ve got to research everything. If you’re going to build a game about ancient Rome and they’re going to be building a piece of a Roman theater or a Roman house or tavern or whatever, you have to do a lot of hard-

core research to figure out what that was and how we can represent it. ... I think it’s very powerful to have that on campus and let kids have that experience. They know they’re building the game that other kids will play. That’s really powerful.” The day we visited, Richter was working on the toga for a digital character, using a stylus and electronic pad to “paint weights” — essentially shading different parts of the character’s body to tell the digital fabric which parts of the character’s body to cling to. As Fredrick had said earlier: “Togas are really hard. It’s a ton of fabric, and any time you try to animate fabric, it wants to go through pieces of the body.” “Fabric is an extremely complex thing,” Richter said. “There’s so many ways it can move, different

ways it can move. If you just generically put [clothing] on a character, it doesn’t understand that it’s fabric. So if you move an arm it clips [goes through the character’s body part]. When you move a body, it doesn’t really understand it’s supposed to flow.” Another of those in the lab that day was Keenan Cole, technical director for Tesseract. A 2008 gradu-

ate of UA with a degree in Classical Studies, Cole got in on the ground floor at Tesseract, helping Fredrick with his original “Digital Pompeii” and game design courses. “We discovered that [creating games based on texts was] a really effective way for students to sort of grapple with the themes and motifs that are in the texts themselves,” Cole said. “From there we then

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QUITE THE CHARACTER: A game avatar.

said, ‘Why don’t we make a game that’s an online course that students will walk through and interact with actual characters from ancient times, from literary texts, and see how effective that could be?’ ” They started creating the game “Mythos Unbound” in the fall of 2012, and launched the course built around it in the fall semester of 2013. Originally offered as a “beta” version to only 30 students, the game and course have since been through heavy revisions, and the course is now open to up to 150 students per semester. Cole said that feedback from the game-based courses has always been excellent, with many students saying that it was a favorite class of their academic career, something Fredrick said is rare for an online course. Nearby, Chloe Costello was build18

OCTOBER 8, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

ing a digital representation of a Roman house. An architecture major who is now the art director for Tesseract, Costello originally started at Tesseract in 2011 as a student, helping make 3-D models of houses. Growing up, Costello said, she’d always been a gamer and loved learning games as a kid. While she had dreamed of a career in game design, when she got to college she took what she called “a more typical route” with her degree. “I was going to be an architect,” she said, “but then I got the parttime job here and I liked it a lot. I thought, maybe I can have a career in games. I’d always dreamed of it.” While learning games and recreational games usually have different goals, she said, the games built at Tesseract are particularly good

BRIAN CHILSON

at putting historical ideas in context so students can feel like they’re immersed in history. “In a classroom,” she said, “they’ll give you a problem that’s something like, ‘Sally has to fill this bucket with water. How many liters does she need?’ You’ll think, ‘Well, why is she filling this bucket with water? What’s the point?’ Games give a context to that, [such as] ‘Oh, she’s filling the bucket with water because she needs to bring it to the blacksmith.’ That’s what I think is most important in a learning game. It gives you a reason why you’re learning something. It gives you a framework so that the problems make sense.” While the life of an architect can be a lonely pursuit, Costello said she has learned to love working with a team. “You realize that people have

their strengths and weaknesses,” she said. “The product comes out better for it really, having the diversity of people’s backgrounds.” Greg Rogers is the design and narrative lead for Tesseract. He wrote the scripts for both “Mythos Unbound” and “Saeculum.” Like everyone else who works at Tesseract, he’s a vet of Fredrick’s courses, taking the game-design course “three or four times because I couldn’t get enough of it. I had a passion for it and the material. I felt like it was really relevant.” Rogers said when Fredrick first came up with the idea of teaching game design and later game-based history courses, there were naturally “some cocked heads” on campus, but the concept has now proven itself. Like Fredrick, Rogers pointed out

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VIRTUAL ARCHITECT: Chloe Costello in the Tesseract lab.

that even though video games have a reputation for being time-wasters, they’re very good at teaching complex ideas. “Games teach very economically,” he said. “The stigma that’s been applied to games is that they rot your brain or whatever, but it’s really kind of backwards. The language that games use is very natural in teaching people the things they need to know.” Rogers said that as cheaper virtual reality headsets come online in the next few years, games will make the leap to more and more classrooms, giving students the ability to experience a historical setting as if they’re actually there. “That presents a whole new level of immersion,” he said. “I don’t think there’s some-

thing that will come in and replace teaching. But as new technologies are introduced, they supplement. I think it’s been proven that games are not a fad. Games are not going away, and they have something of worth to offer. I absolutely think you’ll see that grow in the future.” Fredrick said one goal that could be down the road is licensing the game-based courses to other universities, though they’ll need to go through several iterations of the concept before they’re ready to do that. They’re also working on outside projects, including a “virtual gallery” application for an online course in art history. It’s a representation of a space at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, giv-

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ing students the ability to virtually rearrange works of art, tag pieces and alter the lighting scheme. Fredrick said support from the university and from his colleagues in other departments has been crucial to Tesseract’s success so far. “I’m really grateful for the support of my colleagues in the Classical Studies program and the Department of World Literatures, Languages, and Cultures, as well as Computer Science and University Information Technology,” Fredrick said. “While we started small, this really has become a collaborative effort across the campus. We’ve come farther, faster than many state schools ever could.” Now that he’s been pushing the

idea of game design and teaching through games for a few years, Fredrick said a game-development ecosystem is starting to emerge at UA. The pieces are beginning to fit together, he said. That’s preparing the university for the digital future. “Video games are thought of in this frivolous way,” Fredrick said, “but in fact they’re the biggest entertainment industry on the planet now. That’s a major thing. That means their way of teaching and their way of approaching 3-D is becoming kind of a lingua franca, a common language of experience. The way I put it to UA to get the ball rolling was: Are we planning to do more 3-D or less? Looking ahead to the next decade, there’s only one answer to that question.”

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ARKANSAS TIMES

LOST CAUSES AND BURNING MANSIONS, CONT. they had to debrief him, and he was all mixed up about that. Apparently it was kind of like Graham Greene’s “The Quiet American,” very disillusioning and dangerous. He really didn’t talk about it too much, and when he did talk about it, it was very bizarre. Then he got psychedelicized, started having a lot of altered states experiences as a lot of us did. [Longtime New York Times pop critic and Little Rock native] Bob Palmer was also a friend of Randall’s, and became a friend of mine. We shared some of these transcendent psychedelic experiences together. I guess Randall was as close to genius as anyone I’ve ever known. And [Beat Generation writer] John Clellon Holmes recognized that in him, as did Allen Ginsberg, who called Randall’s poetry “modern freak brain original.” Randall could have been published more than he was, could have achieved a great legacy of work in visual art and writing, it’s just that he talked away his ideas and his thoughts. He was also a performance artist; we had an artaction group together in Memphis called the Big Dixie Brick Company. I always see that phrase “artaction” used to describe your early work. What does that mean? I adopted that phrase from the artist Red Grooms. It refers to happenings, these spontaneous art events that occurred, in which artists would create experiential events. Maybe in a gallery, but also out in the street, off the stage. I still engage in art-actions. Randall and I collaborated on a lot of happenings together. We also did a number of experiments with video, with our art-action group TeleVista, like our performance on the ABC affiliate in Memphis, on the “Marge Thrasher Show.” Half of that program is still floating around the Internet. We really disturbed Marge Thrasher, a talk show host who was very much in the vein of Margaret Thatcher in appearance and outlook. On the second song Panther Burns played, I had the king and queen of the local cotton carnival beating a tambourine with us. Thrasher said, “Oh my god, this is the worst thing I’ve ever heard.” She signed off saying, “I really

need a bath after that.”

lier forms in today’s world, and then expressing something. If I sit in the cinematheque in Paris or Vienna, as I have done, for months and months, pretty soon that experience is part of the fabric of my thinking. When you hang out at Sam Phillips Recording Service in Memphis for years, when you see Albert King or Howlin’ Wolf or Jerry Lee Lewis over and over again, it makes an impression. It’s not that I want to revive these people — there are revivalists in Memphis just as there are in Vegas. I don’t do that. It’s not an imitation or a re-enactment. I’m going to live through it again. You might see some of the same notes or moves, but I use that stuff. Jerry Lee Lewis is a part of me.

and Whelan Springs have almost vanished — they are forlorn, grown up with weeds. Gurdon was a thriving railroad town when I was growing up. Mailmen out on the street every day, cars up and down the roads, six passenger trains a day coming through town, hotels and movie houses. All that’s gone. They don’t even have a grocery store. There’s one gas station and a BBQ joint. I don’t trust it anymore, I don’t trust that kind of neglect. And I look at Arkansas politics today: absolutely appalling. The people in the governor’s mansion, our representatives in Washington. They’re ignorant. People who should have been flunked out of Harvard, political opportunists. I don’t trust them. This is the reason I cannot go home.

Your music and writing is steeped in the past — vanished music cultures and arcana. How do you approach your work as a historian and researcher? I can’t know anything of what’s happening right now or in the future unless I know something of the past. What’s gone down beforehand. I don’t even know myself, who I am, without having some perspective. In my book [“Ghosts Behind the Sun: Splendor, Enigma & Death”], I wanted to tell the whole story. To understand Memphis and Arkansas — the artists who worked there, the people who lived and died there, the people who suffered and were lynched there — it all has to come out. You can’t understand rock ’n’ roll music without understanding the social and political forces around it. You have to talk about the Civil War, and what happened before the Civil War. You have to talk about so much to even give an outline of what has gone on here.

And now the Memphis scene you participated in is itself becoming romanticized and memorialized in books and documentaries. What does that feel like? You make something public and people come across it and react to it, and it’s all part of the ongoing process of things. I’m aware of legacies, and I try to leave a trail of what I’m doing to see that it’s preserved in some fashion. Legend becomes vital over time. Legend overtakes the so-called rational conscious existence. That phenomenon we call legend and myth, here is where dwells that which we cannot touch: the realm of literature and imagination. You can make paintings about it, but you can’t photograph it; you can write about it, but you can’t really touch it. Myths become vital. What about the myth of the Old South? The men and women and slaves who laid down their lives in the War of Rebellion? How complex. That is what the Panther Burns are made of: brother against brother, burning mansions, lost causes.

You have a new photography book coming out? It’s called “An Iconography of Chance: 99 Photographs of the Evanescent South.” It’s supposed to be out in October, but I haven’t seen a galley yet from the publisher. I’m sure it’s coming.

In the book you inhabit these past periods in the first person, which reminded me of your music — the way you revive old styles. It’s something apart from sheer revivalism. Some people say it’s a deconstruction. And there is that gradient in what I do. But it’s more a matter of living and breathing those ear-

In another interview, you said that many parts of rural Arkansas have become ghost towns, that the small communities are drying up. I go back to Arkansas every year. Maybe one day I’ll come back to Arkansas to live, but I’m afraid to. I’d like to come back. My mother lives there, in Hot Springs. But places like Gurdon

Didn’t you once interview Orval Faubus together? Yes, I remember it quite well. Randall did the interview, and I operated the camera. A very eloquent and articulate figure, extremely intelligent. He was a strategist, but also endowed with an enormous degree of rhetoric. He did a lot for Arkansas. And he did a lot to set us back in the imagination and consciousness of the world. He could have handled things, in my opinion, a little differently. In his opinion, he was representing his constituency. When I went to interview him with Randall, there was a rock ’n’ roll band set up in the house, his son’s rock band. He had a marvelous modern house. He was a man riddled with inconsistencies.

Are you still in touch with William Eggleston? Yes, we’re in touch. In fact, in the past few months I’ve reached out to Bill and talked to him about the book. He’s seen all the pictures and knows I’m doing it. He’s doing as well as ever. He’s staying there at the Parkview Hotel in Overton Park [in Memphis]. His wife, Rosa, recently passed away. The Bill that you read about in my book is the same Bill right there in the Parkview Hotel. Bill is a nocturnal creature, a fascinating individual. He seems to be doing fine — he has the constitution of a racehorse. We don’t talk about pictures too much, because he doesn’t like to talk about photographs. He likes to look at them and react to them, but not to analyze them or talk about their merits or conceptualize about them. It’s, “This is interesting.” He never takes more than two pictures of anything, and even that’s rare. He mainly takes one shot. He rarely looks through the lens anymore, he just holds the camera. And it’s always film, he doesn’t do any digital work. We talk about people and cities and social events. Comrades and other things unspeakable.

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THE TO-DO

LIST

BY WILL STEPHENSON

SATURDAY 10/10

THURSDAY 10/8

MOTLEY CRUE

7 p.m. Verizon Arena. $38-$147.

There are worse fates for a band than being remembered mainly for your tour gossip. Like, say, not being remembered at all. Mötley Crüe gamed the system, sneaking into the cultural pantheon through the backdoor (via sex tapes, tell-all memoirs and Nikki Sixx’s urine), but the group is here nonetheless, their concert tickets more expensive than ever. This is, at least nominally, a farewell

tour for the glam metal pioneers, one last job for the criminals responsible for “Girls, Girls, Girls” and “Dr. Feelgood” and “Smokin’ in the Boys Room.” Revisiting their hits today, what stands out is how bright and fun and great most of them are — as propulsive as disco and as cheesy and riffheavy as modern country. How great is the talk-box solo on “Kickstart My Heart”? What were they thinking — and why does nobody think it anymore? Alice Cooper is along for the

ARKANSAS’S REEL HISTORY

ride, too, a super-human feat considering he’s been an elder statesman longer than I’ve been alive. In a recent Rolling Stone profile, the group consulted with Cooper on livening up their stage show for the end game. “Alice, can you build us three more guillotines, and then we’ll just end it?” guitarist Mick Mars quipped. “Better, it’s a puff of smoke,” Cooper replied, droll as ever, “and when it clears, there’s just skeletons up there with your clothes on — and that’s it.”

1-6 p.m. Ron Robinson Theater. Free.

Arkansas history archives and organizations — including the Arkansas History Commission, the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, UALR’s Center of Arkansas History and Culture and several more — are collaborating this weekend on a promising-sounding screening of archival footage and found film from around the state. Ranging from the 1930s to the 1960s, the material is all over the map — Ozark folk songs, small-town parades, Hot Springs in its Golden Age and more. Like our own equivalent to Thom Andersen’s essay film “Los Angeles Plays Itself,” the result will presumably be an elegiac collage-history of vanished Arkansas characters and cultures.

SUNDAY 10/11

LITTLE ROCK PRIDE FEST

BRIAN CHILSON

11 a.m. Clinton Presidential Center.

BLUES HEAVY: Taj Mahal headlines the Saturday finale lineup at the King Biscuit Blues Festival.

THURSDAY 10/8-SATURDAY 10/10

KING BISCUIT BLUES FESTIVAL Downtown Helena-West Helena. $50.

The story of the King Biscuit Blues Festival and the radio show that inspired it — “King Biscuit Time,” supposedly the country’s longest-running daily radio broadcast, the program that inspired B.B. King and Ike Turner and 34

OCTOBER 8, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

Levon Helm — has been buffed up and trotted out so often that it’s almost lost its spark, acquired a textbook sheen that’s enough to make your eyes glaze over. But don’t let that blind you to the thing’s significance, which remains real and fascinating and worth attending to. The event, this year celebrating its 30th anniversary, has to be one of the best

bargains in live music, three nights of blues performances by heavyweights like Taj Mahal, Bobby Rush, Jimmie Vaughan, Leo “Bud” Welch and many more. And Helena’s history offers a memorable backdrop. This is what we talk about when we talk about Delta Blues, a living history with real origins and real vitality.

This year’s Pride Fest kicks off with a parade through the River Market at 11 a.m., followed by a full afternoon of music and events and vendors on the grounds of the Clinton Presidential Center. “It’s all about creating community, and I believe we are doing a good job with that,” says the festival’s sponsorship director, Zach Baker. “It is a great way for people to network, celebrate, and see many businesses, nonprofit, and civic and religious leaders who support equality.” Triniti Nightclub hosts a kickoff party at 9 p.m. Friday, featuring Orlando, Fla., drag scene fixture Axel Andrews; Sway hosts a Pride party of its own at 9 p.m. Saturday, starring Milk (from Season 6 of “RuPauls’ Drag Race”). The festival lineup includes 2015 Karaoke World Champion Anthony Magee (12:45 p.m.), Flameing Daeth Fearies (1:15 p.m.), 2015 Pride Pageant Winners (2 p.m.), Ryan Cassata (3 p.m.) and John Willis and Late Romantics (4 p.m.). Food trucks will include Loblolly Creamery, Katmandu MoMo, Le Pops, Black Hound BBQ, Yvette’s Sandwiches and more.

IN BRIEF

THURSDAY 10/8

FRIDAY 10/9-SUNDAY 10/18

ARKANSAS STATE FAIR

Arkansas State Fairgrounds. $15.

Nothing is more simultaneously inspiring and harrowing than the State Fair, an ecstatic vision quest of stuffed animals, prized pigs, motorcycle stunts, Ferris wheels and funnel

cakes, all of it soundtracked by Styx and Tony! Toni! Toné! “Have you ever seen a coatimundi or an exotic fox up close?” asks this year’s promotional material — you’ll have your chance, if the answer is no. There will also be beer and cheese fries and beauty pageants, petting zoos and mechani-

cal bulls, parades and high-dives, corn dogs and tractor pulls. The musical headliners would’ve made for a dream lineup in 1991: Eddie Money sharing a stage with Naughty By Nature, Grand Funk Railroad, Joe Diffie and early ’90s R&B group Silk (of “Freak Me” fame).

The 68th Original Ozark Folk Festival continues in downtown Eureka Springs through Oct. 10, $12-$32. The MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History hosts a Ghost Hunting Class at 6:30 p.m., $25. Stone’s Throw Brewing presents #ArkiePubTrivia at 6:30 p.m. Comedian Christine Steadman is at the Loony Bin at 7:30 p.m., $7 (and at 7:30 p.m. and 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, $10). Dreaming Sophia plays at Wildwood Park for the Performing Arts, 7 p.m., $15. Brooklyn singer-songwriter Audrey Dean Kelly performs at The Joint as part of its Music Innovators Series, 7:30 p.m., $10. All Them Witches play at Maxine’s in Hot Springs with Adam Faucett, 9 p.m., $7. The Cedric Burnside Project returns to the White Water Tavern at 9:30 p.m., $10.

FRIDAY 10/9

DOCS IN THE SPA: Among the festival entries (clockwise, from top left) are “Made in Japan,” “Raiders! The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made,” “Primary Instinct” and “The First Boys of Spring.”

FRIDAY 10/9-SUNDAY 10/18

HOT SPRINGS DOCUMENTARY FILM FESTIVAL Arlington Hotel. $7.50-$250.

With the recent passing of the Little Rock Film Festival, it’s never been more apparent how crucial it is that we support (and attend) what local cultural institutions we have left — and luckily for us, our state still has a world-class film event in the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, an Academy Award-qualifying outlet that is also one of the oldest events

of its kind in the country. There will be parties and concerts every night — at Maxine’s and Deluca’s and the Gangster Museum and local bathhouses. (Have you ever been to a party at a bathhouse? It would be shameful to skip this.) There will be constant film screenings, bookended by appearances by filmmakers, documentary subjects and local luminaries. Highlights, at random: “The Primary Instinct,” featuring the life story of actor Stephen Tobolowsky (inspired by Tobolowsky’s popular

podcast), who will be in attendance; “The First Boys of Spring,” Larry Foley’s film about Hot Springs’ baseball spring training history, with former St. Louis Cardinal Lou Brock on hand; “Made in Japan,” about Japanese country-western singer Tomi Fujiyama; and “Raiders! The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made,” about the Mississippi 11-year-olds who made a shot-for-shot remake of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” in the early ’80s. It’s an incredible event, and an important one.

tion that plays only Stephen Stills and the Alan Parsons Project, and wonder out loud, “Why don’t they make music like this anymore?” Well, they do — pretty regularly — and Dripping Springs, Texas, native Israel Nash is here to prove

it, with a debut album (“Rain Plans”) that resummons the era of shaggy Laurel Canyon folk rock. It’s good because “Harvest”-era Neil Young is good, and if that’s not enough to satisfy your drunk uncle, nothing will be.

WEDNESDAY 10/14

ISRAEL NASH

8:30 p.m. Stickyz. $10.

Every Thanksgiving, without fail, one of my uncles will drink too much, get misty-eyed by a satellite radio sta-

Ramon Murguia, scholar-in-residence at the Center on Community Philanthropy, speaks at the Clinton School for Public Service’s Sturgis Hall, noon. Jonathan Karl, ABC News’ chief White House correspondent, gives the annual J.N. Heiskell Distinguished Lecture at the Ron Robinson Theater, 6:30 p.m. The Arkansas Chamber Singers perform their “Music of the Night” production at St. Edward Catholic Church, 7:30 p.m., $15. The Eskimo Brothers play at Stickyz, 9 p.m., $6. Rwake’s CT, Pallbearer’s Brett Campbell, Snakedriver’s Dustin Weddle and many more present a Metal Vinyl Take-Over at Vino’s. Tyler Kinchen & The Right Pieces return to the Afterthought, 9 p.m., $7. White Water presents a Dance Party hosted by Joshua Asante, 9:30 p.m.

SATURDAY 10/10 The Arktoberfest Craft Beer Festival and Catfish Cook-off is in downtown Arkadelphia. Country star Miranda Lambert performs at the ASU Convocation Center in Jonesboro, 7:30 p.m., $39.75-$59.75.

SUNDAY 10/11 St. Edward Catholic Church hosts an Oktoberfest Carnival at 10 a.m. The Arkansas Chamber Singers perform “Music of the Night” at the St. James United Methodist Church, 3 p.m., $15. Asbury United Methodist Church hosts the Hog on the Hill BBQ Cook-Off and Dessert Bake-Off at 4 p.m. Theory of a Deadman plays at Juanita’s with Shaman’s Harvest and Aranda, 8 p.m., $27. Revolution hosts a Big Horns Show (billed as “The Spirit of New Orleans”) at 8 p.m., $10 adv., $15 day of. The Mallett Brothers Band plays at Stickyz at 8:30 p.m., $5.

www.arktimes.com

OCTOBER 8, 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.

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

DANCE

Ballroom dancing. Free lessons begin at 7 p.m. Bess Chisum Stephens Community Center, 8-11 p.m., $7-$13. 12th and Cleveland streets. 501221-7568. www.blsdance.org. Contra Dance. Park Hill Presbyterian Church, 7:30 p.m., $5. 3520 JFK Blvd., NLR. arkansascountrydance.org. “Salsa Night.” Begins with a one-hour salsa lesson. Juanita’s, 9 p.m., $8. 614 President Clinton Ave. 501-372-1228. www.littlerocksalsa.com.

THURSDAY, OCT. 8

MUSIC

All Them Witches, Adam Faucett. Maxine’s, 9 p.m., $7. 700 Central Ave., Hot Springs. www. maxinespub.com. Audrey Dean Kelly. The Joint, 7:30 p.m., $10. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501-372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com. The Cedric Burnside Project. White Water Tavern, 9:30 p.m., $10. 2500 W. 7th St. 501-375-8400. www.whitewatertavern.com. Dreaming Sophia. Wildwood Park for the Performing Arts, 7 p.m., $15. 20919 Denny Road. Ecstatic Vision, Construction of Light, Becoming Elephants. Vino’s. 923 W. 7th St. 501-375-8466. www.vinosbrewpub.com. “Inferno.” DJs play pop, electro, house and more, plus drink specials and $1 cover before 11 p.m. Sway, 9 p.m. 412 Louisiana. 501-907-2582. Jim Dickerson. Sonny Williams’ Steak Room, 7 p.m. 500 President Clinton Ave. 501-324-2999. www.sonnywilliamssteakroom.com. Karaoke. Zack’s Place, 8 p.m., free. 1400 S. University Ave. 501-664-6444. King Biscuit Blues Festival. With Taj Mahal, Bobby Rush, Jimmie Vaughan, Leo “Bud” Welch and more. Downtown Helena, through Oct. 10, $50. Cherry and Main Streets, HelenaWest Helena. Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-3724782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com. Mister Lucky (headliner), Greg Madden (happy hour). Cajun’s Wharf, 5:30 and 9 p.m. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. www.cajunswharf.com. Mötley Crüe. Verizon Arena, 7 p.m., $38-$147. 1 Alltel Arena Way, NLR. 501-975-9001. verizonarena.com. Open Jam. Thirst n’ Howl, 8 p.m. 14710 Cantrell Road. 501-379-8189. www.thirst-n-howl.com. Open jam with The Port Arthur Band. Parrot Beach Cafe, 9 p.m. 9611 MacArthur Drive, NLR. 771-2994. RockUsaurus. Senor Tequila, 7-9 p.m. 10300 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-224-5505. Ted Ludwig Trio. Capital Bar and Grill, 8 p.m., free. 111 W. Markham St. 501-370-7013. www. capitalbarandgrill.com.

COMEDY

Christine Steadman. The Loony Bin, 7:30 p.m., $7. 10301 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-2285555. www.loonybincomedy.com.

EVENTS

68th Original Ozark Folk Festival. Downtown Eureka Springs, through Oct. 10, $12-$32. Ozarkfolkfestival.com. #ArkiePubTrivia. Stone’s Throw Brewing, 6:30 p.m. 402 E. 9th St. 501-244-9154. Ghost Hunting Class. MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History, 6:30 p.m., $25. 503 E. 9th St. 376-4602. www.arkmilitaryheritage.com. The National Circus & Acrobats of the People’s Republic of China. Reynolds Performance Hall, 36

OCTOBER 8, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

EVENTS

TWO MAN WRECKING CREW: The Cedric Burnside Project, featuring Burnside (above) and Trenton Ayers, returns to the White Water Tavern at 9:30 p.m. Thursday, $10.

University of Central Arkansas, 7:30 p.m., sold out. 201 Donaghey Ave., Conway.

FRIDAY, OCT. 9

MUSIC

All In Fridays. Club Elevations. 7200 Colonel Glenn Road. 501-562-3317. Arkansas Chamber Singers: Music of the Night. St. Edward Catholic Church, 7:30 p.m., $15. 801 Sherman St. 501-374-5767. www.saintedwards. net/church. Dance Party hosted by Joshua Asante. White Water Tavern, 9:30 p.m. 2500 W. 7th St. 501-3758400. www.whitewatertavern.com. The Eskimo Brothers. Stickyz Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicken Shack, 9 p.m., $6. 107 River Market Ave. 501-372-7707. www.stickyz.com. Ghost Town Blues Band (headliner), Richie Johnson (happy hour). Cajun’s Wharf, 5:30 and 9 p.m. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. www. cajunswharf.com. JB and the Moonshine Band. Revolution, 9 p.m., $10. 300 President Clinton Ave. 501-823-0090. www.rumbarevolution.com/new.

King Biscuit Blues Festival. See Oct. 8. Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-3724782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com. Metal Vinyl Take-Over: Brett Campbell (Pallbearer), Dustin Weddle (Snakedriver), CT (Rwake). Vino’s. 923 W. 7th St. 501-375-8466. www.vinosbrewpub.com. Route 66. Agora Conference and Special Event Center, 6:30 p.m., $5. 705 E. Siebenmorgan, Conway. Ted Ludwig Trio. Capital Bar and Grill, 8 p.m., free. 111 W. Markham St. 501-370-7013. www. capitalbarandgrill.com. Tyler Kinchen & The Right Pieces. Afterthought Bistro & Bar, 9 p.m., $7. 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-663-1196. www.afterthoughtbistroandbar. com. Upscale Friday. IV Corners, 7 p.m. 824 W. Capitol Ave.

COMEDY

“Lou Tells a Bog One.” An original production by The Main Thing. The Joint, 8 p.m., $22. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501-372-0205. thejointin-

68th Original Ozark Folk Festival. Downtown Eureka Springs, through Oct. 10, $12-$32. Ozarkfolkfestival.com. Arkansas State Fair. Featuring Naughty by Nature, Grand Funk Railroad, Styx, Eddie Money, Montgomery Gentry and more. Arkansas State Fairgrounds, Oct. 9-18, $15. 2600 Howard St. 501-372-8341 ext. 8206. www.arkansasstatefair.com. LGBTQ/SGL weekly meeting. Diverse Youth for Social Change is a group for LGBTQ/SGL and straight ally youth and young adults age 14 to 23. For more information, call 501-2449690 or search “DYSC” on Facebook. LGBTQ/ SGL Youth and Young Adult Group, 6:30 p.m. 800 Scott St.

FILM

24th Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival. Arlington Hotel, Oct. 9-18, $7.50-$250. 239 Central Ave., Hot Springs. 501-623-7771. www. hsdfi.org.

LECTURES

Jonathan Karl. ABC News’ chief White House correspondent. Ron Robinson Theater, 6:30 p.m. 1 Pulaski Way. 501-320-5703. www.cals.lib.ar.us/ ron-robinson-theater.aspx. Ramón Murguía. The Center on Community Philanthropy Scholar-in-Residence. Sturgis Hall, noon. 1200 President Clinton Ave. 501-683-5200. clintonschool.uasys.edu.

KIDS

Children’s Theater: “Apollo: To the Moon.” Arkansas Arts Center, Oct. 9-10, 7 p.m., $10. 501 E. 9th St. 501-372-4000. www.arkarts.com.

SATURDAY, OCT. 10 10/8 : House Concert: Dreaming Sophia 10/10 : ART in the PARK: Park’s Pants

w/ Nancy Nolan and Dave Anderson 10/15: Artists’ Reception & Documentary Screening

10/22 : Tales from the South: Tin Roof Project w/ Nancy Nolan 10/25 : In Concert: VIENNA BOYS CHOIR 10/29-31 : Dracula Unearthed w/ Praeclara & Arkansas Festival Ballet 20919 Denny Rd, Little Rock 501.821.7275 wildwoodpark.org

TICKETS ONLINE AT WILDWOODPARK.ORG OR CALL 501-821-7275

MUSIC

Karaoke at Khalil’s. Khalil’s Pub, 7 p.m. 110 S. Shackleford Road. 501-224-0224. www.khalilspub.com. Karaoke. Casa Mexicana, 7 p.m. 7111 JFK Blvd., NLR. 501-835-7876. Zack’s Place, 8 p.m., free. 1400 S. University Ave. 501-664-6444. Karaoke with Kevin & Cara. All ages, on the restaurant side. Revolution, 9 p.m.-12:45 a.m., free. 300 President Clinton Ave. 501-823-0090. www.rumbarevolution.com/new. King Biscuit Blues Festival. See Oct. 8. 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. Miranda Lambert. ASU Convocation Center, 7:30 p.m., $39.75-$59.75. 217 Olympic Drive, Jonesboro. 870-972-2781. 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. Shari Bales (headliner), Shannon McClung (happy hour). Cajun’s Wharf, 5:30 and 9 p.m. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. www.cajunswharf.com. Ted Ludwig Trio. Capital Bar and Grill, 8 p.m., free. 111 W. Markham St. 501-370-7013. www. capitalbarandgrill.com.

COMEDY

“Lou Tells a Bog One.” An original production by The Main Thing. The Joint, 8 p.m., $22. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501-372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com. Christine Steadman. The Loony Bin, 7:30 p.m. amd 10 p.m., $10. 10301 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-228-5555. www.loonybincomedy.com.

EVENTS

68th Original Ozark Folk Festival. Downtown Eureka Springs, through, $12-$32. Ozarkfolkfestival.com. Arkansas State Fair. See Oct. 9. Artktoberfest Craft Beer Festival and Catfish Cook-off. Downtown Arkadelphia. 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 a.m., $8-$28. 400 President Clinton Ave. 501-613-7001. 22nd annual Komen Race for the Cure. Register at former Pleasant Ridge Post Office, 11619 Pleasant Ridge Road, through 2 p.m. Oct. 9. komenarkansas.org. Little Rock Downtown Navigators Tour. Starts at La Petite Roche Plaza. Downtown Little Rock, through Oct. 31: 4 p.m., free. Little Rock Farmers’ Market. River Market pavilions, through Oct. 31: 7 a.m. 400 President Clinton Ave. 375-2552. www.rivermarket.info. Pork & Bourbon Tour. Bike tour includes bicycle, guide, helmets and maps. Bobby’s Bike Hike, 11:30 a.m., $35-$45. 400 President Clinton Ave. 501-613-7001.

FILM

24th Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival. Arlington Hotel, through Oct. 18, $7.50-$250. 239 Central Ave., Hot Springs. 501-623-7771. www.hsdfi.org. Arkansas’s Reel History. A series of rarely seen historic film presented by the Arkansas History Commission and State Archives. Ron Robinson Theater, 1 p.m. 1 Pulaski Way. 501-320-5703. www. cals.lib.ar.us/ron-robinson-theater.aspx.

KIDS

Children’s Theater: “Apollo: To the Moon.” Arkansas Arts Center, 7 p.m., $10. 501 E. 9th St. 501-372-4000. www.arkarts.com.

SUNDAY, OCT. 11

MUSIC

Arkansas Chamber Singers: Music of the Night. St. James United Methodist Church, 3 p.m., $15.

321 Pleasant Valley Drive. 501-225-7372. www. stjames-umc.org. Big Horns Show. Revolution, 8 p.m., $10 adv., $15 day of. 300 President Clinton Ave. 501-823-0090. www.rumbarevolution.com/new. 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. 501-3724782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com. The Mallett Brothers Band. Stickyz Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicken Shack, 8:30 p.m., $5. 107 River Market Ave. 501-372-7707. www.stickyz.com. Theory of a Deadman, Shaman’s Harvest, Aranda. Juanita’s, 8 p.m., $27. 614 President Clinton Ave. 501-372-1228. www.juanitas.com.

EVENTS

2015 Little Rock Pride Fest. With live entertainment, food trucks, vendors and a parade through the River Market. Clinton Presidential Center, noon. 1200 President Clinton Ave. 3708000. www.clintonpresidentialcenter.org. Arkansas State Fair. See Oct. 9. Artist for Recovery. A secular recovery group for people with addictions. Quapaw Quarter United Methodist Church, 10 a.m. 1601 S. Louisiana. Hog on the Hill BBQ Cook-Off and Dessert Bake-Off. Asbury United Methodist Church, 4 p.m., $10. 1700 Napa Valley Drive. Oktoberfest Carnival. St. Edward Catholic Church, 10 a.m. 801 Sherman St. 501-374-5767. www.saintedwards.net/church.

FILM

24th Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival. Arlington Hotel, through Oct. 18, $7.50-$250. 239 Central Ave., Hot Springs. 501-623-7771. www.hsdfi.org.

MONDAY, OCT. 12

MUSIC

Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-3724782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com. Monday Night Jazz. Afterthought Bistro & Bar, 8 p.m., $5. 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-663-1196. www.afterthoughtbistroandbar.com. Open Mic. The Lobby Bar. Studio Theatre, 8 p.m. 320 W. 7th St. Richie Johnson. Cajun’s Wharf, 5:30 p.m. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. www.cajunswharf. com.

EVENTS

Arkansas State Fair. See Oct. 9.

FILM

24th Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival. Arlington Hotel, through Oct. 18, $7.50-$250. 239 Central Ave., Hot Springs. 501-623-7771. www.hsdfi.org.

CLASSES

Finding Family Facts. Rhonda Stewart’s genealogy research class for beginners. Arkansas Studies Institute, second Monday of every

month, 3:30 p.m. 401 President Clinton Ave. 501-320-5700 ‎. www.butlercenter.org.

TUESDAY, OCT. 13

MUSIC

Jeff Ling. Khalil’s Pub, 6 p.m. 110 S. Shackleford Road. 501-224-0224. www.khalilspub.com. Jim Dickerson. Sonny Williams’ Steak Room, 7 p.m. 500 President Clinton Ave. 501-324-2999. www.sonnywilliamssteakroom.com. Karaoke Tuesday. Prost, 8 p.m., free. 322 President Clinton Blvd. 501-244-9550. willydspianobar.com/prost-2. Karaoke Tuesdays. On the patio. Stickyz Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicken Shack, 7:30 p.m., free. 107 River Market Ave. 501-372-7707. www.stickyz.com. Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-3724782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com. Mushroomhead, Unsaid Fate, Amerikan Overdose. Juanita’s, 8:30 p.m., $15. 614 President Clinton Ave. 501-372-1228. www. juanitas.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. 501372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com.

DANCE

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

EVENTS

Arkansas State Fair. See Oct. 9. Little Rock Green Drinks. Informal networking session for people who work in the environmental field. Ciao Baci, 5:30-7 p.m. 605 N. Beechwood St. 501-603-0238. www.greendrinks. org. Mount Holly’s 21st Annual Tales of the Crypt. Mount Holly Cemetery, 5:30 p.m., free. 1200 Broadway. Trivia Bowl. Flying Saucer, 8:30 p.m. 323 President Clinton Ave. 501-372-8032. www.beerknurd.com/ stores/littlerock.

FILM

24th Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival. Arlington Hotel, through Oct. 18, $7.50-$250. 239 Central Ave., Hot Springs. 501-623-7771. www.hsdfi.org. “Dracula” (1958). Riverdale 10 Cinema, 7 p.m., $5. 2600 Cantrell Road. 501-296-9955. “SlingShot.” Ron Robinson Theater, 7 p.m., $10. 1 Pulaski Way. 501-320-5703. www.cals.lib.ar.us/ ron-robinson-theater.aspx.

SONNY DOES MORE THAN STEAK!

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

WEDNESDAY, OCT. 14

MUSIC

Acoustic Open Mic. Afterthought Bistro & Bar, 8 p.m., free. 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-663-1196. www.afterthoughtbistroandbar.com. Brian and Nick. Cajun’s Wharf, 5:30 p.m. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. www.cajunswharf.

Free Valet Parking In The River Market District • 501.324.2999

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

OCTOBER 8, 2015

AFTER DARK, CONT. com. Drageoke with Chi Chi Valdez. Sway. 412 Louisiana. 501-907-2582. Eleganza! White Water Tavern, 9:30 p.m. 2500 W. 7th St. 501-375-8400. www.whitewatertavern.com. Israel Nash, The Pines. Stickyz Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicken Shack, 8:30 p.m., $10 adv., $12 day of. 107 River Market Ave. 501-372-7707. www. stickyz.com. Jim Dickerson. Sonny Williams’ Steak Room, 7 p.m. 500 President Clinton Ave. 501-324-2999. www.sonnywilliamssteakroom.com. Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-3724782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com. Nothing More, The Color Morale, Turbo Wolf, Separations. Juanita’s, 7:30 p.m., $13.

614 President Clinton Ave. 501-372-1228. www. juanitas.com. Open Mic Nite with Deuce. Thirst n’ Howl, 7:30 p.m., free. 14710 Cantrell Road. 501-379-8189. www.thirst-n-howl.com. The Sisters Sweet. South on Main, 7:30 p.m., free. 1304 Main St. 501-244-9660. southonmain.com. Twiztid, Blaze, Boondox, Prozak, Scum. Revolution, 8:30 p.m., $22 adv., $25 day of. 300 President Clinton Ave. 501-823-0090. www.rumbarevolution.com/new.

COMEDY

The Joint Venture. Improv comedy group. The Joint, 8 p.m., $7. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com.

FILM

24th Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival. Arlington Hotel, through Oct. 18, $7.50-$250. 239 Central Ave., Hot Springs. 501-623-7771. www.hsdfi.org.

POETRY

ARTS

“Gold star

s all aroun

– The New

AWA

EVENTS

Arkansas State Fair. See Oct. 9.

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.

DANCE

TONY NER RD-WIN

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.

York Times

d!”

THEATER

“The Midtown Men.” Reynolds Performance Hall, UCA, Tue., Oct. 13, 7:30 p.m., $27-$35. 350 S. Donaghey, Conway. “The Shape of Things.” A production of the play by Neil Labute. The Weekend Theater, through Oct. 10: Fri., Sat., 7:30 p.m., $12-$16. 1001 W. 7th St. 501-374-3761. www.weekendtheater.org.

NEW GALLERY EXHIBITS, EVENTS

MUSIC AND LYRICS BY WILLIAM FINN | BOOK BY RACHEL SHEINKIN | CONCEIVED BY REBECCA FELDMAN ADDITIONAL MATERIAL BY JAY REISS | DIRECTED BY NICOLE CAPRI

OCTOber 16 — NOVeMber 8 (501) 378-0405 | Therep.org ARKANSAS REPERTORY T H E AT R E PRODUCED BY ELAINE EUBANK AND ALFRED L. WILLIAMS, THE REV. DR. AND MRS. CHRISTOPH KELLER III, CES AND DREW KELSO Intended for adult audIenCeS. Sponsored By

CONVENTION AND VISITORS BUREAU

OCTOBER 8, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

AFTERTHOUGHT BISTRO AND BAR, 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd.: Drawn, painted and printed portraits by Jennifer Perren, through Nov. 2. 5:30-9:30 Mon.-Sat., 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Sun. ARKANSAS ARTS CENTER, MacArthur Park: “Super Sunday Free Family Funday,” foam printing, rainbow bookmark making, Sharpie tie-dye, noon-3 p.m. Oct. 11; “Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art,” member preview, lecture by E. Carmen Ramos and reception, starts at 6 p.m. Oct. 15; “A Little Poetry: The Art of Alonzo Ford,” through Oct. 25. 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: “Unresolved Spaces,” sculpture by Patrick Fleming; “Infiniti No. 1,” work by Christa Marquez, reception 5-8 p.m. Oct. 9, 2nd Friday Art Night. 374-9247. BUTLER CENTER GALLERIES, Arkansas Studies Institute, 401 President Clinton Ave.: “Photographic Arts: African American Studio Photography,” from the Joshua and Mary Swift Collection, reception 5-8 p.m. Oct. 9, 2nd Friday Art Night, with music by Titus Payne; “Gene Hatfield: Outside the Lines,” through Dec. 26; “Disparate Acts Redux,” paintings by David Bailin, Warren Criswell and Sammy Peters, through Oct.; “Weaving Stories and Hope: Textile Arts from the Japanese Internment Camp at Rohwer, Arkansas,” through Oct.. 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 320-5790. CHRIST CHURCH, 509 Scott St.: Paintings, printmaking and mixed media by Diane Harper, opening reception 5:30-8 p.m. Oct. 9, show through December. COX CREATIVE CENTER, 120 River Market Ave.: “Mid-Southern Watercolorists Special Open Membership Exhibition,” Oct. 9-31, reception 5-8 p.m. Oct. 9, 2nd Friday Art Night. 918-3093. GALLERY 221, Pyramid Place, Second and Center sts.: “From the Ground Up,” paintings by EMILE, through Nov. 3, reception 5-8 p.m. Oct. 9, 2nd Friday Art Night. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-

Fri., 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Sat. GALLERY 221, Second and Center streets: “Two Boobs Think Pink,” “From the Ground Up,” paintings by Jennifer “EMILE” Freeman, through Nov. 3, reception 5-8 p.m. Oct. 9, 2nd Friday Art Night. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Sat. 801-0211. HISTORIC ARKANSAS MUSEUM GALLERIES, 200 E. 3rd St.: “Layers,” photographs by Kat Wilson, opening reception 5-8 p.m. Oct. 9, 2nd Friday Art Night; “Growing Up … In Words and Images,” paintings by Joe Barry Carroll, through Jan. 3; “Katherine Rutter & Ginny Sims,” paintings and pottery, through Nov. 8. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 324-9351. RIVER CITY COFFEE, 2913 Kavanaugh Blvd.: Mixed media by Michael Church, reception 6 p.m. Oct. 9, kickoff to Pride weekend event. 661-1496. UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS AT LITTLE ROCK: “Marianela de la Hoz: Speculum-Speculari,” Oct. 10-Dec. 8, Gallery I, reception 4-6 p.m. Oct. 14, followed by artist talk, Fine Arts Building room 161. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Sat., 2-5 p.m. Sun. 569-8977. WILDWOOD PARK FOR THE ARTS, 20919 Denny Road: “Park’s Pants,” a project by photographer Nancy Nolan in collaboration with Dave Anderson, Oct. 10-Nov. 22, opening reception 6 p.m. Oct. 15. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sat., noon-5 p.m. Sun. 821-7275. BENTONVILLE CRYSTAL BRIDGES MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART, One Museum Way: “Alfred H. Maurer: Art on the Edge,” 65 works spanning the artist’s career from the Addison Gallery of Phillips Academy, Oct. 10-Jan. 4; “Community Conversation with Ana Pulido Rull,” common threads that link Rothko, Sobel and Rockwell works in the collection, 1 p.m. Oct. 10; American masterworks 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. CLARKSVILLE UNIVERSITY OF THE OZARKS: Exhibition of work by Aj Smith and Marjorie WilliamsSmith, Oct. 12-13, reception 7 p.m. Oct. 12, Walton Fine Arts Center, with “Faces of the Delta,” lecture by Smith, 7 p.m. Oct. 13, Rogers Conference Center. JONESBORO ARKANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY: “2015 Faculty Biennial,” Bradbury Gallery, opening reception 5 p.m. Oct. 8, show through Nov. 11; “Many Ways to Read a Map,” ceramics and installation by Bill Rowe, Oct. 8-Nov. 11. Noon-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 2-5 p.m. Sun. 870-972-3471.

NEW MUSEUM EXHIBITS, EVENTS

MacARTHUR MUSEUM OF ARKANSAS MILITARY HISTORY, MacArthur Park: Movies at MacArthur: “Alive Day Memories: Home from Iraq,” documentary, 6:30-8:30 p.m. Oct. 14; “Combat Paper Workshop,” turning military uniforms into handmade paper, Oct. 15-17, for more information and to register contact Stephan McAteer, smcateer@ littlerock.org; “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.

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www.arktimes.com

OCTOBER 8, 2015

MOVIE REVIEW

New Fall Arrivals

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STUCK ON THE RED PLANET: Matt Damon is an abandoned astronaut in “The Martian.”

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GROW grow LOCAL ARKANSAS TIMES

OCTOBER 8, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

Life on Mars Ridley Scott’s ‘The Martian’ waves the flag. BY WILL STEPHENSON

stronaut cinema is typically either cerebral or survivalist. The first tradition depicts space travel as a journey that is primarily metaphorical or metaphysical — think of “Solaris” or “2001: A Space Odyssey,” narrative laser shows more concerned with inner-space than hard science — and the other fixates on the pragmatic and the purely athletic, the arduous business of endurance that propels high-concept nail-biters like “Apollo 13” and “Gravity.” Ridley Scott’s latest, “The Martian,” belongs firmly to this latter camp, which worried me. My instinct is to avoid stories about clinging desperately to life despite all logical odds. I didn’t catch “Open Water,” for instance, and have tried hard to forget “Cast Away.” Not because they are intense, but because they are exhausting. Survival is dull work. Worse than that — it’s uncinematic. Either I’m going completely soft, then, or “The Martian” manages to avoid

this trap. I suspect it’s me. In terms of Scott’s filmography, it’s more “Black Hawk Down” than “Blade Runner.” Patriotic and emotionally manipulative, it’s of a piece with the latter half of the filmmaker’s career, in which he’s endeavored to dial back the solemn psychedelia of his iconic early efforts, which strained at the edges of the blockbuster frame. Like Terry Gilliam, Scott used to make films so thickly imaginative and dimensional that they bordered on recklessness. Films like “Legend” and “Alien” were vast and multisensory — they dripped with painterly detail and dank atmosphere, like velvet paintings in the glare of a black light. Scott changed, though, or his budgets did, or the technology did. A lot of things changed. Anyone expecting the director who blissed out to Vangelis and Philip K. Dick might be disappointed this time out. “White Squall” apologists, on the other hand: Welcome home.

Which is not to say “The Martian” isn’t gorgeous or immersive or powerful. It’s all of those things, and it’s even sometimes funny. For that matter, it might be the best movie I’ve ever seen about disco and botany. The film finds its footing in a Martian storm that’s as chaotic and stylized as a gothic charcoal etching, in the midst of which Matt Damon gets separated from his crew and left for dead. The hopelessness of the situation is so total as to be off-putting, but Damon keeps things light-hearted, and Scott declines the opportunity to wallow. Alone on Mars, the astronaut listens to ABBA and watches “Happy Days” and dips potato wedges in Vicodin. The planet is depicted in wide purple and orange landscapes, with a rugged scope that does justice to John Ford and Ansel Adams. All of this in the service of an essentially nerdy STEM fantasy of epic proportions. An elegy for a space program that no longer exists, it’s bittersweet in its earnestness about American industry and the indestructible Protestant work ethic. This is a film in which the deployment of the ASCII alphabet is played for high drama. There are jokes about coffee and J.R.R. Tolkien. Damon scrapes out his survival with duct tape, ersatz fertil-

izer, ketchup and inexplicable determination. He is the ideal American, hardworking and self-effacing, possessed of endless reserves of ingenuity and gentle humor despite his predicament’s cosmic horror. Unusually for Hollywood, neither the erotic nor the romantic ever infringe on his mission. No flashbacks here to the wife he left behind. He’s married to the sea, a NASA true believer who measures out his life in math problems. “Tell them I love what I do,” he says in an early message to his parents. “I’m dying for something big and beautiful and greater than me.” Whether or not that’s true — whether he dies; whether it’s greater than him — is an open question than should cast a pall over the rest of the story, but it really doesn’t. Scott is always granting the audience reprieves by cross-cutting back to Earth, where NASA HQ, a collection of celebrities chosen apparently at random (Jeff Daniels, Kristin Wiig, Donald Glover), gamely attempts to “science the shit out of” each contingency. And in the background, gathering around the enormous screens in Times Square to watch the catastrophe unfold, is the film’s most truly science-fiction invention: an unashamed America that still seems to care.

Attention Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure participants and fans! Make plans to go to Samantha’s Tap Room right after the race - we’ll be open at 10:00 am.

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322 Main Street | 501.379.8019 www.samstap.com www.arktimes.com

OCTOBER 8, 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’

Chi’s Asian Cafe

LULU’S LATIN ROTISSERIE & GRILL is now open at 315 N. Bowman Road, Suite 2. Heinz and Kristin Koenigsfest are co-owners of the pan-Latin American restaurant; Kristin serves as manager and Heinz, a native Bolivian and longtime manager at ZAZA, is chef. The specialty is Pollo a La Brasa, Peruvian-style rotisserie chicken. Hours are 11 a.m. until 3 p.m. Sunday through Wednesday and 11 a.m. until 9 p.m. Thursday through Saturday. The phone number is 228-5564. BY COINCIDENCE, WE ALSO SEE that Jacob Chi has filed a plumbing permit and an application to sell beer and wine on behalf of a new restaurant called Lulu’s Crab Boil at 5911 R St., the former home of Haagen-Daas. Chi owns a number of local restaurants with his parents, Bill and Lulu Chi, and brother, Jasen.

DINING CAPSULES

AMERICAN

1620 SAVOY Fine dining in a swank space. 1620 Market St. Full bar, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-221-1620. D Mon.-Sat., BR Sun. ADAMS CATFISH & CATERING Catering company in Little Rock with carry-out trailers in Russellville and Perryville. 215 N. Cross St. All CC. $-$$. 501-336-4399. LD Tue.-Fri. ALL ABOARD RESTAURANT & GRILL Burgers, catfish, chicken tenders and such in this trainthemed restaurant, where an elaborately engineered mini-locomotive delivers patrons’ meals. 6813 Cantrell Road. No alcohol, all CC. 501-9757401. LD daily. ALLEY OOPS The restaurant at Creekwood Plaza (near the Kanis-Bowman intersection) is a neighborhood feedbag for major medical institutions with the likes of plate lunches, burgers and homemade desserts. Remarkable chess pie. 11900 Kanis Road. Full bar, all CC. $-$$. 501-221-9400. LD Mon.-Sat. JASON’S DELI A huge selection of sandwiches (wraps, subs, po’ boys and pitas), salads and spuds, as well as red beans and rice and chicken pot pie. Plus a large selection of heart healthy and light dishes. 301 N. Shackleford Road. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-954-8700. LD daily. JIMMY JOHN’S GOURMET SANDWICHES Illinois-based sandwich chain that doesn’t skimp on what’s between the buns. 4120 E. McCain Blvd. NLR. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-945-9500. LD daily. 700 S. Broadway St. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-372-1600. LD daily. KITCHEN EXPRESS Delicious “meat and three” restaurant offering big servings of homemade soul food. Maybe Little Rock’s best fried chicken. 4600 Asher Ave. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-666-3500. BLD Mon.-Sat., LD Sun. LASSIS INN One of the state’s oldest restaurants still in the same location and one of the best for catfish and buffalo fish. 518 E 27th St. Beer and wine, all CC. $$. 501-372-8714. LD Tue.-Sat. 42

OCTOBER 8, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

3421 Old Cantrell Road Little Rock 916-9973 chislittlerock.com

QUICK BITE Chi’s Asian Cafe in Riverdale isn’t huge, but it has three excellent seating choices, including a quaint patio, regular floor seating and seats available at the delicious sushi bar. The restaurant also offers delivery; call for details. HOURS 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily. OTHER INFO All major credit cards, wine and beer.

LOVE AT FIRST BITE: The sesame chicken is a joy.

Small Chi’s, big taste Menu hits all the right marks.

or more than three decades, the name “Chi” has been synonymous with Asian food in Little Rock. Since 1981, there have been 10 or so restaurants opened, owned and operated by Lulu and Bill Chi in the city. These restaurants have run the gamut of styles, including Mongolian barbecue, Japanese hibachi, upscale sushi and the classic namesake Chinese restaurants that dot our dining scene. The thing we love the most about the Chi’s restaurant group is that each of the family’s restaurants has a unique feel, personality and menu. These are not cookie-cutter restaurants mass-producing cheap food — each location is a place to enjoy good food prepared by professionals. Picking a favorite Chi’s is difficult, but if we were forced to do it, we’d have to go with Chi’s Asian Cafe in Riverdale, which for our money offers one of the best, most expansive menus in town, all served by a friendly staff. It’s the sort of place that goes to great lengths to make sure each customer feels taken care of.

It had been some time since we’d stopped by the Riverdale location, but after a recent expedition for antiques found us in the area, we decided to reacquaint ourselves with the place, finding it even better than we recalled. It’s rare that we sit down to a meal with which we can find nothing wrong, but we’ve got to give credit to Chi’s for accomplishing just that. We took advantage of the lunch special menu, which offers a selection of Chinese classics like Sesame Chicken ($8) and Kung Pao Triple Delight ($9), served with an egg roll, fried or steamed rice and choice of soup. This sort of setup is pretty common in our experience, but the execution at Chi’s was exceptional. Instead of bringing everything to the table at once, the staff at Chi’s served us as if we were sitting down to a multicourse dinner, allowing us to savor each dish in our own time. First up came our soups, one egg drop and one hot and sour. Having been victim to countless bowls of thin, uninspired egg drop soup, we were delighted

to find that each Chi’s version consisted of a thick, delicious broth that held thick ribbons of egg white, all piping hot and needing no added seasoning. The hot and sour was piquant, walking the line between “hot” and “sour” perfectly. Just as we were spooning the last bites of soup into our mouths, our entrees arrived. The Kung Pao Triple Delight was a great combination of seasoned meat, peanuts and earthy water chestnuts, all lightly flavored. A side of fried rice made a tasty addition to the plate, and while the egg roll was nothing out of the ordinary, we must note that it, like everything else, had obviously been cooked to order. Where we really fell in love, though, was when we took our first bite of the sesame chicken. This is a standard dish on most Chinese menus, but again the freshness of Chi’s take on the classic made eating it a joy. Each bite of tender, juicy chicken was lightly breaded and quickly fried to a crisp, golden brown that held up perfectly to the tangy sauce without becoming soggy. This dish was as attractive to look at as it was to taste, dotted with both white and black sesame seeds. Just as we were getting involved with our lunch entrees, our server brought out a spicy tuna roll ($6) that had our mouths watering. Sushi is one of the unique parts of the Riverdale menu, and while we initially had fears that the kitchen might not be able to handle sushi on top of cooking the other dishes, the first bite proved that those fears were unfounded. The tuna was ruby-red and lightly spiced without covering up the clean taste of the fish. Each piece was a wonderful balance of seaweed, rice and

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664-6900 fish, and we found ourselves wishing we had ordered more than just one roll. We fulfilled that wish on a return trip a few days later with the Sushi Combo ($11), which came with another of those excellent spicy tuna rolls and five pieces of our favorite kind of sushi, nigiri. We love nigiri because it is sushi distilled to just the basic ingredients of fish and rice. Being in a landlocked state, we have nothing but the greatest admiration for places that go above and beyond in their sourcing of seafood, and each piece of fish here was as fresh as if it had just been bought directly from the boat. There are several sushi bar dinner combos available that we are dying to get back to try, including the Papa Chi’s

Grand Sushi Combo, which comes with nine pieces of nigiri, a crab roll and a crunchy shrimp roll. The large size of the menu may make you worry things won’t work as well as they should. In this case, though, an experienced staff of chefs worked very well with our friendly servers, making sure that each dish hit the table right at the peak of freshness. The result was two meals that were nothing short of outstanding. Each bite was proof that after more than 30 years, the Chi family hasn’t compromised standards of quality, making Chi’s in Riverdale a relatively inexpensive way to dine on some of the finest food in town.

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We have an NEW Gluten-Free lunch menu and beautifully decorated Halloween cookies! Egg, Dairy and Sugar-Free options available.

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DINING CAPSULES, CONT. LINDA’S CORNER Southern and soul food. 2601 Barber St. 501-372-1511. MARIE’S MILFORD TRACK II Healthy and tasty are the key words at this deli/grill, featuring hot entrees, soups, sandwiches, salads and killer desserts. 9813 W Markham St. No alcohol, CC. $-$$. 501-225-4500. BL Mon.-Sat. SUFFICIENT GROUNDS Great coffee, good bagels and pastries, and a limited lunch menu. 124 W. Capitol. No alcohol, CC. $. 501-372-1009. BL Mon.-Fri. 425 W. Capitol. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-372-4594. BL Mon.-Fri. SUGIE’S Catfish and all the trimmings. 4729 Baseline Road. No alcohol, all CC. $. 501-5700414. LD daily. THE TAVERN SPORTS GRILL Burgers, barbecue and more. 17815 Chenal Parkway. Full bar, all CC. $-$$. 501-830-2100. LD daily. WHITE WATER TAVERN Good locally sourced bar food. 2500 W. 7th St. Full bar, all CC. $-$$. 501-375-8400. D Tue., Thu., Fri., Sat.

ASIAN

BENIHANA JAPANESE STEAKHOUSE Enjoy the cooking show, make sure you get a little filet with your meal, and do plenty of dunking in that fabulous ginger sauce. 2 Riverfront Place. NLR. Full bar, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-374-8081. LD Sun.-Fri., D Sat. CHI’S DIMSUM & BISTRO A huge menu spans the Chinese provinces and offers a few twists on the usual local offerings, plus there’s authentic Hong Kong dimsum available. 6 Shackleford Drive. Full bar, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-221-7737. LD daily. Chi’s Chinese Cuisine, 17200 Chenal Parkway. No alcohol, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-8218000. LD Mon.-Sat., D Sun. Chi’s Asia Cafe, 3421 Old Cantrell Road. Wine and beer ,all CC. 501-916-9973. CHINA TASTE Conventional menu with an online ordering system (though no delivery). 9218 Rodney Parham Road. No alcohol. $-$$. 501-227-8800. LD Mon.-Sat. FAR EAST ASIAN CUISINE Old favorites such as orange beef or chicken and Hunan green beans are still prepared with care at what used

to be Hunan out west. 11610 Pleasant Ridge Road. Full bar, all CC. $$. 501-219-9399. LD daily. FU LIN Quality in the made-to-order entrees is high, as is the quantity. 200 N. Bowman Road. Full bar, all CC. $$. 501-225-8989. LD daily, BR Sun. IGIBON JAPANESE RESTAURANT It’s a complex place, where the food is almost always good and the ambiance and service never fail to please. The Bento box with tempura shrimp and California rolls and other delights stand out. 11121 N. Rodney Parham Road. Beer and wine, all CC. $$. 501-217-8888. LD Mon.-Sat. KIYEN’S SEAFOOD STEAK AND SUSHI Sushi, steak and other Japanese fare. 17200 Chenal Parkway. Full bar, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-821-7272. LD daily.

BARBECUE

CAPITOL SMOKEHOUSE AND GRILL Beef, pork and chicken, all smoked to melting tenderness and doused with a choice of sauces. The crusty but tender backribs star. Side dishes are top quality. A plate lunch special is now available. 915 W. Capitol Ave. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-372-4227. L Mon.-Fri. HB’S BBQ Great slabs of meat with a vinegarbased barbecue sauce, but ribs are served on Tuesday only. Other days, try the tasty pork sandwich. 6010 Lancaster. No alcohol, No CC. $-$$. 501-565-1930. LD Mon.-Fri. SIMS BAR-B-QUE Great spare ribs, sandwiches, beef, half and whole chicken and an addictive vinegar-mustard-brown sugar sauce unique for this part of the country. 2415 Broadway. Beer, CC. $-$$. 501-372-6868. LD Mon.-Sat. 1307 John Barrow Road. Beer, all CC. $-$$. 501-2242057. LD Mon.-Sat. 7601 Geyer Springs Road. Beer, all CC. $$. 501-562-8844. LD Mon.-Sat.

EUROPEAN / ETHNIC

ALI BABA A Middle Eastern restaurant, butcher shop and grocery. 3400 S University Ave. No alcohol, all CC. 501-379-8011. BLD Mon.-Sat. BANANA LEAF INDIAN FOOD TRUCK Tasty Indian street food. 201 N Van Buren St.

THE EVERYDAY SOMMELIER Your friendly neighborhood wine shop. #theeverydaysommelier

DOMAINE ALAIN PAUTRE CHABLIS AC 2013 ELSEWHERE $29.99 SPECIAL $24.99 The Pautre estate is in Ligorelle, on the Northwestern edge of the appellation. The vines are 30 to 40 years old, and located on a calciferous plateau, beside a forest, facing south. This truly is the best area for the Petit Chablis Appellation. Monsieur Pautre is passionate about quality, and his wine is the traditional ”profile” of what a great Chablis should taste like.” I couldn’t agree more.

BEST LIQUOR STORE

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

OCTOBER 8, 2015

NO NE VE W M DA BE T R E 14

ANNOUNCING The 2015 ARKANSAS TIMES WHOLE HOG ROAST

WHOLE HOG

benefiting

Argenta Arts District

SATURDAY, NOV. 14 RAIN OR SHINE Argenta Farmers Market Events Grounds , 5 until 9 PM

Tickets $15/$20 Day of benefiting

Argenta Arts District

TICKETS: ARKTIMES.COM/HOG15

WE ARE STILL ACCEPTING:

AMATEUR TEAMS are considered individuals or businesses not connected to any particular restaurant, food truck or catering companies. Amateur teams will be preparing at least 30 pounds of pork butt. Amateur teams wanting to enter our People’s Choice “No Butts About It” will need to provide an option such as chicken wings, thighs, ribs, goat, stuffed jalapenos, anything besides pork butt - be creative. This is a separate award for amateurs only. Edwards Food Giant is offering 20% discount on meat purchases. Entry fee: $75

Arkansas Times and the Argenta Arts District are now accepting both AMATEUR and PROFESSIONAL TEAMS to compete in our 3rd annual Whole Hog Roast

BEER & WINE GARDEN

Gated festival area selling beer & wine ($5 each). Loblolly ice cream will be for sale.

PROFESSIONAL TEAMS are considered restaurants, catering companies and food trucks. Professional teams will be preparing a whole hog from Ben E. Keith Company Entry fee: $500 and includes the whole hog, pick up by Nov. 11.

Each team must provide two sides serving at least 50 people each.

CURRENT ROAST COMPETITORS AMATEUR TEAMS:

L.A. SMOKERS (LEVY AREA SMOKERS) COWBOY CAFE · SMOKIN’ BUTZ SMOKE CITY LIMITS 44

OCTOBER 8, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

• • •

Ticket holders will cast all the votes via “Tokens” Three tokens will be provided to all ticket holders, additional tokens are available for sale Three Winners will be chosen: PEOPLE’s CHOICE FOR Best Professional Team, Best Amateur Team and the Best Amateur “No Butts About It” Team.

CURRENT PROFESSIONAL TEAMS ARKANSAS ALE HOUSE · COUNTRY CLUB OF ARKANSAS · MIDTOWN BILLIARDS SO RESTAURANT-BAR · CLINTON PRESIDENTIAL CENTER · SIMPLY THE BEST CATERING (BRIAN KEARNS, WINNER IN 2013)

Deadline to enter: October 16

To enter, contact Drue Patton dpatton@argentadc.org or Phyllis Britton phyllis@arktimes.com

ONL PLEASE V

Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival 2015 Parties and Special Events JUST A TASTE OF THE FESTIVAL! FRIDAY, OCT. 9

DONOR AND VIP KICKOFF COCKTAIL Central Park Fusion (4:00 - 6:00 P.M.) Sponsored by AY Magazine and Arkansas Money and Politics Celebrate the start of HSDFF 2015 and our visiting special guests as well as our Red Carpet Circle members, and many community and statewide supporters. All-Access Passholders OPENING NIGHT EVENT Arlington Hotel 6:00 P.M. Popcorn & Champagne Toast on the Mezzanine Level, Arlington Hotel 6::30 P.M: Theater doors open 7:00 P.M: Presenting Sponsor Welcome by Deltic Timber Corporation President and CEO Ray Dillon. Screening of The Primary Instinct and Q&A with special guest, actor Stephen Tobolowsky. (The Primary Instinct will be preceded by ESPN short film Go, Sebastien, Go! , with musical appearance by 13-year-old Mariachi performer Sebastien De La Cruz) 9:00 PM: Post-screening catered party on the Arlington Mezzanine. All –Access Passholders, Opening Night Ticketholders 9:30- 12:00 P.M: AFTER-PARTY AT SUPERIOR BATHHOUSE BREWERY AND DISTILLERY All-Access Passholders, Opening Night Ticketholders

SATURDAY, OCT. 10

TUESDAY, OCT. 13TH

TILLMAN PENTHOUSE PARTY Above Tillman’s Fine Antiques (5:00 P.M. - 7:30 P.M.) All-Access Passholders and Invited Guests ROLANDO’S MOUNTAINSIDE PATIO (9:00 P.M. - 12:00 A.M.) All-Access Passholders

WEDNESDAY, OCT. 14TH

THERMAL WATERS PARTY Quapaw Bathhouse (8:30 P.M. - 10:00 P.M.) All-Access Passholders

THURSDAY, OCT. 15TH

24TH ANNUAL VINTAGE EMPORIUM TRADITIONAL HSDFF FILMMAKER PARTY (6:30 P.M. - 8:30 P.M. 12:00 A.M.) For more than two decades, Hot Springs festival supporter Carolyn Taylor has been welcoming visiting filmmakers and special festival guests to her VIP Filmmaker event. Drinks and food provided by some of the best venues Hot Springs has to offer. All-Access Passholders and Invited Guests HSDFF Courtyard Celebration (8:30 - Midnight) Join us across the street from Vintage Emporium at the ground level New Orleans-style courtyard of Historic District Antiques, with DJ’s Mike Poe and Liam Wilson spinning LIVE. All-Access Passholders, Invited Guests and by ticket purchase on Eventbrite

FRIDAY, OCT. 16TH

SPA CITY MOBSTER PARTY Gangster Museum of America (9:00 -12:00 A.M.) All-Access Passholders and by ticket purchase on Eventbrite

FAT JACK’S OYSTER AND SPORTS BAR (9:00 P.M. - MIDNIGHT) Music by Arkansas band Crossroads. All-Access Passholders

SUNDAY, OCT. 11

SATURDAY, OCT. 17TH

ONLINE ALL THE TIME PLEASE VISIT US AT WWW.EDWARDSFOODGIANT.COM

PIZZA EXTRAVAGANZA! Deluca’s Pizzeria Napoletana (9:00 P.M. - 12:00 A.M.) Performances by Ryan Cassata & Dana Falconberry All-Access Passholders

MONDAY, OCT. 12TH

Whittington Place Mixer (4:00-6:00 P.M.) Emerging Filmmakers Students, All-Access Passholders MAXINE’S LIVE (9:00 P.M. - 12:00 A.M.) Music by Adia Victoria, Dana Falconberry and Amyjo Savannah. All-Access Passholders

RED CARPET BREAKFAST WITH PETER COYOTE (9:00 A.M. - 10:00 A.M.) Kollective Tea + Coffee HSDFF Red Carpet Donors Circle Members Only CLOSING NIGHT AWARDS PRESENTATION FOLLOWED BY CLOSING NIGHT FILM MADE IN JAPAN (6:30 P.M.) Special Guests: Director Josh Bishop, country western music legend Tomi FujiyamaEvent supported by Hot Springs National Park Sister City Foundation and Japan Foundation New York. Closing Night Awards and screening of Made in Japan with special guest Tomi Fujiyama and Director Josh Bishop TAKING PART in an exclusive Q&A at the conclusion of the film. Seating priority to VIP Pass holders.

CLOSING NIGHT GALA Sponsored by AY Magazine and Arkansas Money and Politics, Tented Event/ Central Park Fusion (8:30 P.M. - 11:00 A.M.) Live: Japan’s First Lady of Country Music Tomi Fujiyama will raise the roof with her special brand of country music from both sides of the Pacific. Gourmet fare and an assortment of wines from different regions, catered by premiere restaurant Central Park Fusion. All-Access Passholders and Closing Night Ticketholders CLOSING NIGHT LATE-NIGHT AFTER PARTY (11:00 P.M. - 2 A.M.) Low Key Arts DJ Kramer will be spinning LIVE! All-Access Passholders

HSDFF FREE EVENTS

(All forum events are free and open to the public after passholders are seated)

SATURDAY OCTOBER 10TH

11:30 a.m. HSDFF Family Shorts Block: Legos and Tigers and Bows......Oh My! 12:30 Master Magician Ed Magic presents... “Imagine” 1:30 and on: William Shakespeare visits the Arlington from the Arkansas Shakespeare Theater 3:00 pm Tess Harper: Life, Hollywood and Home Truths Mammoth Spring, Arkansas, native Tess Harper definitely has a story to tell. The Oscar-nominated actress will discuss her 30-year career in film and television during a live interview, followed by questions from the audience, on opening weekend. Attending: Tess Harper Moderator: Stephen Tobolowsky. Attending: Tess Harper

SUNDAY OCTOBER 11TH

11:50 am Film : The Penguin Counters (children 8+) following a rag-tag team of field biologists on a treacherous journey to the Antarctic where they track the impact of climate change – one penguin at a time. 1:15 pm Kai the Penguin. Kai is an African Penguin born at the Little Rock Zoo as part of the Zoo’s African Penguin Species Survival Plan of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA). The African Penguin is an endangered animal found off the coasts of South Africa and Namibia that is threatened by over-fishing, oil spills, and habitat loss. Five penguin chicks have been born at the zoo since 2011 when the zoo opened the Laura P. Nichols Penguin Point Exhibit

Visit hsdfi.org for an online schedule and list of parties and special events. 3:20 pm What Makes Us ESPNW Series with Nadine Mundo The Mundo Sisters, a sibling director team, created and directed WHAT MAKES US, a new series of short films on elite female athletes from ESPNW. Nadine Mundo will be on hand to talk about the making of the films Vero, Riss and Knighter, working with star athletes, and what makes them top in their field.

FRIDAY OCTOBER 16

PETER COYOTE READING AND BOOK SIGNING 11:30 am Actor and author Peter Coyote will read from his new memoir “The Rainman’s Third Cure.” “As he showed in Sleeping Where I Fell, Peter has lived a life most of us could only dream of. In this insightful and beautifully expressed follow-up, we get a deeper view not only of his own path, but of the currents underlying so much of our own shared histories. Viewed through this prism of three transformational relationships, his story is as moving as it is fascinating. A remarkable book. ”—Bonnie Raitt Attending: Peter Coyote Presented by That Bookstore in Blytheville

SATURDAY OCTOBER 17

THE CONVERSATION New York Times Op Docs Series The Conversation is a series of 5-minute films about race in America. The series provides a safe space for communication and honest, sometimes painful, revelations on the subject, and aims to become a source of resolution, opening up dialogue to make room for fresh voices, new ideas and, ultimately, change.

FAMILY-FRIENDLY & STUDENT-FRIENDLY FILMS AT HSDFF:

THE PENGUIN COUNTERS (age 8+) HARRY & SNOWMAN (8+) Saturday October 10 @ 6:30 PM. IMBA MEANS SING ( 8 +) Saturday October 17 @ 2:10 P.M. RIGHT FOOTED (Middle and High School) Friday October 16 at 10:00 A.M. GHOST TOWN TO HAVANA (High School) Saturday October 10 at 1:00 P.M. ROMEO IS BLEEDING (High School) Saturday October 10 at 4:20 P.M.

www.arktimes.com OCTOBER 8, 2015 2015 ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT www.arktimes.com OCTOBER 8,

DINING CAPSULES, CONT. No alcohol, CC. $-$$. 501-227-0860. L Mon.-Fri. KHALIL’S PUB Widely varied menu with European, Mexican and American influences. Go for the Bierocks, rolls filled with onions and beef. 110 S. Shackleford Road. Full bar, all CC. $$. 501-224-0224. LD daily. BR Sun. STAR OF INDIA The best Indian restaurant in the region, with a unique buffet at lunch and some fabulous dishes at night (spicy curried dishes, tandoori chicken, lamb and veal, vegetarian). 301 N. Shackleford. Beer and wine, all CC. $$. 501-227-9900. LD daily.

ITALIAN

DAMGOODE PIES A somewhat different Italian/pizza place, largely because of a spicy garlic white sauce that’s offered as an alternative to the traditional red sauce. Good bread, too. 2701 Kavanaugh Blvd. Beer and wine, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-664-2239. LD daily. 6706 Cantrell Road. Beer and wine, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-6642239. LD daily. 10720 Rodney Parham Road. Beer and wine, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-664-2239. LD daily. 37 East Center St. Fayetteville. Full bar, all CC. $$-$$$. 479-444-7437. LD daily. NYPD PIZZA Plenty of tasty choices in the obvious New York police-like setting, but it’s fun. Only the pizza is cheesy. Even the personal pizzas come in impressive combinations, and baked ziti, salads are more also are available. Cheap slice specials at lunch. 6015 Chenonceau Blvd., Suite 1. Beer and wine, all CC. $-$$. 501-868-3911. LD daily.

LATINO

CANTINA CINCO DE MAYO Friendly, tasty American-ized Mex. 3 Rahling Circle. Full bar, CC. $$. 501-821-2740. LD daily. CASA MANANA Great guacamole and garlic beans, superlative chips and salsa (red and green) and a broad selection of fresh seafood, plus a deck out back. 6820 Cantrell Road. Full bar, all CC. $-$$. 501-280-9888. LD daily 18321 Cantrell Road. Full bar, all CC. $-$$. 501-868-8822. LD daily 400 President Clinton Ave. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. (501) 372-6637. BL Mon.-Sat. LAS DELICIAS Levy-area mercado with a taqueria and a handful of booths in the back of the store. 3401 Pike Ave. NLR. Beer, all CC. $. 501-812-4876. BLD daily. LAS PALMAS Mexican chain with a massive menu of choices. 10402 Stagecoach Road. Full bar, all CC. $-$$. 501-455-8500. LD daily 4154 E. McCain Blvd. NLR. Full bar, all CC. $-$$. LD daily. LONCHERIA MEXICANA ALICIA The best taco truck in West Little Rock. Located in the Walmart parking lot on Bowman. 620 S. Bowman. No alcohol, No CC. $. 501-612-1883. L Mon.-Sat. MOE’S SOUTHWEST GRILL A “build-your-ownburrito” place, with several tacos and nachos to choose from as well. Wash it down with a beer from their large selection. 12312 Chenal Pkwy. Beer, all CC. $-$$. 501-223-3378. LD daily. SUPERMERCADO SIN FRONTERAS Shiny, large Mexican grocery with a bakery and restaurant attached. 4918 Baseline Road. Beer, all CC. $$. 501-562-4206. BLD daily. TAQUERIA SAMANTHA On Friday and Saturday nights, this mobile taqueria parks outside of Jose’s Club Latino in a parking lot on the corner of Third and Broadway. 300 Broadway Ave. No alcohol, No CC. $. 501-5685264. D Fri.-Sat. (sporadic hours beyond that). TAQUERIA Y CARNICERIA GUADALAJARA Cheap, delicious tacos, tamales and more. Always bustling. 3811 Camp Robinson Road. NLR. Beer, all CC. $-$$. 501-753-9991. BLD daily. 46

OCTOBER 8, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

BARTH, CONT. political power. We will know a good deal more about the direction the Supreme Court is headed on the issue once oral arguments take place in the coming months (the date for the oral arguments is not yet scheduled). Some contend that the Court will ultimately pull back from what would be a big win for conservatives, but also a deeply disruptive decision. If the Court heads in a more activist direction, however, U.S. politics for the coming generation would be transformed.

MAUMELLE CIVIL SERVICE ENTRY LEVEL POLICE EXAM The CITY OF MAUMELLE announces Civil Service examination for the position of entry level Police Officer will be given on Saturday, October 17, 2015. QUALIFICATIONS FOR TAKING THE EXAM ARE: 1- Be a United States Citizen 2- Be the age of 21 on date of the exam (Police Exam) 3- Be able to pass a background check, a drug test, and/or physical examination 4- Possess a high school diploma or equivalent 5- Possess a valid Arkansas driver’s license Beginning salary is $30,334.00 per year; the City offers an excellent employee benefit package. The application process will begin immediately. For additional information visit www.maumelle.org. “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) 851-2784, ext. 233 or at vernon@maumelle.org.

Arkansas Times has a position open in Advertising Sales. If you have sales experience and enjoy a fast-paced work environment, then we would like to talk to you. Arkansas Times is published weekly and our arktimes.com website is one of the largest, most successful news websites in the state. You will be selling both print and digital advertising. The Arkansas Times is a fearless, editorially driven publication that stands up for tolerance, treating people equally and advocating policies that further the education, health and cultural advancement of the people of Arkansas. We have the best music, arts and cultural coverage in the state as well as aggressive news reporting. This means readers are engaged with the Times and our advertisers get results. In addition you will be selling a number of annual and quarterly magazines including Arkansas Food and Farm, the Central Arkansas Visitors Guide, Heights, Hillcrest & Riverdale, Welcome Home, Arkansas Made and Block, Street & Building. This is a high-income potential sales position for a hard working sales executive. We have fun, but we work hard. Add to that, the satisfaction you get knowing that you are making something possible that is important in the cultural and political life of Arkansas. PLEASE SEND YOUR RESUME TO PHYLLIS BRITTON, PHYLLIS@ARKTIMES.COM.

ARKANSAS TIMES

ARKANSAS TIMES ADVERTISING SALES The Special Publications division of The Arkansas Times has a position open in Advertising Sales. If you have sales experience and enjoy the exciting and crazy world of advertising then we’d like to talk to you. We publish 4 publications: Savvy, AR Wild, Food & Farm and Shelter as well as corresponding websites and social media. What does all this translate to? A high-income potential for a hard working advertising executive. We have fun, but we work hard. Fast paced and self-motivated individuals are encouraged to apply. If you have a dynamic energetic personality, we’d like to talk to you. PLEASE SEND YOUR RESUME AND COVER LETTER TO ELIZABETH AT: ELIZABETH@ARKTIMES.COM EOE.

ARKANSAS TIMES MARKETPLACE

RESEARCH STUDY

• Men and women ages 18 - 60 • Healthy volunteers or persons suffering from depression • No major medical illness • 1 visit to complete questionnaires and interviews • 1 visit to complete brain imaging scan • All responses are kept confidential • Monetary compensation provided Principal Investigator: Dr. Ricardo Caceda, UAMS

❤ ADOPTION ❤

Art Classes to Zoo Trips & Everything in between, First baby will be our King or Queen. Expenses paid.

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ARKANSAS TIMES

You are a GEORGE JONES FAN and therefore you need this tote. GET IT AT: bit.ly/george-jones

CONTACT NOLAN KORDSMEIER 501-526-8487

MARKETPLACE TO ADVERTISE IN THIS SECTION, CALL LUIS AT 501.375.2985

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CODE ENFORCEMENT OFFICER CODE ENFORCEMENT GENERAL PURPOSE OF POSITION

Smiles

Children and Adults

ESSENTIAL DUTIES

EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE

Associates degree (A.A.) or equivalent from two-year College or technical school and two (2) years related experience and/or training or equivalent combination of education and experience and 6 to 11 months of project management experience. Beginning Salary: $27, 817 Applications will be accepted until job is filled. 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 disables individuals are encouraged to apply.” This ad is available from the Title VI Coordinator in large print, on audio, and in Braille at (501) 851-2784, ext. 233 or at vernon@maumelle.org.

ARKANSAS TIMES

BEAUTIFUL make HAPPY PEOPLE!

To assure compliance with City of Maumelle Building Codes, Ordinances, Storm water Codes, and American with Disabilities Act guidelines. Inspection of electrical, mechanical, plumbing and framing construction for compliance with City of Maumelle, State of Arkansas and International Residential Codes. Enforcement of City of Maumelle Ordinances relating to residential and business compliance. Issuance of warnings and citations for non-compliance. Coordinate with other city entities to ensure code violations are corrected and efficiently and complete other tasks and duties as needed or assigned.

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OUR DOC TOR DR. CHRISTOPHER LARSON, D.D.S.

(501) 565-3009 (501) 562-1665

www.faithdentalclinic.com www.arktimes.com

OCTOBER 8, 2015

The Markham Family Benton

When Derek and Anna’s son was born nearly four months premature, the doctors and nurses at Baptist Health were there. And together they’re helping to turn one of life’s little miracles into a lifetime of happiness Are you about to start on the amazing path to motherhood? From obstetrics to advanced care for high-risk newborns to helpful classes and support groups, Baptist Health Women’s Center is here for you. Keep on thriving. Keep on going. #KeepOnAmazing

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OCTOBER 8, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

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