Arkansas Times - September 8, 2016 by Arkansas Times

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SEPTEMBER 8, 2016 / ARKTIMES.COM

On the verge North Little Rock’s Graham Gordy has been writing in TV and movies for years. His new Cinemax show, “Quarry,” could put him on the map By Maxwell George

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VOLUME 43, NUMBER 1 ARKANSAS TIMES (ISSN 0164-6273) is published each week by Arkansas Times Limited Partnership, 201 East Markham Street, Suite 200, Little Rock, Arkansas, 72201, phone (501) 375-2985. Periodical postage paid at Little Rock, Arkansas, and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to ARKANSAS TIMES, 201 EAST MARKHAM STREET, SUITE 200, Little Rock, AR, 72201. Subscription prices are $42 for one year, $74 for two years. Subscriptions outside Arkansas are $49 for one year, $88 for two years. Foreign (including Canadian) subscriptions are $168 a year. For subscriber service call (501) 375-2985. Current single-copy price is 75¢, free in Pulaski County. Single issues are available by mail at $2.50 each, postage paid. Payment must accompany all single-copy orders. Reproduction or use in whole or in part of the contents without the written consent of the publishers is prohibited. Manuscripts and artwork will not be returned or acknowledged unless sufficient return postage and a self-addressed stamped envelope are included. All materials are handled with due care; however, the publisher assumes no responsibility for care and safe return of unsolicited materials. All letters sent to ARKANSAS TIMES will be treated as intended for publication and are subject to ARKANSAS TIMES’ unrestricted right to edit or to comment editorially.

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COMMENT

Believe Trump Not to worry citizens — Trump’s massive deportation plan won’t be nearly as illogical and expensive as it sounds. He has promised his followers to reduce their taxes, to build a wall along the border and that Mexico will pay for it — but that they just don’t know it yet. And he’s not kidding. Trump’s a shrewd businessman and his plan likely goes something like this: If all these Mexicans and others are now paying coyotes virtually every cent they’ve got to get them into the U.S., imagine how much more they will pay Trump’s hired thugs to let them stay here! And, the beauty is they’ll have to pay again and again every month — just like rent or mafia protection. Otherwise it’s back over the border after all their property is confiscated. Those who can’t pay and have nothing of value to sell will be immediately thrown into privately run corporate prisons and maybe waterboarded a little bit until their relatives in Mexico or elsewhere send money for their release. They could be held there indefinitely, since there is no room in our federal- and state-run prisons. To avoid this hell, the rest of the Mexicans and others without papers will likely run for the border — as Romney suggested they would do — and simply “self-deport.” So, when Trump tells us he’s going to do something appalling, unjust, hateful, insane and what most of us think of as un-American, believe him! Mady Maguire Little Rock

What the aginners really think OK, let’s be real. Those opposed to medical marijuana aren’t concerned about its benefits or health risks. Opposition to legalization rests in one thing. For a shrinking, yet highly influential segment of society, marijuana is still associated with minorities, hippies, homosexuals and other “undesirable” types. What else explains it in the face of overwhelming evidence proving marijuana’s potential as a therapeutic substance? Richard Hutson Cabot

From the web In response to the Sept. 1 cover story, “Million-dollar Thursday,” about Sherwood District Court, which an ACLU lawsuit has likened to a debtors’ prison: 4

SEPTEMBER 8, 2016

ARKANSAS TIMES

Don’t do the crime if you can’t pay the fine or you’ll end up doing time. Conservative Arkansan Conservative Arkansan: Sometimes you don’t do the crime yet can’t prove it (stolen checks, etc.), sometimes you just screw up a bit on your addition and subtraction, sometimes your employer doesn’t pay you on time and it bounces your check, sometimes shit happens. Sometimes people live from payday to payday. Sometimes people can’t hold

their jobs because of b.s. like what’s happening in Sherwood, and has been happening there for decades. Bouncing a check is something that happens to most people at some point in their lives, unless they’re wealthy. For most of us who live near or below the poverty line, we’ve had something bounce. Particularly on these older cases before banks regularly offered overdraft protection. You should be able to pay off the check, with a reasonable fine, and then

move on. It shouldn’t follow you for years and be thousands of times costlier than the original check amount. Keeping these people from being able to hold jobs only hurts their chances of being able to pay off these absurdly high fines. It’s a system rigged to exploit the poorest of society. And anyone who reads this article and reacts the way you did is part of society’s problem. Holier-than-thou, empathy-less asshats, who lack any ability to put themselves in anyone else’s shoes, and thrive on being judgmental toward those they consider beneath themselves. Samantha Wesley Conservative Arkansan: If you get a chance, please read the Jewish carpenter’s parable in Matthew 18:23-35 concerning the attitude and fate of those who wish to hammer an individual who commits petty crimes. See if you can pick out the character that most resembles you in this homily. theBMC1 In response to Gene Lyons’ Sept. 1 column, “Boris and Natasha”: Lyons’ tiresome tirades about Boris and Natasha are becoming salacious. We get it, we get it, OK? So why repeat their increasing vulgar comments on and on and on? Makes one wonder how many times did he gleefully read these two buffoons’ postings, for heaven’s sake. Hmmmmm? Stop sputtering, Gene. Odd. And beneath you. Investigator of both sides I hadn’t heard about the story out of Stockholm nor knew of the extent that Putin’s people were influencing policy through fake stories on social media. imjustsaying In response to the Sept. 2 Arkansas Blog post, “Arkansas hires former Bush Medicaid director”: All these people on the government payroll as representatives of a party that hates government. But what the heck, contradictions in statements and in actions mean nothing, of course. Cato Just how in granny’s drawers is this dude worth $300,000? Oh, wait, the fedrul gub’mint (us) is paying half of the “state nut” and the state (us) is paying the other half. Now I understand. Ozarkrazo

Well, Dennis Smith is a Certified Teapublican, so a little bit of marital hanky-panky ain’t no big thing! And I’m sure he opposes Obamacare, but has figured out a way to live with it! RYD So, cool, Arkansas has hired a “small government” benefit cutter at near $300K a year, half of whose salary will be paid by them evil feds. Where are all of the ledge Medicaid expansion agin’ers who screamed about the burden of debt laid on our children cuz medical care? I just luv the sound of crickets. tsallenarng Correction: In last week’s arts and entertainment feature about The Rep’s production of “Spamalot,” we mistakenly said that the Arkansas Repertory Theatre rents costumes to individuals to support its productions. Though the company has historically held costume sales featuring wardrobe pieces and props from past Rep productions, costumes are not available for rental to individuals.

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SEPTEMBER 8, 2016

EYE ON ARKANSAS

BRIAN CHILSON

WEEK THAT WAS

HAZY DAYS: A late summer scene at the Two Rivers Park boat launch on the Little Maumelle River.

Tweet of the Week: “Let me show you what we deal with in Arkansas. Harrison, AR, 2016. National anthem that.” — From Twitter user @DjWalt_, sharing pictures of billboards from Harrison in recent years that advertised “WhitePrideRadio.com” and declared “ ‘Diversity’ is a code word for #whitegenocide.” An African-American resident of Arkansas, @DjWalt_ was commenting on the controversy over San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s refusal to stand during the pregame national anthem as a protest against racism in America.

Ante up The secretary of state’s office certified a proposed constitutional amendment for the November ballot that would legalize casino gambling in three counties in the state — Washington, Miller and Boone — after determining its backers had gathered enough signatures. (Those backers include several investors from Missouri and the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.) The committee formed to promote the measure, Arkansas Wins, has begun advertising: “Help us bring jobs, tax dollars, and tourism back to Arkansas!” its new website says. A committee formed to fight the casino amendment, Protect Arkansas’ Values, is mounting a PR campaign of its own, and the proposal could well be challenged in court before Election Day. Expect big spending and a slew of ads in the next two months. 6

SEPTEMBER 8, 2016

ARKANSAS TIMES

The war on drugs A second proposal to allow medical use of marijuana also qualified for the November ballot last week. That means Arkansans will likely face the prospect of voting for both the Arkansas Medical Cannabis Act and the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Amendment this fall (unless a court challenge should disqualify one or both measures). The “cannabis act” would allow for a limited grow-your-own provision for some patients and allow for cultivation at designated nonprofit “cannabis care centers”; the “marijuana amendment” would establish a more centralized cultivation and distribution model and does not include a grow-your-own provision. Will pro-pot voters tend to support both, or will the presence of two competing measures result in defeat for both? Meanwhile, with the state’s prominent (Republican) elected officials lining up against medical marijuana, the cannabis act is facing two lawsuits attempting to strike it from the ballot before Nov. 8. Now that the proposed amendment has qualified for the ballot, it is sure to face legal challenges as well.

Shaky ground On the Saturday morning before Labor Day, an earthquake centered near Pawnee, Okla., was felt across much of Arkansas. Thousands of smaller trem-

ors have shaken parts of Oklahoma in recent years, but the 5.6 magnitude Pawnee quake was almost the strongest in the state’s recorded history (it tied with a 2011 quake). Scientists believe the increased seismic activity is caused by the use of disposal wells that inject vast amounts of wastewater generated from oil and gas fracking back into the earth. Concern over increased earthquakes led Arkansas to limit the use of disposal wells in years past, and in the wake of the Pawnee tremor, Oklahoma has now ordered dozens of wells in that area shut down as well.

Three strikes against unlimited school choice Should parents be able to choose which school district their children

attend, no matter what? For the third time in the past month, the federal courts have said “no” — at least not if a district is under a desegregation order. Last week, U.S. District Judge Susan Hickey sided with the El Dorado School District in its claim to an exemption from Arkansas’s 2015 “school choice” law. The El Dorado district, which has a 49 percent African-American student body, had prevented the transfer of a student to the neighboring Parkers Chapel School District, which is about 9 percent black. In July, the state Board of Education — composed mostly of staunch advocates of school choice — ignored El Dorado’s insistence that a 1971 desegregation order should prevent the transfer. But Judge Hickey disagreed with the state board: “[El Dorado School District] has a continuing constitutional obligation to avoid taking any action the natural and probably consequence of which would be a segregative impact,” she wrote. Earlier in August, U.S. District Judge Price Marshall slapped down a similar attempt by the state board to allow a student transfer from the new Jacksonville/North Pulaski School District to neighboring Cabot. And the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals made a similar ruling about schools in Garland County. The message to the state board is clear: Desegregation orders still matter, and “choice” does not trump all else.

OPINION

Medical marijuana? Yes.

roponents of competing medical marijuana proposals have begun sniping at each other. Private cultivation and methods of dispensation are among the arguments. I’ve decided not to complicate matters by considering that debate when it comes to my vote. I’m voting for both the proposed amendment and initiated act, if both make the ballot. To do otherwise is to risk defeat of both. I won’t join any

movement that fractures people who favor decriminalization. Opponents of medica l ma riMAX juana say that BRANTLEY its approval will maxbrantley@arktimes.com be the first step toward total decriminalization. I agree. And it’s about time. With marijuana in some form now

Clinton innuendo

f President Hillary Clinton were to have an enemies list like Richard Nixon’s, which singled out 50 writers and media companies for malicious attention by government agencies like the IRS, who would be on it? This is a frivolous exercise, mind you, because the disclosure of Nixon’s list by his chief counsel burned the lesson into every politician’s conscience. Guessing at a President Trump list would be too daunting since it would include most of America’s political establishment and media and nearly every world leader except Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un. But President Clinton’s would be small, unless she added the denizens of the altright that gin out conspiracies that have had little effect on her standing. None in the Arkansas media would make it, our incursions into her affairs back in the ’70s and ’80s seeming now to be trivial. Her list would start and perhaps end with the New York Times. The Washington Post might join it. Her huge untrustworthiness quotient in the polls owes largely to the seminal reporting and commentary in the Times or the Post, in spite of the fact that both have been considered part of the liberal media and that a few of their columnists and unread editorials take her side. One of those Times columnists, Paul Krugman, the Nobel Laureate economist, took the Associated Press to task this week

for a damning story about Hillary Clinton visiting with dignitaries from around the world in her first two years ERNEST as secretary of state DUMAS after they or their governments had made gifts to the Clinton charitable foundation. Krugman said the meetings sounded ominous but were, in fact, perfectly harmless, there being no evidence she did or said anything to advance whatever interest the visitors had. Meetings on the same terms occur in every quarter of government, especially Congress. His point was that the AP and other media that write stories about the foundation or her emails are filled with innuendo but carry no damning facts. He compared it with the scant media attention given to Trump’s seeming bribes to attorneys general in Florida and Texas to prevent their joining an investigation into consumer fraud by Trump University. Trump’s foundation illegally funneled $25,000 to the Republican attorney general of Florida, who was deciding whether to join the Trump U. probe (she didn’t). He lied about it on IRS forms and paid a fine to the IRS. He gave $35,000 to the campaign fund of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, who was running for governor, after Abbott halted his own

legal in about half the country and use on the rise, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that evidence of abuse has fallen. And the rate of marijuana abuse has never been high. Nothing I’ve read pushes me to believe marijuana bears comparison with the ill effects of alcohol. It lacks the same degree of harm. The anecdotal evidence is abundant of the positive effects of marijuana for people with a variety of grave health problems.

Arkansas’s surgeon general, Dr. Greg Bledsoe, says he wants more study. If research is so persuasive, he should be leading the march for alcohol prohibition. Enough. If alcoholic beverages may be sold and consumed legally, so it should be for marijuana. If medical marijuana is a first step, I’m for any and all proposals to provide it. The End.

consumer division’s plan to sue Trump for $5.7 million for defrauding Texas students and operating a phony university in the state without a charter. What Krugman did not say was that it was the Times that started the Clinton Foundation fool’s errand and keeps it going. In 2013, the paper assigned a reporter to do nothing but look into the affairs of the likely presidential candidate. The Post followed suit. Voluminous stories about foundation gifts from royalty, foreign governments, corporations, autocrats and rank-and-file folks followed. There was no evidence of quid pro quo, but articles said the gifts for the foundation’s charitable work in Africa and elsewhere raised “questions” about potential improprieties. The Wall Street Journal, the Post, the AP and other media picked up the refrain. It was the Times’ sniffing through Benghazi testimony that turned up Clinton’s private email server, and the paper has led the unceasing search for fresh angles on that particular Clinton folly. Though the Times is the world’s greatest and most pervasive news source, it was the obscure leftist journal Mother Jones that actually plowed through the FBI report on the emails and concluded that it largely affirmed Clinton’s accounts. Mother Jones reported that Clinton, not former Secretary of State Colin Powell, was truthful about their email discussions back in 2009. Powell, who insinuated that Clinton was blaming him for her decision about a private server, had said that their exchange about emails, in

which he advised her to avoid email correspondence subject to public disclosure, occurred a year or more, not two days, into the Obama administration. The FBI report pinpointed it as Jan. 23, 2009. Powell advised her to avoid having her emails made part of the record. “Be very careful,” he wrote. “I got around it all by not saying much and not using systems that captured the data.” But the Times’ role as Clinton’s Javertlike antagonist goes back to 1992, when its investigative writer Jeff Gerth came to Arkansas to see who this rube running for president was. An old Republican source from his foray into Arkansas to expose perfidy by the Stephens family in Little Rock sent him to Jim McDougal, who had gotten the newly married Clintons in 1978 to borrow money for a foolish speculative venture called Whitewater on a remote Ozark mountain and was sore that the Clintons had not bailed him out and wouldn’t give him a state job when he fell on hard times. McDougal also told Gerth about Hillary’s lucky speculation in the futures market the same year. These weird little stories captured the imagination of Washington Republicans, and the Times’ reporting, nasty columns by William Safire and the paper’s editorial writers produced the biggest political snipe hunt in history and nearly all the Clintons’ crises. She aided them by her obstinacy in sharing her law firm’s billing records or much else about all the public things she considered personal. She might go on the list. arktimes.com

SEPTEMBER 8, 2016

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ere’s your presidential election coverage in a nutshell. Last week Donald Trump delivered his big immigration speech in Phoenix, uttering this inflammatory claim: “Hillary Clinton has pledged amnesty in her first 100 days, and her plan will provide Obamacare, Social Security and Medicare for illegal immigrants, breaking the federal budget.” Suffice it to say that every word was categorically false. Clinton hasn’t proposed “amnesty.” Undocumented aliens aren’t eligible for Social Security, Medicare or Obamacare. Period. Trump’s statement is not merely a falsehood, but an inflammatory, hurtful one — convincing low-information voters that their tax money is being misused. Something closer to the opposite is true. Many undocumented workers pay taxes without getting benefits. Nobody said boo. The big news was that Trump did a decent job reading the speech from a teleprompter. (A practice he once scorned, but never mind.) He also looked “presidential” standing tall next to Mexico’s dapper little chief executive — a visual worth the trip to Mexico City. Meanwhile, the Associated Press posted the following to its Twitter feed: “BREAKING: AP analysis: More than half those who met Clinton as Cabinet secretary gave money to Clinton Foundation.” That, too, is breathtakingly false. As James Fallows pointed out in The Atlantic, “the AP came up with its claim that ‘more than half’ the people Hillary Clinton met while Secretary were donors, only by deciding not to count the overwhelming majority of people she met.)” Specifically, the AP ignored the literally thousands of U.S. and foreign government figures Clinton dealt with during her four-year term. Looked at another way, Clinton met with 54 of the foundation’s more than 7,000 donors (all publicly posted on its website). And who were they? The one the AP found most concerning was one Muhummad Yunus — neglecting to mention (as Washington Monthly did) that the Bangladeshi economist “won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2010.” A philanthropist himself, Yunus has been a personal friend of Hillary Clinton’s since the 1980s.

Another visitor the AP found notable was Crown Prince Salman of Bahrain, that Persian GENE Gulf ally’s head of LYONS state. Reporters generated the appearance of scandal by trusting a shrill press release from Judicial Watch — a secretly funded foundation that exists largely to file lawsuits and make bizarre allegations against the Clintons. But no, the prince never remitted a reported $32 million in what Trump called a “pay to play” donation to the Clinton Foundation. He’d actually announced a scholarship fund benefitting students in his own country at a 2005 meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative — four years before Hillary Clinton became secretary of state. Any reporter who thinks the State Department should have stiffed the guy understands nothing about international affairs. Another shady Clinton visitor was acclaimed author and Holocaust survivor Elie Weisel. “Unfortunately,” Joe Conason notes with understatement, “many Washington reporters seem eager to repeat any accusation brandished against the Clintons, even from a dubious source, without rudimentary checking.” But then what would an unscandal be without the New York Times, the fons et origo of bogus Clinton narratives? An enterprising search by Talking Points Memo found 20 Times-generated “shadows” looming over Hillary’s campaign since last May — shades cast by everything from Bill Clinton’s presidency to Anthony Weiner’s penis. “Shadows,” of course, are journalistic shorthand for “we can’t prove anything, but we don’t like her.” Indeed, to anybody capable of close reading and critical thinking, Washington Monthly’s Paul Glastris gets it right: “Stories on the Clinton Foundation over the last two weeks fit the same basic pattern: the facts dug up by the investigation disprove the apparent thesis of the investigation … . In virtually every case we know of, it’s clear that Hillary and her staff behaved appropriately.” Politically, however, that’s not how it plays on TV, where allegations often morph into verdicts with no intervening stages of proof.

Time for another talk

s Bill Clinton started his 1982 political recovery following his shocking defeat to Frank White two years before, he took to the airwaves of Arkansas with an atypical campaign advertisement: He looked directly at the camera and apologized for having been out touch with Arkansans during his first term, including his damaging decision to raise vehicle tag fees. As Clinton wrote in his autobiography, “I then said that when I was growing up, ‘my daddy never had to whip me twice for the same thing.’ ” Clinton had a fight at every stage of his 1982 comeback, but the ad was crucial to inoculating him from critiques of his first term and allowed him to go on the offensive against his primary and general election opponents. Sixteen years later, Clinton was again on his back politically — this time because of his falsehoods regarding his inappropriate sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Once again, he talked straight to the camera and admitted his failings, this time in a short address from the White House just hours following his August 1998 testimony to the grand jury investigating the case. The speech didn’t immediately rehabilitate his reputation with the American public, but it was crucial to making the case that it was time to “move on.” Indeed, the web-based organization MoveOn.org — crucial to setting the stage for the historic Republican congressional defeats that fall — opened for business only days after that speech. Eighteen more years have passed, and it is time for a different Clinton to talk directly to the camera, crisply take responsibility for her errors regarding her use of email during her time as secretary of state, and move the American public toward thinking anew about her candidacy and her prospective presidency. Unquestionably, the notes from Hillary Clinton’s FBI interview regarding her email practices released late last week demonstrate that no matter how sloppy the decisions, intentional wrongdoing was absent. Moreover, as Paul Krugman’s much-discussed New York Times column over the weekend sharply argued, the media regularly engages in innuendo regarding Clinton’s email practices and the dynamics surrounding the Clinton Foundation, while Don-

ald Trump’s own “record of bilking students, stiffing contractors and more” is ignored. While few votJAY ers see Trump as BARTH either competent or truthful, the coverage of the Clinton email controversy has taken a toll on Clinton and helped Trump cut her national polling lead in half since the immediate aftermath of the Democratic National Convention. To turn the tide, Clinton’s campaign should invest in a national two-minute ad in which she talks directly to the camera. She is very, very good in such a setting (indeed, better than her husband), as Clinton showed in her excellent ad announcing her candidacy last spring. Once and for all, she should acknowledge her regret that she got some things wrong regarding her email practices, defend the Clinton Foundation’s work, and commit she will never break trust with the country as president. Then, she could close the message with a tweaked version of the close of her husband’s 1998 address in which he asked the American public to “to repair the fabric of our national discourse, and to return our attention to all the challenges and all the promise of the next American century.” Hillary Clinton’s trustworthiness numbers bounced upwards as a result of the messaging from the well-crafted Democratic National Convention, suggesting that voter perceptions of Clinton are not yet cemented and could be shifted by such an effort. To be clear, Hillary Clinton will likely be able to win this general election without taking such a step. Barring an episode during the upcoming presidential debates that jars her advantaged position in key state polls, Clinton seems poised to hold on for an Electoral College victory over Trump. But, this isn’t just about winning an election; it’s also about removing the albatross that her perceived untrustworthiness will present to her presidency. At a time when Americans’ faith in their governmental institutions is challenged like never before, it’s important not just for her ability to get things done, but for the country to truly begin to “move on.”

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Soft secondary

wo schools of thought may well emerge after Arkansas nipped a spirited Louisiana Tech team, 21-20, in the 2016 opener Saturday. One is that the Hogs are going to battle a two-headed demon all year. The secondary, now bereft of Kevin Richardson’s services after a season-ending pectoral injury, is the familiar “old” head, the one that has basically bedeviled the Hogs for a good quarter-century off and on. That soft coverage you saw Henri Toliver, Ryan Pulley, Santos Ramirez and others employing against the Bulldogs? It’s not likely to change, because there’s an evident belief that the Razorbacks cannot afford to get beaten deep. Evidently Calvin Ridley’s decisive touchdown bomb in the waning stages of the third quarter at Tuscaloosa had Robb Smith fearful of what might happen again if press coverage was employed. Second, more alarming head of the same beast: an offensive line that gave the second-worst showing a Razorback team has given in the Bret Bielema era (calling the pathetic effort at Florida in 2013 the worst, because there was no fairness in attempting to adjudge the Alabama game that year). Austin Allen’s going to catch hell for every pick he throws this year, to be sure, but the two against the Bulldogs were defensible under the circumstances. On third-and-18 on the opening drive, he was asked to squeeze in a 20-yard out to Jared Cornelius, and Tech safety Xavier Woods recovered to make the snag along the chalk. Later, with the Hogs trying to pad a 14-7 lead and sustain building momentum, Allen fired to his right and found the waiting arms of the Bulldogs’ Prince Sam instead. What looked like an apparent gaffe at first may have been a matter of Allen and Drew Morgan simply reading off different pages of the playbook. At any rate, Allen was actually quite efficient and productive given that Tech popped him to the tune of four sacks and numerous well-laid licks after the throw. Left guard Hjalte Froholdt struggled mightily, which might have been anticipated for a converted defensive end making his first start on the O-line, but left tackle Dan Skipper was also outperformed, and their failures largely offset a fairly competent debut effort by freshman right tackle Colton Jackson of Conway. The erratic protection spells itself in the output: Arkansas’ pedestrian 297 total yards on almost 37 minutes of possession time and 69 offensive snaps

is well behind Dan Enos’ curve. The Hogs did not generate an offensive play longer than 18 yards, BEAU and Tech reeled WILCOX off five plays of 20 yards or greater. It wasn’t that the Bulldogs were particularly electric offensively, though: Their first-time starter at quarterback, J’Mar Smith, settled into a minor groove early by throwing short, crisp slants and screens, and stayed in it because the Razorbacks simply permitted it. I noted derisively on Saturday that Robb Smith’s work here is starting to look a bit more like flash-in-the-pan stuff, and the results bear that out. Take away the exceptional performance his unit gave during the meat of SEC play in 2014 — those back-to-back shutouts of LSU and Ole Miss will always endear him to us — and largely the Arkansas defense over the past 27 games resembles one of those cautious apertures that might inexplicably splay wide at any moment. Despite a solid second-half effort generally, the Hogs owe at least part of their good fortune against the Bulldogs to kicker Jonathan Barnes clanking away a field goal that would’ve given Tech a 23-14 second-half lead. Arkansas will need more burst from Rawleigh Williams (24 rushes, 96 yards) and a TD in his return to game action after last year’s harrowing neck injury) and more downhill outside running from Kody Walker. Devwah Whaley’s taste of action was too limited to extract anything meaningful, and that must change soon. Cornelius’ end-arounds continue to be a fair change of pace, but cannot be overused. The run game sorely missed Alex Collins’ tenacity and vision. And that’s sort of how the other school of thought emerges. Arkansas has had a real nasty tendency to play down to lesser nonconference foes at times the past four years, losing to Rutgers after narrowly beating Southern Mississippi and Samford in 2013, tanking against Toledo and Texas Tech last year, and now this close shave. But maybe it’s something essential to the calculus at the moment: Would Arkansas have gained much by pasting the Bulldogs? Arguably not. With TCU having to fight like hell to escape South Dakota State at home, Bielema has to feel like the game behind can’t dictate the path of the game ahead.

9/7– 9/13

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THE OBSERVER NOTES ON THE PASSING SCENE

Back to school

hough The Observer has taught classes out at the college for many a year now — many, many a year at this point, 15 years on — it’s been even longer since we’ve been on the Amen side of the desk. That changes tonight, when we go to take the first class as a student since back in the stone age of 1999. Though we probably should have long since signed up for some classes on real estate appraisal, artisan beard oil chemistry or the ever-popular Computer Stuff so we could get out of the steam engine business and into a profession that will actually exist 20 years from now, this is a class we’re taking purely for our own education (which is, on balance, the best kind of education): a course on how to become one of the Makers over at the Innovation Hub in North Little Rock. If you haven’t heard of it, you should. The Innovation Hub, which is run by Arkansas Times alum and three-time Pulaski County Most Chipper Politician Rep. Warwick Sabin (sorry, Sen. Elliott), is a little hive of geekdom where paying guests can go in and use their fancy-ass tools to make all kinda goodies, from knick-knacks to gee-gaws, widgets to sprockets. They also teach classes over there, presumably to help folks like Yours Truly keep from lasering our finger off. Yours Truly never liked authority much, even though we’re perfectly fine dishing it out — let us point to our 2.1 final GPA and extensive disciplinary record in high school as Exhibit A in our own prosecution — so we are a bit apprehensive about this whole idea to tell you the truth. Learnin’ never came naturally to us, our mind a very loose weave indeed when it came to that sort of thing. At this point, the only thing we remember from our time in formal education is “I before E except after C,” that the speed of light in a vacuum is 186,282 miles per second and that “The Canterbury Tales”

includes some stuff that would make Larry Flynt blush. Don’t ask why we remember those things. We just do. Most everything else has been worn away by the scouring sun of 20 years. Which, of course, begs the question: Will The Observer’s old, whiskeypickled brain still be spongy enough to soak up knowledge? Or, once the class starts, will we get a flashing “HARD DRIVE FULL! DELETE ALGEBRA!” message in the corner of our vision? Time will tell. All we can do is show up with our old pen and fresh notebook, our required laptop (a new development for us, given that we were so broke we couldn’t pay for breakfast, much less for a laptop, back when we last cracked a textbook) and an apple for the teacher. While it doesn’t appear to be a quizzes-and-tests kind of class, we still find we’ve got a spray of butterflies in our tummy about all this. So much of The Observer’s experience now is about the great net of a life, its pattern forming a beautiful, constant riff on the same set of themes: birth and death, love and disappointment, joy and fear. And so, even though it’s not that kind of class, we are reminded today of the first day of school, all the way back to the FIRST first day, The Boy Observer getting off the bus in our new shoes, with our Magic Mart sack full of minty-new school supplies, both fearful and excited to expand our young mind. Though we’ll never admit it to the folks over there at the Innovation Hub tonight, this old dog finds that the prospect of learning a new trick has dredged up all those same feelings along with the memories, which is the next best thing to actually being that scared, elated kid walking into Lawson Elementary for the first time. That’s a pretty nice place to be on a September morn, in the Year of Our Lord 2016.

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SEPTEMBER 8, 2016

Arkansas Reporter

THE

The desegregation of Van Buren schools Despite white students staging a strike and burning an effigy of a black student, integration prevailed in 1957. BY JOHN A. KIRK

ble was reported. Van Buren High School remained successfully integrated even as events unfolded at Central High School in Little Rock in September 1957. But because of the continuing defiance of

SEPTEMBER 8, 2016

ARKANSAS TIMES

COURTESY OF LIBRARY OF CONGRESS PRINTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION

ith the 59th anniversary of the desegregation of Little Rock’s Central High School just a few weeks away, attention will no doubt focus again on that landmark event. Though of course important, that story has often overshadowed other developments taking place in school desegregation in Arkansas at the same time. Events in Little Rock played an important role in shaping what happened elsewhere in the state. Take, for example, the story of school desegregation in Van Buren. In 1954, the Van Buren School District had 2,634 white students and 87 African-American students. Black students attended a segregated elementary school, and after graduation they were bused over the Arkansas River to the segregated Lincoln High School in Fort Smith. After the Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation decision, with assistance from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 19 black parents sued for the entry of 24 black students into Van Buren’s white high school, in the first case of its kind in Arkansas. At the trial, Van Buren Superintendent Everett Kelley told the court that it would “take time to educate school patrons for integration,” and that he did not “intend to integrate until forced or until the feeling in Van Buren changes.” Federal District Judge John E. Miller warned that after Brown the only issue was how long the “transition to a racially nondiscriminatory school system” would take. Miller ordered the board to produce an integration plan and report back to the court. On Aug. 20, 1956, the school board submitted a nine-year desegregation

For four days, around 40 white students staged a strike outside the school. On the third night, they burned an effigy of an African-American student on the school grounds. The students sent a telegram to Gov. Orval E. Faubus telling him, “In behalf of [sic] Van Buren High School we are on strike here. In order to stay integration, we need your help.” There was speculation that Faubus might use legislation passed by an extraordinary session of Arkansas General Assembly in 1958 to close the school. School officials were in no doubt about the cause of the disturbances. “If it hadn’t been for Little Rock, we wouldn’t have this trouble now,” one said. “We had Negroes in the school last year — more than this year — and we didn’t have any trouble.” Others agreed. A member of the student council claimed that the strikers were “just trouble makers … . They’re always into something and now they’re just trying to imitate Little Rock.” A mother of one of the white students told reporters that Little Rock “gave us an example up here,” adding, “All we needed was something to get it started. And now that it’s started, we’ll soon have those colored children out of there.” With black students refusing to return to school until their safety was assured, the white students ended the strike. At the next school board meeting, the president of the newly formed Van Buren Citizens’ Council (VBCC), Sam Cox Jr., claimed they had nothing against African Americans, but, he said, “We just want them to go to their own schools.” Parents demanded to know why the Van Buren School Board was not seeking a delay

INTEGRATION: Thirteen black students began attending Van Buren schools in 1957.

plan beginning in August 1957. Under the plan, the first four high school grades would desegregate in 1957, the eighth grade in 1958, and the seventh grade in 1960. On Aug. 28, 1957, the school board implemented this plan by enrolling 23 African-American students with 550 white students. No trou-

the law in Little Rock, the mood had changed considerably the following year. On Sept. 2, 1958, when 13 black students attempted to enroll, they were met by jeering white students carrying signs reading, “Niggers, Go Home” and “Chicken Whites Go to School With Jigs.”

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in its integration plan in the courts as the Little Rock School Board was doing in the state Capitol. The 15-year-old president of the student council, Jessie Angelina “Angie” Evans, said that a poll of 160 students in the school favored admitting African-American students, with 85 for, 45 against and 30 undecided. Afterward, Evans told a Time magazine reporter, “Someone had to speak up. I just don’t think segregation is a Christian thing.” On Friday, Sept. 19, 1958, Judge Miller turned down the request of the NAACP to intervene in events at Van Buren. He expressed confidence that black students could now safely resume classes. On Sept. 22, eight of the 13 black students returned to school without incident. The VBCC responded by circulating petitions for the recall of school board members. School board president J.J. Izard, whose seat was targeted by segregationists, explained that the school board had no choice under existing law but to desegregate. Izard stepped down before the election, and his place on the school board was contested by Sam Cox Jr. and local businessman Russell Myers. Myers took the position in the election that he was against integration but for keeping the schools open. He won by 1,084 votes to 256 votes. The school remained integrated, and the VBCC disbanded. Events in Little Rock threatened the peace in other communities and encouraged copycat protests elsewhere. However, the Van Buren story of school desegregation is one of a number in Arkansas where local citizens stood strong to preserve local control over their public schools and desegregate. And, as they ably demonstrated, even in an increasingly hostile environment, it was still possible to do so and prevail. John A. Kirk is the George W. Donaghey distinguished professor of history and director of the Joel E. Anderson Institute on Race and Ethnicity at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. This piece is an adapted version of his entry “Desegregation of Van Buren Public Schools” in the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture.

THE

BIG PICTURE

Inconsequential News Quiz: Trial by combat edition

PLAY AT HOME

TO THE DEATH! 1) In July, the City Council of Pine Bluff voted unanimously to do something that might have been surprising to some. What was the vote about? A) To evacuate and abandon Pine Bluff, shocking many who thought the city was already abandoned. B) To rename the large pile of bricks and splintered lumber that has blocked Main Street for months “Mt. Pine Bluff.” C) To rescind the medals of valor awarded to members of the Pine Bluff Police Department SWAT team for a 2013 incident in which they stormed the bedroom of a 107-year-old man holed up inside with a gun and shot him to death. D) To name Arnold’s Catfish Place in Pine Bluff a city, state and national treasure (seriously, you should go). 2) In early August, robot-related news from Arkansas went viral online. What happened? A) Long-haul trucker Dusty Merkin of Paragould filed for divorce after learning his wife, Wanda, had built “a love bot” from washing machine parts while he was away. B) Sen. Tom Cotton (a.k.a.: Cottontron 5000) unexpectedly became self-aware following a lightning strike on Koch Industries during his yearly overhaul and oil change. C) Drone camera hovering near the Governor’s Mansion outed Governor Hutchinson as a fan of naked hula hooping, with the video immediately seized by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as a potential mental health hazard. D) A Little Rock resident posted on Facebook about the horrors that resulted when his “Roomba” robot vacuum ran over a pile of dog shit while the family was sleeping, then proceeded to smear it all over the house. 3) Peak irony was reached in a recent Facebook post by Little Rock homeless champion Aaron Reddin (facebook.com/itsthevan) in which Reddin said a homeless man told him he had been kicked out of The Compassion Center, a Little Rock shelter, because the man … A) Refused to provide the staff with wise, Oprahesque platitudes to help them find meaning in their solidly middle-class lives. B) Couldn’t stop crying. C) Didn’t know the words to a single song from “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” D) Asked to sleep in one of the dozens of church sanctuaries all over the city that sit dry, air-conditioned and empty most nights of the year between dusk and dawn. 4) Recently, officials with the Miss Arkansas Pageant decided to make a change that’s sure to be controversial. What was the change? A) After 58 years in Hot Springs, the pageant will move to Little Rock in 2017. B) The pageant will no longer be called a “scholarship competition” in favor of the more accurate “future trophy wife casting call.” C) Next year’s crown to be made of three pounds of peanut brittle, which must be eaten by Miss Arkansas 2018 in under 15 minutes in order to assume the title. D) The winner will henceforth be decided through Trial by Combat as seen on “Game of Thrones.” Hulga “The Mountains” Hopewell of White County is an early favorite to win. 5) Sept. 28 is sure to be an interesting day for those who live and work in downtown Little Rock. What’s happening that day? A) It’s Consequence Free Day, the once-a-decade 24-hour period in which all crimes are legal, as seen in the 2013 film “The Purge.” Most Little Rock residents should notice no change. B) Bring Your Tiger to Work Day. C) Arkansas Travelers mascot Otey the Swamp Possum will be released back into the wild. We can only pray he never kills again. D) The Broadway Bridge, a crucial artery for traffic over the Arkansas River, is closing that morning for the start of a sixmonth replacement project. Answers: C, D, B, A, D

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SEPTEMBER 8, 2016

Graham Gordy’s long road Will his new Cinemax series, “Quarry,” be the payoff for years of dogged creativity?

BY MAXWELL GEORGE

BRIAN CHILSON

GORDY: His new TV show, “Quarry” debuts Sept. 9 on Cinemax.

SEPTEMBER 8, 2016

ARKANSAS TIMES

BRIAN CHILSON

he dining room of Graham Gordy’s Park Hill bungalow is situated in the center of the house, a way station between the front den and the kitchen. The walls are a deep turquoise; on the largest is a nicely appointed arrangement of decorative ornaments and children’s art. Much of the space is filled by a wide wooden table. This is where Gordy works. One end of the table is given over to neat stacks of papers, manuscripts and books. A laptop sits closed and at the ready. Across the country, in New York and Los Angeles, Gordy’s various collaborators await dispatches from this room, the next character sketch or scene or snippet of dialogue fresh from a mind that can’t stop turning out the stuff. On Friday, Sept. 9, one of Gordy’s ideas, nearly a half-decade in the making, will premiere on Cinemax: the new TV show “Quarry,” which Gordy created, wrote and executive-produced with his Los Angeles-based writing partner, Michael D. Fuller. Adapted from a series of pulp novels by Max Allan Collins, it follows in the tradition of serious television dramas centered around goodhearted bad guys — “Breaking Bad,” “Justified,” etc. — that Tony Soprano begat. “Quarry” follows the descent of a Marine who returns home from active duty in Vietnam in 1972 and is drawn into a dark business, becoming a contract killer in Memphis and its environs. If the first season is a hit, it could change Graham Gordy’s life. It could lead to a second season and beyond, further establish Cinemax (a subsidiary of HBO) as a network for ambitious narrative television and grant Gordy and Fuller a blank check to develop future ideas with complete creative control. Or it could flop: fail to land with the critics, who will parse the show at every level, tapping against every detail and nuance for signs of shoddy construction; fail to draw an audience to a second-tier network still rehabbing its “skin-emax” reputation as a soft-core porn channel. “Quarry” could disappear after a single season. Most likely, it will land somewhere in between — not a cultural touchstone like “Mad Men,” but popular enough with the critics and viewers to carry it through several seasons. Still, the potential highs are as lofty as one can imagine. Gordy has seen success before, seen what it can do for a person not unlike himself, a Vince Gilligan (creator of “Breaking Bad”) or David Simon (“The Wire”), or even his friend Ray McKinnon, a former Little Rock resident whose

show “Rectify” will see its anticipated fourth and final season on SundanceTV this fall. (Gordy and Fuller wrote for the first season of “Rectify.”) Gordy has also endured failure: He was a co-writer with Mike Myers on Myers’ universally panned 2008 film “The Love Guru,” which New York Times film critic A.O. Scott declared “downright antifunny, an experience that makes you wonder if you will ever laugh again.” That hit took him some time to swallow. Now, after more than four years of production on a relatively compact piece of work (the first season amounts to eight more or less hourlong episodes) with Gordy and Fuller involved at every stage, “Quarry” is out of their hands. Sitting at the dining room table where he writes, three weeks from the show’s premiere, Gordy is composed. “All the ways in which I can react to this concept, I have reacted to it,” he says. Gordy, 40, is tall with an athletic build and a manicured, examined aspect about him that seems to extend to his interior as well. He is thoughtful in conversation, deep-voiced and open, talking his way around questions until his point is suitably illuminated, as if he were searching a dark room with a flashlight. “I have reacted to [the show] with tremendous hope and optimism and belief in what we’ve done,” he told me, while conceding that the anticipation is “curbed by the things I’m frustrated with about it or the disappointments I’ve had along the way or the things that I don’t feel landed.” On the wall behind him, a small framed print reads “A Room is a Place Where You Hide From the Wolves Outside and That’s All a Room Is.” Here, in the heart of a quaint brick house on a quiet, tree-lined street in a pleasant North Little Rock neighborhood, Gordy continues to work on his countless other projects, all in various stages of development, while Sept. 9 looms. “It has been such a long and sometimes arduous process,” he says, “that I have become more stoic about the thing in itself and what reaction comes.”

“QUARRY.” SEASON 1, episode 1. Black screen. Sound of water lapping and birds’ early morning chirping. Fade in, close crop on a vintage election pin half-buried in the pebbly sand at water’s edge — you can make out “I VOTED” in a chunky serif font and once-vibrant blue and red coloring from the late ’60s, maybe. Quickly cut to wide angle, revealing the full scene:

A man lies face down in the shallows of a river. The landscape is black against metal-blue, a predawn picture almost grayscale, like a tintype photograph. In the background, stretched across the river, a bridge, its unnaturally straight angles working against the jagged, dark canopy overhanging the shoreline and framing the scene. With the exception of music — these first four minutes are accompanied only by the foreboding swelling of synths — the overarching aesthetic and central themes of “Quarry” are contained in its opening scene. After several seconds, the man stirs and crawls ashore. He stands and looks across the river, getting his bearings. Close crop on his face: Duane Allman mustache, wet hair hanging to his jaw. In his hollow gaze, we read he’s taking stock of whatever series of events planted him face down in a dark eddy. He turns, retrieves a gun from the sand and stumbles along the shore until he comes to another man standing against a tree. He shoots that man in the back. Cut to a witness: a giant tortoise in the underbrush. The man pauses, as surprised about the turtle cameo as the viewer is, shakes himself back to his task and proceeds to drag the corpse into the river and push it out into the current. In this short time, we are made to know that this show will be these things: wickedly alluring, artistically ambitious and very bleak. Our antihero is Mac Conway (Logan Marshall-Green), who carries a prominent knot in the center of his brow that reads by turns sinister and disarming. Conway is a vet, but no war hero; he and his friend Arthur Soloman (Jamie Hector, who played Marlo on “The Wire”) are implicated in a My Lai-type massacre of Vietnamese civilians, and their homecoming is met by a protest at the airport. Both are spurned by the community. Meanwhile, their wives attempt to comfort and unpack the men, whom a year away at war has profoundly altered. From this setup, established in the pilot episode, much struggle, suffering and sorrow follows rapidly, and one big debt leads Conway to many bad deeds. Conway is suffering from PTSD, a mostly undiagnosed, untreated condition at the time, and Marshall-Green imbues the character with a sustained aspect of vacancy, a glaze in the eyes and a little tightness in the jaw. Alongside Marshall-Green, “Quarry’s” first season is populated by a number of impressive performances from largely underexposed actors. Jodi Balfour portrays Mac’s wife, Joni, who serves as confidant and foil to her husband and,

like him, has secrets. As the Broker, the plot’s mysterious mastermind and the director of a misfit crew of for-hire hitmen, Peter Mullan has that supremely villainous quality of being unshakable, dispassionate, measured. The other two central characters of “Quarry” are music and water. Memphis is the city of Sun Records, Stax, Beale Street and Graceland, a heritage the show must attend to. It does: Songs are used to advance the narrative (Conway’s missing “Otis Blue” LP is a plot device in the pilot), radios and record players aren’t simply playing but are actually listened to, and in nearly every episode characters are put in front of a live set. Scenes unfold in and around the swimming pool Conway built by himself in his backyard (he was a high school swimmer before he got drafted). Once a source of solace and sanctuary, the pool, a key player, seems to have acquired a darker aspect while he was in Vietnam. Always hovering off screen is the Mississippi River. We see it in the season’s opening scene and because it becomes quickly apparent that the predawn murder was a flash forward, we know things will get worse. We’re headed downriver.

“QUARRY” WAS BORN from the ashes of Gordy and Fuller’s first serious foray, “The Wreck,” a proposed TV series about the machinations of a Southern college’s football program. They took the project fairly deep with AMC: John Lee Hancock, director of “The Blind Side,” was attached, but the network declined to order a pilot, the project’s death knell. When Gordy and Fuller encountered the “Quarry” novels, the pair were already ruminating on an idea for a show about the Dixie Mafia and the Mississippi River as an artery of illicit activity. So they moved Mac Conway from the Iowa setting of the books to Memphis and introduced their Dixie Mafia characters into the “Quarry” narrative. For a moment, they considered bringing the story forward to the present day, but the ’70s timeframe of the original, they realized, reflected the anxieties and discontent of our time in helpfully uncanny ways. As Gordy told the Arkansas Times’ David Koon in 2013, “This last decade has been sort of a scrambled rewind of the 1970s — an unwanted war, a really terrible recession, and a lot of apathy and anger.” Gordy reiterated this point about the early ’70s to me: “People felt psychologically or emotionally adrift.” The result is a show brimming with arktimes.com

SEPTEMBER 8 2016

MICHELE K. SHORT/CINEMAX

MAC CONWAY: Logan Marshall-Green stars in “Quarry” as a Vietnam vet turned hitman.

Graham Gordy’s long road

SEPTEMBER 8, 2016

ARKANSAS TIMES

malaise, in which the terrors inflicted upon and by the characters are symptoms of the spoilage in the society at large. “Quarry” depicts both sides of the racial divide of 1972 Memphis, and its protagonists, white and black, are ensnared by wicked manifestations of power and entrapped by the few who wield it. Mac is lorded over by The Broker; across town, Arthur’s family witnesses hate crimes by white supremacists and profiling by the Memphis police. There’s a terrible familiarity to the painstakingly accurate setting, like finding your own eyes in a Kodachrome portrait of your grandfather in an old family album. “In retrospect, probably without realizing it so much in the beginning,” Gordy says, a primary impulse behind the show’s writing was to “understand a little bit more about the era from whence I came. What happened in the era before this, when my parents were relatively young and out in the world? What did the world look like, what did it feel like?”

Gordy was born in 1975 in Conway and grew up there. His father, Fred Gordy, was a doctor, “very old school.” Gordy remembers going on house calls with his dad, “getting paid in a couple dozen eggs and deer meat and stuff like that.” (On his father’s side, Gordy is related to Jimmy Carter.) His mother, Dr. Sondra Gordy, was a history professor at the University of Central Arkansas specializing in the civil rights era. From an early age, Gordy was attracted to acting, especially sketch comedy. He performed in plays at the Arkansas Arts Center Children’s Theatre in Little Rock and, as a teenager, at the Arkansas Repertory Theatre. When he was 19, he moved to L.A. and began taking classes and writing sketches at The Groundlings, the famous breeder of comedy stars, whose alumni include Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig and Will Ferrell. If people in Arkansas expected to see Gordy a short time later on the big screen, it didn’t work out that way. He came back after a year, dis-

enchanted with the realities of acting in Hollywood, and enrolled at UCA. After graduating in 1999, he pursued a master of fine arts in dramatic writing at New York University’s Tisch School, where he won the Goldberg Award for Playwriting. When he was 24, his workshop piece titled “The Discipline” was staged by one of his mentors, Frank Pugliese, who cast Wallace Shawn, Marisa Tomei and John Slattery in it. It was a surreal debut for Gordy. “I don’t know, man. All I can say is that I peaked early,” he offers today. “Frank was one of those people who believed in me more than I did.” After grad school, Gordy worked for comedian Mike Myers for several years and began to write for the screen, contributing to the second and third movies in the “Shrek” franchise. His first major writing credit is attached to the fiasco of Myers’ “The Love Guru,” which was deemed the Worst Screenplay of 2008 at the Razzie Awards. It’s rumored that Myers strong-armed the process, but Gordy declined to fuel

MICHELE K. SHORT/CINEMAX

ARKANSAS TIMES

F E S T I VA L OF IDEAS 2016 S A T U R D AY, S E P. 2 4

12:30 P.M. - 5:30 P.M.

FREE

INNOVATION HUB 2 1 0 E . B R OA D WAY S T. NORT H LIT T L E ROCK

With presentations, interviews and demonstrations by Arkansas Visionaries… North Little Rock Police Officer Tommy Norman, who's gotten national attention for his devotion to community policing.

Lost Forty Brewing’s Grant Chandler, who’ll use his microbiology background in the brewery’s soon-to-open lab.

Dr. Carolina Cruz-Neira, director of UALR’s George W. Donaghey Emerging Analytics Center and an internationally regarded expert on virtual reality.

Lawyer, civil rights champion and muckraker Matt Campbell. AND MORE…

AF TER PA R T Y LO C A T IO N CRUSH W I N E BA R

This year’s complete list of Arkansas Visionaries, who’re doing things to make the state a better place, will be revealed in the Sept. 15 issue. arktimes.com

SEPTEMBER 8 2016

Graham Gordy’s long road

SEPTEMBER 8, 2016

ARKANSAS TIMES

that story. In an email, he wrote of the project, “The headline is: I learned a tremendous amount, but it came at a huge emotional cost and it gutted me.” His relationship with Myers winding down, Gordy left New York, and in 2007 was tapped to write the script for the indie “War Eagle, Arkansas,” which garnered acclaim at numerous film festivals and reminded him of the kind of work he’d been doing in playwriting. “I spent the next few years trying to get back to what I really wanted to write, which were smaller, character-driven features. The economy had just tanked and I suddenly had written two lower-budget, character-driven screenplays I was proud of at the precise moment when Hollywood decided to stop making movies that size.” He turned to developing “The Wreck” with Fuller, whom he’d met in New York. “It was a hard couple of years. I got bites, and hired for things here and there, but nothing got produced.” In 2010, Gordy collaborated with writer/actor Ray McKinnon, then living in Little Rock, on the short film “Spanola Pepper Sauce Company,” a dark comedy written by and starring Gordy and directed by McKinnon, filmed over a weekend an hour outside of town. (Gordy was also a columnist for the Times during this period. His wife, Amy, is also the editor of Savvy, which is published by the Times.) When McKinnon’s long-simmering project “Rectify” was picked up by SundanceTV in 2011, Gordy joined the writers’ room, bringing Fuller with him. This is how the years fill up as a writer: tinkering and taking what opportunities come along. To talk with Gordy today is to hear a man settled into a productive, creative, but hard-won life. When I asked him about the course of his career, trying to parse his ambitions, he spoke of talent as “cultivated,” more about “attitude as opposed to aptitude.” He’s worked hard, and he hasn’t stopped working. “It’s taken me a long time to learn these lessons,” he said. Gordy’s present path goes back to that wilderness year in L.A., when making up comedic sketches had moved him away from acting and toward writing — potentially “the long game of life,” to borrow his phrase. He realized writing was “something that would be very challenging and that I could work at and would probably take me 20 years to get good at and another 20 to tire of.” By this math, Graham Gordy has only just started cooking with gas.

IN HIS 1985 essay “Morality,” the playwright/actor Wallace Shawn contends that “the difference between a perfectly decent person and a monster is just a few thoughts. The perfectly decent person who follows a certain chain of reasoning, ever so slightly and subtly incorrect, becomes a perfect monster at the end of the chain.” Since Gordy got to meet him in New York, Shawn has remained an influence, and “Quarry” exhibits the intellectual moralizing that is trademark Shawn. “Quarry” is a gumbo of references and allusions and tips of the hat to the many sources Gordy and Fuller employed as they developed the show and adapted Collins’ Iowa-based books to Memphis. Going for a historically accurate, yet lived-in quality for “Quarry,” Gordy and Fuller read stacks of books on Vietnam and PTSD, dove deep into auteur-era Hollywood (Gordy cites the 1973 crime film “The Friends of Eddie Coyle,” among many others, as a touchstone), and consumed as much of the culture from the time as they could. “Good writing is about — yes, it’s about structure, and, yes, it’s about great characters, and it’s theme, but it’s also specificity as much as anything else,” Gordy says. The 1972 Munich Olympics and the Nixon-McGovern presidential race provide a ready backdrop for the story — Mark Spitz’s pursuit of seven Olympic gold medals is even used as a foil to Mac Conway’s bad turns. The sort of historical accuracy Gordy and Fuller were after required more than timely news clips, vintage cars and flared jeans; it also required attention to the artifacts people would use leading up to that year. To recreate 1972, Gordy explains, you have to go farther back than 1972; you have to gather up the items and records and clothes one would accumulate in the decades prior. One overlooked anachronism could topple the entire effect for a viewer. Music is key both to authenticity and as illustration of how disconnected Conway is with the present. While the rest of Memphis (including his wife) has moved on to power pop band Big Star, Conway is still an Otis Redding man. If some moments in the first season remind you of something Charles Portis wrote, or Walker Percy, that’s by design. That the show looks like a shot by William Eggleston or Stephen Shore — the iconic color photographers whose work is particularly evocative of the 1970s — is because Gordy and Fuller posted their images around the writers’ room.

“Eggleston’s photography was huge for us,” Fuller told me over the phone, “in a way that you can read six books about something and then you see one picture and it’s like, ‘Oh, that’s what it felt like.’ ” Though he made pictures all over America, Eggleston is synonymous with Memphis, the city where he has been based since the 1960s. Gordy and Fuller even supplied the production crew for “Quarry” with an Eggleston “look book,” and they gave director Greg Yaitanes and cinematographer Pepe Avila del Pino a syllabus of films that had inspired the writing. “Our mandate, without being dictatorial about it,” Gordy told me, was, “We would love for somebody to turn on this show, and for two or three minutes be like, ‘Was this actually made in the early ’70s? Is this a movie from the early ’70s?’ ” Or, as Yaitanes told me, the avowed goal was, “We’re gonna make this, visually, for the deepest diving Memphian.” At one point, Gordy and Fuller weren’t convinced the show would ever get made. “Quarry” was conceived in 2012 and picked up by Cinemax early the next year, but, waiting for a green light from the network, it wasn’t filmed until 2015, with more than 50 days of continuous shooting that spring and summer. The process is called “cross-boarding,” when a TV show is filmed all at once, like a movie; it’s a boon for continuity. But the shooting schedule also presented a host of challenges in untangling the raw material from hours of film into the final edited eight episodes. It was expected that “Quarry” would be released in February this year, but the demands of postproduction pushed it to the fall. In midAugust, billboards advertising the show’s September premiere began to appear around Hollywood. To those who had been involved for years, I imagine they served as a final, irrefutable confirmation: “Quarry” was finished.

“QUARRY” WAS VERY nearly filmed in Arkansas. This was Gordy’s intention from the beginning, to bring this ambitious TV project to his home state, to kick open the front door for Hollywood. Before filming, Gordy, Fuller, Yaitanes and executives from HBO/Cinemax “spent a week driving around Memphis, around Mississippi, around Arkansas and Louisiana,” Gordy recently wrote me. Due to unfavorable tax credits in Tennessee and the limitations of Louisiana visually and geographically, the team seemed

MICHELE K. SHORT/CINEMAX

HOMECOMING: Joni (Jodi Balfour) serves as a confidant to her husband, Mac (Logan Marshall-Green), but she’s got secrets of her own.

set on taking Gordy’s advice for the production. “Arkansas had the project,” he wrote. “HBO and all of our team was ready to do it here and had started the negotiations based on a film tax credit that had passed.” But the deal unraveled. The network needed assurance of enough funding for five years, so they could invest in a soundstage and infrastructure. Although then-Gov. Mike Beebe supported the project, as Gordy explains it, the tax credit offered wasn’t enough to ink the deal. In the end, Cinemax decided to split filming between Memphis, Mississippi and New Orleans, with the bulk in Louisiana. “I was heartbroken, of course,” Gordy says. “All I’ve ever wanted, after making a living at doing this, is to be able to do it here.” More than ever before, he is committed to realizing this vision for Arkansas. Gordy’s next project, a feature titled “Antiquities,” is set to film in the state this fall. Gordy and Arkansas film-

maker Daniel Campbell co-wrote the film based on Campbell’s short, which won the Charles B. Pierce Award for Arkansas Film at the Little Rock Film Festival in 2010. “Antiquities” is being produced as the inaugural project for Mortuus Pater Pictures, which Little Rock’s Gary Newton created after seeing “Quarry” go elsewhere. “The loss of [‘Quarry’] was the catalyst for me,” Newton, the president and CEO of Arkansas Learns and a former executive vice president at the Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce, told the Arkansas Times in July. “It felt like we finally had the Holy Grail, to have been the first choice of the studio, to be able to put Arkansans to work, and develop a crew base. The fact that we lost that was a gut-check.” He formed Mortuus Pater and raised $650,000 to support Gordy, Campbell and Arkansas film and TV projects. Gordy told me, “We have to try to build it from the

ground up and build the infrastructure as we go. And ‘Antiquities’ is the size of a project that the state can financially get behind and incentivize. So, we just have to be successful with it and show it is worthwhile.” Gordy says 2016 “has been a year of re-assessment for me.” He has continued to dip back into “Quarry,” doing promotional work and some early scheming in case of a second season, and over the summer he wrote what he refers to as “a half-hour comedy full of dick jokes,” which he’ll shop around leisurely. Still, Gordy gives the sense that he’s a little between gigs while waiting for “Quarry” to drop. In one email, he wrote: “The Irish Poet John O’Donohue talks about threshold moments in your life being a threshing, giving up some husk and moving into a more full version of yourself. A lot of that has been trying to go back and examine what made me want to do this in the first place and re-look

at the things that left me in awe.” The self-awareness one perceives in Gordy’s manners of dress and speech seem to permeate his work as well. All of his collaborators with whom I spoke praised Gordy on a particular point. “He’s got a great sense of scene and character and a wonderful sense of how to bring humanity to a character,” Fuller told me. Yitanes says the same thing: “What I admire specifically about Graham is his sense of humanity and his sense of warmth as an individual and how he infuses that into the characters. When you see how much that matters to him as a person, you feel very charged with having to protect that on behalf of them when it passes from page into reality.” Peopling a narrative’s “world” — a term both Gordy and Fuller use when talking about their work — with a set of dynamic characters is essential to the success of any long-form drama, which arktimes.com

SEPTEMBER 8 2016

Graham Gordy’s long road IN THE WRITERS’ ROOM: “Quarry” co-creators Michael Fuller (left) and Graham Gordy.

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is why Fuller and Yitanes both point to this as a particular strength of Gordy’s. But Gordy’s “ace in the hole,” according to Fuller, is his comedic sensibility. Both writers are devotees of Charles Portis, whose 2003 Oxford American essay “Motel Life, Lower Reaches” is referenced in “Quarry” when the season takes an Arkansas detour; on the run from trouble back home, Mac and Joni decamp to the Sunnyside Motel in Huntsville, where they encounter a string of drifters. Fittingly, Gordy is currently shopping a screenplay for a film of Portis’ 1979 novel “Dog of the South,” which he adapted with Little Rock writer and editor Jay Jennings. (Jennings and I work together at the Oxford American.) Jennings compares Gordy to “Breaking Bad” creator Vince Gilligan, a famously pleasant person whose creativity traffics in dark themes: “He’s the nicest guy and ran the best writers’ room, and produces this ultraviolent TV show that has this morbid humor to it — Graham is the same way in some senses.” Jennings also extends the comparison to Portis, Arkansas’s master writer. Citing Gordy’s short “Spanola Pepper Sauce Company,” he observes, “the humor that comes out of it is what the character doesn’t realize what he’s revealing about himself, which is char20

SEPTEMBER 8, 2016

ARKANSAS TIMES

acteristic of Portis as well. I think one thing that Graham’s characters share with Portis’ characters is that they don’t seem able to help themselves in revealing more about themselves to you. There’s almost this compulsion to say more than they should.” There is a glimpse of Graham Gordy at work: dogged as they come, tempered in the foundry of New York theater and already met with career disappointments grave enough to turn most creative types out to pasture for good. Relentless not just in his pursuit of landing his creative projects and seeing them through with artistic integrity, but detailed to the extent that his characters’ individual humanity has become his calling card in the industry. Whatever the future of “Quarry,” Gordy is staying in Little Rock; no concessions. This goes back to his theater days: “When I was in New York and writing plays, I was always writing about Arkansas and Arkansans and the South,” he says. “That’s translated into the things that I’ve written for the screen as well — I write about the South.” After nine years in New York, Gordy remembers how he was called to return to Arkansas, to make his career work here. “I just got to a point where it was like, I know where I’m gonna die.”

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SEPTEMBER 8 2016

Arts Entertainment AND

here’s a momentary pause in conversation when the door to the patio opens. The patrons of Little Rock’s Club Sway have been clustered about, chatting and smoking, when each head turns to take note of who’s standing in the doorway. They’re silent before calling out. Everyone wants to say hello, get a hug, compare shoes. It’s somewhere after 10 p.m. on Friday night and Symone has arrived. She’s dressed in a caramel-colored pantsuit serving Whitney Houston-gone-Wall Street. It’s a special night, a night where she is the club’s focus, its temporary raison d’etre. Tonight is “Symone Says,” a monthly night of drag performances starring and emceed by Symone herself. In Little Rock’s small but thriving drag scene, Symone occupies a unique position, being a relatively young performer but also at the top of her (and everyone else’s) game. After winning Fresh Fish, a live competition for drag queens, she’s been hosting “Symone Says” on the last Friday of each month since the summer of 2015. Earlier in the week, I went to visit Symone at her dorm room on the University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s campus. As I sat in a small, mass-produced desk chair, across from me on the bed was Symone’s shadow: Reggie Gavin. He’s a UALR senior studying mass communications, and, two-inch red fingernails aside, he’s indistinguishable from any of the other students on campus. He’s dressed in all black: tight jeans, a tank top with the larger-than-life visage of Warhol muse Edie Sedgwick blazoned across his chest, a backward baseball cap. His dorm room is like all others, a confusion of things, schoolbooks, makeup, wig stands and clothes. Gavin was almost instantly attracted to the art form of drag when he first saw RuPaul guest star on a rerun episode of “Sabrina the Teenage Witch.” “A few years later, when I first saw “RuPaul’s Drag Race” [a competition for drag queens on TV], I thought, ‘Hmm, I could do this.’ ” At 16, when he got his first job, his paychecks went to nothing except makeup, and he would practice his technique after school before his parents got home from work. “I had a twohour window that I could practice in 22

SEPTEMBER 8, 2016

ARKANSAS TIMES

Symone ascend One of Little Rock’s best drag queens, and the man behind her. BY SETH ELI BARLOW

QUEEN OF QUEENS: Symone has had a regular show at Club Sway since winning the Fresh Fish competition.

the mirror, and then when I’d hear the garage door open, I’d know to hurry up and take it off.” Symone is “this culmination of Rihanna, the soul of Whitney Houston in the way she can captivate an audience and Naomi Campbell with the fierceness, the attitude,” Gavin says. She’s a stark contrast to Gavin, a self-described “quiet boy,” who seems grateful for Symone both as a creative outlet and as a protective wall between him and the outside world. As I talk to Gavin, it becomes clear how closely Symone exists beneath his surface. In the moments when Gavin hesitates to answer a question, it’s Symone’s body language that answers for him. On social media, though both Gavin and Symone have Facebook and Instagram profiles, Symone’s are updated most frequently. She is the one, by design, who receives the attention, the fame. Gavin says Symone’s confidence has bled into his own life. “Sometimes, I’ll even wear her clothes to class, and I’ve got these,” he says, holding up his red-nailed hands. “We’re more blended now than we used to be; she’s helped me overcome the shame I used to feel from doing drag.” The symbiotic duality of Gavin and Symone belies the fact

that Symone is still a detailed creation of Gavin’s, an outward manifestation of his desires, but also a protective layer of persona. In performing as Symone, Gavin finds an elusive, almost selfmanifested power. “It can be addicting,” Gavin acknowledges, “being the center of attention, everyone’s focus for those couple of minutes.” It’s a power that, without Symone to act as conduit, Gavin might not manifest. Back at Sway, Symone is in the upstairs green room with the other girls. They’re all preparing for the evening’s show, an eight-number set in which each queen performs twice. The queens are all changing from their preshow outfits. Symone quickly shucks her pantsuit, while another queen gets a friend’s help to unzip her fringed and bedazzled Mexican flag unitard. “Papa Don’t Preach” is on full blast. With her outfit changed, now in a black leather skirt and top, Symone waits behind the stage to be introduced. A giant ceiling-mounted video screen is playing a video of Britney Spears singing karaoke, but no one can hear it over the house music, which is fine; her countenance is enough to reign over the proceedings. This is the only part of the night that makes Symone nervous, the five seconds behind the

curtain before Gavin’s doubts give way to Symone’s control. “When it’s time for Symone to perform, she just comes out of me. There’s just no doubt that I can do it. That’s never been a question; once I get on the stage it’s just second nature.” Her lip-sync is to Jazmine Sullivan’s “Mascara,” but the performance recalls the best parts of Ciara’s criminally underloved “Body Party” music video. She saunters around the stage, on top of and under tables, giving the audience what they came for: a three-minute vacation into her existence, to imagine themselves in her shoes, dancing for the pleasure of another, being the focus of someone else’s desire. The power she holds over the audience is tangible and, for Symone, intoxicating. Flouncing and purring across the stage, she’s earning her tagline, “The Ebony Enchantress,” flinging herself against the stage’s mirrored backdrop, making eyes at the audience in front of her and also their reflection. The song ends and Symone shifts gears, no longer lustful and bawdy, but cheerful and cajoling as she flirts with the audience, welcoming them and ushering on the next queen to perform. The night proceeds without incident. A range of queens perform, their looks ranging from grunge to disco, each of them momentarily being taken over by their own inner drag self. Symone closes the show with another performance. She wears a canary yellow suit with animal print shoes. She dances to a mix of songs — Rihanna, Britney Spears and Fifth Harmony. The performance is athletic, reaching a crescendo

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ndant with the final hypnotic drum beat. The song ends, the spotlight leaves her and, sweat covered, she leaves the stage. In his dorm room, I had asked Gavin if he thinks he’s the best drag queen in Little Rock. Gavin had demurred, hands covering his face as his skin attempted to blush. “Well,” Gavin had finally allowed, “I’m on my way.” Symone’s smile let slip that her answer might be different. “I still have a lot to learn,” he had said, and surely it is Gavin speaking, “but do I think I’m one of the best? Absolutely. No question.” Gavin likes being the queen to set the bar. Gavin knows that, for Symone, Little Rock is just a stepping stone. Eventually, in order for Symone’s career to grow, she’ll have to move to another city, work herself up from the bottom all over again. “I’m not going to get complacent,” Gavin says. I have lot more that I want to do. A lot more to prove.” He says it like a challenge, as though Symone is daring Gavin to push harder, to take her, and him, further. Symone’s smile takes over his face again. “This,” he motions to the sparse dorm room around him, wigs and makeup scattered about, “it’s just the beginning.”

ARKANSAS REPERTORY THEATRE Founding and Interim Artistic Director Cliff Baker introduced incoming Artistic Director John Miller-Stephany at a meeting last week. Miller-Stephany comes to Little Rock from The Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, where he served as artistic administrator and associate artistic director from 1996 to 2015. He cited the leanness and dedication of The Rep’s staff and the breadth of its programming among the reasons the company impressed him, saying, “Theater is all about human connections, and the human connection I made on that first visit made me think that this could be a good artistic home for me.” Miller-Stephany also emphasized the importance of The Rep’s status as a “resident theater,” a term that he says he prefers over “regional theater” because it better communicates the artistic work’s placement within the community. He clarified the core of the company’s purpose, saying, “We shouldn’t be the ‘big house on the hill,’ and theater is a social service, but we are not a social services organization. We can’t be all things to all people, and we are first and foremost an arts organization.”

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AFTER NEARLY 10 years of renovation efforts led by nonprofit Hostelling Arkansas Inc., the 1917 Craftsman-style building in MacArthur Park known as “Fire Station 2” will officially reopen as the Firehouse Hostel and Museum with a free, public celebration at noon Sunday, Sept. 18. The building houses 36 twin-size bunk beds starting at $28/night. To arrange a group or school tour of the firefighting museum, call 501-476-0294 or email info@firehousehostel.org. WORDSWORTH BOOKS AND Co. announced that author David Sedaris (“Me Talk Pretty One Day,” “Naked,” “Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls”) will make an appearance next year at the newly renovated Robinson Center, which is slated to reopen in November. Sedaris will talk at 8 p.m. April 21, 2017. Tickets range from $25-$50 and will be available Sept. 9. POET JO MCDOUGALL and novelist/ playwright Phillip McMath kick off the first of a literary series to take place in an unlikely venue: B. Barnett, a women’s fashion boutique in the Pavilion in the Park shopping center. McDougall will read from her poetry collection “The Undiscovered Room” and McMath will read from “Lincoln’s Dream,” a two-act tragedy that will also be read Oct. 8 at The Weekend Theater.

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arktimes.com

SEPTEMBER 8, 2016

THE TO-DO

LIST

BY STEPHANIE SMITTLE

THURSDAY 9/8

‘LOVE THY NEIGHBOR:’ INTERFAITH PEACE EVENT

6 p.m. St. Mark’s Episcopal Church. Free.

On the 10th anniversary of the events of 9/11, the Arkansas House of Prayer and its sister organization, St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church’s Interfaith Center, established a gathering

open to all religions — and to those who don’t practice a religion at all — as a collective ode to community and world peace. Whether it was a particularly well-timed response to a rapidly increasing sense of political division or just the promise of a supercharged performance from Beebe’s Cody Belew of “The Voice” fame in 2013, the now annual peace event began to need

larger venues, and this year is at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church on Mississippi Avenue. The event includes performances from the executive director of the House of Prayer and an evereloquent asset to the local music scene, John Willis; soprano saxophone virtuoso Marquis Hunt; soulful singer and future events manager for Mylo Coffee Jessica Lauren; the Interfaith

Kids Choir; Indian percussionist and UALR musicologist Dr. Rolf Groesbeck; and singer/songwriter Maddie Robinson. The service adheres to a tight timeframe of about an hour and is followed by what they call the Interfaith Food Festival, a buffet-style feast of vegetarian dishes accompanied by live music from Temple B’nai Israel’s Schechinotes.

THURSDAY 9/8

JOHN FULLBRIGHT

8 p.m. South on Main. $22$34.

If John Fullbright has something in common with his fellow Okemah, Okla., native Woody Guthrie, it’s the economy of his lyrics: “I could use another 20 years to fix the last 15,” or “Everyday we go running on a razorblade/Sewing up the edges frayed waiting to arrive/ While joy is Little Lord Fauntleroy/Sitting in his LaZ-Boy keeping hope alive.” Unlike, say, “Ludlow Massacre” or “Dust Bowl Refugee,” though, Fullbright’s song titles are as Plain Jane as his deadpan stage presence. If you skimmed a track list, it’d be easy to place Fullbright in the crowded file of aspiring Americana artists who haven’t yet found what exactly it is they have to say. Like those wouldbe troubadours, Fullbright certainly borrows from his predecessors, but even in songs that so clearly remind the listener of older iconic songwriters the way, say, “High Road” sounds like a cut straight out of Warren Zevon’s best years, they somehow avoid feeling derivative. They stand out because they feel lived in; they feel like they’ve been around much longer than the 28 years Fullbright’s been alive. 24

SEPTEMBER 8, 2016

ARKANSAS TIMES

UNCLE WALT WAILS: Little Rock’s trumpet guru Walter Henderson has played horn for Frankie Avalon, Leslie Gore and locals Amasa Hines and Funkanites, and he brings his jazz combo to Ron Robinson Theater Friday, Sept. 9 as part of the Butler Center’s Arkansas Sounds project, 7 p.m., $10.

FRIDAY 9/9

WALTER HENDERSON GROUP 7 p.m. Ron Robinson Theater. $10.

While Walter Henderson isn’t exactly a household name, you’ve heard him play if you’ve witnessed an Amasa Hines show when the band brings in auxiliary horns to boost the “aural baptism” vibe, and Henderson’s jazz combo boasts some

major credentials. A trumpetist, flugelhornist, vocalist and piccolist, Henderson recorded his first solo album “Schema” in 1997; appears with Velvet Kente and Funkanites; has played with Leslie Gore, Buddy Guy and Frankie Avalon; and inspired a mostly instrumental tribute from the late Art Porter Jr. titled “Uncle

Walt.” For this concert, he’s backed up by the consistently innovative drummer Jamaal Lee (also of Velvet Kente and Funkanites), as well as Matt Dickson on saxophone, the Arkansas-born and Memphis-educated Chris Parker on piano and David Higginbotham (Bob Boyd Sounds, David Rosen Big Band) on bass.

IN BRIEF

THURSDAY 9/8

FRIDAY 9/9

DIXIE CHICKS

7:30 p.m. Verizon Arena. $54-$119.

The Dixie Chicks — sans lead singer Natalie Maines, at the time — made their first CD, “Thanks Heavens for Dale Evans,” for $5,000. A few years later, in 1998, they’d sell more album copies than all other country music groups combined that year, having morphed into a powerhouse trio that blended bluegrass fiddle with pop harmonies and boasted the sorts of standout lyrics that landed songs like “Goodbye Earl”

and “Sin Wagon” in karaoke catalogs at dorm room parties and VFWs across the nation: “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition/Need a little bit more of my 12-ounce nutrition.” And, wherever your political allegiances might lie, you’ve got to hand it to Maines for speaking her mind at a London concert in 2003, saying, “We don’t want this war, this violence, and we’re ashamed that the President of the United States [George W. Bush] is from Texas,” even when it meant she’d outrage a good

chunk of her fan base. The result was what Merle Haggard called “a verbal witch-hunt and lynching”; the group answered fan criticism a few years later with their song “Not Ready to Make Nice.” Elle King, the whiskey-and-RedBull-swilling daughter of comedian Rob Schneider who crashed the pop scene last year with a set of pipes that rivals Adele’s, some seriously fabulous eyeshadow and a trailer-trash glam video for her breakout hit “Ex’s and Oh’s,” opens the show.

SATURDAY 9/10

LEGENDS OF ARKANSAS

Noon. Argenta Plaza. Free-$40.

The imprint of the makers boom in Arkansas is indelible. It’s evident in the lines for The Southern Gourmasian food truck at the Hillcrest Farmers Market, in the fact that a necklace with a gold honeybee perched on a gem is instantly recognizable as one of Amy Bell’s Dimestore Diamonds, in the skyrocketing volume of Lost Forty Brewing’s Daydrinker, Stone’s Throw Brewing’s Shamus Stout and Diamond Bear’s Two Term Imperial IPA behind the taps of every bar on town. If you’re looking for a primer on your local scene, this is it. Legends of Arkansas moved a couple of years ago from the River Market to Argenta, and this year’s all-local lineup is dizzying: group yoga sessions from Barefoot Studios, a hip-hop workshop with Big Piph (Epiphany Morrow), a hula hoop playshop with Arkansas Circus Arts, and performances from Amasa Hines, Bad Match, Gil Franklin, Dangerous Idiots, Charlotte Taylor and Gypsy Rain, Mark Currey, Sad Daddy and Jamie Lou and the Hullabaloo, to name a few. The event’s family-friendly, but if you’re more inclined to frequent the past-bedtime scene, there are after-parties at Four Quarter Bar with Weakness for Blondes, at Discovery Nightclub with Big Brown and at Midtown Billiards with Black River Pearl.

GLUEY PORCH TREATMENTS: Seminal punk/sludge metal band the Melvins have hit the road with their characteristically revolving lineup in support of “Basses Loaded,” the band’s 24th studio album.

TUESDAY 9/13

MELVINS

8 p.m. Metroplex Live. $20.

Bands like Black Sabbath and Black Flag are undeniable harbingers of the sort of slow, heavy, plodding guitar riffs that the world would later call “sludge metal,” but if there were ever a band that steered that sound from the “War Pigs” era to its contemporary iterations — Mastodon, EyeHateGod and even Alice in Chains — it’s the Melvins. Named after the object of lead singer/guitarist Buzz Osborne’s hatred, a supervisor at a Thriftway in Montesano, Wash., the band made waves as a punk-informed trio as early as 1987 with “Gluey Porch Treatments.” It released its 24th studio album in June this year. Other fun facts about the Melvins include (but are not limited to) the following: Shirley Temple’s daughter Lori “Lorax” Black played bass for the band in the 1990s, Buzz Osborne is credited with having introduced Kurt Cobain to the people with whom the late icon would form Nirvana, and the Melvins’ 2011 tour landed them in the middle of a disastrous earthquake in New Zealand, then — only two weeks later — in the most powerful earthquake to hit Japan. This show at the Clear Channel Metroplex opens up with a set from fellow Washingtonians Helms Alee, a math rock trio with killer threepart harmony and dreamy mid-song breakdowns.

The Studio Theater begins a fournight run of “The Mercy Seat,” Neil LaBute’s theatrical response to the events of 9/11, 7:30 p.m. Thu.-Sat., 2:30 p.m. Sun., $15-$20. The Old State House Museum hosts Arkie Pub Trivia at Stone’s Throw Brewing, 6:30 p.m., free. Will Marfori, a comedian with cerebral palsy who also serves as an awareness advocate for the disorder, takes the stage at the Loony Bin, 7:30 p.m. Wed.-Sat. ($8), 10 p.m. Fri.-Sat. ($12). Dogtown Film Series screens “Citizen Kane” at Argenta Community Theater, 7 p.m., $5.

FRIDAY 9/9 The Main Thing’s “Electile Dysfunction” riffs on a politically divided family that lands suddenly in the news, The Joint, 8 p.m., $22. The UALR Trojans women’s soccer team plays a match against Mississippi Valley State at the Coleman Sports and Recreation Complex, 7 p.m. “Brass ’n’ grass” trio Carrie Nation and the Speakeasy shares a bill with Russellville’s Poor Ol’ Uncle Fatty at Maxine’s in Hot Springs, 8 p.m., $7. The White Water Tavern hosts Louisiana Soul Revival with pianist Doug Duffey at the helm, 9 p.m., $10. Hendrix College hosts a reading of the 2016 Hendrix-Murphy Student Playwriting Contest’s winner, Eric Walker’s “A Stupid Game of Dungeons and Dragons,” in the Cabe Theater, 7 p.m., free. Self-described “redneck soul” trio The Arkansas Brothers plays at South on Main, 9 p.m., $10. Tim Anthony (of Afrodesia) performs what he calls “groove traveling” at Reno’s Argenta Cafe, 9 p.m.

SATURDAY 9/10 Discovery and Triniti nightclubs host the finals of the annual Miss Gay Arkansas Pageant, $20-$30, 8 p.m. White Water hosts a heavy rock show with Attagirl, I Was Afraid and Colour Design, 9:30 p.m. Vaudeville rockers Randall Shreve and the Devilles bring the circus to Stickyz, 9 p.m., $8. Pulaski Tech South Campus hosts the seminar “Southern Fried Schnitzel: German Food and Culture in Arkansas,” 10 a.m., free. Downtown Eureka Springs is home to a weekend of jazz, featuring a special performance from the Brubeck Brothers at The Auditorium, followed by a jazz jam at coffeehouse/taproom BREWS, 8 p.m., $30. Country crooner Matt Stell plays King’s Live Music in Conway with Christopher Fulmer, 8 p.m., $5. The Big Dam Horns bring the brass to Cajun’s Wharf, 9 p.m., $5. Nashville indie pop outfit Vinyl Thief plays a free show at Bear’s Den Pizza in Conway, 10 p.m.

arktimes.com

SEPTEMBER 8, 2016

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.

THURSDAY, SEPT. 8

MUSIC

Chris DeClerk. Cajun’s Wharf, 5:30 p.m., free. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. cajunswharf. com. Dead Soldiers. Maxine’s, 8 p.m., $5. 700 Central Ave., Hot Springs. maxineslive.com. Drageoke. Hosted by Queen Anthony James Gerard: a drag show followed by karaoke. Sway, 8 p.m. 412 Louisiana. clubsway.com. Jaded. Cajun’s Wharf, 9 p.m., $5. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. cajunswharf.com. Jim Dickerson. Sonny Williams’ Steak Room, 7 p.m. 500 President Clinton Ave. 501-324-2999. www.sonnywilliamssteakroom.com. John Fullbright. South on Main, 8 p.m., $20-$34. 1304 Main St. 501-244-9660. southonmain.com. Karaoke. Zack’s Place, 8 p.m., free. 1400 S. University Ave. 501-664-6444. Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-3724782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com. Montu. Stickyz Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicken Shack, 9:30 p.m., $5. 107 River Market Ave. 501-372-7707. stickyz.com. Motet. With AttA. George’s Majestic Lounge, 9 p.m., $15. 519 W. Dickson St., Fayetteville. 479442-4226. georgesmajesticlounge.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. Casa Mexicana, 7 p.m. 7111 JFK Blvd., NLR. 501-835-7876. Rodney Block’s Block party: Broderick Daniels. The Joint, 7:30 p.m., $10-$15. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501-372-0205. thejointargenta.com. Steve Azar. Arkansas State University at Mountain Home, 6 p.m., free. 1600 S. College Ave., Mountain Home. thesheid.com. Ted Ludwig Trio. Capital Bar and Grill, 8 p.m., free. 111 W. Markham St. 501-370-7013. www. capitalbarandgrill.com.

COMEDY

Will Marfori. The Loony Bin, 7:30 p.m., $8. 10301 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-228-5555. loonybincomedy.com.

EVENTS

11th Annual Hot Springs Open Motorcycle Rally. A bike show and games, parade and live music from Mustang Sally and Joe Nichols. 100 Central Ave., Hot Springs. www.thehotspringsrally.com. ArkiePub Trivia. Stone’s Throw, 6:30 p.m., free. 402 E. 9th St. 501-244-9154. stonesthrowbeer. com. Love Thy Neighbor Interfaith Peace Event: “Moving From Darkness Into Light.” Hosted by Arkansas House of Prayer and Interfaith Center, featuring musical performances, speakers from several of the world’s religions, and an Interfaith Food Festival. St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 6 p.m., free. 1000 N. Mississippi Ave. 26

SEPTEMBER 8, 2016

ARKANSAS TIMES

WHAT’S REAL: Elise Davis celebrates the release of her album “Token” (admission includes a copy) with a show at the Rev Room Saturday, Sept. 10, with the Wildflowers Revue, 9 p.m., $15-$17.

FRIDAY, SEPT. 9

FILM

“Citizen Kane.” Argenta Community Theater, 7 p.m., $5. 405 Main St., NLR. 501-353-1443. argentacommunitytheater.com.

LECTURES

“Dollars and Sense of Historic Preservation.” A talk from Donovan Rypkema. Fort Smith Museum of History, 9 a.m., $35-$75. 320 Rogers Ave., Fort Smith. 479-783-7941. preservearkansas.org.

SPORTS

Chris Tarkington. Followed by S.I.N. Karaoke. Kings Live Music, 8 p.m., free. 1020 Front St., No. 102, Conway. kingslivemusic.com.

KIDS

Garden Club. A project of the Faulkner County Urban Farm Project. Ages 7 and up or with supervision. Faulkner County Library, 3:30 p.m., free. 1900 Tyler St., Conway. 501-327-7482. www. fcl.org.

MUSIC

All In Fridays. Envy. 7200 Colonel Glenn Road. 501-562-3317. The Arkansas Brothers. South on Main, 9 p.m., $10. 1304 Main St. 501-244-9660. southonmain. com. Carrie Nation and the Speakeasy. With Poor Uncle Fatty. Maxine’s, 8 p.m., $7. 700 Central Ave., Hot Springs. maxineslive.com. David & Sarah. Cajun’s Wharf, 5:30 p.m., free. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. cajunswharf. com. Dixie Chicks. With Elle King. Verizon Arena, 7:30 p.m., $54-$119. 1 Alltel Arena Way, NLR. 501975-9001. verizonarena.com. Four West. With Logan Lind. Kings Live Music, 8:30 p.m., $5. 1020 Front St., No. 102, Conway. kingslivemusic.com. Hibernia Jam. Hibernia Irish Tavern, 8 p.m. 9700 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-246-4340. hiberniairishtavern.com. The Hooten Hallers, Dead Soldiers. Smoke

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and Barrel Tavern, 10 p.m., $5. 324 W. Dickson St., Fayetteville. 479-521-6880. whitewatertavern.com. JB and the Moonshine Band. With Woodshed Country. George’s Majestic Lounge, 9:30 p.m., $10. 519 W. Dickson St., Fayetteville. 479-4424226. georgesmajesticlounge.com. John Calvin Brewer Band. Markham Street Grill and Pub, 8:30 p.m., free. 11321 W. Markham St. 501-224-2010. markhamstreetpub.com. Jonathan and Kara Story. Part of the “Faulkner Performing Arts Center Presents” series. University of Arkansas, 8 p.m., $10-$15. University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. uark.edu. Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-3724782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com. Louisiana Soul Revival. Featuring Doug Duffey. White Water Tavern, 9 p.m., $10. 2500 W. 7th St. 501-375-8400. whitewatertavern.com. Noisem, Rawhead. Vino’s, 9 p.m., $8. 923 W. 7th St. 501-375-8466. vinosbrewpub.com. Ryan Visor. Four Quarter Bar, 10 p.m., $7. 415 Main Street, NLR. 501-313-4704. fourquarterbar.com. Salsa dancing. Clear Channel Metroplex, 9 p.m., $5-$10. 10800 Col. Glenn Road. 501-217-5113. www.littlerocksalsa.com. Shannon Boshears. Cajun’s Wharf, 9 p.m., $5. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. cajunswharf. com. Ted Ludwig Trio. Capital Bar and Grill, 8 p.m., free. 111 W. Markham St. 501-370-7013. www. capitalbarandgrill.com/. Tim Anthony. Reno’s Argenta Cafe, 9 p.m. 312 Main St., NLR. 501-376-2900. www.renosargentacafe.com. Tragikly White. Stickyz Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicken Shack, 9:30 p.m., $10. 107 River Market Ave. 501-372-7707. stickyz.com. Upscale Friday. IV Corners, 7 p.m. 824 W. Capitol Ave. Walter Henderson Group. Ron Robinson Theater, 7 p.m., $10. 1 Pulaski Way. 501-3205703. arkansassounds.org.

COMEDY

“Electile Dysfunction.” The Joint, through Nov. 19: 8 p.m., $22. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501372-0205. thejointargenta.com. Will Marfori. The Loony Bin, 7:30 p.m. and 10 p.m., $12. 10301 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501228-5555. 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.

EVENTS

11th Annual Hot Springs Open Motorcycle Rally. See Sept. 8. Gridiron Gala. Lyon College, 6 p.m., $100. 2500 Highland, Batesville. 870-372-7211. 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 501-244-9690 or search “DYSC” on Facebook. First Presbyterian Church, 6:30 p.m. 800 Scott St. Motor Maids on the Mountain. A motorcy-

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ARKANSAS TIMES

11th Annual Hot Springs Open Motorcycle Rally. See Sep. 8. Antique Motorcycle Exhibition. Hill Wheatley Plaza, 9 a.m. Central Avenue downtown, Hot Springs. Bike MS: Rock n’ Hot Ride. Two-day fundraising event supporting national Multiple Sclerosis Society. Garver LLC, $35-$50. 4701 Northshore Drive, NLR. 855-372-1331. Falun Gong meditation. Allsopp Park, 9 a.m., free. Cantrell and Cedar Hill Roads. Hillcrest Farmers Market. Pulaski Heights Baptist Church, 8 a.m.-noon. 2200 Kavanaugh Blvd. Historic Neighborhoods Tour. Bike tour of historic neighborhoods includes bike, guide, helmets and maps. Bobby’s Bike Hike, 9 a.m., $8-$28. 400 President Clinton Ave. 501-613-7001. Little Rock Farmers’ Market. River Market pavilions, 7 a.m. 400 President Clinton Ave. 375-2552. www.rivermarket.info. Motor Maids on the Mountain. A motorcyclist gathering and campout, featuring field games on Saturday. Petit Jean State Park, through Sept. 11. 1285 Petit Jean Mountain Road, Morrilton. petitjeanstatepark.com. 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.

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FILM

“The Wedding Party.” Feature-length romantic comedy filmed in one continuous 119-minute take. University of Arkansas Global Campus, 7:30 p.m., $5-$7. 2 E. Center St., Fayetteville. 800-952-1165. globalcampus.uark.edu.

SEPTEMBER 9 - Ryan Visor • 10 - Weakness for Blondes 16 - Salty Dogs • 17 - The Squirrel Nut Zippers 18 - Free Sunday show w/ Doug Dicharry from Dirtfoot 23 - Tyler Kinchin and The Right Pieces 24 - The Great Whiskey Rendezvous

LECTURES

Southern Fried Schnitzel: German Food and Culture in Arkansas. Pulaski Technical College South Campus, 10 a.m., free. Exit 128, I-30. 501682-6900.

Open until 2am every night!

BOOKS

“Shadow Souls.” Book-signing by author Chris Nooner. Faulkner County Library, 1 p.m., free. 1900 Tyler St., Conway. 501-327-7482. fcl.org. Stories in September. Reading and book-signing by poet/memoirist Jo McDougall (“The Undiscovered Room”) and novelist/playwright Phillip H. McMath (“Lincoln’s Dream”). Pavilion in the Park, 3 p.m., free. 8201 Cantrell Road.

KIDS

Little Rock Paper Airplane Championship. To benefit the Lymphomaniac Society. Sturgis Hall, 10 a.m., free. 1200 President Clinton Ave. 501683-5200. clintonschool.uasys.edu.

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American Aquarium. George’s Majestic Lounge, 9 p.m., $15. 519 W. Dickson St., Fayetteville. 479442-4226. georgesmajesticlounge.com. Attagirl, I Was Afraid, Colour Design. White Water Tavern, 9:30 p.m. 2500 W. 7th St. 501375-8400. whitewatertavern.com. Big Dam Horns. Cajun’s Wharf, 9 p.m., $5. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. cajunswharf.com. Brubeck Brothers Quartet. Followed by a jazz jam at Brews. The Auditorium, 8 p.m., $30. 36 Main St., Eureka Springs. theaud.org. Delta Symphony Orchestra Gala. The Fowler Center, 6 p.m., $100. 201 Olympic Drive, Jonesboro. 870-972-3471. deltasymphonyorchestra.org. Elise Davis, Wildflowers Revue. Revolution, 9 p.m., $10-$17. 300 President Clinton Ave. 501823-0090. revroom.com. Greg Madden. Cajun’s Wharf, 5:30 p.m., free. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. cajunswharf. com. Inertia, Frank Lewis, Osyrus Bolly. Vino’s. 923 W. 7th St. 501-375-8466. vinosbrewpub.com. Karaoke at Khalil’s. Khalil’s Pub, 7 p.m. 110 S. Shackleford Road. 501-224-0224. www.khalilspub.com. Karaoke. Zack’s Place, 8 p.m., free. 1400 S. University Ave. 501-664-6444. Casa Mexicana, 7 p.m. 7111 JFK Blvd., NLR. 501-835-7876. Karaoke with Kevin & Cara. All ages, on the restaurant side. Revolution, 9 p.m.-12:45 a.m., free. 300 President Clinton Ave. 501-823-0090. www.rumbarevolution.com/new. Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-3724782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com. Matt Stell. With Christopher Fulmer. Kings Live Music, 8 p.m., $5. 1020 Front St., No. 102, Conway. kingslivemusic.com. Matthew McNeal. Smoke and Barrel Tavern, 10 p.m., free. 324 W. Dickson St., Fayetteville. 479-521-6880. smokeandbarrel.com. Pickin’ Porch. Bring your instrument. All ages welcome. Faulkner County Library, 9:30 a.m. 1900 Tyler St., Conway. 501-327-7482. www.fcl.org. Randall Shreve and The Devilles. Stickyz Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicken Shack, 9 p.m., $8. 107 River Market Ave. 501-372-7707. stickyz.com. Ted Ludwig Trio. Capital Bar and Grill, 8 p.m., free. 111 W. Markham St. 501-370-7013. www. capitalbarandgrill.com/. Vinyl Thief. Bear’s Den Pizza, 10 p.m., free. 235 Farris Road, Conway. 501-328-5556. bearsdenpizza.net. W. C. Jameson and Buddy Case. Faulkner County Library, 2 p.m. 1900 Tyler St., Conway. 501-327-7482. fcl.org. “Walks Through History.” Downtown Eureka Springs, 11 a.m., free. arkansaspreservation.com. Weakness for Blondes. An afterparty for Legends of Arkansas. Four Quarter Bar, 10 p.m., $7. 415 Main Street, NLR. 501-313-4704.

COMEDY

SULLY PG13 | 2:15 4:30 7:15 9:25

✁

SPORTS

UALR Trojans vs. Mississippi Valley State. Women’s soccer. UALR, 7 p.m. 2801 S. University Ave. 501-569-8977. lrtrojans.com.

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clist gathering and campout, featuring field games on Saturday. Petit Jean State Park, Sept. 9-11. 1285 Petit Jean Mountain Road, Morrilton. petitjeanstatepark.com.

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✁

santo-coyote.com arktimes.com

SEPTEMBER 8, 2016

AFTER DARK, CONT.

SUNDAY, SEPT. 11

MUSIC

Carrie Nation and the Speakeasy. Smoke and Barrel Tavern, 10 p.m., free. 324 W. Dickson St., Fayetteville. 479-521-6880. smokeandbarrel.com. Irish Traditional Music Session. Hibernia Irish Tavern, 2:30 p.m. 9700 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-246-4340. www.hiberniairishtavern.com. Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-3724782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com. With Our Arms to the Sun. With Socionic. Stickyz Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicken Shack, 8 p.m., $5. 107 River Market Ave. 501-372-7707. stickyz.com.

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EVENTS

Bernice Garden Farmer’s Market. Bernice Garden, 10 a.m. 1401 S. Main St. www.thebernicegarden.org. Motor Maids on the Mountain. A motorcyclist gathering and campout, featuring field games on Saturday. Petit Jean State Park. 1285 Petit Jean Mountain Road, Morrilton. petitjeanstatepark.com.

SPORTS

UALR Trojans vs. Kansas State. Women’s soccer. UALR, 1 p.m. 2801 S. University Ave. 501-5698977. lrtrojans.com.

KIDS

Andrew & Polly. Pulaski Academy Performing Arts Center, 1:30 p.m., free-$10. 12701 Hinson Road. 501-225-1683.

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LO C A L T I CK E T S , O n e Pl a ce

SEPTEMBER 8, 2016

ARKANSAS TIMES

MUSIC

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

LECTURES

Jeremy Richman. Talk from the founder of the Avielle Foundation. Sturgis Hall, 6 p.m., free. 1200 President Clinton Ave. 501-683-5200. clintonschool.uasys.edu.

CLASSES MONDAY, SEPT. 12

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, SEPT. 13

MUSIC

Brian and Nick. Cajun’s Wharf, 5:30 p.m. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. www.cajunswharf. com. Jeff Ling. Khalil’s Pub, 6 p.m. 110 S. Shackleford Road. 501-224-0224. www.khalilspub.com. Jim Dickerson. Sonny Williams’ Steak Room, 7 p.m. 500 President Clinton Ave. 501-324-2999. 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. Melvins. Clear Channel Metroplex, 8 p.m., $20. 10800 Col. Glenn Road. 501-217-5113. metroplexlive.com. New Motto, The Rios, Open Fields. White Water Tavern, 9 p.m., donations. 2500 W. 7th St. 501-375-8400. whitewatertavern.com. People’s Blues of Richmond. Stickyz Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicken Shack, 8:30 p.m., $8-$10. 107 River Market Ave. 501-372-7707. stickyz.com.

COMEDY

“Punch Line” Stand-Up Comedy. Hosted by Brett Ihler. The Joint, 8 p.m., $5. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501-372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com.

EVENTS

Little Rock Farmers’ Market. River Market pavilions, 7 a.m. 400 President Clinton Ave. 375-2552. www.rivermarket.info. Little Rock Green Drinks. Informal networking session for people who work in the environmental field. Ciao Baci, 5:30-7 p.m. 605 N. Beechwood St. 501-603-0238. www.greendrinks. org. Trivia Bowl. Flying Saucer, 8:30 p.m. 323 President Clinton Ave. 501-372-8032. www.beerknurd. com/stores/littlerock.

LECTURES

Sanjay Gupta. A talk from CNN’s chief medical correspondent, part of the Arkansas Children’s Foundation 2016 Anne Hickman Lectureship. Statehouse Convention Center, 11:30 a.m., $25. 7 Statehouse Plaza. www.archildrens.org.

POETRY

Words & Wine. Adult, guided creative writing class with poet Kai Coggin. Emergent Arts, through Sept. 27: 7 p.m., $12. 341-A Whittington Avenue, Hot Springs.

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 14

MUSIC

Ben Byers. Cajun’s Wharf, 5:30 p.m., free. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. cajunswharf.com. Forlorn Strangers. With Nature & Madness and Lost John. George’s Majestic Lounge, 8 p.m., $8. 519 W. Dickson St., Fayetteville. 479-442-4226. georgesmajesticlounge.com. Islander. With Palaye Royale, Bad Seed Rising. Revolution, 8 p.m., $10-$12. 300 President Clinton Ave. 501-823-0090. revroom.com. Jim Dickerson. Sonny Williams’ Steak Room, 7 p.m. 500 President Clinton Ave. 501-324-2999. www.sonnywilliamssteakroom.com. Julia Buckingham. Riverfront Park, 6 p.m., free. 400 President Clinton Avenue. Karaoke at Khalil’s. Khalil’s Pub, 7 p.m. 110 S. Shackleford Road. 501-224-0224. www.khalilspub.com. Karaoke. MUSE Ultra Lounge, 8:30 p.m., free. 2611 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-663-6398. Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-3724782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com. Open Mic Nite with Deuce. Thirst n’ Howl, 7:30 p.m., free. 14710 Cantrell Road. 501-379-8189. www.thirst-n-howl.com. RockUsaurus. Senor Tequila, 7 p.m. 10300 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-224-5505. Stellar Wayz. South on Main, 8:30 p.m., $5. 1304 Main St. 501-244-9660. southonmain.com.

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AFTER DARK, CONT.

COMEDY

The Joint Venture. Improv comedy group. The Joint, 8 p.m., $8. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com. Kris Pierce. Vino’s. 923 W. 7th St. 501-375-8466. vinosbrewpub.com.

DANCE

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

LECTURES

The Chief Speaks: Little Rock Police Chief Kenton Buckner. As part of the Political Animals Club. Pleasant Valley Country Club, 11:30 a.m., $20-$21. 1 Pleasant Valley Drive. 501-225-5622. www.pleasantvalleycountryclub.net. Dana Suskind. A talk from the director and principal investigator of “Thirty Million Words.” Sturgis Hall, noon, free. 1200 President Clinton Ave. 501683-5200. clintonschool.uasys.edu.

POETRY

Wednesday Night Poetry. 21-and-older show. Kollective Coffee & Tea, 7 p.m., free. 110 Central Ave., Hot Springs. 501-321-0909. maxineslive. com/shows.html.

NEW IN THE GALLERIES

ARKANSAS ARTS CENTER, MacArthur Park: “Jon Schueler: Weathering Skies,” abstract paintings and watercolors, through Oct. 16, Art After Hours screening of “Jon Schueler: An Artist and His Vision,” reception 5:30 p.m. followed by film at 6 p.m. Sept. 8, Arts Center open until 9 p.m.; “Cut, Pieced and Stitched: Denim Drawings by Jim Arendt,” through Oct. 23; Renoir’s “Madame Henriot,” loan from the Columbus Museum of Art, through Sept. 11; William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s “Admiration,” loan from the San Antonio Museum of Art. 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, 4th floor: “Surface and Light,” works by Adam Benet Shaw, reception 5-8 p.m. Sept. 9, 2nd Friday Art Night. 374-9247. BOSWELL MOUROT FINE ART, 5815 Kavanaugh Blvd.: New works on paper by Anais Dasse, opening reception 6-9 p.m. Sept. 10. 664-0030. BUTLER CENTER GALLERIES, Arkansas Studies Institute, 401 President Clinton Ave.: ACANSA Arts Festival Pop-Up Gallery, Concordia Hall, Sept. 9-30, reception 5-8 p.m. Sept. 9, 2nd Friday Art Night, with music by Guido and Steve; “Arkansas League of Artists,” juried show, through Oct. 22; “From the Vault,” work from the Central Arkansas Library’s permanent collection, including works by Win Bruhl, Evan Lindquist, Shep Miers, Gene Hatfield, Ray Khoo and Jerry Phillips, through Oct. 22. 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.Sat. 320-5790. CANTRELL GALLERY, 8206 Cantrell Road: “Always Coming Home,” new paintings by John Wooldridge, opens with reception 6-8 p.m. Sept. 9, show through Oct. 29. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 224-1335. COX CENTER, 120 River Market: Paperbacks (50 cents) and hardback books ($1) for sale, 5-8 p.m. Sept. 9, 2nd Friday Art Night. 9183093. HISTORIC ARKANSAS MUSEUM GALLERIES, 200 E. 3rd St. “Heinbockel, Nolley and Peterson: Personal Rituals,” watercolors by Amanda Heinbockel, fiber art by Marianne Nolley and mixed media by Brianna

Peterson, opens with reception 5-8 p.m. Sept. 9, 2nd Friday Art Night, with book-signing by William B. Jones, author of “Petit Jean: A Wilderness Adventure,” beer by Rebel Kettle Brewing Co., and live music by Amy Garland and Nick Devlin; “Walter Arnold and David Malcolm Rose: Modern Ruins,” constructions from Rose’s “The Lost Highway,” photographs by Arnold; “Tiny Treasures: Miniatures from the Permanent Collection,” through Nov. 6; “Hugo and Gayne Preller’s House of Light,” historic photographs, through October. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 324-9351. HEARNE FINE ART, 1001 Wright Ave.: “Two Fronts,” multimedia drawings by Alfred Conteh, opens Sept. 9; “AfriCOBRA NOW: Works on Paper” featuring Akili Ron Anderson, Kevin Cole, Adger Cowans, Michael D. Harris, Napoleon Jones-Henderson, Moyo Okediji, James Phillips, Frank Smith and Nelson Stevens, artists reception and book-signing 5:30-8 p.m. Sept. 9, tours and discussion 10:30 a.m. Sept. 10. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Sat. 372-6822. L&L BECK ART GALLERY, 5705 Kavanaugh Blvd.: “14 Holes of Golf,” through September. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tue.-Sat. 660-4006. LAMAN LIBRARY, 2801 Orange St., NLR: “Nature and Nurture,” mixed media artwork and sculpture by Carol Corning and Ed Pennebaker, Sept. 12-Nov. 4, reception 6-8 p.m. Sept. 23. 9 a.m.-8 p.m. Mon.-Thu., 9 a.m.5 p.m. Fri.-Sat. 758-1720. M2 GALLERY, 11525 Cantrell Road: Retrospective of etchings by state Artist Laureate Evan Lindquist, paintings by Steve Adair. Noon-5 p.m. Mon., 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.Sat. 225-6257. MATT MCLEOD FINE ART GALLERY, 108 W. 6th St.: “Launch Party,” posters designed by McLeod for the upcoming Third Annual Six Bridges Regatta and closing reception for “The Human Experience,” work by Angela Davis Johnson, Dominique Simmons, Harry Loucks, Jeremy Couch, Jude Harzer, Wayne Salge, Kathy Strause, Bryan Massey, Cindy Holmes, Jeff Waddle, Ryan Schmidt, Sage Holland, Tom Holland and McLeod, 5-8 p.m. Sept. 9, 2nd Friday Art Night. 725-8508. RED DOOR GALLERY, 3715 JFK, NLR: “Spiritual Journey,” new work by Paula Jones, reception 5-8 p.m. Sept. 9, 10 percent of sales benefit Pulaski Technical College and will be matched by the Windgate Foundation. 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Sat. 753-5227.

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NEW IN THE MUSEUMS

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BENTONVILLE CRYSTAL BRIDGES MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART, One Museum Way: “The Northwest Arkansas Craft Boom,” with Eleanor Lux, Emily Chase and Olivia Trimble, 7 p.m. Sept. 8; “Performance Lab: Cynthia Hunt,” participatory art-making with audience, 7-9 p.m.; “American Made: Treasures from the American Folk Art Museum,” 115 objects including quilts, carvings, signs, samplers, weathervanes and more, through Sept. 19; American masterworks spanning four centuries in the permanent collection. 11 a.m.6 p.m. Mon., Thu.; 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Wed., Fri.; 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Sat.-Sun., closed Tue. 479-4185700. CONWAY UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL ARKANSAS: “Curious Devotion,” paintings by Danielle Riede, ceramics by Dawn Holder, installation by Langdon Graves, opens with reception 4-6 p.m. Sept. 8, show through Oct. 20, Baum Gallery, lecture by Riede 1:40 p.m. Sept. 8, McCastlain Art Lecture Hall. HOT SPRINGS ALISON PARSONS GALLERY, 802 Central Ave.: “Wonders in LaLa Land,” whimsical art by Lori Arnold, through September; also paintings by Polly Cook and Patrick arktimes.com

SEPTEMBER 8 2016

MOVIE REVIEW

AFTER DARK, CONT. Barbara Higgins Bond, Danny Campbell, LaToya Hobbs, Delita Martin, Aj Smith and Rex Deloney, 5:30 p.m. Sept. 15, with music by Kemistri featuring Nikki Parrish, show through December; permanent exhibits on African-American entrepreneurship in Arkansas. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat. 683-3610. OLD STATE HOUSE MUSEUM, 300 W. Markham St.: Episcopal Collegiate School Steelcats Percussion Ensemble, 5-8 p.m. Sept. 9, 2nd Friday Art Night, with food from the Capital Hotel; “We Make Our Own Choices: Staff Favorites from the Old State House Museum Collection,” “First Families: Mingling of Politics and Culture” permanent exhibit including first ladies’ gowns. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 324-9685.

CALL FOR ENTRIES

BODY SHOP VIGILANTES: Satyam (Mohanlal Viswanathan Nair, better known as Mohanlal) sets a stunt-heavy cycle of class warfare in motion from within his mechanic shop, where he and his crew operate an extrajudicial coalition to defend Hyderabad’s poorest residents.

Tollywood tumble ‘Janatha Garage’ distills India’s identity crisis. BY GUY LANCASTER

ne of the favorite words employed by horror writer H.P. Lovecraft was “indescribable.” Granted, he was often trying to get across the idea of entities beyond the ken of human senses, but at times his insistence that such realities could not be circumscribed by human language proved ridiculous — he even once labeled a footprint as “indescribable,” begging the question of how, then, it could be recognized as the imprint of a foot. To use such a word is the epitome of lazy writing. That said, the newest Tollywood release showing at the Colonel Glenn 18, “Janatha Garage,” is, well, indescribable. (Tollywood is a colloquial term for the Telugu-language movie industry based in the Indian city of Hyderabad, to be distinguished from Bollywood, which encompasses the Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai.) Mohanlal Viswanathan Nair plays Satyam, who runs a garage in Hyderabad that fixes more than motor vehicles: Its crew also works to fix people’s lives, to right the wrongs often ignored by local authorities. They are part-time vigilantes with a devoted following among Hyderabad’s poorest residents. However, after his brother and sister-in-law are killed in retaliation for his efforts, Satyam sends their son, his baby nephew Anand, to be raised by his mother’s family in Mumbai. Some 25 years later, Anand (N.T. Rama Rao Jr.) is a student of environmental science 32

SEPTEMBER 8, 2016

ARKANSAS TIMES

whose devotion to saving the Earth often manifests itself in harassing small businesses for using the wrong kind of plastic bags, but when this walking “Captain Planet” gets into a fight with some local developer’s thugs (apparently an education in environmental science includes wrestling moves), his family sends him to Hyderabad, where he is drawn to the world of his uncle Satyam without even being aware of the blood connection. Soon enough, Anand becomes the second generation of vigilante ringleader at Janatha Garage, leading the crew in its fight against yet another evil developer — this one in league with Satyam’s own son. Tonally, “Janatha Garage” shifts back and forth between a telenovela, with its breathless love of drama, and another night of “WWE Smackdown.” Very few moments of the film are left untouched by the musical score, which is something Carl Orff might have composed had he been enamored of heavy metal. Some 30 minutes could have been shaved from the nearly three-hour runtime had only the editor cut those scenes where people stare wordlessly at each other while the music swells and swells and swells and the camera circles around like a gnat. When it comes to the fight scenes, our heroes are gods incarnate, suffering not a cut or bruise as they break bones and pummel faces in a slow-motion dream of violence. (One has truly entered an alternate cinematic world when the musical numbers

and dance sequences feel restrained by comparison.) In a recent essay for the New York Times, novelist Aatish Taseer wrote that popular Indian cinema “dramatizes a society’s deepest tensions,” especially in the figure of the villain, who “is the embodiment of what India believes ails India.” Such villains have ranged from British colonizers to drug kingpins: “But in a spate of recent films, the villain has taken the form of India’s own inner demons as the country negotiates an anguished transition to global modernity.” That is true enough for “Janatha Garage,” whose bad guys are the greedy developers and the corrupt politicians who sustain them, while our heroes side with the poor, with traditional Indian values and with Mother Earth. This is a nation struggling with the hegemony of globalized greed — a new form of Western imperialism that has lured away too many of India’s own sons. Even more so than most American summer fare, “Janatha Garage” operates without the slightest subtlety, as if our characters emerged from a medieval mystery play — the good inherently good, the evil purely evil. Or perhaps a better comparison would be the folk songs of the American labor movement, especially those of the Wobblies, which offered stark diagnoses and solutions to the problem of class oppression: e.g. “Dump the Bosses off Your Back.” Unlike the luxury resort envisioned by our villain, this film does not have your comfort in mind, and if it strikes the typical American viewer as rather indescribable, just know that behind its simplistic story and overwrought emotion lies a significant crisis of cultural integrity. Nuance, after all, is the domain of the comfortable.

The Central Arkansas Library System is seeking a qualified artist to create a permanent, non-figurative outdoor artwork for the Thompson Library at 38 Rahling Circle. The work should represent the late Central High valedictorian Roosevelt Thompson’s love of learning and public service. Budget for the project is $45,000; deadline to submit a model and other information about the sculpture is Nov. 1. For more information and the Request for Proposals form, contact Colin Thompson, colint@cals.org, at the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies. The Arkansas Arts Council is accepting applications for Arts in Education Mini Grants and Arts for Lifelong Learning Mini Grants, residency programs, through August 2017. Artists must match the grant award of $1,000 with either cash or an in-kind contribution. For more information, go to the Available Grants section of arkansasarts.org. The Argenta branch of the William F. Laman Library invites Arkansas art teachers to enter the 2nd annual Juried Arkansas Art Teacher Exhibition, to be held Nov. 18-Dec. 10 at the library. Guy Bell, artist and owner of Drawl Gallery, will be juror. Deadline to apply is Oct. 28. Cash prizes will be awarded. For information on how to enter, email Rachel Trusty at rachel.trusty@lamanlibrary.org. Wildwood Park for the Arts invites printmakers to submit works with a theme of nature for the February 2017 “Nature in Print” exhibit. Deadline to submit proposals online is Dec. 1. Find more information at wildwoodpark.org/ art. The Thea Foundation has opened registration for students, teachers, families and community groups wishing to take part in Thea Paves the Way, the annual sidewalk chalk event at the Clinton Presidential Center. This year’s event will run from 8 a.m. to noon Sept. 10; school groups may compete for art supply gift certificates. Participants will get to visit the presidential library free of charge. To register, go to theafoundation.org.

ONGOING GALLERY EXHIBITS

ARGENTA GALLERY/ROCK CITY WERKS, 413 Main St., NLR: Paintings, jewelry, pottery and glass. 11 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Tue.-Sat. 258-8991. CHRIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, 509 Scott St.: “Last Glimpses of Authentic Polaroid Art,” photography by Brandon Markin, Darrell Adams, Lynn Frost, Rachel Worthen and Rita Henry, through Sept. 30. 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Mon.Thu., 9 a.m.-noon Fri., 8 a.m.-7 p.m. Sun. CHROMA GALLERY, 5707 Kavanaugh Blvd.: Work by Robert Reep and other Arkansas artists. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Sat. 664-0880. DRAWL SOUTHERN CONTEMPORARY ART GALLERY, 5208 Kavanaugh Blvd.: “Woodruff County Portraits & Other Paintings,” work by

J.O. Buckley, through Sept. 27. 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Tue.-Sat. 680-1871. GALLERY 26, 2601 Kavanaugh Blvd.: “In Memoriam,” collages by Amy Edgington, hand-colored photographs by David Rackley, through Sept. 10. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tue.-Sat. 6648996. GALLERY 360, 900 S. Rodney Parham Road: Abstract paintings by Brian Wolf, through Sept. 24. 663-2222. GINO HOLLANDER GALLERY, 211 Center St.: Paintings and works on paper by Gino Hollander. 801-0211. GREG THOMPSON FINE ART, 429 Main St., NLR: “Glennray Tutor — Solo Exhibition,” magical realism paintings, through Sept. 10. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Sat. 664-2787. LAMAN LIBRARY ARGENTA BRANCH, 420 Main St., NLR: “In the Spirit of Creativity,” paintings by Anne and Dan Thornhill, through Sept. 10. 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Sat. 687-1061. MATTHEWS FINE ART GALLERY, 909 North St.: Paintings by Pat and Tracee Matthews, glass by James Hayes, jewelry by Christie Young, knives by Tom Gwenn, kinetic sculpture by Mark White. Noon-5 p.m. Tue.Sat. 831-6200. MUGS CAFE, 515 Main St., NLR: “Morning Stroll Surprise,” photographs by Carey Roberson, through mid-September. 7 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 379-9101. RED DOOR GALLERY, 3715 JFK, NLR: Work by Jeff McKay, C.J. Ellis, TWIN, Amy Hill-Imler, Ellen Hobgood; new glass by James Hayes and ceramics by Kelly Edwards. 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Sat. 753-5227. UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS AT LITTLE ROCK: “WAR-TOYS: Israel, West Bank and Gaza Strip,” photographs interpreting children’s artwork by Brian McCarty, through Oct. 20, reception 5:30 p.m. Sept. 21 with talk by McCarty to follow; “Arkansas Women to Watch: Organic Matters,” work by Sandra Luckett, Katherine Rutter, Dawn Holder and Melissa Wilkinson, through Oct. 20. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri., after Labor Day also 10 a.m.-1 p.m. and 2-5 p.m. Sun. BENTON DIANNE ROBERTS ART STUDIO AND GALLERY, 110 N. Market St.: Work by Dianne Roberts, classes. 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Wed.-Fri., 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sat. 860-7467. FAYETTEVILLE SUGAR ART GALLERY, 1 E. Center St.: “Running Toward Dreams,” work by young Iranian and U of A student artists, traveling exhibit. 417-699-2637. FORT SMITH REGIONAL ART MUSEUM, 1601 Rogers Ave.: “The Art of Transcendence,” RAM annual invitational, through Oct. 16. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 479-784-2787. HOT SPRINGS EMERGENT ARTS, FINE ARTS CENTER, 341 Whittington Ave.: “More Than “Just a Pretty Face,” Hot Springs Gallery Walk. 613-0352. FINE ARTS CENTER, 626 Central Ave.: “A Study of Light,” plein air artworks, through Oct. 1. 624-0489. GALLERY CENTRAL, 800 Central Ave.: “Paintings from Provence,” work by Bob Snider and Holly Tilley. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 31842728 GARVAN WOODLAND GARDENS: “Traditional Art Guild,” work by local artists, September and October, Magnolia Room. JUSTUS FINE ART, 827 A Central Ave.: New textiles by Jennifer Libby Fay, painted paper on canvas by Donnie Copeland, sculpture by Robyn Horn, paintings by Dolores Justus. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Wed.-Sat. 321-2335.

SEE WHY IT’S RIGHT FOR YOU

JONESBORO ARKANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY: “Night Women,” mixed media printmaking by Delita Martin; “Dinner Table,” installation by Martin; “Seat Assignment,” photographs by Nina Katchadourian; “Continual Myth,” drawings by Tad Lauritzen Wright; “Arkansas Neighbors,” photographs by Andrew Kilgore, through Oct. 9, Bradbury Art Museum. Noon5 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 2-5 p.m. Sun. 870-972-2567.

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PERRYVILLE SUDS GALLERY, Courthouse Square: Paintings by Dottie Morrissey, Alma Gipson, Al Garrett Jr., Phyllis Loftin, Alene Otts, Mauretta Frantz, Raylene Finkbeiner, Kathy Williams and Evelyn Garrett. Noon-6 p.m. Wed.-Fri, noon-4 p.m. Sat. 501-766-7584. PINE BLUFF ARTS AND SCIENCE CENTER FOR SOUTHEAST ARKANSAS, 701 S. Main St.: “Here. African American Art from the Permanent Collection,” through Oct. 15. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 1-4 p.m. Sat. 870-5363375.

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STUTTGART ARTS CENTER OF THE GRAND PRAIRIE, 108 W. 12th St.: “2016 Small Works on Paper,” through Sept. 29. 870-673-1781.

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YELLVILLE PALETTE ART LEAGUE, 300 Hwy. 62 W: Work by area artists. Noon-6 p.m. Wed.-Sat. 870656-2057.

HISTORY, SCIENCE MUSEUM EXHIBITS

ARKANSAS INLAND MARITIME MUSEUM, North Little Rock: The USS Razorback submarine tours. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Fri.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 371-8320. ARKANSAS NATIONAL GUARD MUSEUM, Camp Robinson: Artifacts on military history, Camp Robinson and its predecessor, Camp Pike, also a gift shop. 8 a.m.-3 p.m. Mon.-Fri., audio tour available at no cost. 212-5215. ARKANSAS SPORTS HALL OF FAME MUSEUM, Verizon Arena, NLR: 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 663-4328. CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL MUSEUM VISITOR CENTER, Bates and Park: Exhibits on the 1957 desegregation of Central and the civil rights movement. 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m. daily. 374-1957. ESSE PURSE MUSEUM & STORE, 1510 S. Main St.: “The Art of Handbags,” contemporary purses by Rhode Island artist Kent Stetson, through Sept. 25, closing reception Sept. 22; “What’s Inside: A Century of Women and Handbags,” permanent exhibit. 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Sun. $10, $8 for students, seniors and military. 916-9022. HISTORIC ARKANSAS MUSEUM, 200 E. 3rd St.: Renovated and replicated 19th century structures from original city, guided tours Monday and Tuesday on the hour, selfguided Wednesday through Sunday, $2.50 adults, $1 under 18, free to 65 and over. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 324-9351. MacARTHUR MUSEUM OF ARKANSAS MILITARY HISTORY, 503 E. 9th St. (MacArthur Park): “Waging Modern Warfare”; “Gen. Wesley Clark”; “Vietnam, America’s Conflict”; “Undaunted Courage, Proven Loyalty: Japanese American Soldiers in World War II. 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 1-4 p.m. Sun. 376-4602. MUSEUM OF DISCOVERY, 500 President Clinton Ave.: “Wiggle Worms,” science program for pre-K children 10 -10:30 a.m. every Tue. Hours: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun., $10 ages 13 and older, $8 ages 1-12, free to members and children under 1.

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RAÍCES MEXICANAS An exhibition showcasing artists with Mexican roots

SEPTEMBER 1ST

Argenta Gallery 413 Main Street | North Little Rock, AR

PA R T I C I PAT I N G

ARTISTS

Luis Atilano Luis Arellano Martin Flores Mark Clark

T H R O U G H

OCTOBER 1ST

Gustavo Lira Garcia Anthony Samuel Lopez

Rolando Quintero Alan Rodriguez

Luis Saldaña, Sergio Valdivia Sabrina Zarco x3mex

arktimes.com

SEPTEMBER 8 2016

AFTER DARK, CONT.

VOTING STARTS SOON! VOTING STARTS SEPTEMBER 1 VOTING ENDS SEPTEMBER 30

ARKTIMES.COM/ TOAST16

2016 CATEGORIES Bar (Central Ark.)

Drinking brunch

Bar (Around the state)

Patio or deck for drinking

Bartender (Central Ark.)

Cocktail list

Bartender (Around the state)

Coldest beer

Bar for live music (Central Ark.)

Bloody Mary

Bar for live music (Around the state) Martini New Bar

Margarita

Wine bar

Local brewery (Central Ark.)

Sports bar

Local brewery (Around the state)

Pick-up bar

National brewery

Gay bar

Locally brewed pale ale

Dive bar

Locally brewed IPA

Hotel bar

Locally brewed stout

Neighborhood bar

Liquor store

Bar for pool, darts, shuffleboard or other games

Brewpub

Bar for food

Beer selection (retail)

Happy hour

Wine selection (retail)

Beer selection (bar or restaurant) AT THE ARTS CENTER: In conjunction with the exhibition “Jon Schueler: Weathering Skies,” a film about the artist and his work will be screened at 6 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 8, at the Arkansas Arts Center. A reception will be held at 5:30 p.m.; a Q&A with Magda Salvensen of the Jon Schueler Estatand Arts Center curator Ann Prentice Wagner will follow.

396-7050. WITT STEPHENS JR. CENTRAL ARKANSAS NATURE CENTER, Riverfront Park: Exhibits on fishing and hunting and the state Game and Fish Commission. 907-0636. BENTONVILLE MUSEUM OF NATIVE AMERICAN HISTORY, 202 SW O St.: 1930s sandpainting tapestry by Navajo medicine man Hosteen Klah, from the collection of Dr. Howard and Catherine Cockrill, through December. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 479-273-2456. CALICO ROCK CALICO ROCK MUSEUM, Main Street: Displays on Native American cultures, steamboats, the railroad and local history. www.calicorockmuseum.com. ENGLAND TOLTEC MOUNDS STATE PARK, U.S. Hwy. 165: Major prehistoric Indian site with visitors’ center and museum. 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat., noon-5 p.m. Sun., closed Mon. $3 for adults, $2 for ages 6-12. 961-9442. JACKSONVILLE JACKSONVILLE MUSEUM OF MILITARY HISTORY, 100 Veterans Circle: Exhibits on D-Day; F-105, Vietnam era plane (“The Thud”); the Civil War Battle of Reed’s Bridge, Arkansas Ordnance Plant (AOP) and other military history. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. $3 adults; $2 seniors, military; $1 students. 501-241-1943. MORRILTON MUSEUM OF AUTOMOBILES, Petit Jean Mountain: Permanent exhibit of more than 50 cars from 1904-1967 depicting the 34

SEPTEMBER 8, 2016

ARKANSAS TIMES

evolution of the automobile. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. 7 days. 501-727-5427. PINE BLUFF ARTS AND SCIENCE CENTER FOR SOUTHEAST ARKANSAS, 701 S. Main St.: “Exploring the Frontier: Arkansas 1540-1840,” Arkansas Discovery Network hands-on exhibition; “Heritage Detectives: Discovering Arkansas’ Hidden Heritage.” 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 1-4 p.m. Sat. 870536-3375. POTTSVILLE POTTS INN, 25 E. Ash St.: Preserved 1850s stagecoach station on the Butterfield Overland Mail Route, with period furnishings, log structures, hat museum, doll museum, doctor’s office, antique farm equipment. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Wed.-Sat. $5 adults, $2 students, 5 and under free. 479-968-9369. ROGERS ROGERS HISTORICAL MUSEUM, 322 S. 2nd St.: “Let Us Pray: Rogers’ Early Churches.” 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon. and Wed.Sat., 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Tue., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 479621-1154. SCOTT PLANTATION AGRICULTURE MUSEUM, U.S. Hwy. 165 and state Hwy. 161: Permanent exhibits on historic agriculture. 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. $4 adults, $3 children. 961-1409. SCOTT PLANTATION SETTLEMENT: 1840s log cabin, one-room school house, tenant houses, smokehouse and artifacts on plantation life. 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Thu.-Sat. 351-0300. www.scottconnections.org.

CAMARO JR.

Join authors Bryan Borland and Theresa Davis as they read from their new books for an exclusive release party with Lucie’s Place! Borland, a native Arkansan and founder of the Sibling Rivalry Press, will share his third collection of poetry, DIG. Davis, a nationally recognized slam poet from Atlanta, will present her second full-length poetry collection, Drowned: A Mermaid’s Manifesto.

7PM Thursday, September 15th Tickets start at $15

Beverages provided by:

Ron Robinson Theater • 100 River Market Ave, 72201 Little Rock

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/an-evening-with-the-authors-tickets-26806443795

MURROW

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 22ND AND FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23RD • 6 PM AT THE REP “BLACK BOX” TICKETS $20 GENERAL ADMISSION, $10 STUDENTS Joseph Menino stars as journalist Edward R. Murrow, MURROW delivers a biographical look at an icon and pioneer of American broadcast journalism and also a powerful, stinging indictment of the contemporary corporate-media complex. More at acansaartsfestival.org or 501.663.2287 Sponsored by

Lucie’s Place provides homeless LGBTQ young adults in Central Arkansas with safe living environments, job training and counseling services in order to ensure lifelong stability and success, and works to promote equality and acceptance for LGBTQ young adults.

300 Spring St, Suite 803, Little Rock 501-508-5005 luciesplace.org

BY JOSEPH VITALE

Post MURROW show interview with John Kirk at Samantha’s Tap Room 9-9:30 p.m. ACANSA Arts Festival encourages public appreciation of the arts, showcases and increases awareness of the arts in the region and enriches the cultural vitality of Arkansas.

Media Sponsor

arktimes.com

SEPTEMBER 8 2016

Dining WHAT’S COOKIN’ NOLEN BUFFALO, OWNER of The Water Buffalo brewing and gardening supply at 106 S. Rodney Parham Road, got word last week that the feds had OK’d his license to brew and sell beer, and an hour later, had rotator cuff surgery. So The Water Buffalo doesn’t know exactly when it will open its taproom, where it will sell 18 to 24 beers on tap from all, or most, of the brewers in town, including its own, says the fittingly named employee Wilson Brewer. It will also sell growlers on Sundays, making folks a little less blue in this blue-law state that otherwise says ixnay on Sunday alcohol sales. The tap room will be intimate, with space for about 20 people, but he added that “the idea is that you’ll get a beer and walk around the hobby shop.” The Water Buffalo, winner in the Arkansas Times’ Readers’ Choice Best Hobby Shop category, offers instruction on brewing, gardening and the like, including introductory courses to beer- and wine-making, how to make yeast starters, how to build a hydroponic garden, how to make cheese, and more. FOLKS INTERESTED IN German food and culture are in Gluck: The Arkansas State Archives is offering the symposium “Southern Fried Schitzel: German Food and Culture in Arkansas” on Saturday, Sept. 10, at Pulaski Technical College’s Culinary Arts and Hospitality Management Institute. Speakers will include by historian Shirley Schuette, Old State House living history coordinator Leah Lambert, German history professor Dr. Kathleen Condray of the University of Arkansas, UAMS director of historical research Tim Nutt, and State Archives staff member Terra Titsworth, a professional trained chef. Titsworth will prepare a meal typical of Lichtenstein and there will be a beer tasting. The seminar is free; reserve a spot at events.archives@ arkansas.gov or call 682-6900. Check-in is at 9 a.m. BEFORE YOU FILL UP your fall calendar, make sure and save room for two of Arkansas Times’ biggest festivals: The annual Arkansas Times Whole Hog Roast will be held from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 23. Less than a week later, the Arkansas Times Craft Beer Festival returns 6-9 p.m. Friday, Oct. 28. Both will be held at the Argenta Farmers Market grounds and will benefit the Argenta Arts District. Buy tickets to both at centralarkansastickets.com. We’re currently accepting competitors for amateur and professional teams in the hog roast. The professional winner will receive $1,000 cash; other winners and runners-up will receive trophies. Contact Phyllis@arktimes.com or call 492-3994 for more information. 36

SEPTEMBER 8, 2016

ARKANSAS TIMES

WHAT SAY YOU, COUNSELOR? Good, we think, as The Counselor and rhe Fried Chicken tacos make up a tasty plate at Tacos 4 Life.

Get a taco, give a little Tacos 4 Life hits the spot.

acos 4 Life is a welcome addition to what used to be called Hamburger Row in Conway, the strip of Oak Street in between downtown and Interstate 40 that literally every fast food chain known to the developing world has called home at one point or another. Inside, the decor is new, clean, familiar, well lit. To use a good Conway-grown analogy, it’s the Kris Allen of restaurants. There’s a nice sheen to it and you know, even though it’s not advertised, there’s a Christian undercurrent to the whole thing (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Part of the restaurant’s business model is what made brands like Toms Shoes and Warby Parker glasses so appealing. You buy something you need and the company donates in kind to a worthy cause. Tacos 4 Life donates $0.22 for every taco, quesadilla, burrito, salad or rice bowl to Feed My Starving Children, a Christian nonprofit that pro-

vides meals to starving and malnourished children in orphanages, schools, clinics and refugee camps around the world. But you’re reading this to find out whether the food is any good or not. And it is. It’s really good. But a taco truck it ain’t. Tacos 4 Life is more of a sandwich restaurant that uses tortillas for bread. We’re fine with this, by the way. In a perfect world, we’d eat tacos for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The restaurant has a set menu and then some seasonal options, like the Grilled Street Corn ($3.95), a flamekissed ear coated in a fine layer of mayo and topped with cotija cheese, cilantro and spices. This was an excellent appetizer and one we’d recommend to diners when it pops up on the menu again. The Ultimate Trio ($6.92), always on the menu, was a solid appetizer to share with friends, as we did. Cheese dip, guacamole and salsa come with

freshly fried tortilla chips. The chips were substantial enough to handle a piling of guacamole and then some. The salsa was sharp and fresh, and the guac was hearty with lots of cilantro, some lime juice and just enough onion. We could have made a meal of it had we allowed ourselves to keep going. The cheese dip was good and creamy. Not mind-blowing, but solid. When it came time for tacos, our spouse went with a tropical theme. We loved the flavor combination of pineapple, toasted coconut and shrimp (ours were fried) on the Ono Shrimp Taco ($4.89). The crunch from the green onions and lettuce was nice and cut the sweetness of the ono sauce, a light cream sauce with a subtle pineapple flavor. We found the dollop of sauce to be a bit too generous, but the flavors were spot on. We also tried one of the tacos from the summer specials menu — the Island Jerk Chicken ($3.79). We’re big jerk chicken taco fans, and this one stood up to the ones at some of our other favorite taco joints. Tacos 4 Life’s grilled jerk chicken was sweet, juicy and well seasoned, with a little bit of a kick and served with mango-pineapple salsa and fresh cabbage. The fruit was fresh, the cabbage crunchy. What more can you ask for from a summer taco? We weren’t as pleased with the

BELLY UP

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

OH, YES: To the Ono Shrimp and Jerk Chicken tacos.

Cuban Taco ($4.04). Generally, any pork option is our favorite on the menu, but this one missed if only for one ingredient: cheese. We love cheese and we love pork, but mixing the two can be precarious. The shredded pork taco was topped with bacon, sweet pickle, a “sweet secret sauce” and gouda. The sweet pickles, rich cheese and the bacon were just too much at once. Knock a couple of toppings off this one and it has a chance. The Counselor was one of our favorite tacos. It was strips of flank steak,

Tacos 4 Life 716 W. Oak St. Conway 501-358-6005

2235 Dave Ward Drive Conway 501-205-1380 1572 N. College Ave. Fayetteville 479-966-4150 tacos4life.com QUICK BITE A Little Rock location is set to open at the Shackleford Crossing shopping center in early 2017. HOURS Hours vary depending on location. Find hours at tacos4life.com. OTHER INFO No alcohol. Credit cards accepted.

topped with Korean barbecue sauce, shredded cabbage, fried wonton strips that added a nice crunch and yum yum sauce. Don’t ask us what yum yum sauce is, but it hit the mark. Our server told us it’s one of the more popular choices, and for good reason. The Fried Chicken Taco ($3.49) was a table favorite: comfort food wrapped in a warm tortilla. Chunks of deliciously fried chicken were drizzled with chipotle aioli and honey and then topped with shredded, crisp iceberg lettuce. All we can say is it hinted at perfection. The chicken is obviously fried in the kitchen (not in some distant food lab), the slightly spicy sauce provided a nice little kick, the lettuce gave everything a nice, clean crunch, and the addition of honey was inspired. If it sounds like we’re overselling it, just go try it. It was everything you like about food at once. It was warm, soft, cool, crispy, sweet, tender, spicy and just good. They might be able to get away with a restaurant that sold only this kind of taco. Tacos 4 Life is fun without the fuss. You order, then sit. The staff is helpful and friendly. And there’s a ton of stuff on the menu. We couldn’t get close to sampling it all, something we’ll try on future trips. And say what you will about Kris Allen, the kid can sing.

WORK OUT WITH AN EXPERT Kathleen Rea specializes in helping men and women realize their physical potential, especially when injuries or just the aches and pains of middle age and more discourage a good work out. With a PH.D. in Biomedical Engineering, Kathleen understands how your body works and how to apply the right exercise and weight training to keep you fit and injury free. Workout in the privacy of a small, well equipped gym conveniently located in Argenta with one of the state’s best private trainers. For more information call Kathleen at 501-324-1414.

REGENERATION FITNESS KATHLEEN L. REA, PH.D.

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

SEPTEMBER 8, 2016

It’s the Party to the Party!

Ride the Arkansas Times BLUES BUS to the King Biscuit Blues Festival in Helena

P E H T P S E ' H T I OT T

i T s a s n a k r ue l A B t e i h u t c s e i d B i R g n i eK OCTOBER 8 n h t n to A We are bringing the party with us on the Arkansas Times Blues Bus

e h h t t We are celebrating 31 years of the blues at King Biscuit 30 ging fea Join us for Charlie Musselwhite along with the Charles Wilson Band, Toronzo Cannon e h brin for and Beverly “Guitar” Watkins t s e're . 10 ' t I d w 0ct RESERVE YOUR SEAT BY GOING TO CENTRALARKANSASTICKETS.COM. a

$109 per person

PRICE INCLUDES: Round-trip tour bus transportation Tickets into the gated concert area Lunch at a Delta Favorite Live blues performance en route to Helena BEVERAGES ON BOARD THE BLUES BUS

Round-trip bus transportation provided by Arrow Coachlines.

Like our Bus Trips page for details, updates and other perks! facebook.com/arktimesbustrips 38

SEPTEMBER 8, 2016

ARKANSAS TIMES

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Contact Megan Blankenship @ 501-687-1047 All Major Credit Cards Accepted or mail check or money order to: Arkansas Times Blues Bus 200 E. Markham, Suite 200 Little Rock, AR 72201

S: E r ta D o p U s CL ran t N I s u CE tour b ce I n R o c P p i -tr ted d a g n u e Ro th o rite t o n v i a s F t Ticke t a Delta ces n a a rform unch

ARKANSAS TIMES MARKETPLACE

ARKANSAS TIMES

explore

LOCAL

DIGITAL INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY MANAGER

Y Share T the R ! A Y P road T R A P Share the Road

For Cyclists

Tips for SAFE cycling on the road.

• Bicycles are vehicles on the road, just like cars and motorcycles. Cyclists must obey all traffic laws. Arkansas Uniform Vehicle Code #27-49-111 • Cyclists must signal, ride on the right side of the road and yield to traffic normally. Code #27-51-301/403 • Bicycles must have a white headlight and a red tail light visible from 500 feet and have a bell or warning device for pedestrians. Code #27-36-220 • Make eye contact with motorists. Be visible. Be predictable. Head up, think ahead. • On the Big Dam Bridge... go slow. Represent! • As you pass, say “On your left... thank you.” • On the River Trail... use a safe speed, don’t intimidate or scare others. Watch for dogs and leashes.

To provide strategic direction for developing the Central Arkansas Library System’s digital and technology initiatives. Will direct the work of the library’s technology staff and oversee all information technology for the library system. A bachelor’s degree, or current and substantial work toward one, and prior supervisory experience in a technology capacity is required for this position. The successful candidate will possess strong project management and communication skills. Salary starting from $75,000 with excellent benefits.

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Apply by September 30, 2016. See www.cals.org/about/jobopportunities.aspx for more information and to apply.

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SUBSTANCE ABUSE COUNSELING

DOT SAP Evaluations Christopher Gerhart, LLC

(501) 478-0182

FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHER-TURKISH (Little Rock, AR)

Teach Turkish Lang. courses to sec. school students. Bachelor in Turkish Lang or rltd fld + 1 yr exp as Turkish Lang teacher at mid or high sch. Mail res.: Lisa Academy 21 Corporate Hill Dr. Little Rock, AR 72205 Attn: HR, Refer to Ad#MC.

LAB TECH Responsible for performing basic and advanced laboratory analyses on treatment/industrial wastewater and QC samples. R e s p o n s i bl e f o r a n a ly z i n g, evaluating, interpreting, and preparing QC reports. Responsible for accurately maintaining records of tests conducted and general housekeeping. For more information visit www.lrwu.com. Equal Opportunity Employer.

Deadline to apply Friday 09/16/16

MEET DEXTER Dexter is a very handsome Jack Russell Terrier (JRT) in need of a good home. He was taken out for foster from the Little Rock Animal Village because he had been there awhile and they needed the space for the many new dogs coming in. Dexter is great with people; he has bonded quickly with his foster family. Unfortunately, as is common with JRT’s, he is not good with other dogs or with cats, which is why his foster mom cannot keep him (otherwise she would!). He is very smart, and very trainable (he loves to play!). He is housebroken and is used to staying in a confined space (so he’ll be fine if he needs to be crated while his owners are at work). He has been neutered and is up-to-date on all shots. He is being treated for heartworms currently, but is otherwise very healthy. He weighs 30 lbs. and is estimated to be 5 to 7 years old (still young enough to be playful, but safely past all of the puppy pitfalls).

y b d e d i v ro p n s o e i t n ta ch Li OR r o K C TO : p E s a n o n H o i t C C of his costs (his adoption fee and the heart worm treatment) are being covered; we just ra R t L DAllwant r ta E I o w s p A to go to a good home. He is really great with people; he just needs to be the only s u o R pet inBhimhisusforever n r M B a O r e r R s A a www.bikeleague.org/ O NEY s Blue 00 home. cert

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Make eye contact with cyclists. #27-49-111 • Cyclists must signal, ride on the right side Drive predictably. of the road and yield to traffic normally. Code #27-51-301/403 prevent bikes. and a •Please Bicycles must have aghost white headlight red tail light visible from 500 feet and have a www.ghostbikes.org bell or warning device for pedestrians. Code #27-36-220 • Makefor information: eye more contact with motorists. Be visible. Be predictable. Head up, think ahead. Bicycle advocacy of arkansas • On the Big Dam Bridge... go slow. www.bacar.org Represent! • As you pass, say “On your left... thank you.” • On the River Trail... use a safe speed, don’t intimidate others. Watch for dogs Leagueorofscare American Bicyclists and leashes.

E programs/education N con O PH Y e to E B Cards e t vorit G u R ro A dit n e H r e C C s ce jor a M man All 85 For more information... Bicycle Advocacy of Arkansas www.bacar.org League of American Bicyclists www.bikeleague.org/programs/education

te 2 MO nsas Time m, SIFuiINTERESTED, YOU CAN CONTACT FOSTER MOM SUSAN AT ha ka Ar 201 OR LRAV (ASK FOR SKIP) AT 501-376-3067. Mark R 72501-231-6101 . E 200 Rock, A Little arktimes.com

SEPTEMBER 8 2016

SEPTEMBER 8, 2016

ARKANSASâ&#x20AC;&#x2C6;TIMES