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Something in the way deadCenter Film Festival moves attracts movie lovers like no other.

By Gazette staff, P. 19

OKC’S NUMBER

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COOP CONCERT SERIES: PAT GREEN - JUNE 22 WYNONNA AND THE BIG NOISE - JULY 12 COOP CONCERT SERIES: ROBERT EARL KEEN - JULY 20 REO SPEEDWAGON - JULY 26 KANSAS - AUGUST 30 JOHN ANDERSON - SEPTEMBER 6 DAVID FEHERTY - SEPTEMBER 21 JOSH TURNER - OCTOBER 25 RON WHITE - NOVEMBER 1 THE CHARLIE DANIELS BAND - DECEMBER 13

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INSIDE COVER P. 19 In its 19th year, deadCenter Film Festival continues to expand its slate of independent film and is becoming a force for advancement in Oklahoma’s rural schools, inspiring students who could become the great filmmakers of tomorrow.

JUNE 14 8pm

By Gazette staff Cover by Kimberly Lynch Photos by Alexa Ace

start at $60

NEWS 4 CITY convenience store moratorium 6 CITY MAPS 4

8 METRO Freedom Center 10 CHICKEN-FRIED NEWS

EAT & DRINK 13 REVIEW Chae Cafe & Eatery 14 FEATURE Red Rooster

16 GAZEDIBLES doughnuts

ARTS & CULTURE 19 COVER deadCenter Film Festival 22 OKG SHOP Solare

OKG Shop deadCenter program 25 COMEDY Matt Davis at The Paramount Room 22 23

26

Best of OKC ballot

31 COMMUNITY Pride on the Plaza 32 CALENDAR

MUSIC 37 EVENT Son Volt at The

Jones Assembly

Street Speakeasy

38 REVIEW Homecoming Kingz at 51st

july 26

40 LIVE MUSIC

THE HIGH CULTURE 42 CANNABIS Releaf Labs

46 CANNABIS Oklahoma legislative

session in review

49 CANNABIS The Toke Board 49 CANNABIS strain review

FUN 50 PUZZLES sudoku | crossword 51 ASTROLOGY OKG CLASSIFIEDS 51

COMING SOON

billy bob thornton & the boxmasters august 22-24

ep expo

october 25-27

native ink tattoo festival

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NEWS

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A Save-A-Lot grocery store next to Dollar Tree opened in 2017 and has already closed. | Photo Alexa Ace

Food emergency

Councilwoman Nikki Nice aims to remedy northeast OKC’s lack of access to affordable, healthy foods. By Miguel Rios

Oklahoma City Council passed a 180-day moratorium on “small box discount stores” in the 73111 ZIP code.

Ward 7 councilwoman Nikki Nice proposed the measure, which was signed May 8, because she was concerned about the area’s lack of access to fresh, healthy foods. She was also alarmed with the proliferation of dollar and discount stores in the area.

“This moratorium just slows that process down so we can find more creative and better ways to get a grocery store in the community since this conversation has literally been happening since 1993,” Nice said, referencing former councilwoman and retired county commissioner Willa Johnson’s attempt to bring a grocery to the area 26 years ago. “In the meantime, I’ve been meeting with our planning department weekly, as well as our municipal counsel office, just to get a footing and a knowledge and understanding of what some of those options are.”

Nice is also waiting on the results of a study that would inform much of the decisions that will come next. She has been working with a grocery consultant since her election in November and expects those results soon.

“We’re working, again, being creative about all the opportunities and tax incentive programs that can help to bring [a full-sized grocery store],” she said. “I know a lot of people are anti some of those programs, but when you have a need such as this, this is a time when, in my opinion, you should be able to use it.”

Community needs

The 73111 ZIP code is one of the unhealthiest in the city, according to Oklahoma City-County Health Department, with the life expectancy of its residents nearly six years shorter than the average.

“We know hunger costs Oklahoma about $1.5 billion a year. So this is where 4

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it starts. It starts with us focusing neighborhood by neighborhood, ZIP code by ZIP code, in order to turn those numbers around,” she said. “The community deserves something new. The community deserves something more. The community deserves something better. We are thankful that we do have the stores that we have, but at the same time, we want a regular store. We don’t want a discount type of store. We want a store where the least of us have dignity when we’re shopping at a store, where we don’t feel like we’re subjected to certain things because we are in a certain ZIP code. We want access just like everybody else.”

73111 is also considered a food desert, an area with limited access to fresh fruits, vegetables and other whole foods “largely due to a lack of grocery stores and healthy food options.”

“We need … the needs to be met of the community, but if some places or business are unable to meet their bottom dollar, their bottom line, they just won’t come,” Nice said. “That’s where, unfortunately, you have these small box discount stores.

They will come in, and they know they don’t have all the options for the community. … There is surely a concern when it comes to low-income communities, when it comes to rural communities because they are, unfortunately, putting grocery stores out of business.”

Nationwide, dollar stores now outnumber Walmart and McDonald’s locations combined, with the number of locations reaching 30,000 in 2018, according to Institute for Local SelfReliance (ILSR). Dollar stores have also surpassed Whole Foods in feeding Americans.

“While dollar stores sometimes fill a need in cash-strapped communities, growing evidence suggests these stores are not merely a byproduct of economic distress. They’re a cause of it,” reads the

December 2018 ILSR report. “In small towns and urban neighborhoods alike, dollar stores are triggering the closure of grocery stores, eliminating jobs, and further eroding the prospects of the vulnerable communities they target.”

ILSR reports that a Dollar General’s arrival typically cuts a small town’s supermarket sales by about 30 percent.

Additionally, dollar stores are not necessarily less expensive; they simply offer more single-serving quantities, many of which actually cost more per ounce.

We want a store where ... we don’t feel like we’re subjected to certain things because we are in a certain ZIP code.

Nikki Nice “Our research suggests that they often target African American neighborhoods,” reads the report. “Their strategy of saturating these neighborhoods with multiple outlets can make it nearly impossible for new grocers and other businesses to take root and grow.”

Within the ZIP code, a Save-A-Lot grocery store, which was located next to a dollar store, opened in 2017 and has already closed.

District goals

The end goal is to amend the OKC zoning code to establish a healthy neighborhood overlay district, which would “provide requirements for the inclusion of fresh food and provide requirements for the dispersal of locations” of discount stores. The moratorium would end if the district is established before 180 days is over.

Following a similar moratorium, Tulsa City Councillor Vanessa HallHarper was successful last year in establishing a healthy neighborhoods overlay policy for three neighborhoods in her district. The policy reduces the Ward 7 councilwoman Nikki Nice wants residents of the 73111 ZIP code to have better access to fresh, healthy foods. | Photo Alexa Ace

minimum parking requirements for a grocery store by 50 percent and states discount stores must be at least one mile away from one another.

“If we can turn around 73111 and we can also implement the option of having a grocery store by the end of the conversation, then we are doing what we were asked and tasked to do. And at this point, you have to be creative because, again, we’ve had this conversation since 1993,” Nice said. “I’m thankful for councilwoman Hall-Harper, who fought in her community for the same types of things for the area of Tulsa, because we understand what processed food looks like compared to fresh produce, to fresh fruits and vegetables. If you have the option of only getting processed food, that’s what you’re going to get. If you’re only exposed to those options, that becomes your norm. We need to make sure that is not the norm.”

Nice will also have conversations with people about the prospect of a food bank resource center for the community. She said she wants to take a holistic approach to addressing the problem, which would include educational components.

“The conversation that I’m planning on having is like a task force with other entities within the community that have already done some of the work and the research so we can collaborate with some of those efforts of attaining and having access to healthier options, education opportunities about health and sustainability,” she said. “Even when it comes to us being able to have community gardens, understanding what that looks like, growing our own food, our fruits and vegetables. Just a holistic approach to bringing down the [negative] outcome of 73111 because your ZIP code should not determine your life outcome.”

Once the study is finalized, Nice plans to host a community meeting to discuss its findings.

WE’RE LIKE SCHOOL IN SUMMERTIME, EXCEPT WE TOTALLY HAVE CLASS. Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853–1890). Daisies, Arles (detail), 1888. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond.

Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon. Photo: Travis Fullerton. © Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

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NEWS

Public input

OKC residents favor voting for individual MAPS projects and allocating part of the penny tax for operations and maintenance. By Miguel Rios

A recent poll of likely Oklahoma City special elections voters shows many would like to see the MAPS vote done slightly differently moving forward.

A majority of people surveyed said they would rather vote for MAPS 4 projects individually. Most would also like to see some of the penny tax spent on operations and maintenance rather than completely spent on capital improvements.

The survey of 406 registered OKC voters was conducted by SoonerPoll and sponsored by former councilman Ed Shadid. The poll, conducted between April 24 and May 9, has a 4 percent margin of error.

Ward 6 councilwoman JoBeth Hamon said she was not necessarily surprised with any of the poll’s findings but did not think mental health and substance abuse facilities, which had the most support, would poll so well.

Ward 1 councilman James Greiner had a similar feeling, but he did not think the soccer stadium, which had the least support, would poll so badly.

Almost 80 percent of those surveyed said they would rather vote for each MAPS project separately, while 16.3 percent said they prefer an all or nothing vote. Hamon said she has been told MAPS is structured as an all or nothing vote so the final package is a compromise that addresses many of the city’s needs. She is not totally convinced of that argument but does not know where she sides on the issue yet.

Greiner said he would much rather vote on individual projects.

“I would certainly rather vote on individual projects because when you’re talking about a big group of capital improvements, you’re going to have a wide range of things. Some things I won’t think are a great idea and other things I will,” Greiner said. “That’s how the typical voter would really want to vote.”

Ward 2 councilman James Cooper said he worries about putting individual projects up for vote.

“I get really nervous and worried about putting something like, ‘Hey, sidewalks. What does the entire city think about sidewalks?’ Because here in the inner city, most of us [care],” he said, “but when you start going further and further out into the more rural parts of Oklahoma City, which we have in our boundaries, sidewalks are nowhere near a priority for them.”

About 57 percent of those surveyed said they supported reserving a portion of the penny tax to pay for operations and maintenance, while almost 34 percent opposed it.

“I think this poll really speaks to 6

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people’s desires to see some kind of maintenance and operations dollars,” Hamon said. “There’s been frustration because operation costs are high and there hasn’t been a true avenue for funding. … The whole conversation about the operating dollars is kind of another hurdle to start analyzing.”

Of those surveyed, 71 percent said they wanted at least one quarter of the penny tax reserved for maintenance and operations — 21 percent said one quarter of the penny, 48 percent said half and less than 2 percent said the full penny should be used for operations and maintenance.

“I like the idea of reserving part of the MAPS penny sales tax for the — we can call it the maintenance and operations, but I call it the stewardship of the projects we pass,” Cooper said. “We build these projects, and I think then the question has to be, ‘How do we become responsible stewards of what we build?’ Seeing a dedicated sales tax to maintain and operate what we build makes sense to me. … I’m a lot more interested in maintaining and stewarding what we’ve already built than necessarily building big, new, $200 million shiny objects. What will transform people’s lives? A better environment in their neighborhood. Every bit of economic research will tell you that.”

At the same time, Cooper said the council should also look for creative ways to maintain and operate MAPS project outside a dedicated sales tax.

Greiner said that could be possible through endowment funds.

“We do need to move into the direction of really talking about the operation and maintenance and how it’s going to be funded on all these MAPS projects,” Greiner said. “We have relied a lot on just the idea that if we build these things, then it’s going to generate more economic development … it’s going to increase the amount of money people are spending and that’s going to make up the difference. … Those endowment ideas that mayor [David] Holt has talked about is something that I would definitely consider. I don’t know if I completely support it yet, but on the surface, the idea is at least a very interesting and good conversation to have.”

Greater Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce conducts its own MAPS poll but has never released the results. The mayor and city council will determine which projects will become part of the MAPS package, which is set to be finalized in early September for a special election in December.

MAPS 4 Special Election Poll Would you rather vote for 6–10 projects as a package with an all or nothing vote, OR would you rather vote for each of the projects separately?

16.3 %

4.6 %

79.1 %

Project package with all or nothing vote Vote for each project separately Don’t know/Didn’t respond

33.8 % 21.5 %

Do you support or oppose reserving a portion of the 1-cent MAPS tax to pay operation and maintenance costs?

Strongly support

23.3 % 9.2 %

Somewhat support

12.2 %

Neutral/Didn’t respond Somewhat oppose Strongly oppose

Which ratio best reflects what you believe should be the city’s priorities?

21.6 %

13.9 % 15.0 %

Spend the full tax on new capital projects

1.5 %

Spend 3⁄4 on new capital projects and 1⁄4 on operations and maintenance

47.9 %

Spend 1⁄2 on new capital projects and 1⁄2 on operations and maintenance Spend the full tax on operations and maintenance Don’t know/Didn’t respond

12.1 % 13.8 % 6.9 % 23.5 %

Do you support or oppose a soccer stadium in the downtown area costing between $70–$90 million being included in a MAPS4 bundle of projects?

43.7 %

Strongly support Somewhat support Neutral/Didn’t respond Somewhat oppose Strongly oppose

Do you support or oppose mental health and substance abuse facilities being included in a MAPS4 bundle of projects?

Strongly support Somewhat support Neutral/Did not respond Somewhat oppose Strongly oppose Source: SoonerPoll.com

62.3 %

7.4 % 5.3 % 4.1 % 20.9 %

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Revitalizing Freedom

A new board of directors for Freedom Center has a long-term plan to restore the building and revitalize the civil rights landmark. By Miguel Rios

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Efforts are underway to revitalize and repair one of Oklahoma’s most important civil rights landmarks into a community hub.

Freedom Center, 2609 N. Martin Luther King Ave., served as the headquarters of NAACP Youth Council. Led

by Clara Luper, the group organized a sit-in in 1958 at Katz Drug Store, effectively launching the nation’s sit-in movement. More sit-ins followed, and Katz ended its segregation policy days later. The youth council continued organizing sit-ins through the early 1960s, helping end segregation in public spaces around the state.

Freedom Center was burned down in 1968, but the community raised money to rebuild. It has been vacant for about a decade. Today, the building is in disrepair, with commemorative plaques falling off the facade and bricks crumbling.

retired county commissioner Willa Johnson the receiver of the property.

Marilyn Luper Hildreth, Luper’s daughter, said Washington does not have authority to raise money for Freedom Center, which now has a new board of directors leading that charge. “[Washington] is not a representative of Freedom Center,” Hildreth said.

“Leonard Benton is the court-appointed trustee for Freedom Center. … I’m working on the board, and we’re working for the reorganization of Freedom Center. After my mom died, I’ve been in the hospital several times and I just have not been able to do everything like I was doing. I hate that, but sometimes it happens.”

Due to health concerns, Johnson reached out to Benton to become the new receiver of the property. He was appointed receiver by the court in late 2018.

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A monument in front of Freedom Center honors civil rights leaders. | Photo Alexa Ace

Michael Washington, a local activist, said he was raising money to repair the building and create a community space.

In 2017, he filed paperwork to become the registered agent for Freedom Center Inc., the nonprofit that controls the building. A dispute over control of the building followed between Washington, the Oklahoma chapter of NAACP and community members.

In 2018, Historic Preservation Commission recommended the building be declared a historic landmark.

That same year, a judge settled the dispute over control of Freedom Center by naming former councilwoman and

“Mr. Leonard Benton is the new receiver of the property, and he’s doing a great job putting his board together and moving forward,” she said. “I hope it is expanded because there is a lot of memorabilia that should be in the Freedom Center and make it a kind of museum to all the hard work that the African American people, especially the children and Ms. Luper, put into it.

I’m just really praying that it turns out well. Based on what I’ve heard so far, it has that opportunity.”

Benton, chairman of the new board, said Washington has no legal rights to Freedom Center and is currently not involved in the board’s revitalization efforts but was instrumental in bring-

ing attention to the need for repairs.

“Washington was the gentleman who did recognize that something needs to be done with the Freedom Center and he was the one who went to the Oklahoma City Historic Preservation Commission,” he said.

“He has no rights to represent the Freedom Center. He continues to at as if he is a representative.”

The property is one of the most significant, important things that we could observe and celebrate and to make permanent in our community.

Leonard Benton

Freedom’s future

Freedom Center’s new board of directors includes former members of the youth council. They are now meeting monthly to discuss the future of the building.

“We had a mini retreat for the purpose of beginning to establish goals and clarify our mission and purpose, including a new constitution and bylaws to organize Freedom Center as a 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization,” Benton said.

The organization is still in the process of reinstating its tax-exempt status, so it is currently not asking for donations.

“We’re developing a more specific plan in terms of how can our community be the most helpful, so when we go to the community for support, we have a well-defined plan in terms of what it is that we need and how contributions can be made,” he said. “But at this point, we are not asking for that level of support, but that will be forthcoming.”

Benton said it identified three phases for the future of Freedom Center.

“The first is that we are in the process of stabilization. We’re trying to get the building to be safe and sound to be able to have meetings and those types of things … to be able to have safe access to the building,” he said. “We would also like to restore the Freedom Center to a quality facility that would maintain the basic character of the building. … Then more of a long-term plan that we have for the facility is the construction of a new Oklahoma City

Freedom Center has sat vacant for almost a decade, but a new board of directors has plans to repair the building. | Photo Alexa Ace

Clara Luper Civil Rights Center that would be constructed at a museumcaliber type of facility.”

The new building would be an annex of approximately 8,000-10,000 square feet next to the existing building.

“We have secured the services on a pro bono basis of an architecture group to develop a site plan and some preliminary type of rendering to provide for us and cost estimates. We have offered the proposal to the mayor and city council to be included in the MAPS 4 projects,” he said. “We’re asking folks to go to the mayor and city council … to support the concept for the Clara Luper Civil Rights Center.”

Hildreth said the organization hopes to open the building for the general public to enjoy and to become a place of education.

“What has happened is students do not learn that much about black history in the school system at all; as a matter of fact, it’s not part of the curriculum.

So it is up to us to make sure that our community is aware of our history,” she said. “We have an obligation to continue to preach about where we’ve come. If you don’t know where you’ve come from, you have no direction of where you’re going. That’s the general idea; we must make sure our young people are aware of the struggle.”

When Benton was asked to lead the revitalization efforts, he felt honored and excited. Having worked in the nonprofit sector for years, being involved and leading various multicultural organizations and driving past Freedom Center often, it felt meant to be, professionally and personally.

“The property is one of the most significant, important things that we could observe and celebrate and make permanent in our community,” he said.

“It’s something that is uniquely historic that we have not told a good story of here in Oklahoma City. [Clara Luper Civil Rights Center] would be the first civil rights museum in Oklahoma. … It is an opportunity for us in Oklahoma City to recognize that uniqueness that as a community.”

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chicken

friedNEWS

Rank behavior

Despite the all-encompassing name U.S. News & World Report, the only thing most people know about the publication is its annual university rankings.

The magazine announced last week that University of Oklahoma will be removed from a variety of its rankings including best colleges, best values and top public universities following a report from OU Daily that the university intentionally inflated its alumni giving numbers since 1999, according to Inside Higher Ed. The university reported to U.S. News & World Report that its alumni giving rate for 2015-2016 and 2016-2017 was 13.8 percent, but in actuality, it was 7 percent over those fiscal years, according to OU Daily. The alumni giving rate factors in 5 percent for U.S. News & World Report’s rubric for determining its “Best Colleges” list, where OU celebrated in 2017 the first time it cracked the top 100 before falling to 124 in 2018. It will be removed from the magazine’s listing for the upcoming cycle.

The inflation of the university’s alumni giving rate took place during former OU President David Boren’s tenure and was reported under James Gallogly’s administration, which represents one of the few honest and non-shady moves to happen during Gallogly’s brief 10-month time in charge of the university.

Inside Higher Ed confirms that OU intentionally tried to deceive the magazine by inflating the giving statistics, and it was not an accidental mistake. You know, like those accidents that last for nearly 20 years that are so common.

U.S. News & World Report routinely penalizes schools for inaccurate data, and Inside Higher Ed highlights seven such instances over the last decade, but OU appears to be the only one on the list intentionally providing false information.

It would make more sense had the university not realized their alumni giving rate was nearly half of what it reported to U.S. News & World Report because that would better explain the fact that it was losing $36 million per year and shouldering $1 billion in debt when Gallogly took his post.

Sutton warning

Oklahoma’s weather the past few weeks has been pretty crazy. Well, it is always kind of crazy, but it has been the kind of crazy that makes meteorologists pant through potential tornado reports on live TV. Thankfully, many of the state’s meteorologists have been in Oklahoma long enough to learn from past mistakes and know what kind of things will help people take severe weather seriously. Emily Sutton remembers that nearly half of the people who died because of flooding in 2013 were Spanish speakers.

So being a great professional meteorologist dedicated to saving as many lives as possible, she invited two Spanishspeaking KFOR employees help translate a weather forecast via Facebook Live. It is only fair we all panic together.

While the video’s chat was mostly filled with positive messages commending Sutton, it was not long before the racists logged on to tell people to “learn English.” One unlucky and probably unhappy man took to Emily’s Facebook page to share his thoughts.

“I did… favor Emily Sutton as a weather forecaster .. however, I saw the broadcast using a translator .. Mexican language … I remind one and all … this is the Untied States of America… I am offended that KFOR overtly shoved the America English aside to favor the

foreign language presentation.. this is America,” Richard Weathers wrote – maybe while on Ambien?

We at Chicken-Fried News are more frustrated by this sensitive snowflake’s complete assassination of basic “America English” spelling, grammar and use of punctuation. Also, the “Untied” States does not have an official language and is actually one of the most linguistically diverse countries in the world. Why anyone would want this country to get dumbed down to one language is beyond us.

Sutton explained why they used translators and invited him to just not watch.

“Also - it’s not American, we speak English.

Art-of-theState Coverage When covering major festivals like deadCenter Film, we’re all-in.

OKG remains the comprehensive “go-to” for your local arts event “to-do” list.

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People from Mexico don’t speak Mexican - they speak Spanish. Native Americans had the founding language in America. You should try traveling and experiencing another culture to open your horizons. You will find that we are all humans. Be kind to each other. Don’t be a Richard,” she wrote before dropping the proverbial mic.

Laverne, squirrelly

After a powerful tornado bypassed the Oklahoma panhandle town of Laverne on May 23, KFOR chief meteorologist Mike Morgan used strikingly unscientific language to describe the event.

"Truly a miracle," Morgan said. "Our prayers are answered for Laverne."

KFOR reported that the same storm destroyed at least three other houses in nearby communities. We hate to criticize anyone with a direct line to the Big Kahuna, especially during storm season, but for future reference, “Merciful God, please spare the town of Laverne (estimated population 1,380) and all the persons and property within its lawfully outlined city limits amen,” seems like a needlessly specific prayer if you ask us.

Maybe God is simply such a huge fan

of Orange Is the New Black actress Laverne Cox they could not bring themselves to destroy anything bearing her name.

Or, as less spiritually minded meteorologists have pointed out, an abnormally warm air mass over the Arctic Ocean and Alaska linked to humancaused climate change is exacerbating severe weather and creating an unusually harmful storm season.

"It makes all kinds of sense that the warm temperatures near Alaska, related to the low ice cover driven largely by global warming, must be boosting that [Alaskan] ridge, which in turn drives the downstream trough over the Western states that has caused late-season heavy rains in California, snow in Denver, and multiple pulses of extreme weather plowing through the Midwest," Woods Hole Research Center senior scientist Jennifer Francis told CBS News. “These are exactly the types of long-lived patterns we expect to see happen more often as the Arctic warms and melts rapidly."

Perhaps we should reconsider what we call an “act of God.”

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Hesburgh offers a unique glimpse at more than fifty years of American history as seen through the eyes of educator, civil rights champion, activist , and long-time president of the University of Notre Dame, Theordore Hesburgh.

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Anytime brunch

Chae Cafe & Eatery vastly improves on the food in its departure from the All About Cha chain.

By Jacob Threadgill

Chae Cafe & Eatery 7300 N. Western Ave. facebook.com/chaeokc | 405-840-7725 WHAT WORKS: The short rib Benedict and poke are distinct and delicious.

WHAT NEEDS WORK: The menu says multiple waffles, but only one came with the order.

TIP: Order extra dressing with the ramen salad.

The proliferation of social media and millennials hitting their post-grad years with spending cash no doubt played a role in the second wave of brunch the past decade — from continental buffets and menus with clear dilatations between lunch and breakfast items to crossover Frankenfoods made with locally sourced ingredients designed to get Instagram likes.

If the elevation of brunch from a meal reserved only for holidays or a postchurch outing represents the second wave of brunch, Chae Cafe & Eatery, 7300 N. Western Ave., is ushering in the third wave with the ability to get brunch seven days a week until 10 p.m.

Chae Cafe opened in the second half of 2018 when owner Daniel Chae took his franchise All About Cha location independent by bringing menu items from Chae Modern Korean that served its final meal earlier that year.

Chae’s footprint has consolidated as Brioche French toast at Chae Cafe & Eatery | Photo Jacob Threadgill

he sold his stake in Ur/Bun to chef Vuong Nguyen, who developed the menu at Chae Modern Korean, but the restaurant’s legacy continues at the cafe with dishes like short rib Benedict, a cheddar biscuit with kimchi pork belly gravy and DMZ Waffle, which tops a waffle with fried chicken and more of the pork belly gravy.

The interior at Chae Cafe is basically the same as it was as All About Cha with a fresh coat of blue paint, but the food is on an elevated level and the coffee and tea make a commitment to organic and local providers.

Chae Cafe’s version of poke takes the popular dish that is a mash-up of Japanese and Hawaiian flavors and adds a Korean twist.

I was excited to see it using KLLR Coffee, which is my favorite local coffee roaster. I am a fan of its Café con miel, which has nice notes of honey and cinnamon.

As Chae Cafe gets close to completing a year in business, it has already made some menu additions, like adding the ever-popular iron bibimbap from Chae Modern Korean (and briefly Ur/Bun) to its menu, which is great news for the many

fans of the crispy rice dish with vegetables, egg and choice of protein. It was one of the most popular dishes at the former restaurant and earned many high remarks from Yelp reviews at Chae Cafe.

I really enjoy the accessibility of Chae Cafe. Whereas the previous restaurant required reservations on the weekend and had a higher price point, everything on the cafe’s menu is under $15, with most of the items around $10.

In-house baked brioche bread is showcased on French toast and sandwiches like California Roll, which has imitation crab, coleslaw, avocado and cucumber, and the BELT (bacon, egg, lettuce, tomato) as well as its fried chicken.

The heaviest dish on the menu outside of DMZ packs a huge punch in a small package. The potato cakes feature small kimchi potato cakes topped with cheese and bacon cream sauce. Order it to share with someone because it sticks to your ribs.

Chae Cafe’s version of poke takes the popular dish that is a mash-up of Japanese and Hawaiian flavors and adds a Korean twist. You can get marinated tuna or salmon, but Chae adds a twist by offering bulgogi (spicy marinated beef) or dakgalbi (spicy marinated chicken). The bowl of protein, rice and a healthy portion of vegetables is topped with Chae sauce, which is one of my favorites. The spicy and savory chili paste gochujang is mixed with other ingredients to temper the spice and bring out the savory aspects. It is one of my favorite interpretations of poke in the city.

A pair of recent visits to Chae Cafe highlighted its strengths and a few inconsistencies. The short rib Benedict has been a home run from opening until now, and the Benedict is also available with ham, avocado, tofu or shrimp.

My wife ordered a chicken Caesar wrap, but it was delivered without chicken. Of course, they rectified the matter, but it seems like the folks behind

Ramen salad is a new item on the Chae Cafe & Eatery menu. | Photo Jacob Threadgill

the front counter have a lot on their plate. Not only are they taking orders, they are baristas and serve as expediters from the kitchen, adding sauces and sides to plates before bringing them to your table.

I ordered the waffles — at least that what it says on the menu. It says waffles plural, but I only received one waffle with fruit. Social media photos show the order with multiple waffles. I do not know if this is a recent change or the kitchen came up short; I definitely left that meal a little hungry.

A subsequent trip went much smoother. I tried a new item on the menu: ramen salad. It features chilled ramen on top of lettuce with three fried shrimp, edamame, cucumber, carrots, pickled onion, sweet peppers and avocado. It was a fun dish that was a perfect lunch and not too heavy. My only tip is to ask for a side of its sesame dressing. The noodles were dressed, but I felt it needed a little extra after mixing everything together.

I also tried the brioche French toast, which was solid but not as crispy as I would have liked. Between waffle(s?), French toast and pancakes, I recommend the pancakes.

The atmosphere is relaxed with plenty of students studying and families enjoying a casual meal.

There are trips to Chae Cafe that would lead me to rank it as one of my favorite casual, counter-service restaurants in the city and other trips that are a little inconsistent. Even at its most inconsistent, it is still a vast improvement from the food from All About Cha, and I look forward to being a regular customer at Chae Cafe.

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EAT & DRINK

WE NEED YOUR HELP!

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The new bar at Red Rooster | Photo Alexa Ace

New hen

Red Rooster makes a leap from dive bar to a full-service cocktail lounge with a local and organic menu. By Jacob Threadgill

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Red Rooster has existed on the corner of Walker Avenue and 30th Street since 1937, but its transformation into a fullservice restaurant focused on organic and local ingredients from its previous life as a dingy dive bar is as clear as the light pouring in through its new large front windows.

Well, the glass is new, but the space for the windows was there; it was just boarded up and bricked over in the intervening decades.

“We didn’t realize there was space for windows until we saw old pictures,” said Red Rooster co-owner Andrea Koester, whose Venerable Concepts also includes nearby Holey Rollers with partner Josh Gautreaux, John Otjen and chef Timothy Mort.

Red Rooster closed late last year after serving The Paseo Arts District as a smoke-filled beer bar without a kitchen for decades. Property owner Joy Reed Belt approached Koester and Gautreaux about taking over the lease. They agreed after sitting and having a beer in the old space on the contingency that they’d be able to get a liquor license.

The building was re-zoned for liquor service, which allows the space to fulfill its historic potential. It preserved its 1930s ambiance by keeping the space’s original ceiling, floor and brick wall and other aesthetic choices like vintage mirrors and a giant wood bar — if Oklahoma’s 1930s alcohol laws allowed for liquor by the glass service.

“We did our research on what [the Red Rooster] used to be when it first opened,” Koester said. “It was a bar and grill and one point, more of a restaurant, and it was kind of an ice cream

shop. … We decided to bring it back to what 1937 would be like with classic cocktails but still have the neighborhood bar feel.”

Gautreaux and his brother oversaw the renovation process, which included chipping away plaster to expose brick, except for one portion on the dining room’s back wall that keeps an original Red Rooster painting that serves as the restaurant’s unofficial mascot.

“The original plan was to remove the rooster, but [Gautreaux] kept not wanting to touch it,” Koester said.

“Towards the end of the process, we came in one Sunday to take the rooster down and just couldn’t do it, so we’re left with a rooster that’s not quite centered and kind of random, but it’s all about trying to create a space that acknowledges the history but also brings in new touches.”

The cocktail list includes timeless drinks like Manhattan, mint julep, Sazerac, French 75 and negroni with a group of si x martinis that includes a guide to ordering the ver mout hbased drink.

“I think people would really like martinis if they knew how to order them,” Koester said. “It’s a little intimidating, so we

made a guide to help educate.”

There’s also a section of the cocktail menu featuring contemporary drinks compiled by its bar staff.

All eight of its bar taps pour Oklahoma beers, and its cans and bottles are dominated by craft selections. Koester built on her experience as a wine rep to create a wine list that is affordable but also eclectic.

“I want people to have fun and try things that aren’t your normal grapes,” she said. “I want to educate and show that you can get a great bottle of wine from Greece that costs half as much as a French bottle.”

Red Rooster takes a similar approach with its menu by focusing on small plates and using less popular cuts of meat like dark meat chicken and pork shoulder and passing the savings to the customer.

“Our menu is designed so that you can grab a few different dishes and split them between two people so that you can taste a little bit more,” she said.

Holey Rollers is a vegan bakery, but Koester herself doesn’t strictly follow the diet, preferring to focus on local and grass-fed meats. The menu is evenly split between meat and plantbased options.

It includes a housemade charcuterie board ($14, $24), Hatch red chile smoked chicken wings ($10) with red chiles from New Mexico, smoked lamb sirloin with yogurt dill, spinach and chickpeas ($18) and a pork shoulder braised in gochujang ($14).

Mort builds off his charcuterie training to make a gourmet corn dog that will routinely change on the menu.

The current iteration features housesmoked kielbasa with a blue masa breading ($7).

Its most popular dish is scallion “tacos” with braised gochujang pork and pickled onions ($9).

“We had it listed as scallion pancakes, but we changed it to tacos on the

Red Rooster’s burger is made with local grass-fed beef, caramelized onions, melted cheese and housemade pickles and buns. | Photo Alexa Ace

menu and it quickly became our top seller,” Koester said.

It offers a Rooster burger made with grass-fed beef from BF Farms in Enid prepared using the smash method, topped with an American cheddar blend, caramelized onions, housemade pickles and mustard aioli on a bun baked at Holey Rollers. On Mondays, patrons can get a burger, beer and fries for $10.

WE’RE SOCIAL. Pisco Sour at Red Rooster | Photo Alexa Ace

Koester’s favorite vegetarian dish on the menu is the Buddha Bowl with quinoa, mushrooms, market vegetables, dried apricots and tahini vinaigrette ($10), followed by the grit cakes topped with black bean puree, pickled squash and avocado crema ($8). Its pasta dish features Della Terra pasta, basil and local pecan pesto with mushrooms and market vegetables ($12).

The B-MLT sandwich is the vegetarian version of the classic made by smoking Portobello and then tempura-frying it.

“You really get the smoky and crispy effect of bacon, and it’s been pretty popular,” she said.

Koester and her group have expanded from the Holey Rollers food truck to now having two restaurants within walking distance of each other in less than two years.

“I feel like I’ve been working at this for so long, trying to build a restaurant group of our own, and for it to happen so quickly, it is amazing,” she said. “I’m pumped about it and I have such an amazing team.”

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EAT & DRINK

Delectable doughnuts

You can go nuts for doughnuts with these seven bakeries in Oklahoma City. Whether you want gourmet, classic, yeast or cake, they have you covered.

By Jacob Threadgill with photos Gazette / file and provided

Geronimo’s Bakery

Humble Donut Co.

Belle Kitchen

This institution has been around since 1972, and while it has become famous for its eponymous burger that includes a slice of ham, Geronimo’s started as a bakery. You have to act quickly to get its sweet treats because the bakery case is usually sold out by afternoon, but you can get a variety of takes on classics like doughnuts topped with cherries or a Big Texas, which is equivalent to six regular doughnuts.

Found in Orange Leaf, this co-branding opportunity has its first location in Oklahoma City. Watch your mini doughnuts get made right in front of your eyes as the tender cakelike treats get topped with all sorts of sweet toppings — it is hard to beat its classic cinnamon sugar treatment.

The square shape is not the only thing that makes Belle Kitchen’s doughnuts unique. It has interesting frosting flavors like hibiscus and cereal milk in addition to classics like bacon maple and daily specials. Be on the lookout for filled doughnuts like Butterfinger with chocolate crème and candy topping.

1817 N. Martin Luther King Ave. 405-427-5893

5900 W. Memorial Road, Suite D humbledonuts.com | 405-470-4402

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Best Donuts

Social Deck + Dining

Polar Donuts

Hurts Donut Company

It might sounds presumptuous to name your doughnut place as the best, but its product certainly puts Best Donuts in the conversation. Its delicately frosted yeast and cake doughnuts hit all the perfect notes, but it offers a few services that set it apart from the competition. You can order from its drive-thru window, and Best offers personalized messages made out of doughnuts. Just be sure to act quickly because it closes at noon.

This new Uptown 23rd restaurant serves brunch every day and hits home on that theme with a wild blueberry cake doughnut that can be ordered from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. It gets the gourmet treatment and touch — made fresh to order and topped with powdered sugar — but at $3, it is basically the same as a doughnut from Belle Kitchen or Hurts.

This shop routinely makes national lists for serving the best doughnuts in Oklahoma. It offers doughnuts with funny names that are not for the faint of heart, but it backs it up with flavor.

Polar Donuts is also one of the few shops in the metro to offer “spud-nuts,” which are made with dehydrated potato flakes that are more substantial than the traditional sweet treat.

Have you ever wanted to host a 2 a.m. doughnut party after leaving one of the Uptown 23rd Street bars? This chain can satisfy your cravings 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It has an equal selection of cake and yeast doughnuts, all of which have fun toppings that can be an indulgent breakfast of sugar champions or a post-meal dessert.

2320 NW 23rd St. 405-524-1800

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ARTS & CULTURE

COV E R

Lance McDaniel and Stephen Tyler work closely with students in rural areas, offering access to virtual reality technology. | Photo Alexa Ace

Tech boom

As deadCenter Film Festival enters its 19th year, the organization energizes its education initiatives.

By George Lang

For its 19th annual celebration of local, regional, national and world film June 6-9 in downtown Oklahoma City, deadCenter Film Festival selected 140 features and short films. Among the final films announced for this year’s event include director Danny Boyle’s musical fantasy Yesterday, about a world in which the Beatles never existed, and Growing Up George, an OKC Thunder Films production about Thunder forward Paul George that was inspired by the work of Japanese cartoonist and Thunder super-fan Nanae Yamano.

Over nearly two decades, deadCenter Film Festival has screened over 1,600 films, attracted 30,000 film enthusiasts in 2018 and spurred a $5.3 million economic impact for Oklahoma City.

An all-access pass is available for $200, with VIP access packages available for donors of $2,500 or greater. Visit deadcenterfilm.org to purchase passes and access full listings of festival events.

All of this advancement has resulted in national recognition for the festival.

But for executive director Lance McDaniel, some of the most important improvements in the organization surround future filmmakers.

“To me, what has really happened the most in the past year is the technology program,” McDaniel said. “This year, we took it in-house and Stephen Tyler is heading up our technology. The reason that is important is we integrated it into our statewide education program. We took VR to all these rural high schools, and we were amazed at how well they picked it up and bonded to it. It really reshaped how we’re looking at our educa-

tion program and whether we should be doing deeper dives.”

The education program, which began in 2011, brings advanced virtual reality technology into small public schools and provides students with exposure to equipment that is currently or will soon be used in filmmaking. But when McDaniel talks about deeper dives, it involves providing more instruction than the typical onehour class session can allow.

“Those deeper dives could mean going beyond the one-hour creative exercises that deadCenter conducts in small towns like Alva and Fairview and moving into more long-term projects with regional technology centers to provide those students with more hands-on experience,” he said.

McDaniel is banking on making at least a few students in these classes fall in love with filmmaking. By his estimation, five or six students in every class deadCenter visits will enter a professional field that requires some knowledge of video production or related media. He hopes that, by exposing students to cutting-edge technology, there will be greater opportunities for them once they enter the workforce.

For the future filmmakers attending those classes, the cost of entry into making movies is far lower than it was for les enfants terribles of the previous generation. McDaniel said that while he does not expect all of the students he visits to be entering films in deadCenter in the coming decades, he wants them to be aware of the possibilities.

“What’s interesting is that 20 or 30 years ago, you could only make a movie if

you were desperate to do it and leveraged your entire life to get that camera and that 16-millimeter film,” he said. “It was really the Quentin Tarantinos of the world who were making it happen. The access to technology now means that any of us can walk out the door and make a movie on our phones.”

Even in 2019, many parts of Oklahoma have limited access to high-speed internet and computers in classrooms are not always a given. Those community needs and the ambitions of students living in those towns make deadCenter’s education program an important part of the organization’s mission.

“I think it’s important for us to service the entire population and say, ‘Here’s what’s next and this is how you can be a part of it,’” McDaniel said.

And here is what is next: previews and reviews of select films featured in this year’s deadCenter Film Festival, with insights and interviews by Oklahoma Gazette staff.

Visit deadcenterfilm.org.

Arrows of Outrageous Fortune

Arrows — which stars ridiculously likable local comedian Alex Sanchez as Henry, a directionless millennial who inherits a large house and lot of trouble from his estranged father (Ben Hall) — seems variously inspired, if only for a scene or two, by everything from Clerks and The Puffy Chair to films by John Waters and David Lynch and Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, but it bears the most resemblance to Reece’s previous release, the Ingmar Bergman-inspired horror film Strike, Dear Mistress, and Cure His Heart.

Discussing Strike, Dear Mistress, which premiered at Austin’s Fantastic Fest, with Oklahoma Gazette last year, Reece said “Horror is really one of those genres where you can do whatever you want.” Apparently, for Reece, so is comedy.

Anchored (until it decidedly is not) by sympathetic performances by Sanchez, Mary Buss (as grieving but not forgiving ex-wife Gerlinde Arrow) and Cate Jones (as mistress Evelyn Gray), Arrows moves with the dream logic of long-form improv comedy and, with considerable overlap, will probably confuse at least as many people as it delights. By the way, the heavy-handed Hamlet references (Henry seems to be actually listening to a recording of the play as he drives to the hospital to see his father) appear to exist solely to troll the audience, which could possibly be said of the film itself. While some will undoubtedly leave the theater in tears of laughter, others will probably be left asking, “Was that some kind of joke?”

— Jeremy Martin

The Art of Self Defense

5:30 p.m. Thursday 7:15 p.m. Saturday Harkins Theatres Bricktown 16 150 E. Reno Ave. In passing along the link to a review copy of Arrows of Outrageous Fortune, OKC writer-director Mickey Reece described his latest film using words few critics would probably think to write.

“It’s just a traditional American comedy,” wrote Reece in a Facebook message, “simply put on this earth for folks to laugh and have a good time.”

The primary question for a comedy is, traditionally, Is it funny? In this case, the answer depends on another question — to quote Joe Pesci’s character in Goodfellas, “Funny how?” If you’re talking in terms of LOLs delivered, the answer is largely contingent on your preference for lowbudget left-field experimentation over carefully polished setups and punchlines.

If you mean “funny” like the way a bluecheese-stuffed olive might taste if you expected to bite into a maraschino cherry, the answer is resoundingly, “Yes.”

8 p.m. Thursday Oklahoma City Museum of Art 415 Couch Drive Casey Davies transforms from a timid, insecure accountant to an unapologetically alpha male in The Art of SelfDefense. Touching on themes of toxic masculinity, misogyny and manipulation, writer/director Riley Stearns creates a dark comedy with hints of surrealism in his sophomore film.

Davies (Jesse Eisenberg) begins the film polite and quiet, with a tendency to sits on his hands, constantly apologize to his Daschund and let people walk all over continued on page 20

O KG A Z E T T E . C O M | J U N E 5 , 2 0 1 9

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ARTS & CULTURE continued from page 19

COV E R

him. He is unable to relate to his coworker bros’ break room talks of sex, pranks and push-ups and instead gets mocked before retreating to his desk.

After getting beaten and almost killed, he begins to look for ways to protect himself, be more masculine and stand up for himself. He tries to buy a gun but stumbles into a karate dojo, where he meets Sensei (Alessandro Nivola).

Casey begins taking classes and becomes devoted to karate, so much so that he begins to neglect his job. His quest to “become what intimidates [him]” makes him a natural at karate, but outside the dojo, he still feels less than a man. So Sensei takes him under his wing, getting him to ditch adult contemporary for metal music and French for German. “Everything must be as masculine as possible,” he tells Casey.

Throughout the film, Sensei’s macho bravado pushes Casey to become more brash and assertive. But it makes life tough for Anna (Imogen Poots), the only female and one of the dojo’s first students. While she is better than her male peers, she is never awarded a black belt because Sensei equates femininity with weakness. Sensei constantly reminds her she is naturally weaker as a woman, at one point even realizing that “her being a woman will prevent her from ever becoming a man.”

The film becomes more and more absurdist as it goes on, slowly revealing more sinister sides of the dojo. As Casey transforms his behavior to match the feeling he has while in the dojo, he gets admitted to night class, tougher, more violent sessions where things really get dark. The film’s ending is somewhat jarring, with Casey’s determination to become an alpha culminating in a shocking but humorous finale.

Witty one-liners are sprinkled abundantly throughout the movie, which intentionally procures somewhat monotone deliveries from the actors. Though not all jokes land and not everything set forth pays off — the film’s message is murky at best — The Art of Self-Defense presents an engaging character study of what it means to be masculine. — Miguel Rios

Red Dog

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8 p.m. Friday Oklahoma City Museum of Art 415 Couch Drive 7:15 p.m. Sunday Harkins Theatres Bricktown 16 150 E. Reno Ave. Luke Dick is an award-winning songwriter with credits writing for major musicians like Miranda Lambert and Eric Church. Dick is also a member of new wave punk band Republican Hair.

Before any of this, he was an adjunct philosophy teacher in New York. Now, he can cross “documentary director” off his bucket list.

Dick is married with two children, but his family was not always so conventional. He spent his toddler years in Oklahoma’s most notorious strip bar, Red Dog Saloon. Eventually, he learned his mother, Kim Kassen, was not just a bartender there; she was a stripper.

Dick’s documentary, Red Dog, chronicles the unfiltered, outrageous stories Kassen told her son. With interviews with fascinating key characters that shaped his early life, amusingly effective animations and a soundtrack by Dick himself, Red Dog unfolds a brutally honest narrative all about family and dysfunction.

Kassen’s friends — bouncers, patrons and fellow strippers — became their family. Her best friend, Nasty Cathy, was Dick’s “aunt,” and one of the bouncers/ dope dealers was “Uncle Rick.” All of Kassen’s husbands were affiliated with Red Dog in some way, and Dick learned to call two of them “dad.” In his own interviews, it is easy to tell familial relationships were important for young Dick.

The cast of characters includes the current Red Dog manager, some of Kassen’s husbands, Nasty Cathy’s son and Tiny, the dance contest-winning bouncer who got the job by knocking out the previous bouncer. Every character is incredibly candid, which makes them likeable and relatable. However, Kassen is the star of the show. Her nononsense attitude and habit of reaching for a cigarette after an emotional anecdote makes the audience feel like they know her well.

The animations, interlaced between interviews, bring the characters’ memories to life. Replete with exaggerated

features and fun sound effects, they also add more levity to the film, which is humorous but can get emotional at times.

Most of the subjects characterize Red Dog as a place of sin, full of sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll. They have regrets, but they also recount happy memories and describe their relationships as a family of outcasts with a lot of love. The film focuses on this, humanizing the characters despite their admitted flaws and shortfalls and avoiding any judgment.

Some interviews might be inconsistent, with lighting and audio suffering in some shots, but clever animations, tactful editing, great interviews and Dick’s soundtrack encapsulate an interesting point in time for one of OKC’s most infamous sinful destinations.

— Miguel Rios

Who Let the Dogs Out

with interviews in the Bahamas, London, Philadelphia, Florida, Michigan and Seattle to track the history of the song.

Writers in the middle of the copyright dispute actually intended for the chorus to be a feminist anthem meant to castigate misogynistic “dogs.”

Sisto’s research traces the origins of the song well before the legal precedent, first to a high school rapper in Jacksonville in 1992 and then to a Michigan high school football team that used it en route to a state championship in 1990, which opens Pandora’s box.

There are numerous newspaper and video accounts of the phrase and signature “woofs” being used in association with sporting events, including Edmond Memorial High School in 1995 and a school in Austin in the late 1980s.

“Everything you say to everyone you meet somehow carries,” says an interview subject in Michigan. “We do borrow, and it’s OK. It’s no imitation. It’s the authenticity of creativity, and it comes from a creative place. It’s wonderful to think how close we are.”

The documentary checks in just under an hour — not including credits — and is a surprisingly interesting and succinct film that asks deeper questions than the subject matter would have led you to think would be there. — Jacob Threadgill

Bluebird 11 a.m. Saturday 2:30 p.m. Sunday Harkins Theatres Bricktown 16 150 E. Reno Ave. On first glance, the 2000 Baha Men hit “Who Let the Dogs Out?” could not be more superficial. Half the song is the eponymous phrase with woof noises. It is an anthem many people who lived through the era would probably choose to forget and certainly not something people would think could lend itself to a compelling hourlong documentary, yet here we are.

Director Brent Hodge’s Who Let the Dogs Out follows New York-based artist and self-described “Who Let the Dogs Out” expert Ben Sisto and intercuts interviews and footage of him hosting a popular live show of the same name that details the history behind the song.

Like many hit songs, “Who Let the Dogs Out?” has been the subject of a few legal battles over copyright and ownership, but Sisto’s research shows that the phrase and chant in question actually dates back farther than previously thought and brings up larger metaphysical questions of collective consciousness.

The song was a hit in the Caribbean before Baha Men, complete with a new younger lineup (kind of like the Ricky Martin teen band Menudo) and the producer that catapulted Hanson, made it ubiquitous in the year 2000.

The documentary spans the globe

9:30 p.m. Saturday The Devon Lawn Myriad Botanical Gardens 301 W. Reno Ave.

There’s nothing like a good origin story, and Nashville’s Bluebird Cafe has been the launching point for many future stars including Faith Hill, Garth Brooks and Taylor Swift.

Now, The Bluebird Cafe gets its own origin story with a documentary directed by Brian LoSchiavo and full of interviews and performances by stars such as Hill, Brooks, Swift, Vince Gill, Jason Isbell, Steve Earle, Tricia Yearwood and Kacey Musgraves, but its best moments highlight Bluebird’s ability to showcase the writer behind a hit song.

One of its first performances is from Don Schlitz, a name most people don’t know, but they definitely know his song

“The Gambler,” which was popularized

by Kenny Rogers and highlights the unique setup of Bluebird, which allows songwriters to add their inflection and motivation to the song that the star performer might do differently.

The documentary’s best moments showcase the history of Bluebird, which went from a former pool hall in a small suburban shopping center to becoming the place where songwriters can become famous and providing big breaks for aspiring performers, which sometimes include the cafe’s own staff.

Former Bluebird bartender Mark Irwin got his break as a songwriter with Alan Jackson’s No. 1 hit “Here in the Real World” while he still worked at the cafe.

Bluebird offers open-call auditions, and the documentary interviews a few up-and-coming artists but doesn’t follow through with their performance or life once they advance past the opening stage.

Bluebird is full of fun behind-thescenes stories like Brooks’ big break, which came after every record label in town turned down the Oklahoma native.

The final quarter of the movie details the impact of the network television show Nashville, which went to painstaking effort to recreate the cafe on the show.

The documentary is full of Nashville star power waxing poetic about the intrinsic connection of the performer and intimate audience setup, but it lacks any real conflict. Its final scenes mention the fact that the area around Bluebird is becoming more gentrified and developed and that its adjacent building could be eyed by developers at any moment but doesn’t talk to anyone with the city or the building’s owner to flesh out the future of the cafe.

Die-hard country fans are probably at least aware of Bluebird’s history, but they can enjoy its many intimate performances. The documentary doesn’t offer much tension to keep a casual or uninitiated country fan interested.

— Jacob Threadgill

American Heretics: The Politics of the Gospel

2 p.m. Saturday Harkins Theatres Bricktown 16 150 E. Reno Ave. 2 p.m. Sunday Oklahoma City Museum of Art 415 Couch Drive

In 1985, when Dr. Robin Meyers expressed interest in starting a liberal church in Oklahoma City, he was told by one person not to use the word “liberal” to describe the church. When he asked what word he should use instead, he was told, “conservative.”

This is the story told in Catherine and Jeanine Butler’s American Heretics: The Politics of the Gospel, which focuses largely on Mayflower Congregational United Church of Christ and the efforts of Meyers and associate pastor Lori Walke to provide liberals living in a hard-right community with a church that thinks and behaves progressively.

The film also interviews Walke’s husband, State Rep. Collin Walke, D-Oklahoma City, showing his efforts to bring more diversity to the state Legislature’s chaplain program, and spends time with Carlton Pearson, the former leader of Higher Dimensions Family Church in Tulsa who, after publicly doubting the existence of hell, was forced out of leadership and went on to serve as a minister at Tulsa’s All Souls Unitarian Church.

“Originally, it was just going to be a film about Mayflower, and it expanded to some other things like All Souls and the politics of the gospel and so forth,” Meyers said. “But it started out with this intrigue about how is it that a progressive church makes it in Oklahoma.”

American Heretics is generous in its depiction of Oklahoma but does not flinch when showing the hard battles waged on behalf of the state’s progressive Christian community. It also serves as a quick lesson, thanks to former Phillips Theological Seminary professor Bernard Brandon Scott, in how the New Testament’s gospels were written — mostly four centuries after the last apostle died — and documents the process by which Mayflower became a sanctuary church for undocumented immigrants.

For Walke, who grew up in the Southern Baptist tradition, participating in American Heretics meant laying bare the theological differences she has with her close family members. But in the end, Walke felt that being part of the documentary was fulfilling some of her mission as a free-thinking member of the clergy.

“It was a little scary to ask my family to be part of this film, and also I felt it to be a duty,” Walke said. “I was obligated to tell this story because it is the story of so many people here in Oklahoma. These are folks who have been de-churched, who do not have the voice or the volume of the Religious Right or the Moral Majority.” — George Lang

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O KG S H O P

ARTS & CULTURE

Minimal pair

Solare provides a minimalist approach to body and mind care through its 16th Street Plaza District storefront. By Jo Light

In this bright, 16th Street Plaza District shop, the smells of natural oils, earthy incense and homemade candles spice the air. Simple shelves display chic products like organic balms, modern jewelry and woven sandals. A stately black-andwhite photograph of the artist Georgia O’Keeffe hangs on one wall.

Solare, 1757 NW 16th St., hopes to emulate the beloved painter’s sensibilities through a similar spirit of independence, minimalism and intentional living. The store is a spare, light-filled apothecary carrying female-made and female-designed beauty and home goods as well as limited apparel and accessories.

Taking many of its cues from the art and philosophy of Georgia O’Keeffe, Solare carries products to enrich the mind, body and spirit. | Photo Alexa Ace

Shop owners Angela Hodgkinson and Blakely Hiner both operated separate businesses nearby in the alleyway down the block, just inside the entrance to Plaza Walls, which is where they met and realized they had overlapping interests.

Hodgkinson’s place was called Reference Point and was directly across from Hiner’s business, Bison Shop, in the narrow Plaza Alley suites hallway. Bison

Shop featured primarily vintage goods, while Reference Point focused on Hodgkinson’s love of modern fine jewelry.

“It was kind of slow back in the alley,” Hiner said. “So we would always end up in one another’s space.”

They pointed to some big life shifts, including the 2016 election, as motivations to share the same storefront in early 2017. They continued to run their separate brands for several months before truly combining in October 2017.

“We had pretty distinct tastes at that point,” Hodgkinson said in agreement.

“But we had a lot of overlap. And we also had a lot of overlap in our personal interests, with art and design. Georgia O’Keeffe is our muse, who you can see. We were both really interested in Georgia and the life that she created for herself.”

They also both developed a love for natural beauty care and decided to focus on an apothecary approach to the shop, giving them a new, slightly more elevated retail direction.

Now they choose new products together, and everything reflects their shared tastes and vision.

They relocated to their new Plazafront location in November 2018.

They are aware of today’s political and social climates and purposefully feature female artisans. Everything in the shop, except for a few blankets, is made or designed by women.

“We’re really focusing on building up women and supporting women,” Hodgkinson said. “And it seems really important to us, just as business owners, to create a space that we are following

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through with what we believe in.”

The store is also founded on ideals of living what Hodgkinson called “an easy life,” or a life focused on simple, beautiful, essential personal care. It openly embraces the feminine, but its products are for everyone.

“We’re focused on selfcare and wellness,” Ho d g k i n s o n said.

“Natural, apothecary-type items [are] the heart of the shop. But beyond that, sustainability is really important to us.”

Hiner pointed out that many of the store’s products are multifunctional.

“Like the Everyday Oil; you can literally use it head to toe,” Hiner said. She gestured to Hodgkinson. “Everyone can benefit from a lot of what we sell, and they have more than one use to reduce your footprint, reduce the items you think you need.”

The Everyday Oil is a plant-based, unisex, multipurpose oil made in North Carolina. Solare is one of only a handful of shops in Oklahoma that carries it.

Social media and online networking has allowed Hiner and Hodgkinson to join a community of like-minded business owners, which is how they often find new products for the store. They likened it to modern-day word-of-mouth.

Along with products like face creams and oils, the store carries natural wellness tools. Its delicate jade and rose quartz facial rollers, along with soft-bristled body and face brushes, are popular.

On another shelf, small jars of Austin-made Serota’s Underarm Balm promise natural deodorant protection for men and women.

The store also features a line of inhouse candles, which Hodgkinson makes herself. Hiner called the line their “baby.” The signature scent is rose patchouli, and the candles are made with soy wax, organic beeswax and natural oils.

“The blend gives us certain properties that we appreciate, but it also helps to purify the air,” Hodgkinson said. “So it actually cleans the air as it burns

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from left Angela Hodgkinson and Blakely Hiner are co-owners of Solare. | Photo Alexa Ace

instead of putting more impurities into your household.”

They are making their own line of facial and body products for release later this year.

Another exclusive item comes from Brooklyn ceramicist Nancy Kwon, who makes the store’s custom stoneware incense bowls in clean, simple lines.

The jewelry cases include delicate rings

by Michelle Hisae Meronek, made from recycled metals and reclaimed diamonds.

Solare fosters community through regular events. They held a traditional Japanese tea ceremony on May 25, led

by Japanese-born (now Oklahomabased) Yumie Farringer. Kwon crafted tea bowls for the ticketed event.

The store also incorporates To Be Magnetic meet and greet events into its calendar. The free meetings are part of a larger program from Lacy Phillips that focuses on self-realization techniques and how to manifest goals.

Hodgkinson and Hiner said they are happy to be in Plaza District as it grows and evolves.

“I wouldn’t be able to do what I’m doing here there,” Hiner said. “It just is not as feasible. There’s not the community surrounding local businesses that there is here. We’re very grateful to be here.”

“There’s opportunity,” said Hodgkinson. “And if you have an idea, I really believe in Oklahoma City you can make it happen as long as you have that drive and persistence. And [if] you’re creative at all, you can do it.”

Visit solare-shop.com.

Piece of mind

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ARTISTS SHOW FROM

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Featuring artwork from 20 artists’ in clay, metal, glass, wood and more. www.cmgartgallery.com ¡ 405.256.3465 1104 NW 30th St, Oklahoma City, OK 73118 Thursday – Saturday ¡ 11am – 5pm

SPONSORED PROGRAM 9

9

19th Annual deadCenter Film Festival The 19th annual deadCenter Film Festival kicks off this Thursday and runs through Sunday night. Films will be screened at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, Harkins Bricktown Cinemas, 21c Museum Hotel, Downtown Library, and Myriad Gardens Great Lawn. deadCenter will screen 140 films of the 1,500 films that submitted to the festival, including 22 feature films, 108 short films, and 10 virtual reality films.

From hilarious comedies and thoughtful dramas, to intense documentaries and mind-blowing shorts, deadCenter has films for every possible audience and taste.

All Access passes can be purchased at The Paramount on Film Row for $200 and include priority access to all 140 films and parties throughout the weekend. Individual movie tickets are sold before each screening for $12 each.

DEADCENTERFILM.ORG

Free events include Kid’s Fest and Patrick Patterson Student Film Contest winners at the Downtown Library at 10:00am on Friday and Saturday; the Oklahoma Film + Music Office panel series at ACM@UCO on Saturday, from 10:00am – 5:00pm; Virtual Reality films at the deadCenter Virtual Cinema @ 21c Museum Hotel, Friday through Sunday, 11:00am – 6:00pm; and, the world premiere of a new animated short about Thunder player Paul George on Saturday

night at 9:00pm at Myriad Gardens Great Lawn, followed by the musical documentary Bluebird about the famous songwriting café in Nashville, featuring performances by Garth Brooks, Taylor Swift, Faith Hill, and many more.

Check out this issue of the Gazette for a full schedule and list of films. Movie trailers and additional information are available at www.deadcenterfilm.org.

Follow us on Twitter: @deadCenter Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/deadcenterfilm See us on Instagram: @deadcenterfilm

Getting Social with deadCenter #

dcff19

SPONSORED PROGRAM

narratives features

Frances Ferguson

The Art of Self-Defense

9

• Thursday, June 6, 8:00 PM at Oklahoma City Museum of Art Oscar nominee Jesse Eisenberg stars as a meek man who joins an intense karate dojo after being randomly attacked on the street. This dark, twisted comedy is from director Riley Stearns, who last played deadCenter with the short film, The Cub.

The Bygone

• Saturday, June 8, 4:15 PM at Devon Energy Theater at Harkins Bricktown Cinema • Sunday, June 9, 11:00 AM at Devon Energy Theater at Harkins Bricktown Cinema When a young Rancher falls in love with a Lakota Sioux girl from a nearby reservation, her sudden disappearance sparks a search that uncovers a harrowing past and hints at a dire future.

International Falls

• Saturday, June 8, 3:00 PM at MidFirst Bank at Harkins Bricktown Cinema • Sunday, June 9, 5:15 PM at MidFirst Bank at Harkins Bricktown Cinema Dee is a wife and mom stuck in a boring job and a broken marriage in what feels like the frozen edge of the world: International Falls, Minnesota.

A comedy nerd with a secret dream of getting on stage, she meets Tim, a burned-out touring comedian at a moment of crisis. Now what?

Come As You Are

Go Back to China

Two-time deadcenter award winner Bob Byington returns with another insightful, dry comedy, this time with a female lead played by Kaley Wheless from The Highwaymen. Nick Offerman provides a hilarious narration.

Three young men with disabilities flee for a road trip to a brothel in Montreal that caters to people with special needs, in order to lose their virginity and embrace their independence. Janeane Garofalo and Gabourey Sidibe co-star.

The semi-autobiographical family comedy follows spoiled rich girl, who after blowing through most of her trust fund, is forced by her father to go back to China and work for the family toy factory.

Hosea

Arrows of Outrageous Fortune

Colewell

• Friday, June 7, 6:30 PM at OG&E Theater at Harkins Bricktown Cinema • Saturday, June 8, 6:45 PM at OG&E Theater at Harkins Bricktown Cinema

• Saturday, June 8, 4:15 PM at OG&E Theater at Harkins Bricktown Cinema • Sunday, June 9, 4:00 PM at OG&E Theater at Harkins Bricktown Cinema Set amongst the red clay of Oklahoma, a conflicted woman whose life circumstances have led her down a path of prostitution reunites with her childhood sweetheart who believes he can give her a better life.

Postal

• Saturday, June 8, 8:00 PM at MidFirst Bank Theater at Harkins Bricktown Cinema • Sunday, June 9, 7:45 PM at MidFirst Bank Theater at Harkins Bricktown Cinema A dark comedy based on true events, Postal reimagines the emotional meltdown of Philip Tress, a Jacksonville millennial on the morning his downward spiral began.

• Friday, June 7, 9:15 PM at OG&E Theater at Harkins Bricktown Cinema • Saturday, June 8, 12:00 PM at MidFirst Bank Theater at Harkins Bricktown Cinema

featuring the short film Needles • Thursday, June 6, 5:30 PM at Devon Energy Theater at Harkins Bricktown Cinema • Saturday, June 8, 7:15 PM at Devon Energy at Harkins Bricktown Cinema

deadCenter award winner Mickey Reece returns to deadCenter with another hilarious offbeat comedy about a man who bequeaths his only son, Henry, a mansion filled with insane women.

Home with a View of the Monster

•Friday, June 7, 9:30 PM at Devon Energy Theater at Harkins Bricktown Cinema • Saturday, June 8, 9:30 PM at OG&E Theater at Harkins Bricktown Cinema Altus natives Alex and Todd Greenlee write and direct this tense thriller about a couple who return home early to their vacation rental to discover mysterious clues left behind by their recent guests.

• Saturday June 8, 5:30 PM at MidFirst Bank Theater at Harkins Bricktown Cinema • Sunday, June 9, 2:15 PM at MidFirst Bank Theater at Harkins Bricktown Cinema

• Saturday, June 8, 8:00 PM at Oklahoma City Museum of Art • Sunday, June 9, 12:00 PM at American Fideiity at Harkins Bricktown Cinema Karen Allen stars as a woman facing retirement when the Colewell post office is slated for closure. As she weighs relocating, a young woman causes Nora to reflect on the choices that led her to Colewell.

Yesterday

Sunday, June 9th, 7pm

at OG&E Theatre Harkins Bricktown Cinema

Yesterday, everyone knew The Beatles. Today, only Jack remembers their songs. He’s about to become a very big deal.

The Royal Tenenbaums Pajama Party @ 21c Museum Hotel Friday, June 7, 11:00pm Join us for an official 21c PJ Party and special screening of this Wes Anderson classic hosted

by Ari Tenenbaum himself. Party starts at 11pm, screening starts at midnight. Costumes encouraged!

Essential Info

Full schedule and details can be found at deadcenterfilm.org. There, you can read about each of the 100+ films, screening locations, how to purchase a pass, the latest deadCenter news and more. #dcff19

All-Access Passes

All Access Passes are $200 and may be purchased at deadCenter’s Registration Lounge at The Paramount on Film Row, 701 W. Sheridan Ave., 11 AM - 7 PM through Friday, June 7 and 10 AM - 3 PM Saturday, June 8.

ARTS & CULTURE

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Focused message

Comedian Matt Davis delved into what makes jokes universally funny for his latest tour.

By Jeremy Martin

After touring the U.S. for nearly 20 years, stand-up comic Matt Davis began performing in other countries and realized he was not saying as much as he thought he was.

“I got to a point where I was writing material about stuff that I didn’t feel confident I could say, if that makes sense,” Davis said. “They were my opinions, but they were based on too much conjecture. I just felt like to have something that I genuinely wanted to say, I had to have the challenge of trying to be able to do that material in as diverse an area as possible. Basically, the perspective that’s built by just me working in the US and Canada and a little bit abroad wasn’t enough. I needed to test it against other things.”

Davis stops in Oklahoma City on his BadFamiliar tour 8 p.m. June 14 at The Paramount Room, 701 W. Sheridan Ave. Davis, who visited 30 countries in 13 months on his previous tour, said OKC is one of only three U.S. cities — along with New York, Seattle and Birmingham, Alabama, where his comedy career began — he will visit before he takes BadFamiliar to Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland. His goal is to “build

Stand-up comic Matt Davis brings his BadFamiliar tour to Oklahoma City 8 p.m. June 14 at The Paramount Room. | Photo provided

an hour of comedy that works all over the world … something that is universal without it being stereotype-driven or pandering.” Performing around the world made Davis realize the abundance of “stuff that we see as comedy, we treat as comedy, that is essentially just groupbelonging tests.”

“If you’re trying to make a joke about something and it’s, ‘something, something Beyoncé,’ or ‘something, something NFL football,’” Davis said, “those laugh points, really, are just showing us that we all know what we’re talking about. It’s like you’re playing a referential game, the same way puns work. What makes a pun function is that the person you’re telling the pun to knows both uses of all the words involved in the pun, so it becomes an adherence test to language, to the fact that we know these things. You tell a high level of vocabulary pun to a 7-year-old and they don’t get it because they don’t know those words continued on page 28

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NOMINATION BALLOT

Oklahoma City’s original and longest-running readers’ poll, Best of OKC, is

back for its 35th summer! We need your input in telling us the best our city offers, so nominate your favorites right here or at bestofoklahomacity.com, until Monday, June 17, 2019.

FOOD & DRINK 16. BEST FOOD TRUCK OR FOOD CART (CANNOT HAVE A BRICK-AND-MORTAR) 1.

BEST LOCAL CRAFT BEER

32. BEST DINER 17.

2.

BEST COCKTAIL (AND THE RESTAURANT/BAR THAT SERVES IT)

3.

BEST BREAKFAST

4.

BEST BRUNCH

5.

31. BEST PATIO DINING

BEST MEXICAN RESTAURANT 33. BEST RESTAURANT

18. BEST LATIN RESTAURANT (NOT MEXICAN) 34. BEST CHEF 19. BEST ITALIAN RESTAURANT 35. BEST SERVER (AND THEIR RESTAURANT)

BEST LATE-NIGHT EATS

20. BEST WESTERN EUROPEAN RESTAURANT, NOT ITALIAN (DANISH, ENGLISH, FRENCH, GERMAN, IRISH, SCOTTISH, SPANISH, ETC.)

36. BEST BARTENDER (AND THEIR BAR)

6.

BEST BURGER

21. BEST MEDITERRANEAN RESTAURANT

37. BEST PRE- OR POST- EVENT SPOT

7.

BEST TACO

22. BEST INDIAN RESTAURANT

38. BEST NATIONAL OR REGIONAL RESTAURANT *

8.

BEST SANDWICH SHOP

23. BEST JAPANESE RESTAURANT

9.

BEST BARBECUE

24. BEST CHINESE RESTAURANT

10. BEST PIZZA PLACE

25. BEST THAI RESTAURANT

11.

26. BEST VIETNAMESE RESTAURANT

ARTS, CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT 39. BEST LOCAL COVER BAND

BEST STEAKHOUSE

12. BEST SUSHI

27. BEST NEW RESTAURANT (TO OPEN SINCE 6/1/18)

13. BEST RESTAURANT WITH VEGAN OR VEGETARIAN MENU OPTIONS

28. BEST FINE DINING RESTAURANT

40. BEST LOCAL ORIGINAL BAND OR SINGER (EX: SINGER/SONGWRITER, RAPPER, HIP-HOP GROUP) 41. BEST RADIO PERSONALITY OR TEAM

29. BEST NEIGHBORHOOD BAR

42. BEST PERFORMING ARTS GROUP (EX: THEATER COMPANY, DANCE COMPANY, ORCHESTRAL GROUP)

30. BEST NEW BAR (TO OPEN SINCE 6/1/18)

43. BEST VISUAL ARTIST

14. BEST SEAFOOD 15. BEST DESSERT RESTAURANT, SHOP OR BAKERY

*THIS CATEGORY ALLOWS VOTING FOR NATIONAL ESTABLISHMENTS THAT SUPPORT THE LOCAL ECONOMY.

FOR YOUR BALLOT TO BE COUNTED: + You must fill out at least 30

+ The ballot may NOT be typewritten,

+ Oklahoma Gazette must receive your

+ There cannot be multiple

categories.

ballot (one per envelope) by mail no later than Monday, June 17, 2019.

26 2

JUNE 8 5, 2019 6 | O KG A Z E T T E . C O M

photocopied or hand-delivered. handwritings on the ballot.

+ Make sure your selections are locally owned (unless otherwise noted) and your choices do NOT appear on the ballot more than three times.

+ All contact information must be complete.

44. BEST LOCAL ANNUAL EVENT OR FESTIVAL

60. BEST FINE JEWELRY

76. BEST SPA (NO INJECTIONS USED)

45. BEST CHARITY EVENT

61. BEST THRIFT STORE

77. BEST PLACE TO GET FIT

46. BEST FREE ENTERTAINMENT

62. BEST WOMEN’S BOUTIQUE

78. BEST HEALTH FOOD STORE

47. BEST BAR FOR LIVE MUSIC

63. BEST MEN’S CLOTHING

79. BEST LOCAL HOTEL

48. BEST CONCERT VENUE

64. BEST BICYCLE SHOP

49. BEST PUBLIC ART/MURAL (GIVE INTERSECTION AND DISTRICT)

65. BEST PET-FRIENDLY PATIO 66. BEST NAUGHTY BUSINESS

50. BEST PLACE TO BUY LOCAL ART 67. BEST PLACE FOR CONTINUING EDUCATION 51. BEST ART GALLERY

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ARTS & CULTURE

The Chickasaw Nation Arts & Humanities Division

continued from page 25

CO M E DY

yet. You also can’t translate a pun.

You can’t take a pun in English and make it work in Mandarin, barring a few examples. Generally speaking, you can’t translate it because there’s nothing to translate — it’s just a game that you’re playing. But when you have material that becomes dependent on a very similar game, you also can’t translate that. You can’t translate it, languagewise, from English to Mandarin or from Spanish to German, but you also can’t translate it socially and culturally. So you can’t take that and then do it in Poland to a native Polish audience that happens to know English because they don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. You have to bring them completely up to speed on what you’re talking about for it to be funny, but if the payoff is just essentially for you to wedge in some reference in the same way that you would wedge in a pun, of course, it falls apart. It’s the old ‘If you have to explain it’ thing.”

100 West Muskogee Street - Sulphur, OK

For more information, or to enroll, call the ARTesian Gallery & Studios at (580) 622-8040.

EXPERIENCE FIRST FRIDAY GALLERY WALK Friday, June 7, 2019 • 6-9pm

Live Music: Casey and Minna Food Trucks: BlueJ’s Rollin’ Grill The Big Friendly Craft Beer Bus

ARTS DISTRICT

In the Paseo Art Space at 3022 Paseo Sharon Sudduth Oil portraits, 100 Faces: A Human Kaleidoscope. Exhibit June 7-29 Local and national art, great food, art classes and plenty of shopping!

#FirstFridayPaseo

405.525.2688 • thepaseo.org

CAPITOL INSIDER

News from the Oklahoma Legislative Session

Fridays at 4:44 pm & 6:44 pm Mondays at 6:45 am & 8:45 am

With KGOU’s Dick Pryor & eCapitol’s Shawn Ashley

Complete program schedule at KGOU.org 28

J U N E 5 , 2 0 1 9 | O KG A Z E T T E . C O M

Generally speaking, you can’t translate it because there’s nothing to translate — it’s just a game that you’re playing.

Matt Davis Discovering he could no longer rely on cultural and geographic references for easy laughs made Davis concentrate on the actual message he was delivering to the audience.

“I started becoming more focused on what is being communicated ... what is the subject of the bit,” Davis said. “If that is funny, if that is revealing something, whether it be about my own shortcomings or my own inabilities or my own misconceptions, by building material around that … it can be communicated from place to place, it can be communicated, theoretically, from language to language because what is underneath is fundamentally what is funny.”

While certain topics seem to relate to almost everyone, Davis said he prefers making his act more individual to his own experiences.

“There are the obvious human condition things, right?” Davis said. “You can always talk about, and I don’t, but you can always talk about sex-related things at different levels of taboo. You can always talk about relationship stuff and family things; those things are very universal around the world because you’re touching on the human condition. Things like death, having children, difficulties in relationships, things can be built around those topics always. I don’t touch on that. Mine is more personal narratives … where I’m just kind

of stumbling through these things, so if I’m talking about language, I’m talking about my inability with language and my difficulties with it … or my view of homogeneity in society and that constant push to homogeneity that occurs and how I see that from place to place and what that means to me, and then what I take away from that.”

Davis, who said his shows used to be flagged with content warning signs when he discussed gay marriage in Birmingham, was recently surprised to discover that his admiration for the diversity of cities such as Shanghai, Istanbul, Cape Town, Amsterdam and Toronto has become a controversial topic in the U.S. and other parts of the world.

“When I was talking about that, say, a few years ago, people would just kind of nod along,” Davis said. “People were like, ‘Yeah, sure, the diversity of people in a place is a good thing.’ And it could just be that the thoughts were always there, I’m sure, but the fact that that is a political statement is strange to me. ... In Poland, that’s a very political statement. Certain parts of Germany feel it’s a political statement. Spain definitely does. In Portugal, people didn’t give a shit. They get it. In Cape Town, South Africa, people don’t feel it’s a political statement. You’re just describing the community around them.”

Wherever he performs, Davis said, a common topic for local comics seems to be the superiority of wherever he is, a phenomenon he calls ‘people over there syndrome.’”

“They will make fun of a town that’s outside of the town you’re in to contrast it against, and the people over there are always idiots, right?” Davis said.

“It’s a multi-thousand-year-old trope, but … you’re not really saying anything.

All that you’re doing is saying, ‘We’re not the people over there,’ and then we all cheer and applaud and laugh at this, because, ‘Haha, fuck them. We’re not.

We’re over here. Look how great we are.’ What does that even mean?”

Local comics Justin Keithley and Tyler Spears are scheduled to open.

Tickets are $8. Visit facebook.com/ okccomedy.

Matt Davis 8 p.m. June 14 The Paramount Room 701 W. Sheridan Ave. facebook.com/okccomedy | 405-618-6944 $8

Jump Shot

• Thursday, June 6, 5:30 PM at Oklahoma City Museum of Art • Saturday, June 8, 1:45 PM at OG&E Theater Harkins Bricktown Cinema

Jeffrey Palmers’ Words from a Bear debuted at Sundance to great acclaim and makes its Oklahoma debut at deadCenter. The film offers a profound celebration of N. Scott Momaday’s writing and history and the art of storytelling itself.

Fan favorite NBA player Kenny Sailors from 1943 is finally given his due, sixty years later, as modern NBA giants led by Stephen Curry and Dirk Nowitski discuss his game changing jump shot.

Who Let The Dogs Out

Red Dog

• Saturday, June 8, 11:00 AM at Devon Energy at Harkins Bricktown Cinema • Sunday, June 9, 2:30 PM at American Fidelity at Harkins Bricktown Cinema

• Friday, June 7, 8:00 PM at Oklahoma City Museum of Art • Sunday, June 9, 7:15 PM at Devon Energy at Harkins Bricktown Cinema

“Who Let the Dogs Out” is a song that has transcended generations, and has led Ben Sisto to dedicate eight years exploring and exposing a story steeped in show business, legal battles, female empowerment, artistic integrity, and one very catchy hook.

Grammy winning songwriter Luke Dick revisits his childhood as the son of a stripper at the rowdiest and most popular strip club in Oklahoma City.

Now he’s asking his mom questions about his own childhood - she turns out to be more forthcoming than he ever imagined.

American Heretics: The Politics of the Gospel

• Saturday, June 8, 2:00 PM at American Fidelity at Harkins Bricktown Cinema • Sunday, June 9, 2:00 PM at Oklahoma City Museum of Art Reverends of Mayflower Church featured prominently in this exploration of defiant ministers, congregations, and community leaders that are challenging deeply rooted fundamentalist Christian doctrine in favor of a Gospel of Inclusion.

Faces of the 47th: The Art of Activism

• Thursday, June 6, 8:00 PM at Devon Energy at Harkins Bricktown Cinema • Sunday, June 9, 11:15 AM at OG&E Theater Harkins Bricktown Cinema Director Cacky Poarch returns with another great documentary about art activism in Oklahoma.

Frustrated by Oklahoma’s 47th ranking in overall education funding, artist Sarah Agee decided that the lack of adequate funding for public schools was unacceptable and became an activist through art.

The Push

• Friday, June 7, 6:00 PM at MidFirst Bank at Harkins Bricktown Cinema • Sunday, June 9, 12:30 PM at Gaylord Foundation at Harkins Bricktown Cinema Extreme sports junkie Grant Korgan had it all, then lost it all in a tragic accident. After an intense rehab, he rose up to become the first spinal cord injured athlete to ski to the South Pole.

Jay Myself

• Friday, June 7, 8:30 PM at MidFirst Bank at Harkins Bricktown Cinema • Saturday, June 8, 11:30 AM at American Fidelity Harkins Bricktown Cinema Jay Myself documents the monumental move of renowned photographer and artist, Jay Maisel, who begrudgingly sold his home; the 35,000 square-foot, 100-year-old landmark building in Manhattan known simply as “The Bank.”

Find the full schedule in the glossy insert!

For Sama

• Friday, June 7, 5:30 PM at Oklahoma City Museum of Art • Saturday, June 8, 11:15 AM at OG&E Theater at Harkins Bricktown Cinema Winner of Best Doc and Audience Award at SXSW, For Sama is a feature documentary that tells the astonishing story of a 26-year old female Syrian filmmaker, Waad al-Kateab, who filmed her life in rebel-held Aleppo through 5 years of the Syrian uprising.

Get your tickets today at

Bluebird

• Saturday, June 8, 9:30 PM at The Great Lawn at Myriad Gardens Featuring unforgettable performances by Taylor Swift, Garth Brooks, Vince Gill, Jason Isbell and many more, Bluebird explores the past and present of this accidental landmark, hears the origin stories of music royalty, and follows emerging singer-songwriters as they chase their dreams.

deadcenterfilm.org Metro Technology Centers Preparing for Life

#DCFF19

OKLAHOMA FILM

MUSIC

AmericanFidelity Foundation

9

Free Film Panels @ Academy of Contemporary Music The Oklahoma Film + Music Office hosts their free panel series at ACM@UCO on the Bricktown canal on Saturday, June 8, from 10:00am - 5:00pm. Come hear actors, directors, producers, writers, and crew members explain how they create films and navigate their careers in film and television.

Individual (Rush) Tickets

If available, rush tickets are $12 and can be purchased at each screening before show time, after pass holders have been seated.

Free Screenings

deadCenter offers free screenings Kid’s Fest and an encore screening of Pat Presents Student Film Contest at the Downtown Library Friday and Saturday, starting at 11 AM each day. There is also a free outdoor screening of songwriting documentary Bluebird 9:30 PM Saturday on the Myriad Garden’s Great Lawn. This screening, featuring the world premiere of a new animated short film about Thunder player Paul George, is not to be missed!

Please note that all films screened at deadCenter Film Festival are unrated. Any films shown after 6 PM may have mature themes and are not appropriate for those under the age of 18.

9

• Saturday, June 8, 5:30 PM at Oklahoma City Museum of Art • Sunday, June 9, 1:30 PM at Devon Energy at Harkins Bricktown Cinema

SPONSORED PROGRAM

Words From a Bear

SPONSORED PROGRAM

documentary features

SPONSORED PROGRAM

short film programs

Okie Expat Shorts

Comedy

Homegrown and totally awesome - just how we like them!

• Friday, June 7, 5:30pm Devon Energy Theater at Harkins Bricktown Cinema • Sunday, June 9, 4:15pm Devon Energy Theater at Harkins Bricktown Cinema

Seven Okies slaying it outside their home state bring their films back home!

• Saturday, June 8, 1:30pm Devon Energy Theater at Harkins Bricktown Cinema • Sunday June 9, 1:30pm OG&E Theater at Harkins Bricktown Cinema

Ten films guaranteed to produce the giggles.

• Thursday, June 6, 6:00pm OG&E Theater at Harkins Bricktown Cinema • Sunday, June 9, 7:30pm American Fidelity Theater at Harkins Bricktown Cinema

Love, Sex, & Death Turbo Charged

dC After Dark

Unheard Voices

Okie Shorts

Nine films taking Love, Sex, & Death to the next level.

• Friday, June 7, 8:45 PM American Fidelity Theater at Harkins Bricktown Cinema • Sunday, June 9, 8:30 PM Gaylord Foundation Theater at Harkins Bricktown Cinema

The Protagonists Seven different shorts, seven different perspectives.

• Saturday, June 8, 5:15 PM at Gaylord Foundation Theater at Harkins Bricktown Cinema • Sunday, June 9, 5:00 PM at American Fidelity Theater at Harkins Bricktown Cinema

Ninety-one minutes for adult eyes only.

• Thursday, June 6, 8:30 PM OG&E Theater at Harkins Bricktown Cinema • Saturday, June 8, 8:15 PM Gaylord Foundation at Harkins Bricktown Cinema

Not So Short Shorts Four films worth every extra minute.

• Saturday, June 8, 12:00 PM at Gaylord Foundation Theater at Harkins Bricktown Cinema • Sunday, June 9, 5:45 PM at Gaylord Foundation Theater at Harkins Bricktown Cinema

Eight stories that need to be seen and heard.

• Saturday, June 8, 2:30 PM Gaylord Foundation Theater at Harkins Bricktown Cinema • Sunday, June 9, 11:45 AM MidFirst Bank Theater at Harkins Bricktown Cinema

Kids’ Fest Eight short films the whole family will enjoy.

• Friday, June 7, 11:00 AM at Ronald J. Norick Downtown Library • Saturday, June 8, 11:00 AM at Ronald J. Norick Downtown Library

Love, Sex, & Death Check, check, & check. We got them all here!

• Friday, June 7, 6:15pm American Fidelty Theater at Harkins Bricktown Cinema • Saturday, June 8, 7:45pm American Fidelty Theater at Harkins Bricktown Cinema

Guns & Goodbyes Seven stories focused on letting go... and a little gunfire.

• Saturday, June 8, 4:45 PM at American Fidelity Theater at Harkins Bricktown Cinema • Sunday, June 9, 3:00 PM at Gaylord Foundation Theater at Harkins Bricktown Cinema

Music Videos dC leaps into the music with these fourteen awesome music videos.

• Friday, June 7, 10 AM - 12 AM at 21c Museum Hotel Oklahoma City • Saturday, June 8, 10 AM - 12 AM at 21c Museum Hotel Oklahoma City • Sunday, June 9, 10 AM - 12 AM at 21c Museum Hotel Oklahoma City

techCenter @ 21c Museum Hotel deadCenter is partnering with Tapstone Energy to present techCenter 2019 at 21c Museum Hotel. techCenter

Pat Presents Encore Presentation Check out these ten films created by students from across the state and featured in the Pat Patterson Student Film Contest last February.

• Saturday, June 8, 1:00 PM at Ronald J. Norick Downtown Library

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includes 10 Virtual Reality/360 films,

Growing Up George This animated short film focuses on Thunder All-Star forward Paul George’s major influences that made him the player and person he is today.

Inspired by the art work of Thunder global super fan Nanae Yamano of Japan.

• Saturday, June 8, 9:00 PM at The Great Lawn at Myriad Gardens

5 interactive Virtual Experiences, and the Oklahoma premiere of the

Virtual Cinema @ techCenter • Friday, June 7, 11:00 AM - 6:00 PM at 21c Museum Hotel Oklahoma City • Saturday, June 8, 11:00 AM - 6:00 PM at 21c Museum Hotel Oklahoma City • Sunday, June 9, 11:00 AM - 6:00 PM at 21c Museum Hotel Oklahoma City

Levi’s Jacket with Google technology woven into the fabric. Our trained volunteers will set you up so you can set back, relax, and enjoy the future. techCenter is free and open to the public Friday through Sunday 11:00-6:00pm.

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON FILMS AND EVENTS VISIT DEADCENTERFILM.ORG | #DCFF19

J U N E 5 , 2 0 1 9 | O KG A Z E T T E . C O M

ARTS & CULTURE

CO M M U N I T Y

The artist market at Live! on the Plaza | Photo provided

Plaza Pride

16th Street Plaza District turns its Live! series into a Pride celebration June 14. By Jacob Threadgill

16th Street Plaza District’s monthly Live! on the Plaza art walk is hosting its first Pride-themed event in the series June 14, which organizers hope serves as a kickoff for the June 22 Pride Parade.

The free event open to all ages kicks off at 6 p.m. with Pride T-shirt tie-dying and an artist market in front of OKC Improv, followed by live music by GWiz at 7 p.m. in front of Bad Granny’s Bazaar and a drag race in the Plaza Walls courtyard alleyway between Dig It! Boutique and Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma.

Dig It! owner Amanda Martinez was instrumental in organizing the event, according to Plaza District director Selena Skorman.

“I feel like the Plaza is a neighborhood of diversity; it always has been, and it will be as it continues to grow,” Martinez said. “Our target audience, especially for my store, is younger and diverse. At Dig It!, everyone is welcome.

It’s so encouraging for kids that are not even part of LGBQTIA lifestyle, that they are supporting their friends and peers. Pride Month is huge.”

The drag race is a contest with five competitors who receive “drag in a bag.”

They will have five minutes to create an outfit out of mystery items and then compete in a race complete with obstacles and surprise challenges while surrounded by the art of Plaza Walls.

Dig It! also hosts a drag show at 9 p.m.

Martinez said it is important to have such an event because there is a decreasing number of all-ages venues for drag and it promotes awareness to kids at an early age.

“I want to give props to our business owners because they are the ones for the large part that make our district feel so welcoming to the LGBTQIA+ community,” Skorman said. “If they weren’t welcoming, the district wouldn’t feel welcoming, and they are, especially with the younger population of the community. If you’re under 21, you can’t go to the gay bars or places that are safe

spaces designated for those kids to go to; in fact, some of them are recently closed. Bad Granny’s and Dig It! have always been a place where kids can go after school and feel welcome.”

The event also includes a fashion show at Velvet Monkey Salons at 8 p.m., and those in attendance get a sneak peak of the Plaza District’s float designed by Max Ogan, owner of Bomb Shelter art gallery, for the following week’s Pride Parade on 39th Street.

“We’re using [Pride on Plaza] as a way to help market the big Pride event,” Skorman said. “It’s a pre-party; you can pre-game with us.”

Members of the Friends of the Plaza will be treated to a VIP area from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at Pie Junkie. Membership for FOP is $50 annually or $10 for a onetime pass.

Plaza District hosts LGBTQIA+ nonprofit organizations that will be on hand to provide information and goodies, including featured partner Freedom Oklahoma.

“Plaza is a place where people are encouraged to be themselves, there are LGBTQ-owned businesses, and it is a place where everyone is welcome,” said Allie Shinn, executive director of Freedom Oklahoma. “What they recognize is that being welcoming to all might not be enough. We also need to be promoting voices that are fighting for the entire city to get there.”

Freedom Oklahoma also sponsors Equality Run 5K and 10K Sunday at Myriad Botanical Gardens and partners with Urban Pride Events for a silent disco at Angles night club June 21.

“We’re so excited to see districts all over the city embracing pride,” Shinn said. “Ultimately, Pride is an incredibly important celebration and protest. It is both a celebration of LGBTQ folks to live as their authentic selves and a

protest of all of the structures that make it so difficult for that to be a reality.

We’ve come a long way but still have a long way to go, of course, to have full equal protection under the law, but when we see the city of Oklahoma City responding the way they are by having Pride pop up in places like the Plaza, we know we’re making progress.”

In tune

Oklahoma City native GWiz plays on a stage outside Bad Granny’s 7 p.m.-8 p.m.

GWiz, which is led by Garland Alyssa Moore, will be playing a mix of pop, synthesizer and guitar work, music from an LP that will be released later this year or early 2020.

“I’m stoked to play the Pride on the Plaza,” Moore said. “Me and my friends used to play in bands [in the Plaza] in like 2010 and 2011, and it’s fun to play there, especially how much the district has grown and changed. It’s definitely refreshing they’re doing a Pride on the

Plaza event. … It’s going to be cool to play at Bad Granny’s. That was the first venue my friends and I would frequent.”

Moore recently relocated from Oklahoma City to Los Angeles. She performs at Pride on the Plaza with a full band before flying to Oregon for a DJ set the next day.

GWiz released the album Akiba in 2016, which is more pop behind a traditional bass, drums, guitar setup, but the next album, GWiz of the Stars, incorporates more of an electronic feel, building off the instrumental track “Crossroads,” which was released last year and has an accompanying music video filmed at Crossroads Mall after it closed.

Moore, who also has experience driving stock cars, said the new album will blend spaced-out cosmic sounds with the musical aesthetic of 1990s NASCAR television productions.

“It’s really going to be something,” Moore said.

GWiz also performs in Oklahoma City July 27 at Tower Theatre’s Over the Rainbow: Pride Prom.

Visit plazadistrict.org.

Pride on the Plaza 6-10 p.m. June 14 16th Street Plaza District NW 16th Street, between Classen Boulevard and Pennsylvania Avenue plazadistrict.org | 405-578-5718 Free

GWiz performs at Pride on the Plaza. | Photo Dylan Johnson / provided

O KG A Z E T T E . C O M | J U N E 5 , 2 0 1 9

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Our safe word is VOTE Vote us Best Naughty Business

CALENDAR These are events recommended

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

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

Buttermilk Paseo, 605 NW 28th St., 405-605-6660, buttermilkokc.com. SAT Mid-Oklahoma Writers a meetup for local writers featuring guest speakers and literary discussions, 7-9 p.m. the second Tuesday of the month.

Eastside Church of Christ, 916 S. Douglas Blvd., 405-732-0393. TUE Ralph Cuisine book signing the author will autograph copies of his novel Prudence in Hollywood, 6-7:30 p.m. June 5. Best of Books, 1313 E. Danforth Road, Edmond, 405-340-9202, bestofbooksok. com. WED

Accepting applicants for part-time sales associates.

Apply at 8009 W Reno Today!

LINGERIE • ADULT TOYS • BDSM & FETISH ITEMS • LOTIONS • NOVELTY GIFTS & CARDS 615 E. MEMORIAL, OKC • 405-755-8600

8009 W. RENO, OKC • 405-792-2020

READ US AT

Second Sunday Poetry hear the works of a variety of local poets, 2 p.m. second Sunday of every month. The Depot, 200 S. Jones Ave., Norman, 405-307-9320, pasnorman.org. SUN

FILM Carmine Street Guitars (USA, 2018, Ron Mann) a documentary about a guitar store in New York City’s Greenwich Village, June 7. Rodeo Cinema, 2221 Exchange Ave., 405-235-3456. FRI D-Day Remembered a commemoration of the anniversary of the Allied invasion of Normandy featuring D-Day memorabilia, and 60-minute film about the importance, 2 and 6 p.m. June 6. Circle Cinema, Tulsa, 10 S. Lewis Ave., 918-585-3504, circlecinema.com. THU Dirty Dancing (USA, 1987, Emile Ardolino) on vacation with her family, bored Baby (Jennifer Grey) falls in love with her dance instructor (Patrick Swayze), 5 p.m. June 6. The Banquet Cinema Pub, 800 NW Fourth St., banquetcinema.com. THU

How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (2019, USA, Dean DeBlois) competing forces race to discover a hidden Dragon Utopia in the latest installment of the popular animated adventure franchise, through June 7. Harkins Theatre, 150 E. Reno Ave., 405-231-4747, harkinstheatres.com. MON-FRI Rocketman (2019, United Kingdom, Dexter Fletcher) a fantastical. musical adaptation of Elton John’s life story, 7 p.m.

June 7. The Banquet Cinema Pub, 800 NW Fourth St., banquetcinema.com. FRI Rolling Thunder: A Bob Dylan Story (2019, USA, Martin Scorsese) a documentary chronicling Dylan’s legendary tour; presented by the Bob Dylan Center, 8 p.m. July 11. Circle Cinema, Tulsa, 10 S. Lewis Ave., 918-585-3504, circlecinema.com. TUE Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse (USA, 2018, Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey) Miles Morales learns how to be Spider-Man from Peter Parker in this animated adventure, 7-10 p.m. June 7. Lions Park, 450 S. Flood Ave., Norman, 405-366-5472. FRI Straight Outta Compton (USA, 2015, F. Gary Gray) a biopic detailing the rise of revolutionary hip-hop group N.W.A, 5 p.m. June 6. The Banquet Cinema Pub, 800 NW Fourth St., banquetcinema.com. THU VHS and Chill: Blockbusted Video riff along with comedians and film fans at this monthly movie screening where audience participation is encouraged, 7-9 p.m. first Wednesday of every month. The Paramount Room, 701 W. Sheridan Ave., 405-8873327, theparamountroom.com. WED

HAPPENINGS All-White Attire Rooftop Day Party enjoy appetizers, drinks and a live DJ at this party hosted by the Urban League Young Professionals and Boeing, 6-10 p.m. June 8. Allied Arts, 1015 N. Broadway Ave., 405-278-8944, alliedartsokc.com. SAT Board Game Day enjoy local craft beer while playing old-school board and arcade games with friends, 5-8 p.m. Sundays. FlashBack RetroPub, 814 W. Sheridan Ave., 405-633-3604, flashbackretropub.com. SUN Chicago Steppin Class learn how to do the popular dance at this free weekly class, 7-9 p.m. Thursdays.

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

Red Earth Festival An annual celebration of Native art and culture, Red Earth Festival, now in its 33rd year, features an art sale, traditional songs and dances, a grand parade and, new this year, after-hours date night activities. Shop for contemporary and traditional paintings, jewelry, pottery, sculpture and more at Red Earth Art Market; enjoy light snacks and live music from Smilin Vic at Party in the Art Market; see tribal dignitaries, classic cars, Clydesdale horses and colorful floats in the Red Earth Parade, now following a new route; and watch the Grand Entry of Dancers at Red Earth Powwow. The festival is Friday-Sunday at Cox Convention Center, 1 Myriad Gardens. Tickets are $15-$33. Call 405-427-5228 or visit redearth.org. FRIDAY-SUNDAY Photo provided 32

J U N E 5 , 2 0 1 9 | O KG A Z E T T E . C O M

GO TO OKGAZETTE.COM FOR FULL LISTINGS!

List your event in Submissions must be received by Oklahoma Gazette no later than noon on Wednesday seven days before the desired publication date. Late submissions will not be included in the listings. Submissions run as space allows, although we strive to make the listings as inclusive as possible.

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

Sorry, but phone submissions cannot be accepted.

SoonerCon 28 At 28 years of age, this annual meetup for sci-fi and fantasy fans is definitely old enough that, if it were a person, some buzzkill relative would have long since told it to grow up and get a more mature hobby like knitting or collecting guns.

Instead, SoonerCon is bigger than ever in a new location, featuring appearances by more than 200 special guests, including rocket scientist Lonnie Johnson, sci-fi author Kevin J. Anderson and actor Nana Visitor who played Kira Nerys Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Convention-goers also get the chance to play tabletop games, compete in costume contests, sing karaoke, hear live music, watch comedy and magic shows, attend discussion panels and, of course, shop for sweet, sweet licensed merch. The convention is Friday-Sunday at Embassy Suites Hotel & Conference Center, 2501 Conference Drive, in Norman. Admission is $30-$55.

Visit soonercon.com.. FRIDAY-SUNDAY Photo provided Coffee with Real Estate Investors network over coffee and discuss topics such as real estate investing, building a successful business and chasing the American dream, 7 p.m. Wednesdays.

Starbucks, 5800 W. Memorial Road, 405-722-6189, starbucks.com. WED Conversational Spanish Group Meetup an opportunity for all experience levels to practice speaking Spanish, 7 p.m. Tuesdays. Full Circle Bookstore, 1900 Northwest Expressway, 405-842-2900, fullcirclebooks.com. TUE Downtown Recyclers Toastmasters practice your public speaking skills at this ongoing weekly meeting, noon-1 p.m. Wednesdays. Department of Environmental Quality, 707 N. Robinson Ave., 405702-0100, deq.state.ok.us. WED Film Row Trivia Night test your cinematic knowledge at this monthly competition hosted by VHS and Chill, 7 p.m. the second Tuesday of every month. The Paramount Room, 701 W. Sheridan Ave., 405-887-3327, theparamountroom.com. TUE

Moore Chess Club play in tournaments and learn about the popular board game at this weekly event where all ages and skill levels are welcome, 1-4 p.m.

Sundays. Moore Library, 225 S. Howard. SUN oNE OKC a street festival featuring children’s activities, poetry, food trucks, games and live music; hosted by Adam & Kizzie, noon-4 p.m. June 8. oNE OKC, NE 23rd & Rhode Island. SAT Pooches on the Patio bring your best friend to this dog-friendly happy hour with drink specials, appetizers and free pet treats, 4-7 p.m. May 11. Café 501 Classen Curve, 5825 NW Grand Blvd., 405-8441501, cafe501.com. SAT Prince’s Birthday Party celebrate the legacy of the legendary musician with purple drinks, a lipsync battle, a costume contest, and a charity raffle benefitting Sisu Youth, 9 p.m. June 7. HiLo Club, 1221 NW 50th St., 405-843-1722, hilookc.com. FRI

The Friend Zone: Speed-Friending make new friends five minutes at a time at this platonic meetup, 7 p.m. second Monday of every month. Oak & Ore, 1732 NW. 16th St., 405-606-2030, oakandore.com. MON

Red Dirt Dinos: An Oklahoma Dinosaur Adventure learn about regional prehistoric reptiles at this hands-on exhibit featuring three interactive robotic dinosaurs, through Sept. 2, Through Sept. 2.

Science Museum Oklahoma, 2020 Remington Place, 405-602-6664, sciencemuseumok.org. THU-SAT

Governor’s Club Toastmasters lose your fear of public speaking and gain leadership skills by practicing in a fun and low-stakes environment, noon-1 p.m.

Wednesdays. Oklahoma Farm Bureau Building, 2501 N. Stiles Ave., 405-523-2300, okfarmbureau.org. WED

Toastmasters Meeting hone public speaking and leadership skills in a move-at-your own pace environment, 7-8:30 p.m. Thursdays. McFarlin United Methodist Church, 419 S. University Drive, 623-810-0295. THU

Heartland Husky Rescue Adoption enjoy alcoholic beverages and spend time with puppies and adult dogs in search of forever homes, noon-3 p.m. June 9. The Bleu Garten, 301 NW 10th St., 405879-3808, bleugarten.com. SUN

Trivia Night at Matty McMillen’s answer questions for a chance to win prizes at this weekly trivia night, 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays. Matty McMillen’s Irish Pub, 2201 NW 150th St., 405-607-8822, mattymcmillens.com. TUE

continued on page 34

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CALENDAR C A L E N DA R

continued from page 33 Zine Fest a celebration of DIY print publications featuring live music, readings, a potluck and vendor displays, 4-10 p.m.

June 8. Resonator, 325 E Main St., Norman, resonator.space. SAT

FOOD

The Painted Box — Cultura Cookies learn to create elaborately decorated cookies at this workshop taught by Angela Niño, 9 a.m.-2 p.m. June 8. The Paramount Room, 701 W. Sheridan Ave., 405-887-3327, theparamountroom.com. SAT Paseo Farmers Market shop for fresh food from local vendors at this weekly outdoor event, 9 a.m.noon Saturdays, through Oct. 19. SixTwelve, 612 NW 29th St., 405-208-8291, sixtwelve.org. SAT Rosé Party on the Terrace a rosé tasting with a whole roasted pig, 1-4 p.m. June 8. Ambassador Hotel, 1200 N. Walker Ave., 405-600-6200, marriott. com/travel. SAT The Taste on 36th a monthly gathering of food trucks from throughout the state featuring live music, noon-6 p.m. second Saturday of every month. Ice Event Center & Grill, 1148 NE 36th St., 405-208-4240, iceeventcentergrill.eat24hour.com. SAT Wines of the West enjoy food and live entertainment at this annual wine tasting, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. June 8. Stockyards City, 1307 S. Agnew Ave., 405-2357267, stockyardscity.org. SAT

YOUTH Children’s Garden Festival: Where the Wild Things Are a celebration of Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s book Where the Wild Things Are featuring activities, artistic displays and more, June 7-16. Myriad Botanical Gardens, 301 W. Reno Ave., 405-445-7080, myriadgardens.com. FRI-SUN Creativity Camp for Littles children 4-8 years old can explore the connection between artistic expression and creative movement at this camp; comfy play clothes recommended, 10-11:30 a.m. June 10-13.

Sweet Yield Studio, 629 W. Sheridan Ave., Suite 103, 405-615-2141. MON-THU Early Explorers toddlers and preschoolers can participate in fun scientific activities they can repeat later at home, 10-11 a.m. Thursdays. Science Museum

Shawnee Juneteenth Community Festival Though the Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Abraham Lincoln officially abolished slavery in the United States on Jan. 1, 1863, news (or, more accurately, enough Union troops to enforce the executive order) did not reach Texas until June 19, 1865. The date, known as Juneteenth, has been commemorated ever since, but this year marks the first-ever Shawnee-based community celebration of the holiday, hosted by Dunbar Heights Community and Citizen Potawatomi Nation. The festivities begin with a prayer and march and continue with guest speakers, step-show routines, live music and a career-readiness workshop. Start this year’s celebration early, starting 1 p.m. Saturday at Dunbar Heights Community, 804 S. Park Ave., in Shawnee and continuing at Shawnee’s FireLake Arena, 18145 Old Rangeline Road. Admission is free. SATURDAY Photo provided

Oklahoma, 2020 Remington Place, 405-602-6664, sciencemuseumok.org. THU OKC Drag Queen Story Hour children and their families are invited to a story and craft time lead by Ms. Shantel and followed by a dance party, 4 p.m. second Saturday of every month. Sunnyside Diner, 916 NW Sixth St., 405.778.8861. SAT

Playdate with Queens children can enjoy snacks, drinks, story time, dress up and a fashion show alongside dray queens Syren, Myka Monroe and Olivia Lycan, 1-3 p.m. June 8. Azalea House of Healing, 3705 N. Meridian Ave., 405-603-4202, azaleahealing.com. SAT Reading Wednesdays a weekly story time with hands-on activities, goody bags and reading-themed photo ops, 9:30-10:30 a.m. Wednesdays. Myriad Botanical Gardens, 301 W. Reno Ave., 405-445-7080, myriadgardens.com. WED Storytime Science the museum invites children age 6 and younger to hear a story and participate in a related scientific activity, 10 a.m. Tuesdays and Saturdays. Science Museum Oklahoma, 2020 Remington Place, 405-602-6664, sciencemuseumok. org. TUE-SAT Super Sonic Second Saturday help design a paper city, play with Big Blue Blocks, see live mural painting by Sergio “Tank” Ramirez, Amanda Zoey Weathers and Jaiye Farrell, and more 1-4 p.m. June 8. Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center Showroom, 1146 N. Broadway Drive, 405-951-000, oklahomacontemporary.org. SAT

PERFORMING ARTS Art of Rap hosted by Jim Conway, this monthly rap battle pits local MCs against one another for a cash prize, 9 p.m. Mondays. Hubbly Bubbly Hookah & Café, 2900 N. Classen Blvd., Suite K, 405-609-2930. MON Blue Sunday a monthly blues tribute show hosted

by Powerhouse Blues Project,6-8 p.m. the second Sunday of every month. Friends Restaurant & Club, 3705 W. Memorial Road, 405-751-4057, friendsbarokc.com. SUN Chisholm Creek Rooftop Hop a variety of musicians perform on the rooftops and patios of businesses at this weekly concert, 6-10 p.m. May 21.

Chisholm Creek, 13230 Pawnee Drive, 405-728-2780, chisholmcreek.com. TUE Comedy Night an evening of standup comedy featuring Jeremy “The Mighty Jer-Dog” Danley, 7-10 p.m. June 8. Off the Wall Club, 3007 SE 44th St., 405-672-2994, facebook.com/offthewallclub. SAT

əˇstrā Pronounced “astray,” the latest production by Perpetual Motion Dance tells the story of survivors struggling to maintain their humanity after an environmental apocalypse through experimental modern and aerial dance. Choreographed by Perpetual Motion artistic director Michelle Moeller and featuring performances by Emily Dawson, Kayla Jenkins, Alana Murray, Amy Nevius and Caitlin Robinson with videography by Kyle Van Osdol, əˇstrā offers Oklahomans a chance to consider the ramifications of human-caused climate change while looking at something significantly cooler than the usual fracking-induced earthquakes and increased tornado activity we typically see. The show runs Friday-June 16 at Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center, 3000 General Pershing Blvd. Tickets are $20-$25.

Visit perpetualmotiondance.org. FRIDAY-JUNE 16 Photo Abby Brook / provided 34

J U N E 5 , 2 0 1 9 | O KG A Z E T T E . C O M

The Comedy of Errors Oklahoma Shakespeare in the Park presents the Bard’s chaotic comedy of mistaken identities; directed by D. Lance Marsh, June 6-29. Myriad Botanical Gardens, 301 W. Reno Ave., 405-445-7080, myriadgardens.com. THU-SAT Divine Comedy a weekly local showcase hosted

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

Wednesdays. 51st Street Speakeasy, 1114 NW 51st St., 405-463-0470, 51stspeakeasy.com. WED Don Quixote Open Mic a weekly comedy show followed by karaoke, 7:30-9 p.m. Fridays. Don Quixote Club, 3030 N. Portland Ave., 405-947-0011. FRI Iron Horse Open Mic and Showcase perform music on stage at this show open to all experience levels, 7-10 p.m. Wednesdays. Iron Horse Bar & Grill, 9501 S. Shields Blvd., 405-735-1801. WED

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Joel Forlenza: The Piano Man the pianist performs variety of songs made famous by Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra and of course Billy Joel, 5:30-8:30 p.m.

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

TUE-THU

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

Wednesdays. Lumpy’s Sports Grill, 12325 N. May Ave., 405-286-3300, lumpyssportsgrill.com. WED Monday Night Blues Jam Session bring your own instrument to this open-stage jam hosted by Wess McMichael, 7-9 p.m. Mondays. Othello’s Italian Restaurant, 434 Buchanan Ave., 405-701-4900, othellos.us. MON OKC Improv performers create original scenes in the moment based on suggestions from the audience, 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays.

Oklahoma City Improv, 1757 NW 16th St., 405-4569858, okcimprov.com. FRI-SAT Triple’s Open Mic a music and comedy open mic hosted by Amanda Howle, 7:30 p.m. every other Wednesday. Triple’s, 8023 NW 23rd St., 405-7893031. WED Open Mic at The Deli hosted by Jarvix, this monthly show offers anyone the opportunity to sing or perform, 10 p.m.-1 a.m. first Wednesday of every month. The Deli, 309 White St., Norman, 405-3293934, thedeli.us. WED Open Mic at The P share your musical talent or just come to listen at this weekly open mic, 7 p.m.

Wednesdays. The Patriarch Craft Beer House & Lawn, 9 E. Edwards St., Edmond, 405-285-6670, thepatriarchedmond.com. WED Othello’s Comedy Night see professionals and amateurs alike at this long-running weekly open mic for standup comics, 9 p.m. Tuesdays. Othello’s Italian Restaurant, 434 Buchanan Ave., Norman, 405-7014900, othellos.us. TUE Paramount Open Mic show off your talents at this open mic hosted by musician Chris Morrison, 7 p.m. first Wednesday of every month. The Paramount Room, 701 W. Sheridan Ave., 405-887-3327, theparamountroom.com. WED Public Access Open Mic read poetry, do standup comedy, play music or just watch as an audience member at this open mic hosted by Alex Sanchez, 7 p.m. Sundays. The Paseo Plunge, 3010 Paseo St., 405-315-6224, paseoplunge.org. SUN Rebels & Royals Drag King Show hosted by former Mister USofA Damian Matrix-Gritte, this monthly show features local drag kings and special guests 10:30 p.m.-12:30 a.m. Fridays. Frankie’s, 2807 NW 36th St., 405-602-2030, facebook.com/frankiesokc. FRI Red Dirt Open Mic a weekly open mic for comedy and poetry, hosted by Red Dirt Poetry, 7:30-10:30 p.m. Wednesdays. Sauced on Paseo, 2912 Paseo St., 405-521-9800, saucedonpaseo.com. WED

CALENDAR Rhyme in Reasons share your talent or just watch other artists perform at this weekly open mic, 7:30-10 p.m. Thursdays. Reasons Lounge, 1140 N. MacArthur Blvd., 405-774-9991. THU Sanctuary Karaoke Service don a choir robe and sing your favorite song, 9 p.m.-midnight Wednesdays and Thursdays. Sanctuary Barsilica, 814 W. Sheridan Ave., facebook.com/sanctuarybarokc. WED-THU The Skirvin Jazz Club a monthly live jazz show presented by OK Sessions, 7:30 p.m. third Friday of every month. Park Avenue Grill, 1 Park Ave., 405702-8444, parkavegrill.com. FRI VZD’s Open Mic Night a weekly music mic hosted by Joe Hopkins, 7 p.m. Wednesdays. VZD’s Restaurant & Bar, 4200 N. Western Ave., 405-6023006, vzds.com. WED Weekly Jams bring an instrument and play along with others at this open-invitation weekly jam session, 9:30 p.m.-midnight Tuesdays. Saints, 1715 NW 16th St., 405-602-6308, saintspubokc.com. TUE

Seeing Now an exhibit of multimedia art works

by Hank Willis Thomas, Ken Gonzales-Day, Travis Somerville, Paul Rucker, Graciela Sacco, Terence Hammonds and Michael Waugh, through Dec. 31.

21c Museum Hotel, 900 W. Main St., 405-982-6900, 21cmuseumhotels.com. THU-SAT

OKLAHOMA’S PREMIER PROFESSIONAL THEATRE

2019 SUMMER AT THE CIVIC

Prix de West Invitational Art Exhibition & Sale an annual exhibition and art sale featuring more than 300 Western paintings and sculptures by contemporary Western artists of landscapes, wildlife and illustrative scenes, June 7-8. National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, 1700 NE 63rd St., 405-478-2250, nationalcowboymuseum.org. FRI-MON

Book by Betty Comden and Adolph Green Music by Nacio Herb Brown Lyrics by Arthur Freed Directed by Michael Baron

Welcome Home: Oklahomans and the War in Vietnam explores the impact of the war on Oklahoma families as well as the stories of Vietnamese families relocated to Oklahoma, through Nov. 6.

Oklahoma History Center, 800 Nazih Zuhdi Drive, 405-521-2491, okhistory.org. MON-SAT

June 25 - 30, 2019 HOLLYWOOD GLAMOUR THAT SWEEPS YOU OFF YOUR FEET! Celebrate Hollywood’s Golden Age with this romantic, musicalcomedy classic! Your entire family will dance, laugh and sing along to a memorable song score featuring a full orchestra and splashy production numbers...all while it magically rains on the entire Civic Center Stage!

Book by Harvey Fierstein Music by Alan Menken Lyrics by Jack Feldman Directed by Ashley Wells

ACTIVE Botanical Balance an all-levels yoga class in a natural environment; bring your own mat and water, 5:45 p.m. Tuesdays and 8 a.m. Saturdays. Myriad Botanical Gardens, 301 W. Reno Ave., 405-4457080, myriadgardens.com. SAT

July 9 - 14, 2019 “SEIZE THE DAY” AND CHANGE YOUR WORLD! Incredible dancing and rousing anthems raise the roof in this thrilling story of the New York City Newsboy Strike of 1899. A spirited crew of rag-tag orphans “Seize the day” and win the hearts of a nation in this unforgettable Disney musical. Great fun for the entire family!

Co-ed Open Adult Volleyball enjoy a game of friendly yet competitive volleyball while making new friends, 6-8 p.m. Wednesdays. Jackie Cooper Gymnasium, 1024 E. Main St., Yukon, 405-350-8920, cityofyukon.gov. WED

Music and Lyrics by Maury Yeston Book by Peter Stone Directed by Michael Baron

FEATURING 100+ VOICES AND OKC PHILHARMONIC’S NEW MUSIC DIRECTOR, ALEXANDER MICKELTHWATE!

Monday Night Group Ride meet up for a weekly 25-30 minute bicycle ride at about 18 miles per hour through east Oklahoma City, 6 p.m. Mondays. The Bike Lab OKC, 2200 W. Hefner Road, 405-603-7655.

MON

Open Badminton hit some birdies in some morning pick-up games of badminton with friends, 10 a.m.noon Saturdays. Jackie Cooper Gymnasium, 1024 E. Main St., Yukon, 405-350-8920, cityofyukon.gov. SAT

July 23 - 28, 2019 THE RESOUNDING ASPIRATIONS OF VOYAGERS! The engineering feat of 1912 takes center stage in this Tony Awardwinning Best Musical. Based on real people aboard the legendary ship, Titanic is a stunning and stirring production of the hopes and dreams of her passengers who each boarded with stories and personal ambitions of their own...all innocently unaware of the fate awaiting them.

FOR MORE INFO CALL (405) 524-9312, OR VISIT LYRICTHEATREOKC.ORG

SUBSCRIBE TODAY & ENJOY THESE GREAT BENEFITS:

• DISCOUNTS ON ADDITIONAL CIVIC TICKETS PURCHASED FOR YOUR GUESTS • FREE TICKET EXCHANGES TO OTHER PERFORMANCES OF THE PRODUCTION • FREE TICKET REPRINTS FOR MISPLACED TICKETS • GUARANTEED BEST SEATS IN THE HOUSE

Stars and Stripes Spin Jam a weekly meetup for jugglers, hula hoopers and unicyclers, 6-8 p.m.

Wednesdays. Stars & Stripes Park, 3701 S. Lake Hefner Drive, 405-297-2756, okc.gov/parks. WED

LYRIC’S SUMMER AT THE CIVIC PACKAGES START AT JUST $86!

Twisted Coyote Brew Crew a weekly 3-mile group run for all ability levels with a beer tasting to follow; bring your own safety lights, 6 p.m.

Mondays. Twisted Spike Brewing Co., 1 NW 10th St., 405-301-3467, twistedspike.com. MON

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Presenting Sponsor

Wheeler Criterium a weekly nighttime cycling event with criterium races, food trucks and family activities, 5-8 p.m. Tuesdays. Wheeler Park, 1120 S. Western Ave., 405-297-2211, okc.gov. TUE Yoga Tuesdays an all-levels class; bring your own water and yoga mat, 5:45 p.m.-7 p.m. Tuesdays.

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

VISUAL ARTS Beautiful Minds: Dyslexia and the Creative Advantage an exhibition of artworks created by people with dyslexia including students from Oklahoma City’s Trinity School, through July 14. Science Museum Oklahoma, 2020 Remington Place, 405-6026664, sciencemuseumok.org. FRI-SUN

VicTIms,WITnESsES,AND SurvivORs

Dancing Around the Edges an exhibition of KB Kueteman’s abstract acrylic paintings, Through June 30. Contemporary Art Gallery, 2928 Paseo St., 405-601-7474, contemporaryartgalleryokc.com.

WED-SUN

Faces of Pride Pop-Up Gallery Opening an exhibition of portraits of members of the LGBTQ+ community accompanied by quotes from interviews with the subjects, 6-9 p.m. June 8. Oklahoma City Pride, 2127 NW 39th St., oklahomacitypride.org. SAT From the Golden Age to the Moving Image: The Changing Face of the Permanent Collection view portraits painted by Kehinde Wiley, Anthony van Dyck, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and George Bellows, Through Sept. 22. Oklahoma City Museum of Art, 415 Couch Drive, 405-236-3100, okcmoa.com. FRI-SAT Life Imagined: The Art and Science of Automata see examples of mechanical proto-robots from 1850 to the modern day, Through Sept. 29.

Science Museum Oklahoma, 2020 Remington Place, 405-602-6664, sciencemuseumok.org. SUN-SAT Monotypes Workshop with Adrienne Day learn about this painterly printmaking method at this hands-on art workshop, 1-4 p.m. June 8.

Artspace at Untitled, 1 NE Third St., 405-815-9995, 1ne3.org. SAT Paseo Arts District’s First Friday Gallery Walk peruse art from over 80 artists with 25 participating business for a night of special themed exhibits, refreshments and a variety of entertainment opportunities, 6-10 p.m. first Friday of every month.

Paseo Arts District, 3022 Paseo St., 405-525-2688, thepaseo.org. FRI

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

Late submissions will not be included in the listings.

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

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JUNE 8 - JULY 19, 2019 ARTIST RECEPTION SATURDAY, JUNE 8, 2019, AT 6:30 P.M.

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Son Volt plays June 18 at The Jones Assembly. | Photo David McClister / provided

Rebel Son

Son Volt’s new album explores protest music’s place in society today and pays homage to its past.

By Jeremy Martin

Recorded in part in Tulsa’s Woody Guthrie Center, Son Volt’s latest album, Union, is one of protest music and a tribute to the tradition itself. Though protest songs have seen a resurgence for obvious reasons in the Trump era, Son Volt frontman Jay Farrar said he never really stopped listening to them since his early 20s, when he discovered Guthrie and Bob Dylan.

“The political content was paramount to me,” Farrar said. “Topical and political content in writing used to be much more commonplace throughout the years ... but to me, it’s always seemed commonplace because that’s the kind of music I’ve always listened to.”

Son Volt — the band Farrar formed following the 1994 breakup of Uncle Tupelo, the seminal alt-country act that also featured Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy — plays June 18 at The Jones Assembly, 901 W. Sheridan Ave. Like Guthrie, born in Okemah, who wrote songs about the plight of Depression-era Dust Bowl refugees

(“Pastures of Plenty”) and Dylan, who decried racial injustice during the civil rights movement (“The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll”), Farrar is also writing in response to the news of the world around him.

“Essentially, it’s protest music, and there’s plenty to protest right now,” Farrar said. “A lot of these songs were just kind of going through the headlines, really … whether it’s ‘The 99,’ where I was referencing some of the protests that have gone over recently, going back a few years. It was kind of a composite sketch of the Dakota Pipeline protests, the Ferguson protests, the Occupy protests. And then ‘The Symbol’ is just referencing what’s going on with immigration and DACA. It’s really just feeling compelled to say something.

That’s what I do. I write songs, and it’s been a common part of my upbringing to be inspired by protest music and folk music. It’s just the tradition of the bard.”

“The 99” urges listeners to “Take the stand now, protest and holler / Desecration of the land for the almighty dollar” and promises “They can fill up the jails but it won’t make a dent / Those sins don’t wash away in the sea of discontent.”

“The Symbol,” which closes the album, tells the story of “Juan from Monterrey” who has lived for a decade in the U.S., helping repair New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. “They say I’m a criminal, that’s what they say,” Farrar sings from Juan’s perspective. “My children were born, born in the USA / They say these children, they too must Union was released March 29. | Image provided

go / But their home is here, not Mexico.”

Inspiration for “The Symbol” came from Guthrie’s “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)” which details a 1948 plane crash that killed 28 migrant farm workers being deported from California to Mexico. Farrar said he was encouraged to try new creative methods after working with Will Johnson, Anders Parker and Jim James on the 2012 album New Multitudes, which set music to lyrics Guthrie wrote but never turned into completed songs.

“Some experience came from that, for sure,” Farrar said, “maybe some confidence in trying out different types of songwriting. I know that writing from a narrative perspective, from someone else’s viewpoint, I dabble in that on this recording, whether it was the song ‘Reality Winner’ or the song ‘The Symbol,’ just being confident enough to give that a try.”

“Reality Winner” tells of the title subject’s life before and after her arrest and imprisonment for leaking a classified NSA document detailing a Russian cyberattack on a U.S. voting software supplier to the media.

“Obviously, she was a whistleblower, and I found her story compelling,” Farrar said. “I felt the least I could do would be to write a song to let others know who might not know, but fortunately for her, the word is getting out there from a lot of different points.”

On May 29, CNN reported that Winner’s mother Billie Winner-Davis is alleging the government is restricting the media’s access to her daughter in order to silence her.

“The prosecution painted her to be a very evil person, who hates her country ... who needed to be feared by the American people,” Winner-Davis told CNN. “And I honestly believe they are afraid that if America gets to know who Reality Winner really is, they are going to see that wasn’t the case at all. … They are going to see a loving, caring, compassionate person who is honest and who is good.”

In the song named for Winner, Farrar sings of the former Air Force translator and language analyst, “Felt like gaslighting, not something to just accept / Proud to serve, just not this president / Those that seek the truth will find the answers.”

Parts of Union were also recorded at the Mother Jones Museum in Mt. Olive, Illinois. The museum’s website describes Jones, an Irish immigrant born in 1837, as “a fearless fighter for workers’ rights” who “believed in organizing at the community level” and “condemned white supremacists in the union movement.” Farrar compared recording in the museum and the Woody Guthrie Center to a “field trip.”

“The primary intent was to really highlight the contributions of Woody Guthrie and Mother Jones,” Farrar said, “and hopefully learn something along the way and be informed during the recording process, and hopefully, to be inspired, and all those things did happen. … They were both champions of the underdog or the under-represented, so in that sense, they were similar.

They’re from different time periods, obviously, and Mother Jones is someone who was intimately involved in trying to get better wages and rights for coal miners near where I’m at here in St. Louis. So it’s something that I’ve always been curious about, the Mother Jones Museum. I remember going back a few decades, even back to the ’90s, it was just sort of a hand-painted sign, almost like folk art on the side of the road saying ‘Mother Jones Monument,’ and just since the ’90s, they were able to get a museum going and a real sign now.”

On “Rebel Girl,” Farrar sings, “Her hands may be hardened from labor / And her dress may not be very fine / But her heart in her body’s beating / That is true to her class and her kind … for the only and thoroughbred lady is the rebel girl.”

“The Reason,” meanwhile, serves as a rallying cry for everyone. “Time and tide wait for no one,” Farrar sings. “Put your shoulder to the wheel …You may fall on stony ground / Hold the line and stay sound.”

Even in times that call for protest songs, Farrar said making music is a therapeutic practice that helps him gain perspective.

“Writing, in general, is a cathartic process,” Farrar said. “Whether it’s about introspective motivations or inspiration or topical songwriting, it’s all the same.

It definitely elevates your mood and takes you to a different place. That’s pretty much what music is all about.”

Tickets are $25-$30. Visit thejonesassembly.com.

Son Volt June 18 The Jones Assembly 901 W. Sheridan Ave. thejonesassembly.com | 405-212-2378 $25-$30

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EVENT

MUSIC

Kingz speech

Hip-hop acts with Oklahoma City connections go deep with Homecoming Kingz show. By Jeremy Martin

Hopefully Dallas-based hip-hop artist Motian’s return to the Oklahoma City area will go smoother than when his family first moved him here at age 12.

“I came from Tehran, Iran, in 2001 right before 9/11 happened, and I’m in Moore, Oklahoma, so it wasn’t the most diverse place in the world to go,” Motian said. “I didn’t speak any English at all.

So one of the big challenges for me was, How do I communicate? … The one thing that bothered me the most is I was unable to verbally stand my ground. I could physically fight, but you can’t fight the whole world. I wasn’t able to really get my message across. That was probably the most frustrating part because I had to internalize everything.”

Motian performs with several other hip-hop artists with local ties at Homecoming Kingz Saturday at 51st Street Speakeasy, 1114 NW 51st St. He began connecting with other students at afterschool rap battles.

“There were these cool guys that were telling the story, and everybody was listening to them,” Motian said. “So that’s what I wanted for myself. … Towards my senior year of high school, that’s when I really got involved in music.”

In a studio he shared with his cousin, producer and film director Nima T, Motian said he first began to learn to make music.

“It was really bad at the time, as you can imagine,” Motian said. “There wasn’t anybody like, ‘Hey, this is how you make rap music.’ … In the past few years is really when I’ve kind of got the business side of it down, so now I’m getting more aggressive with the marketing, with the content and now I have direction as to where I want to go and

how I want to go.”

His song “Walking Tall” and the accompanying video directed by Nima T offers encouragement to kids struggling with bullying and suicidal thoughts.

“I had a good support system that got me through it, but I felt like a lot of kids out there don’t have something like that,” Motian said. “When they go home from school after all day being bullied, they might also be bullied by parents, stepparents or whomever it may be. My goal with ‘Walking Tall’ was to really shine a light on this issue, just kind of help kids see that you don’t have to take your own life. You don’t have to end it short. There’s going to come a time where you can look back at it and be proud of yourself for how far you came.”

Who’s next

Thomas Who moved back to OKC in August after living in Dallas for several years and is also scheduled to perform.

Who said his most recent album, Who Knew? is his most personal project.

“It was a very transparent, open, vulnerable, uncomfortable project,” Who said, “so if nobody knew who I was as an individual, they’d be able to take a listen to that project and kind of get a wide-range understanding of exactly who I am and what I represent and what I stand for, what I’ve been through, so on and so forth.”

“Like Father Like Son,” for example, details depression and intimacy issues caused by a complicated relationship with his father.

“That was one of the most difficult songs I’ve ever written in my life because when you have people that have parental issues, sometimes there’s still time to resolve it,” Who said. “My pops is dead, and there was no resolution. …

That’s an ugly, sad, vulnerable story to tell, but it’s a part of my truth.”

His contributions to The Space Program collective, which released the album Curriculum of the Mind in April, relate his experience as a black college athlete at a predominately white university.

“Football kind of saved me,” Who said. “I’m a fat kid from the east side of Oklahoma City, and I’ve done all of the dumb things, the selling drugs, the getting shot at, the shooting guns, being in crazy violence, but I’m 6’5” and at that point, I was 300 pounds and could run a five-flat 40. … My 10th-grade year, my football coach at Northeast High Thomas Who recently released the single “ABNL (All Blessings No Luck)” from his upcoming album Splash. | Photo provided

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School basically begged me to come play ball, and it allowed me to go to a university. … It opened me up in a lot of ways; however, you do feel like an alien in those instances, too.”

At University of Tulsa, a private, predominately white school, he said some professors treated him like “a jock who had no common sense.”

“A lot of times, we as athletes, and just being completely transparent, we as black men, get this label, like if you’re a bald-headed kid with a beard and hood tattoos, you have nothing to say that is of any value, you have no redeeming qualities. If you blew out your knee right now, nobody would give a damn about you,” Who said. “We had to speak to that. That was my experience.”

After two introspective albums, Who said his upcoming release, Splash, will be more fun.

“Splash gave me the ability to look into the mirror and say, ‘Say, bro, just have a good time,’” Who said. “Let me just be honest and know that, yeah, I enjoy Talib Kweli, but I also listen to DaBaby. I’m not going to act like both of those things aren’t happening.”

Deezy uneasy

Deezy, another OKC-based member of The Space Program, is also scheduled to perform. Working on Curriculum of the Mind gave him a chance to talk about his own experiences as a young black man.

“My parents were really big on pushing me towards college,” Deezy said, “but at the same time, my dad is a college grad and he worked in corporate America. He had a glass ceiling over him where he’s outperforming people, he’s more qualified than certain people, but he’s been stuck at the same salary and not being promoted while all his white counterparts that are less qualified and aren’t really taking on as much work or doing work as good as him are being promoted around him. … I’m looking at him like, ‘Why the fuck am I going to go to college and do the same thing that he’s doing?’”

Like Motian and Who, however, Deezy said his music covers a complex array of moods and feelings.

“I’m a really versatile artist,” Deezy said. “On one track, you might hear me get really deep or get political or it’s life-

Deezy’s song “Rollin’” has been featured on Wild 104.9. | Photo provided

Dallas-based artist Motian performs with several other hip-hop artists with local ties at Homecoming Kingz on Saturday. | Photo provided

experience-type stuff, and then I’ve got tracks like ‘Throw It Down,’ where I’m talking to females. I have turn-up tracks. I have a song called ‘Rollin’’ that was on 104.9.”

His upcoming project, Aporia, is a five-song music video EP about “wanting something and not wanting it at the same time,” more specifically the difficulty he has reconciling his public and private lives as an artist and entertainer.

“You wanted this success so bad,” Deezy said, “but now that you start getting it, now that you see how it’s affecting other things in life, you start to question whether you really want it or not.”

L-Smooth Mensa h, Eclipse Darkness, Druce Wayne and Jacobi Ryan share the bill. Admission is free.

Visit 51stspeakeasy.com.

Homecoming Kingz 9 p.m. Saturday 51st Street Speakeasy 1114 NW 51st St. 51stspeakeasy.com | 405-463-0470 Free

O KG A Z E T T E . C O M | J U N E 5 , 2 0 1 9

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LIVE MUSIC Miss Brown to You, Myriad Botanical Gardens. FOLK

These are events recommended

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

Sunless/Dischordia, 89th Street-OKC. METAL

MONDAY, JUN. 10 Jason Hunt, Sean Cumming’s Irish Restaurant. FOLK

WEDNESDAY, JUN. 5

Jonathan Brown/S. Ready/Stafre & the HitTones, The Deli. HIP-HOP

Adam Aguilar & the Weekend All Stars, Sidecar Barley & Wine Bar. COVER

Traitors/Bodysnatcher/All Seems Lost, 89th StreetOKC. METAL

Full of Hell/Primitive Man, 89th Street-OKC. METAL

TUESDAY, JUN. 11

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Juice Wrld/Ski Mask the Slump God, The Criterion.

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Church of Misery/Mondo Generator, 89th StreetOKC. METAL

Kyle Reid, Scratch Kitchen & Cocktails. SINGER/

SONGWRITER

Hot House Band, Othello’s Italian Restaurant. JAZZ Susan Herndon, Black Mesa Brewing Company.

SINGER/SONGWRITER

FRIDAY, JUN. 7 Absolute Power/Deshawn Wright/Pineapple Stro, Kendells. HIP-HOP Beach Language/Admirals/Giant Stride, Blue Note Lounge. POP Michael Martin Murphey, Tower Theatre. COUNTRY Steve French & Company, Sauced on Paseo. ROCK Swim Fan/Daydrinker, Opolis. POP To Kill Porter, Oklahoma City Limits. ROCK

SATURDAY, JUN. 8 Jahruba & the Mah Mystics, Othello’s Italian Restaurant. REGGAE

Reddened Monarch Music Festival Inspired by a conversation between internationally renowned Enid fiddle player Kyle Dillingham and festival namesake Eddie Monarch (both pictured above), Reddened Monarch Music Festival seeks to promote support and awareness of Oklahoma City’s homeless population. Featuring performances by Dillingham’s band Horseshoe Road (recently returned from a tour through Kuwait and Kosovo), The Odds, Will Carl Gaines, Jabee and Jynxx, the festival also includes an appearance by Mayor David Holt, who recently announced the formation of Task Force on Homelessness, Volunteers will be on-site to serve a plated dinner to homeless concertgoers. For everyone else, there will be food trucks. The festival is 6-9 p.m. June 12 at Myriad Botanical Gardens, 301 W. Reno Ave. Admission is free, but donations are accepted. Visit myriadgardens.or. JUNE 12 Photo provided Joel Mosman & Oklahoma Uprising, Bedlam Bar-BQ. FOLK/ROCK No Vacation/Okey Dokey, 89th Street-OKC. POP

SUNDAY, JUN. 9 Adam Miller, Frankie’s. SINGER/SONGWRITER

GO TO OKGAZETTE.COM FOR FULL LISTINGS!

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J U N E 5 , 2 0 1 9 | O KG A Z E T T E . C O M

WEDNESDAY, JUN. 12 Adam Aguilar & the Weekend All Stars, Sidecar Barley & Wine Bar. COVER Hawthorne Heights/Emery, 89th Street-OKC. ROCK

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

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

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

Sorry, but phone submissions cannot be accepted.

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Laboratory workers at Releaf Labs process cannabis distillate for their vape cartridges. | Photo Alexa Ace

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Releaf Labs has quickly risen to become one of the most visible medical cannabis distillate cartridge brands. By Matt Dinger

Releaf Labs was born out of the urge to move patients toward cannabis and away from opiates.

“My father was a 20-year opiate painkiller addict. He passed away in September but was unable to break free of that,” CEO Mike Girocco said. “We looked at this as a safe alternative to opiate painkillers and the addiction inherent with that product. So that was kind of the beginning of it. And we’ve been kind of running full speed since probably a year ago June. We started manufacturing in January. And we’ve risen to one of the top vape brands in the state.”

Releaf Labs started in a 4,000 square-foot building on Sooner Road while its larger, state-of-the-art CO2 extraction facility was being built in southern Logan County.

“We started out with pre-rolls because that was just the easiest way to get a product to market. And then, toward the end of January, we started actually processing and we came up with a one-gram distillate cartridge. That’s basically been our flagship,” Mike Girocco said. “Sometime in March, we came out with a disposable half-gram pen, kind of an all-in-one product, which has been very popular, and we feel as the market grows and new users come, it will even increase in popularity.”

The MSRP for the one-gram cartridge is $60, and the half-gram dispos42

J U N E 5 , 2 0 1 9 | O KG A Z E T T E . C O M

able cartridges have an MSRP of $45.

There is no MSRP for the pre-rolls. To date, Releaf products are in more than 90 dispensaries.

“Julie and I lived in southern California for 20 years. We moved here in 2016, and we saw kind of the way that the industry had come up in California.

As soon as we had an indication that we were going to legalize State Question 788, basically I started flying back and forth to California and meeting with former associates, meeting with consultants, extractors, dispensary owners, just kind of doing the math. We wanted to have something that was scalable.

We kind of looked down the road maybe four to five years — Julie thinks less — and looked at it as ‘We need to be poised for regional expansion kind of in advance of national legalization.’ So we picked processing because we felt it was the most scalable. You could establish a prominent brand with not all the pitfalls and pain in the ass that a dispensary and retail is. Growing, on the other hand too, we knew that there was never going to be a moratorium on the number of grows. I look at it as financial barrier to entry. We looked at dispensary as the easiest barrier to hurtle, the second one was grow and then the third one was processor,” Mike Girocco said. “You can imagine what the commercial realtor in LA is like, especially if you’re on the investment side. You’re an absolute

guppy. Here, I feel like I can at least be a perch. So when I moved out in 2016, we had already purchased some office buildings and then proceeded to purchase some additional apartment buildings. And that’s kind of my background, multifamily real estate, essentially.”

Mike Girocco’s mother moved to the state in 1976, so he has deep Oklahoma roots even though he has spent the past two decades halfway across the country.

We have the number one position on Weedmaps, which kind of is a double-edged sword.

Mike Girocco “We moved out here because of Mike’s family. I was not intending to come work in this at all. I had my corporate job. I ran a sales department for a U.S. media company and did that from California. And then they allowed me to do it from here when he wanted to move out. And they just started getting busy. It grew really fast from ‘Here’s a new small business’ to ‘Oh my gosh!

We’re going to have the capacity to be one of the biggest producers of distillate in the state.’ And he said, ‘I’m going to need a sales department. We’re going to need to figure out how to how to get it there.’ And so I left my job on February 26th and I started here on February 27th,” Julie Girocco said.

“I took her to dinner that night. That was her sabbatical,” Mike Girocco said.

“And it was my birthday too. ‘Oh yeah. It’s your birthday. We’re going to dinner. Tomorrow, you start,’” Julie Girocco said.

Releaf Labs does not grow the flower it uses in its products.

“We have alliances with growers.

Actually, our brand manager’s father moved out from Huntington Beach, California, to actually do it here. He was formerly from Oklahoma and grew up here. And he was looking for an opportunity to get back away from all the crazy state regulations and barriers that they put up,” Mike Girocco said.

While they have been in operation for less than six months, Releaf has created one of the most visible brands in the industry.

“We have the number one position on Weedmaps, which kind of is a doubleedged sword. It promotes our brand, but it also puts a target on our back. I think that we become a target for our competition. I can’t prove it, but I would guess that some significant negative reviews have come from our competition.

They’re just kind of taking potshots at us. I would never do that. I would never or allow any employee to do that to the detriment of any competitor,” Mike Girocco said. “We have we’ve had some skin knees and bruised elbows from cartridge malfunctions that have primarily come from failures at the manufacturer level.”

Since all of the vape cartridge manufacturers are in China, Releaf did its own research and development as well as poll industry experts and consultants to choose which product it uses.

“Honestly, it’s the one thing that keeps me up at night. It’s really the only thing I can’t totally control. I can control our product, I can control our feedstock, I can control our process, I can control our employees — what I cannot control is the manufactured cartridges that I have to buy to deliver the product,” Mike Girocco said.

One such cartridge failure already did occur, and Releaf honored returns at the dispensary level no matter how much or how little distillate was remaining in the cartridge.

“You don’t know who you lose is the problem. You don’t know which patients. People are really nice here.

California, people will just kind of say it like it was and they didn’t care if they hurt your feelings or whatever. People are so nice here. Like, ‘Just please tell me what you really think,’” Julie Girocco said. “People are all in this business because they have chosen to be here and they’re getting into it and you’ve got all the excitement of a new business in Oklahoma. So that’s been really fun. It’s getting more challenging.

It’s getting a lot more competitive out there to get our products into dispensaries. But it’s good. I mean, we think we’re going to do well with a challenge.”

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Moving forward The first legislative session following the implementation of State Question 788 has ended with some regulatory framework for the industry. By Matt Dinger

The first Oklahoma legislative session since the passage of State Question 788 has ended.

No special session to address regulations was called by Gov. Mary Fallin after 57 percent of voters cast ballots in favor of a broad, mostly unrelegated medical cannabis industry in the state, which meant aside from the ballot language and existing law, the parameters were wide open until this spring.

House Bill 2601

The first and only major legislation this season signed into law by Gov. Kevin Stitt was House Bill 2612, a 55-page bill dubbed the “unity bill” that goes into effect on Aug. 31. House Bill 2601, also known as the “cleanup bill,” that clarifies portions of HB2612 was signed by the governor May 28.

HB2601 includes clarifications on where cannabis can be smoked or vaped, the creation of a 60-day license and grandfathering in current business license holders from residency requirements outlined in HB2612.

Most of the amended cannabis consumption laws reflect places where tobacco smoking is already forbidden or restricted. Airports and college campuses may not decide not to let patients smoke or vape cannabis on their prem-

The legislative session has ended with several new bills addressing the medical cannabis industry passed and signed by the governor. | Photo Alexa Ace

ises, and patients may not smoke or vape cannabis within 25 feet of entrances of state, county and municipal buildings. Private residences used as licensed child-care facilities may also not permit cannabis smoking or vaping during hours of operation, according to HB 2601, but smoking or vaping within medical research or treatment centers is permitted if it is integral to research or treatment.

Following the Smoking in Public Places and Indoor Workplaces Act, the bill reads “No person shall smoke tobacco or marijuana or vape marijuana in a public place, in any part of a zoo to which the public may be admitted, whether indoors or outdoors, in an indoor workplace, in any vehicle providing public transportation, at a meeting of a public body, in a nursing facility licensed pursuant to the Nursing Home Care Act, or in a child care facility licensed pursuant to the Oklahoma Child Care Facilities Licensing Act.” Technology center school districts may also prohibit cannabis consumpcontinued on page 48

O KG A Z E T T E . C O M | J U N E 5 , 2 0 1 9

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CANNABIS

tion on the grounds by employees when classes or programs for students are in session, but consumption is prohibited in other educational facilities and in vehicles owned by the state, according to the bill.

Smoking or vaping cannabis is also forbidden within 15 feet of an entrance at an outdoor seating area of a restaurant.

Under HB2601, a physician may recommend a short-term license to patients that is valid for 60 days. The license fee will be set by the health department. It does not affect the standard two-year license for patients.

The bill also strikes a provision that prevents the state health department from contracting with vendors providing commercial services to medical cannabis businesses “either directly, through affiliates, or any joint venture or subsidiary.”

HB2601 also clarifies a much-criticized sentence in HB2612 that allowed the health department to bring disciplinary action on “any other basis as identified by the Department” and modifies it to read, “indicating a violation of the applicable laws and regulations as identified by the Department.”

Applicants who were issued cannabis business licenses prior to the passage of HB2612 will also be allowed to keep their licenses regardless of residency. All applicants now must have lived in Oklahoma for two consecutive years or for five consecutive years in the previous 25 years.

HB2601 also clarifies prohibitions on advertising and signage for medical cannabis businesses. It previously prohibited targeting those under the age of 18 by using cartoon characters or similar images. It is now broadened to include advertising that promotes overconsumption, represents the use of cannabis having curative or therapeutic effects or “objects such as toys or cartoon or other characters, which suggest the presence of a child, or any other depiction designed in any manner to be especially appealing to children or other persons under legal age to consume marijuana, or any manner or design that would be especially appealing to children or other persons under eighteen (18) years of age.”

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Senate Bill 1030 was signed by the governor on May 29. It further outlines that those found in possession of cannabis are not subject to imprisonment for the offense but face a $400 fine. It also explicitly states that law officers may release the offender on personal recognizance.

SB1030 also further outlines that municipalities may not change or restrict their zoning laws to prevent retail cannabis businesses from operating within their boundaries but may use

standard planning and zoning procedures to determine where cannabis businesses may be located. It also strikes the requirement that medical cannabis businesses receive the necessary municipal permits before they are granted a license.

Senate Bill 162

Senate Bill 162 changes requirements on who may sign an application recommendation for medical cannabis. It changes the requirement from an “Oklahoma board certified” physician to a physician “licensed by and in good standing with the State Board of Medical Licensure and Supervision or the State Board of Osteopathic Examiners.” There are still no qualifying conditions required for a recommendation. SB162 also sets parameters for harvest and test batches at 10 pounds or less. It was passed by the Legislature and signed into law on May 7.

Senate Bill 532

Senate Bill 532 allows another party to take over operations if a dispensary, grower or processor becomes insolvent, ceases operations or otherwise ceases operations provided that the party meets all Oklahoma medical cannabis licensing requirements. SB532 was signed by Gov. Stitt on May 23 and goes into effect Nov. 1.

Other bills

Several other bills making minor changes to existing legislation were also passed

by Congress and sent to the governor this session, but other bills introduced earlier in the session either did not receive floor votes or died.

Senate Bill 887 would have allowed for counties to assess fees to certain licensees under a subsection allowing for individual counties to increase quantities of medical marijuana that patients are allowed to possess. Senate Bill 325 would have allowed individual counties to hold special elections to “restrict or prohibit the possession, consumption, transport, sale, cultivation or manufacture of marijuana or marijuana products, or any combination thereof.” Both failed to make it to a floor vote.

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SUPER FRUIT Strain name: Super Fruit Grown by: Green Seed Farm Acquired from: Steve’s Greens Cannabis + Wellness Date acquired: May 21 THC/CBD percentages: (waiting on test results) Physical traits: Evenly split between lush green and bright orange stigmas with moderate trichomes on the outside. Trichomes increase and some purple is revealed as you get closer to the stem.

Bouquet: Earthy and sweet Review: Super Fruit is a cross between Fruit Loops and OG, according to the growers at Green Seed Farm. The bud I sampled was moist and spongy, but not wet or terribly sticky when I pulled it apart with my fingers, though it stuck to the blades of the grinder. The smoke is smooth and rich with a slightly sweet taste. The high is immediately calm and intensifies slowly but never gets too intense. It’s more relaxing than euphoric.

Super Fruit from Steve’s Greens | Photo Alexa Ace

The first time I tried it, it made me a little dizzy and more than a little sleepy as it started to wear on. A second outing during daylight also made me a tad lightheaded and ready to sprawl out, though I bounced back as it wore off. It’s definitely a strain I’d recommend to ease you into sleep but not something that’ll turn your brain off like a light switch, however, it also did not inspire me to get anything done.

Cannabis effects vary wildly from patient to patient based on a multitude of factors, including THC tolerance, brain chemistry and personal taste. This review is based on the subjective experience of one patient.

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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY Homework: To connect with me on social media, go here: https://freewillastrology.com/social ARIES (March 21-April 19)

“I don’t think we were ever meant to hear the same song sung exactly the same way more than once in a lifetime,” says poet Linh Dinh. That’s an extreme statement that I can’t agree with. But I understand what he’s driving at.

Repeating yourself can be debilitating, even deadening.

That includes trying to draw inspiration from the same old sources that have worked for you in the past. In accordance with current astrological omens, I suggest you try to minimize exact repetition in the next two weeks: both in what you express and what you absorb.

For further motivation, here’s William S. Burroughs: “Truth may appear only once; it may not be repeatable.”

TAURUS (April 20-May 20)

Peter Benchley wrote the bestselling book Jaws, which was later turned into a popular movie. It’s the story of a great white shark that stalks and kills people in a small beach town. Later in his life, the Taurus author was sorry for its influence, which helped legitimize human predation on sharks and led to steep drops in shark populations. To atone, Benchley became an aggressive advocate for shark conservation. If there’s any behavior in your own past that you regret, Taurus, the coming weeks will be a good time to follow Benchley’s lead: correct for your mistakes; make up for your ignorance; do good deeds to balance a time when you acted unconsciously.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20)

Some birds can fly for days without coming down to earth. Alpine swifts are the current record-holders, staying aloft for 200 consecutive days as they chase and feed on insects over West Africa. I propose we make the swift your soul ally for the next three weeks. May it help inspire you to take maximum advantage of the opportunities life will be offering you. You will have extraordinary power to soar over the maddening crowd, gaze at the big picture of your life, and enjoy exceptional amounts of freedom.

CANCER (June 21-July 22)

“I think gentleness is one of the most disarmingly and captivatingly attractive qualities there are,” writes poet Nayyirah Waheed. That will be emphatically true about you in the coming weeks, Cancerian. Your poised, deeply felt gentleness will accord you as much power as other people might draw from ferocity and grandeur. Your gentleness will enable you to crumble obstacles and slip past barriers. It will energize you to capitalize on and dissipate chaos. It will win you leverage that you’ll be able to use for months.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22)

Is the Loch Ness monster real? Is there a giant sea serpent that inhabits the waters of Loch Ness in Scotland?

Tantalizing hints arise now and then, but no definitive evidence has ever emerged. In 1975, enterprising investigators got the idea to build a realistic-looking papier-mâché companion for Nessie and place it in Loch Ness. They hoped that this “honey trap” would draw the reclusive monster into more public view. Alas, the scheme went awry. (Lady Nessie got damaged when she ran into a jetty.) But it did have some merit. Is there an equivalent approach you might employ to generate more evidence and insight about one of your big mysteries, Leo? What strategies might you experiment with? The time is right to hatch a plan.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22)

Earlier in your life, you sometimes wrestled with dilemmas that didn’t deserve so much of your time and energy. They weren’t sufficiently essential to invoke the best use of your intelligence. But over the years, you have ripened in your ability to attract more useful and interesting problems. Almost imperceptibly, you have been growing smarter about recognizing which riddles are worth exploring and which are better left alone.

Here’s the really good news: The questions and challenges you face now are among the finest you’ve ever had. You are being afforded prime opportunities to grow in wisdom and effectiveness.

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LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22)

How many languages are you fluent it? One? Two? More?

I’m sure you already know that gaining the ability to speak more than one tongue makes you smarter and more empathetic. It expands your capacity to express yourself vividly and gives you access to many interesting people who think differently from you. I mention this, Libra, because you’re in a phase of your cycle when learning a new language might be easier than usual, as is improving your mastery of a second or third language.

If none of that’s feasible for you, I urge you to at least formulate an intention to speak your main language with greater candor and precision—and find other ways to expand your ability to express yourself.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21)

Here’s Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano from The Book of Embraces: “In the River Plate basin we call the heart a ‘bobo,’ a fool. And not because it falls in love. We call it a fool because it works so hard.” I bring this to your attention, Scorpio, because I hope that in the coming weeks, your heart will indeed be a hard-working, wisely foolish bobo. The astrological omens suggest that you will learn what you need to learn and attract the experiences you need to attract if you do just that. Life is giving you a mandate to express daring and diligent actions in behalf of love.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21)

I invite you to meditate on this proposal from freelance writer Radha Marcum: “The spiritual definition of love is that when you look at the person you love, it makes you love yourself more.” I hope there’s a lot of that kind of action going on for you in the next four weeks.

According to my assessment of life’s secret currents, all of creation will be conspiring to intensify and deepen your love for yourself by intensifying and deepening your love for other people. Cooperate with that conspiracy, please!

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19)

Not all, but many horoscope columns address your ego rather than your soul. They provide useful information for your surface self, but little help for your deep self. If

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you’ve read my oracles for a while, you know that I aspire to be in the latter category. In that light, you won’t be surprised when I say that the most important thing you can do in the coming weeks is to seek closer communion with your soul; to explore your core truths; to focus on delight, fulfillment, and spiritual meaning far more than on status, power, and wealth. As you attend to your playful work, meditate on this counsel from Capricorn author John O’Donohue: “The geography of your destiny is always clearer to the eye of your soul than to the intentions and needs of your surface mind.”

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18)

Aquarian biochemist Gertrude Belle Elion shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1988. She was instrumental in devising new drugs to treat AIDS and herpes, as well as a medication to facilitate organ transplants. And yet she accomplished all this without ever earning a PhD or MD, a highly unusual feat. I suspect you may pull off a similar, if slightly less spectacular feat in the coming weeks: getting a reward or blessing despite a lack of formal credentials or official credibility.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20)

Today Mumbai is a megacity with 12.5 million people on 233 square miles. But as late as the eighteenth century, it consisted of seven sparsely populated islands. Over many decades, reclamation projects turned them into a single land mass. I foresee you undertaking a metaphorically comparable project during the coming months. You could knit fragments together into a whole.

You have the power to transform separate and dispersed influences into a single, coordinated influence. You could inspire unconnected things to unite in common cause.

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

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

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