With shows like "Sons of Anarchy" and "Rescue Me," FX has proven itself to be one of the groundbreaking networks when it comes to pushing the dramatic envelope. Now comes what might be their most edgy and WTF-inducing project to date, the sexy, spooky and sinister "American Horror Story."
Also a good week for the Central Arkansas job market and new blood at the lottery. It was a bad week for 'Last Shot with Judge Gunn,' Mark Pryor and living high on the hogs.
Dempsey Bakery is celebrating its grand opening on Saturday, Oct. 29. The gluten-free bakery is located at 323 Cross Street, next door to the Diamond Bear Beer Brewery.
A political blogger wrote, "I eased dropped on a committee meeting at Occupy LA last night. One guy announced to the group, 'Okay, homework tonight is to find out about Glass-Steagall.'
We have a decade of proof on the national level that tax cuts don't create jobs. We likewise have years of proof in Arkansas that capital gains tax cuts — the Republican default tax cut — are worthless as economic stimulus. We also have ample proof that giving away tax money to corporations is no economic boon. Yet still we persist.
The Occupation movement, if we may call it that, may peter out as big money hopes it will in the chill of winter and the distraction of presidential politics. But it will not share the fate of its twin, the Tea Party, which was to be co-opted by the very forces that caused its rage.
We've noted before the right-wingers' talent for seizing control of the political dialogue through repeated use of terms that are misleading when not entirely false. For example, their insistence on "death tax" instead of "inheritance tax," making it appear the tax is paid by everyone when it's really paid only by a tiny handful of the super-rich.
Our guide includes local boutiques for work and evening, vintage and consignment stores for worn-in leather boots and high-end labels with good price points, and chain stores.
Mary Ann Gunn, the former Fayetteville circuit judge who left the bench to create a reality show loosely based on her former drug court known as "Last Shot With Judge Gunn," got a taste of reality herself last week.
Rep. Ed Garner of Maumelle has always been something of an unlikely Tea Party favorite with his government accountability talk because of his own sketchy record.
As we reported last week, the Democrat-Gazette dropped Gene Lyons' weekly syndicated column last week. Beginning Wednesday afternoon, the Times will host it on our website, arktimes.com.
This unusual request came down from the cloud last week: "Would you ask Assmunch if he has a personalized version of the Hippocratic Oath? I guess you'd call it an Assmunchocratic Oath."
I'm no John Brummett. Max Brantley, Ernie Dumas, Bob Lancaster, Paul Greenberg, Doug Smith or Gene Lyons either. All have strong voices and deep institutional knowledge. I have neither.
The featured work on the Arkansas Symphony's second Masterworks concert last Saturday evening was Brahms First Piano Concerto with Norman Krieger as soloist.
Though born and bred in Little Rock, The Observer had never been on the Arkansas River until just the other day. We rolled out of bed at the crack of dawn to set sail with the River Revival Flotilla, a group of boat owners who departed from the Little Rock Yacht Club and headed downriver to the Arkansas Inland Maritime Museum in North Little Rock.
Halloween is upon us, and that means thoughts of spooks and spirits. Arkansas has places rumored to be haunted from border to border, so here, just for fun (and to get your spine in proper tingling mode for the holiday), are a few of the biggies from Arkansas ghostlore. Bonus: many of them are places you can visit.
Gene Lyons' weekly column joins our on-line lineup today. Here's his first column for us, on the Occupy Wall Street movement, with a local reference on which to build.
Interesting find by Talk Business:
Duane Highley, a Springfield, Mo., utilities executive, has been chosen as new CEO of the Arkansas Electric Cooperatives of Arkansas, succeeding the retiring Gary Voight.
It's worth reading up on the current campaign in Mississippi to pass a "personhood" amendment that will not only outlaw all abortion — including for rape pregnancies — but also outlaw some forms of birth control.
Another sharp illustration of how the 1 percent aren't like everybody else. Report in New York Times today from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office underscores who dramatically income gaps have widened.
The Sierra Club, the National Audubon Society and Audubon Arkansas have asked the Arkansas Public Service Commission to stop construction of American Electric Power's Turk Plant, being built by its SWEPCO subsidiary in Hempstead County.
If you were to tell me when I went to Arkansas Tech that you could find good sushi in Russellville, I woulda laughed you out of the room. But you can certainly find it there today.
Gov. Mike Beebe took questions on Talk Politics this morning. Twitter quotes of interest:
He say he "may indeed" vote for Sheffield Nelson's ballot initiative to make the gas severance tax 7 percent, similar to surrounding states, to produce money for highways and city streets.
Caterpillar CEO Doug Oberhelman is in Little Rock today and the good suits are no doubt nodding in unison to his remarks, as posted on Twitter by Roby Brock, on the need for some big highway spending so as to create demand for Caterpillar machinery and also for the need for a reduction in the corporate t
Robert Greenwald, the activist filmmaker, is continuing his work to expose the dark side of the billionaires Koch, whose political activities have fueled the Tea Party, Americans for Prosperity and a variety of efforts to help Republican takeovers of state legislatures and Congress.
This is kind of inside-bureaucracy baseball, but I'd like to credit the Arkansas attorney general's office for what appears to be a common-sense official opinion on the Arkansas Workers Compensation Commission's interest in questioning workers about their immigration status on a piece of agency paperwork.
The Times' Nicholas Kristof writes today that the crux of the Occupy movement's complaint isn't capitalism, its crony capitalism,
Capitalism is so successful an economic system partly because of an internal discipline that allows for loss and even bankruptcy.
Socialite-around-Little Rock and sometime Republican politics dabbler Noelle Nikpour was featured on the Daily Show last night in a bit on climate change and other so-called "science."
Once again exploring the idea of “how far would you go for a good burger?” — I stopped in to the little restaurant at Viola’s major intersection (where Highway 62/412 and Highway 223 meet) with friends to grab some vittles Sunday.
I mentioned in The Insider this week that Rep. David Sanders of Little Rock would be in the Republican primary for an open Senate seat that Rep. Ed Garner of Maumelle is also seeking.
Can Democrats regain ground lost in the U.S. House in the 2010 tidal wave? Polling offers some hopeful signs, but, yes, the polling was done for a Democratic PAC.
Governing has named Gov. Mike Beebe one of its 2011 public officials of the year, sharing high esteem with Arkansas residents reported in yesterday's Arkansas Poll release.
But for the fact that he died in 2003, two years after the first Shrek movie kicked off the franchise, New Yorker Cartoonist William Steig would today be rolling around in royalties today. He is, after all, the original creator of the green ogre who has appeared in four movies, various fast food and theme park tie-ins, and now a Broadway musical based on the earliest Shrek film.
The players include most of Amasa Hines (and formerly The Natives and Romany Rye): Whitman Bransford (keys), Ryan Hitt (bass), Judson Spillyards (guitar) and Joshua Spillyards (drums). Plus Arkansas guitar god Greg Spradlin and Velvet Kente's polyrhythmic drummer Jamal.
Mud, you know, has positive therapeutic and dermatological properties; people pay a lot of money to dip themselves in it at fancy spas when Neutrogena won't do the trick. Some of my earliest experiences with mud probably came on an elementary school playground and involved proto-scatological pranks. Most recently, I slipped on it in the rain. The Mud Run is a convenient combination of all these qualities: restorative, regressive and downright mucky.
The Peabody RiverTop Parties continue into the fall with the city's biggest Halloween celebration. Local DJ Brandon Peck is spinning and Epiphany is emceeing at the voodoo-themed extravaganza. Plus, $5,000 in cash and prizes are being given away for the best costumes
It's Thursday and you're on. Closing out:
* BAD VIBRATIONS: The TSA has removed a screener from passenger duty because he wrote a note "get your freak on" to a female air passenger in whose bag he apparently discovered a vibrator.
If you're any kind of snob when it comes to band names, Colorado-native Derek Vincent Smith's performance name — Pretty Lights — might, at first glance, sound phoned-in.
Paul Krugman's column today is worth printing for distribution by all the Occupy protestors. He's OK with the European financial deal, but focuses on the bigger picture — "the abject failure of an economic doctrine."
Mara Leveritt's website breaks news about the murder case against a Traskwood woman accused of slaying two men, including the son of a Benton alderman, found buried on her property.
Movie director Peter Jackson, in New Zealand to film "The Hobbit," brought Damien Echols of the West Memphis Three with him and that occasioned some questioning at a news conference there.
Sort of ironic. The day after Whirlpool announced closure of its big plant in Fort Smith, with the remaining refrigerator work going to Mexico, comes news that a Mexican firm is buying O.K. Industries, the Fort Smith-based poultry company.
The Arkansas Realtors Association said September home sales were up 10 percent over the same month a year ago, but the average price declined 1 percent.
Little Rock filmmakers The Renaud Brothers — Brent and Craig — cut their teeth making insightful, powerful documentary in some of the world's most dangerous places, including Iraq and earthquake-ravaged Haiti.
School "reform" wonks, this article is for you. It's an assessment of the New Orleans school makeover "miracle," in which a handful of schools with unimaginable financial and other support from the Billionaire Boys Club ($50 weekly good behavior rewards for students!)
The state Higher Education Department today reported an increase of more than 5 percent in the number of new high school graduates enrolling in Arkansas colleges with grades and test score necessary to win an Academic Challenge Scholarship.
Gov. Mike Beebe's massive popularity, Arkansans' contradictory worry over the economy and confidence that things are going to get better, and repeat endorsements of Showtime's "Homeland" and Jeff Nichols' "Take Shelter" (which opens today at Rave in Little Rock) are on tap this week.
The line is open. Final words:
* FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS: Monticello Live has an account of a huge brawl at the Monticello-Hamburg junior high football game.
Interesting discussion in a legislative committee yesterday about requiring that high school students take two years of a foreign language to qualiify for a lottery scholarship.
Charles Blow, who writes a weekly column for the New York Times based on polling and other data, hit a favorite topic of mine during election bloviations.
This yarn has traveled around the world so many times it will never be supplanted by the facts:
But, just for the record, that $16 muffin at a Washington hotel wasn't — it was the cost of muffin, beverages and service and reflected the cost of rooms provided at no charge for the conference.
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette editorial page — reflecting its publisher Walter Hussman's devotion to the Billionaire Boys Club effort to wreck the Little Rock School District by encouraging establishment of as many charter schools as possible and forsaking efforts to improve the existing public school districts in Pulaski County — naturally emphasizes the positive when it comes to charter schools.
I wrote more than a week ago that reviews were underway — by legislative audit and the state Securities Department — that might take a look at a subject of discussion in the brokerage community.
Columbia Journalism Review, in its The Audit feature on business journalism, gives a stinging review of the Fort Smith Times-Record coverage of the news last week that Whirlpool would be closing its refrigerator factory in Fort Smith, putting 1,000 people out of work.
Not much so far in the way of news or excitement this morning. A few scraps of potential interest:
* NOT SO SILENT IN THE SHALE: There is a good story on people in New York agitating against shale gas exploration dangers.
Start leading the polls and scrutiny increases. Tonight, it's Politico with story:
During Herman Cain’s tenure as the head of the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s, at least two female employees complained to colleagues and senior association officials about inappropriate behavior by Cain, ultimately leaving their jobs at the trade group, multiple sources confirm to POLITICO.
What do you give out to trick-or-treaters on Halloween night? Is there a specific time you should turn on your light? These are the sort of questions parents ask on a night like this.
If I read this Democrat-Gazette story this morning correctly, it means that Arkansas voters are going to be asked Nov. 8 to approve borrowing money to redo road repairs that taxpayers haven't finished paying for from the last highway bond election.
KARK reports that Prosecutor Cody Hiland of Conway will seek to remove Kenney Cassell from office as Searcy County sheriff for a misdemeanor federal conviction in 1979 for possession of stolen cornish hens.
Good column by Paul Krugman on the "weaponized Keynesians." They are the hypocritical Republicans who say federal spending on bridge, road, school and other construction doesn't create jobs, but spending federal money on airplanes, bombs and weapon systems does.
Scott Ford, who had the great good fortune to be born into the Alltel empire, is drawing wide attention for a recent speech in Fort Smith in which he seemed to draw a parallel between the 99 percenters of the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations with those responsible for genocide in Rwanda.
To borrow a phrase: 'I anticipate a deeply religious experience." Tim Matheson, the actor who played Otter, the Delta house Romeo in the legendary "Animal House," will be celebrity grand marshal of the March 17 St. Patrick's Day Parade in Hot Springs.
A group calling itself the Arkansas Tea Party has issued a news release opposing the penny sales tax increase on the ballot in North Little Rock Nov. 8.
Forget the Herman Cain sexual harassment story, even though it's just getting cranked up. Try this one, about a well-sourced report that suggests his campaign got off the ground with illegal fund-raising.
New York critics weren’t wild about the 2008 stage incarnation of “Shrek the Musical.” But, outside of “The Lion King,” theater critics have pretty much walled off their hearts to popular film cartoons being made into high-priced, Great White Way entertainment. Then again, it’s a tricky business to turn the intricately animated into singing and dancing flesh-and-blood.
Kat found Andouille sausage in the sweet cornbread being offered at the State Fair of Louisiana. What's weird in your cornbread? Time to share your recipe.
The line is open. A final few words:
* CAIN'S COMMENTS: After first disavowing all knowledge of any complaints, Herman Cain has now developed an alibi that there might have been one baseless complaint.
The nature of complaints about Herman Cain's behavior toward subordinates remains sketchy at best. But news accounts — not in the morning Democrat-Gazette, I note — do note his "evolving" accounts on the issue yesterday.
Mark Friday on your calendars. A variety of progressive groups plan to "occupy" a Koch brothers gala in Washington to celebrate their effort to complete the takeover of American government for the rich.
Because of three episodes of Little Rock air travelers going through security checks with weapons, the Little Rock Police Department has issued a public reminder:
Please help us get the word out that it is illegal to carry a weapon into the airport.
Great column by Ernest Dumas again this week, loaded with details on big issues on which Mitt Romney has done about-faces — clean air, gay rights, abortion, health care and more.
Dr. Walter Kimbrough, president of Philander Smith College, has been on the radar of a number of college job searches because of the strong job he's done at Little Rock's historicaly black college.
A devoted traveler myself, I've followed with interest House Republican Leader John Burris' Twitters from his State Department-sponsored junket to Europe.
From David Koon: Occupy Little Rock, the local offshoot of the worldwide protest movement that started in New York City with Occupy Wall Street, is getting a hand from a philosophical kindred spirit via a $1,000 donation last week from the local chapter of the AFL-CIO.
A public meeting has been scheduled at 5:30 p.m. Thursday at the police training building, 2400 Willow Street, North Little Rock, to talk about the city sales tax proposal on the Nov. 8 ballot.
It's Tuesday night and you're on. Close-outs
* REPUBLICAN DOG WHISTLE: Republican politicking has been reduced to something even less than catch phrases.
Crescent Dragonwagon comes to Little Rock this weekend to preach the word about cornbread. In addition to her appearance Saturday as a celebrity guest judge at the Arkansas Cornbread Festival, Crescent will be the special guest at the Historic Arkansas Museum Friday at lunch for Cornbread: Food, Shelter, Story.