Arkansas Times Recommends is a weekly series in which Times staff members (or whoever happens to be around at the time) highlight things we’ve been enjoying this week.

I recommend hiring movers. It’s worth it. — David Ramsey

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I went to South on Main last night for the first concert of the Oxford American Jazz Series, a band called The Bad Plus. Before they took the stage, an announcement was made that a tornado warning was in effect for the area, and that we should all immediately take shelter. You could hear all the phones in the room buzzing with the same warning. I couldn’t hear what it sounded like outside, but there were sheets of rain coming down and the trees were bending over.

Everyone in the restaurant got up from their tables and huddled together in the two restrooms and the kitchen. I started out in the men’s room but was herded into the women’s, which overall was nicer than the men’s, but not by as much as people always say. We discussed our various degrees of tornado-related fear, and I couldn’t help but imagine the room suddenly imploding or being violently torn apart. Some people pulled out their phones and took photos of all of us for their Instagrams. Overall it was a well-executed emergency response plan. Also, the band still played. They got onstage not long after they let us back into the restaurant, and the bassist said, “We all survived a natural disaster tonight, and that’s a great way to start the evening.”

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After the show I drove to White Water to see Christopher Denny. As soon as I got off I-630 I noticed the entire area had lost power. The houses were all dark, and so were the traffic lights, which was ominous. White Water was open, though. I walked in and they’d spread candles around the room, so that you could see just enough to find your way to a chair. Everyone had to be quiet to hear Denny play, and mostly everyone was. He played John Prine and Townes Van Zandt covers, and his own songs. When the lights finally came on everyone groaned. — Will Stephenson

I recommend this George Jones shower curtain. — Bryan Moats

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I’m on a fungus kick. Really. I’ve been reading “Mycophilia: Revelations from the Weird World of Mushrooms” by Eugenia Bone, a New Yorker who loves to cook with mushrooms and who learned a lot about them on her forays with other ’shroomers throughout the country. She became so taken with the weird world of mushrooms that, she writes, “I become someone who, when a friend mentioned LSD, wouild say, “You know that’s synthesized from a fungus.” Or if someone mentioned that the potted trees on their patio weren’t doing well, I’d say, “They are probably mssing their symbiotic fungal partner.” She became, that is, tedious. But the book isn’t, and her conclusion that because fungi are a part of everything — trees, plants, soil, us — all living things as the same thing makes a lot of sense after a while. Or at least it does when you have more than a passing knowledge of the fungi that have taken over your husband’s feet. Next up: “The Mushroom Hunters: On the Trail of an Underground America.” Also recommended: David Arora’s “Mushrooms Demystified: A Comprehensive Guide to the Fleshy Fungi of the Central California Coast,” which is the most hilarious field guide you’ll ever read. So what if it’s about California? Just look at the pictures. — Leslie Newell Peacock



I’m going to recommend the new album “In a Dream” by the Juan MacLean, a DFA dance/disco duo that I understand is in some way or another closely related to LCD Soundsystem, but rather than looking into the biographical details and then presenting them as if they possessed some kind of relevance or meaning to me that they do not, I’d prefer to use my general ignorance as an intentional foil. I don’t know anything, and as the time deficits in my personal life continue to increase, I’m ever more subject to the whims of tastemakers elsewhere when I’m faced with the occasional moment of down time. Listen. I am a sucker for some dancey electronica executed with panache and a little cleverness, and if it has a good mix of female vocals and dumb spacecraft noises, I’m sold. Here is “A Place Called Space.” — Benji Hardy

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