'Napoleon Dynamite' star unsure what to expect as official starter of Arkansas parade

Jon Heder, voice-over and film actor of Napoleon Dynamite fame, says he doesn't know what to expect from his duties as official starter for the First Ever 15th Annual World's Shortest St. Patrick's Day Parade on Saturday.

"In this business, you get to do a lot of things you've not done before, and a lot of times you go in and you're quite blindfolded," Heder told The Sentinel-Record in a recent interview. "Sometimes you get a good idea in advance, but a lot of times you don't know until you try it. I don't know exactly what this is going to be like, but it's a parade and it will be fun."

While he's only been "in and out of Little Rock" before, the actor said his grandfather did live in Arkansas for nearly 20 years. Because of this, he's ready to find out what Hot Springs is all about.

"It's more you get a flavor of a place, and being a southern state I don't get to visit very often," he said. "I'm excited to just see it and get to know the people of Hot Springs."

Now a father of four kids, Heder said St. Patrick's Day is a fun time for his family, jokingly referring to it as "one of those hard-core holidays that we have."

"We do the green thing and I do like old Irish lore. I like learning about leprechauns and stuff, and now that I've got kids when St. Paddy's Day comes around now it's for sure the whole 'OK, are you wearing green?' thing.

"We did a couple years ago, me and my kids, make a leprechaun trap and that was a lot of fun, but that's about it. That's about as far as I get into it," he said.

These days, Heder can be heard on several animated series for Disney Channel, Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network, and seen in various independent feature films.

Of the parade, Heder has a few questions of his own on what to expect that he's hoping the people of Hot Springs will answer.

"What I want to know is how do they make this an event out of the shortest street in the world?" he asked."Do you see it for a second and then it's gone?"

Heder will join this year's celebrity grand marshal, Joey Fatone, when the parade kicks off at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, an hour later than usual to accommodate race fans from Oaklawn Park.