Ron Wolfe
Stories by Ron
Diggin’ up BONES
posted: 05/15/2012 2:27 a.m. Discuss
Texas author Russell Ferrell claims to have unearthed “the greatest dinosaur story ever,” thanks to what Cephis Hall from Arkansas dug up.
Inch by inch:Acrocanthosaurus
posted: 05/15/2012 2:08 a.m. Discuss
Acrocanthosaurus had the world and pretty much everything else by the tail in the early Cretaceous period. It was the only giant carnivore of its time — about the size of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, 2/2 tons, give or take a sharp toenail, according the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.
MAY CALENDAR: Just getting warmed up
posted: 05/01/2012 2:49 a.m. Discuss
May is the merry month of May polls that show crawfish, toads and pickles high in popularity, fishhooks sunk, cheese dip in the thick, and movies reeling.
Whoo! goes there
posted: 04/29/2012 4:21 a.m. Discuss
Nearly 5,000 people turned out for Union Pacific Corp.’s steam locomotive No. 844’s recent stop in North Little Rock. A line of visitors climbed the steps to see in the open cab of this 68-year-old visitor from another time.
Simulator puts engineers on fast track
posted: 04/29/2012 4:07 a.m. Discuss
In railroading’s steam era, the way to become a locomotive engineer was to work your way up slowly, the way steam builds.
THEATER REVIEW: Trip through Wardrobe a magical one
posted: 04/28/2012 2:46 a.m. Discuss
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe closes out the Arkansas Arts Center Children’s Theatre’s current season with a roar. A nearly full house of about 300 adults and children saw Friday night’s opening.
MUSIC: Graduations split Four Reps
posted: 04/24/2012 2:10 a.m. Discuss
The Beatles broke up, Led Zeppelin came down, and Selena Gomez left The Scene. The end was bound to come, too, for the Arkansas Repertory Theatre’s a cappella quartet, The Four Reps.
Heart disease in women makes volunteer see red
posted: 04/22/2012 3:46 a.m. Discuss
Every woman needs a little black dress, the saying goes, to which Debi Barnes adds that every woman needs to know the importance of a red dress.
ART: Novel themes, comic twists
posted: 04/15/2012 3:32 a.m. Discuss
Graphic novelist Nate Powell started drawing comics as a redheaded boy in North Little Rock. Today, his books win top awards, and his original work is on display at Historic Arkansas Museum in Little Rock.
Run!
posted: 03/31/2012 2:43 a.m. Discuss
Bamboo is a grass that looks like a tree, and Dale Almond is an Arkansan who looks like he came from the Australian Outback, bringing his bamboo didgeridoo.
Big, heaping platter of bamboo:Yummy!
posted: 03/31/2012 2:36 a.m. Discuss
Bamboo — it’s what’s for dinner.
Word’s growth bamboozles
posted: 03/31/2012 2:35 a.m. Discuss
Bamboo has more than 700 species, and even that number falls short of counting all the ways to say bamboo: Bamboo curtain: the Communist states of east Asia — a Cold War expression, not so much bandied about these days with the Chinese making iPhones.
APRIL CALENDAR: Time to celebrate!
posted: 03/27/2012 2:35 a.m. Discuss
April is the month when even stranger things happen than flying saucers. Books fly off the shelf. Rabbits are on the fly with colored eggs. And fools spring the old rubber-fly-in the-soup trick again (only in Arkansas this time of year, it’s probably a real fly).
LR’s Main Street leads to vision
posted: 03/14/2012 4:18 a.m. Discuss
Rocco Landesman, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, said Tuesday that he expects Main Street in downtown Little Rock will develop into a blocks-long district of galleries and other arts-related activities.
He’s focused
posted: 03/11/2012 5:07 a.m. Comment 1
Batman goes back to the Batcave, and movie still photographer Ron Phillips comes home to Arkansas.
Movie work rolling up 100 and counting ...
posted: 03/11/2012 5:03 a.m. Discuss
Ron Phillips’ career as a movie still photographer spans more than 100 films. Some were big hits (The Sixth Sense, 1999), some big award-winners (Tender Mercies, 1983) and some, well, got chewed off his resume (Jaws 3-D, 1983). The list includes: A Soldier’s Story (1984) Angels in America (2003) A Love Song for Bobby Long (2004) Invincible (2006) Race to Witch Mountain (2009) The photographer counts “60 DVDs on the shelf that I claim to have worked on.” Of the lot, “I still watch Christmas Vacation every year,” the National Lampoon comedy (1989).
The amazing vanishing man
posted: 03/11/2012 5:02 a.m. Discuss
Hollywood movie director Jay Russell, from North Little Rock, tells why he expects the impossible from his favorite still photographer, Ron Phillips.
Cookbook is stage in singer’s recovery
posted: 03/07/2012 3:33 a.m. Discuss
When country singer Ruby Dee Philippa lost some of her brain power to a head injury, she found an answer on the stove — in cooking, and especially in writing recipes.
‘Informants’ recount childhoods
posted: 03/06/2012 4:23 a.m. Discuss
Margaret Jones Bolsterli’s new book, Things You Need to Hear: Collected Memories of Growing Up in Arkansas, 1890-1980 (University of Arkansas Press, $24.95) visits with 41 Arkansans she calls her “informants.” Some are as famous as the late singer Johnny Cash (quoted from Cash: The Autobiography ), and most are from 40 years of interviews that Bolsterli conducted as a writer and historian.
Publicist recalls Monkee
posted: 03/06/2012 4:22 a.m. Comment 1
Don Berrigan of Rogers remembers singer Davy Jones as “a great guy” with whom he shared the tuneful times of Jones’ TV series, The Monkees.
Out of the PAST
posted: 03/06/2012 4:21 a.m. Discuss
People’s lives are shaped by growing up in Arkansas, especially in hard times — meaning, in the state’s early years, practically everybody.
MARCH CALENDAR: On your mark ... spring forth!
posted: 02/28/2012 2:47 a.m. Discuss
March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lion that drank too much green beer. Leprechauns leap, dummies talk, runners walk and everybody gawks at daffodils.
Tribute acts play it up
posted: 02/21/2012 3:07 a.m. Discuss
Ladies and gentlemen, please join the applause in tribute to tributes — bands and tribute performers, hair styles, comic books and even fruit smoothies.
With that, we salute you
posted: 02/21/2012 2:33 a.m. Discuss
In Arkansas, not every tribute to a person is another person. These are among the state’s other sorts of tributes to musical entertainers: Groundbreaking will be Sunday, the late Johnny Cash’s birthday (he would have been 80), for the restoration of his childhood home in Dyess, southeast of Jonesboro.
Could it be deja vu, all over again?
posted: 02/21/2012 2:32 a.m. Discuss
A tribute can be hard to tell from an imitation, likeness, honor, homage, one off or bald-faced swipe. Here, for example — some tough calls: The Artist, an Oscar nominee for best picture, slips in some of composer Bernard Herrmann’s highly recognizable music from Vertigo (1958), the Alfred Hitchcock thriller that starred Kim Novak.
FEBRUARY CALENDAR: FEBRUARY CALENDAR: A bit of a leap
posted: 01/31/2012 3:06 a.m. Discuss
February is all about that tingly feeling. Might be love — might be cold rain. Groundhogs watch for their shadows. Grocery stores hunt for their shopping carts full of cherries.
Cast your gaze skyward: The national bird is soaring
posted: 01/30/2012 2:50 a.m. Comment 1
Three signs posted halfway on the trail to the observation deck at Pinnacle Mountain State Park tell what a person might see up there in the wind and the romping treetops.
Symbol of ... whatever fits?
posted: 01/30/2012 2:35 a.m. Discuss
Some people watch quietly for eagles, and some feel moved to say something profound about the national bird: Things named after eagles include the Eagle Bank and Trust Co. of central Arkansas, Eagle Brand condensed milk, American Eagle Outfitters jeans, Harley-Davidson Screamin’ Eagle motorcycles and Eagle Claw fish hooks.
Golden arches to shine on chocolate fountains
posted: 01/29/2012 3:29 a.m. Discuss
“Sweet” is the word for the ninth annual Chocolate Fantasy Ball, a concoction of generosity swirled with February’s favorite candy flavor to benefit Ronald McDonald House Charities of Arkansas.
Riding the rails for a visit to yesteryear
posted: 01/29/2012 3:05 a.m. Discuss
Trains have been chugging across movie screens at least since The Great Train Robbery (1903). But trains don’t just show up on the set like movie extras, and trains can be as puffed up as the biggest stars.
Movie posters: From the reel to real thing
posted: 01/29/2012 3:04 a.m. Discuss
“Ark in the Dark: An Exhibit of Vintage Movie Posters About Arkansas” shows how people have seen the state reflected for almost 100 years.
Double exposure
posted: 01/29/2012 3:03 a.m. Discuss
The art and history of movies and Arkansas are on display in related exhibits at two galleries in Little Rock.
So imaginative, and so little help
posted: 01/03/2012 3:08 a.m. Discuss
Haven’t written a New Year’s resolution this year? Welcome to Arkansas’ nonresolvers’ club, in which the membership of those who refuse to write seems to be exclusively, well — writers.
And same to you, McDuck
posted: 01/03/2012 3:07 a.m. Discuss
Stuck for a New Year’s resolution, comics historian and author (Hollywood Cartoons) Michael Barrier of Little Rock wondered what sort of goal Scrooge McDuck would set.
JANUARY CALENDAR: It’s the month of fresh starts, or is it the beginning of the end?
posted: 12/27/2011 4:51 a.m. Discuss
January is when everything is resolved, and yet nothing is settled. January is when you look in the mirror and say, “It’s time for change!” And sure enough, you find a way to see things differently — a new mirror. January is when snowflakes fly, eagles soar, and brides-to-be just can’t keep their feet on the ground.
It’s a wonderful stage during Christmastide
posted: 12/20/2011 4:23 a.m. Discuss
Does the name Clarence ring a bell?
Mysteries solved
posted: 12/06/2011 4:37 a.m. Discuss
What the ad promised : Mail-Order Mysteries — Real Stuff From Old Comic Book Ads (Insight Editions, 2011), 156 pages of amazing revelations by Kirk Demarais of Siloam Springs.
When toys were dangerously fun
posted: 12/06/2011 4:30 a.m. Discuss
December is Safe Toys and Gifts Month, a reminder that today’s playthings are supposed to be as harmless as a rubber knife — and good luck finding so much as a rubber knife.
Profit was the point
posted: 12/06/2011 4:29 a.m. Discuss
What was wrong with these people? — these shyster outfits peddling junk to innocent children. Had they no shame?
THEATER REVIEW: Frog and Toad bring picture book to life
posted: 12/03/2011 4:32 a.m. Discuss
The audience of about 200 children and grown-ups hopped to their feet to applaud Friday night’s opening of A Year with Frog and Toad at the Arkansas Arts Center Children’s Theatre in Little Rock.
DECEMBER CALENDAR: Holly, jolly ... year’s finale
posted: 11/29/2011 4:20 a.m. Discuss
December is when, “Ho, ho, ho!” means the big galoot in the sooty suit is coming down the chimney. “Oh, oh, oh!” means he slipped, and he is hanging on to the gutter, knowing just what he hopes someone will bring him for Christmas: a ladder.
When out on the lawn ...
posted: 11/26/2011 3:37 a.m. Comment 1
Christmas decorating is big this year thanks to more and more inflatables on the rise.
Be of good cheer!
posted: 11/26/2011 3:34 a.m. Discuss
Christmas decorations tend toward the reverent and traditionally merry. But even the Grinch could find something to steal in this year’s selection, such as: Six-foot-tall inflatable Grinch in a snow globe that reads, “Merry Grinchmas !” (Gemmy, $500).
Time to get crafty at whatever you do
posted: 11/26/2011 3:30 a.m. Discuss
Christmas lawn decorations used to come out of Dad’s workshop — formidable Santas and snowmen, hewn from splintery plywood, painted peppermint red and gloss white, and sprinkled with sawdust and the ashes from Santa’s favorite cigarette, Lucky Strike.
Christmas decorating, just like in movies
posted: 11/26/2011 3:28 a.m. Comment 1
Everybody knows that decorating for Santa is sure to cause disaster — everybody, that is, who believes in Christmas movies.
ART: UALR exhibit blurs line between illustration, art
posted: 11/20/2011 3:30 a.m. Discuss
The Society of Illustrators’ headquarters in New York might look like any other townhouse in the high-class Upper East Side, but for its red door — a painterly splash of showmanship against the white and brick facade.
Tempest-uous debate
posted: 11/08/2011 4:40 a.m. Discuss
Editor’s note: This story tells which other guy the makers of the movie, Anonymous, claim wrote Shakespeare’s plays. And as the ghost warned Hamlet, there are secrets that, if told, can make a person’s hair stand on end “like quills upon the fretful porpentine.” as Shakespeare a fraud?
Shakespeare onstage as himself
posted: 11/08/2011 4:26 a.m. Discuss
Forsooth! Many a film has been made of Shakespeare’s plays — most recently, The Tempest (2010) with Helen Mirren — or based on Shakespeare’s work. Disney’s animated feature (1994) and stage musical, The Lion King, echo Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Bard goosed out prose with quills
posted: 11/08/2011 4:25 a.m. Discuss
Images of Shakespeare often show him with a feather in his hand — for light comedy?
