I’ve watched state policymakers and legislators ask this question and inexplicably seem unable to come to a fairly simple conclusion. The Oklahoma Arts Council (OAC) is one of the leanest-operating state agencies in Oklahoma, improving the lives of Oklahomans from Frederick to Miami and Broken Bow to Black Mesa, seeding the success of hundreds of […]
Jonathan
Posted inNews
The problem is cost, not coverage
According to Obamacare, the federal government would cover 90 percent of the cost of such an expansion long-term. States would be required to pay the difference. When passed by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama, the Obamacare Medicaid expansion was mandatory, but in a 7-2 decision, the United States Supreme Court made the Medicaid […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
Its joke is that Burt Wonderstone (Steve Carell, Hope Springs) and Anton Marvelton (Steve Buscemi, TV’s Boardwalk Empire) are improbably coiffed stage magicians in Vegas à la Siegfried & Roy, but without the tigers. As glitzy and showy as they are painfully unhip, the two friends have been working together for 30 years, but a […]
Posted inArts & Culture
6 Souls
See, he’s not your everyday schizophrenic, but a supernatural one, playing host to a half-dozen souls (hence the title) sharing one common thread: They were murdered. It’s an intriguing idea, and for a while, co-directors Måns Mårlind and Björn Stein (Underworld: Awakening) do it justice. Alas, it cannot last. Once the story moves into the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Terminator Anthology
Cameron’s The Terminator of 1984 was and is a well-made piece of sci-fi trash that bears the ingenuity-on-a-budget scars of most Roger Corman graduates. If it proved a breakthrough for Cameron (who then earned the Aliens gig as a follow-up), it was arguably double that for its monosyllabic center, Arnold Schwarzenegger, then considered near-inconceivable as […]
Posted inMusic
Trading places
Between being a band, helping manage a record label/recording studio and maintaining a full-time day job, time management is crucial. Maybe that’s why Josh Griffin and Jonathan Eldridge — the two-man crew behind Oklahoma City blues-rock outfit The Trading Co. — have taken to writing songs and playing shows at the same time. “We’ve done […]
Posted inMusic
Tusk’s task
Photo: Geoff L. Johnson Savannah, Ga., has proven to be something of a breeding ground for metal bands, giving rise to Kylesa, Baroness, Black Tusk and others in the past decade or so. You might think something is in the water. It’s actually in the air. “It’s just hot — really, really hot,” guitarist Andrew […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Rudyard Kipling’s Mark of the Beast
Not only is the title superimposed over an image from the indie effort, but two clickable options, two URLs and four review blurbs, as if to convince you upfront that you are about to witness brilliance. To further complicate the eyesore, the blurbs are not presented in consistent typeface, color or size. In other words, […]