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

“ekekekkekkek”

Does the word “ekekekkekkek” mean anything to you? In short, it’s the internet’s best attempt at putting into language that super strange chirpy rattle chatter thing that cats get up to whenever they’re looking out the window and a bird suddenly comes into view. Instantly, their demeanor changes and they’re locked in, powerless to deny their ancient instincts. Delightful. And birds aren’t the only trigger for “ekking”! My friend’s cat — believe it or not — regularly makes the sound in response to loud sneezes? Go figure. Feline mysteries abound. 

If, like me, you’re less interested in figuring out why cats “ek” and are more interested in watching them do it ad infinitum, I have just the recommendation for you: an Instagram page (with a million freaking followers) devoted to archiving “ek”s from all over the world. There’s a remarkable amount of variety. It’s a great way to kill an hour. 

–Daniel Grear

Cosmic Crisp Apples

Despite my general belief that everything is getting worse all the time, I have to admit that we are living in a golden age of apples. Thanks to developments in apple science, your Fujis and Galas and Grannies Smith are as good as they’ve ever been. (Red Delicious and its somehow-even-worse “golden” cousin are still trash, but even apple science has its limits.)

No matter how good your pomme préférée might be these days, however, there is one apple that clears all of the others: the Cosmic Crisp.

A hybrid varietal that crosses the much loved Honeycrisp with Enterprise apples, the Cosmic Crisp manages to outshine its more well known ancestor by a significant margin. To use a sports analogy, Cosmic Crisp is the Barry Bonds to Honeycrisp’s Bobby Bonds, using modern science to achieve nearly perfect balance in all aspects of appledom. It is simultaneously sweet and tart, with crisp flesh and medium-thin skin that yield easily in a satisfying crunch. It is a fantastic baking apple, holding its shape and texture as good as any pie apple you’ve seen and, despite being a very juicy apple, not releasing so much liquid that it impacts the quality of the finished pastry.

The best part of this? Now that the cosmic crisp has been on the market nationally for four or five years, you can generally get it from your favorite applemonger. I’ve seen them at Sam’s Club, Kroger, Natural Grocers, and even Edwards Food Giant in recent months. It might not fix [/gestures wildly at everything], but you’d be surprised by how much a perfect apple can brighten a few minutes of your day, even in 2025.

UPDATE: There’s a new, interesting apple on the scene locally. Kind of hard to find, and not quite perfected yet. It’s the Opal apple. Looks like a golden delicious, but tastes like a strange mix of apple, melon and a hint of banana. When the texture is right and they are cold, they’re pretty amazing. Problem is, when they get even slightly overripe, they get mealy and depressing.

-Matt Campbell

Ezra Klein’s ‘Don’t Believe Him’ and other essays

It’s been three weeks since the inauguration, and the Trump administration has handed over the control panel of the federal government to squadron of 23 year old boys. What’s real? What’s fantasy? Is there any difference? The effect is so disorienting and overwhelming it’s hard not to shut down and turn away. 

If you’re looking for a cognitive lifeline to grab onto, my utterly boring recommendation is to listen to Ezra Klein’s recent run of interviews and audio essays for The New York Times. In the past, I personally never liked Klein all that much as a writer or speaker — he radiates the dull, self-serious excellence of the valedictorian, and his pronouncements too often seemed calibrated to satisfy mainstream liberal opinion. 

But in this particular political moment, in which so many other journalists and commentators seem too disoriented and overwhelmed to have much of anything coherent to say at all, it feels like Klein is doing the work no one else is. He is cogent, careful and curious. He is clearly outraged by the self-evidently outrageous abuses of power, but he’s also thoughtful about his critiques — and genuinely interested in understanding what’s going on, rather than sputtering uselessly about the insanity of it all.

Klein has been churning out material on Trump at a remarkable clip since the November election, and especially since Jan. 20. Start with his essay from last weekend, “Don’t Believe Him,” in which he argues that Donald Trump’s blitzkrieg of executive orders is actually masking a fundamental brittleness. A sample:

There is a reason Trump is doing all of this through executive orders rather than submitting these same directives as legislation to pass through Congress. A more powerful executive could persuade Congress to eliminate the spending he opposes or reform the civil service to give himself the powers of hiring and firing that he seeks. To write these changes into legislation would make them more durable and allow him to argue their merits in a more strategic way. Even if Trump’s aim is to bring the civil service to heel — to rid it of his opponents and turn it to his own ends — he would be better off arguing that he is simply trying to bring the high-performance management culture of Silicon Valley to the federal government. You never want a power grab to look like a power grab.

But Republicans have a three-seat edge in the House and a 53-seat majority in the Senate. Trump has done nothing to reach out to Democrats. If Trump tried to pass this agenda as legislation, it would most likely fail in the House, and it would certainly die before the filibuster in the Senate. And that would make Trump look weak. Trump does not want to look weak. He remembers John McCain humiliating him in his first term by casting the deciding vote against Obamacare repeal.

That is the tension at the heart of Trump’s whole strategy: Trump is acting like a king because he is too weak to govern like a president. He is trying to substitute perception for reality. He is hoping that perception then becomes reality. That can only happen if we believe him.

The flurry of activity is meant to suggest the existence of a plan. The Trump team wants it known that they’re ready this time. They will control events rather than be controlled by them. The closer you look, the less true that seems.

-Benji Hardy

“Cher: The Memoir (Part One)”

A friend recommended “Cher: The Memoir (Part One),” the audiobook. I had just finished “From Here to the Great Unknown,” recommended by Arkansas Times editor Austin Gelder. I had never really been able to do audiobooks, but I think I found my new jam. Since the election, I’ve had a hard time listening to NPR every morning on the way to the office. So, I queued up the books and started taking the long route to the office — and everywhere else.

I grew up listening to Cher with my mom, blaring the cassette tapes in her black Mercury Cougar. I had no idea about half the shit that Cher went through (and this is just part one!)  Her mom is from Arkansas. Never knew that. I found myself relistening to parts of chapters, thinking, “Wait, did she really just say that?!?” Each day I find myself googling more and more photos of all the amazing clothes she talks about. And her houses! Really, if you have the slightest bit of interest in Cher, you should queue it up.

-Mandy Keener

Turn on, tune in, drop out

My fellow Gen Xers, annihilation is on our doorsteps at last! We’ve been prepping for this our whole lives, but turns out, it’s not all that fun to watch in real time. You know what is fun to watch? TV. 

Treat yourself to some PBS for cozy British mysteries and the most adorable li’l murders you ever saw. My current fave is the Masterpiece Theater production “Grantchester,” about a chiseled ginger crime-solving vicar who viewers might find inspires impure thoughts. The good parishioners of Cambridgeshire village circa 1950 are dropping like flies, with a homicide rate that would easily meet, and possibly exceed, “Gang Wars: Bangin in Little Rock” levels. It’s OK, though, because dishy Anglican Sidney Chambers always gets his man.

Public television may well be on the way out, as our new president from South Africa unleashes his tween entourage to cut funding for everything except border walls and Space Force. So grab some snacks and make your way to the couch immediately.

-Austin Gelder

Live Trivia

I spend a good amount of my spare time filling my brain with random, mostly useless, knowledge and factoids. Sifting through Wikipedia articles like a prospector looking for gold, or watching a 30-minute YouTube video about how safety features in space heaters work? Sounds like a great way to kill a few minutes. 

The pursuit of knowledge has an intrinsic satisfaction, sure, but is that really better than scoring some free food and beer? Enter live trivia, one of my favorite ways to waste an evening.

With multiple games happening nearly every night of the week and dozens of Central Arkansas bars and restaurants participating, there has never been a better time to flex your knowledge about your niche interests. El Sur, Vino’s and Caverns & Forests Board Game Cafe are three of my go-tos. 

In my experience, first place typically nets you a $35 to $50 gift card, with smaller gift cards for second and third.

The local scene is active. I hear the same team names every week at different places and I’ve started to remember which ones to look out for. (Little Rockers are pretty creative with their trivia-themed team names. “Quiz in Your Face” is a particularly memorable one.) 

Challenge Entertainment, the company behind Arkansas’s trivia scene, has information about game schedules and venues online.

-Milo Strain

“Your Monster” (2024)

Plopped into the streamiverse rolodex with little fanfare after an appearance in Sundance’s “Midnight” category and a dismal turnout at the box office, Caroline Lindy’s fanciful little comedy “Your Monster” is an undersung delight. Released just before Halloween last year, Lindy’s movie manages to riff cleverly on genre conventions without adhering to any particular genre itself, and plumbs the depths of major bummers like cancer and childhood trauma in a way that’s, unfathomably, tons of fun. Is it a horror movie? A rom-com? A remake of Beauty and the Beast? Beats me, but the result is certainly a smart and satirical, if breezy, meet cute with a major twist and an ending that I thought about for days afterward. In Oscar season, where it can feel like only Deeply Moving Films of Heft and Gravity are deserving of our attention, this palate cleanser sings and dances and should absolutely be reason enough for Melissa Barrera to get cast in lots, lots more movies.

-Stephanie Smittle