Brick

Copy­right 2011 Ben S. Pol­lock DATELINE MIRTHOLOGY — Crys­tal Britches was speech­less, stand­ing in the set­ting sun on a recent after­noon in a park­ing lot in Ben­tonville, Ark. “She did it. My old BFF really pulled it off,” Ms. Britches said of her peri­odic Best Friend For­ever Alice. I, her ghost-publicist Noah Vale, had dri­ven …

Copy­right 2011 Ben S. Pol­lock DATELINE MIRTHOLOGY — What a lovely day for a ded­i­ca­tion. This is free-range jour­nal­ist Noah Vale, prepar­ing a live blog for my client Crys­tal Britches. We are here for the open­ing of Crys­tal Bridges Museum of Amer­i­can Art, although Ms. Britches prefers call­ing it the Ravee­nia Museum, the Ozark Museum …

Copy­right 2011 Ben S. Pol­lock I. Cross­ing the Line DATELINE MIRTHOLOGY — Should her museum-progress trek be now or wait till it’s fur­ther along? My client Crys­tal Britches calls Fayet­teville and Wash­ing­ton County home. For her, Ben­tonville and the rest of Ben­ton County are places to visit. Unlike, say, Spring­dale, which she sees as merely one …

Copy­right 2010 Ben S. Pol­lock DATELINE MIRTHOLOGY — I grabbed a take-out cof­fee from Com­mon Grounds and headed across Fayetteville’s Dick­son Street to the rose gar­den of the cur­rent Wal­ton Arts Cen­ter. I sat on the ter­raced brick wall, wait­ing for my client-friend Crys­tal Britches, and shiv­ered. The flower bushes were faded, match­ing the mood. “Hon’, …

Copy­right 2010 Ben S. Pol­lock DATELINE MIRTHOLOGY — My client Crys­tal Britches was swel­ter­ing in her plas­tic rain gear. It neared 90 this morn­ing at the Fayet­teville Farm­ers Mar­ket — nearly all the sum­mer veg­gies were avail­able but no musi­cians or side­walk artists — but the fore­cast had pro­jected rain. “Hon’. I thought I’d find …

Copy­right 2009 Ben S. Pol­lock DATELINE MIRTHOLOGY — Dear Wal-Mart share­hold­ers and employ­ees, oops, I mean “asso­ciates.” And the for­mer, you smart happy investors. If you’ve come to North­west Arkansas before, we’re glad to have you back, and that means you don’t need to trou­ble your­self fur­ther in the read­ing this let­ter of wel­come. So …

Copy­right 2008 Ben S. Pol­lock DATELINE MIRTHOLOGY — That would be me, a metaphor­i­cal den­tist, just for the morn­ing. Even though as a jour­nal­ist, ethics for­bids me from vol­un­teer­ing in pol­i­tics I have over the years taken on other tasks out­side the news­room. It’s a nice way to meet inter­est­ing peo­ple, and one actu­ally gets …