I first noticed a pair in the parking lot at Parkland College, hanging from the back of a fire-engine red Ford F150. If you’ve been paying attention to the trucks on the road, you may have seen them too — in between all the two-dimensional vinyl ribbons and the Calvins urinating on rival sports teams and other truck brands — a pair of bull testicles, uncannily realistic, hanging from a truck’s hitch, right below the license plate.

Depending on the manufacturer, these backside decorations are called "bulls balls," "truck balls," "bumper nuts" or "truck nutz," and they come in a surprising variety of colors and sizes.

I was lured to Crazy Buffet in the North Prospect Big Box Retail District the other night on the recommendation of a friend who told me that this place was “better than the others.” By the others, I’m assuming he meant Chinatown Buffet, the now defunct Four Seasons House and Eastern Taste down in Savoy (conveniently located next to Friar Tuck). Of course, my excitement at eating at Crazy Buffet was fueled by the fact that I hadn’t eaten much all day and, aside from its abundance and variety, it dished up food that looked and smelled good. Yet, on finishing my third plate, I looked down at the substantial leftovers (bits of this or that I didn’t feel like eating) and thought to myself: Nothing here was really very good.

This past Saturday, Smile Politely was well represented at the Country Music Marathon in Nashville. Okay, maybe well represented isn’t exactly fair to say, but at least there were two of us there: your humble author and SP Editor-in-Chief Chris “I run through ridiculous levels of pain” Maier were among the estimated 35,000 participants clogging the streets of Nashville.

While I was running, I started to think about how great it was to see a city I knew almost nothing about — other than glimpses from Robert Altman’s epic film Nashville — by running 13.1 miles through it (we were actually running the half marathon). It’s kind of surreal to see a place’s landmarks for the first time while groaning and gasping and struggling through a race.

Four months ago, before he won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz was hanging out in my hotel room in Key West. There were a number of us there — younger, aspiring writers, lounging on the teal sofa-bed and leaning against the Formica bar, listening to Díaz tell the story about a reading with V.S. Naipaul in Australia. (“Yo, that cat hates black people,” Díaz said of the former Nobel Prize winner, who had refused to read directly after Díaz and a Russian writer, and would only come on stage after the audience had left and tickets were collected a second time.)

Downtown Champaign, with its two movie theatres and its many bars, restaurants and cafés seems to be a perfect locale for small film festivals: movie buffs can watch a film and then talk about it over espresso at Café Aroma or chocolate martinis at Kofusion or burgers at the Esquire.

Ebertfest may be the best example of how well suited downtown Champaign is to the small festival. Each year at the end of April, the area from Westside Park to the train tracks is filled with film industry types, movie fans and Roger Ebert groupies (they’re the wildest bunch), wandering about, wearing oversized laminated passes and talking about whether the film they’ve just watched is justifiably “overlooked.”

Yet if Ebertfest is a small festival (which surely it is compared to Cannes, Sundance or even Chicago), the upcoming Latin American Film Festival, celebrating its second year, might best be described as a micro-festival. There are only five films total, showing twice an evening (three on Saturday) from April 4–10.

On Tuesday, the News-Gazette reported that "Unofficial St. Patrick's Day" — which, like REO Speedwagon, Roger Ebert and that Miss America lady, are the spawns of Champaign-Urbana — cost the community more than $30,000.

These costs came mostly in the form of overtime pay for officers in charge of keeping violence and rowdiness to a minimum. Unfortunately, not much of the $30K went to cleaning up the piles of vomit on and around Green Street that seemed to multiply as the day wore on.

For Book Glutton, a website that allows users to form virtual reading groups and comment on online books, the origins were no less humble. The idea was born out of a night of drinks at the Esquire in downtown Champaign and the initial notes were scribbled on cocktail napkins. Of course, for Travis Alber and Aaron Miller, the company’s founders, designers, principle investors and only full-time staff, Book Glutton’s success is still a distant goal that depends on users taking advantage of what the site has to offer.

For many of us Americans, Africa exists as only a giant multi-colored mass on our world maps. The worst thing about our ignorance of Africa is that people don’t seem too uncomfortable with it — or with our general lack of knowledge about global geography and cultures. In a now-famous video clip, American Idol contestant Kelli Pickler asks (on the TV game show “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?”) if Europe is a country or not, which she trumps by expressing shock at the fact that there exists a place called Hungary; at least the audience laughs. But I wonder if the audience would have laughed at her if she’d never heard of Burkina Faso or Mali or Togo?

There’s very little about Papa George, the restaurant that was until recently Pickles on Neil Street, that says “Greek.” In fact, the exterior screams bland American cuisine (a la Pickles), but the fact that the seldom-busy parking lot was overflowing last Friday night attests to how popular this restaurant has become and how, after a rocky start, the food has greatly improved.

The problem of authenticity arises again when entering and seeing essentially Pickles, with a few minor changes — a strip of wall near the ceiling has been painted Mediterranean blue and the tables now have textured blue candleholders. So it’s almost unavoidable to ask: Must a Greek restaurant have white-washed walls and be adorned with Corinthian columns and tchochkes from the old country for the food to be tasty and authentic? In the case of Papa George, the answer is no.

Ask Kyle Watson to choke you out and he might just accommodate your request. In fact, he’s lost count of the exact number of people he’s caused to black out — many of them guys in bars who specifically requested to lose consciousness. “It doesn’t hurt them if they’re only out a few seconds,” Watson says. “I’m pretty sure it takes two to three minutes to cause brain damage.”

But the majority of the blackouts he causes happen in the ring, after he’s gotten his opponent in a submission hold like his signature move, the triangle choke. Of the scores of matches he’s won in submission wrestling and sport Jiu-Jitsu competitions, Watson estimates six out of ten were by choking his opponent. And nine of his 11 M.M.A. (mixed martial arts) wins have been by asphyxiation.

Snow, freezing rain, mud, soggy boots, bitter temperatures and gray skies: Welcome to winter in Champaign–Urbana.

It’s true that this year we’ve enjoyed some uncharacteristic meteorological reprieves. (And with the mercury expected to hit the mid-40s on Christmas day, we probably have a few more in store.) But when the wind chill sweeps off the prairie at 15 degrees it’s officially time to consider protective measures. Short of hibernating, lying on the couch under a blanket with a large stack of DVDs is your best bet. If you have some good entertainment options (and a lackey to bring you your flicks), you may not have to leave the house until spring.

Read on for some DVD winter winners, guaranteed to keep your mind away from the ice age brewing outside your windows.

Peter Kogen works at the university grants office. He is a dedicated employee, arriving at work early and never leaving a minute before five. Ask his coworkers and they will tell you he is polite, respectful and keeps to himself.

So if any of them were driving through Urbana last Saturday, they were probably shocked to see Kogen, the quietest person in the office, standing alone on the corner of Springfield and Lincoln, holding a large sign that read: “THE WAR ON TERROR IS A LIE. 9-11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB.”