Smile Politely. Speak Directly. A Champaign-Urbana Culture Blog

When you enter the “real world,” you have to get used to a few things. Signing up for a 401k, for example. Setting an alarm clock for a time only previously observed by ambitious creatures such a birds and coke addicts. And — our favorite — the hour-long lunch break.

In jobs that don’t enjoy the luxury of an hour-long break, employees are often forced to suffer the thirty-minute rush, in which there’s just enough time to grab a sandwich and wolf it down before it’s time to clock back in. But when you have an hour, you’re likely to spread your gastrointestinal wings and seek out some deals. You might find that Cafe Kopi, for instance, offers a mean Thai tempeh sandwich, and that with KoFusion's lunch sushi deal, you get nine pieces of sushi and a bowl of miso soup for under ten dollars and in under thirty minutes.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg lettuce (we couldn’t resist), and we know there are plenty more praiseworthy lunchtime deals around town. So, all you grown-ups out there with hour-long lunch breaks and ten bucks to burn: Where do you go for lunch? Where can you get in and out within an hour, and without paying more (or much more) than ten dollars?

I have bad news for just about everyone: As of Monday, May 12, 2008, the rapture index hit 170. If this seems like an arbitrary number to you, like saying the cloud index is 67 or the UFO index is 329, then it is likely you are not quite ready for the rapture, and could use a visit to Rapture Ready.

Gas prices are on the rise nationwide, and we’re certainly not insulated here in Champaign-Urbana. As of this morning, gas at most stations in town is going for $3.75–$3.79 a gallon.

With fuel prices skyrocketing and no relief in sight, drivers are beginning to look for ways to save a buck. In a report last week, ABC News offered a handful of tips, such as keeping tires properly inflated, removing junk from the trunk and sticking with slower speeds.

The one remedy not mentioned, however, is the simplest of all: Find ways of getting around that don’t involve a car. Take the bus. Bike. Walk. Stay home.

Whichever “solution” you choose to embrace, chances are good that gas will affect the transportation decisions you make this summer.

If you go to Wikipedia and type in “Council of Chiefs,” what you’ll find is a very brief entry on a “non-profit organization that was created in honor of Chief Illiniwek at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.” At the bottom of the page, there are two suggested links: one to a site that hasn’t been updated since the mascot’s demise and the other to a Facebook group called “Save the Chief.”

Here’s how the group, which has 65 members, describes itself: “For everyone who thinks its [sic] extremely gay that they want to change our mascot to ‘THE ORANGE CRUSH’ or something else gay like it.”

One of the first things that caught my eye when I walked into the new store was a giant poster stating, “We Value Family” above a photo of a typical, white, middle-class family: a mother, a father and two children.

Of course, my liberal sensibilities were immediately offended. “Hmmph,” I grunted. “What does this mean?” County Market values family? But what kind of family? From the photo I assume the worst: County Market values only white, middle-class families with both a mother and father.

Of course, this seeming unity can quickly fall apart once we decide to choose one method of achieving it over another. For example, most everyone agrees that poverty should be eliminated, but only some of us think that giving tax rebates to wealthy people is the way to get there. Child safety strategies can suffer from the same problem, especially if we work hard enough to shoehorn them into different political ideologies.

Sugary sweet confections aren’t something folks generally turn down. So, when a little storefront opened up proclaiming “Cakes on Walnut,” it was only natural that Champaign residents threw their scales out the window and gave the new cupcake shop a try.

Smile Politely loves when new businesses pop up in town. Cakes on Walnut, at 114 N. Walnut Street, was certainly bustling during last week’s Ebertfest, as movie-goers bopped around downtown with white boxes — large and small — or sat at the outdoor bar indulging in the sugary grub.

So now that the dust has settled, what did you think?

Owned by the sister duo, Trisha Bates and Amanda Bates, the interior boasts a pleasantly-modern setup, but with magazines galore, a sitting area, and wireless internet access to boot. The former shoe repair shop offers a cozy enough invitation to hunker down with a cupcake for an afternoon sweet treat.

Guided by the staff at Bacaro, the Bates’ sisters concocted an array of fancy sandwiches such as turkey apple quince and white bean and Parmesan, so “Cakes on Walnut” is no one-trick pony. Cupcake flavors include red velvet, vanilla, chocolate, classic yellow, salted caramel, strawberry balsamic — and Smile Politely has heard raves and jeers about the offerings.

Is a cupcake habit (at $2.75 for a small and $3.50 for a large) something you can afford? Will you carve out a new column in your budget to include the saccharine delights?

I have visited or attended many Methodist churches (e.g., Urbana First UMC, Champaign First UMC, Wesley UMC, New Horizon ) but they have all, unfortunately, lacked in the area of cultural diversity. I have also visited a few black churches (e.g., Love Corner, Salem Baptist, Canaan Missionary Baptist ), but none of these had Methodist roots.

So I was quite curious about St. Luke CME, for here is a church that has both a black and a Methodist heritage. How, then, would it come across? Would one of these heritages win out over the other? Or would this church somehow manage to marry Methodist and black culture into a cohesive whole?

It’s pretty simple. You are presented with a word, and if you correctly guess the definition of that word from a list of choices, a hungry person somewhere in the world gets 20 grains of rice. If you get it wrong, the hungry person apparently gets nothing. You can play as long as you like.

Every year, Urbana High School and University of Illinois alum Roger Ebert shows up in town with about dozen canisters of film, a cadre of mildly known actors and, often, at least one Hollywood superstar. This time around, that superstar is Ang Lee — himself an Illinois graduate and director of megahits such as Brokeback Mountain and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The Lee movie featured at this year’s festival is Hulk, which Ebert gave three out of fours stars when the film first hit the screens in 2003. Ebert’s final assessment: Hulk is “a comic book movie for people who wouldn't be caught dead at a comic book movie.” In other words, it’s got a big green guy in it, but it also tends toward the sentimental.

If this were your film festival, and if Ang Lee weren’t coming to town, would Hulk make the bill? What else would? Below is a list of what Roger Ebert came up with. Then we want to hear what your recommendations would be.

Wednesday, April 23:

Hamlet (1996)

Thursday, April 24:

Delirious (2006)
Yes (2004)
Canvas (2006)

Friday, April 25:

Shotgun Series (2007)
Underworld (1927)
The Real Dirt on Farmer John (2005)
Mishima (1985)

Saturday, April 26:

Hulk (2003)
The Band’s Visit (2007)
Housekeeping (1987)
The Cell (2000)

Sunday, April 27:

Romance and Cigarettes (2005)

Keep scrolling down for updates from Ebertfest throughout the weekend!

If I was one of the deserving poor, and had put by a bit, I could chuck it; but then why should I, acause the deserving poor might as well be millionaires for all the happiness they ever has. They don’t know what happiness is. But I, as one of the undeserving poor, have nothing between me and the pauper’s uniform but this here blasted three thousand a year that shoves me into the middle class.

Ah, the undeserving poor. Champaign-Urbana is rife with them. But we never see them out on the streets, begging for spare change. Instead, they are cozy in their middle-class homes with their middle-class families. Oh, but they do beg. Middle-class begging is just a little harder to spot.

If you’ve never been to an Ebertfest before, you can move along now, there’s nothing to see here.

Now that all the people with day jobs and lives have left the room, I’d like to make my nominations for The Quintessential Ebertfest Film, or the film that has best represented Ebertfest as a whole over the years. This can be followed by the rest of you telling me what a numbskull I am and how little taste I have. Then we can argue about film theory and other minutia. It’s all part of the Ebertfest experience, after all.

Central Illinoisans and people from other surrounding areas were rudely awakened by the New Madrid fault line stirring this morning. Today's earthquake was rated as a 5.2 on the Richter Scale and hardly any damage has been seen at ground level. Fortunately for us, earthquakes are a rare phenomenon in Illinois, which is why many people have said they initially thought the quake was a truck rumbling by, a train derailment or — something else?

It was the latter experience for me this week when I visited Wesley United Methodist Church at the corner of Green and Goodwin streets in Urbana.

Being a long-time United Methodist myself, visiting Wesley was like slipping into a favorite pair of old sneakers. Of course, this makes my job here very difficult. How am I going to be objective about this church while I write about it through my clouded lenses of familiarity and fondness? Well, I will try, but forgive me if a little Methodist bias slips through.

My family and I went to Wesley UMC last Sunday, April 13, to attend their 9:30 a.m. traditional worship service (they also offer a contemporary service at 11:15). We had no trouble finding a parking spot in the church’s lot off of Goodwin.

She was also at The Spurlock Museum Auditorium last Thursday, as the guest speaker for the annual Marjorie Hall Thulin Lecture by the Program for the Study of Religion at the University of Illinois. The lecture gives students and the general public a chance to interact with influential theologians of our day, such as Charles Curran and Stanley Hauerwas.

Few would deny that Champaign-Urbana is home to an actual "music scene." That we can even pose this question is proof enough. And let's not forget that our little community has spawned a band that sold the most albums in the United States in 1980. That's nine million or so, to be clear. The 44th most of all time. We even have a street named for them.

So yes, we have a music scene. That is true. And a lot of people care about it, relatively speaking.

Last week, we saw controversy manifest itself in the form of two shows next door to one another. One was the Local Music Awards, hosted by WPGU and buzz magazine at The Highdive. The other, a charity show that came to be known as the Anti-LMAs, was held right next door at Memphis on Main. Both shows were well attended, and both showcased a wide range of local bands. Within minutes of the Local Music Awards letting out, Memphis on Main went from being packed to beyond capacity. Just as fast, the crowd had to rush to the exit, coughing and tearing up in the eyes: Someone had pepper sprayed the crowd, and the sidewalk along REO Speedwagon Way looked like an impromptu party for respiratory-challenged hipsters. At the very least, this was an active evening for the C-U music scene.

And then we have the record labels (that's plural, mind you), festivals, touring bands, publicity companies, promoters, online and walk-up record stores, radio stations, magazines, blogs (all plural, still) and everything else you could imagine that makes this place a known quantity in the Midwest music scene.

But still, there is something missing. In the mid-1990s, people were heralding C-U as the next Seattle: a fertile breeding ground for the alternative music movement and a mainstay for the ears and eyes of major label record executives. As many as five bands walked into fairly lucrative recording contracts and many went on to tour in arenas and theatres regularly.

And with that, we leave it you, the community, to chime in and let us know: What can be done to improve upon what we already have?

Dearest Reader.

I am steadfast, and remain, The Campus Wit.

It's that time of year again. The season that brings joy to the hearts of humanity. From the young in age to the young at heart, no one can deny the power of Girl Scout Cookie season. From what I can gather, however, Girl Scout Cookies have no set season. I've seen them pop up during the sticky glow of summer, but I have also spotted them when the air is so cold that your feces refuses to exit the warmth and protection of your digestive tract. That is the great thing about Girl Scout Cookie season. It can be any season, and they always come when you least expect them, but need them the most.

Horton Hears a Who is a Dr. Seuss children’s book about tolerance and care for all creatures. Horton is an elephant who hears an entire little city of people (Whoville) inside a dust speck on a flower. He is first ridiculed for his beliefs, then imprisoned in a cage, and then a mob of jungle creatures almost destroy the speck before the voices of all the Whos finally come together to be heard. The mob then realizes Horton was telling the truth, and they all decide to protect the little speck.

The tag line for the story is “a person’s a person, no matter how small,” and has long been a phrase used by pro-life groups. However, this was not Theodor Geisel’s intent with the story, and in fact he had threatened to sue these groups over the issue while he was alive.

In late March, Alderman Charlie Smyth introduced an ordinance to the Urbana City Council that resulted in a packed council chamber and so much discussion — a vote on the proposal was postponed until April 14.

During the next committee as a whole meeting of the city council, the members will revisit the ordinance that could potentially ban cell phone usage while driving in the City of Urbana. Although, some members were in favor of a hands-free cell phone ban — similar to ordinances in cities such as Chicago and New York City — Smyth's bill calls for a full ban on the use of cell phones, including Bluetooth devices, while behind the wheel.

Smyth argues that a hands-free ordinance would not be effective because there is no difference cognitively between using a hands-free set or a hand-held device; both options take the driver's mind away from operating the vehicle.

Most any driver has been annoyingly cut off only to pass the culprit, whom — surprise! — is talking away on a phone. However, with a comprehensive ban, questions arise about how to enforce a ban on hands-free electronic devices; how to educate the public about the new ordinance; and in two cities separate by name only, how to spread the word that when you enter the city limits of Urbana, it's time to end the conversation.

After much debate, the council opted to further the conversation and have City Attorney Ronald O'Neal draft a new ordinance addressing questions raised at the March 25 meeting.

First Sniff

I never had the chance to tour in a bus when I was a musician. It’s the dream of most bands actually; your own cot, a living room in the back with video games and satellite television, a kitchen with a stove and running water. It’s a mobile home, in reality. And when your band can afford it, it’s a luxury that most are willing to dip into the band fund to purchase. After all, any one who has been in a van for tens of thousands of miles with the same stinky people understands that anything (and I mean anything) would be better than that.

“Are you even a Christian?”

This is one of the gentler responses I sometimes receive from conservative evangelicals who cannot comprehend that a fellow Christian would criticize certain aspects of our faith. I like this question very much because at least it gives me a chance to respond with an enthusiastic “Yes, I am!” Then there are the other responses I get such as, “You’re going to rot in hell.” These I don’t care for much. These responses make me want to ask, “Are you even a Christian?” But I don’t. I just Smile Politely.

• Dance (breakdancing/b-boy/-girling)
• Poetry (spoken word/rapping)
• Music (turntablism/deejaying)
• Visual Arts (graffiti)

In the meantime, tonight at 7 p.m., the one-man show Jails, Hospitals and Hip-Hop continues in Allen Hall (and closes after Saturday's 2 p.m. showing at The Armory Free Theatre), and showcases hip-hop culture as one of the ties that bind in a script of characters with cultural and social differences.

Hip-hop culture has been alternately celebrated and vilified — is it elitist, or welcoming? Is it sexist; is it racist? Certainly no movement is perfect, but the efforts of activists in our community this coming week bring to mind the positive potential available and active in hip-hop, as an energetic community unifier and a purveyor of poetry.

Will you be attending the events this weekend and in the coming week? What has hip-hop done for you? What can our community learn from hip-hop?

That’s really not who I am.

After all, last Sunday was Easter and it is now officially Spring. It is time for rebirth, new beginnings, flowers, bunnies and all that crap. Thus, your Humble Heretic has decided to die to his old crotchety ways and be reborn into a kinder, gentler and humbler heretic.

I recently got back from a learning tour of Colombia that cost my church and me around $1500. Should I instead have just sent the money to a human rights or service organization in Colombia? There are certainly roofs that need to be built there and, perhaps more importantly, human rights workers who need money to do their critical work. I know people always talk up the “human relationship” benefits from such a trip, but I want to justify my trip in purely economic terms. Shouldn’t Colombia see at least $1500 of value from my trip since I allegedly went there not just to learn but to be of assistance?

Both Illinois basketball teams made valiant runs for a Big Ten Tournament title in 2008. Had either of them won the championship, they would have earned an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. The women's team dropped a heart breaker to Purdue in the final seconds, while the men's team got shook down by a really strong Wisconsin Badgers team. Needless to say, both teams are left on the outside looking in.

Still, March Madness is everywhere. The first round of the men's tournament is under way, and the women's tourney gets started tomorrow. Sports Editor Seth Fein posted his men's bracket in the Big Ten Basketball Report this week, and now we'd like to know who you have picked for the Sweet Sixteen, Final Four and Champion match ups in either or both tournaments.

You’ll forgive me if I seem more than a little wracked in the brain, please. After all, it’s officially March Madness, and if you are one of the 16–47 people who read the Big Ten Basketball Report each week, you know that I am:

     A. A die-hard Purdue fan
     B. Fairly spiteful of Illinois sports
     C. Obsessed by the NCAA Tournament

So, after screaming at a High-Def TV screen in a random sports bar last Friday while the good guys in Orange upset not one, not two, but three Big Ten teams (including Purdue) en route to almost winning a Big Ten Championship, I am more than a little parched.

So parched in fact, that I found myself craving nothing but cabbage soup, evidently.

Hello, dear friends. As always, I remain the Campus Wit.

Being somewhat of a misanthrope, I often feel the need to look back and find time periods where the state of humanity was not as dire as it is today. In my enthusiasm for history, I often belittle today’s culture by comparing it to the past. In essence, I behave like a bitter old man despite the fact that I am in college and have no direct historical perspective beyond the decrepit financial end to the second Reagan administration.

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.

I also admire and support Obama’s long-time pastor, the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright. I have heard Dr. Wright speak a couple of times — not at his church on the South side of Chicago, but as a guest speaker at my seminary, Garrett-Evangelical in Evanston — and I have always been impressed and inspired by his words. So it surprises me that Dr. Wright has come under fire lately for statements he has made in some of his sermons.

Downtown Champaign’s M2 building is slated for completion in late 2008. As home to the Destihl Restaurant and Brew Works, BankChampaign, four floors of office space and four floors of residential units, the building will draw increased traffic to the evolving downtown area. To accommodate this congestion and the anticipation of future development in the area, a 600-space parking garage will be erected by early 2009 at the corner of Hill and Randolph streets.

The garage is likely to find its most use at night (particularly weekend nights) when parking is in highest demand.

Though going up in tandem with the privately owned M2, the garage will be a publicly funded and operated facility.

“It’s a city deck, so it’s public parking,” Shirl Johnson, parking operations supervisor, says. Parking fees will be collected by an attendant or automated credit card machines.

The contract for construction will be voted on at the March 18 Champaign City Council meeting. If the current proposal is accepted, the contract will be awarded jointly to English Brothers and A & R Services for the construction of the $10,590,000 garage.

First Sniff

I have recently tangled up with a new and freshly-minted obsession: weight loss. After years of making certain that my belt line increased annually with plenty of red meat, Jarling’s Custard Cup, and an excessive amount of mushroom sherry sauce from Original Pancake House, I have decided that this is the year to start reversing that trend. I am currently 5'7" and 200 pounds. That, according to most healthy weight-management sites, is about 40–60 pounds more than I should be, making me officially obese.

I am willing to accept this — for now.

But 2008 means more than marriage for me. It means a skinnier Sniffer.

Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz?
My friends all drive Porsches; I must make amends.
                                                        —Janis Joplin

The Bible contains a lot of wisdom about wealth. In fact, wealth may be the number-one topic addressed in the Bible (it’s certainly in the top five). Let’s review just a few of the more well-known passages.