This page is a Monthly Archive of entries from April 2008 listed from newest to oldest.
This past Sunday, April 27, my family and I attended St. Luke Christian Methodist Episcopal Church in Champaign. I had never attended a CME church before and so I really did not know what to expect. The only things I really knew for sure were that this church has, like me, a Methodist heritage and that it has, unlike me, a black heritage.
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?
I knew FreeRice.com had hit the mainstream when my daughter came home all excited about it. She’s in middle school, and the paradox of middle school is that nobody does anything unless everybody does it. Since everybody is apparently doing Free Rice, I thought it would be good to try it out.
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!
I love the musical My Fair Lady (which was based on the play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw). There is a scene in which Eliza Doolittle’s father gives a wonderful speech about poverty:
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.
On a day-to-day basis, there’s plenty of “politics as usual” to go around, but in the grand scheme of presidential candidate nomination seasons, this has been anything but a “politics as usual” electoral stretch.
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?
Sometimes, when I visit a church for the first time, I feel like Dorothy when she says: “Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” And other times when I visit a new church I feel like, well, Dorothy again when she says: “There’s no place like home.”
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.
Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza was born with malformed hands in Germany in 1938. The story is told that her father recognized she would not make a good farmer’s wife with impaired hands, so he decided instead to invest in her education, and shipped her off to school. She has subsequently become one of the most influential feminist theologians in the world, and is currently the Krister Stendahl Professor of Divinity at Harvard.
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.
OK, I admit it. I’m a church hopper. I have been hopping around from one church to another for a few weeks now with some kind of naïve belief that there might actually be a church somewhere in C-U that my whole family will like. One of the main obstacles has been the “L” word. I am a liberal while my wife is a conservative, so finding a church whose theology we both can embrace has been like searching for the Holy Grail. I wonder if James Carville and Mary Matalin have this problem?
I lost my initial enthusiasm to see Horton Hears a Who when I heard the pro-life crowd had co-opted it. Although I’m pro-choice, I do know people who are honorably pro-life, and these days I generally try to stay away from useless argumentation about when a fetus becomes a baby. However, one thing I am sure about is that protesting at a children’s movie is creepy and unseemly. Nonetheless, my kids were gung-ho about going, so thought I would see what the fuss was about.
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.
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