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

Forget the Great Pizza Debate nationwide. C-U has its fair share of pizza joints, and opinions about them are as varied as the toppings offered on the menus.

So, have at it: What's the best place to get a pie in C-U? And what style of pizza do you prefer? We've got our own opinions that we'll throw into the hat come Sunday evening, but for the moment, we want to hear what you all think.

Serve it up.

Even in our modern culture, there are people who possess great magic. I don’t really know how the magic works, but good things will happen to you if you meet one of these magical people. And if you touch one of them, some of their magic will rub off on you. Some folks are even lucky enough to acquire certain talismans that the magic people owned; for example, a handkerchief with which Elvis mopped his sweaty brow, or Mick Jagger’s armpit hair.

This powerful magic can even be invoked simply by saying the person’s name.

This was followed by a maelstrom of commentary, whose only endpoint could be a raving conservative talk show host revealing his basic lack of historical knowledge. Kevin James was on Hard Ball yelling over and over again that Neville Chamberlain was an appeaser, while Chris Matthews was yelling at him over and over asking him what Chamberlain did that was appeasement. James obviously didn’t know, and it became a painful and sad spectacle to watch a man be so aggressively dumb. Matthews finally jumped in to explain that appeasement isn’t talking to one’s enemies, it is giving them things. Chamberlain wasn’t an appeaser because he talked to Hitler. His problem was giving away half of Czechoslovakia.

This is a pretty simple one.

Come mid-May, the students hightail it outta here like the plague's near, eager to get back home to family, significant others, summer jobs and the good old-fashioned R&R. That leaves Champaign-Urbana with about a third less population in the summer than during the spring and fall semesters.

So, what's your preference? Do you like C-U when the streets of Campustown are swarming with students or do count the days until the towns take on the feel of Smalltown, USA?

Monday evening I was at Pekara, the cozy little bistro on Neil St., because that’s where we Smile Politely editors have our weekly meeting. The meeting was canceled, but nobody bothered telling me. OK, they might have told me, but the truth is I delete 90% of the emails I get from the other Smile Politely editors without actually reading them, so I guess I’ll never know.

But I’m glad I showed up anyway because, first, Pekara has a fantastic tomato bisque and, second, I ran into someone I haven’t talked to in a while and ended up having a great chat.

Well, it was actually more like an interview.

And it was with God.

This is a trick question, of course, because it is likely that one is a Chiquita banana and the other is a Dole banana, and the moral choice would be to buy neither. Both were likely harvested and packaged by workers being treated like chattel, and the profits will likely go to someone who looks a lot like Boss Hogg.

A case could be made for buying the less expensive one, in order to reduce the profit of Boss Hogg, and also to increase the amount of money in your own pocket, that you swear you will use for charity. But let’s face it, Boss Hogg will still make money, and you will probably just blow your extra money on something unnecessary, like bottled water.

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?