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

What is your favorite state park? It might be closing.

Kickapoo State Park located in nearby Oakwood will close Nov. 1 due to state-wide budget cuts that will also shut down several other state parks and historic sites throughout Illinois. The closures were recently announced by Gov. Rod Blagojevich's office as a way to counter Illinois’ $2 billion budget shortfall.

Other parks and sites in the area affected by the closures inlude Moraine View State Park in Leroy, Bryant Cottage in Bement, Weldon Springs State Park in Clinton and Lincoln Log Cabin near Charleston.

Once closed, the public will no longer have access to the parks which will then be staffed with minimum personnel.

So, what do you think of these park closings and how will it affect you? Is it an appropriate way to make up our state’s budget deficit? Do you have any fond memories of these parks? And where will you go instead to appreciate and enjoy nature in our state?

Chester Frazier will get more minutes than anybody this year. That news may seem about as thrilling as the selection of Joe Biden to be Vice President.

Chet's playing time is necessary for the same reason that Evan Bayh didn't get the VP nomination. To remove Bayh from Indiana means the other team scores a Senate seat. To remove Chester means the other team scores, period.

Political analysts, positing the Biden choice, foresee him as Obama's attack dog. That's Frazier's role, too. They're both there to harass opponents.

Like most of the students on campus, I moved into my new apartment this past weekend. I had all the excitement of starting a new school year and moving into a new place. Everything was going my way. That feeling lasted about ten minutes. I entered my apartment and became immediately deflated. Wait, this isn’t how it looked when I signed the lease back in October. There was a gaping hole in the wall of the living room. It appeared that the carpet was only cleaned around the furniture. I found some old lip balm, hairpins, pens and plenty of dust underneath the couches. Burn marks tainted the carpets, and there was already, somehow, garbage all over the balcony. Overall, the place looked abused and filthy.

All right, kids. First and foremost, congratulations are in order. You have successfully navigated your relative high school’s snares of comfort, survived a mild summer, and now find yourself someplace you might consider “nowhere.” After embracing your parents one last time, perhaps breathing a sigh of relief while doing so, and unpacking the elements of your collegiate life from boxes and impact plastic, you have officially taken the first step into being a collegiate.

After living here in C-U for a while, I thought it would be nice to take my mother out to eat for Mother’s Day at one of our fine local eating establishments. I really like ribs, but my mother likes healthy things like salad and salmon, so being a thoughtful son, I called Famous Dave’s Barbecue and made a reservation. When we showed up that Sunday to claim our table, we were told we would have to wait an hour and a half. “But we had a reservation!” I protested. “Sorry, we overbooked,” was the answer.

Ultimate Washington insider or not, I will always have an emotional soft spot for Joe Biden. It’s not because of his policies or his experience, or because he does such a good job of calling people out on their idiocracy — for example, his money quote on Giuliani: “There’s only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun, a verb, and 9/11”. No, Joe will always get the benefit of the doubt from me because he is an important part of my 9/11 story, which I hope not entirely to bore you with right now.

Ed Note: With school back in session, Ellyn Newell brings Smile Politely her top ten reasons why college students really need to get in shape and how.

1. Pokey Sticks: They may be delicious, especially at 3 a.m.; but a fourth meal of the day comprised of only fried cheese probably is not the best dietary plan. Instead, try a small serving of goldfish to satisfy your late night cravings.

2. Beer: The amount of beer drunk on this campus could probably black out a small tribe group of human beings living within the same vicinity of each other for a year. Contrary to popular college belief, beer is not its own food group, and it most certainly should not be your base food group. Try alternating every couple beers with a cup of water. It’ll flush out your system and you might even be able to make it to after hours for once.

Well, there’s a new unexpected art project in town — shrouded in secrecy with only a website and manifesto to reveal itself. The collective is called The Fireswallow Project and they “are for art.” They tell us that in the coming weeks, art is going to happen, all around us, unexpectedly, and that they will be the ones providing us with the details.

In Champaign-Urbana, we have myriad options when it comes to gatherings. From annual parties like Taste of Champaign and the County Fair, to bi-annual throwdowns like Wall2Wall Guitar Festival, to art festivals like Boneyard and the Downtown Festival of the Arts, we are blessed with more than a few options.

Now, as the Sweetcorn Festival takes its 33rd lap around downtown Urbana this weekend, we couldn't help but ask ourselves: just how good of a festival is it?

Certainly, and especially for those who grew up here, there is a nostalgia that surrounds it: a new school year has arrived and the sounds of marching bands on the gridiron are not far off. The local economy is about to turn for the better and, despite the fact that it is widely known that central Illinois grows feed corn almost exclusively, there is nothing quite like the taste of an ear of patented Illini Super Sweet corn, drenched in butter and lightly salted.

But up until this year, prices for an ear at the festival ballooned to the point of a head shaking walk to Schnucks. At $1 a pop, many folks simply decided to forgo the annual corn-gorge and elect to maybe sample an ear or two with a friend. In years past, the cost went from absolutely free to $.25 to $.50 and up.

To combat the trend, newly hired Urbana Business Alliance director Susan Toalson teamed up with Wal-Mart, the company who provides the corn (we know, we know — it kinda sucks that they are involved) to offer festival-goers a 2-for-1 deal this year. One ticket (that costs $1) will get you two ears of the sweet and salty central Illinois tradition. Not bad, right? We thought so.

And, while the last few years saw more local rock bands performing alongside classic artists like The Family Stone and Parliament, this year's lineup leaves more than a little to be desired: Saturday headliner Foghat, a band which actually performs with just one of its original members — the drummer, Roger Earl — has inspired more than a few commenters on local websites to express a little disdain while scratching their heads.

But the Sweetcorn Festival attracts bigger crowds than any other festival in C-U every year — and that makes a strong statement. They must be doing something right.

So, let's have it, students and denizens alike: how does the Sweetcorn Festival stack up against the others?

Happy Reunion, Devoted Readers. Despite challenges to my honor and name, I have returned and persist as your devoted Campus Wit.

After a summer filled with tarry and talk, another school year looms. Books are being bought, supplies are being sought, brains are turned on to thoughts of delight, debauchery and depression. In short order, students will return to the cracked and crusty confines of Champaign-Urbana. First stop for many of these students? Quad Day. Ah glorious Quad Day! Even the Ancients never dreamed of such wonder and spectacle.

As far as we know, Urbana's Planning Commission doesn't get its pockets lined with cash. Unscrupulous developers don't buy votes here. Maybe in Champaign, but not Urbana.

Thursday night, the Urbana Commission will consider a proposal to restrict the construction of impersonal apartment buildings. Here's the News-Gazette story about it.

Basically, Urbana is going to encourage the people who take care of neighborhoods (homeowner occupants) to stay in those neighborhoods, and keep them nice. The loser in this battle is the slumlord, who knocks down old houses to make way for cheap apartment buildings.
Urbana let this happen in decades past, and today's overflowing trash bins are the visible consequence. The invisible consequence is the loss of fantastic old houses, and the emergence of ugly, shitty apartment buildings.

Perhaps the problem is that we have been too narrow in our definition of what science actually is. For example, the creationists have been telling us for a long time that the well-thought-out and researched theories of evolution are no match for the mythologies of the Judeo-Christian traditions. Perhaps they are on to something. After all, they’ve written books and in so doing have helped us to see that books are no longer the domain of well-done, peer-reviewed, scholarly research. The creationists have also opened a Creation Museum thus showing us that museums are no longer a place where scholarly research can be disseminated to the common person.

The Olympics are already more than halfway over. As usual, they have provided valuable life lessons for athletes and viewers alike. A small sample includes:

• Sports are more interesting and broadcast-worthy when Americans are good at them.
• The love of sport and competition is important, but the big endorsement deals don’t go to losers.
• Individuals need skill, determination, hard work and sometimes luck to win. Nations sometimes need forged passports to win.
• China is concerned with worldwide attention on human rights, but not so much that they are going to give Tibet back to the Tibetans.

These are all fine lessons, and I am wiser for having learned them. However, the single biggest lesson I learned from these games turns out to be one of my favorite Stephen Colbert lines: The market has spoken, and global warming is real.

This week, Ask Politely is a special commentary by our resident film critic, Chuck Koplinski. The rest of the piece can be found by clicking "Continue Reading" below. Please join in the discussion.

This is going to be messy.

There is a current controversy raging around Ben Stiller’s new film, “Tropic Thunder.” At its core, it is a vicious satire about vacuous Hollywood movies, the avarice of the bean counters that finance them and the narcissistic film actors who star in them. Method acting, the process through which performers go to great lengths to research and inhabit their roles before the cameras begin to roll, takes a particularly strong beating. In the film, five time Oscar winner Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.) goes to the nth degree with this method by undergoing a skin pigmentation process that makes him look like an African American in order to play his role.

However, this modern take on blackface isn’t causing the firestorm. Actually, I haven’t read a single derogatory thing about it. Nope, the controversy is about the film’s frequent use of the “R word.”

No, it's not “rim job,” either.

It's “retard.”

I believe having a sense of community is a powerful, spiritual force in our lives. The central act of Christian worship is (or should be) Communion which isn’t just about drinking wine and eating bread, but about doing those things with a community of believers to symbolize our unity, love and acceptance of one another.

But it just so happened that on bill day this month, I decided to buy a knife magnet, and remembered Coop America. By knife magnet, I don’t mean a magnet in the shape of a knife. That would be both useless and dangerous (unless there was a shiny, metallic robot coming after you, in which case you would have bigger problems than a magnetic knife could solve).

When Merchandising Tool, Viacom (MTV) first arrived on cable, their programming consisted of almost nothing except promotional videos for popular music. As they began to hone their marketing skills, MTV culled and grouped videos they felt would be well-received by targeted demographics. They labeled this survey Top 20 Video Countdown.

Why the disproportionate overlapping? It's not for lack of material. Although MTV didn't start until 1981, music videos had been around since the 20s. And even in 1987, no Whitesnake video was better than Strawberry Fields Forever.

That show ruled the ratings for its target market. So naturally, there were umpteen spins-off, and variations. Soon, upping the ante, MTV began to run regular top-videos-of-all-time programs. Discriminating viewers quickly identified a tendency for MTV to include current hit favorites among the listees. That is, you could count on the "100 Best of All-Time" being pretty much the same as the "Top 20 of the Week."

Welcome to Champaign-Urbana, which was tenth in the Top Green Cities list 2007, by Country Home magazine, in conjunction with Sperling's BestPlaces — although in 2008 we have moved down to #56. (And I cannot believe that Boston-Quincy, Mass. is higher than us, I think they paid someone off.)

This article was originally going to be about how to deal with the repercussions (on the playground) of teaching your child to practice non-violence, and how to lecture any other child who attempts to hurt, maim, or take something away from your own child, but if I wrote it, I would piss off a lot of people, most of whom are related to me.

Then I was going to write about my proposal that If Drug Deals Are Going On Near My House, I Should Get A Cut Of The Action (the money, I mean) — and couldn't that be taxed somehow to help us build roads and schools or at least pay for the fireworks next year? But then I thought that's probably a really bad idea too.

So instead I'll just smile politely and talk innocuously and inoffensively about throwing shit away.

As the site of the main campus of the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana certainly qualifies as a college town in a fairly pure sense. There's certainly not many other geographical reasons for our fair cities to be anything more than the seat of an agricultural county.

There's a certain eclecticism that comes nearly standard with being a college town (unless you're Terre Haute). It's a special atmosphere that lends itself to greater diversity and tolerance than would normally be found in similarly-sized towns.

But how does C-U compare to other college towns? From Olympia to Gainesville, Berkeley to New Haven, there are hundreds of municipalities in this land which contain an institute of higher learning. We are merely one. In your opinion, how do we rate?

Michael Scott is the ultimate nightmare boss, played by Steve Carell on The Office. But he’s not the mean kind that yells at you and demands unreasonable production and hours. He’s the kind that wants to be your friend while being completely clueless about how to interact with others.

I had always thought of Michael as representing bad bosses or buffoons, but not necessarily representing (or caricaturizing) his race as a white person. Perhaps this is because I watched The Office only intermittently until this summer. Then the miracle of DVD season releases gave me a more complete picture of him. His main qualities seem to be 1) he wants everyone to like him 2) he’s unwilling to let go of any privilege or power that he has, and 3) he’s generally unaware how his actions negatively affect others. This is uncomfortably close to how a lot of white people generally behave towards minorities.

Census statistics show that Champaign-Urbana has more bicyclists than the average American town. Urbana ranks third in Illinois (and first in towns of over 1,000 people) with 4.61 percent of the population commuting by bicycle. Champaign isn't far behind with 2.31 percent, slightly behind Carbondale. The U.S. average is right around one percent.

There is also a thriving bicycle culture in C-U. Prairie Cycle Club, ChampaignCountyBikes.org and The Bike Project co-op serve as resources and advocates for cyclists. Critical Mass, bike polo and chariot and alley cat races are frequent and well-attended. There are also several good established and unofficial bike shops around town which serve the community.

Biking around campus and in the old parts of Champaign and Urbana is possible and often enjoyable. Much of the motor traffic seems to be used to being around bicycles and often give them the benefit of the doubt at four-way stops. As you may have noticed, it's pretty flat around here, which makes it less challenging for novice cyclists to get around.

On the other hand, the outlying areas of both cities were not planned with bikes in mind, especially north of I-74. The trail system — despite the contribution of the new bike lanes along First Street — is disorganized and frustrating to navigate, especially in Campustown. Many of the secondary streets are poorly-maintained and filled with potholes.

So, does the good outweigh the bad? Do the smiles and waves from motorists outnumber the honks and fingers in your experience? How bike-friendly is Champaign-Urbana?