Just ate not-too-Americanized Chinese/Korean food cooked by my favorite local Asian, Uncle David*, the head chef at Chinn Chinn. Probably late seventies/early eighties but all over the kitchen, born in China but grew up in Korea, speaks both languages fluently and combines the cuisines well in an unpretentious manner. For some reason, Mattawan Michigan, this small hick town/white flight magnet next to Kalamazoo filled with bible-beaters, meth cooks, and middle-aged women who wear sweatshirts with photos of large breed dogs, unironically, has some of the best Chinese food/Asian fusion I’ve tasted in America.

Lots of Jesus freaks in the Midwest. The manager of my temporary gym, who cleans in an obsessive-compulsive manner, wearing thick yellow rubber gloves, inquired about my profession in China, then followed-up with “you involved in Christian ministry out there at all?”

“Em, no”

I hope that a society with 5,000 years of history, plush with Buddhism and Confucianism doesn’t get bit by the wacky evangelical bug, like South Korea. Would be a major bummer.

Tangentially related to the topic of the American religious/socially conservative community, I’m going to a Tea Party next week. Not high tea, but a gathering of people from the real America, not to be confused with elites from the coasts. People from “flyover country,” furious with President Obama (a Muslim born in Kenya, in some folks’ mind) and fed up with the federal government spending billions of our dollars and sinking the country further into debt.

This is all explained well and entertaingly in a recent New Yorker article. I’m looking foward to the experience. It’s like in-your-face liberals wilding out at protests, but with conservative folk.

Going ever further back tonight than yesterday’s track. Will get (slightly) more current tomorrow. No introduction needed, The Velvet Underground. I’ve always wanted to play out Sunday Morning as a last, last track on a Saturday night but I never remember.

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The Velvet Underground - Femme Fatale

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The Velvet Underground - Sunday Morning