GODLESS WEDNESDAY: Former Pastor Who Tried Living Without God For A Year Became Atheist

Somehow I missed the story of Pastor Ryan J. Bell, even though he is a local since Fuller Theological Seminary is in Pasadena, California. Bell made headlines when he announced that the former Seventh-Day Adventist Pastor and seminarian was going to live without God for a year as an experiment. Both of his Christian employers (Azusa Pacific University and Fuller) terminated his employment within days of Bell's announcement, but he received over $27,000 in donation after his plight was publicized on the Patheos website.

Well, the experiment is now over and Bell says "I don't think God exists." He said so in a recent interview on NPR

After a year, Bell tells NPR's Arun Rath, "I've looked at the majority of the arguments that I've been able to find for the existence of God, and on the question of God's existence or not, I have to say I don't find there to be a convincing case, in my view. 

"I don't think that God exists. I think that makes the most sense of the evidence that I have and my experience. But I don't think that's necessarily the most interesting thing about me." 

[...] 

"I think before, I wanted a closer relationship to God, and today I just want a closer relationship with reality," Bell says.

Don't you think there is something wrong with religion if it ends up being a choice between God and reality? Jus' sayin'!

QUEER QUOTE: Pasadena's Public Health Director Condemns Homosexuality (& Oprah & Jay-Z!)

Oh dear! I live and work very near to Pasadena, California in the north-east section of Los Angeles. Pasadena is having its own "bigot eruption" right now as the virulently anti-gay (and bizarre) beliefs of
Dr. Eric Walsh, the City Director of Public Health have come to light in the local media.

The Los Angeles Times reports that Dr. Walsh has been put on administrative leave from his taxpayer-funded job, for which he was paid more than $250,000 in 2012.

The reason for his suspension is this list of things that Dr. Walsh believes, according to the Pasadena Star-News, should disqualify him from serving as Pasadena's Public Health Director

• Oprah Winfrey is harboring the spirit of the anti-Christ;• The prophet Muhammad, founder of Islam, was influenced by Satan;• The devil set up Catholicism;• Acceptance of homosexuals is a satanic ploy to destroy America;• Rapper Jay Z is a disciple of Satan;• Single mothers are ruining their children;• Disney movies, which are loaded with violence, sex and magic, are a satanic ploy to split up families;• Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is a “satanic belief”;• The distribution of condoms to a public in need leads to higher AIDS rates;• The pope is the anti-Christ.

But it is this choice quote which makes him today's Queer Quote:

“In our public school system they began to teach moral relativism. They began to teach that there really is no absolute right or wrong. It’s more a matter of what you think or what you accept. And (according to that doctrine) if two adults agree to do something, it’s not wrong because they are both consenting adults. That is doctrine from the pits of hell. What makes something right is not based on man, it is based on God.”

One website thinks that is basically saying that gay people come from the "pits of hell" but maybe that's not what the good doctor meant?
Hat/tip to The New Civil Rights Movement

FOOD REVIEW: Yujean Kang's (Pasadena, CA)

exterior of Yujean Kang's restaurant

Steamed dumpling with green onion, egg, pork and vegetable

A combination of three dishes: string beans, chicken with cashew nuts
and scallops with cucumber

Chicken with Glazed Cashew Nuts

Sauteed Blue Lake Green Beans with Roasted Pork

Mandarin Orange Cheesecake with
Fresh Fruit in Raspberry and Passion Fruit Sauce

For my birthday on May 21, I had dinner with my husband at one of my favorite restaurants in Los Angeles, Yujean Kang's a gourmet Chinese restaurant. They do not serve you typical Szechuan Chinese cuisine, but instead use high-quality ingredients to produce gourmet-level entrees at non-gourmet prices.

Although it is one of my favorite restaurants, I haven't actually eaten at Yujean Kang's for awhile. They have two dishes on their menu which I absolutely adore. They are: 1) crispy beef with chinese baby bok choi, szechuan style; and 2) chicken with glazed cashew nuts. In fact, I almost always order these two items whenever I go there.

We started with a very interesting steamed dumpling stuffed with four interesting ingredients (cooked egg, green onions, smoked pork and some vegetable whose name I forget. Unfortunately a single order of these only included 3 dumplings so I was forced to eat 2, after taking the close up picture seen above. They were quite small, but very yummy.

Since it had been awhile since I had eaten there we only ordered one of my favorites, the chicken with glazed cashew nuts (sliced chicken breast with assorted mushrooms, fresh snow peas and vanilla beans, served with sesame seed and glazed cashew nuts). This is a truly astonishing dish. The chicken is very, very tender, melting in your mouth, but incredibly flavorful thanks to the presence of vanilla beans and a yummy slightly sweet sauce. The dish has very interesting competing textures, with sweet, crunchy glazed walnuts and very smooth, slippery mushrooms and the aforementioned chicken. Additionally, there are bright green, crunchy snow peas which provide contrasting color and another interesting texture. The pictures above do not do it justice!

In addition to the Chicken with Glazed Walnuts, we ordered the Sauteed Green Beans with Pork, primarily to compare Yujeans Kang's version of this typical Szechuan dish with the same dish I've often ordered at Yang Chow restaurant. Honestly, I found Yujean Kang's version of the dish slightly inferior to Yang Chow's. The greens were not crunchy enough at Yujean's, although the dish was a nice contrast to the chicken. However, it was intended to be a light vegetable dish because the other two dishes contained protein and the addition of smoked pork made it seem a bit too substantial.

The third dish we ordered was one of the most expensive things on the menu, a $23 entree: the fresh spicy sea scallops with cucumber and jellyfish. The dish came with Szechuan peppercorn sauce on the side. My husband was very interested in ordering this because Szechuan peppercorns were banned for import into the United States for years (ban ended in 2005) and the spice is supposed to have an almost pharmacological effect on the tastebuds.

Hubby had dropped the knowledge that this was my birthday dinner so they insisted on providing a dessert for free. While I ran out to feed the meter (even on an early Saturday evening it is not wise to defy the Parking God in Pasadena) and when I returned there was a lovely (complementary) mandarin orange cheesecake with kiwi, grapefruit and tangerine artfully arranged around the plate. Amazingly, there was even mandarin inside the cheesecake itself, and this did not clash with the dairy-laden sweet.

All in all, Yujean Kang's is an excellent dining experience, one I would like to repeat soon, but next time I will make sure to order both of my favorite dishes!

Name: Yujean Kang's.

Location: 67 North Raymond Avenue, Pasadena, CA 91103.

Contact: 626-585-0855.

Visit: May 21, 2011.

AMBIANCE: A-.

SERVICE: A.

VALUE: B.

FOOD: A. 

OVERALL: A- (3.667/4.0). 

Eye Candy: Chadwick Johnson

UPDATE 08/25/2010: Pictures removed by request.

Bam! Here's model Chadwick Johnson for your viewing pleasure. Although I first noticed him at Queerty, apparently this very fit young man lives in the Pasadena area, just a hop skip and a jump from MadProfessah. If I ran into him, my heart just may skip a beat!

VIDEO: Time-Lapse Video Of Fire Clouds Over L.A.

Time Lapse Test: Station Fire from Eric Spiegelman on Vimeo.

This is the best video I have seen depicting what it is like to live in Los Angeles as we shift from one season (drought) to the next (fire). Hopefully we will be skipping the other two (flood and riot) in 2009! The video shows 90 minutes condensed in to 24 seconds.

hat/tip to LA Observed.

Joys of Euro Pane

chocolate eclair

raspberry tart with custard filling

Here are two more reasons (besides the three reasons I had blogged about previously) to enjoy Euro Pane Bakery in Pasadena, California. Their chocolate eclair and the raspberry tart (with custard filling).

REVIEW: Euro Pane Bakery (Pasadena, CA)

Flourless chocolate cake

Bee sting

Almond cookie (left), chocolate chip with walnuts (right)

Euro Pane is an amazing bakery found in Pasadena (950 E Colorado Blvd, (626-577-1828) near the corner of Lake and Colorado Boulevards. It has truly delicious, European-style pastries. Sadly, the prices are pretty European also, but they are worth every centime!

MadProfessah samples their wares pretty frequently. Recently, I tried their flourless chocolate cake, bee sting, and some cookies. Everything was absolutely excellent. Europane is a great place to spend an hour or so on the weekend, basking in the lovely Southern California weather!

MOVIE REVIEW: Hellboy 2

Saw Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy 2: The Golden Army this weekend while Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight was crushing box-office records.

The sequel to the 2004 Hellboy has been received relatively warmly by critics and the public in general (87% critics and 80% users at rottentomatoes.com).

As usual, the sequels to sucessful films that become summer blockbusters become bigger, louder and longer. Actually, Hellboy 2 is a few minutes shorter than the original's two-hour running time but seems much longer.


del Toro is clearly an extremely talented director and the images he includes in the film are truly breath-taking, even more imaginative than the amazing creations that appeared in his Oscar-winning Pan's Labyrinth (MadProfessah's review). This is one of the reason's he has been tapped to take on what is probably the #1 directing job in the world today, the adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit.


However, Hellboy 2 is a good example of the importance of a good script and being faithful to the internal consistencies of a fantastical world. In Hellboy 2, the entire plot revolves around the prevention of the activation of an indestructible, unstoppable Golden Army. When the question of whether the Golden Army will be stopped is resolved, one of the characters grabs the device which controls the activation of the Golden Army and completely destroys it in a few seconds. WTF? If the character ccould have demolished the key device at any point in time, what was the point of the last 90 minutes of the film? This is a fatal flaw and basically ruined the film for me. And my attention was already starting to flag because right before this point the action had become extremely frenetic and appeared to be unending. However, at no point does the film look bad, and overall, the action scenes were well-paced throughout the running time of the film.

OVERALL GRADE: B.

IMAGERY: A+.
ACTING: A-.
PLOT: D.
IMPACT: B-.

REVIEW: Azeen's Afghani Restaurant (Pasadena, CA)

Recently I had lunch at Azeen's Afghani Restaurant in Pasadena, CA. Pictured above is an excellent dish called mantu (Steamed dumplings filled with chopped beef, onions and herbs topped with yogurt and sautéed Mixed vegetables, $4). My lunch companion ordered pakawra-e-badenjan (Batter dipped, sautéed slices of eggplant topped with yogurt and meat sauce, $4). I don't even like eggplant, and I thought this was very tasty. These were both appetizers. For our entrees we ordered the chicken and lamb kabobs, which came with pallaw, an interesting seasoned rice (the rice is cooked in the juices and gravy of the meat, so arrives infused with flavor) and Afghani bread which was described as a cross between Indian naan and Italian focaccia. It was served with a very interesting spicy/minty green chutney. The bread had a look of corrugated cardboard and the texture of somewhat dry toast. To be honest, I enjoyed the appetizers more than the entrees (cooked meat on skewers is nothing new). The pallaw was a dry shadow of the Caribbean pelau, which is a similar gravy-infused wet rice dish (reminiscent of risotto or paella). The meals were served with delightfully refreshing Afghan iced tea with cardamom. Afghani cuisine appears to be an interesting hybrid of sources from India, Persia and the Middle East.

I definitely intend to return to Azeen's in the near future, for some more mantu, and to sample the rest of their interesting appetizer menu.

GRADE: B+.