If this doesn't get you guys angry, I don't know what will

That racist jackasshole Elkhay actually celebrated the launching of Chinese Laundry by bringing in a real, live, and nude Asian American model.

http://www.bostonherald.com/track/inside_track/view.bg?articleid=1079100&srvc=rss

And to make matters worse, the oxygen thieves over at the Herald have to be racist towards Jenn too.

New Asian eatery’s wanton ad leaves bad taste for some

By Inside Track
Monday, March 10, 2008

Chinese Laundry, a new fusion eatery in Providence has drawn the ire of a blogger called “Angry Asian American Woman” who is steamed about provocative print ads placed by the restaurant to promote tomorrow night’s opening.

The glossy ads, which have run in Providence Monthly, show a nearly naked woman with Oriental symbols tattooed on her torso with copy that reads “Good things come to those who wait” and “The wait is over.”

The ad, according to Jenn, the Angry one, “relies on Orientalist fetishization to sell the store: The message of the ad is that the Asian food of the restaurant - like Asian women - are exotic and different, and will represent a new experience.

“Diners are urged by the ad, then, to come and consume the Eastern food much as they would hope to consume and conquer the Asian woman,” she writes on her blog at www.reappropriate.com.

Whoa. What if you only want a bowl of chow foon?

Jenn’s noodle would have been really fried if she caught the scene on Friday night, when Chinese Laundry threw an opening-night party attended by New England Patriots [team stats] Dan Koppen, Matt Light [stats] and Sam Neal.

Apparently, the star of the night was a live Asian model draped in red silk sheets and sushi - and not much else - posing atop a long table that could be viewed from the glass floor in the main dining room.

John Elkay, the restaurant’s owner, posted on the blog over the weekend that “The only thing I was trying to conquer was a guest’s appetite.

“In today’s overstimulated world is it possible we were just trying to get the attention of the reader and not trying to conquer the east and their woman?” he asked.

Despite the response by the owner, fired-up bloggers are still calling for a boycott and a campaign backed by a national civil rights organization. And one over-zealous poster suggested torching the North Main Street eatery! But the Angry Asian American woman threw cold water on that one.

And speaking of Koppen, we hear the almost-bachelor-no-mo’ offensive line biggie was roasted and toasted by his buds Tedy Bruschi [stats], Light and many more at Abe & Louie’s steakhouse in the Back Bay the other night.

Koppen and fiancee Amber van Eeghen, an ex-New England Patriots [team stats] cheerleader, are tying the knot veddy soon. Rib-eyes all around.

Angry Asian Man, You Are Not Alone.

Bruce Lee’s not the only angry Asian man around. This is Beau Sia, one of my favorite spoken word poets, performing on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam (sorry for the low quality).

Sia said in an interview that he actually prefers performing for non-Asian audiences, because of the opportunity to present a new voice, and not just reiterate frustrations with which Asian-American community is already familiar. This means this piece was written as a direct address to a non-Asian audience; it’s deliberately confrontational, reactionary.

So how does this angry Asian man compare with the one we’ve seen kicking ass in Enter the Dragon? For starters, there’s the image that each chooses to portray. Bruce’s powerful, muscular, battle-scarred body is a direct contrast to the hunched, fragile-looking Yellowman of Broken Blossoms. Beau, on the other hand, chooses to go with the fluffy pink turtleneck. Baffling at first, but one can compare the sweater to Bruce’s often-imitated falsetto yells. A comedian in an earlier video post claimed that Bruce Lee was the only person in the world that could make those noises and still be scary. Similarly, I think Beau Sia’s got to be the only guy who can wear that sweater and still be just as badass.

We discussed how Bruce Lee seems to portray himself as almost superhuman-- or at least otherworldly. He chooses to abstain from sex and alcohol, and he promotes the art of “fighting without fighting,” which is a noble statement (on top of being plain ol’ magic). Whereas Beau seems to scream that he is just as human as everyone else. He doesn’t claim to be above sex-- just better at it. Bruce Lee’s character (though significantly more impressive) still retains much of the oriental exoticism we’ve addressed-- yet in his hands it seems more like an expression of pride in Asian culture than an exploitation of it. After all, the “finger pointing at the moon” line isn’t just kung fu movie hocus-pocus, but comes straight out of Buddhist scripture.

One sequence of Enter the Dragon that I found interesting was the final fight scene with Han. In its final moments, Bruce literally becomes lost in a maze of images, and is confused by the multiple shifting reflections of himself and of his enemy. He is only able to defeat Han by shattering the phantom images in order to confront the real villain. The scene is a powerful statement. We, too, must first study and become absorbed by the images of our own bodies that are projected around us. But studying them isn’t enough. Our ultimate goal has to be to destroy these images, and thereby to get at the social problems that underlie them.

As a final parting gift, here’s another fantastic clip from Beau Sia, this time addressing pop culture in general.