Hey guys,
I´ve known this fact (call it disturbing, astonishing, amazing, boring, surprising or whatever) for several months, but as we were talking about Obama, his personality and charisma in class today I directly thought back to that: Kal Penn is about to work for Barack Obama in the White House - as a "full" member of staff.
For those of you who do not know him: Here is first of all a picture - that is him (taken from http://www.emeriandjonahscloset.com/ejc/aj/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/kal-penn.jpg).
Looks quite serious, doesn´t he?? A young serious man who can take his tasks and fulfill them!
Hehe - yes! But...
But there is also another side of Kal Penn (not that negatively connotated as it may sound now):
He used to work as an actor - okay, nothing special, you may think, but!!
Most of you might know him from the series Dr. House (I love it by the way, alothough I liked the first two seasons best). He played the young Dr. Lawrence Kutner working for Dr. House´s team. After being invited by Obama to work for him, the figure Kutner had to commit suicide as both jobs at the same time were incompatible. This was the more serious part of his work, but now let´s turn to some movies he made that are even less compatible with his future job:
They are still quite unknown here, but one must have seen them. It is firstly Harold & Kumar - Go to White Castle and secondly the sequel to it: Harold & Kumar - Escape from Guantanamo Bay.
In these movies, Kal Penn (which is actually only a stage name; his real one is Kalpen Modi) plays Kumar, a weed smoking, lazy young man who is forced to study medicine by his father. His purpose in life is having fun and smoking as much weed as he can get, together with his friend Harold (a Korean man - also a weedhead, but a little bit more reasonable), alone or with his Jewish friends. This is what it look like then (taken from flixster.com:
Now the question: Can such a man really take such a responsibility and work for the White House? At first glance he can absolutely NOT - I mean he is a weedhead who does not do anything with his life!
But: Barack Obama will not have chosen an unreliable man to work for him who could crash all his previous work. By the way - what is Modi´s job then? He is supposed to be some kind of a mediator between the American government and Asian immigrants and artists. He does not expect to get special treatment, but he would like to be regarded as any other member of staff and he does not want to take advantage of his former career as an actor.
Here is an online source reporting about this, but there are many other comparable ones, just google it, since you know how search engines work :)
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=aFXnt_hqV._8&refer=muse
If you are interested in his movies, here is a trailer of the first movie where they try to get some burgers at White Castle ;)
This is an interview with Kalpen Modi; at first summarizing what he has done so far and then he talks about what his tasks are in the White House, and he is not only a "weedhead". Check it out!
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