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Grassroots Day 7 - Run of Death, U Penn, and Sushi & Cookies!
2007-10-02 1:19AM / 標準BLOG
Sung & Roger contemplating a change in hairstyle
Today I went on a run with Sung. I have run with Mr. Kang many times. However, this is my first time running with him since he enrolled himself in some sort of clandestine, navy seal, black ops exercise program called Treadstone. Now I am no running god, but I do run trail marathons and am in ok shape. Usually one runs at a certain pace. Slower at first, higher for the main run, and then slower to cool down. Mr. Kang was not taught this logic at boot camp. Running with Sung is like running on a short-circuited treadmill. Fast, not so fast, super fast, really super fast, etc, etc, etc. Thank God Manhattan is an island. Without natural boundaries, I think Sung and I would have ended up in South America.
The gentleman with Sung is the train conductor. When he heard that Sung was on board, he came on back to ask for an autograph for his son. My only question is...who the heck was driving the train!?
After rubbing Ben Gay over what was left of my legs, we hopped a train toward Philadelphia to speak to the students at University of Pennsylvania. I must say, the students of UPenn kick ass! The room (which was a Wharton business school classroom btw) was totally packed and the energy was amazing! We had a fun Q&A with some of the best questions ever. The students then took us to another Wharton room for some cookies and sushi...a fine combination of fish and flour. All and all we had an amazing time at U Penn. We then took a late night train back to NYC where Julie, Sung, and I winded down our night with a meal of ribs and chicken and 1/8 of a beer. BTW, we just found out we made Page 5 of the U Penn Newspaper today. Rad. -Roger
U Penn KDPhi is in da house!
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Grassroots Day 6 - Tigers & Lychee Martinis
2007-10-01 12:36AM / 標準BLOG
Day 6 on the road and we are experiencing the beginning signs of fatigue and delirium. Sung is starting to speak in strange, Asianish tongues, Julie is hugging us less, and my eyes are sprouting veins larger than my heart valves. But the great thing is is that we're having an amazing time visiting all these student and community groups!
Our grassroots journey today takes us to Princeton N.J. to meet the many AA students at one of America's finest Ivy Leages. We hopped the New Jersey transit (a rather crappier Amtrak) and spent a wonderful Saturday afternoon hanging out with the Princeton students. But the coolest part of our trip was getting to eat at an official Princeton eating club. All I can say is that I know now what a wealthy landowner must have felt in the 1700s, eating a fine meal on the porch of his colonial mansion overlooking his kingdom. The crazy thing is, Princeton students eat like this everyday. Life does not suck if you go to Princeton.
Go to Princeton and this is how you will eat everyday. though we had meat loaf and fried chicken, we were told that they had king crab legs a few nights earlier...
After dinner we said our goodbyes and headed back to NYC. We met up with Dustin Nguyen and his wife, Angela. They were both in town because Angela was receiving an award from the Christopher Reeve Foundation. The night was certainly nutty...too many people drinking too many of them lychee martinis. Good times. We shared a few laughs, had some Vietnamese food, and, to cap off the evening, watched Dustin & Anglea drift her chair on the NYC sidewalks. -Roger
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Grassroots Day 5 - Politics and a Hip Hop Partay!
2007-09-30 12:48PM / 標準BLOG
This morning I jumped on a train with Justin to go from Washington D.C. to NYC. Prior to our departure, Justin and I had one of the best, home-made-tasting hamburgers in the world...and it was in the food court of the D.C. train station! Go figure.
Upon arriving in NYC, we had barely enough time to drop off our stuff at Hells Kitchen when we had to head out to Queens to attend the Organization of Chinese Americans awards banquet. When we popped out of the subway in Queens, I seriously had no idea where we were. We had to find a Chinese restaurant somewhere in a sea of Chinese restaurants. It's like trying to find a needle in a needle stack. Then it started to rain.
Justin and I were totally blown away by the amazing people of OCA. We met the first Asian woman to pass the bar in NYC, Ellen Young...very cool. There was also Bill Imada, a business leader in the ad agency that led the charge of taking away all the add sponsorship from a big NY radio station after they did a rather racist skit on the air. And we got to hang out with Emmy Award winning journalist, Ti Hua Chang. Thanks OCA for inviting us out!
Only in NYC can you go from a political awards banquet to hanging at a hip hop club all in the same night. And that's exactly what Justin and I did. We jumped a train from Queens back to Manhattan's lower west side. Peter Chun and BASE NY were helping us promote FTG at their club, Hiro Ballroom. It was very cool. The whole club was plastered with FTG posters and they were playing clips of FTG on the jumbotron. And they even gave us our own private booth. Strangely enough no one in the club actually sits in any booth...they sit ON TOP of them. Don't know why they do that, but standing on furniture at a classy joint is certainly something I recommend everyone should try at least once in their lives. It makes you feel like a bad ass rebel. Tough and rebellious. Anyway, it's 4 am right now and we just got in. I'm going to try something called sleep. : ) -Roger
Partying at BASE NY & sitting ON TOP of the furniture.
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Grassroots Day 4 - A Pot Belly in Washington D.C.
2007-09-29 3:33AM / 標準BLOG
After only 3 hours of sleep Justin, Julie, Sung, and I caught an early morning train to Washington D.C. We had to run like mad to catch our ride at NY Penn Station cause Sung and I refused to get out of our beds.
An FTG "Hello" from the President's backyard. The grass was dying...
The last time any of us had been in DC was in 2002 for BLT. So we were all very excited to return to our nation's capital. We were picked up by DC Asian American Film Festival President, Christian Oh. He was more pimp then film festival purveyor. And he further cemented his image as DC Mac Daddy when he dropped us off at our hotel and gifted each of us with a 2 liter bottle of Vodka.
Sung pictured with Tyesha, Tyeesha, Jamal, Tydvia, Hannah, Donald at DC's Pot Belly sandwich shop on 11th & F.
None of us had a meal and it was 3 pm. So we checked in and headed out for a quick bite. Originally Justin wanted Italian. However, we were snubbed with some hard core "spirit dark" at one of DC's finer italian joints, with the waiter insisting that we could not have meatballs with our spaghetti. We love meatballs so we left. But things always happen for a reason. We ended up at a cool sandwich shop called Pot Belly's. The second we stepped in, the folks at Pot Belly recognized Sung from FF3. They were the coolest bunch and they gave us the warmest welcome. In fact, they refused to let us pay for our lunch. We couldn't have asked for more. Great food, great people, and they had a mean meatball sandwich. Thanks Pot Belly!
Later we attended the opening night of the DC AA Film Fest. FTG was the opening night film. And though it was pouring rain, the energy was awesome and the DC crowd was just great. One of the coolest things about this Journey is getting to meet the many people we connect with on line via MySpace, Facebook, etc in person at their home cities. We finally got to meet our MySpace buddy Nathalie Liautaud and a few other of our Internet family members. Very cool indeed. By the time I looked at my watch it was almost 2 am. I decided to head back to the hotel with Julie while Justin and Sung decided to go walking to find DC Chinatown. Justin and I are headed back to NYC in the morning to attend the NY OCA Banquet while Sung and Julie are sticking around in DC to speak to the students at Georgetown. It is now 4 am, Friday. Must sleep. : ) -Roger
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Grassroots Day 3 - It's Hot as Hells Kitchen in NYC!
2007-09-28 3:13PM / 標準BLOG
Sung and I are dripping wet in this picture. Not the day to wear wool blend
Autumn in New York is supposed to be nice, cool, fall affair. Unfortunately for Sung, Julie, Justin, and myself, we are experiencing the preliminary indicators of global warming in Manhattan. It's HOT here in Hells Kitchen!
Sung and I had to get up early because we had some phone interviews with newspapers and web magazine outfits. After we were done, Sung and I decided to run the entire rim of Central Park. Normally, this would not be too much of a problem given that Sung and I run quite regularly. However, it was 90+ degrees and super humid so the loop around the park felt more like a prison death march. At least both of us got a tan.
We then met up with Justin for our 2 speaking sessions at the NY Film Academy and the Korea Society. Justin had just come from a Chinese TV interview where the make-up artists on set insisted that he had to wear lipstick. Sung and I arrived at Union Square dripping wet...no one told us that NYC was going to be soooo hot so we only brought long pants & long sleeve shirts. The sweat stick of boxers on a man's leg is enjoyable for only so long. I wonder if the NY Film Academy audience thought it was strange that both Sung and I looked like well-dressed wet cats. We had an amazing Q&A session with about 300 film students. What was really cool was that many of the foreign students were big fans of BETTER LUCK TOMORROW. You gotta love bootleg DVDs. Mejor Luck Manana baby!
We then went to the Korea Society on the East Side. I got to hand it to the society of Koreans, they definitely got some serious cash flow. Their building was rather pimp. Josh, Julie, Justin, Sung, and I played our documentary and then spoke with 120ish members of the Society de Koreans for about 1 1/2 hours. We ended the session by giving away a bunch of FINISHING THE GAME T Shirts. As parting gifts, the Korea Society gave us T Shirts of Bruce Lee. Kinda strange to get what you just gave.
After that we cabbed it to Chinatown for some late night eats. Why Justin ordered the stomach & liver dish I will never know. It looked and tasted like coagulated vomit. But hey, the noodles rocked! We then went back to our lair in Hells Kitchen to do some work and prep for our next day. Before we knew it, it was 4am. As I am writing this, I realize we have to get up in 4 hours to catch an early train to Washington DC. Yeah boy... -Roger
Kind of ironic that this NYC police officer pulled us over to tell Sung that he loved "The Fast & The Furious 3"
