You Can’t Be Serious(51)

The winner (usually Olivia) was the person who came up with the best nonchalant task, and the most extreme facial expression. Sara didn’t invent AFITA. It was created by friends of hers to amuse themselves at parties where only they knew they were playing. On our set, however, everyone knew we played. The rest of the cast was always invited to join, but I think they saw Accidentally Fucked in the Ass as an absurdity for only the three new actors. (That said, I’m pretty sure we did convince Hugh Laurie to play once. Omar Epps was always an emphatic no.)

Not to be outdone by Hess’s “game,” Peter started a “competition” called HULLLLLL in which each player:

a) impersonates a castmate (castmate must be present) while

b) pretending to gag on a dick by performing a throaty choking sound (the length and intensity of which varied. Player’s choice!).

This would always have to take place at a time when:

c) the castmate being impersonated was complaining about something.

Peter does a pretty solid impersonation of me, so when it was his turn at the “competition,” he would wait until I had complained about something innocuous, like my burger being cold or not getting enough sleep the night before. He’d then push out his bottom lip, slouch the way I sometimes do, and say, “My name is Kal Penn and my food was too col—HULLLLLL!” (You either know this sound accurately or you don’t.) Anyway, that’s it. That’s the whole “competition.”

On the off chance you find this game disgusting or immature, you should know that Peter brought “HULLLLLL” to us from his days on Broadway. His understudy taught it to him when they worked on the Steve Martin play Picasso at the Lapin Agile together. From there, Peter HULLLLLLed his castmates at the very serious Atlantic Theater Company during his run of The Water Engine. (If you recall, David Mamet’s Atlantic Theater Company is where I did my first professional workshop through the Governor’s School for the Arts before my senior year of high school. It all comes full circle.) So, when Peter introduced this on the set of House, there was a lot to live up to.

The best “players” on our cast were the ones who would bait you with a long, misdirected setup. I once goaded Olivia with a setup about social justice, something we both care a great deal for. Knowing she had read the paper that morning, I played dumb and said, “I heard there’s a New York Times article on greed and Big Pharma, have you read it?” For the next ten minutes, she passionately talked about economics and morality. I finally interrupted her, leaning in and saying, “You should write an op-ed. I think your take on drug prices with the recent economic data you cited was HULLLLLL!”

OLIVIA: Did you just set me up with that whole thing?

ME: I sure did.



I guess what I’m saying is that I was living the dream. Not just because I was paying my rent by acting, but because I had artistic contentment too. I had broken out of the Brown Catch-22. Roles would still be tougher to get to be sure, but I had built enough of a résumé to truly know that this was something I could make a career out of. I felt perfectly content living an entirely apolitical life doing an Emmy-winning medical drama while very stupidly dodging imaginary dicks at both ends.



* * *



Then one day in the fall of 2007, Olivia knocked on the door of my trailer. “Kal, do you want to come to an event for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign next week? I have a plus-one! You’d love it.” The primary season was kicking off in an especially crowded field: Since Vice President Cheney wasn’t running for the presidency, there were more than a dozen viable candidates between both major parties.

“Nah, I like public service. Not politics.”

“But you protested against the Iraq War!” she said.

“That’s not politics; that’s just being a decent human before both parties voted to kill innocent people for no reason,” I opined in my kinda irritating soapboxy way.

Olivia saw her opening: “Exactly. Obama was against the Iraq War too!”

I had read Obama’s book Dreams from My Father, and like most people, loved his 2004 DNC speech. But I detested politicians, and the idea of going to an event in support of someone running for president just wasn’t on my radar, even if my friend was saying he was different from the rest.

Not one to take no for an answer, Olivia pleaded with me. “Obama is a real underdog candidate! He’s the only major candidate to refuse federal lobbyist donations, and he’s been trailing way behind Hillary Clinton and John Edwards—we’re talking thirty points behind—all summer long in Iowa.”

Iowa is the first state to vote in the primary process, so every candidate goes there early and often. It turned out that Obama was looking for bumps leading up to the Iowa caucuses; he was coming to LA for a two-day fundraising stint and was tacking on a special reception for artists.

“It’ll be mostly actors and musicians,” Olivia explained. “The senator wants to meet us, and he’ll probably ask us to be surrogates for him—to do events on his behalf and help him campaign in Iowa. It’s a small, intimate thing that Pantera Sarah6 is putting together for him—it’ll be fun!”

I was dubious: Lots of politicians make swings through New York and LA to ask for money, and I wasn’t really interested in seeing one give a canned speech at a Hollywood recruiting event. Olivia was getting tired of my stubbornness. “You’re coming with me! It’ll be fun. We’ll have a drink and see what it’s like.” The passion of my trusted friend was contagious enough—I accepted her invitation.