moon festival & mr. james hong:

so i was going to create a new blog with personal posts but i thought it'd be much more maintainable to keep one blog. (yea right, another blog? what was i thinking?)

so last weekend i attended the moon festival, in which my great uncle jim was invited to receive a lifetime achievement award at the festival. he asked if i wanted to help him at his table while he signed autographs so i thought sure, why not! i hardly ever see him, and really spend time with him so i thought it could be fun.


you may recognize him (or his voice) from his most recent work, kung fu panda and balls of fury, but i think his most popular titles include big trouble in little china (a classic) and bladerunner. with 332 titles to date, he is still going strong at 80!

it was great watching people line up to get his autograph, and stand off all shy-like wondering if they could take their picture with him. being famous must be such a crazy thing! he had such avid fans there, one girl came up and was like, "we've been searching to see where he was all day!" people wanted to shake his hand, tell him they admire him, i think he has a lot of fans from the asian-acting community.

my favorite 'uncle jimmy' moment has to be when i was in england studying abroad, and a bunch of us were watching season 4 of friends. then all of a sudden, there he was! (cause you know, with 332 titles to your name, you're bound to show in in some sitcom!) and i was like, "whoa! guys, that's my uncle!" and silence. no one said anything. a little akward. then 5 minutes later someone was like, "is that really your uncle?" and i said "yep!" and they were like, "oh we thought you were just saying that cause you were asian." haha! what?

anyway, we finished the evening as he invited my boyfriend and i to dinner. it's still cool that people recognize him and his face, they may not know his name but he has achieved fame to a degree. he can still live a normal life without being gossiped and written about. i guess at the end of the day though, he is just always uncle jimmy to us. i hope at 80 i can be in as great of shape as he is.