Ken Jeong is having a moment. I should mention that I’m a bit of a fan.
“Medicine really matured me as a person because, as a physician, you’re obviously dealing with life and death issues, issues much more serious than what we’re talking about in entertainment. You can’t get more serious than life and death. And if you can handle that, you can handle anything.” – Dr. Ken Jeong
I’ve been thinking about the folks out there who might actually be thriving during this Pandemic. And, I am happy to be thinking about it. I can’t say I know many personally, however.
“There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath…”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
Most of the people I know in my industry are in dire straits. Many who run businesses are on the verge of closure, already closed or still in the process of opening a place from before the initial lock-down and therefore struggling to reorient and retool a business plan that will scarcely hope to succeed in the now let alone later. Essentially, all are bleeding money, resources and are slowly approaching a level of debt that requires the point of no return decision.
“…that one most perilous and long voyage ended, only begins a second; and a second ended, only begins a third, and so on, for ever and for aye. Such is the endlessness, yea, the intolerableness of all earthly effort.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
Other folks are a mixed bag of layoffs, juggling shared living spaces with roommates or loved ones who make questionable decisions, dealing with homeschooling pressures and general political divisive stress in addition to mourning the loss of friends, family and fellow Americans.
“There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
Of course, there are certainly also individuals whose main inconvenience is the missing of going to bars and restaurants with friends and the natural empathy towards knowing that their favorite places are dying a slow slow death, akin to a sinking vessel. One in which just as a leaky hole gets fixed, another begins to form and multiply at the highly inconvenient rate of faster than one can say Mississippi or Tallahassee or “life is not very supercalifragilisticexpialidocious right now.”
“…and Heaven have mercy on us all – Presbyterians and Pagans alike – for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick
.75 oz. grapefruit, .5 oz. (1:1) honey syrup
with cinnamon and singed rosemary
And as we steer straight into the maelstrom of the colder months here in D.C., into the more familiar but formerly less-scary flu-season, I keep thinking about this work from Edgar Allan Poe, “A Descent into the Maelstrom.” It is narrated by a very salty survivor and has darkly tailored dreadful lines as such: “…but in the next moment I cursed myself for being so great a fool as to dream of hope at all.”
BUT ALSO, I channel that one Shakespeare start-of-phrase from “Richard III.” It has been tainting my brainwaves: “Now is the winter of our discontent…” This is mostly because the future truly feels much more ominous than hopeful. Our at-large decisions of biting off more than we can chew to begin with happen to be pieces of a large infected COVID-19 pie that everyone keeps passing around the table like it’s already Thanksgiving in 2021.
And then a ray of light: Korean American comic actor and genuine family man Dr. Ken Jeong. He is thriving during this pandemic and I love it.
In the before-times, and continuing into the ongoing season, his most recent gig has been one of the celebrity panelists on the hit show “The Masked Singer.” Let that sink in for a skosh. A show where it is absurdly cool to wear a mask is killing it with a fairly representative diverse cast including BIPOC hosts and panelists. Really famous and talented icons go covert with exquisite disguises, perform songs and give us hints to see if we can figure out who they are in real life. The original idea came from a Korean show called “King of the Masked Singer,” which apparently Jeong’s mother is a big fan of. And just recently, due to the success of the show, Ken has been given the reigns to host his own new show “I Can See Your Voice.” It’s another Korean spin-off game show where contestants, everyday folks who all have relatable stories for needing some extra finances, can win money if they can correctly guess who is a bad or good singer based on lip-syncing. And guess what else is in the works with yet-again-Ken? “The Masked Dancer” promises to keep us going debuting right after Christmas. Naturally, with the cancellation of concert venues and live performances, celebrity performers happen to have a lot of free time and I can only imagine that they might even be vying to get into the line up of these masked performances. This, of course, makes these shows even more laden with talent and draw. It’s not like most of America is not already glued to our television shows…oh wait. It seems the timing is quite good for Dr. Ken Jeong.
Honestly, it is nice to see the rise of a truly less than typical star, Asian-American no less, known for his antics of being a bitter physician with a dark comic edge, an effeminate mobster-gangster, a general clown about town and someone who can survive and thrive in the deep end of a pool filled to the brim of being the butt of everyone’s jokes. That takes serious character, and maybe the rest of the country and dare I say world, should learn from him, even if he is a Dodgers fan.