All of a sudden, my phone is ringing, where the hell is the 202? “Hi, I’ve got Kal Penn on the line from New York, are you all set?”

Shit.

I was going to write my questions for Mr. Penn after lunch, and before the 3:30 phone call. Only that was 3:30 EST. I’m an idiot. This guy is Kumar for Christ’s sake.

Intermission: Hey Kal.

Kal: Loren, how are you?

INT: Good, how about you?

Kal: Good, man.

INT: Alright, I just have a few questions for you if you don’t mind.

Kal: Cool.

(By this point, I’ve wikipedia-ed Kal Penn. I’m frantically scanning for question material. Panicked, I shoot from the hip)

INT: Would you say that your part in “Van Wilder,” both the first one and the upcoming “Rise of Taj,” has improved your sex life at all?

Kal: (Laughs) That’s what you’re going to ask me? I’m not answering that question.

INT: Oh, come on.

Kal: What do you think?

INT: Alright, according to Wikipedia, during your undergraduacy at UCLA, you formed a secret society called ‘6 South.’

Kal: Oh man, Wikipedia, I don’t really know what that’s about. But if in were a secret society, I wouldn’t be able to talk about it.

INT: What about Van Wilder 2, the upcoming ‘Rise of Taj’?

Kal: It’s a spin off from the first one. In the first one I was kind of a sidekick character and this was a chance to branch out from that. It’s four years later and Taj is going to grad school. He comes into his own and teaches a bunch of pasty British children how to have a good time.

INT: In interviews for Harold and Kumar you talked about how you were glad to give up the “stereotypical, racist, and degrading” Indian accent. What about your accent in the first “Van Wilder?”

Kal: I would have no desire to play a stereotypical character with an accent. But I don’t think an accent alone can determine whether or not a character is stereotypical. In this case it was the opposite of stereotyping, taking a character who was so one-dimensional and branching him out into a real human being. It’s funny for more universal reasons opposed to something confined to a stereotype. In order to carry a whole film, you can’t just make it one-dimensional, it has to be about something more.

INT: You played a character named Stanford in Superman Returns, did that just make you feel completely awesome?

Kal: (laughs) Yeah, it was pretty badass.

INT: Superman was on a different scale than your other films. What was it like moving from comedy to big-budget action?

Kal: It was great but I wish more of my stuff had stayed in the film. But it was awesome. With a quarter of a million dollar budget, I’d never had the opportunity to work with that [kind of money].

INT: What’s next for Kal Penn? There are rumors of an upcoming “Harold and Kumar go to Amsterdam.”

Kal: Yes. They’re not going to Amsterdam, but there is a sequel to that we’re shooting in January. It comes out in late 2007. I’m also on the new season of “24,” off and on.

INT: As a villain?

Kal: I’m not sure. I know there’s a bunch of BS online about what I’m playing. It’ll be interesting to see what I end up playing. I also have a film called “The Namesake” coming out in March. It’s [based on] a book by Jhumpa Lahiri who won the Pulitzer.

INT: No record deal yet? That seems like the next logical step.

Kal: No record deal yet.

INT: Well, that’s all I got. Thanks for talking to me.

Kal: No problem.

Note to self: Do not shoot from the hip.