January 12, 2005

• The Year that was: Two-Thousand and Four:

  
  

  If you haven’t been a rabid reader of this journal since February, here’s a major recap of the Highs and Lows of my 2004:

  
  

  The “Highs”:

  
  

  The year started off with a bang booking a State Farm Insurance commercial only to be fired once I got on set for looking “too young”.  As mentioned above, February marked the debut of this journal where I got to keep in contact with all of you (and my parents).  It was a great idea stemmed from “smileygurl9″ after I visited the University of Maryland.  That month also had “BLT” nominated for a Spirit Award (the Oscar for Indie Films) .  Although we didn’t win, it was a great bookend to the entire journey of the film.  ”BLT“ was also in a film festival which brought me to Taiwan and Hong Kong in March – and introduced me to a lot of good food there.  

  
  

  While my Dell Commercial continued to play nationwide and also catching me occasional flack from “BLT” loyalists, the film also brought me out to speak at over 20 different universities across the country (pictured: a tiny me in front of 600+ students at University of Florida).  I spent the summer teaching the masters acting program at my alma mater, SUNY Buffalo.   I won $2800 Canadian in blackjack from a casino in Niagara Falls.  Did some voice work on “The Day After Tomorrow” and “Spiderman 2“.  Booked a recurring role on “Tru Callling” only to be canceled 6 episodes in.  One day in Sept after coming back from shooting in Vancouver, my wife Kim met me at the airport with balloons and a sign reading, “SHEN -Daddy to Be” (which is how I found out she was pregnant for the second time – I’ll explain later).  I shot a bunch of “SNL” comedy sketches for “Asia Street Comedy”.  Direct-to-video films I’d done, “The Hazing” and “The Deviants” finally came out on DVD.  Kim and I purchased a brand new home to be fully built sometime in mid-2005.  A film I did with Katie Holmes called “First Daughter” opened to a whopping nationwide audience of 6 viewers.  I shot ”Smilodon“, a Sci-Fi channel movie, in Fiji for 3 weeks, co-wrote a feature film and am currently awaiting the news of its sale.  All in all, ’04 was a pretty great year filled with challenging/interesting work and lots of new faces. 

  
  

  The One “Low”:

  
  

  The only major dent occured in April when Kim had a miscarriage 10 weeks into the first pregnancy.

  
  

  That night, 5 hours after it had happened at the hospital, I had to hop on a flight to speak at the University of Illinois – Champaign Urbana with my “BLT” co-stars, Sung Kang and Roger Fan (pictured on right). 

  
  

  Just keeping from breaking down during that entire speaking engagement and posing for the photos, signing autographs afterwards was probably the toughest performance I’ve had to muster to date.  But from reading this guy’s entry, I guess everything looked normal:  http://www.xanga.com/item.aspx?user=aLbiEEE&tab=weblogs&uid=84766647 .  To make matters harder, the very next day I had to fly into Virginia to speak at Virginia Tech and then head over to NYC to emcee a CAPA event and after THAT speak at Dartmouth University. 

  
  

  I wound up being gone for over a week on the East Coast.  I felt so horrible being away that entire time but thank goodness Kim was under her parents’ watch the entire time.  When Kim was first pregnant we desperately wanted a girl but after the miscarriage, it’s amazing how our tune changed to just praying for a healthy baby the second time around.

  
  

  All the things that can occur in just one year.  The breadth and range.  And how much you can wind up forgetting, the good and bad, if you don’t document it in some way.  I almost forgot I went to Taiwan until I skimmed over my old entries! 

  
  

  Here’s to everyone having more ”Highs” than “Lows” in 2005.            

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