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"First Filipino 'American Idol,' that's kind of still a surreal reach," Malubay said in an early "Idol" interview. "I don't want to be ahead of myself. I don't want it to go fast. I want it to just come as it does. I'm really excited to just get onstage and show everybody what I can do."
Malubay -- pronounced "mah-loo-BYE" -- also became the focus of a minor "Idol" scandal this season when Facebook photos of her goofing off with friends in provocative poses were made public. She doesn't understand the fuss.
"It's not a big deal," she wrote on a MySpace blog. "For me, those photos are not racy. But if you think they are, it's OK, that's your opinion. ... It has nothing to do with the show, which is looking for the next singing superstar and not looking for the perfect human."
Razor-tongued "Idol" judge Simon Cowell wasn't convinced she could get far at first, saying after her audition that she reminded him of a "hotel singer." But judge Randy Jackson disagreed, telling her "You definitely got a big voice for a very cute, smaller girl."
Since then, Cowell has acknowledged to feeling differently after watching her perform.
"I knew that Simon would come around," Panaligan-Ke said. "I knew she was going to impress them."
But Cowell came full circle on Tuesday, saying he was "bored to tears" by Mulabay's version of the Beatles' "In My Life."
------
On the Net:
www.americanidol.com
Mar 11 15:51
Available @ Amazon
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AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- "Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle" didn't exactly do gangbusters at the box office when it opened in July 2004. The comedy about stoner pals with major munchies searching for tiny hamburgers in the middle of the night made about $5.5 million its first weekend on the way to an $18.2 million gross domestically.
But the film's writers, Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, always had faith that it would find a following eventually through DVD rentals and cable-TV viewings. And now, their faith has been rewarded.
The sequel "Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay" premiered at the South by Southwest film festival over the weekend to a raucous, packed house. (The movie, which also marks Hurwitz and Schlossberg's directing debut, opens in theaters April 25.)
This time, Harold (John Cho) and Kumar (Kal Penn) are suspected of being terrorists after Kumar sneaks a high-tech bong onto a flight to Amsterdam, which everyone onboard thinks is a bomb. The two get sent to Gitmo but manage to break free, ending up in Miami and Texas and -- of course -- running into Neil Patrick Harris playing a mushroom-eating, hooker-loving, unicorn-riding version of himself.
"When we were in college we liked cult movies like `Dazed and Confused' and `Office Space' and `The Big Lebowski,' and these were movies that weren't huge box-office smashes but sort of found an audience on DVD the year or two after the movie came out," Schlossberg, 29, told The Associated Press. "We felt with `Harold and Kumar' when it came out in theaters in 2004 that if people saw the box office, it wasn't going to end there."
Cho, who's also appeared in the "American Pie" movies and plays Sulu in next summer's "Star Trek," said he's sensed a real clamor for more among the fans who've given the first "Harold & Kumar" a cult following -- and that can be a little overwhelming.
"I've wanted to satiate them, really. Being unable to has been frustrating. I'm glad it's coming out now -- I just hope people like it as much as they did (at the premiere)," he said. "People are insanely enthusiastic. People forget that I don't know them, though they may know me, so they will yell at really piercing volumes at times -- like, 3 feet from me and my wife -- and it's scary. But it's great, and it's loving."
Although "White Castle" was only their first produced script, Hurwitz and Schlossberg always knew they wanted to do a sequel, and they knew they wanted it to pick up immediately where the first one left off as their favorite '80s sequels always did. Initially, they'd planned to have the pals travel to Amsterdam to find Harold's crush, Maria, but they didn't want a movie where the two just traipsed around Europe the whole time.
"Then we started thinking about Kumar getting into trouble on the airplane, some racial profiling, Homeland Security getting involved, then Guantanamo Bay, and suddenly all these ideas just come out," Schlossberg said. "It wasn't a conscious effort to make something more political. It was really just: `OK, how can we amp it up a notch?' And the first movie, our story was so simple. I mean, there were no stakes whatsoever. So in this movie, for us the joke was, let's give almost the exact opposite -- the highest stakes of all time. Let's have literally Homeland Security chasing after them, it's a national security threat, their lives are at stake, their freedom is at stake."
"One of the things that people really enjoyed about the first film was that second layer that's saying a little something, a little bit of social relevance," the 30-year-old Hurwitz added, referring to the original movie's ethnic humor. "While coming up with the story of the sequel, it was important to us to find that second layer. We love a good (poop) joke as much as the next guy, but there are a lot of bad (poop) jokes, and we feel like really sophomoric comedy works best when there's something smarter going on, and vice versa."
Penn, meanwhile, views both primarily as buddy comedies.
"The first one was talked about as being a movie about weed and this one is being talked about as being a political movie. I don't think that's the case in either film," said the co-star of TV's "House." "I think it's a movie about two friends and the journey they go on. And in the first case, getting food in the middle of the night was what brought them closer together. And in this case, struggling for their freedom is what brings them closer together."
Friends themselves since high school, Hurwitz and Schlossberg also amped up the stakes by directing for the first time. "White Castle" director Danny Leiner wasn't available for the sequel, and rather than choosing some random person who didn't know the material, they wanted to give it a shot.
"It's being naive that helps. We weren't worried at all," Hurwitz said. "We were on set the whole time for the first `Harold & Kumar' and we had a great working relationship with Danny Leiner on that first film. And just sort of shadowing him and standing behind him as he directed the first film, giving our input throughout the movie and throughout the (post-production) process, we felt very included.
"A lot of times, writers get very tossed aside right away," he added, "and we were kept in the family on that first movie, which allowed us to learn a lot."
"If we had more experience, we would have been like, `We need more time, we need more money, we need more everything,"' said Schlossberg. "But because we didn't know, we were just like, `Thanks."'
Hooray for Harold and Kumar, a Stoner Movie with Asians
By Nelanjana Banerjee, Pacific News Service
When Hollywood gets its hands on minorities, movie viewers often cringe. But Neelanjana Banerjee,
26, got a buzz watching two Asian American actors play the stoner leads in Harold and Kumar
Go To White Castle.
Comic: Secret Asian Man on: Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle
Mar 11 16:44
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- John Cho thinks he has a cult following now as Harold in the "Harold & Kumar" movies -- he ain't seen nothing yet.
Cho will co-star as Sulu in J.J. Abrams' "Star Trek," due out next summer. He's shooting his last scenes this week as the Starship Enterprise's helmsman, just as he's promoting "Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay," the "Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle" sequel that premiered over the weekend at the South by Southwest film festival.
The 35-year-old actor is fully aware of the pressure he and the rest of the cast and crew are under to please the legions of voracious "Star Trek" fans.
"Right after I got the gig, a friend of a friend e-mailed me and said, you know, `Congratulations, I'm so happy for you, and also I just wanted to impart to you how great a responsibility this is,' and, like, just went on for a while about how important it was and how `Star Trek' changed his life and how it's responsible for everything good in his life," Cho said. "And he also went on to claim that `Star Trek' is the predecessor to the iPod, cell phones and all that.
"So it is daunting, it's scary. Frankly, I'm not used to this kind of heat," he added. "Usually somebody asks, `What are you working on next?' and you tell them the name of the project and they're like, `What is it?' and you're like, `Uh, two guys go to a hamburger place.' They're like, `Yeah, right. Good luck with that.' And this is the first time everyone knows what I'm talking about."
Naturally, Cho can't say much about the film, given Abrams' typical reticence about his projects. (We know it's about an early adventure of Capt. James Kirk, Spock and their shipmates.)
"But I think he sees it as a favor to fans to keep everything on the down-low because he's a very enthusiastic moviegoer, and he wants to be surprised and he wants things to be kept from him until the last minute," Cho said of the director, who also created the TV series "Lost." "But it's been going great, what can I say except that it's really thrilling. There are a few dreams that you have when you're a little boy: It's cowboys and Indians, it's being on a spaceship. This is one of the great fantasies of my life."
"Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay," co-starring Kal Penn, opens April 25. "Star Trek" is scheduled to come out May 8, 2009.
Mar 12 23:36
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PEORIA, Ariz. (AP) -- It's still the talk of camp, even if the Mariners see it as a non-issue.
Ichiro Suzuki still doesn't have a hit this spring. On Wednesday, he got a day of rest while Seattle beat the Milwaukee Brewers 5-1. He remains 0-for-21, one at-bat shy of what would tie his career-worst hitting funk from 2005, if this were the regular season.
The man who has the most hits in the major leagues since his arrival from Japan in 2001 (1,592) is scheduled to be back in center field Thursday against the San Francisco Giants.
Manager John McLaren continues to be amused by the international curiosity the skid has generated, with the pack of Japanese reporters who cover every move the franchise player and superstar makes buzzing about it.
Suzuki, in his unique, Zen-like way, fueled that interest after going 0-for-4 Tuesday in Tucson, Ariz. He said part of him wants to see the streak continue so the seven-time All-Star can be unusually tested so early in the season.
"To tell the truth, some of this is kind of fun," Suzuki said through his interpreter Tuesday.
McLaren, who has joked that Suzuki is on his way to Triple-A Tacoma because of the slump, is also laughing.
"I think it's a little bit comical, really," the manager said Wednesday morning, for about the sixth time. "He is saving his hits for the regular season.
"I just smile when I see the Japanese press waiting for me. You know, it's a story over there no matter what he does. If he changes a piece of equipment, it's news."
McLaren said he will invite Suzuki and other regulars to play in minor-league games that begin this weekend, to get extra at-bats.
McLaren and then-manager Lou Piniella had star designated hitter Edgar Martinez do that during spring training when McLaren was Seattle's bench coach in 1995 and again from 1998-2002.
"We'd say, 'Edgar, how'd you do?"' McLaren said. "And he'd say, 'Well, my on-base percentage went way up."'
Mar 12 12:23
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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- As Barney Clark lay in a Utah hospital bed in January 1983, clinging to life with a Jarvik 7 artificial heart, medical pioneer Willem J. Kolff sat in a truck in the parking lot of the Utah Artificial Heart Institute and sobbed.
Veterinarian Don Olsen, an expert at implanting versions of the heart in calves, remembers Kolff recounting how he felt Robert Jarvik, the latest designer, was monopolizing the media and overplaying his role.
Kolff feared recognition of his original work and that of about 247 other researchers was lost, Olsen remembers.
Twenty-five years later, Jarvik's lucrative stint promoting blockbuster cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor has reignited frustration about who has and deserves -- credit for the medical device.
Pfizer Inc. halted the Jarvik campaign Feb. 25 amid a congressional investigation into whether its ads were misleading. Among the concerns: Jarvik is not licensed to practice medicine but appeared to be giving medical advice. He skipped a residency and went into research after graduation from the University of Utah School of Medicine in 1976.
Earlier versions of the ad dubbed Jarvik the "inventor of the artificial heart," drawing objections from Olsen, Kolff's son and other researchers who feel the 97-year-old Kolff, if anyone, deserves the title. Kolff was already recognized as the inventor of the first working artificial kidney in 1957 when he began work on a heart with a series of researchers.
Clifford Kwan-Gett, a Kolff colleague who designed a predecessor to the Jarvik 7, wants Congress to probe Jarvik's invention claim. Olsen said he is planning to write a book, hoping to influence how history sees the heart's creation.
"I'm not saying all of the credit should be taken away from Dr. Jarvik, not at all," Olsen said. "But now seems to be the time to clear the air and record for history the appropriate contributions."
Jarvik's Web site says he is "widely known as the inventor of the first successful permanent artificial heart, the Jarvik 7." Despite that and the wording of the 2006 Pfizer ad, Gary Lewi, Jarvik's publicist, said Jarvik has never claimed to be the sole inventor.
"While proud of the artificial device that bears his name, he has acknowledged repeatedly the role that others played to make a difference in presenting this breakthrough invention," Lewi said in an e-mail to The Salt Lake Tribune.
"The timing of this recent criticism -- for an event that occurred decades ago -- seems cynical at best, rather bitter and ill-founded," he said.
The first human implant of the Jarvik 7 was a pivotal moment in medical research at the U., catapulting the university, the state and Jarvik into national consciousness. Behind that success, however, tensions among competitive researchers have been simmering for decades.
Kolff started work on a heart at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio and moved in 1967 to the U., launching its Division of Artificial Organs and putting it in the national race for an implantable artificial heart. He was joined by Ohio colleagues Kwan-Gett, a surgeon, and Tom Kessler, a prosthetic technician.
In Utah, Kwan-Gett's hearts set records for animal survival. "The heart and the driver were actually built by me and tested in animals before Jarvik arrived," said Kwan-Gett, now 73 and living near San Diego.
But Kwan-Gett and Kolff began to disagree about the heart's development. During one dispute over materials, Kwan-Gett said, he worked on heart models at home, curing silicone in his kitchen oven and buying parts at Grand Central, a discount department store. He left the program in 1971.
By then, Jarvik had met Kolff while working for Ethicon, a New York manufacturer that provided materials for the hearts.
Jarvik had graduated from Syracuse University with a degree in zoology; he then studied medicine in Italy for two years after American medical schools rejected him.
Back in New York, he earned a master's degree in occupational biomechanics from New York University in 1971. Kolff hired him that year, and he started medical school at the U. in 1972. Kessler said Jarvik wasn't an engineer, but he understood engineering principles; he wasn't a practicing doctor, but he understood anatomy. Kolff, then his enthusiastic mentor, singled out his ability to "make nearly anything with his own hands."
Jarvik made significant changes in materials, Olsen said. An example: he removed a metal ring at the heart's base, where it attached to the air compressor that drove the heart, and replaced it with a hard plastic ring. He could then use an adhesive to attach the heart to the base, replacing the wiring previously used, Olsen said.
On jarvikheart.com, Jarvik says he was hired to solve two issues with the Kwan-Gett heart: improving the flow of blood from the lungs to the heart and improving the diaphragm that pumped blood through the heart.
Jarvik says he changed the shape of the heart to more closely mimic a human heart to solve the first problem, and invented a "multilayer blood pump diaphragm" to address the second. His diaphragm was made of three layers of polyurethane, replacing the silicone rubber, his site says.
Olsen and Kwan-Gett question Jarvik's claim. Kwan-Gett said he designed such a diaphragm, but he left before it was completed. Olsen argues multilayered diaphragms were already being used by mechanical engineers and that Jarvik simply applied the concept to the heart.
Still, the U. made note of Jarvik's diaphragm in a 1982 statement about the heart's development.
"Jarvik's improvements to the Kwan-Gett heart did not alter its basic function or operation," it said, "but provided superior fit, larger stroke volume and a novel multiple-diaphragm design."
Many researchers -- in both the medical and engineering fields -- worked on the heart throughout its development in Utah, the statement stressed.
"We were changing (the Jarvik hearts) all of the time. Some of (the changes) were huge," said Kessler, who helped build heart models in Ohio and at the U. from 1967 to 1983.
But Jarvik "was the person who knew the most about it and really was recognized as the person in charge of that particular project," said Kevin D. Murray, a cardiothoracic surgeon at Reid Hospital in Richmond, Ind., who was a National Institutes of Health fellow at the heart program from 1982 to 1984.
"It's a multitude of people always contributing that was the strength of the lab, but Rob was in charge," Murray said.
To motivate young researchers to keep improving the heart -- and keep them in his lab -- Kolff had a policy of putting their names on new versions. The Jarvik 7 was the model approved for clinical use by the Food and Drug Administration in 1981, although debate about the rules for selecting a patient continued for months.
Olsen said he had lobbied Kolff to change the name to the "Utah Heart" long before Clark's surgery in December 1982. Kolff refused.
After the implant, "suddenly it was successful and suddenly everybody wanted to have their name put on the heart," Murray said.
Clark's surgery made history -- and headlines. Reporters and photographers from around the globe descended on University Hospital, intrigued by the audacity of replacing a man's heart with a machine and by the Seattle dentist, nearing death from his failing heart, who had volunteered.
The U. had underestimated the media's interest.
"It was a very, very intense time for all of us," said John Dwan, executive director of public affairs for the U.'s Health Sciences Center from 1978 to 2001.
Jarvik, who had observed Clark's surgery by William C. DeVries but played no role in it, appeared at the subsequent press conference in scrubs.
While spokesman Chase Peterson, then the vice president of Health Sciences, stood at a podium, Jarvik sat square in front of it.
"You couldn't miss him," Dwan said.
Kolff stayed in the background while Jarvik continued to attend the regular press conferences about Clark's progress. In the public mind, the image of the youthful doctor became tied to the heart that bore his name.
Dwan said he tried to direct reporters to Peterson and the surgeons, feeling Jarvik "was trying to use it to get ahead." Peterson, later the U.'s president, diplomatically recalls: "It was a job to keep very able people in the same corral."
Kwan-Gett remembers going to Kolff and Peterson to demand recognition for his work. Now, he calls the heart implanted into Clark the "Jarvik-7 model of the Kwan-Gett heart" and said Jarvik has the credit because "he's got a big mouth."
Peterson said he doesn't recall meeting with Kwan-Gett, but remembers that among the researchers "there was jealousy ... you hate to see people working in the lab and not getting as much credit as they should."
Lewi, Jarvik's publicist, addressed Kwan-Gett's claim in his statement to The Tribune. The U. reviewed the issue, he said, and "determined that nothing improper had been done, while acknowledging the team effort involved in a large program."
After Clark's death in March 1983, a second implant was delayed by ethical concerns about his quality of life and other issues. DeVries eventually left Utah to continue implants at the Humana Heart Institute in Kentucky, and the U.'s artificial heart effort faded.
But Jarvik's name stayed in the spotlight, with the name "Jarvik 7" used throughout medical literature and Jarvik serving as CEO of Kolff Medical, created by Kolff in 1976 to develop the heart.
In 1983, Kolff resigned from the company after an executive committee excluded him from major decisions. The next year, Jarvik -- who had sculpted Kolff and kept the bust in his office -- changed the name of the company to Symbion Inc.
Kolff objected, saying the name reminded him of the Symbionese Liberation Army, the group that kidnapped Patty Hearst. In a 1984 letter about the change, he wrote: "Dr. Jarvik wants to stamp out everything that is Kolff," according to Kolff's papers at the U.
Jarvik was later ousted by Symbion and started Jarvik Heart Inc., which manufactures his Jarvik 2000 FlowMaker, a heart pump used by patients awaiting heart transplants.
Kolff's son, Jack, said his father's decision to let Jarvik's name stay on the heart -- and his efforts to advance Jarvik's career -- were among his father's greatest regrets in his life.
"I think my father realized at the time the cat was out of the bag, and what could he do now? It was too late," said Jack Kolff, a retired cardiothoracic surgeon who assisted in the research by implanting the Jarvik 7 in brain dead patients in Philadelphia.
Yukihiko Nosé, former president of the American Society for Artificial Internal Organs, said researchers initially acquiesced to Jarvik's celebrity to protect their field. Early on, few cardiac surgeons and cardiologists believed the artificial heart could work, Nosé noted.
"Among our small group of people, (we) unified together (to) defend or support whatever one of us did," he said.
Nosé, who worked on predecessor hearts with Kolff at the Cleveland Clinic, is now a professor of transplant surgery at the Baylor College of Medicine in Texas. While Jarvik made significant contributions, his prominence has unfairly eclipsed Kolff's work, Nosé said.
"Without Kolff, Jarvik is nobody ... he stole the name and fame from Kolff," Nosé said. "It should be called the Kolff heart."
But Murray said some of Jarvik's fame was "thrust upon him." He was named "Inventor of the Year" in 1983 by the Intellectual Property Owners Association, and the media continued to cover his career -- once in a 10-page Playboy spread. That "makes for easy interpretation by the public and by advertisers," he said.
He also points out that of all the researchers once on Kolff's team, only Olsen and Jarvik remain focused on artificial hearts.
Jarvik "really had a commitment and a talent in this area," Murray said. "He has been persistent in his contribution to both science and (at his) company."
The 2006 Lipitor ad touting Jarvik as the inventor of the artificial heart drew protests to Pfizer from Jack Kolff, Olsen, Nosé and others. In an April 2006 e-mail, Jack Kolff objected to the ad, writing that the work of numerous researchers had culminated in the implantation of the Jarvik 7.
"A number of physicians with knowledge of these details have been surprised and frankly, infuriated, by your inaccurate advertisement," he wrote.
Pfizer's corporate counsel initially defended the ad, saying its depiction was "consistent with his (Jarvik's) representation throughout the scientific community as inventor of the first successful artificial heart for humans." But the ad was later altered to refer to Jarvik as "inventor of the Jarvik artificial heart."
Kolff now lives in a nursing home near his son in Pennsylvania. Time has helped him put the limited public recognition of his achievements behind him, Jack Kolff said.
"The glass is still half full," the younger Kolff said. "That is his attitude."
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