George Takei Called Me!

By Michael Musto Thu., Apr. 14 2011 at 2:40 PM

For our scheduled interview!

He's doing public service announcements urging people to apply for Social Security benefits online -- but before we went there, I had to tell him I loved his sardonic Spider-Man audition video that's making the rounds.

"It's amazing how quickly things can go viral," Takei said. "We live in an amazing Star Trek society -- in reality."

Takei said he did the video to draw attention to a real show he's working on -- Allegiance, a musical drama about the interment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

"I grew up in two of those internment camps," he said. "My mission has been to get Americans to understand how great our democracy is, but also how fragile it is. This was one of the unconstitutional, shameful chapters in American history."

As for taking the shame out of Social Security:

"Applying for or collecting Social Security benefits had been a very laborious process of going to the office, lining up, and going through all that hassle. That can all be eliminated and can be made less costly for the agency as well as the applicants by using the internet."

The site is Socialsecurity.gov, for those this applies to. (Not me. Nuh-uh. I'm just starting out. Oh, hush.)

By the way, Takei's co-star in the PSAs happens to be TV/movie legend Patty Duke, but he told me their schedules didn't match, "so we filmed separately, using Star Trek technology. We beamed her in."

Hey, the split-screen approach sounds just like The Patty Duke Show!

I'll run more of my Takei interview soon, focusing on his coming out as gay.

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penguin

Nichelle Nichols, cast member of the original Star Trek series, recalls a surprise visit from her biggest fan, Martin Luther King Jr. Did you know MLK was a trekkie? http://ow.ly/4BuOT

Cyberquill

Mr. Sulu would make a fabulous Spiderman. Word is that Richard Chamberlain has submitted an audition tape for the part of Mary Jane.

rolph

Come to think of it:

I hope they're not pushing the website just so they can lay off workers at the Social Security office! Then it wouldn't be so noble.

Jonster

I like Mr. Takei. I've been to Manzanar, one of the concentration camps we put Japanese-Americans into in 1942. People were held there for 3 years. (I don't know how you can be "raised" in three years, but it must've seemed like an eternity.) As a correlation, if you want to learn about the harsh conditions suffered by Americans defending themselves after the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, read the new book by Laura Hillenbrand, author of Seabiscuit, called "Unbroken." I had no idea the Japanese were so barbaric to the Americans they captured and killed until I read this book, which follows the story of Louis Zamperini, an Olympic track star from Torrance, CA who ran in Hitler's '36 games. 1 in 10 American POWs were killed by the Nazis during WWII. 1 in 4 were killed by the Japanese. Zamperini is tortured beyond comprehension after being shot down in the Pacific and, one day, finds himself in an interrogation room with a Japanese-American man he knew from back home before the war . . . who turned out to be a spy. I'm not saying Manzanar was a good idea, but because of the nature of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese-Americans were not safe in their homes.

franco

Let's not forget The Nanking Massacre...

...or Nanjing Massacre, also known as the Rape of Nanking, a mass murder and war rape that occurred during the six-week period following the Japanese capture of the city of Nanjing (Nanking), the former capital of the Republic of China, on December 13, 1937 during the Second Sino-Japanese War.

During this period, up to hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians and disarmed soldiers were murdered and 20,000–80,000 women were raped by soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army.

The controversy surrounding the massacre remains a stumbling block in Sino-Japanese relations, as well as Japanese relations with other Asia-Pacific nations such as South Korea and the Philippines.

Jonster

Having said all that, Takei is right -- it was a shameful time in American history. Especially if you were born here, an American of Japanese heritage. But, I don't know, a dramatic musical about concentration camps? Hmmmm.

Pert

Costarring Lea Salong. (For real.)

Paul

Rumor has it that everyone in the cast hated Shatner.

Savannah Montgomery

Very timely Michael, I applied for disability benefits just a couple of weeks ago using the Internet site...went for my interview and had to tell the interviewer I'd filled out the forms online already...still not bad, it cut out a lot of unnecessary chatter.