The Harold & Kumar worldview

In A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas, the titular stoners want to sneak into a holiday party thrown by the daughter of a Russian mobster so they can steal his Christmas tree. (It's a long story.)

To get them in, Kumar's roommate takes the liberty of bending the truth; on the elevator ride up, he confides, "I told her you worked at the White House."

"Like anyone would believe that," snorts Kumar, who seems to have spent the years since the previous movie smoking pot and wearing a hole into his couch.

Of course, as any viewer of the Harold & Kumar movie series knows, Kal Penn, who plays Kumar, did indeed spend part of the intervening years in the Obama administration as an associate director in the White House Office of Public Engagement. And when someone offhandedly refers to Harold, Kumar's partner in crime, as "Sulu," fans won't miss the reference to John Cho playing that role in the recent reboot of the Star Trek franchise, when 3D Christmas opens here Friday.

Since Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay in 2008, it's been a very busy time for the duo, or at least for Harold, who's gotten married and is now juggling the role of a nervous son-in-law with his wife's desire to have children.

But that character's dilemma is nothing compared to what's happened for actors Penn and Cho during the same time period.

Penn, 34, was born in Montclair, N.J., and graduated from Freehold Township High School before heading to UCLA. In addition to his stint in Washington, he's been a regular on House M.D. (his character committed suicide so he could take the White House job), he made a successful transition to big-screen drama with the adaptation of Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake, and he taught classes on teen films and images of Asian Americans at the University of Pennsylvania under his given name, Kalpen Suresh Modi. Cho shot a season of the sci-fi drama Flash Forward, and he's gearing up for another Star Trek movie.