Comments Off on Mr Miyagi has a first name (thanks Wikipedia!)
So, erm, Mr Miyagi has a first name and stuff – Kesuke apparently. I mean, it was probably said in there somewhere, I just never knew. As far as I know, it’s Mr Miyagi, thank you very much.
What’s more silly/amusing is that there is a Wikipedia page on the character of Mr Miyagi… seriously, click here.
It even has all the usual Wikipedia tomfoolery with citations needed and stuff.
I know this is probably a rather pointless post, but… doesn’t it strike anyone else as odd????
Comments Off on This week is now (un)officially the Noriyuki “Pat” Morita/Mr Miyagi appreciation week
This week on Gisoku Budo, inspired by the previous couple of posts, I will be focusing on nothing else but the awesomeness of Noriyuki “Pat” Morita and Mr Miyagi.
I was actually intending on writing this post yesterday, so luckily enough there will be two posts on his awesomeness made today to make up for that 🙂
For this one, I’d like to chuck across a link to a reproduction of an article written by Charles C. Goodin titled “Noriyuki Pat Morita: In the Footsteps of a Sensei” (source: issue #6, Spring 1996 of Furyu: The Budo Journal). The transcript has appeared on The Karate Kid Movie WebSite, and you can find it under “Cast” in the Karate Kid I Menu on the left-hand side – because he’s using frames and some java, I can’t link to the page directly. Head down about a third of the page and there’s a big block of orange text – it’s all in there, and there are some amazing insights into the movie, Morita and the character of Mr Miyagi as well.
So we were channel surfing a week or two back, and lo-and-behold, the first Karate Kid movie was on, and Noriyuki “Pat” Morita was being all awesome and stuff, and it was supremely awesome. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen the first Karate Kid movie, but I swear I could watching it once a week and still love it after years on end.
Alright, that might be a bit of an exageration, but it’s such an awesome movie. Even if Ralph Macchio specialised in some pretty rubbish karate, it’s still 126 minutes of inspired awesomeness. I mean, it wasn’t his fault I guess – getting dropped into a six-month crash-course of martial arts training without any prior experience won’t exactly get the most polished results, particularly if you’re a Westerner, so thumbs up to him for not chucking a wobbly and chickening out.
So, continuing in the spirit of awesomeness, Wifey was channel surfing the other day and a choice piece of 80s awesomeness quickly hit the screen – she was about to turn over since the didn’t realise the extremity of awe-inspired film clip-ness that was hitting the TV:
Well, without the subtitles anyways 🙂 Do you realise how many instances of this Peter Cetera’s Glory of Love there are on YouTube, and that this is the only one with the silly film clip? Pure tomfoolery.
Anyhow, it’s awesome, because he’s singing in a dojo.
… I don’t have much else to add to this. The above film clip will do the job I reckon 🙂 If you’re interested, someone’s also added the lessons of Mr Miyagi to YouTube, so you can entertain yourselves/family/friends/coworkers by looking it up and sharing it with them. I know the people I share my office with were just thrilled when I decided it would be a good idea to share “Paint the Fence”:
Last week Wifey and I popped up to Noosa to catch up with her family. Now, my father-in-law and Hamez (brother-in-law, look up some of the archives as I’ve dragged him along to karate in the past) are particularly keen fishermen, so in due course I went out with them in their boat to do some fishing. Not having fished since I was a wee tacker, this was all very new and interesting for me; granted I was a bit rubbish at it, but it was awesome fun.
Where I want to go with this, though, is how being on the water on a small boat works on your balance. Between the three of us sitting down, standing up, casting, drinking beer (well, my father-in-law and I, Hamez is still under 18 and was our driver since he now has his boat license) and motoring around the river, there are plenty of opportunities to fall over and mangle yourself (and I’m quite adept at both of these generally). I’m sure with two legs its tricky working out your balance, but I had a bit of trouble adjusting given the lack of a knee on my left leg 😛 What I eventually found out was that I had to adjust my whole method of standing or moving on the boat… it’s hard to describe, but the best way I could put is that you have to learn to be far more flexible with how you control your walking/standing motions to go with the flow of the boat and the water, rather than resisting the natural flow of movement with a sense of rigidity. Once I got this sorted, I found I was having a much easier time moving around the boat without stumbling so much. Sure, I was never game to stand on the bow, but I was reasonably confident standing in the recessed areas by the time we ended up leaving to come back home.
It actually reminded me of the montage scene in The Karate Kid (aka greatest movie of all time), where Daniel is standing on the bow of the boat practicing his forms. Except I didn’t do any karate, because I probably would have looked like a bit of a tosser with all the other fishermen around 😛
You know what? I think this calls for a (widescreen) trailer to the original Karate Kid movie:
Awesome. Note the boat scene around 1:03. The only way that movie could have been better is if Chuck Norris was in it as a referee or something, like his awesome cameo in Dodgeball.
Anyway, the principle of this is the same for martial arts – be flexible, learn to move with your scenario and don’t oppose it with unnecessary, strict rigidity – as the mighty Bruce said, “be like water”. Even beyond the principle there’s the question of using the boat as a tool for teaching you to have good balance, which is an essential technique in any committed martial artist.
If nothing else, it’s definitely something to think about.
