You know you're getting old when...

[Bill Glasheen]

• A karate student has never heard of either Seven Samurai or The Magnificent Seven.. And when I talk about Marlboro Country and hum a few bars, I get a blank stare.
  
  MARLBORO COUNTRY - HENRY MANCINI
• A karate student has heard of Romeo and Juliet, but has never heard of West Side Story.
  
  West Side Story - America
  
  West Side Story- Cool
• A karate student doesn't know what the expression "Miller time" means.
  
  Vintage Miller Time Beer Commercial
• You hum a Jim Morrison tune and someone looks at you like you're singing an original.
  
  The Doors Love Me Two Times

How can timeless ideas and themes be lost in time?



- Bill

[Bill Glasheen]

What would you think of a teenager who didn't recognize this passage?

• But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?
  It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
  Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
  Who is already sick and pale with grief
  That thou, her maid, art far more fair than she

- Bill

[Bill Glasheen]

And who could forget these lines... unless you never read them. All spoken by the same simple character with a powerful sense of awareness. I read these lines at a time and an age when I could identify with them.

• I was half in love with her by the time we sat down. That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can.
• If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she's late? Nobody.

May you rest in peace, sir!

- Bill

[Bill Glasheen]

And who still remembers - or ever learned - what it was like to be unstuck in time?

• If what Billy Pilgrim learned from the Tralfamadorians is true, that we will all live forever, no matter how dead we may sometimes seem to be, I am not overjoyed. Still--if I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I'm grateful that so many of those moments are nice.

Sorry, Captain Kirk, but your science fiction didn't cut it compared to that which could be imagined from the written word. If you can't squint your eyes and escape the box of your present form, you have truly lost out on the joy and meaning of life.

And wouldn't you know the concept was so compelling that another would think to copy it half a generation later.



Or maybe you were blissfully ignorant, and just saw it as another movie.

- Bill

[Victor Smith]

Well I prefer


It's Howdy....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJ-IPXpvRaU

or better still

A hearty horse....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxIuIxqo2So

[Bill Glasheen]

or better still

A hearty horse....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxIuIxqo2So

Both are classics with cultural references in our everyday language. But the latter (above) is more so. "Lone ranger" is now part of our vernacular.

Nice way to introduce a kid to classical music as well.

Turn on the subwoofer, fire up the tweeters, and fasten your seatbelts. Adrenaline = ON!

Rossini William Tell Overture, Riccardo Muti

- Bill

[Jason Rees]

I've read Slaughter-House Five, but not Catcher in the Rye. I know plenty of people who haven't read Catcher. It's somewhere on my to-read list. Maybe once I get my Kindle (it's on order ).

JOOC, what Sandra B. flick is that pic from?

[Bill Glasheen]

JOOC, what Sandra B. flick is that pic from?

Premonition

And I'm not the only person who immediately recognized the movie as a Kurt Vonnegut rip-off.

- Bill

[Glenn]

Sorry, Captain Kirk, but your science fiction didn't cut it compared to that which could be imagined from the written word.

Which is why so many movie adaptations of books are disappointing, the director's imagining from those words rarely matches my imagining from the same words. "Master and Commander: Far Side of the World" was the last such movie for me. I have been slowly working my way through Patrick O'Brien's 20 Aubrey-Maturin novels, when time allows me to fit it in around my more important non-fictional reading, which usually means it takes me about a year to finish one book. While the movie was well done in many respects, it did not fit how I envisioned the characters and events...of course, changing the opposing ship from American to French for the movie did not help that, but probably played better with American audiences.

[Glenn]

How can timeless ideas and themes be lost in time?

Because they are not found much in today's 300 channel, "reality" TV world...played yes, but good luck finding them. I wonder how many of the newer generations of karate students have never even seen a Bruce Lee movie or episode of "Kung Fu" either.

But then again, the ideas and interests that got us into the martial arts are not necessarily the same as those of the younger generations. How well do we know, or relate to, what they consider timeless ideas and themes?

[Bill Glasheen]

But then again, the ideas and interests that got us into the martial arts are not necessarily the same as those of the younger generations. How well do we know, or relate to, what they consider timeless ideas and themes?

My generation wanted me to read "the classics", Glenn. And for the most part, I did. I certainly did much, much better than the average engineer who in general cannot read well, write well, or do public speaking.

As for martial arts... this generation doesn't have the inspiration that the last one did, Glenn, and I notice it in terms of the number and types of students walking in the front door. Without David Carradine on TV or Bruce Lee in the movie theater, we have an oversupply of qualified teachers and an undersupply of good students.

A new Karate Kid movie's coming out, but it's a complete mis-characterization of "Okinawan karate." I love Jackie Chan, but that's not what they do on Okinawa.

But then... all the chefs and waiters in my sushi places are Chinese. So whatareyagonna do, eh?

- Bill

[chef]

You know you are old when the child you taught now has her own child...

[f.Channell]

Most of the kids I see that start Karate have seen the Karate Kid movie.
It's one the parents will sit down and watch with them.

I sometimes play an episode of Kung-Fu during a Karate camp. Most of the kids can't make it through it. No guns, explosions, foul language etc...
I was eight when I was captivated by it. but we only had three channels and no video games.

F.

[Bill Glasheen]

You know you are old when the child your taught now has her own child...

I won't say what I've been asked not to say but I want to say. But consider it said.

- Bill

[chef]

You could probably say it in this venue, Mr. Glasheen.

FWIW...


PS Wow, I do believe today is the first time I have posted on this forum since November 3, 2009. Been a long while.