Thoughts on Gran Torino

My SPOP homie Vince recommend Gran Torino to me one day when I was his server at Guppys. I remember seeing previews for it so tonight a couple of homies and I went to LA to check it out.

My first thought was, "Wow, Clint Eastwood squints a lot. Man, he curses a lot too. Wait, did he just say gook?" Yes he did, and lots other racial epithets about Asians, Hispanics, you name it, and he probably said it in the movie. That aside, I thought it was an incredible movie. Although it's set in Michigan, probably Detroit, it could be set in any number of areas with a large Asian American population.

Throughout the movie, I kept thinking, "Man, this movie reminds me A LOT about my life." I think my youth paralleled the movie quite a bit. First off, there's a boy by that name of Thao in the movie who's shy and doesn't really know what to do with life and is kinda whooped around the house by his mother and sister - kinda reminds me of me when I was a kid. Another thing was that in the movie was set in a predominately Hmong neighborhood with Clint Eastwood's character as the only non-Asian household on the block - a lot like my neighborhood. I think what really hit home was the gang element in the movie. The gangs in the movie, as they are here, were formed because little kids were tired of being bullied by big kids. In the movie near the opening, Thao was seen walking home from school being harassed by Hispanic gang members and all of the sudden his cousin and his gang shows up to scare them away with an Uzi. I'm sure things like that happened down the street in the 90s in my area. This same gang who saves Thao comes to be the antagonist element in the movie.

Stuff happens, you can watch the movie if you wanna know what happens, and as expected, Clint Eastwood more or less takes Thao under his wing and helps him grow up. Clint Eastwood's character is a Korean War veteran who was a part of the U.S. Army Rangers. What's almost scary is that in high school my neighbor, Mr. Parsons, more or less took me under his wing as well. Mr. Parsons is a U.S. Air Force veteran who served during Vietnam. He went to some of my football games and acted as a sort of mentor for me while in high school.

There's so many messages in the movie, so many things I could write about, I wish I could just write about all of them. However, I think the most important theme of the movie is violence begets violence and it really takes the bigger person to stand above it all. It's truly a movie everyone should see.

Regret and Failures

Experience is built up upon failures of the past and regret of previous decisions. Every choice we make now is due to something happening in the past. One elementary example is some of us as children learn that the stove is hot because our parents told us it was. Some of us, like me, actually touched the thing so we quickly went "AH! PAIN!"

Personally, I've learned a lot of my life experience with the latter method for some reason. Arguably, some people simply learn from others, some others simply learn by doing. Ever since I was a kid, everything I've learned, I've learned because I've actually done it, made mistakes, corrected those, and learned. I still remember some martial arts forms I learned ten years ago because of muscle memories, we learn our ABCs because we still remember performing that song, and in fact, I still have to sing it sometimes if I forget sometimes. Makes you wonder how we all got into college if we still have to recite a song to remember the order the English alphabet.

I never had the birds and the bees talk with my parents, maybe it's an Asian American parental thing or maybe they just plum forgot, but yeah, I never got it. I never got a lot of lessons on girls that I wish I did, other than the fact that they have cooties or something like that. Much of the experience I have concerning girls is because I think I've been through it all in regards to relationships with the other sex. My friends would ask me for advice on this situation or that situations, and I tell them "I've been there..." and I'd tell them a little bit of what happened to me. I feel sometimes I have failed too much in the past and there is too much regret there as well.

Talking to my friend today, I realized a made another mistake and that I just have to learn from it. I've always said that it's only awkward if you make it awkward, that it's only an issue if you make it an issue. And I realized that those words were truer than I thought they were.

Don't Plan, Just Do

The greatest times in my life, the most memorable times in my life, are the times in which I don't really plan anything, but rather, go and do. Granted, there is SOME planning involved, such as going here, or doing this, but other than that, it's all about the doing that really matters.

One of the greatest memories I have was when my best friend was moving into a new apartment. He was trying to find some furniture stores so he could furnish his place and luckily there was one less than a mile away. He bought a sofa from there and we were talking online about how to get it back to his apartment. For some reason, I had this crazy idea of CARRYING the sofa from the store to his place, you know, to safe fifty bucks.

It was the greatest idea in the world! Until we actually did it. Oh man it sucked, it was a sofa-bed thing so it had a mattress and more metal in it, and it was heavy, and it sucked carrying it back. It took us about ten minutes to walk there and about an hour to bring it back. But man, we always look back on it and remember it and laugh about it.

My best friend and I actually have this little motto of ours that kinda goes - "Be awesome in everything that you do." We're just trying to make every day a little bit awesome.