KUNG-FU MASTER WEIGHS REALITY WITH HOLLYWOOD.
THE HUMAN RACE
HOLLYWOOD VS TRUTH IS LIKE ‘YIN AND YANG,’ HE SAYS.
Gerald Okamura is to Kung-Fu what Babe Ruth was to baseball, cowboy Casey Tibbs was to rodeo, Muhammad Ali was to boxing and Jim Thorpe was to football. He is a master of his art.
When I asked the 73-year-old grandpa what he did for a living, he gazed at me with dark, unrelenting eyes accentuated by menacing eyebrows. The head was clean shaven. The well-groomed billy goat beard reached below his muscular neck.
“I am an actor-stuntman,” he said.
With that beard and hairless dome, I told him, he looked like one of those Shaolin priests who performed with David Carradine in “Kung-Fu,” a popular TV series in the mid-1970s.
“That was me,” he admitted.
“What kind of actor are you?” I asked.
“A lousy actor,” he said as his tight lips cracked into a smile. “For God’s sake, Gerald, you’re smiling!” I teased.
“Those who look into this face don’t realize there’s a sense of humor behind it,” he said. “Society is too caught up in images. Though I’m a lover at heart, I guarantee that Hollywood would never cast a guy with this face to replace Brad Pitt in a romantic lead. If you asked my wife (Maude), my three daughters and four grandkids, they’ll tell you I’m a sweetheart.”
Yet Gerald, a Japanese American born in Hilo, Hawaii, had delivered karate chops to stars ranging from Mel Gibson to James Caan. How does a Grand Master in Kung-Fu and San Soo compare Hollywood with martial arts?
“Yin and Yang,” he explained, “is an ancient Chinese philosophy: Two different worlds representing the passive and active forces of life.”
When I asked, “What if I yanked on your beard?” Mr. Kung-Fu warned, “You wouldn’t want to try that.”
When I asked the Carson, Calif. resident for a philosophic thought for a quote, he quickly replied, “Even after death, you can still change the world.”
Then he added with a laugh, “But don’t take me too seriously.”
— Boots LeBaron —
(Boots’ current book, “THE HUMAN RACE,” is available
on Kindle and in paperback on Amazon. It contains
humorous, inspirational and philosophic essays,
light poetry and interviews about life, death, love,
courage, Showbiz, religion and everything in between)
Man, I wish I knew all the different types of people you’ve met.
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Don’t be afraid to talk to strangers. Use humor. Look around you. Everybody has a story to tell. Once you found somebody, let them trust you. I’ve spent an adulthood in search of people who will reveal thoughts. Start with one guy or gal. And go from there. Boots
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