No More Wax On Wax Off

The world of karate has lost a good master, and the world of auto maintenance has lost a good waxing coach.

Pat Morita, best known as chopstick-fly-catching Mr. Miyagi from The Karate Kid series of movies, died apparently of natural causes in Las Vegas, at the ripe young age of 73, on Thursday (Full Story). Perhaps the earliest role that I know him in was the TV show Happy Days. When I saw that episode (as a rerun!), I remember saying to myself, "Holy shit! Is that Mr. Miyagi!? Damn, he hasn't changed!!" I'm glad I wasn't in church when I said that.

Then, several years after The Next Karate Kid was out, I remember not being able to believe seeing a poster for his stand-up comedy show at some casino on the freeway to Las Vegas. I though it was quite an about-face for a movie career, until I learned that that's how he tried to start show business.

It would be cool if his memorial has a statue of a guy in the Crane Stance, with the epitaph:

Gone to show Jesus how to wax his '84 Buick LeSabre.