Gran Torino — A brilliant movie about American culture.

So after church this weekend, Cath and I decided to go see a movie since we haven’t in a while.

Eastwood's latest film.

There are a ton of movies out now that we wanted to see including Slumdog, Marley and Me, etc… But ever since the commercials had been airing for the movie, I would jokingly walk around the house saying in a gravely voice, “Get off my lawn!” Truth be told, it drove my wife nuts.

Whether or not it was meant for a laugh or not, it worked in getting my wife to want to see the movie.

So—- As my friend Jason Bentley commented on my status, he said that the critics have already reviewed the movie. Duh! This is a non-critics review of the film therefore ultimately superior. (IMO).

Enough talk…..

Gran Torino takes place in Michigan where Clint Eastwood (Walt Kowalski) is a Korean War vet who lives in a run down neighborhood where mostly immigrants live and Eastwood, stuck in the middle.

Having just lost his wife, Eastwood struggles with family conversations and emotions with his sons and making things harder for him is his racist attitude toward the his Hmong neighbors.

Their worlds collide when Thao (a teenager who lives next door to Eastwood) is dragged into his cousin’s gang and their requirement is for him to steal Eastwood’s prized possession: a 1972 Gran Torino.

The story really picks up as Eastwood mentors this young man and enrolls him into the school of hard knocks.

Eastwood directed this movie and it’s the little things that I love.

One thing that stood out to me was the use of the American flag. A theme that runs throughout the movie. Be it an actual flag or a reflection, he definitely used that and I loved the use. It helped shape Eastwood’s character of All-American, buy American, drive American.

The other thing that really helped sell the movie was the blunt, blunt racial slurs. I mean really— I don’t think I’ve ever heard a movie drop so many racist comments about people but you couldn’t help but laugh it was so brutal. Like Southpark, Gran Torino poked slurs at just about every race out there. Either way it worked and it was done so well, it did provide the framework for the story of the movie.

The movie will make you laugh, make you swell up and make you angry. It is so well crafted that it’s a damn shame that the movie isn’t nominated for some of the Oscar awards coming up in February.

So if you’re looking for a movie that gives you a little bit of everything, Gran Torino is definitely worth a look.

I give it a *** 1/2 out of ****

-A

A decade in technology.

So I have been working with computers for some time now and now after having sold my recently built system to a friend, I’m on the hunt for building yet another computer system.

First and foremost, lets get the nerd tech specs out of the way.

Case : Custom painted Cool Master 690 (totally nerdy right?)
CPU: Intel Core i7 920
CPU Cooler : Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme
Memory:  Corsair Dominator  3×1GB  DDR3 1600
GPU: eVGA 9800GT
Hard Drive : Seagate 750GB Sata II drive
PSU: BFG 800W Power Supply
Fans : Rosewill White LED in the front / Scythe “Flex” fans in the rest of the spots.

So what’s crazy about those above specs is the processor (for the most part) compared to some of the other parts… even though they are equally insane.

What’s crazy is 10 years ago…. Intel was still doing battle with a company called AMD (which is still somehow still around today).  I remember in 1998 I picked up an Intel Pentium II processor that was a meager 450MHz in speed with a 16MB of video memory and 512MB of RAM.  Awesome system right?  Well— at the time…. yeah.  Having played Half-Life on that system (still one of my favorite games to date) I ventured into online gaming (on dial-up) and a dominate computer to play all of the hottest games.

Fast forward now to 2009…. to give you some idea in terms of how far things have advanced…. the new Intel Core i7 is roughly 6 of the Intel Pentium II processors in one processor today.  Going a step further though…. is the chip is a Quad-Core chip meaning it has 4 (four) logical cores on the computer chip waffer.  Pretty neat huh?  Well, not only does it have 4 cores, but it re-introduces hyper-threading which Intel introduced back in the early 2000’s giving the processor (from Microsoft Windows perspective) 8 total logic cores which means… pretty much any application…. any game, any movie…. pretty much anything I will throw at the computer to do…. it will get it done in a matter of milliseconds.

So while you might start thinking that I’m totting my own horn on this…. I’m getting to my point now.  Kids.  Kids these days are spoiled.  Not only do most homes in America at least have a broadband connection of greater than 2MB/sec download speeds, they are also getting these computers, video game systems, TV’s and movies that were once thought fantasy back when I was a kid.

Anyhoo— My wife has also made me swear to type and sign a piece of paper that says I won’t build another computer until 2013 at the earliest of which I told her I would as really— this is the last computer I’ll ever need right?   So as I prepare to have kids here in the near future…. will they get spoiled with the fast download speeds, online gaming and high definition movies?  Maybe just a little…..

-A

The normal life need not apply.

What is Christianity and what has it become?

Has it become a right of passage?  Has it become a political party?  Has it been used against those who stand are followers of Christ?

Maybe I was just naive to think that Christianity was just a story about some guy who died 2,000 years ago on a cross and by accepting him as savior for our sins and having him right the wrongs, we then get to go to heaven.

If only it were that simple or that clean.  My view point is though that there are people who think that is the open and shut case for how us christians are supposed to act today.

I’m sitting here at the beach right now (note that this is date logged on the 17th of Jan.) watching the waves crash on the beach and having seen the tide come in and out, I can’t help but think that the ocean… be it a system of eve’s and flow’s, is one of Gods most amazing creations.  What’s even more funny is as I write, my dog Mason is pacing back and forth and keeping an ever watchful eye out the windows for other dogs to bark at.

Anyways, what’s so special about water and sand anyways?  I mean, is it such a big deal that a bunch of sand and salt water crash up against the shoreline every minute of everyday?
I think about the passage where God says that the number of hairs on our head are as many as the sands on a beach.  I also think about D-Day in World War 2 where the Allies had to run up a beach in order to overtake the Germans, I think about how in the recent floods we’ve had over the years, how sand has tried to keep the water out… I think again to the story of Jacob and God’s promise of descendants to be as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sand grains of the beach.  Some how— Sand and water…. play a part.

So what am I getting at?  I guess I’m getting asking the question of what is the significance of being a christian in this day and age?  Where is that I align myself— with my thoughts, prayers, idealogy, questions, faith— everything.  My hope is that more people are asking the same questions I am.  My prayer is that everyone would be asking the same questions and taking time throughout the day to think about smaller things and how their impact might be larger than we can see within a 30 second sound byte or clip.

As I move to live my life beyond the normal American lifestyle of having a nice house, kids, nice car etc…. I open myself to have dialogues with everyone I know and what their views are on life and how their lives are going.

At the end of the day—- no matter how much Facebook keeps us in contact, no matter how a text message may make us smile…. It’s people…. family and friends that keep us honest and keep us true to the person who we are.
Love, Live and Laugh with those people….. as we only have this short time to enjoy each other.

-A

A New Year…. a new Blog… a new Hockett.

So here we are.  My first real post of the 2009 year.

A view of 2008.... heading into 2009

 

 

My thoughts as a person are shifting… from an unconscious state… to a conscious state.  

Having been the Baptist boy that has grown up in the Christian church my entire life… I took life for granted.  I took people and friends for granted.

The trip I took to Beiruit last summer has completely rocked my world though and this blog I’m hoping is going to be some of the insight into how my filter on life has changed.

First and foremost…. to my friends….

2009 represents a red letter year for me…. (and my wife I’d say) where in a time and place where life calls the two of us to live life past what our American culture has told us we should do.

Having been unemployed now for 2 1/2 months or so—- It has given me an incrediable amount of time to be able to sift through the crap/challenges that have presented themselves back in the previous year.  So where does that leave me and where do friends fall into the picture?

Catherine and I are going to be striving for a goal of living life together with everyone in a very intentional way.  That means…. the normal chit chat… while there is a time and place for that…. we want to engage life with the people we surround ourselves with.  That means going through the hard times you might be having, the literal shit that you might be slogging through…. heart breaks and whatever else might be causing you to wrestle with life or the church.

While my perspective of how the church is shifting from being a building… a meeting place… a scheduled time…. to being the actual body of believers— the people I interact with on a daily basis, weekly basis…. my views are changing on how to be the church.

Also I’m not talking about how to make the church culturally relevent in the 21st century or anything…. those are limted venues for measures of success in what I consider the last hurrah of the modernist church.

So what does this all look like?  I envision a church someday where we have young and old…. married, singles, gay, divorced, single parents and everything else inbetween be a part of the body of Christ in a way that they experience Christ through those relationships.  Will that happen?  I don’t know.  Will I give up on dreaming for that? Never.

 

-A

Blog reboot coming here in the next couple of weeks.

As you can probably tell, I’m going through and re-working somethings.

Will still have some more ranging topics as well.

more later.