Vinyasa

I had a pretty good weekend.

On Friday, my boss invited several of us to partake of nachos and potent potables to celebrate several recent contract wins. (No, that is not my boss pictured at the top of this post, though this gentleman also has a Ph.D. That's Dr. Phibes -- more about him in a minute.)

There was hardly any discussion of work and jokes aplenty: Guy walks into the vet's office with a goldfish in a bowl. "Doc, I think my goldfish has epilepsy." Peering into the bowl, the vet says "He looks OK to me." The guy responds, "Well, I haven't taken him out of the bowl yet."

Pah dum bum.

As usual at social events I attend, I was one of the first to leave. Not because I wasn't having a swell time, but because I get really sleepy once the sun goes down. The good news is that I slept well that night. Gooey nachos are better than Sominex.

I thought about running Saturday morning, and probably should have. But the first session of the "Yoga for Enhanced Swimming" class was at 8:00am, and I wasn't sure how much energy I would need to survive it. As it turned out, running beforehand probably wouldn't have made much difference in my ability to perform the yoga poses. My body doesn't bend right, I have no balance, and my brain wants to run screaming from the room at every mention of arcane easter philosophy. "It is like a fingah pointing away to da moon." Yeah, yeah, I know. Your breath informs your movement, and your chakra khan is focused at your third eye, blah blah blah.

It's not that I'm skeptical. I am quite sure I could be a better athlete and a more serene spiritual being if I embraced the yoga approach. But I have a boatload of western conditioning to overcome. I can easily grasp the concepts of F = MA and d = r*t. But it'll be while before I master how the crouching crane transforms to the downward-facing elephant. Sanskrit is greek to me.

But I'll get better. I'll swim faster and be healthier. I am trying to incorporate some of the yoga ideas into my daily life this week -- we'll see if I do any better in next week's class.

Anyway, this has nothing to do with Dr. Phibes. Though since he is an experienced ballroom dancer, it would not surprise me to find that he's better at yoga than I am. But the point is that "The Abominable Dr. Phibes" was on TV this weekend, and I decided I'd rather watch it again than follow the football games. An FBI profiler would probably be able to tell you many things about my personality based on that simple fact, but the truth is that I'm just a huge fan of Vincent Price.

[Side note: As far as I know, only two things are ever referred to as "abominable": Snowmen and Phibes. It would be interesting to take a survey to see which answer most Americans prefer.]

The last time I had watched the movie, I paid more attention to the cleverness of Phibes's schemes than I did to the subleties of the acting. But this time, I found myself fascinated by the patterns and pacing of the good doctor's speech. For someone who has to speak without lips, he is surprisingly articulate. Check it out:



Price has one of the great voices of all time. It got me thinking about who else belongs on that list. James Earl Jones obviously takes the top spot. And Arnold Schwarzenegger is up there. But who else do you think of when you think of outstanding voices? Don LaFontaine, Mel Blanc, Harry Shearer, and Seth Macfarlane come to mind, of course, but I also want to hear what you think about people who aren't necessarily in the "voice" business...but are people who speak with a unique flavor that adds to their personality. I'm thinking of folks like Curley Howard, Patrick Warburton, Cheech Marin, and Maurice Evans. But what about Jason Statham, Steven Wright, Victoria Jackson, or Wallace Shawn?

Let me know what you think. In return, I'll keep you posted on whether I'm ever able to stop concentwating on the finger so I can experience all dat heavenly glory. Have a great day!