Danny and The Trees

Another ski day with Danny last week. The first generated so much dialog I thought I’d share about this one as well.

First, somehow, someway we were like the 6th or 7th chair up the mountain. It’s got to be some kind of miracle but there we were waiting for the lines to open.

Second, while there was a John Denver reference during the day, no one busted out into song nor was there a conversation about him. That automatically made it a good day.

There was an inch or two of powder on the slopes, it warmed up to 41 degrees and the big discussion point was the overacting but cool voices of certain actors. AntonioBan Deras being one of them. he always says his name that way – putting the first syllable of his last name with his first name, then pausing before finishing it off with ‘Deras.’ He’s the only guy on the planet to be able to pull that off. If you think I’m kidding – try it with your own name.

GrantEng Lish. Doesn’t remotely work. I had a former student make fun of the way I say my name. She said I pronounced it “Gran Tenglish” really emphasizing the “T” of Grant. My response was – it’s my name so I’ll pronounce it the way I want. I’m guessing AntonioBan Deras would say the same thing. Except he’s cooler.

“Oh yesssssssss, he issss.” With the “Oh” said very fast and the ‘s’ of the yes sliding into eternity. It’s the coolest accent in the world and I dare anybody to disagree. Ricardo Montalban has the same thing going on. It’s the whole Spanish thing going on. It makes anything sound sexier than what it really is. I mean, what else can explain all the bottles of Nasonex in my house?

Danny noted that you can’t really talk about Ricardo without talking about William Shatner (Star Trek: Wrath of Khan) which led to many hours of William Shatner moments.

Danny continued, “It’s rare that two actors with such over the top voices and acting appeared in the same movie. Can you imagine a movie that had both AntonioBan Deras and Ricardo Montalban?”

G: “They were. Spy Kids 2.”

Danny gave me approximately the same look I gave him when I learned he had John Denver on his iPod.

I started my defense immediately. “My kids love the movie. Personally, I’ve never seen it from beginning to end. Honestly.”

Somehow this leads us to Christopher Walken. Again, I’m not sure how we got there but got there we did. Danny does a spot on impression of Christopher Walken doing the “Cowbell” Skit of Saturday Night Live.

Most of the day was spent with us speaking in one of these voices and saying “Oh yessssss” way to many times.

The last run of the day provide some drama for us…well, mainly me. I took off through the trees on the last run and cut one of the corners a wee bit too tight. On the back side of the tree (the blind side) was a branch. It felt like someone had popped me in the face with a switch. It hurt a little, messed up my helmet a bit and fogged up my goggles. So I cruised to the edge of the trees, plopped down to rearrange my goggles and helmet as they were now all cock-eyed and fogged up.

A snowboarder comes screaming up beside me.

“Dude…are you okay?”

I look around, he’s talking to me. “Oh yeah, just getting my goggles unfogged.”

“Are you sure? Just relax for a bit.”

I start laughing. “I’m fine, man. Thanks for checking on me.” And stay off the drugs.

“Just relax and you might need a stitch or two. In fact, I’ll go get ski patrol.”

It occurs to me at this point that I may be the one clueless. I reach down grab a handful of snow and place it where the branch popped me in the face. Blood. And lots of it. I look back up in the trees and in fact there is a pool of blood with a trail leading to me.

The snowboarder is white and I’m having to calm him down.

“It’s probably a scratch. You know how bad some cuts bleed. It’s okay.”

After a few minutes of snow pressed on the face, the bleeding had stopped. It was about a half-inch gash along my cheekbone. The snowboarder stayed there the whole time. We hugged and exchanged email addresses.

Okay, that last line was a lie but that is where I felt like this thing was going. To be honest if the shoes were reversed, I’d done the same thing – stay there until I knew he was okay.

This whole time, Danny is on the phone with his bride clueless to what was going on. I catch up with him and he sees the blood and says in his AntonioBan Deras voice…

“Oh yesssss. A beautiful battle wound to woo your beautiful lady.”

G: “Unfortunately what I’m going to hear from said beautiful lass is something along the lines of “that’s why I hate skiing in the trees.”

We ended our day debating which of the voices – Shatner, Walken, Banderas, or Montalban – would we want to narrate our life story?

I picked AntoinoBan Deras. With Christopher Walken in second place.