Not on el topic de adventure, but thought I'd share... one of the best things I've read in awhile.

“I think Al Pacino has stretched his soul, more so than maybe I have,” Giamatti said. “So his soul would be more elastic. It’s a liquid, an oily liquid th aat gets into cracks and crevices, but also has some body to it, so he can do that ‘Hoo ha!’ thing.” Giamatti’s rendition of “Hoo ha!” was mournful and slightly sneezy.

As he sipped chicken soup, reputed to pep up the soul, he grew less agitated. “I’d like to try Willie Nelson’s soul for a day,” he volunteered. “It would be like an ear of roasted corn. And I go to Dolly Parton, for some reason—her soul would be light and airy, like a hummingbird. Yes, I like the idea of having a country singer’s soul. But not Merle Haggard’s—it’d be an engine block. Powerful, but kind of rusty, with lots of buildup.

“Freud would be interesting,” he continued. “I’m seeing a piece of Babylonian statuary, with the curly beard, the half-a-lion, the wings. Or Donald Trump: a nice set of whitewall tires.” To Giamatti’s surprise, he was also drawn, like many another, to the apparently soulless Jessica Simpson: “I can’t get a read off of her, which is why I’m curious. Her soul might just be a tape measure.” He drew the line at the guitar player Slash, “a blood orange left on a windowsill, all dried out and leathery”; Kim Jong Il, “a crazy box of crabs”; and Henry Kissinger, “a doorknob.”

Giamatti leaned back. “What about the Pope? Presumably, it’s part of the job description to have a lot of soul. This guy is a tough read, though—he’s like Jessica Simpson. I just see a glass of water with this guy.” He shrugged. “But, on the other hand—refreshing the people. Maybe it’s a bottomless glass.”

Continuing around the continent on a kind of astral Eurail pass, he said, “Berlusconi . . . I’m seeing a heavily lacquered coffee table. No good. Tolstoy would be a great one: he could jump right across the way into anybody. And Sarkozy—if I had Sarkozy’s soul, Carla Bruni would fly over, drawn to me like the arrow point of a compass, and get in my bathtub and sing.”

What would Giamatti’s own soul resemble? “If people judged it off the movies, they would see something spiny—a sea urchin,” he said. He observed, however, that that’s not really him. “People would be surprised, but I have a certain low-level machismo,” he said, grinning for the first time. “I remember being up for a scrap in the schoolyard, and I can take a punch.” His shoulders shifted pugnaciously. “I’m always surprised, when I do movies, at how eager I am to throw myself out of a moving car. I don’t look like it, but I’ve got a little ‘Hoo ha!’ in me.”

If his soul isn’t a chickpea or a sea urchin, then what is it? “I’m seeing a hand-painted ceramic toad,” Giamatti said. “A nice one, though. Not a crappy Chia Pet one. Something decorative for the yard. It doesn’t pull the room together or anything, but it’s out there, and occasionally you notice it and you say, ‘Oh, I kind of like that thing, that—what is it?—that toad thing.’ ” 

Sea Urchins and an Angry box of crabs… Muy funny.