A little earlier this year due to high stress levels and some health issues, I decided to try to find a way to take better care of myself. I wanted to add something that would reduce stress but nothing crazy like joining a gym. For a few years, my wife had been encouraging me to take a yoga class. I was always resistant for some reason, but I thought why not? So after two classes I'd describe as "old lady" yoga (lots of napping, farting, and lying still under blankets), I found a class that for eight weeks or so did the trick. 

For the most part I thought I was the only non-hippy, sarcastic, asshole doing Yoga. Then we discovered that Neal Pollock was raising money to go to Yoga school via Kickstarter. It was all in support of his soon to be released book Stretch: The Unlikely Making of a Yoga Dude. As part of our support, Neal was kind enough to send us a number of books, including his soon to be released tale of his Yoga awakening. 

It all starts when the New York Times calls him fat. Role in pop culture references including Star Trek II, The X-Men, Star Wars, and the rest of my nerd sphere and you get a writer who goes from being a 35-ish sarcastic writer to a 40-ish sarcastic yogi. Not only is the book inspiring (by taking some of the weird/scary/unknown out of yoga) but it's one hell of a good read too. Neal's journeys take him everywhere from doing yoga with a small group of dedicated people within walking distance of his house to conferences in San Francisco to Thailand. Through the course of the book you get a clear picture of how he's trying to be his "best self" more often. To tap into that attitude and bring it into his day to day life. At the same time he writes with humor, tenderness, and the Gen-X sarcasm you'd expect from him.

It's totally worth the $10 or so on Amazon. 

Also, go follow him on Twitter

• Liam Neeson doesn't free any of the sex slaves he encounters and totally forgets the one he does save (because she is a lead) in his hotel room.
• The girl that Shannon from Lost went to Paris with turns up dead, but we're led to believe that beyond cousins in Paris (who are in Madrid at the time of the movie) she has no family that is looking for her or generally gives a shit.
• Liam Neeson goes on a killing spree that the police know is unfolding, yet he's still able to pass through customs on his way back through LAX (meanwhile if you were on that flight today you'd be expected to shit your pants in boredom during the last hour).
• According to Taken, Albanians and vaguely Arab men with too much Mascara are all involved in prostitution.
• Thankfully things like steam pipes aren't adequately bolted in place in France (though Liam Neeson loves that the electricity is up to snuff for his torture) so Liam is able to use Three Stooges-like mishaps to escape death by strangulation by the head pimp's security staff.
• We get to meet Liam's CIA buddies at the start of the movie, but they barely help him out while he's in France. I guess they just wanted to drink his beer at their weekly BBQ and non-homosexual male bonding.