Because Montana’s Accounting Staff Has Nothing Better to Do

Oh dear. Is it only me posting? I’ve been shopping for pants. Quel embarras.

@Benedick: Either that, or JNOV has hijacked your account.

Yes, I am going to Hell for that. Thanks for asking!

@Benedick: I went to a crafts store, bulled my way through the old ladies, and bought a lighted magnifying thingy so I can see WTF I’m soldering on my amp project.

@Dodgerblue: Drink more gin.

@nojo: JNOV is real America. If only I had her courage. I would so smite you. Gay to gay. (Hey. Les Miz. How awesome is that? Jackman this baby! )

Carbon offset willow is doing fine.

@Benedick: I saw a trailer for Les Miz last night. Jackman looked awesome but Russell Crowe as Javert gave me the giggles. Popcorn was flying.

So Jerry – you think gold and silver coins will work when you want to buy Coors Light at your local WalMart? Fucking idiot …

@Dodgerblue: Thing is, the novel is so stupendously fucking awesome what’s the point of a musicale? I mean it’s astounding. Check out the new translation at Modern Library.

On stage it was terrifically staged but the score is the kind of thing that might amuse the bowling club on a rainy Sunday afternoon in Scunthorpe.

That being said, Huge Jackman is very good casting as Jean Valjean. But nothing can take the place of the heartbreaking whirlwind that is Hugo’s wonderment.

Coincidence as Providence as God’s design. Just when you think it can’t get any better it rips out your heart and explodes across the page.

@Dodgerblue: Russell Crowe? Oh dear. Do you think they’ll allow him to sing?

@Benedick: Thing is, the novel is so stupendously fucking awesome what’s the point of a musicale? My thoughts exactly.

But then I’m not much for the theater (sorry) – maybe it’s because my high school teacher forced me to see that one where everybody gets nekkid by the last act when she chaparoned our high school trip to Merry Ole England. “Oh! Susanna” or something like that?

I was sixteen. I just wanted to drink “pints”, eat “chips” and see as many Beatle-related places as possible. True story: we went into Harrod’s just so I could buy a Parlophone label pressing of “With the Beatles”, to compliment my US pressing of “Meet the Beatles”.

So the last thing I really am interested in is a film adaptation of a musical version of one of my favorite novels.

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ: According to the trailer, the whole thing was sung in real time, not in the studio for playback. Methinks they may have to break out the Autotune for Russell Crowe, unless there is anecdotal evidence to the contrary.

@Benedick and @Beggars Biscuit: Wow. I tried to get through Le Miz, but bogged down in an endless struggle about the daily life of some church official living in a bog. Literal and figurative bogginess. There was also a huge swath of political references which meant nothing to me. It was stultifying. And I’ve ploughed through Moby Dick and Anna Karenina and War and Peace (the Russians are ok, but their novels don’t do a whole lot for me). Les Miz left me cold. Maybe I should try the new translation, but I don’t see that helping — it was the story that killed me, not the writing. Does it suddenly explode into awesomeness, and I was just shy of that point?

@IanJ: Trust me. Try the new translation and read it like it’s sci-fi. Hugo always tells you more than you need to know but the long intro with the bishop sets the stage for his stupendous moral fable of good and evil. From time to time the story stops as he expounds on what can seem to be a detour: the Paris sewers, for example. Do we need to know how they were constructed and planned? And when you think, “I don’t really need to know this” Jean Valjean is carrying the half-dead Marius on his back through an ocean of shit for the sake of his daughter. And you will be weeping from the grandeur of the story. And then Marius naked on the bed as they try to save him. And how they turn their back on Jean Valjean. And then how they understand that they were wrong. That he was a hero. And come to him as he is dying…

As I said before: coincidence in the hands of VH becomes the will of God. It’s an astonishingly good book. And a thrilling read.

Translated by Julie Rose for Modern Library.

@Beggars Biscuit: Yes I know, but the theatre does something different. It allows an audience to dream in public.

@Benedick: Just ordered. You have not yet steered me wrong on a book or movie recommendation.

@Benedick: Les Miserables is one of my favorite all-time books, and I will get the new translation.

@Dodgerblue: BTW, there is an awfully good movie adaptation directed by Claude Lelouche with Belmondo as Jean. The story is transposed to WWII with sections in the past. I don’t think it’s yet on DVD. It should be restored and reissued. There is a wonderful performance by Annie Girardot hiding a Jewish refugee. I have it on tape.

@SanFranLefty: As I remember it’s the most complete text ever done in English.

@Benedick: That version is available on Amazon.com but only in a Region 2 format. Quelle dommage, non?