Jan. 1: Bald guys and big books

We here at the House of Manullang are a wee bit obsessed with Les Misérables lately. We got the 25th anniversary concert DVD for Christmas and have watched it at least once every day since. Watched it, like, AS A FAMILY, like, all four of us sit down for a sing-a-long. It’s weird and funny and way awesome that we have been doing this. You’re invited to join us anytime.

If you’ve seen Bridesmaids, you remember Annie’s roommate, right?

In real life this guy is Matt Lucas, and he’s in the Les Miz 25th anniversary concert, nearly unrecognizable as “Master of the House” Thénardier:

The character is, to put it gently, a giant arsehole, and Matt Lucas is soooo good in the part. Here’s a trailer with short interviews in preparation of the 25th anniversary concert; my favorite part is when he begs to play the part of Cosette (2:58).

Whether you like musicals (normal people) or not (Dina), take 51 seconds to watch this clip:

This here’s funny stuff.

Thinking my (our) interest in the musical version of Les Misérables might inspire us to read the classic novel, I ordered a copy from Amazon last week. Yeah, it’s a free download for Kindle, but that’s the abridged version; I wanted the real thing, the unabridged, every-word-Hugo-meant, all-in-one-volume version. I opened the box to see this:

Yay, books! I love books! I was eager to start reading right away, and—I’ll be honest—I kinda did a “neener neener, I get to read it fiiiiirst!” dance for Vic and the kids. I lifted the book out of the box and was surprised at how heavy it was. Then I grabbed a measuring tape, because, um, oh-em-gee, peeps:

It’s a mass market paperback, and even with all the publishing tricks they used to fit as much text on each page as they could, there are still just under eleventy threeve million** pages between its cover. I’ve held Bibles that weigh less than this thing.

Maybe that abridged version isn’t so bad after all.

Please don’t ask how much I’ve read yet. I’m still adjusting to how much art fits on the spine of this book.

(**possibly an estimate)