Ten Little Chances to be Free

This is now my official, Ol' Vic-approved mental image of Enjolras. (NSFW if W disapproves of hot Roman ass. It's educational, really!)

I am incredibly tempted to buy a HP Mini-Note laptop. Because it's $550, probably smaller than most of the books I've read lately, and still has decent screen resolution/memory/hard disk space. And for serious, if I bought it direct from HP, I could get an extra gig of RAM and a laptop case loaded with goodies still for under $700.

Today I ended up working a completely dead closing shift without my computer, so to keep myself from dying of boredom I bought a trashy romance novel when I went to grab food. I have actually never read a trashy romance novel, unless you count certain egregiously bad fanfic, and now I kind of wish I'd bought a magazine instead. Because after fifty pages of our Fiery Regency Heroine endlessly repeating "Scoundrel! Blackguard! Oh, how I despise you! I shall never give in to your--say, is that Eau de Brooding Antihero you're wearing? ....villain!" I got bored and skipped to the sex scenes. And wow, what a waste of five bucks.

Happy birthday, lady_iphigeneia! I have no frenchboy porn for a birthday present at the moment, but I do have something vaguely amusing from the Cimetière de la Chartreuse.

My last private lesson, on Friday, consisted of the instructor telling me, "Give me a summary of Les Mis. All of it. Don't gloss over the details." Which is possibly the most brilliant strategy ever to get me to talk in French for over an hour nonstop, even if I never did manage to come up with the necessary vocabulary for "substituting shellac for resin in the manufacture of glass beads." Also, continuing the Saga of Awesome, she ended the lesson by telling me I should write LM fanfiction in French.

(A side note: the musical is almost unheard of here; the story has been absorbed into the culture, but in different ways. Mention LM and people will think of Cosette or Gavroche or Jean Valjean or the Thénardiers, almost never Javert or Fantine or Eponine. The idea that the English made a musical out of Les Misérables is almost as amusing to the French as... well... the idea that the French made a musical out of Romeo and Juliet is to the English. Also, the teacher of my morning classes mentioned that an informal term for a very thick/long book is a "paving stone," and looked mystified when I burst out laughing.)

Does anyone else's brain randomly play musical versions of word association with certain songs? There are some things I'll start humming and get sidetracked midway into a similar tune from a completely different song.

Back in the days before Les Mis had completely implanted itself upon my mind, Lovely Ladies was mostly interchangeable in my head with... the Oompa-Loompa song. Yes, from the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie with Gene Wilder. This still occasionally leads my mind into thoroughly bizarre places mid-song and I have to stop myself from breaking into hysterical giggles right there in the theater. Most of the random associations, however, have to do with Disney songs:

- The vamp before Master of the House sounds so much like the one leading up to Poor Unfortunate Souls. The mental images this produces are really disturbing.
- A lot of spots in Yeston's Phantom remind me of Beauty and the Beast, but parts of This Place is Mine have actually caused me to switch to singing the Mob Song mid-verse.
- And the latest one? I'm just getting into Der Glöckner von Notre-Dame, having never seen the movie or known the English lyrics or any of the music. The part of Die Glocken that starts "Was für ein Morgen," that part always makes me want to sing Madame Guillotine. Every single time. It's morbidly hilarious.

(Speaking of Glöckner, I am so glad they un-Disneyfied the ending for the musical. ♥)

HAHA. My crappy day has just been turned around by digging up lesmiz.net again and Babelfishing it from Chinese to English. From the garbled impression that gives, it actually is quite a wonderful site, but I think a bit has been lost in translation:

"I also very like ancient expense Larke this humorous fellow, his famous saying 'I have met the Malu: Si's new clothes and the new hat today, inside binds a Malu: Si' to confuse by many LM takes as the classics."

"In ABC society I most appreciate am male fly in vain, his wisdom, is temperate, the erudite Confucian scholar, the rich sympathy and the humanitarianism, decisive strongly form the contrast with An Zhuola. Most makes me be moved is An Zhuola aims at an opposite party artillery when the street barricade, male Bai Fei in side sighed: 'Was a pity! Slaughters in the what kind ugly behavior! Had calculated, does not have the king not to be able again to have the war. An Zhoula, you aim at this staff sergeant, you all do not look at his.'"

"Speaks of these two people to have no alternative but to say loves Pan. She in musical truly compared to novel in more lovable, more selfless, but in novel she is more real. She is the family background first floor poverty-stricken girl, saw is used to all sorts of has been ugly and the evil. She must by own way pursue love, therefore she temporarily stops the Ke match especially to give Malu: Si's letter, also Malu: Si Yindao the street barricade, wants to die together with him."

"In the LM musical I like at first the role is loves Pan Ni and An Zhuola, along with the number of times which listens are more and more many, also gradually liked the sand prestige, certainly, this also could not separate with the PQ uncle's splendid deduction. In musical Stars has molded Sha Wei soul, if does not have it, his image certainly can greatly give the discount."

Oh, Babelfish. ♥ (It also translates 'revival' as 'duplicate typesetting.')

Laundry: Oh look, power went out when the clothes were still damp in the dryer! Looks like you have ironing to do now too!
letitallgo: ...oh god, laundry, plz to go fuck yourself.
Laundry: You can't trick me into doing myself that easily, you know.

Uterus: RAR CRAMPS
Aleve: *doesn't work*
Uterus: RAR CRAMPS
Aleve: I eat your stomach!
letitallgo: You do it all because you're evil, don't you?
Uterus: AND I DO IT ALL FOR FREEEE! *tangoes*

Ah, so I finally find out what my karmic payback was for getting to see two understudy Cosettes in one day: I missed Nehal Joshi's Enjolras. By a single day.

Fuck.

Understudy karma is a weird thing. I missed Nehal (and Chip as Thénardier) in early March too, I assume as balance for getting to see Nikki and Haviland as Fantine. XD And somehow I've seen Megan McGinnis as Eponine four or five times, but never Marissa.

Note to universe: you still owe me one, you know, since that time Dan was on as Marius on Friday, I saw the show on Saturday, and Rob was on as Javert on Sunday. I'm still smarting from that.

Speaking of Rob, any word yet on who's replaced him?