Have you ever had something you really wanted to tell people about but you didn’t think they’d quite get it if you did? Probably because it related to one of your obsessions and you didn’t know anyone else who cared about it quite so much?

…

You can see where this is going, can’t you? I’m not sure if anyone will find this the same level of giggle-inducing that I did, but I’m going to tell you anyway. And after this, I promise I will shut up about Les Mis (for now).

So, as I mentioned when I first posted about the movie, I, and millions of other fans, have been trying to figure out how the cast will be in the movie by listening to how they sound singing other things. Some people have inspired more confidence in the fans than others. One of the “others” is Russell Crowe, who will play Javert and whom we’ve only seen singing things that are nothing like musical theater, which makes it hard to judge how he’ll do.

Then I found a clip of Philip Quast, who was Javert in the 10^th Anniversary dream-cast concert, singing on an Australian children’s show of which he was a cast member before becoming a big theater star. Someone had commented that if we’d only had that to judge his singing by before seeing him as Javert, who would have thought he’d be as great as he is?

See for yourself. Watch this video first. You don’t even have to watch the whole thing, just enough to get an idea of this guy’s singing voice and onstage persona.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urxk4mveLCw]

Now watch this video, from sometime in the 80s:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SpR3ZyMhEM]

IT’S THE SAME GUY!

…Okay, you might not be giggling like crazy like I was after discovering this, but in case there’s someone else out there who’s as amused by it as I am, I wanted to put it out there.

Foot, foot, footie-foot.

…And then I found twenty dollars.