“Les Mis!”
That’s pretty much all I heard Sunday night as my wife and I watched the Oscars with our 15-year-old daughter, Emma.
“Les Mis!” Emma shouted as we sat down to eat before the Oscars came on TV.
When I asked Emma why she was shouting “Les Mis” at the dinner table, she said she was practicing.
“What for?” I asked.
“‘Les Mis’ is going to win best picture, so I’m practicing shouting it so I’ll be ready when they read all the nominated movies,” she said.
By the way, when I wrote that Emma was shouting at the dinner table, I wasn’t being honest. We don’t often sit down at the dinner table. What we do is sit down at the kitchen counter. See, what I think of as a dinner table is the table that is in our dining room. But the dining room is — follow me here — in our dining room and therefore one room removed from our kitchen. So, rather than haul our food to the table in the dining room, we haul it to the kitchen counter, which is a much shorter haul.
This used to free up our dining room table for my wife to use for storage. Normally, my wife would store stuff on the dining room table until it got so we couldn’t see the table, and then my wife would haul the stuff up to our bedroom until we couldn’t see our bedroom. Then she would throw the stuff away.
But my wife doesn’t store things on the dining room table anymore. Instead, what she does is set the dining room table as if we were expecting a crowd for dinner. As the seasons change, so does the way my wife sets the dining room table. Right now, my wife is going with a spring motif.
I don’t know why my wife sets the dining room table for company when we never use it.
But back to “Les Mis.”
Emma has seen the movie “Les Mis” (or “Les Miserables” to be correct) twice and is of the opinion that it is the greatest movie in history. I should note that this marks the first time in at least 15 years that anyone in our home has seen one of the movies nominated for best picture.
My wife and I don’t get out much.
Anyway, not only did Emma figure that “Les Mis” was going to win the Oscar for best picture, she figured it would win every category in which it was nominated. Thus, every time someone would say, “And the Oscar goes to …” Emma would yell, “Les Mis!”
Oddly enough, after about an hour this got a bit annoying.
“Les Mis!” Emma would shout.
“Emma! This is for best animated film! It isn’t in this category!” I would say.
“It’s still going to win,” Emma would say.
“Les Mis!” Emma would shout again.
“Emma! It’s a commercial!” I would say.
“Oh. Sorry,” Emma would say.
At one point, in an effort to make Emma stop shouting, I suggested that she take advantage of her love of the film to learn something about France. Emma thought that was a good idea, and she got her laptop computer and began researching the country.
“You’re not just looking up France on Wikipedia are you?” I asked.
“Nooooo,” Emma said slowly and then closed her laptop and went back to watching the Oscars.
“Les Mis!” Emma shouted.
When Anne Hathaway won the best supporting actress award for her work in “Les Mis,” Emma was very happy. When “Les Mis” missed out on several other awards, Emma was not quite so happy. And, when the movie “Argo” won the best picture award, Emma felt like a Democrat after the 2000 presidential election.
“WHAT?” Emma shouted. “What kind of name is ‘Argo’?”
Eventually, Emma accepted defeat and got ready for bed. Later, as I passed her bedroom, I told Emma goodnight.
“Les Mis!” she shouted.
I decided I am glad the Oscars come only once a year.
DO YOU HAVE AN IDEA for Mike Pound’s column? Call him at 417-623-3480, ext. 7259, or email him at mpound@joplinglobe.com. Follow him on Twitter @mikepoundglobe.
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