Musicals are an interesting phenomenon. Not only is everyone in a musical either reasonably attractive or hideously disfigured, but everyone on stage at any given time bursts into song over really small things, like finding a shoe in the bushes. My sister and I started an ongoing musical a few years ago which never gets written down on paper and changes constantly, based upon whatever we think is really funny at the time. It's mostly about our family, but sometimes a song gets thrown in there that's about a stranger who does something interesting, or something we have to eat that's really good. For example, I wrote a song last week called, "My chocolate chip bagel and me." It was a pretty nice song, but sometimes they're not so nice, which is why we probably couldn't ever sell our musical. A good 90% of the songs are making fun of somebody, and we wouldn't want to hurt anyone's feelings.


Hahahahahaha....I totally lied just there. It has nothing to do with hurt feelings, we're just pretty sure no one wants to sit through 12 hours (just an estimate, since we have a ton of material) of songs about the polyester pants my mom used to wear when we were kids that made a swishy noise, or about getting explosive diarrhea in an airplane bathroom when it's a small plane and you know everyone can hear you. My favorite in recent years was the one I wrote about the lady who sat next to me on a plane and peed her pants so much that when we landed, the sides of my leg was all wet with her pee. Yep, that really happened. I know, I couldn't believe it either, and with my OCD issues, I almost died. I think most people would've, though, even normal ones without hand-washing issues. So I made a song about it, to the tune of "Lay, Lady, Lay" by Bob Dylan. It's called "Pee On My Leg." The best part is that the someone else wrote the music, and the words are constantly changing so I don't ever write them down. That would ruin it. It's also the worst part, because it's way more work than I want to do, so the musical probably won't ever happen. I usually only write a stanza or two and then move on to something else, and it'd be hard to get a whole musical together out of scraps. It's also way more difficult to start up a gang of Cockney pickpockets than you'd think, and that shuts us down about half of the time.


If life was more like a musical, it would probably be really fun, but also embarrassing. I would have to run out of the room and hide a lot. Still, it would be worth it sometimes because you could celebrate something that happened that was awesome, or you could be all sneaky and hide something while singing about it, and nobody would ever notice because they'd be used to it. I don't think I'm perky enough to take part, but watching it would be entertaining. I'd have to really psych myself out to actually start singing like that in a place like the grocery store or a library.


Oh, and I don't like Glee at all. Just in case you were wondering. I love Jane Lynch and I think she'd be hilarious in most anything, but those kids make me want to throw myself in front of a train. So this has absolutely nothing to do with that kind of thing. You know, shows that are all uplifting, and you feel like you learned something at the end? Yeah. That's not my style. Neither is Cats. Generally, I can find something to laugh about in any situation, but that thing is a mess. When I was dragged to Cats by a friend, I mostly just sat in my seat feeling ashamed for the actors, and occasionally looked over at my husband, who also had his mouth hanging open in astonishment that that piece of crap even got made in the first place. I'm pretty sure that someday T.S. Eliot is going to come back to life to beat the crap out of Andrew Lloyd Webber.


I may make a musical about that. In the last two minutes, so many new song ideas have flooded my brain that I can hardly bear it. I think I'll call it, "You Can Sell Anything but Talent" or maybe, "Wow, People Really Will Buy Tickets to Anything!". The possibilities are endless. After all, it won't really be uplifting, and you won't have learned a thing by the end. Just as it should be.