MTTS

My friend Leah finally nagged me into listening to Wicked. I had this mental block against it because I didn't really like the book and just figured the musical would be the same. I've had the cast recording for ages and just never really put any effort in to listening to it (which means listening to it with no distractions). I ran out of books on tape to listen to last week and keep forgetting to update my iPod with the other books I have to listen to, so one day on the way to work I decided to listen to it.

Wow.

I'm an idiot.

It is so good! The story is really kind of sad, but the music is so great! I've been listening to it endlessly for the past week. I love it when I have a new musical to break in. The only bad part is you wake up with songs in your head that you don't know all the words to, so you find yourself shouting out things like "Good news! She's DEAD!" and "Loathing, unadulterated loathing!" at odd times. Or you mutter "Eleka nahmen nahmen ah tum ah tum eleka nahmen" to yourself at the copy machine.

This does make your co-workers look at you oddly, even when you sheepishly explain it's a tune stuck in your head from a musical.

I think I have a diagnosis on this now. I think I have Musical Theater Tourette's Syndrome (MTTS). It's a disease that mainly effects musical theater enthusiasts and manifests itself in the odd non-sequitur of lyrics being shouted/sung at odd moments. As far as I can tell, this is not fatal, but can result in embarrassing moments.

Are there enough other MTTS sufferers out there to merit a support group? If so, I'm going to see Curtains at the Lakewood Theater this Saturday. We could meet up there.

P.S. Just so you know Wicked isn't the only musical that this happens with. You have to be careful with lines like..."Being on the elevator when somebody shouts "Hold the door!" and then what follows!