Remember that scene in Forgetting Sarah Marshall when the hot concierge that the main character goes out on a date with tricks him into getting up onstage at a local bar and singing a song from the vampire opera he’s been pouring his heart and soul into composing? Remember? The guy adopts a Transylvania accent, right out of a Count Chocula commercial and adds a sadsack tone to his voice that gets the bar full of local islanders practically crying in their beers: “…die…die…die…I can’t” the guy sings in his plaintive, slow-motion-like wail as he drops his head down and to the side on the last note. Even the hot concierge undergoes a tranformation in that moment, seeing the guy as a real person, with a real heart and real emotions – unlike the goofy bastard that dumped her a few years back. Remember how funny and perfect that song was – in the movie? In the movie, it brought two people together.
Now imagine your husband singing the same refrain, over and over. Imagine it’s 10:30 p.m. and you’re flossing your teeth, trying to tell him about something important that your boss did to you that day, some great injustice that needs to be expressed. You glance in the mirror and see your husband in the walk-in closet, pained expression on his face that might also indicate a furious case of gas and those words dripping from his sad lips: “…die…die…die…I can’t” as he throws one limp sock, then another, into his already overflowing laundry basket. Imagine he’s still singing it as his your head hits the pillow. Then, you’re head starts singing it – well after he’s snoring.
Fast forward eight hours. Kids are looking for their backpacks, which they left “RIGHT HERE LAST NIGHT” but that somehow have evolved into upright, walking hominids and split since then. Someone needs her hair brushed while you’re brushing your teeth (a talent most moms have, yet try their best to not let anyone find out about) and the twelve year old wants to give you a hug. A hug? At seven-twenty in the morning??? There’s no time for hugs! About this time you realize your husband has picked up where he left off last night with his serenade and “…die…die…die…I can’t…” drifts into hearing range, which means he isn’t doing anything because you know damn well that he uses both hands to dramatize the song, spreading his arms apart as if an enormously fat woman of his dreams is going to spring into them.
Are you imagining it? What are you feeling?
“Die…die…die…I can’t.”
Christine Forest, M.D. says
This post is so funny! You are very talented! Relating something so agonizing like insomnia, in a funny, lighthearted way takes talent indeed.
Keep writing!
Signal Lost says
Funny.
I heard the writer of the song interviewed. He played it for Judd Apatow who first told him to never play that song again b/c it wasn’t funny. Later, while making this movie the writer suggested it again….
Lisa Ricard Claro says
Ha,ha!! Stephen King calls those songs that stick in your head “ear worms”. Guess you got worms! I’ve never seen this movie, but I suppose I’ll have to rent it now just to chuckle when I hear the song.