It’s time for this week’s Song Title Challenge.

Me and my big mouth.  A couple of weeks ago I made an innocuous comment to bumblepuppies about longer song titles being more challenging than one-word titles, and he took it as an invitation for the ultimate challenge.  Thus he sent me Regretting What I Said to You When You Called Me 11:00 On a Friday Morning to Tell Me that at 1:00 Friday Afternoon You’re Gonna Leave Your Office, Go Downstairs, Hail a Cab to Go Out to the Airport to Catch a Plane to Go Skiing in the Alps for Two Weeks, Not that I Wanted to Go With You, I Wasn’t Able to Leave Town, I’m Not a Very Good Skier, I Couldn’t Expect You to Pay My Way, But After Going Out With You for Three Years I DON’T Like Surprises!! by Christine Lavin.

The full title is actually Regretting What I Said to You When You Called Me 11:00 On a Friday Morning to Tell Me that at 1:00 Friday Afternoon You’re Gonna Leave Your Office, Go Downstairs, Hail a Cab to Go Out to the Airport to Catch a Plane to Go Skiing in the Alps for Two Weeks, Not that I Wanted to Go With You, I Wasn’t Able to Leave Town, I’m Not a Very Good Skier, I Couldn’t Expect You to Pay My Way, But After Going Out With You for Three Years I DON’T Like Surprises!! Subtitled: A Musical Apology and at ninety-seven words is the longest known song title in the English Language.  (Apparently there’s a Russian song that tops out at 155 words (English translation 180), but lets just stick with the English song for now.)

Including spaces and punctuation this song title 481 characters long.  To put it in perspective for you, you’ll need four tweets just to tweet this song title (explaining the title of today’s post).  It’s too long for a google search string (which cuts off everything over thirty-two words) and takes up a third of my total word count for the Song Title Challenge.

In the words of the immortal Barney Stinson, challenge accepted.

To find out how the Song Title Challenge works or to suggest a song title for next week, visit the challenge page now.  You can also leave a suggestion on the Facebook page.

bumblepuppies did not include the subtitle in his suggestion (even though it’s actually part of the song title), so I’m just using Regretting What I Said to You When You Called Me 11:00 On a Friday Morning to Tell Me that at 1:00 Friday Afternoon You’re Gonna Leave Your Office, Go Downstairs, Hail a Cab to Go Out to the Airport to Catch a Plane to Go Skiing in the Alps for Two Weeks, Not that I Wanted to Go With You, I Wasn’t Able to Leave Town, I’m Not a Very Good Skier, I Couldn’t Expect You to Pay My Way, But After Going Out With You for Three Years I DON’T Like Surprises!!  The genre is Fantasy/Sci-Fi.  Here goes nothing.

Regretting What I Said to You When You Called Me 11:00 On a Friday Morning to Tell Me that at 1:00 Friday Afternoon You’re Gonna Leave Your Office, Go Downstairs, Hail a Cab to Go Out to the Airport to Catch a Plane to Go Skiing in the Alps for Two Weeks, Not that I Wanted to Go With You, I Wasn’t Able to Leave Town, I’m Not a Very Good Skier, I Couldn’t Expect You to Pay My Way, But After Going Out With You for Three Years I DON’T Like Surprises!!

YOU HAVE THREE NEW MESSAGES.  FIRST MESSAGE:

“Hi, it’s me.  Listen, I’m just calling to say I’m really regretting what I said to you when you called me 11:00 on a Friday morning to tell me that at 1:00 Friday afternoon you’re gonna leave your office, go downstairs, hail a cab to go out to the airport to catch a plane to go skiing in the Alps for two weeks, not that I wanted to go with you, I wasn’t able to leave town, I’m not a very good skier, I couldn’t expect you to pay my way, but after going out with you for three years I don’t like surprises!!  But really, it’s not your fault…

NEXT MESSAGE:

“Me again.  Your stupid machine cut me off.  Anyway, my therapist reckons it has to do with my dad who took off on that space liner and never came back, and he and mom never thought to prepare us beforehand, and one day he was just gone, and it caused me to develop some issues with people leaving suddenly, and then you left suddenly, and it caused all the old fears to rear their heads again, but really it’s projected anger at my father, and…

NEXT MESSAGE:

“Me again.  You really should get a different machine, you know?  As I was saying, I’m not really mad at you, and I really shouldn’t be mad at my dad either, after all it’s not his fault his liner was hit by a stray asteroid while the shields were down for maintenance, but there you have it, I have issues.  I love you and please don’t get eaten by a yeti, don’t you dare laugh at me, yetis exist, I saw this program once on National Geographic and they…

VOICE MAILBOX FULL.  TO RECEIVE NEW MESSAGES, PLEASE DELETE EARLIER MESSAGES.  TO DELETE MESSAGES NOW, PRESS 1.

Copyright © 2014 Herman Kok (And probably Christine Lavin, as she contributed a third of this story.)

Here’s one of the many, many covers of the song available on Youtube.  I picked this one because of the ukulele.  Ukuleles are cool.

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