What Do You Get When You Fall In Love?
A Valentine’s Day Tribute to Burt Bacharach and Tony Soprano
by Fabienne Marsh
February 14, 2023
In February of 2019, the El Paso Zoo launched an event that sated both hungry meerkats and jilted humans.
It was an instant hit.
Despite the zoo’s instructions to protect the privacy of all parties by naming the cockroach with only the first name and first letter of the heartbreaker’s last name, people went crazy. More than 6,800 comments from the US and across the world infested the site with full names, cringe-worthy accounts of relationships, and high praise for the person who came up with the Valentine’s Day event.
Here are a few (full names deleted):
With Tony Soprano, you get revenge. Cute, fluffy, Alpha meerkat mothers whack babies in their own species.
With Burt Bacharach, who died six days before this Valentine’s Day, you get some of the most popular love songs ever written, yet even then, here’s what you get when you fall in love – ‘a guy with a pin to burst your bubble’, ‘enough germs to catch pneumonia’, ‘chains that bind you’ followed by ‘pain and sorrow’ (lyrics by Hal David, I’ll Never Fall in Love Again).
Thanks to the El Paso Zoo, vengeful or heartbroken valentines have a delicious alternative to Valentine’s day – one far less tragic, but perhaps equally cathartic to classic Greek spectacles.
Dionne Warwick will take our readers out with the 1969 hit, “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again.”
#RIPBurtBacharach and Happy Valentine’s Day!
Fabienne Marsh is the author of four novels and numerous works of non-fiction. Her film credits have appeared on dozens of documentary films and she has taught writing at both Johns Hopkins University and the University of Minnesota. She has served as a writer-consultant for Nickelodeon, HBO, Turner Broadcasting and Public Broadcasting (WNET and WETA). Her lighter works of non-fiction include Dave’sWorld, with co-author Michael Cader about David Letterman, and the coffee-table book, Saturday Night Live: The First Twenty Years, for which Marsh interviewed Candice Bergen, Steve Martin, Chris Rock, and other cast members. You can learn more about her at her website.
