Crying all the way to the bank...

For the past week I have been obsessed with Rebecca Black's viral YouTube video "Friday." And not just the video, but all the covers and parodies that her video has spawned. It's like this life force that keeps growing and growing and shows no sign of slowing down.

As of 11:13 this morning, Rebecca's video has logged 42,872,054 hits on YouTube. Most of them mine.

We, we, we,  so excited. We so excited.

When I first saw Rebecca Black pop up in the media, I ignored the stories thinking she was just the newest youngster to release a music video. Yawn. They are a dime a dozen, right? Then her name wouldn't go away. It was everywhere. Then it showed up in the facebook comments of my friends, and I started paying attention.

In fact, my entire life changed that magical day last week when I clicked the play button and heard "Friday" for the first time. Let's reminisce, shall we?

For the first twenty seconds or so, I sat there blinking. My mind quickly uncoiling. WTF? What is going on here? What is this? This is not a song, this is an embarrassing weird monotone something, but it's definitely not a song. It's got to be a joke. Twenty more seconds and a smile swept across my face. Yes! It's a song alright! It's quite possibly and unintentionally the worst song ever, but it's a real honest-to-god song. Then I was sad. How awful for her. Oh no... poor Rebecca Black.

Fascinated, I started clicking away and did my homework. In the course of one week, Friday had morphed from an appropriate 4,000 YouTube hits to millions and millions (and millions and millions). Good Morning America jumped on the Rebecca Black bandwagon and featured her in a human interest story:

Rebecca is such a sweet girl. It broke my heart that comments about her video made her cry. People can be so mean. And yet... look who is crying all the way to the bank!

There is so much to say about this video - most of it having already been said. Yeah, the song is dreadful. Yeah, it's fun to make fun of. Fun, fun, fun, fun. You know what it is.

It's been a week, and I still find myself inexplicably drawn to this song. It's ricocheting around in my head as I type this. I hum it at work. I even downloaded it on iTunes. Yeah, I did. And I'm not the only one. Friday is currently #31 on the top 100 downloaded songs list (down from #13). Now, I'm not a math wizard or anything, but I think that makes Rebecca Black an overnight millionaire and will probably garner her a spot on the Forbes Richest People In America List - somewhere around the Oprah position.

Did you know... the Jonas Brothers spoofed her in concert? Jay Leno featured her on the Tonight Show? Conan parodied her with his own version "Thursday." The list goes on and on including sixteen other worthy covers and parodies, the Groundhog Day remix, plus the Christopher Walken version which is probably my fav. Even Hitler, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Taylor Hicks, and the Abominable Snowman respond to Rebecca Black!

And then there's "Gang Fight" by Bad Lip-Reading.... This is what happens when you have too much idle time on your hands. But gosh, it's freaking hilarious!

So yes, Rebecca Black is now a household name. She's only thirteen and she's famous. And she's rich. Except she is donating all the proceeds of the sale of her song and video to disaster relief for the earthquake vicitms in Japan. How do you like her now?

So, who gets the last laugh here? Beckydoodle, that's who. And she who laughs last, laughs best.