Fridays, No More

Sometimes, there is news too cruel to accept, too confusing for our fragile minds to comprehend, too painful for our psyches to accommodate. We see reports of blood on the streets. Europe is bankrupt. The stock market goes up. The stock market goes down. Congressmen flash their hoo-hah all over the internet. And yet, through it all, there was Friday.

For those who are unaware of Rebecca Black (a doubtful prospect, indeed!) or her magnificent corpus of sheer Euterpean delight (i.e., her one and only song, "Friday"), she is a 13-year-old native of Anaheim, California, a middle-school student, who, on a shoestring budget, recorded a music video that quickly went viral, though deeming the whole phenomenon "viral" would understate the gravity and reach of viruses -- with 167,000,000 YouTube views (at least 4,000 of them being mine), more people have watched Ms. Black's video than died in the 1918 flu pandemic.

And so, each Friday and every Friday, from time immemorial (i.e. six weeks ago?), and, if I were to have my way, for all Fridays to come, it would always be Friday. This especially held true on Facebook, where, once a week (on Friday), I'd dutifully link to Ms. Black's oeuvre-in-its-entirety, "Friday." And all through the weekend, there'd be a barrage of text messages, phone calls, and emails expressing cheerful appreciation for my having shared.

"I cannot believe you got that [expletive redacted] song stuck in my head," some of them would say. "It took a whole week to get it out, and now, you've put it back in!"

"No need to thank me! Happy Friday, Friday!" I'd respond. And despite the ensuing threats of bodily harms should I ever post the video again, Friday was always Friday, and would continue to be Friday, for everyone and forever. Until yesterday.

(You may want to sit down for this next part.)

Rebecca Black's Friday has been removed from YouTube. I repeat this news -- this most terrible, terrible news -- for it bears repeating, though this time without hyperlink; I let the cold, black letters do their own work lest the message they convey be lost: Rebecca Black's Friday has been removed from YouTube.

Earlier today, I made this most inauspicious discovery when I went to go share the link on my wall. "The video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Rebecca Black," read the YouTube page that once directed me to the hullaballoo of early-to-mid-pubescent awkwardness. And then, underneath this proclamation, in smaller gray letters -- those mocking, taunting letters! -- the words: "Sorry about that."

Sorry about that, indeed. Art might be long, and time might be fleeting, but until Ms. Black's video finds its way back onto YouTube, Fridays shall no longer be Fridays. We are instead left with a hole in our existence -- no partyin', no partyin', no! -- and so many questions. How shall we learn to sail through our mundane, workaday lives; to march to the beat of that muffled drum, mortality; to wake up in the morning at 7 a.m., when we gotta be fresh, gotta go downstairs, gotta have our bowls of cereal -- all without Ms Black's song to guide us through this night? I ask you that. Friday, Friday, how shall we continue to get down with you, Friday? How shall everybody look forward to the weekend, weekend?

Until then, weak and feeble heart, shore yourself up; be brave in the face of such accursed malfortune! Fates, remove your grave portents, and may it be foretold that we might learn to have fun, fun, fun, fun once again, and that Fridays might be Friday once more.