–yet she couldn’t pick him out of a line-up.

His name is Parry Gripp and he’s one month away from turning forty three. He had some middling success with a West Coast punk pop band called Nerf Herder.  And he uploads a new song every week to his website and YouTube channel, most of which are inspired by internet memes.

For the past two decades, Parry’s plied his affably daft, post-modern vein of wit and whimsy, long on pop culture arcania and catchy hooks.  Now, with his increasing web success, his unique brand of absurdist bubble gum pop has spread like wildfire via word of mouth amongst the elementary school set.

And so after any day spent with her friends, my daughter comes home and surfs over to YouTube to check out their recommendations.  Lately, the vast majority of those have been Parry’s intentionally amateurish re-edits of popular video clip subjects like his masterful toe-tapper about cats flushing toilets, his madcap take on a chimpanzee riding a Segway, or his melancholy meditation on kids taking soccer balls to the face .  Every one of his good-natured videos features infectious singalong hooks, and so the kids spread his work faster than chicken pox.

Since he began uploading back in August of 2006, Parry has earned 40,675,647 upload views. His ditties can be downloaded as ringtones or on iTunes and Amazon.  And he invites everyone to join his list of nearly 72,000 YouTube channel subscribers.

About ten years ago when we started Element 79, a group of us developed an almost unhealthy obsession with this bit of Flash animated nonsense: “Peanut Butter Jelly Time” by the Buckwheat Boyz.  It was very silly, very catchy, and very 2002.

But this past Sunday morning, I heard at least two different Parry Gripp tunes, both of which could make viably silly musical updates for 2010.  First, is “Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom”–which celebrates adorable pets eating, and second is my daughter’s current favorite, “Fuzzy Fuzzy Cute Cute” which is almost Japanese in it’s manic, irrational celebration of all things adorable.

I’m sure you have better things to do today than to click on either of those links.  But if you like to smile, or simply wish Monday could feel more like Thursday, you might want to click away and spend three or four minutes tapping your toe to pure, grin-inducing, melodic bliss.

After all, there’s still a ten year old inside most of us.

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By Dennis Ryan, CCO, Element 79

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