Hi Dad! You’re a really hard person to buy gifts for! I was going to buy you pounds and pounds of edibles, but Dennis let me know that he’s got that covered, so I didn’t need to risk getting arrested at the airport. So I thought, “What could I get you that would compliment the weed?” So I got you the best pair of noise-cancelling headphones in the world, a super heavy weighted blanket, and ultra-comfy socks so that you can go into a sort of sensory-deprivation chamber the next time you get super high on edibles. But that leaves one problem: What do you have that you can listen to?!

I know this is silly, but I sang and recorded a bunch of songs that I remember singing in the car with you when we were kids. There are a couple that didn’t make it on here for various reasons - Music of the NIght is too hard for me to sing, and By Jeeves and Sunset Boulevard are just really bad songs - although I remember listening to them a million times on our trip to Colonial Williamsburg! (What a weird place, by the way - remember that place that had giant statues of all the Presidents’ heads? Weird.) I just wanted to show you that I remember all of the great times we’ve had as a family, and especially on our one-on-one trips to CW, Boston, Philadelphia, D.C, and more. I love you, Dad.

I remember seeing Brian Stokes Mitchell and Ernie Sabella in Man of La Mancha when I was pretty young. We were sitting in loge, and I absolutely fell in love with the person playing Aldonza/Dulcinea. I remember mom saying what a huge fan of Brian Stokes Mitchell she was, and I sang so many songs from this show for years and years after we saw it.

This is one of the earliest songs I can remember listening to in the car with you, along with Music of the Night. We saw Les Misérables more than once, but I remember that you would get exciting every time this song would come up. Every time I would be surprised that it wasn’t the end of Act I; there are like four more songs before Act I is over!

This is the actual Act I closer, and probably the reason I fell in love with musical theater in the first place.

In case you can’t tell how much I love you, Dad, I learned and sang the hardest song in the world from Jesus Christ Superstar. I remember seeing it on Broadway, where they were holding camcorders and stuff and it was real weird, and then I remember seeing it years later in that tour with Ted Neeley as a way-past-his-prime Jesus. He has an amazing voice, but it was pretty weird seeing 60-year-old Jesus.

I remember Jekyll and Hyde being the first Broadway show that I liked and you didn’t. I didn’t even know that was possible! In hindsight, it is not a particularly great show, but I still remember talking to mom about the stuff I liked while we were waiting for our car in that parking garage for ages.

Now this is a song we all loved. I’m sure by the time we saw Aida you were already all tired of me listening to show tunes constantly, but this was one song that you and mom would ask to hear more than once when it came on. I have a specific memory of staying at the Luxor hotel in Las Vegas and playing this song from… my laptop? Maybe the TV’s music system?

I feel so lucky that we were able to see Wicked with the original cast! Mom loves Kristen Chenoweth, Idina Menzel is a huge Disney Princess now, and I don’t think I’ll ever have the chance to see Joel Gray in anything now that he’s 90 years old! The theater was amazing, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be in a theater as beautiful as the Gershwin ever again.

I tried my best to channel Colm Wilkinson as I sang this, but of course I don’t think anybody has as beautiful a falsetto as him. Not going to lie, when we saw Les Misérables on Broadway, I thought this was the most boring song in the world.

Okay so you don’t know this song - this is actually a song that Jack Black performed for the game we released this year, Psychonauts 2. I just thought it would be a fun thing to add!

I love you, Dad!