Good morning, Hank, it's Tuesday.  Soon it will be your 40th birthday and today, I would like to tell you the story of the great white whale of a birthday present I have been maniacally chasing for the last 14 months.  Like Herman Melville's Captain Ahab before me, I couldn't stop chasing the dream, even as it destroyed me and now here we are. 

So Hank, our story begins back in 2010 when I discovered the Sing-A-Ma-Jig.  These toys sing when you squeeze them and they either sing a series of notes or when placed in a different mode, they sing an actual song.  Like, this one plays "When The Saints Go Marching In", etc.  

Now, many Sing-A-Ma-Jigs were produced and they played a variety of different songs.  There was a pink one that played "Skip To My Lou", a green one that played "London Bridge is Falling Down", and so on.  There were also seasonal Sing-A-Ma-Jigs like Christmassy ones that sang "Jingle Bells" and there were Sing-a-Ma-Jigs that held smaller Sing-a-Ma-Jigs that could harmonize together.  For a toy that was never particularly popular, Fisher-Price made a huge variety of these things.  I mean, there's a Fourth of July Sing-A-Ma-Jig that plays the US National Anthem.  

But Hank, if you go to the Sing-A-Ma-Jig wiki, which I recommend everything about and you dig long enough, you will discover that almost a decade ago, Fisher-Price released a set of three Sing-A-Ma-Jigs called "The Hits!"  They were for sale only at Tescos in the United Kingdom and only for a very limited time, but one of them, Hank, one of them played Smash Mouth's "All Star".  This is the All Star Sing-A-Ma-Jig, the Sing-A-Ma-Jig, Hank, that plays the song that has obsessed your days and nights for decades.  

I mean, Hank, you once very seriously proposed to me that we make a 478 part video series analyzing each of the 478 shots in the music video for All Star.  You're on record saying that the remixing and re-imagining of All Star by the internet is one of your favorite things about online culture, and who can blame you?  All Star and the internet's responses to it are like, the ultimate marriage of the sublime and the ridiculous and so much of our brotherhood has been about finding and sharing the places where silliness meets wonder.

So clearly, I had to find an All Star Sing-A-Ma-Jig for you for your 40th birthday.   Just two problems: One, there aren't very many of them and two, they must be amazing because the people who have them really don't want to part with them. 

Hank, I don't know how much you know about the ruthless world of Sing-A-Ma-Jig collection, but on two separate occasions, I've been ripped off by people who claimed to have the All Star Sing-A-Ma-Jig but turned out not to, and then earlier this year, I Face Timed with someone who showed me their All Star Sing-A-Ma-Jig and I told them the whole story about me and you and my great love for you and your great love for the song All Star and we agreed upon a price and then the collector decided at the last moment that no, no, they just couldn't part with their All Star Sing-A-Ma-Jig.  

Perhaps Melville said it best when he wrote of the All Star Sing-A-Ma-Jig, "There is, one knows not, what sweet mystery behind this Sing-A-Ma-Jig whose gently awful stirring seemed to speak of some hidden soul beneath.  For here, in this All Star Sing-A-Ma-Jig, millions of mixed shades drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries, all that we call lives and souls lie dreaming, dreaming." 

Hank, I am sorry that I have failed to get you the Sing-A-Ma-Jig that contains all that we call lives and souls.  I hope you have a happy birthday nonetheless?

Also, if you have any ideas for what I could get Hank instead or if you happen to have an All Star Sing-A-Ma-Jig, let me know.  Hank, the years start coming and they don't stop coming.  I'll see you on Friday.