SAN FRANCISCO — Deadbeat dads across the nation demanded some sort of summer music festival featuring Cinderella and Damn Yankees, confirmed sources.
“Punk fathers have Warped Tour, metalheads have Riotfest, and tryhard dads accompany their kids to Lollapalooza,” claimed 55-year-old Ted Anders. “All I’m saying is that dads like me, who sent gifts on most birthdays and almost went to their graduation, deserve a kick-ass concert, too! Someone needs to think about us men for once. What’s the point of paying local taxes if your town isn’t gonna reward you with a summer fest featuring the metal acts we got wasted to back in high school and last weekend?!”
Journalist Carl Vickers studies Reddit forums most frequented by deadbeat dads.
“Some of their exact requests vary from region to region, with fail-fathers in Florida expecting the concert to punctuate a weekend carnival with exotic animal petting zoos and nightly wet t-shirt contests, while puerile patriarchs in the upper Midwest seem more interested in deep discounts on pitchers of Icehouse Beer for military veterans and anyone who can produce a concealed carry permit,” said Vickers. “But there seems to be consensus among online deadbeat dads that Cinderella should open and close their set with ‘Gypsy Road’ and Damn Yankees should give Ted Nugent free rein to improvise batshit crazy theatrics with a crossbow.”
Cheryl Ann Wilcox, family therapist and adult daughter of a loser dad, noted that it is quite common for deadbeats to fixate on a perceived slight and not let it go until they’ve blown that fixation so out of proportion as to poison whatever minimal trust or meager goodwill exists in their relationships.
“Summer festival planners need to remember that the demands of deadbeat dads are largely bluster,” Wilcox said. “Even if municipalities were to cave and somehow book these bands, and even if they give Ted Nugent a green light to stage some grandiose spectacle of his retrograde politics, the track records of most deadbeat dads demonstrate that they won’t even show up to see it. Or that they’d get so drunk pre-gaming before the fest that they’d pass out in the parking lot at 1:00pm.”
At press time, the nation’s deadbeat dads forgot to pick up their kids from school after Winger came on the radio.
