Dear Parents,
We are pleased to announce that Adams Middle School has partnered with Live Nation to make it easier for you to purchase tickets to the upcoming Seventh-Grade Band Concert and all future performances, including the much anticipated Waiting for Godot: The Musical, written by our own Ms. Kelley. The cost of all tickets will still be just $5, plus a convenience fee of $20.95, a processing fee of $1.17, an equity tax of 0.2% of your gross annual income, a translation fee of $4.22, a hazard abatement surcharge of $0.22, a mandatory concession purchase of at least two burned brownies and one cookie with giant generic-brand M&Ms that taste like peas for $12, an optional upgrade of $42 for seats where you can actually see your child, and local sales tax of $0.42 (which I should note is not the company’s fault).
We anticipate huge time savings at the performance, as you will no longer have to stand in line at the card table while Mrs. Ramone looks for your name on the list of “good parents” who remembered to purchase advance tickets. Just download the Live Nation app, and give it permission to access your photos, contacts, social media activity, location, and at least one bank account, and you’ll be just one search and seventeen taps away from scoring those prized front-row seats that are set so close to the tuba player that he might drop his instrument on you!
Another advantage to this platform is that you’ll be able to resell your tickets safely and legally if you cannot make it to the concert. Say your kid gets a stomach bug just before the big show, and you’re mopping up the spattered half-digested remains of that day’s chicken finger and macaroni lunch special, and you’re thinking, This is actually better than listening to twelve-year-olds play “Carnival of the Animals.” But you’re bummed to be out five bucks. Well, now you can use the app to put your tickets on the block and maybe help out another Adams family that has found itself with a last-minute need for additional seats. Resale fees may apply.
Live Nation’s concessions team will run the bake sale table this year. We expect significant improvements from private enterprise here. They’ll take the coffee cakes, cupcakes, and unidentifiable treats you donate, put them on new, color-coordinated paper plates and sell them back to you at a 400 percent markup. We get a 2 percent royalty on all sales. So dig deep to support our band.
Live Nation affiliate PerfectImage will also record the performance and use exciting new AI technology to capture your child’s likeness. You’ll be able to order the full concert video, a version that shows your child sitting center stage in front of everyone and playing as if they’d actually practiced, or deep fake versions with your child starring in Mama Mia!, West Side Story, Apocalypse Now, or any of hundreds of other major motion pictures. By participating in the concert, you agree to give PerfectImage the rights to use your child’s likeness and any image derived from it in any media now existing or yet to be invented in perpetuity and indemnify the company against any possible future claims that your child is in any way a derivative work of other copyrighted work. Please note that our contract with Live Nation forbids photography or video during the performance.
Remember to use the hashtag #AdamsBandbyLiveNation on all your social posts (but again, no photos). I signed a contract that committed to at least five hundred posts generating 25,000 impressions, and if we don’t meet that goal they will repossess our school’s mascot box turtle, Fred. So let’s all show some Adams Spirit (sponsored by Live Nation)!
You may notice company representatives in the gym to monitor our compliance with the licensing and exclusivity terms of our agreements. They will be armed and empowered by our contract to protect the interests of Live Nation during the performance. For your own good, do not even think of taking any photos or videos.
We’re looking forward to a busy end of the year with our annual student-staff softball tournament, sponsored by Lockheed Martin, featuring surface-to-air flyball interdiction. And don’t forget our Eighth-Grade Stepping Up Ceremony, which will conveniently be held in the parking lot of the Johnsonville Meat Packing Plant so that all the new graduates can immediately start their first shift now that it’s legal for thirteen-year-olds to work the overnight.
Sincerely,
Principal Mike