BILL KURTIS: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME, the NPR news quiz. I'm Bill Kurtis. We are playing this week with Peter Grosz, Helen Hong and Luke Burbank. And here again is your host at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.
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PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you, Bill. Thank you, everybody. Right now, it's time for the WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME Bluff The Listener game. Call 1-888-WAIT-WAIT to play our game on the air. Hi, you are on WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME.
BILL SPENCER: Oh, hi.
SAGAL: Hi.
SPENCER: (Laughter) I'm surprised. Hi, this is Bill Spencer, and I'm calling from Cockeysville, Md.
SAGAL: You know, we're all a little surprised to find ourselves here at this point in our lives but let's make the best of it. You're from Cockeysville?
SPENCER: Yes, everybody thinks a great deal of themselves.
SAGAL: I can imagine.
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SAGAL: Well, welcome to the show, Bill. You're going to play the game in which you must tell truth from fiction. What is Bill's topic, Bill?
KURTIS: Oh, Dad.
SPENCER: Oh, boy.
SAGAL: Dads embarrass us all the time. I am one. I know this. They wear cargo shorts, they tell dad jokes, they say their daughter Ivanka is really hot. This week, we read a story about a dad humiliating his daughter in a whole new way. Our panelists are going to tell you about it. Pick the real one, you'll win our prize - Carl Kasell's voice on your voicemail. Are you ready to play?
SPENCER: Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Oh, boy.
SAGAL: Does that mean yes?
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LUKE BURBANK: In Cockeysville that is a colloquialism for yes.
SPENCER: Yes, I am more ready than I can imagine.
SAGAL: All right, well, here we go. Your first story of dadness (ph) comes from Peter Grosz.
PETER GROSZ: Brian Burkstein (ph) of Lexington, Ky., was as proud as any father of the bride could be, which is why, for his wedding gift, he wanted to surprise her with something truly special and unexpected. And it was indeed the last thing Ellie and her new husband Mark expected when they walked into their wedding reception and discovered that instead of the band they had hired after months of research, the evening's musical entertainment would be provided by her father and his acapella group from college.
Brian had corralled the members of the group, cleverly titled Melodious Thunk, and called the real band to cancel the week before. So guests expecting to hear wedding standards like Kool and the Gang's "Celebration" were instead treated to acappella classics like Bobby McFerrin's "Don't Worry Be Happy." I kept waiting for the real band to show up, said one partygoer who wished to remain anonymous to protect her anonymity, but then my dad and his friends just kept whacking their chest and making clicking noises. I was mortified.
Burkstein never expected his daughter to have such a negative reaction. As he told the Lexington Herald later, when Ellie was a kid, she loved listening to our old Melodious Thunk CDs. She loved "No Instruments Required," our album of Phil Collins covers, "Funk 182," our Blink 182 tribute and "Ja-capella," our all reggae album. No word yet on where the happy couple is honeymooning or whether they will ever come back.
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SAGAL: A dad surprised his daughter at her wedding with his own old college acapella group. Your next story of a dad doing what dads do comes from Helen Hong.
HELEN HONG: Laney Stephens (ph) was always proud of her dad Paul's career as a working actor. She'd post on Instagram, Dad's playing a waiter on "Two Broke Girls," yes, #afterlife, #superstar, #blessed. All of that daughterly adulation came screeching to a halt when Papa Paul landed a huge national ad campaign for Viagra. Suddenly, Laney's dear old dad was giving suggestive glances to a noticeably younger woman on national television all while a sly voiceover asked, when the moment is right, are you ready?
But it got worse from there. The Viagra campaign made its way onto a giant billboard only six blocks away from school. Nearly all of Laney's classmates had the privilege of driving past a nine-foot-wide version of her dad's face emblazoned with the slogan, are you ready? Laney never heard the end of it. Her new nickname became Are You Ready? You ruined my life, Dad, the teen lamented. Dad, feeling bad, attempted to right this wrong the only way an actor would. He took out another billboard featuring a father-daughter photo and a sign saying, Laney, I'm ready...
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HONG: ...To apologize.
SAGAL: An actor embarrasses his daughter with a Viagra ad and then makes it worse. Your last story of paternal petrification comes from Luke Burbank.
BURBANK: Being an NFL referee is a thankless job. At the end of the day, all you can hope is that you made some decent calls, gained a little respect from the players and forced Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young to marry your daughter, or at least that was one ref's hope, apparently. In his new memoir, Young tells the story of his days as a Tampa Bay Buccaneer. Quote, "partway through the second quarter, I'm in the huddle when the head referee taps me on the shoulder. Can I talk to you for a second, he says. I step away from the huddle. Hey, listen, my daughter's going to BYU. Next thing I know, he starts trying to convince me that I should meet his daughter."
But the striped matchmaker was not done yet. Near the end of the game, Young took a hard sack and committed a critical fumble, which looked like it was going to cost Tampa the game. That is until the ref in question threw a flag negating the play. Young claims the ref then casually walked past him and whispered, she likes Italian food.
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SAGAL: All right, here are your choices. One of these dads managed to embarrass his daughter in one of these ways. Was it from Peter Grosz, how a dad fired his daughter's wedding band to replace it with his own acapella group from school, from Helen Hong, an actor who embarrassed his daughter by starring in a Viagra ad campaign and then taking out a billboard to apologize, or from Luke Burbank, a dad who was an NFL referee and tried to set his daughter up with quarterback Steve Young in the middle of a game? Which of these is the real story of a dad going well beyond the call of dadly (ph) duty?
SPENCER: Oh.
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BURBANK: Not so Cockeysville, are you now?
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SPENCER: Oh, boy. As painful as they all are, the least painful, I think, is the one about the acappella group in the wedding.
SAGAL: So you're going to go then for, I believe it was Peter's story, of the acapella group Melodious Thunk showing up at a wedding much to the bride's consternation. Well, to bring you the real story, we spoke to someone who knew a little something about it.
BEN ROHRBACH: The ref turned to Steve Young and said, by the way, my daughter likes Italian food.
SAGAL: That was Ben Rohrbach with Yahoo Sports.
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SAGAL: He was talking about Steve Young's claim in his new book that a referee once tried to set up Young with his daughter in the middle of a game. Amazingly enough, that was the true story. I'm sorry, you did not win our game. You earned a point, though, for Peter for his very musical, musical bluff. So thank you so much for playing.
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SPENCER: Well, thanks for having me. It's been great fun.
SAGAL: Thank you so much. Bye-bye.
SPENCER: Bye-bye. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.