I think writing, or blogging, about The Big Bang Theory and going to a taping made me think about this item next: a genuine Buzz beer right from the set of The Drew Carey Show.
Back in 2004, I knew one of the prop guys on the show, and he invited me to go to see them shoot the third to last episode, "Love Sri Lankan Style." That episode aired Sept. 1 2004 according to tv.com, but as I recall it was taped much earlier than that. The show took about four and a half hours to tape - excruciatingly long - but it took even longer because at the end they reshot two scenes from an earlier episode. If you think it's hard to laugh at a joke the third or fourth time they do a scene, imagine if you don't know the context it's in at all, on top of that. But it was well worth it because afterwards I got to walk down on the set and visit my friend and look around all the sets that were still standard on the show - Drew's living room, back yard, and the Warsaw Pub. (The office had been done away with, I think, in one of the many format changes the show suffered from. Or maybe it was just packed up for this one, I don't know).
I think since the show was wrapping up in two more episodes, they didn't mind giving me a bottle of Buzz Beer, the beer Drew, Oswald, and Lewis bottled and distributed out of Drew's garage on the show. One of the other crew members was impressed they were handing out a full, unopened bottle rather than an empty one - and of course it remains unopened to this day. I was told they were using a brand of non-alcoholic beer, and there's a little plain gold circle sticker on the cap to cover the real product's name. If you click for a close-up of the photo, you can see it actually says it's bottled in Cleveland, Ohio - a detail they wanted to include, I suppose, in case they ever had a macro-close-up shot of a bottle on the show?
A couple other quick notes about the taping: they gave out really good pizza, and I won a Drew Carey shirt from the warm-up guy (there's always a comedian to entertain the audience inbetween takes) for a having a loud and convincing fake laugh on the second take of a scene. I still have the shirt, and the laugh.
Getting this Buzz did, actually, lead me to start a collection of Fictional beverages which has now grown to include a whopping 5 items. I don't know how many fictional beverages may actually exist (a contradiction of terms?) but if I see them and I like them, I will definitely buy them.
Buzz is proudly displayed on a shelf in the "dining room" end of my apartment, along with my other fictional beverages
which I'll save for later posts. Close by though is one real beverage that I got that very night, Drew Carey Show bottled water. They passed it out as the evening dragged on and yes, I saved mine. I don't think you'll see many of these out there, though I'm sure several more went home over the years with other big fans. It's kind of collapsing in on itself. I guess that's what happens when you save bottled water for about four years? Well, if it ever looks like it's going to fold in on itself, or starts growing algae, I'll have to empty out that "Genuine Cuyahoga River Water." I'm not a big enough of a fancollectorgeek that I'd save it then!(P.S. Cap-beer-cino, by the way, was the rival to Buzz beer that Ed Begley Jr. sold in a single episode of the Drew Carey show. And yes, I'd love to find a bottle of it!)
