Prude, Nudes, and the Fall of Zane Lamprey - Part 1

Depreciation

[dih-pree-shee-ey-shuhn]

-noun
1. decrease in value due to wear and tear, decay, decline in price, etc.
2. a lowering in estimation.
3. an inevitable side effect of having a bunch of loud and obnoxious fanboys.

"Every night, in every city around the world, it happens; people pour into local watering holes to...well...drink!  It's my mission to traverse the globe getting to know these different people and their drinking customs, bellying up to the bar, and with any luck making some new friends."  

So goes the prologue to every episode of Three Sheets.  Don't worry, you'll get to hear all about the Prude and the Nudes along with the rest of my first official day to Eat Drink and be Merry in Part 2, but Part 1 is going to focus on Three Sheets and its host Zane Lamprey.  They're both huge reasons why I wanted to do this blog and work well as topics for this transitional post between my last two introductory posts and where I want to take EDM going forward. 

By the title of this post you can probably tell that Zane has become a bit of a hero of mine.  Unfortunately, you can also probably tell that he's done a bit of something to screw it up. Before I get to his fall, let's establish how he ever got in a position to drop.  I first stumbled upon Zane and the show Three Sheets sometime between January and March of 2009 during the worst tax season of my 10 year career.  The flood of 2008 ravaged too many small businesses and business owners in the Cedar Rapids area to count.  When tax returns for those years were due in spring of 2009, the accounting and tax return challenges those businesses faced probably created about 30% more work than a normal, already overworked filing season presents.  I loved having the chance to help those people out, but a man can only work so many hours before he gets giddy.

So when an ice/snow storm made it impossible for me to get into work one Saturday I took the opportunity to catch up on some well deserved and greatly needed veg time in front of the TV.  I stopped for a moment on the seldom watched and now defunct channel called MOJO...and didn't change the channel or get up from my spot (except to grab a beer after the first 30 minute episode) for about 2 hours.  They were running an all weekend marathon of a show I had never heard of before.  That show was Three Sheets.  This one minute promo for the show on its second (and coincidentally also now defunct) network, The Fine Living Network (FLN), serves as a nice introduction to the concept of the show.



For the rest of that tax season the show became a 30 minute vacation I could go on at the end of any day I needed to.  My wife got hooked somewhere along the way and we've been fans ever since.

Two key elements make the show work as well as it does.  1) Like makers of a great wine, the production team has the ability to balance and blend the relatively mundane informational aspects of the show with the comparatively mindless entertainment that inherently comes with a show about drinking, into something more than the sum of its parts.  2) While that is just fine and dandy, they wouldn't have any footage to put together without Zane.  His methods are almost hypnotic.  He's able to sit down with and befriend just about anyone, and in a short period of time connect with them to the point that their conversation sounds like that of two people who grew up robbing candy stores together.  The greatest in-show example of Zane at his best could only come from this one minute clip from the Las Vegas episode of Season 3 (be sure to have the volume up a bit, as the sound this makes in real time about 32 seconds into the clip is just ridiculous):



Put in this situation, I'm guessing the average A through D list celebrity wouldn't have been able to pull that off.  They would have been too busy dumping some over-proof liquor on the guy and setting him on fire (imagine a cell phone chucking Naomi Campbell, policeman slapping Zsa Zsa Gabore, or tirade throwing Christian Bale).  The Three Sheets sound guy creates a lot of great effects for the show...he didn't need to do an ounce of work for that one.

The legend grew last July in Chicago when I went to a party he was throwing for a few hundred fans of the show with my sister, her boyfriend, and my wife.  One of the day's events was everyone getting a chance to have a picture taken with him.  We were last in line and afterward I let him know how much my wife and I enjoyed being able to take a bit of a vacation with him and the show whenever a long day at the office warranted one.  His head jerked back a bit as if the comment took him off guard (which might be explained a bit with his comment about chugging beer two paragraphs down), thanked me in the humble down to earth manner with which you see him treat everyone he meets on the show, shook my hand, and took off to get started on the next part of the party.  It was the ultimate EDM moment before I even knew what one was.

Fast-forward to March 2010.  The four of us found out that Zane's new traveling show Drinking Made Easy (an odd mix of stand-up comedy, Three Sheets, and a musical number or two) was making some stops in the Midwest in June.  We didn't really know what to expect, but in the spirit of Three Sheets (and now EDM) the four of us used it as an excuse to get out of the house, head up to Madison, WI, and have some fun.  Unfortunately, the show was probably the low-light of the trip.  It was less about expanding a person's horizons and inspiring them to get out to see the world in a merry manner, and more about just getting drunk.  I understand this was a different type of venue, but the balance that made Three Sheets work so well was really nowhere to be found.

I knew we were in for trouble early in the show.  Zane walked out to say a few words of thanks to everyone for coming out to support him and the next thing I knew he said something along the lines of and now for what it seems to be the one thing you guys want to see me do anymore and proceeded to chug a beer.  Disheartening at the time, but reflecting back on the moment, I guess it gives me a bit of hope because it seems he may not be completely oblivious to the problem: playing down the integrity of the show to the loudest and most obnoxious fans only because they are the easiest to hear.

Time will tell, but I really hope this is just a way for him to earn a living and continue to promote Three Sheets until he gets the green light to start another season, rather than the beginning of an inevitable end.  Whether it's fair to them or not, we always see our heroes as something more than we are, so whatever his motives, it's disappointing to know he let it go to where it has.

Most would say it was inevitable, but there you have the rise and fall of Zane Lamprey.  I still feel somewhat loyal to him and will forever be a fan of the existing episodes of Three Sheets.  My goal is to keep the spirit of the show alive in this blog as long as I continue to do it.  The writing will hopefully get better (I don't know that it can get worse).  And who knows, if I try to keep up this ridiculous notion of relating each post to a word ending with "-ion", I've already got the word for a potential future post in the bag...everyone loves a good redempt-ion story.

So, what is the current state of Three Sheets?  It's been over 18 months since the last episode was shot.  But there is hope as re-runs of the first four seasons of the show have been picked up by The Travel Channel on Wednesday nights at 10:00 and 10:30 central time. Plus, the network has promised to produce a new season 5 if the ratings warrant one.  If interested, all 50 episodes of Seasons 1-4 can be viewed anytime for free at www.hulu.com/three-sheets.  Like anything else I'd recommend starting at the beginning.  If you ultimately fall in love with the show like we did, DVDs of seasons 1, 2, 3, and 4 are all for sale on amazon.com.

I'll be back soon with Part II.

Until then, take a day to Eat, Drink, and be Merry.