Zane Lamprey, the host of cheeky travel shows Three Sheets and Drinking Made Easy, has launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund his new show, called Chug. Whether you love travel, drinking or just good comedy, Chug is going to be a show you won’t want to miss.
While it will certainly involve drinking, Chug won’t just be about pounding beer. The show gets its name from the mode of travel Lamprey will use as he finds new drinking holes—the train.
The new show will also allow Lamprey to once again explore all of the crazy ways people around the globe get absolutely sloshed together, while somehow still managing to be surprisingly informative.
Basically, Lamprey’s MO involves traveling to unique drinking locations, breweries, distilleries and wineries to experience the interesting and bizarre customs people have, especially when it comes to alcohol.
After both of his successful shows were kicked off the air, and when none of the mainstream networks wanted to promote what they viewed as just a drinking show, Lamprey decided he’d take his idea directly to all of the alcohol enthusiasts out there who love his irreverent humor and drinking expertise, and who also love to learn about new places.
The Kickstarter campaign will give Lamprey the funding needed to make the show longer than the previous 22–24 minutes, and if a network did decide to pick it up, all of the excited Kickstarter backers would get exclusive rewards ranging from behind-the-scenes footage to T-shirts to an actual appearance on the show itself.
If you love world travel and learning about all of the fantastic things you can do with alcohol, you’ve probably watched Three Sheets and Drinking Made Easy by now. Despite the alcohol, or possibly because of it, Lamprey manages to expose the beautiful, hilarious and terrifying differences between people all around the world, as well as their surprisingly similar habits.
In Three Sheets, Lamprey went to places like Belgium, Croatia and the Philippines. Whether he’s jumping into beer baths in the Czech Republic or grabbing drinks from a molecular mixologist in Hamburg, Lamprey’s eccentric humor charms locals into opening up, resulting in one damn fine travel show.
Drinking Made Easy, a national twist on Three Sheets, follows Lamprey as he travels all over the U.S. It’s even come to our very own Rose City. He stopped into Mint/820, a bar that I didn’t even know existed but that evidently creates delicious cocktails from fresh ingredients like avocados and cilantro.
He took a stroll over to Hopworks Urban Brewery to check out its carbon-neutral location and its Beer Bike, which can carry two half-barrel kegs and three pizzas and has a solar-powered MP3 player. Evidently, HUB heats their product using biofuel wastes like french fry oils from local restaurants.
Lamprey even went downtown and stopped by Portland’s oldest-operating restaurant, Huber’s Cafe, to try one of its famous Spanish coffees. After lighting the Bacardi 151, spilling a bit of Kahlua and sloshing the whipped cream, Lamprey expressed a sentiment common to many Huber’s patrons when he jokingly asked, “Is it possible that I feel drunk already?” after a single sip.
You can expect to see some very zany things in Lamprey’s shows, like a stuffed monkey named Pleepleus, whose appearance is the cue to take a drink of your own. Lamprey’s pal Steve McKenna also sporadically pops into episodes to down a beer or five, run around naked with Lamprey and add some inappropriate—but welcome—humor.
Whether you find different cultures fascinating or want to see all of the ridiculous things the locals manage to get Lamprey to consume—like viper rum—Chug will be a show that won’t disappoint. Jump onto Kickstarter before the campaign ends on June 1 and see what it’s about, and maybe send in some money for a T-shirt.