Those of you who are extremely alert and observant with incredible memories for trivial things may remember that in my last taping report, I was unable to take notes because I was sitting in the front row. Well, I’m sorry to say that even though I did bring my notebook with me to this taping (which you’ll read about later), I won’t be able to take notes for a very long time. I will probably always have to sit in the front row whether I want to or not, so all of my reports will be from memory, at least from this particular weekend. Even more unfortunate is that I am writing this report about a month after the actual taping, so the parts that I promised myself that I would remember have already slipped my mind. So I’ll do the best I can, but again, the games aren’t in order and I’m probably missing a lot of moments.

For this taping, Kathy Griffin was the fourth seater. I must say, she was much better than I anticipated. I expected her to be loud, obnoxious, hyper and annoying and try to take charge of every scene without listening. Maybe I had this opinion of her because she played that sort of a character on “Seinfeld,” which is where I originally saw her, and I still had that image in my head. I am pleased to say that I was wrong. She listened well, contributed to scenes, and there was a pretty even give & take between her and the others. It was still a shame not to see Chip, but in my humble opinion, I’ll take this Kathy over the other one any day.

What they wore:
Wayne: half black, half blue shirt, black pants.
Kathy: Green shirt, black pants.
Colin: Blue shirt,
Ryan: Maroon shirt, gray pants, red and white saddle shoes.

Drew came out and did his usual question & answer session with the audience, and he seemed much more lively and awake than the night before. Subsequently, there were fewer awkward pauses between games. This weekend, and this night in particular, Drew had a strange obsession with Dan Patterson’s “BURN VICTIM” joke during his speech. He couldn’t seem to get enough of repeating it. At some point towards the end of the night, some crew guy decided to have a little fun with the studio monitors, and while Drew was on camera during one of the breaks, the words “BURN VICTIM” started flashing up on the screen under Drew’s face. Drew didn’t know why the audience was laughing so hard since he couldn’t see the monitors himself.

Questions Only: The scene was a passionate beach romance. All I remember was Wayne taking off many thongs.

Hollywood Director: Ryan was a hunky golf instructor in love with his new golf student, Kathy. Wayne was Kathy’s rich, elderly husband who rides in on a motorized cart. Colin entered the first time saying, “In the word’s of Rogers & Hammerstein...the hills are alive with the sound of CRAP!” He had them redo the scene as obnoxious drunks (during which Kathy gave Ryan a big kiss), Fosse (Wayne was the standout of course), insult comics, and sexy Germans. Michelle reminded me of a bit of dialogue that occurred after the game:
Drew, "2,000 points to Kathy for kissing Ryan."
Colin: "I don't get any points for kissing him."
Ryan: "Shhh that's only during the show."

Let’s Make A Date: Kathy was the contestant. Wayne was a blind blues singer who was singing while milking his heifers. Colin was a persistent, aggressive car salesman trying to get people to test out the newest models, the Wayne and the Ryan. Ryan was an old drunk western harlot who was still convinced she was young enough to keep her job. I remember Colin going into the audience and picking on a girl in the center part of the front row telling her to try sitting on Ryan and Wayne, and exclaiming “look at the lovely hood ornament on this one,” bringing back the “Ryan and his big nose” jokes. After the game was over, Ryan said something about thinking that he was supposed to play something to do with cabbage. I’m drawing a bit of a blank here...apparently there’s some word that rhymes with or sounds like “harlot” that has something to do with cabbage...maybe some other vegetable. Can anyone help me out? All I remember was finding it clever.

Sound Effects: Colin was the police chief and Ryan was an angry mob leader. They were sneaking into Frankenstein’s house. At the beginning, Ryan and Colin were walking across leaves in the forest, but for some reason, many of the movements of the rest of the scene were accompanied by a similar sound. In the end, Ryan used suction cups, and they too made the sound of leaves. If I remember correctly, this was a very good game, but the two women who provided the sound effects worked for Warner Brothers and had some association with Whose Line, so they said they wouldn’t be able to air it. Someone correct me if this actually happened on Saturday, it’s likely that I switched the days.

Two Line Vocabulary: Ryan’s lines: “I want out” and “What does that do?” (Didn’t they already use that line in another episode?)
Kathy’s lines: “Are you kidding?” and “I love this!”
Colin could say anything. The scene was an Indiana Jones scene. I noticed that for the first few moments of the game, someone held up a cue card behind one of the cameras that said their lines on them so that they wouldn’t forget them. I remember thinking that this game went pretty well. I’m becoming very fond of Two Line Vocabulary. I remember at one point, Kathy grabbed Colin’s rear end and said, “I love this!”

Greatest Hits: Drew asked for a place that you would go on an anniversary, and they ended up using Circus. Wayne and Kathy were both singing for this game. The opening involved Colin saying something like, “We’ll be right back to our documentary, Cows in Panic, the making of Ryan’s shoes...” The only styles that I remember were blues, punk, Irish jig, heavy metal, boogie woogie, and rock-a-billy. Colin started a vicious trend with this game, which luckily didn’t last particularly long. He said something about Doogie Howser having a bad cold and something was hanging out of his nose...a Doogie booger...hey, that’s sounds like “Boogie Woogie,” thus, his lead-in to the next style. To make fun of him, Ryan later said that a lot of good music comes from Philadelphia, so you shouldn’t make fun of them. You shouldn’t mock a Phili...hey, that sounds like “Rock-a-Billy!” After the game, Drew made up a similar pathetic, obscure connection leading into “A thousand points.” Ryan commented, “I saw you writing something intently over at your desk, I was wondering what that was!” The interesting thing is I noticed the same thing. This Greatest Hits was pretty good, but the only one that stands out from this weekend of tapings was Saturday’s. It was classic. But, as usual, I’m getting ahead of myself...

Newsflash: I was really excited that they did this game since we were sitting so close to the green screen. It was kind of difficult to see the monitors that showed the image projected behind Colin, but I think I saw enough to get the main idea, which was lots of mice and rats. Ryan’s clues were great. He “accidentally” called Colin “Ben” at one point, and said that it was so disgusting that he “need look no more.” He also mentioned that Colin had a “mind like a steel trap”, asked about the closing of the show “Cats,” and commented that something was “cheesy”. He said that Colin was a mafia/mob informant as well. It took me a while to get the reference to “rat.” As for Kathy’s clues, I honestly felt like she was watching a different projection than the rest of us, even though she and Ryan were looking at the same monitor. I have no idea what any of her clues meant, they made no sense at all. Colin still managed to guess correctly.

Press Conference: Colin was the first man to make love on the moon. I remember thinking that Tony once had this same character on the British version during Press Conference. Some of the questions were even the same.

Song Styles: And in come the celebrity guests, as always! For this taping, they had Miss America, to whom they sang as any boy band and David Hasselhoff, who got a gospel song style. Please forgive me if I misspelled his name, as I have no interest in “Baywatch.” In fact, I’ve never even watched it. The only thing that I found interesting about him was how tall he was. He looked like he was almost Ryan’s height. In fact, later during a credit reading, they stood back to back, and Ryan was just barely taller than David.

Living Scenery: It was a batman scene with Ryan, Colin, Wayne, and Miss America. She was very poised and had energy on stage, which I enjoyed. I know it’s a requirement of Miss America, but it was nice to see a special guest with a personality.

Three Headed Broadway Star: They played this game twice. First, they sang to Drew with the song, “I Can’t Live Without Your Buzzer.” Then they brought back David H. and he, Ryan, and Wayne sang to a girl sitting a few rows behind me named Venus. The song was something like, “I Love Your Mother.” David couldn’t seem to grasp the concept of one word at a time. He kept singing full phrases. It was pretty funny. Afterwards, Ryan said, “Hey, Drew, remember the first time you did this game?” Apparently, he had the same difficulty. They filmed three different pickups to this game.

Dubbing: Wayne was the voice of David. Colin was a woman who was swimming/drowning, and David was saving her. Ryan came in as the jealous boyfriend. At one point, David forgot that Wayne was supposed to do the voice for him and he accidentally used his own voice. It was pretty funny.

Irish Drinking Song: Tattoos.
They did this one a few times. By the last verse, Colin needed to rhyme something with “store.” I don’t remember what he said, but at the end, but it didn’t get a particularly strong reaction, so Colin asked the audience, “Should I have said whore?” The unanimous answer was yes. They did the game again, and Colin’s last line was “I like whores!” even though it didn’t rhyme with Wayne’s lyric or make any sense in the context. Also during one of the Irish Drinking Songs, Colin ended for no apparent reason with the line, “There’s blood in my stool.” This became a running gag of the evening.

Party Quirks: Kathy was the host.
Wayne: Chatty manicurist who gets possessed with a Scottish demon
Colin: Stud wannabe practicing pickup lines in a mirror but then messing up when trying them on real women.
Ryan: Apartment maintenance worker who solves problems like the hero of an action film.
Despite the fact that Kathy had trouble guessing, it was a fairly good game. I just couldn’t stop thinking about how much better it would have been if Wayne’s quirk had been given to Colin. Colin pretended to look in a mirror and smoothly say a line such as, “If I told you that you had a nice body, would you hold it against me?” and then turning to Kathy and shouting, “Nice boobs!” He did this twice (with a different pickup line to the mirror, but the same mistake when trying it on Kathy) before Kathy came close enough to guessing it for Colin to be buzzed back to his seat.

Helping Hands: Kathy was the bride and Ryan was her wedding planner. I don’t remember much from this game other than thinking that it was one of my favourites. I remember that there was a bottle of champagne which Ryan drank. Ryan said that it was real champagne, so Colin brought the bottle behind Ryan’s neck and took a big drink of it himself. It was hilarious! I’ve never seen him do that before.

Weird Newscasters: Colin was the anchorman.
Kathy: Clueless teenage girl calling her friends that she’d made it onto “Whose Line is it Anyway.”
Wayne: Don King selling his new “Improve your sex life” video
Ryan: Las Vegas Magician using old, cheesy dad tricks as if he was David Copperfield.
One of my favourite parts about going to tapings is watching the performers before they’re on camera. Naturally, since Ryan was closest to me and I always used to wonder what he did before it was time for him to do his quirk, I watched him while Kathy and Wayne were doing the headlines/sports. Bizarrely enough, Ryan was watching me as well. I tried to avert my gaze just because I felt awkward, but every time I turned back to watch him, he was giving me a strange, thoughtful look. I had no idea what was going on in his head, but I found out soon enough. When it came time to do his quirk, he did a couple of lame tricks on stage, then started walking towards the audience. He walked up to me (as I predicted that he would after those looks he was giving me) and took my jacket. He draped my jacket over my foot, pulled off one of my shoes and asked, “Is this your shoe?” as if he was making it appear by magic. It’s a good thing those shoes are about a size too big on me anyway, because otherwise he might not have been able to get it off. I never thought having oversized shoes would come in so handy in such a situation! Anyway, he gave me back my shoe, brought my jacket onstage and announced, “For my next trick, I will use this simple jacket which has absolutely nothing in it.” Then he noticed the very conspicuous bright yellow notepad with an equally bright yellow pencil sticking out of the pocket, and continued, “...except for this pencil and paper, but I’m *not* going to use them!” I was so embarrassed! People probably assumed that I’d brought a pencil and paper so that I could go autograph seeking after the show, when in reality, what he was holding up was my book for taping notes. I wrongly anticipated that I wouldn’t be sitting in the front row again for this taping, so I was expecting that I’d be able to take notes, and thus, write a better report. I didn’t plan my jacket ending up on stage with my notes in them, otherwise I would have taken them out! Anyway, he draped my jacket between Kathy & Colin’s chairs, went behind it, crawled backstage and up some aisle, crawled through the audience, and ended up “magically” in one of the studio seats (afterwards, he commented, “I was getting my ass pinched and squeezed all the way through that row!”). After the game was over, Wayne picked up my jacket from the chair and handed it to Ryan, who in turn, walked over and gave it back to me, saying, “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.” I’m not sure what he was sorry about. Maybe he assumed I’d gotten frostbite in that icy studio. He wasn’t too far off.

They filmed this game again in the pickups, this time with Kathy as Colin’s bitter ex wife and Wayne as the Soul train morphing into an awkward white guy. Ryan’s quirk stayed the same. Before the pickup for this game, Drew said, “Welcome to Whose Line is it Anyway, the show where everything’s made up and the points don’t matter. That’s right, the points are just like...Canada!” Colin wasn’t too happy with him about that, and there as some banter. Subsequently, Colin’s first story as the news anchor was, “Canada declares war on Drew Carey.” By the end of Wayne’s quirk, he had actually pulled a white guy out of the audience from behind Drew to take his place on stage. They didn’t reshoot Ryan’s quirk at all, so if they air this game...well then my jacket will be making its big television debut!

Scenes From a Hat: Random observation: Every time Kathy got buzzed at the end of her suggestion, she would jump, look surprised, and run back to her place next to Wayne. It got kind of old after a while, especially when she continued to do it during World’s Worst. However, I must give her credit, as she contributed to the game a lot more than Kathy Greenwood ever has (then again, I’ve never been to a Kathy Greenwood taping, so I probably shouldn’t judge. Maybe she contributes a lot and none of it gets aired. I really don’t know). I actually have a relatively large amount of information from this game since I remembered to write some stuff down in my nifty (soon to be famous) yellow notebook right after the show. Here’s some of what I remember: For the topic, “unusual items for your neighbour to ask to borrow,” Kathy asked to borrow a husband, and Colin asked to borrow monkey testicles and a coke (which was a reference that resurfaced again later, I think in a Drew game). For “bad times for a passionate kiss,” I know there were a lot of funny ones, but I don’t remember too many. I think one of them was walking down the wedding aisle, one of them may have been at a funeral. I do remember that Wayne finally got to really kiss Drew. He also kissed Colin. They pretended to walk down a wedding aisle again for the topic of “bad times for your water to break.” For “bad things to say the first time you see someone naked,” Wayne sympathetically said, “Aww.” Colin said something like, “That reminds me, I need new tire treads.” I don’t remember for certain what the scenes were, but some other suggestions included “using a sexy voice for unsexy things” (I think Ryan may have asked, “Do you want fries with that?” but I could be wrong) and “bad things to shout during sex.”

Drew Games:
Props. They played two rounds. That’s all I remember. This game really ought to retire.

Worlds Worst: Topic: World’s Worst person to sit next to in an office. Wayne was the winner. Kathy came forward with many ideas. Many were bad, a few were good, but I have to give her credit for having the guts to get off the step and take some risks. Again, it seems to be more than I can say for Greenwood from what I’ve seen so far. I remember Colin stepping forward and singing a bizarre little song whose lyrics consisted of the repetition of “I like Tapioca, I like Tapioca.” I also remember Colin pretending to sit down, stand up, look at the place where he was just sitting, and proclaiming, “There’s blood on my stool!” I feel really badly because I know there were some other suggestions that I should be remembering, but it was too long ago.

Irish Drinking Song: Graduation
I can see how people get sick of this game. It never seems to end. Before this game started, Colin said something to Wayne like, “Well, my last line isn’t going to be cock sucker!” At the end of the song, when time came for Wayne to say the line with which Colin would have to rhyme to end the song, he made his last words “rock sucker,” leaving few rhyming choices for Colin. Instead of backing out on his word, he just stood there silently smiling and didn’t sing the last line. After the game was over, Colin proudly said to Wayne, “See, I told you I wouldn’t!”

Themed Restaurant: The Wizard of Oz. This is one of the best Themed Restaurant games I’ve seen in a while. Wayne used the water to make himself melt as the Wicked Witch of the West. He was also the tin man at one point, and he spilled water on himself which made him rust. Ryan held the menu in front of his face, read off the specials, and then drifted away shouting, “Pay no attention to the man behind the menu!” Wayne did his munchkin and flying monkey imitations.

Credits: They filmed two with Miss America. In one of them, everyone else was talking about her behind her back after she’d won the pageant. In the second one, everyone was in a bar and Ryan and Colin were ignoring Miss America and trying to pick up Kathy. However, Ryan decided that instead, he would take this opportunity to hit on Miss America, and in the end, they linked arms and he lead her off stage behind the green screen. They also filmed two with David H. In the first one, he was helping drowning people. In this one, he decided that he had to do mouth to mouth with Kathy. In the second one, they were people running in slow motion. Another credit reading of which Michelle reminded me was Wayne sees boyfriend Colin with Kathy. When a cat fight erupts, other girlfriend Ryan breaks them up. I remember thinking how strange it was that this was just a credit reading, as it seemed like a full scene to me.

Special thanks to Michelle for reminding me of so very much :)

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