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Are the People in Beer Commercials Really Having that Much Fun?

By Dean Norman

Dan Demaree was a white water canoeist who got a chance to make some money at his favorite sport. A TV camera crew hired him to paddle his canoe through Cucumber Rapids on the Youghiogheny River in Ohiopyle, PA. When Dan came through rapids, he jumped out of his canoe on the beach, ran up to a campfire, and someone handed him a mug of cool beer. Then the film director said, “Cut”, and an assistant grabbed the mug and poured the beer onto the ground. Dan thought, “What a terrible waste of good beer!”

The director asked Dan to paddle the rapids again to see if the camera could get a better picture. This time when the director said, "Cut”, Dan chugged the beer, and handed an empty mug to the assistant. The guy muttered, “It is very unprofessional to drink alcohol when you are working.”

The director kept asking Dan to do it again so they would have a lot of white water paddling to choose from for the final editing. Dan was glad to oblige. He enjoyed canoeing rapids, and he chugged another mug of beer at the end of each run. He began to feel a bit tipsy, but was able to paddle the rapids well. When he jumped out of his canoe and fell flat on his race, the director decided they had enough good paddling footage to make a good commercial.

When Dan told me his story he said he never saw the commercial, but he appreciated the check he got each time the commercial was shown on TV. I told the story to a friend, and she said, “Oh, I saw that commercial. He looked so cute with mud on his nose, and a goofy grin on his face.”

I told Dan which cut they had used, and he was pleased. “I had fun paddling the rapids, and I saved some good beer from going to waste.” So the answer is, “Yes. Sometimes those people in beer commercials really are having that much fun.”

— Dean Norman 

Dean Norman is a cartoonist and humor writer, whose work has appeared in greeting cards,The New Yorker, MAD Magazine, The Cleveland Plain Dealer Sunday Magazine and The Kansas City Star. He's also written comedy for cartoon shows and written and illustrated children's books. He illustrated a cartoon book for Cleveland Metroparks, Cleveland Metroparks Adventures.

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