I Love Lucy Furniture

Game night out

Something I discovered the other night in WeHo was that no matter how much you think you know about Lucille Ball, there's someone out there who knows more.

Marcus and I met up with his friends to truck it on over to newly opened Westside hot spot VODVIL (pronounced "Vaudeville!"). His friend Brian Nesbitt holds hosting duties at the 70's game-show themed restaurant.

Yes, people, have heart, there are still themes out there that have yet to be discovered! The furniture is 70's deco (avocado green and burnt orange), and it took all my mental acumen to rise up a hazy memory of my Aunt's old kitchen into nostalgic clarity.

At Vodvil, near Canter's Deli on Fairfax, you play the other tables in trivia. My inner competitive Monica Geller began to stir out of her slumber at the mention of this. First up, memory games. They showed us the poster for "Titanic," and instantly we four gays, no stranger to memory games, leapt into every single insignificant detail about the poster.

"Leo's shirt is white, his suspenders are leathery brown!" "Four smokestacks on the ship!" "It says 'From the Director of T2, Aliens and True Lies!' Remember that order!"

We were golden. I knew I had a winning team. Never underestimate the power of a gay guy to make the insignificant significant. What the world ignores today, we know will be a trend tomorrow.

Break. Time for drinks. The cocktail menu had game-show themes as well. Would you like a "Brand New Car"? How about a "Drink Martindale"? Marcus got a "Center Square," an ungodly good Green Apple and Minty bourbon selection. I settled on a "In the (blank), Bob". Gin, soda and strawberry puree.

Ten points to your table if you recall the Newlywed Game butt sex reference of this drink.

As the drinks wore on, every twenty minutes our charming ginger host Brian would re-emerge with a new game designed to focus our rage on the sonofabitch smarty-pants table in the back. The topic was Current Events.

I rolled up my already rolled sleeves. We slaughtered that table. We knew everything from where the Obamas vacation (Martha's Vineyard) to which of these crazy things did Michele Bachmann NOT say (The "North Koreans are our allies" gaffe was actually Sarah Palin's blather, not Bachmann's).

I Love Lucy - The Complete Second Season | Great Chocolate ...

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Season 2 of I Love Lucy includes two of the most famous half-hours in television history. "Job Switching," originally broadcast mid-September of 1952, is the crazy, battle-of-the-sexes episode in which husbands Ricky Ricardo (Desi Arnaz) and Fred Mertz (William Frawley) trade roles with wives Lucy (Lucille Ball) and Ethel (Vivian Vance), culminating in the men making a shambles of domestic chores while Lucy and Ethel take disastrous work at a chocolate factory. That's right: This is the show where the ladies have a Chaplinesque experience with a too-fast factory conveyor belt, forcing them to hide candies in their mouths, in their hats, and down their blouses lest a tough forewoman fire them for incompetence. A half-century later, the scene is still so fresh and funny it would grace any current sitcom. "Lucy Goes to the Hospital," which received an amazing 71.7 rating on January 19, 1953, is the historic episode featuring the birth of Little Ricky and a load of wonderful slapstick. Other television series ( The Dick Van Dyke Show ) and movies ( Nine Months ) have tried to top Lucy 's time-to-go-to-the-hospital shenanigans, but there's nothing like the sight of Ricky and Fred falling all over themselves or Ricky showing up at the maternity ward (direct from a voodoo-themed show at the Tropicana) in witch doctor makeup.

The other 31 episodes included in I Love Lucy: The Compete Second Season have choice moments, too. "Lucy Becomes a Sculptress" finds the ever-ambitious redhead falling for empty flattery at an art-supply store and commencing an ill-advised career working in clay. Ricky agrees to bless this new endeavor if an art critic says she has talent, but Lucy tries to increase her chances by posing as a bust of herself--resulting in mayhem, of course. The usual running themes in I Love Lucy --Lucy's misguided desire to be a part of Ricky's musical career, and her penchant for disguising herself to investigate something--are all over The Complete Second Season . "Ricky Loses His Voice" is a delightful piece in which Ricky's laryngitis inspires Lucy, the Mertzes, and an aging chorus line to put on a Tropicana spectacle, and "Ricky Has Labor Pains" finds Lucy and Ethel going undercover as male reporters to find out what happens at a stag party.

I Love Lucy, Celebrating Fifty Years of Love and Laughter

I love Lucy

I Love Lucy: A Celebration of All Things Lucy, Inside the World of Television's First Great Sitcom

I Love Lucy, The Complete Picture History of the Most Popular TV Show Ever, Authorized by the Lucille Ball Estate

LIFE