10 commentsFor your reading pleasure, another episode of everyone's favorite 50's-esque sitcom, featuring me + my Jack
I Love Lulu
The series runs almost daily and is set in one of our living rooms. The show is not scripted, not taped in front of a studio audience and is the winner of zero Emmy Awards. But if I’m lucky, will rerun forevermore.
The Cast ::
Lulu
She's naïve and ambitious, with an overactive imagination and knack for getting herself into trouble. Known for her Puerto Rican + Jew-‘fro, Lulu appears as a scatter-brained entrepreneuress with the 'America's darling' ability to turn an ordinary situation into a completely unprecedented disaster. Yet underneath the cover of her unconventiional ways and teenagerish antics, she wholeheartely yearns for stardom.
Jack
Lulu’s gay husband, Jack, is the dapper, distinguished, disarmingly talented and very smartly dressed gentleman to her consistently disheveled mess. The show provides Jack ample opportunity to display his considerable talent in making slapstick, sickenly charming and somehow elegant. Jack also exhibits many standard issue 1950's housewife traits – he's secretive about his age (a lady never tells) and obides (sometimes) by a self-prescribed practical and utterly bothersome shopping allowance (this, managed by Lulu).
Jack's nerve is constantly being tested by his 'wife's' hijinks, and she often has some 'splaining to do'!
Goin’ Retro
Lulu + Jack are the quintessential Honeymooners. Deeply meant for each other, madly in love, and bound for life. Because they like their values old-fashioned. He’s the balls and she’s the ol’ chain, and that’s how they prefer it. There isn’t a difference that hasn’t been reconcilable by very dry martini.
They laugh, they sniffle into handerchiefs, and sometimes want to boink each other over the head with a frying pan. Their banter is the picture of politeness and pernicketyness.
And here are a few of their favorite things
Coffee talk ::
served from Grandma’s very finest china, coffee talk is taken seriously. It is scheduled, diplomatic back and forthery, comingled with the utmost in juicy, judgey neighborhood gossip.
A night out ::
dressed to the nines and done in high style. To the theatre gloves are worn by all parties.
A night in ::
includes formal cocktail hour (sometimes he wears the pearls) followed by an evening of
Proper lounging ::
she will fetch him crustless finger sandwiches and a tall glass of perfectly frothed almond milk (from the espresso machine's steamer), he will don house-slippers and enjoy a chocolate cigar, a hot-off-the-presses People rag and a snoozing pooch at his feet.
Slumber parties ::
a glorious (and rebelliously late) night filled with giggles, experimental hairdos, obsessing about boy-crushes, sleeping in separate twin beds, full night gowns.
Holidays ::
on a traditional holiday it will take both of them all day to produce one perfect Norman Rockwell turkey. They will lie and say that one of them has laboured over it. Tony’s market will generously provide the side-dishes. They will lie and say that the other has laboured over the side dishes.
Hunting ::
involves neither guns nor animals (unless you count eligible bachelors).
It is agreed that viable prey must be well groomed, well mannered, cultured, refined in the art of dance and chivalry and being dashingly handsome.
My Jack is the summertime expert I never knew I always wanted. When at the pool, I find it very handy that I can now point out Burberry swim trunks (that aren't the signature plaid design), Gucci knockoff sunglasses, men that are trying to be gay but aren't doing a very good job, and classy ladies who are wearing 'inappropriate for their body-type' bathing suits (and why my two-piece Roxy is perfect in every way). As we delicately sip our vodka/fresh squeezed lemonade cocktail served up in a Louis Vuitton thermos, I also learn how I live in the grandest of neighborhoods and who will be the finalists in this season of the Bachelor (it is episode two). It doesn't even matter if I'm not absorbing my issue of US Weekly, because low-and-behold the person sitting right next to me may as well have been the editor-in-chief.