Loving Lucy. . .Day One: Hello Out There in TV Land!

I can hardly believe it, but September is here! Wowza! Can it be? We spent last month on a Cakewalk (browsing through photos of my cakes). This month we’ll spend thirty days together “loving Lucy.”

I’ve been a Lucy fan for as long as I can remember. My favorite non-fiction book in highschool was titled Lucy, Ricky, Fred and Ethel: The Story of I Love Lucy. I read it over and over again. Just couldn’t get enough.

I’ve chosen to highlight various episodes of I Love Lucy because the heroine in my latest book (Scarlet/The Icing on the Cake) is nuts about the wacky redhead.

I can’t help but start with the most famous episode of all, one you’re sure to remember. It’s titled LUCY DOES A TV COMMERCIAL. In this now-infamous episode, Lucy does a “Vitameatavegamin” health tonic commercial. The tonic (which is 23% alcohol) makes her more than a little tipsy. In fact, she ends up completely intoxicated. Hysterical!

I’m sure Scarlet could really relate to this episode in particular because something similar happens when SHE appears on TV for the first time. Oh, she doesn’t get drunk. Not exactly. But she gets overheated and (after going without food) passes out cold in front of the television audience. What a mess! Check out the scene where she faints dead away with Armando at her side:

I could feel Armando’s stare, even with my eyes closed, so I opened them and peeked at him.

“And again I ask. . .are you all right?” He took hold of my arm. “Your face is really red.”

I put my hands on my cheeks and could feel them burning “It’s just so hot in here. It’s hot to you too, right?”

“Yeah, it’s warm, but not the kind of hot you’re describing.” He gestured to a chair in the back of our little area. “I think you need to sit down, Scarlet.”

In spite of the spinning room, I could not—would not—sit. Not with a wedding cake to bake in front of millions of people.

            Wedding cake.

            We are baking a wedding cake, right? Not a birthday cake?

            Wait. I think we’re baking a turtle cake for a little boy, right?

            No. A baby shower cake. That’s why I have blue fondant gel in my pocket.

Strange. I couldn’t find the bottle of fondant gel in my pocket. Forcing myself back to the task at hand, I made a conscious decision to keep going with this Italian-themed wedding cake. No matter what.

Only one problem—the little white stars. I saw them every time I blinked. When I looked at the cake, there they were. And when I shifted my gaze to mama’s face in the television audience, I still saw them. After a minute of two, I felt sick. Really, really sick. My stomach did the hula, and the stars morphed into magnificent, shiny orbs floating in front of my eyes. Before long, they consumed me. A surge of nausea gripped me just as the camera swung round to get a close-up of our cake. Panicked, I tried to decide what to do. If I bolted, everyone would know I was sick.

Okay, not that I could bolt. My vision—blurry as it was—had now disappeared completely.

But my stomach—oh, my stomach! The cameraman, likely sensing my problem, swung the camera around to the Alvarez family just in time for me to grab a mixing bowl—an empty one, thank God—and empty the contents of my stomach, feeble as they were, in front of everyone in attendance.

At this point a gasp went up from the audience. Not that it mattered. By now, my vision was nothing but stars.

Stars, stars, and more stars.

I gave myself over to them, floating away on a cloud of white.

***

If you want to find out what happens to Scarlet, I suppose you’ll just have to get a copy of the book. I will leave you with a little clue, though. . .she ends up just as humiliated as Lucy. Maybe more so!