Hollywood Game Show Sparkles at LCC

Editor: Geoff Daw
Date: 2024-02-10

Sparks and laughter resounded from the Lakefield Curling Club on the evening of Saturday, January 27th, and warmed the cold winter air, as The Not-So Newlywed Game played out in front of an audience of 100+ members and friends, all in the mood to shake the winter blues!

And shake them, they did!  This fundraising evening – organized and co-hosted by club members and event planners extraordinaire Barb McKee and Jan Dutcher – was set in the club lounge where walls were covered floor-to-ceiling in sparkly blue foil streamers and warm white lights.  Attendees were plunked into the middle of a 1970’s glitzy game show set!

Before the evening’s entertainment began, and following a Happy Hour of LCC socializing, ticketholders were treated to a delicious dinner of Thai chicken soup, pork loin with accompanying vegetables and condiments, and a refreshing strawberry delight dessert.  Kudos to convenor Sharon Cooper and her team of Rosemary Towns, Jackie Ouellette, Shirley Alexander, Vicki Cole, Carol Kidd, Lois Cole, Eileen York and Elaine Schlauch, for providing such an elegant dinner!!

Then, on with the show…!

Co-hosts and wannabe actors Barb and Jan, set the stage for the evening with their opening skit about Age and Attitude, all the while bedazzling in their blue- sequined bell bottoms and platinum hairdo’s!  They introduced the 5 Not-So Newlywed couples for the evening with a blurb about the couples’ respective relationships:  Lou Anne and Rob Hanes, Jennifer and Patrick Croome, Joyce and Keith Manser, JoAnne and Paul Graham, and Helen Lynett and Roger Maloney.  Their marriages ranged from 33 to 47 years, their costumes from the 70s!

Game show host Bob Eubanks – played perfectly by Jeff Darling (or was it Danny Zuko?) – was introduced to the crowd, and the show was underway!

 The premise of The Not-So Newlywed Game is to determine how well the couples know each other by predicting what their spouses will say in answer to various specially chosen questions.   3 questions were asked first of the women, while the men were sequestered off-stage in a sound-proof room; they answered by predicting what their husbands would say. Upon the men’s return, they were asked the same 3 questions, and if their answers matched, points were earned.  During the course of the show, roles were also reversed, with the men being asked 3 questions while their wives were off-stage – and so on….

Naturally, being curlers, our couples were asked some relationship questions in the context of curling terms, with all the innuendo implied – and these questions, and the predictions, did not disappoint our audience!  For example, to the wives, “In curling terms, would your husband size himself up as 4-foot, 8-foot, or 12-foot?”  Or, to the husbands, “In your early days of romantic pleasure, which curling term would your wife choose to best describe your love-making: it’s a little inside, it’s on the button, it’s lost its handle, it’s a blank end?” How might you have answered these questions??

Sparks flew, couples played it up, the audience ate it up, and laughter ensued!!  Bob Eubanks kept the game flowing smoothly, and in the end, everyone was a winner – although, following a tiebreaker, only one couple could emerge in first place, and that was JoAnne and Paul Graham (despite Paul’s dead-man answer of “Muffin Top” to describe JoAnne in terms of food – yikes, Paul!)  

Prizes were awarded from 5th Place up to 1st Place, with enormous thanks to our Lakefield merchants for their generous prize donations:  The Loon; Inn Cuisine; Lakefield Flowers; Coyle’s Tire & Auto; The Cheesy Fromage; and The Village Inn.  Please remember to frequent these wonderful businesses of Lakefield!

Needless to say, it takes a village to pull off an event such as The Not-So Newlywed Game Dinner and Show: a great kitchen team, super bartenders, greeters, runners, writers, ticket sales people, scorekeepers, so many behind-the-scenes people; and, a special thank-you nod to club manager Glen Boyd for all his time in helping make this event happen!

The Not-So Newlywed Game evening raised just under $5900.00 for our Lakefield Curling Club – and that, friends, is also due in large part to all of you who attended and supported our club!!  Don’t we have a wonderful place to curl and socialize!!