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 Monday, July 16, 2007Tupperware party nothing like mom's This was like nothing I'd ever been to, I was promised.  By Frank Mickadeit Barbara Venezia invited me to a Tupperware party at her Newport Beach home. Barbara is the former co-host of the cooking show "Home on the Range." It would be like no other Tupperware party I had ever been to, she promised. It was a beautiful summer evening, and Barbara had set up on the patio. Women wore light, low-cut summer dresses and most of the men – there were a lot of men – wore linen slacks, nice loafers and Tommy Bahama-style shirts. I saw former Assemblywoman Marilyn Brewer and people who appear in the society columns. Dee, the Tupperware "consultant" made her entrance at 6:45 p.m., walking out of the house and down the steps to the patio clad in a huge Dolly Parton wig, a red-gingham blouse tied up at her midriff, a pair of Daisy Dukes slit to her waist and red 6-inch heels. Dee, as was evident to all, was a drag queen. "If you'd asked me a month ago if I was going to be at a gay Tupperware party …," mused Segerstrom heir and vintner Richard Moriarty, not needing to finish his thought for the other men at my table. "Funny what life brings you," real estate broker Mike Craig agreed. I lit a cigar. Indeed, like no other Tupperware party. Kevin Farrell is an actor by trade with several TV credits, including a recurring role on "My Name is Earl." He is also the No. 1 Tupperware salesman in America. And although he lives in L.A., 90 percent of his business is in O.C. "I think that down here, a Tupperware drag queen is an oddity, whereas in L.A. they've seen it all," Farrell had told me an hour earlier in a spare bedroom he was using to transform into his alter-ego – a process that takes him about one hour. "Dee," he explained, "is a simple Tennessee girl who grew up in a trailer park and has a drinking problem." His profit from tonight will go to the AIDS Services Foundation. He also dresses up for various substance-abuse causes. "She shows up for a lot of those," he said, referring to Dee in the third person. "But I don't try to 'pass.' I don't go to Pavilions." Tupperware Brands Corp. seems OK with his schtick and that of two or three other Tupperware drag queens. (A spokesperson confirmed he is one of the top sellers.) "I met the president and he's very proud of us," Farrell said. Farrell sells about $1,500 of product per "show." The typical Tupperware lady does about $400. He averages $20,000 to $23,000 in sales a month, doing up to six parties a week. He gets to keep 25 percent, which translates to at least $60,000 a year. And this is a show, not, say, a "presentation." A show, I'd rate, oh, PG-13, for language and innuendo. In her soft Southern drawl, Dee insists that "all of your dah-reems can come tah-rue with Tupperware" and launches into what has to be the most entertaining history of Earl Tupper ever told. She pops a few "pills" to "take the (bleeping) edge off," sashays through a song about Tupperware to the tune of "9 to 5" and urges us to "throw out all that Rubbermaid and Ziploc (B.S.)." Holding up a piece of Tupperware she says, "Look at this big-ass red bowl! You could lock a small child in this red bowl!" We howl. Over an hour, she works through her display, presenting a set of kids' easy-to-grip tumblers ("ribbed for your pleasure"); teaching us how to make a cake in a microwave with nothing but powered mix and Diet Coke; and showing us how to "burp" the Tupperware – although she prefers to call it "whispering" the Tupperware because it's "more ladylike, don't you think?" Dee's story behind the stylish plastic Rectangular Cake-Taker ($44, Caribbean blue only) is heartbreaking. As a young girl, she says, kids made fun of her when her mom brought her birthday cake to the park on a piece of cardboard wrapped in aluminum foil. "If that bitch had just had this, it would have saved me years of therapy." Strangely, I start to seriously consider items like the Flat-Out Containers ($15-$57, assorted colors), and when Barbara's husband, Stan, leans over and whispers that the Meal Solutions To Go Pack ($30, mocha/Caribbean blue) "would be good for your camper bus," I enthusiastically respond, "Yeah, it would!" Stranger still, when I think about the fun Dee has and how far an extra $60K a year would go toward VW bus improvements and premium Cohibas, I say to myself, "I'll bet I could do this." |
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