Tupperware

Wednesday, 4 p.m. The parking lot of the high-rise Hyatt Cherry Hill is clotted by station wagons, their windows decorated with signs declaring "I love Tupperware" and "When I work, I party. " Inside the glittering lobby, women in their 20s and 30s, in blue jeans or sweat pants, stand in lines at the registration desk, chattering and kicking their bags along. Into the lobby come a half-dozen Japanese businessmen, prosperous in blue suits and red ties. They look at the women.

Barbara Hofstad has been buying educational toys for her son Peter since she was pregnant with him. From puzzles to games and books, Peter, 7, has experienced a whole world of alternatives to video games and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. "When he was little, he was attracted to the toys' bright colors," said Hofstad, a Media resident. Now she doesn't have to go to a store to get the goods. A Livermore, Calif., company, taking its cue from Tupperware parties, is marketing educational toys through demonstrations at private homes.

Home-party sales put Tupperware in cupboards across the United States. But can they entice Africans to buy inexpensive, nutritious cereal for young mothers and their children? Marketing consultant Tony Adams, 58, of Tredyffrin, expects to learn the answer on his next volunteer trip to Malawi, in southeastern Africa, on behalf of the aid group SUSTAIN, an acronym for Sharing U.S. Technology to Aid in the Improvement of Nutrition. Adams has been part of a three-member volunteer team for SUSTAIN.

It may not be on the scale of the implosion of the Sears building in Northeast Philadelphia, but the demolition of the Tupperware building here will be no less of a community event. The four-story structure on Third Street near Penn Avenue, built earlier than anyone apparently can remember, was a cigar factory, then was converted to a clothing mill. Most recently, it was used as a distribution center for Tupperware products. It is due to crumble under a wrecking ball within the next week.

NEW-WAVE TUPPERWARE Stop burping your Tupperware and read this. The Peoria (Ill.) Journal Star has ferreted out Tupperware's secret new product for 1990: stackable microwave dishes. Tupperware, which was planning to unveil the line on Aug. 27, is steamed that the newspaper has popped the lid on Tupperwave - casserole-type dishes and accessories that can be stacked three high in a microwave to allow simultaneous cooking of entrees, side dishes and desserts. LYME DISEASE Something new to worry about: Twelve people have suffered strokes caused by cases of Lyme disease contracted in Europe, researchers report in the American Heart Association journal Stroke.

Some offbeat statistics compiled by the staff of Harper's Magazine: Chances that an American pediatrician has treated a child for a gunshot wound in the last year: 1 in 6. Percentage of all spending President Bush proposes for the next five years that will come from Pentagon budget cuts: 0.6. Percentage of Japanese graduating high-school seniors who have taken at least six years of English-language classes: 100. Chances that a...

By the time Richard Gordon trudged through the doorway of a Center City deli last night, his hands were frozen lumps, his face a glaze of ice. He looked a little crazy, like Dr. Zhivago after his trek across Russia's steppes. Except Zhivago never lugged a jug of unleaded gas from Broad and Pine Streets to 15th and Vine. And Zhivago remembered his mittens. "Nightmare!" Gordon said yesterday as he stamped his feet and thawed out at the Green Village deli, a warm oasis at 15th and Cherry Streets.

Women who love clothes are already aware that we're living in a pashmina moment. Pashmina shawls - woven of cashmere from the neck and underbelly of a Himalayan mountain goat - in sherbet colors are what women crave. For now. But a few of us are defiant, sitting at the sidelines of the frenzy. Buy one, exhorts Jill Edelson, a top saleswoman at the Center City Knit Wit, who can usually sell anyone anything, especially us suckers for the beautiful thing. At $225 to $375 a pop, I'm resisting, even the panoply of top-selling pinks.

Manny Brown's Rib Joint, 512 South St., will host a "Lone Star State Salute" party starting at 7 p.m. Thursday. A specialty for the occasion will be, naturally, Lone Star Beer, and there will be a Texas fashion show by the Sante Fe Silver & Leather Co. Western hats and bandannas will be given to the first 100 customers. Anyone who brings in a rattlesnake rattle (the rattle alone will be fine, please) gets a free Lone Star beer and a rack of Texas-cut ribs for two. The music will be provided by Waco Smith.

JULY IS A big month for U.S. rowing at the top level: Over in Camden on the Cooper River, the 2012 USRowing Club National Championships began Wednesday and continue through this weekend. Shortly thereafter, the USRowing Senior National team heads to London for the Olympics. Other than Philly's longstanding love of rowing culture, what does all this have to with "V for Veg"? Well, it happens that the Olympic rowers will officially be powered by a vegan snack product, The Perfect Snaque, which you can also check out at the Camden event.

After 30 minutes of looking, Elaine Breyer was ready to give up. "Where are you, Joanie?" said Breyer, 81, resting on a stone bench at Mount Sharon Cemetery in Springfield, Delaware County. She had walked row after row of arched gray monuments and couldn't find the grave of her sister. It had been 10 years since Breyer had visited the grave site of her sibling, who had died of renal failure at age 27. Breyer was visiting the cemetery with a group of seniors who were on a similar mission.

Kristen McKeon was the first to try it. A tad nervous, the pale, 22-year-old nursing student tentatively stepped inside a black plastic tent, turned around, and faced her fate. Ten minutes later, she was looking in the mirror and loving what she saw. "Oh my God - I have strap marks!" she said, beaming. McKeon was cohosting with her sister the latest incarnation of the Tupperware party. Instead of buying products, the goal of these gatherings is getting a tan. Instantly.

Judy Ford looked long and hard at the gold cameo pendant and decided what she wanted to do with the once-cherished piece of jewelry. "My ex-husband gave it to me," she said. "Take it. " Same for the love-knot earrings from her son, her mother's wedding band, and a pile of other gewgaws that she had dug out of her dresser drawer to sell at her friend's wine-and-cheese "gold party. " With gold flirting with $1,000 an ounce, women are taking advantage of the high price and scrapping their gold baubles at the kind of giggly house parties where they once purchased Tupperware and sexy lingerie.

MY WIFE IS trying to set me up. How, you ask? Well, recently, during one of our regularly scheduled arguments - we try to get in at least one a week - she stopped yelling in mid-sentence and told me that I was right. In another incident, she told me that I was handsome. I was willing to ignore those two odd happenings, but soon after that, she told me she loved me. Out of the blue. As I was coming out of the bathroom. Scratching. Had these been the only unusual occurrences in the past few weeks, I could have let it go. But they weren't.

Even though Tuesday dates from the early 1970s, the Amaryllis Theatre Company production at the Prince Music Theater is the first in Philadelphia, and it's a case of much better late than never. This is a marvelous piece of movement theater, and the production directed by Stephen Patrick Smith is superb. This strongly narrative, artfully choreographed, wordless piece by the highly regarded artist and teacher Jewel Walker is difficult to classify. I call it movement theater, but a dance critic might rightfully view it as dance, and a mime critic (if such an animal exists)

Ann Murtaugh's life changed at a neighbor's Tupperware party in 1989. "I left thinking, 'I could do this,' " she said. So, one night a week, while working as a branch manager for a Bryn Mawr bank, she started selling the plastic food-storage containers at gatherings of friends and neighbors. Within 12 weeks, she had sold enough to qualify for a company car. Within six months, she had quit her banking job because she was earning more money selling Tupperware. At this summer's national convention in Miami, Murtaugh learned that the Tupperware team she runs is one of the top 10 in sales - No. 9, to be exact - among more than 10,000 teams nationwide.

What's a "crazy, avant-garde, lesbian folksinger" doing selling Tupperware? Well, for one thing, Phranc - the buzz-cut, proudly butch troubadour born Susan Gottlieb - is making a whole lot of money. In Lifetime Guarantee: Phranc's Adventures in Plastic, the bow-tied, square-jawed saleslady is followed by director Lisa Udelson as she pitches at parties, sets up shop at a farmer's market, and starts selling enough lettuce-spinners, ice trays, and snap-lidded bowls and boxes to land "manager" status, a free company car, and a trip to Tupperware HQ in Orlando, Fla. Interspersed with clips from vintage Tupperware training films, Lifetime Guarantee makes some smart points about gender perception and female empowerment.

Women who love clothes are already aware that we're living in a pashmina moment. Pashmina shawls - woven of cashmere from the neck and underbelly of a Himalayan mountain goat - in sherbet colors are what women crave. For now. But a few of us are defiant, sitting at the sidelines of the frenzy. Buy one, exhorts Jill Edelson, a top saleswoman at the Center City Knit Wit, who can usually sell anyone anything, especially us suckers for the beautiful thing. At $225 to $375 a pop, I'm resisting, even the panoply of top-selling pinks.

Orange, lemon and lime, freezer-safe and sealed with a burp, Tupperware has preserved every imaginable leftover for half a century. It has even kept memories of the 1950s fresh. Now the Smithsonian Institution is celebrating Tupperware's status as a cultural icon with new research suggesting the Wonder Bowl may even have served as a vessel for women's higher aspirations in the '50s. Like the suburbs, Tupperware proliferated in postwar America, an era of narrowed horizons for women who had spent years filling in on the job for men serving as soldiers.