With a mix of sass and sincerity, class and congeniality, on Thursday night, RuPaul — the pop culture superstar and creator of the RuPaul’s Drag Race franchise — gave the enthusiastic audience a master class in whatever that “it” factor is that creates star power.
“Is Oprah here in the audience? Is Ellen here?” asked RuPaul as he greeted the crowd for the sold-out UCSB Arts & Lectures (A&L) show. “No. Well, good — we can talk shit about them then,” he laughed. This was right after twirling A&L’s Director of Public Lectures Caitlin O’Hara — who was celebrating her birthday that night in a fabulous red caftan — as she introduced him on stage. He then made a few jokes about sponsors Lynda Weinman and Bruce Heavin, — “rich people, darling” — before launching into an amusing evening of personal stories, part of the promotional tour for his new memoir, The House of Hidden Meanings .
While self-help life hacks and 12-step success stories are valuable tools for many, they’re at all not my idea of interesting, but what could have added up to a dull evening in the hands of someone less skilled than RuPaul was instead a simply fabulous night in the hands of the wonderfully entertaining cultural icon. Of course, his journey to sobriety was not at all preachy and spiced with stories of hanging out at a male strip club called Bananas in Reseda, beginning smoking pot at age 10, and getting into harder drugs a few years later.