Sunday, March 21, 1999
Tuxes can't hide bawdy behavior
BY JIM KNIPPENBERG
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Oh my, they did it again. Referring here to the 131st banquet of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick last week at the Omni. You know the one: Men only, cigars, champagne, brazenly unhealthy meal (a biiig steak topped with sauces and onions) and, uh, impolite jokes.
It's a politically incorrect night out, and never mind that every politically correct politician in town is there: Hamilton County prosecutor Mike Allen; Ohio Treasurer Joe Deters; Secretary of State Ken Blackwell; ex-Governor John Gilligan; Judges Lee Hildebrandt, Steven Martin, Ron Panioto and Pat Dinkelacher.
And Mayor Roxanne Qualls, the only woman to attend . . . until Wednesday, when one crashed cocktail hour. Dressed in a men's tux, clunky shoes and slicked hair, she mixed and mingled and just smiled when asked her name.
Some cocktail hour that: All four bars ran out of Guinness. Several ran out of Irish whiskey, subbed bourbon and ran out of that, too.
Down at dinner, a tableful of men fired champagne corks at each other, usually when someone on the dais was making a speech.
And there was a mighty cloud of blue smoke hanging over table eight, thanks to the cigars Celestial manager John McLean handed out.
Then there was the Notre Dame grad who customized words to the school's fight song (don't ask; it had to do with a sailor, three women named Molly and livestock), then got too embarrassed to tell Psst! his name.
On a cultural note, Jim Tarbell played “Danny Boy” on his harmonica at dinner, then over after-dinner drinks in the bar where frightened hotel guests kept asking “Who arethose people in tuxes?”
PIE IN THE EYE: Sorry, but we gotta ask: Will pie be served?
And Kitty Strauss just has to answer: Not a chance.
Referring here to Wednesday's Decision Maker luncheon the Chamber of Commerce is throwing at Gregory Centre, near the Boathouse, downtown.
Strauss, chamber vice president, has Procter & Gamble chair John Pepper doing a guest speaker bit on trends in business but not dodging pies in the face. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), protesting animal testing at P&G, have nailed him twice.
So what is dessert?
Chocolate Raspberry Bash, Strauss says — a cheesecake way too dense to toss. (Pie flingers usually use cream pies.)
Meanwhile, Pepper and PETA have a truce: PETA president Ingrid Newkirk has asked members to cool it with the pies.
Not to mention raspberry bash.
SALVAGE: And this for people driving through Avondale recently and wondering what that guy was doing with a chainsaw.
Giving an old tree new life.
The guy was Sam Sherrill, associate professor of planning at UC. He's the guy who takes down ailing trees and turns them into furniture for families who have a sentimental attachment. Like granny who got her first kiss under it or something.
His last job was a 40-foot Sweet Gum on Reading Road.
But not for sentimental reasons. It was to clear a lot where UC students will build a Habitat for Humanity house this spring. Sherrill took the tree down and cut it in to 1,000 feet of board lumber.
For what? For this: Come next spring, it will be used for cabinets in another Habitat house UC students will build. Tidy cycle, 'eh?
Sherrill is so well known for his work that Norm Abram shot a New Yankee Workshop show around him last October. It airs May 1 on WCET.
Psst! appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Have an item to report? Call Jim Knippenberg at 768-8513; fax: 768-8330.
Psst! appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Have an item to report? Call Jim Knippenberg at 768-8513; fax: 768-8330.
KNIPPENBERG ARCHIVE