Tuesday, December 21, 1999
Book signings bring out crazies
BY JIM KNIPPENBERG
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Easy work, 'eh? Sit in a store signing books for adoring fans, maybe enduring some writer's cramp but little else.
Well, yeah, says Jeff Marks, who's in the middle of a signing tour for his Canine Christmas (Ballantine, $5.95), a collection of 15 short mysteries about murder, mayhem and dogs. It's easy, but strange.
Such as ... The sort of smarmy guy who sat at the back of the signing listening, then asked: “Canine? Is that about guys having sex with dogs?” That was followed by silence “because I was speechless. I finally said no, and he stomped off.”
Or the one “Where this guy sat next to my mom, didn't know it, and kept telling her there were no good mysteries being written anymore.”
Or the very strange guy who goes to all his signings and never buys a book. Just sits there looking at Marks. “People like that make you think Misery (Stephen King's book about a nut case fan) is really non-fiction.
Strange work indeed.
HAPPY ENDINGS: And this from our file marked Really Suite Stories With Happy Endings, all set to a score by one Mr. Pete Tchaikovsky.
So here's Gerry Born playing the Nutcracker character at the Cincinnati Zoo's Festival of Lights. And here's Jen Furman doing the role of Clara.
The couple knew each other casually when they worked at Paramount's Kings Island, but didn't work together until they started their zoo roles three years ago.
Born, biology and drama teacher at St. Xavier and graduate of Ringling's Clown College, needed someone to walk him around the zoo because it's hard to see out of the Nutcracker head. No peripheral vision, no view of the feet, a bad thing with all the kids. Bad form to trample guests, you know.
Enter Furman, tennis coach at Indian Hill High School and now an intern with the ATP tour. Dressed as Clara, the little girl at the center of Nutcracker, she has been in charge of leading him about for the last three years.
The partnership worked well. So well they got married last July, making Nutcracker's sweet little ending just a little sweeter.
HEARD AROUND TOWN: “I am happy. Happy to have served eight years on council. Happy to have been mayor for six. And happy to be out.”
That from former Mayor Roxanne Qualls, responding to a well-wisher's “Damn, you look happy.”
Indeed. Smiling fromheretohere in a white satin blouse and beaded black jacket, she had 600 guests Friday in Music Hall Ballroom for a Thank You bash she and her pals threw for supporters and friends.
Heady crowd, that: Former Ohio Senate president Stan Aronoff and wife Vicky; Mayor Charlie Luken; former councilwoman Bobbie Sterne; longtime Sterne adviser Marilyn Ormsby; court bailiff and party organizer Norma Walker in a battery-powered Christmas necklace; Covington developer David Herriman; Charter party boss Jeneen Brengelman; high-end decorator Pat Korb; and a ton of City Hall types.
Qualls, meanwhile, still won't badmouth the Council Circus other than to repeat how happy she is to be out and on her way to Harvard.
Knip's Eye View appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Have an item to report? Call Jim Knippenberg at 768-8513; fax: 768-8330.