Wednesday, August 02, 2000
Poetry packs 'em in down at Cafe Cin-Cin
No one is as surprised as Wayne “Box” Miller: “Who would have thought it? Poetry can actually fill a bar and even have a waiting list?”
But it does. Every Thursday downtown at Cafe Cin-Cin, where Miller produces Love Jones Thursday, an evening of poetry that attracts 10 to 30 poets and a full-house.
“Most weeks now, if you don't have a reservation, you don't get in,” says Miller, who sometimes reads from his Soul of a Man book and sometimes writes new stuff.
Two things he's right proud of at the saloon-restaurant:
• The show is celebrating its first anniversary. “It's something we thought we'd just try, with no idea of whether it would succeed. It did.”
• The show's status of matchmaker: “We've had three proposals there. Last week, I wrote a special poem for a guy, and as I hit the last line, he popped the ring.
“She accepted.”
Next project? Miller is in the studio doing a spoken word CD, about 60 percent Soul of a Man poetry, the rest new, all with a band in the background.
He hopes to have it on the street by October.
On the road
The so-sad story of poor, pitiful, pignapped Pigerre goes on . . .
Pigerre, recall, is the lawn ornament pig made by Sandy Stonebreaker, owner of MainStrasse's Sandy's Frame Shop. Measuring about 2-feet high, it used to stand in a flower pot in front of Chez Nora, the Covington restaurant and bar Jimmy and Pati Gilliece own.
But he was snatched in June by someone who does a lot of traveling. Pigerre has sent photos and notes from St. Louis, Vermont and points between.
Now this: A note, poem and more pictures arrived last week from Tennessee. According to Pigerre, he took a ride on the Chattanooga Choo-Choo, got a job as a height requirement sign — you know, “you must be this tall” — before heading to Florida to write poetry.
“Absolutely no idea,” owner Jimmy says. “It's somebody clever, somebody who's on the road and somebody who knows us pretty well. But we've eliminated everyone we thought it could be.”
Hmmm. Nora is big with the airport crowd — flight crews, operations types. Maybe . . .
Sing it
Meanwhile, out in the airy world of cyberspace, Cincinnati Broadway star Ron Bohmer is giving fans a chance to buy his second CD early and cheap — on line, before it hits stores.
Bohmer, recall, is the School for Creative and Performing Arts grad who had leads in Scarlet Pimpernel, Phantom of the Opera and the tour of Sunset Boulevard. He's also plenty well known locally because he comes back once a year or so to do Back to Broadway, the west-side Side fund-raiser.
So here he is with another life (Car-jam; $13.99). Except for one song from Pimpernel, it's all original, written by Bohmer and recorded live in New York's Laurie Beecham Theatre. It's more pop/rock than his first, mostly Broadway CD.
It's at www.ronbohmer.com, in stores after Labor Day.
Knip's Eye View appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Have an item to report? Call Jim Knippenberg at 768-8513; fax: 768-8330.
