So why, you were wondering, did a Cincinnati Proctoid name of Jim Mock send Tampa into a tailspin. And a guessing game?

        Wellsir, seems Tampa has a huge annual parade celebrating its role as a center for pirates back in the good old days when it was cool to rob and plunder. The Gasparilla Parade, staged since 1904 by Ye Mystic Krewe of Gasparilla, honors pirate Jose Gaspar.

Jim Mock was the model for this poster. | ZOOM |

        Because it was the day before the Super Bowl, Tampa was expecting about 250,000 this year.

        So anyway, Mock and wife Beth went down last year for the parade — “most fun I ever had,” he said. They stayed with his sister Dorothy and husband Carlos Alfonso, a member of YMKG. Members dress in pirate gear and kick off the parade with a boat ride.

        Carlos took Mock on the boat and he must have been one mighty good pirate on account of artist Alberto de Lama, commissioned to do the 2001 poster, sketched him (without knowing who he was) and used him as the official Gaspar likeness.

        That was last year. This year, the poster came out and everyone in Tampa spent a week and a half wondering who is this guy. Including the Tampa Tribune, which ran a Jan. 23 story about the mystery.

        “My brother-in-law saw it and said to Dorothy, "What the heck's Jimmy doing in the paper?' The likeness is that exact.”

        Mystery solved. They tipped off the Tribune and a second story ran the next day.

        “Can you believe this?” Mr. Mock asks. “I'm a celebrity in Tampa.”

        Check it out at the Tampa Tribune's Web site at gasparilla.tbo.com.

        Mourning: Meanwhile, over at Music Hall, Friday was gloomy: The entire opera staff dressed in black, mourning the 100th anniversary of Verdi's death.

        That after a waaaay successful Maisonette party last weekend where a bunch of donors — Patricia Corbett, Harry and Linda Fath, Tom and Cathy Crain — were invited to meet Jake Heggie, composer of the opera Dead Man Walking. based on the Sister Helen Prejean book.

        Heggie was here to discuss Cincinnati doing it some season soon. CO director Nic Muni took a bunch of donors to see it last year in San Francisco, and they were pretty enthusiastic, you betcha.

        No decisions yet.

        Contact Jim Knippenberg at (513) 768-8513; fax: 768-8330.

Bush twins shun spotlight
Former First Kids: Where are they now
KNIPPENBERG: Ohioan reigns in Tampa's parade
Get to It
Good guys go bad in 'Tin Collectors'
Tristate best sellers list
What Tristaters are reading
Arriving and happening in area bookstores