Sunday, May 30, 1999
Knip's Eye View
The buzz about Tristaters
BY JIM KNIPPENBERG
The Cincinnati Enquirer
For the defense: Cincinnati attorney Ken Lawson is all over the June Spin.
Seems there's a 7-page spread on Nate Snow and Brad Allen, the African-American Miami University students accused of faking a hate crime and due to stand trial at a date to be scheduled.
Spin's story is mostly about the incident and Miami's image as J. Crew U., but there's a lot on Lawson, who represents the pair. The story calls him “the best-known black attorney in Cincinnati” and “Bad-ass legal pugilist,” even as it discusses his fascination with Rottweilers and takes a guess at his trial strategy.
Cincinnati and Oxford don't fare well: Cincinnati is referred to as “buttoned-up German-Catholic, smack-dab in farm acres long known for Klan activity.”
Oxford and Miami take a rap for iffy racial relations: “While the school has worked hard to pump up minority enrollment, black 18-year-olds moving to this rural hamlet continue to suffer culture shock.” And then this: “The flyer (an inflammatory job allegedly distributed by Snow and Allen) has hardened Miami's already bad rep for race relations.”
HAIR TODAY: Would you look who pops up in June/July Teen People, the breathless and pimply teen version of People Magazine.
It's School for the Creative and Performing Arts grads Justin Jeffre, and brothers Nick and Drew Lachey (they range from 21 to 25), three-fourths of the platinum-selling boy band 98`.
Young Drew shows up on a Q-and-A page where a reader asks if he ever takes off his ball cap.
Not in public, Teen answers: “He always wears a fitted one like this 7 3/4 New Era cap.” But he's not hiding anything, Teen assures: “Drew's got a full head of brown hair.”
The whole group, including brother Nick and pal Jeffre, turns up with singer Jessica Simpson in a Star Tracks photo from Boca Raton, Fla.. “Got an idea for how to improve the city's postcard beaches?” the mag asks. “Invite 98` and singer Jessica Simpson (currently on tour with the group) to steam things up.”
Indeed.
MISS NEW YORK: And who's this on the cover of a recent New York magazine representing the ultimate New Yorker?
It's former Cincinnatian Sarah Jessica Parker, star of HBO's Sex and the City. It's the magazine's annual Best of New York edition, and it uses Parker as an example of how New Yorkers want the best. They go on to tell where to find it.
Parker, the mag says, must “drag herself to neighborhood favorites like Mercer Street Books & Records ... TriBeCa's Anne Bruno for flowers,” drawing on “deep reserves of patience, stamina and resourcefulness to locate the very best the city has to offer.”
A FEW EXTRAS: There's more:
• That's our own Carmen Electra in the May Maxim as one of 17 former Maxim cover girls revisited for a “then and now feature.”
Then (she was cover girl in September 1997), it said she was “bossing horny teens around on MTV's Singled Out” and “rescuing felons with poor swimming skills” on Baywatch. Now: “Coping with the world's longest hangover in the wake of her hasty Vegas nuptials to she-jock Dennis Rodman and shrugging off the cancellation of her dopey nighttime soap Hyperion Bay.”
• That's our own Chris Payne as well, with a two-page illustration in a May Entertainment Weekly over a story titled “Everything Old Blows!”
• And our own Dean Fearing, executive chef at Dallas' Mansion on Turtle Creek but formerly of the Maisonette, in the May Cowboys & Indians. He's featured in a “Thrill of the Grill” story which is mostly a profile but also features what he likes to serve at a cookout: Lobster nachos, chipotle braised mushroom enchilada, grilled corn with chili basil butter.
Puh-leeeeze.
Jim Knippenberg writes about Tristate people on Sunday.
Psst! appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Have an item to report? Call Jim Knippenberg at 768-8513; fax: 768-8330.
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