Do you know what LOGOMANIA is? Have you encountered anyone with the condition? There was a woman I met teaching some classes years ago. Very lovely young woman, but could not stop talking. Literally. Whatever the topic was, it never ended until you somehow got rescued or managed to escape. We joked that her husband must be deaf, but when we finally met him he was a very nice, normal-seeming guy. Anyway, it’s a real condition and it’s called LOGOMANIA. I saw a feature on a news program about it once. It’s a serious problem because it greatly affects the social lives of those suffering from it. It comes up today because (vu den?) it was in the puzzle, clued with “Abnormal talkativeness.” Ready for the joke? There’s an organization that aids logomania victims. It’s called On and On Anon.

Amanda BYNES was in the grid, a very sad story. She was an actress who achieved stardom early but crashed out due to mental problems and drugs. If you google her pix, as I did, you see the pretty starlet, below, along with dreadful images of her sufferings, which I’ll spare you. Wishing you well, AB — hope you got a kick out of being in the puzzle.

It was a good puzzle, with lots of zip in the cluing and fresh answers. “Boundaries between areas with different amounts of coverage,” was the clue for TANLINES. It reminded me of a funny piece in The Onion from many years ago. Back then, Caity was away at college and I would send her funny items from time to time. The headline was Woman’s Tan Lines Make No Sense, and it was accompanied by a photo of a woman with random-seeming tan lines. [Wow — I found it. It’s from 2004.]

As I recall, Caity tacked it up on the little board in her dorm room, and someone came in who didn’t know about The Onion, and looked at it and said, “How could that happen?”

Do you have a favorite Passover plague? Who doesn’t, amirite? Mine has always been frogs. And they were in the puzzle clued with “Plague that precedes lice in Exodus.” (Did they really have to add “in Exodus?”) I remember joking with my (older) brother about not understanding why “death of the first-born” was considered a plague. (Yup, even back then I wasn’t very funny.)

Who was it who said “You gotta kiss an awful lot of frogs before you find your prince?”

An old New Yorker cartoon (back when they were funny) had a wedding of a handsome prince and beautiful princess, and in the background you saw one side of the church taken up by well-dressed people, and the other side by frogs.

---

TANLINES came up again in today’s puzzle — what are the odds? The clue was “Bra straps may cause them.” I thought a better answer would be ERECTIONS.

“Name on a museum plaque, maybe,” was DONOR. I came up with a little poem for it:

Two lazy men,
Each given a chore:
“You do neither,
I’ll DONOR.”

How’s this for name-dropping? The clue was “Fibonacci or Galileo, by birth.” The answer was PISAN, you know, from Pisa, of leaning tower fame.

The inhabitants of Pisa are proud of the olive oil from their region, and use copious amounts in their cooking. Some dishes are also full of PISAN vinegar.

How long did it take you to find the lemon?

There’s a lemon up there — look again.

As the day went on, I caught some sh*t for the “erections” line, which surprised me a bit, although egs got taken to task recently for a blowjob quip someone felt was gratuitous. Oddly, no charge of misogyny today. Here are the two critics, followed by Commenter Gary’s note:

Anony Mouse 1: So tired, so tired, so tired of the stupid dirty old man comments.

Anony Mouse 2: Agreed. Gross.

Gary: The two lazy men poem is an instant classic. Put that in your “Best of” collection. I’m not sure what Anonymous is grousing about, but I’m fine with dirty old men if they have a plan to rub-dub-dub in a tub soon.

---

Two damn good teams made it to the World Series this year, not that anyone has noticed since the Yankees and Dodgers bowed out. Yesterday’s game came close to being bumped on FOX by a college football game that went into overtime, BYU (ranked #2), finally falling to UCF (unranked), who tried to avoid winning in every way imaginable in a crazy, great game that will long be remembered in Central Florida.

Anyway, props to the Brew Crew for taking the first two from the Rays. It looked iffy when Tampa went up by 4 in the top of the first, but Milw came right back in the bottom with two of their own and the battle was joined. Oddly, in the pre-game chat-up, Derek Jeter took pains to predict that Brewer reliever Aaron Ashby would play a pivotal role in the game. He wound up getting the final five outs, three on Ks. You’ve still got it, Captain!

Did you know Jeets shares four gorgeous kids with his wife Hannah: Bella Raine, Story Grey and River Rose, all girls, and, at last, son Kaius Green? Derek was born in Michigan (Kalamazoo), but lives in Jersey now. Here he is, wearing his “three daughters” face.

---

April Cabbell posted the following on our neighborhood website:

With all the germs going around and me being old school, my house isn’t clean if I don’t use bleach. I have to use bleach. I use bleach on my dishes especially the plastic cups because plastic holds the germs. The bathroom is completely bleached down, I can’t stand to see hair on my bathroom wall, toilet sink, or floor. I’ll wait until everyone leaves the house in the morning and open the windows and get busy. When the guest come over they all tell me how clean my home smells. I can honestly say that we rarely get sick in my home!! When Covid-19 hit us and school bus drivers were needed. I came to work two hours early just to bleach the school bus down and let it air out, before any students were allowed on my bus. Just hearing the coaches and students talk about how clean my bus was made my day!! Everyone wanted to ride on my bus. I say all of this to ask the question: Am I a clean fanatic?

Avi Liveson: What makes you ask?

---

What a hoot! We schlepped into the city today to see The Pirates of Penzance in Yiddish. What a fantastic performance! If you don’t think Gilbert and Sullivan is nonsensical enough as it is, try it in Yiddish. It’s the perfect Owl Chatter activity. Many highlights but we laughed out loud at the Groyser-General boasting of his dreidl winnings. Outstanding cast and orchestra. Standing ovation from those in the sell-out crowd who could get up without help after sitting for an hour and a half straight.

---

Whew, long day. Kudos to NJ Transit and the NYC Subway system, both on top of their games today. (We won’t mention the Jets, who were on the bottom of theirs. Oy.) See you next time, Chatterheads!