Boomer Esiason has a request: If you're headed out to buy a Halloween costume: Please buy it from him. Specifically, from BOOmer's Halloween Express, a Halloween supermarket in Sycamore Plaza (7800 Montgomery Road).

Because, he says, 50 percent of all revenue goes to his Boomer Esiason Foundation and its mission to fight cystic fibrosis. Boomer's 11-year-old son, Gunnar, has it.

So anyway, with the store doing all kinds of business and Esiason hoping for more, it's a good time to pin him down for a round of Five Questions.

If I had to dress up for Halloween, I'd be . . .

A Bengals player. I still have it in my blood.

What I like best about coming back . . .

The people and the restaurants - especially the Precinct. It's one of my all-time favorites in the entire country. And I've eaten at plenty of places. I do still get into Cincinnati 10 or 12 times a year.

I'll never forget the time . . .

Let's see, that would be when my children were born. Gunnar is now 11, Sydney is 10.

One moment I never want to relive . . .

Easy, it's 8:46 a.m. Sept. 11, 2001. You know, my offices were in that building, my staff, my friends.

One thing I want Cincinnati to know . . .

I actually do love the Bengals. And like everyone else, I keep thinking this is going to be the turn-around week.

Celeb spotting: Elsewhere around town, wasn't that Michael Tucker and Jill Eichenberry cozied up in a booth having dinner at Jeff Ruby's downtown steakhouse last week?

Sure was, says manager John Rapp.

Remember them? They played a couple on the old L.A. Law - it's still on cable - and they're also a couple in real life. Which explains the coziness. They were in town to deliver a lecture.

Anyway, they came in for dinner Thursday, Rapp says. Eichenberry had dover sole - a calorie-sensible dish - and Tucker had the less calorie-sensible filet mignon.

Top 10: Finally, a round of applause for the Public Library of Cincinnati & Hamilton County. Because of your great-grandmother. Sort of.

Turns out Cincinnati was named one of the nation's top 10 public libraries for genealogy by Family Tree Magazine.

For a lot of reasons, guesses Patricia Van Skaik, history and genealogy department manager. The collection, she says, is one of only three with census holdings from 1790 to 1930, plus 100,000 books, 1,500 periodicals, thousands of microfilms, microfiches, family histories and passenger lists.

Another reason, she thinks, is the huge collection of African-American records dating to to the early days of the antebellum South.

E-mail jknippenberg@enquirer.com