I don't get to the supermarket as often as I used to.  Yes, I still buy groceries nearly every day, but an Aldi opened just up the street and I've found that most of their products are as good, if not better than the name brands at Cub or Byerly's and the prices rival that of Sam's Club or Costco, without the need to buy in bulk.  What I miss when I go to Aldi is the racks of magazines and gossip rags.  In short, I miss the popular culture.

Most of the time I don't really miss it at all.  In the sense that I care that it's gone, I mean.  I love going  into the store, saving fifteen bucks and getting home fast.  Sometimes, like today, I have to go to a 'full service' supermarket.  We're having steak salad for dinner.  It's one of my favorites.

You slice up a sirloin, soak it in gray poupon, fry it, throw in some mushroom chunks and when they're hot, toss the meat and mushrooms into a large bowl with a torn up head of romaine lettuce, a package of crumbled blue cheese and a cup of  walnut chunks.  The dressing is olive oil, vinegar and dijon mustard.  It's making my mouth water just thinking about it.  It's more of a hot weather meal and today March is having a temperature tantrum but it's what Jay asked for.

You can't buy sirloin at Aldi.  Nor can you get romaine, blue cheese or jalapeno peppers, all of which I needed.

So I went to Cub.  Grabbed up everything and got in line, where I got to read the fake headlines for the first time in months.

Apparently Angelina has had it with being compared to the Octomom and so has ordered Brad not to touch her anymore.  Good luck with that, Angie.

Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey are BFFs.  Well of course they are.

There's a picture of an old lady photo shopped onto a young hot body... wait...who is that?  OMG, it's Valerie Bertinelli!

Valerie B. and Marie Osmond are the two Icons of seventies pop culture that I identify with the most.  They are the same age as I am, give or take a year, but while I was a loser schlub in high school, they were both tv stars.  I loved the Donnie and Marie show but no one ever said I looked like Marie.  I hated Valerie's sitcom, One Day at a Time, but I was told on at least two different occasions that I looked like her.  We wore our hair the same way and we both have small faces, although where hers is perfectly square, mine is perfectly round.  She married a Van Halen and I married a guy who can get tickets to the final four every year.  She named her son "Wolfgang " and I named mine "Tyler".  The similarities are endless!

It seems that in the last few years Valerie, like me, has put on a few pounds.  I doubt if her reasoning was that it would be a shame to pass up seconds tonight if the terrorists were coming tomorrow, but who knows?  We have so much else in common.

No one offered me any money to lose the weight but Val got a spokes-model gig and now she's lost fifty pounds!

The French have a saying that translates loosely to "After forty; face or figure", meaning simply that you have to choose.

There's Valerie, on the cover of some women's mag, in a bikini, complete with a belly button ring, proving the truth of that statement.  From the neck down, she's fabulous!  A body any woman would be proud to strut around in at the beach.  From the neck up she looks like she's ready to star in the second half of The Estelle Getty Story.  Egads, what wrinkles lurked under her chubby cheeks!  I didn't even recognize the wizened little face grinning out from under her bangs which now look ludicrously young for her.

It was jarring.

Oh dear Lord, I hope her next step isn't going to be pumping her head full of botox and winding up looking like a blow up doll of herself.

If only it weren't Lent, I'd bake a batch of chocolate chip cookies and eat the whole thing.

 

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