Celebrity Deaths

Some celebrity deaths are on the "when will it happen" list. Poor Farrah was on that one today. After a career started on sex appeal and beauty she fought to be a legitimate actress but no one around my age was ever able to burn the Charlie's Angel out of our heads. When I was in college the guy's dorm rooms had Farrah, girls had Christopher Reeves. (Mine had Laurel & Hardy, Mae West, Jimmy Carter and WC Fields) Now both the poster icons are gone. But poor Farrah didn't get to go of a pretty cancer - like breast cancer - where everything is pink and people wear rhinestone pins and run marathons. She died of anal cancer. All cancers hurt. I admire her bravery in going public about her cancer and hope that it helps people understand that there are cancers that need funding in organs that aren't as PR perfect - like the pancreas cancer my Dad died of at 50.

And speaking of dying at 50...poor Michael Jackson. Tonight everyone is all about the talent and not about the wink, wink fun they have had at his expense. He was a musical and dancing genius. He clearly suffered from mental and emotional problems as he got older and his celebrity status and money only made those harder to deal with. The lower he got, the more pleasure the media seemed to get out of ridiculing him.

Was he a child molester? I don't know, I hope not. The fact that large sums of money silenced his accusers makes me wonder. Was he strange and conflicted? Oh yes. Did I feel that his masked children needed some help soon in order to be normal? Yes. But now the man they knew as their father is dead and he did protect them from being tabloid fodder as best he could.

Michael Jackson was an extraordinarily gifted singer, song writer, musician, choreographer, dancer, and artist. In watching him all these years since my younger days I do believe he had a genuine sensitive soul in a world of money grubbers.

Two stars went out tonight and I'm sorry they are gone.

Its a Good Thing

I confess, I love Martha Stewart. Is she arrogant, phoney baloney, kindI can't a tiresome in large doses? Yes. But is she smart, a financial success, a self made millionaire and a cultural leader? Yep, that too. You go Martha!

Anyway, this is about one of my favorite things...Kirkland Brand Martha Stewart Olive Bruschetta. I love this stuff! Cipollini olives, Kalmata olives, green olives, Cipollini onioins, balsamatic vinegar

Ritz Crackerfuls - The worst of two worlds

It was after work. As usual I was in Albertson's picking up some cat treats amd scrounging for dinner. Behold! A new product. Ritz Crackerfuls, promising real cheese (cheddar or four cheese) and 5 grams of whole wheat. It looked tasty, a big toasted cracker filled with creamy cheese. Wrong!

Most snackers have eaten the neon orange cheese filled crackers w/cheese from either Lancer or Keebler. The cheese filling is always the least of the combination - sort of a mildly flavored library paste. The real snack satisfaction comes from those flakey, salty crackers. The cheese filling in the "Four Cheese" flavor filling of the Ritz Crackerfuls is the same tasteless paste. Now, looking at the label, I see it is made of 3 cheese powders (cheddar, mozzarella and parmesan) and a scary combination of things resulting in cream cheese. The cracker itself has nothing we all love about a normal Ritz cracker. No buttery flavor, no flakeyness, no tasty dusting of salt. Instead its more like a baby's teething biscuit. At $2.99 for 6 individually wrapped cracker/cheese disasters I recommend a pass on these. For all the Nabisco hype you could go to www.nabiscoworld.com.