Nick Vs. Jessica: Is it chicken or fish?

On Thursday, after work and trip to the YMCA, I made my first trip to the grocery store to stock up for my new apartment. I have not really grocery shopped since Senior year of college. Even then, I was the rare grocery shopper. Despite sharing a townhouse/apartment with 3 of my friends, fully furnished with a kitchen, fridge, stove, etc., I still had a partial meal plan at the dining hall. Plus, the essentials such as milk and bread would always magically reappear in the fridge for me (thanks, Matt, Kirk, and Brian! Someday, I will pay you back). My few excursions to the supermarket were limited, for the most part, to the frozen food section and the beer isle.

I have grown up since then. Thursday at Wal-Mart Super center (Wal-Mart is my favorite store. There will be a Wal-Mart column someday. I promise), I was a good boy. I bought some canned beans, a bag of mixed vegetables, a bag of lettuce, milk, bread, marinara sauce, pasta, and stove-top stuffing. Of course, I did not forget the staples of my diet. I got the beer, and a few items in the frozen food section. Plus, there were the Reese's Easter Eggs on sale, so I had to get a pack of them :-).

The most enjoyable part of my shopping experience was not my isle rummaging, but the check-out line. I had about 24 or 25 items, I think. The express lines are for 20 or less, and I refuse to be That Guy (there is always That Guy who goes in the fast lane with too many items. You hate That Guy, I hate That Guy, we all hate That Guy). So, I was stuck in a regular line with the typical obese Wal-Mart shoppers who look like they are preparing to store their basement in case of a nuclear holocaust. Of course, what else is there to do in a 25 minute wait in the checkout line? That's right! Read the tabloids.

I went through Us Weekly, The Enquirer, and about 3 or 4 others whose names I can't think of. Every cover had the big new celebrity gossip story that I for some reason had been unaware of up to this point: Nick's new girlfriend and Nick and Jessica's escalating feud.

I knew that Nick and Jessica's marriage had ended. I had just assumed it was over a disagreement concerning whether tuna is chicken or fish (It is Chicken of the Sea). Apparently, I now learned, Jessica may or may not have cheated on Nick with some singer from Maroon 5, and Nick was now being Mr. Playboy, dating around with lots of different women to get back at Jessica. On the cover of all the magazines was Nick's new current girlfriend, some 19 year old blond named Jessica Cavalleri or something from some reality tv show I had never heard of who recently had dated USC quarterback and Nick Lachey buddy Matt Leinart.

Generally, my rule of thumb (and I am only 25) is that it is probably not a good idea to date someone who was not born at least, say, before Mookie Wilson hit the ground ball through Bill Buckner's legs in the '86 World Series, and, while it is okay to look at girls younger than that, if you don't want to be creepy, girls that you look at should have been born at least before, I don't know, let's say the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Nick Lachey is 32. Whatever. If he can snag girls like that (I saw her on David Spade's Comedy Central show; she is hot), more props to him. Apparently he is following the "if there is grass on the field, play ball" rule. It's not for me, but, then again, I'm not married to someone as dumb as Jessica Simpson (I'm not married to anyone). That has got to fry his brains, just being around such dimwittedness.