Now it is just getting depressing. My latest issue of the AARP magazine arrived in the mail the other day with a nice cover shot of Bruce Springsteen and large type proclaiming "The Boss Turns 60."

Hey, everyone gets older and the fact that Springsteen will turn 60 on Sept. 23 is not what is so depressing. Good for the Boss; I hope he has a nice birthday with his family.

It's this AARP magazine. I have to stop reading it because every time I get one and look through it I just feel worse. Turning the pages of this magazine is like taking a walk through a chamber of horrors.

I wonder if the writers and editors who produce this publication for the AARP know what they are doing to the plus-50 (or close to it) population. Reading it is like hearing someone scrape their fingernails on a blackboard (oh, I forgot, those do not exist anymore).

The last page of this month's AARP magazine has a picture of a lovely whitehaired woman, the kind of go-getter grandma any child would be happy to have. It's Grace Slick! For goodness sake, it's Grace Slick from the Jefferson Airplane and she's turning 70! on Sept. 30.

There are four other celebrities pictured on that page and they are each turning 50 in September. I hope figure skater Tai Babilonia, actor Jason Alexander, singer Marie Osmond and chef Emeril Lagasse are just as shocked as I am to see that white-haired Grace Slick smiling out from the page.

But I suppose the AARP magazine's birthday page can be considered good news compared to a feature article with the headline "Surviving Prostate Cancer." Are you kidding me?

Reading this is how I'm supposed to spend part of my Saturday afternoon?

The article says people who are diagnosed with prostate cancer have options, but I got queasy reading about those options, so you'll excuse me if for now I just cross my fingers and hope for the best when I go for my annual physical at Dr. C's office.

Oh, there's more. How about the picture in the magazine of 62- year-old Olivia Newton-John? That's the same Olivia Newton- John I saw at the Garden State Arts Center in Holmdel in the early 1970s — the concert my parents did not want to see (it was too wild for them) so they waited in the parking lot while my sister and I enjoyed the show.

I am happy that Olivia survived breast cancer (obviously, she read an article about her options) but a little taken aback that time has brought her so quickly to a seventh decade.

The AARP magazine's cover story about Springsteen contains pictures of the singer from the 1970s, the 1980s and beyond, and insights from people who have crossed paths with him over the years.

And there's that phrase "over the years."

How quickly those years pass by; one day it is the summer of 1984 and you are 24 years old and listening to "Dancing in the Dark" for the first time, and then you turn around and it is the summer of 2009 and the AARP is telling you that Bruce is hitting 60, Grace is knocking on the door of 70 and you've got options for prostate cancer.

Somebody send me a subscription to Mad magazine. I need a good laugh.

Mark Rosman is the managing editor of the News Transcript.