Sunday.  Oddly and not just a little nostalgically, I have re-taken up some interest in NFL football.  Not much.  Maybe half an hour a week – enough time to review the highlights of the few teams in which I seem to have an interest.  There are not many.  The Seahawks.  49’ers.  Sometimes Chicago.  Sometimes N’orleans.  And, whatever team some young phenom is playing for that warrants watching his highlights.  Christian McCaffery of the Panthers.  Nick Bosa (49’ers).  ‘Old’ Adrian Peterson, Vikings.  But, half an hour is enough.  It just doesn’t have the same appeal as when I played the game.  And THAT was a long time ago!

That growing ambivalence is even more true for hockey and motorcycle racing.  Also two original sports for me.  Great sports, to be sure, but some activities are audience-oriented and some are participant oriented and some are just made-for-media broadcasting.  My interest lies in what I can still relate to – pretending I can still do it.  Which is less and less every year.

I am likely to maintain some interest in motorbikes (I can still drive them) and golf for obvious reasons (you can ride in a cart).  And, given the road I drive and the speeds at which I drive it, you’d be forgiven if you thought I was heavily into rally-driving.  But…I am not.  NOT watching it, anyway.  Driving-like-a-nut still has some appeal for me.  But, you know what they say, “There’s no athleticism in a lead foot”.  Most sports are over for me.

Those past feelings, attractions, desires, interests are waning now.  Age can diminish one’s passions.  I do not lust after the next highly touted set of skis, the latest whacked-out moto-crosser or even a new set of high-tech golf clubs.  Skiing is over.  Motocross is way, WAY over and my old clubs are just fine, thank you (even tho golf is also largely over).  No need to even buy a new golf glove.

And the new ‘recreational’ crap is not in the least bit interesting.  The 20th generation of a phone?  A new video game?  Mountain-biking, Tattoos, aspiring to various victimhoods, being allergic to stuff and turning myself into a techie just to park my car?!  Sounds exceptionally boring to me.

And so the circle of life shows up again as the world shifts more and more away from the elderly (baby boomers) and back to selling crap to the youth.  The Millennials will get their revenge but first they need to get a condo and a Tesla.  Poor babies. 

Mind you, they ARE kinda annoying me….already…

I have no interest in professional sports as I am not engaged in the amateur version anymore. And that translates into LESS consumerism.  No purchases from me.  Don’t even watch the whole game.  I don’t buy the equipment AND I do not buy Budweiser beer, Domino’s pizza or even contemplate a new Ford F-150.  Ol’ Dave just ain’t the advertiser’s target anymore.  Hell, I do not even have a TV.  

But, boding ill for the ‘establishment’, the Millenials are NOT as into the old pillars of the  culture industries (football, etc.) as we used to be.  All ‘establishment’ industries are shifting.  Or dying.  Major League Baseball is feeling that quicker than others.  So has the music industry.  Politics. Climate.  Cars (somebody should put GM out of it’s misery).  TV.  Even relationships, sex and all the newly-released genders!!!

The times, they are a’changing……everywhere.  Everything.  There is a major quake in the space-time continuum, a rip in the dimension curtains, a shift in the larger consciousness and a shake-up coming for the old ways of doing things. 

Slowed down only by the wealth so deeply embedded in the old and hoary……..

Sports is just one of the most obvious and so I thought I’d take a Sunday stroll down memory lane and, tellingly, I am comfortable here.

But make no mistake.  Now is different from then.  Now?  Now t’is the season of our discontent.