Against the grain II

I’ve accepted that I’m older and things change

I find myself sounding more like my uncle did when I was growing up.  

“That’s not music,” he would say about rap music as it began to go mainstream. He would also say “y’all don’t know nothing ‘bout that,” and “one day you’ll see, keep living.” 

I find myself saying all of this and it’s funny, I can see my uncle’s face in my mind as he once told us these things.

I do not like today’s music much.  I do not like the way the NBA plays currently. I do not like the pitty-pat way the NFL has evolved to.  I miss ‘real’ news with no opinions, just the news.

Stevie Wonder, Barry White and Chaka Khan have been replaced with Chris Brown, Drake and Megan the Stallion.  Music is not going back to great lyrics, great musicians and great singers.  It is now replaced with whatever record companies feel can make a quick splash and make them as much money as possible with the least money invested in the artist.

Shaquille O’Neil, Hakeem Olajuwon and Patrick Ewing are not coming back.  When I watched basketball growing up, if you were seven feet tall or close to it, you played under the hoop…in the lane.  Kevin Durant (6-foot-10), Giannis Antetokounmpo (6-foot-11) and Nikola Jokic (6-foot-11) jack up three-pointers as fast as the six-foot guards.  They don’t bang anymore.  There are very few set plays in the NBA. It resembles street ball.

What really gets me is that courtside at NBA games, stars like Denzel Washington, Jack Nicholson and Gloria Estefan would be pointed out on camera and we would all know them as bona fide stars.  Now when the camera pans and they point out people. I rarely know them. The stars of today are not necessarily mainstream stars as we once knew.  Social media has made people famous for those who indulge on that social media, but the rest of us are left in the dark.

It’s not going to change.

That’s the way it is now.  While it took time for folks to grow to stardom in our days, today instant fame is the rule of the day.  Some old fogies like myself who don’t know these instant folks are written off as outdated.  Oh well.

Speaking of the NFL, it seems some of these rules traditionally would reference flag football.  If you happen to fall on a player after you tackle them, they literally will throw you out of the game. We grew up watching Jack Tatum, Ronnie Lott and Mike Singletary take the very souls from the offensive players.  I do, however, understand that CTE is real and there are precautions to prevent that from happening.  I get it.

Unfortunately, with the advent of all these new things, decency, truth, protocol, neutrality, intellect, and integrity have also disappeared.  Having these qualities is what truly made America great.

I miss Walter Cronkite more than I ever thought I would as a child. With him it was just the news…no fluff, no angle…just the facts.