Malaise is the spread, thinly distributed after we've scraped the bottom of summer's jar, condiment to a jumble of cold cuts, cucumbers and crackers wilted into soft tepidity by the August sun. Late summer now lacks the cool crunch you found when you took your first bite back in June.
Vacations taken, relatives seen, meat barbecued, sunburns peeled, bills piled, and is there anything more pathetic than watching cable sports channels rebroadcasting old football games?
There is. Watching those same cable sports channels work the 2008 football preview shows for the last month-and-a-half. Watching those channels make a one-hour special out of a team's practice.
The key word being "watching", because we are. Buying and reading those "Summer Prospectus!" bird-cage liners, too, waiting for a building storm of inspiration, a drop of knowledge, a lightning bolt of insight.
Which will never strike because, without football, there has been nothing for seeding a storm -- it's a dry heat.
But living on summer's soggy crackers will no longer do. We can blab on about football and fantasy leagues and discuss our team's chances and pretend it's a meal -- it's not nourishment until we can replace our verbal tapeworm with a visual feast, struck dumb by the oxymoron of a real game, emotionally meat-hooked and moved to screaming made-up words, watching other men who, if they collided with us, would put us in intensive care.
Yeah. With kickoff so close, why would I bet I'm not the only one smiling?