A consumer’s guide to the best and...

A consumer’s guide to the best and worst of sports media and merchandise. Ground rules: If it can be read, played, heard, observed, worn, viewed, dialed or downloaded, it’s in play here.

What: Ski magazine.

Price: $3.99.

So what if you still wear old black leather ski boots you paid $20 for in 1966 . . . ski pants that don’t match your jacket and a black cap that has lift operators greeting you in Russian?

The beauty of Ski, the magazine of the ski life, is that you don’t feel guilty flipping through its pages for being a ski nerd, a retro on snow.

Any uncool, aging baby boomer will find at least one article to appreciate in December’s magazine, the major theme being, “Conquering Your Midlife Crisis.”

The editors’ introduction concludes: “They all learned one important thing: that age is a function of attitude, not the calendar. Their stories follow.”

Andy Slough’s story of “Surviving the Birkebeiner” managed to avoid the usual pitfalls of a first-person tale, the usual mind-numbing cliches.

Slough, on the verge of turning 50 when he began his quest, wrote about training for his first Birkebeiner, a 52-kilometer cross-country ski race in Northern Wisconsin.

Interspersed are interviews and insight from other Birkebeiner competitors.

Did Slough finish? We won’t give it away.

Ski really does mean ski and has articles about nearly everything on skis--ski jumping, downhill skiing, cross-country skiing and snowboarding.

Also informative is a brief piece on the tumultuous career of former American ski team star Julie Parisien, who is trying to make the Olympic team by working her way through the “minor leagues” and has to pay her own expenses, an estimated $15,000, until she makes the U.S. team.