Is Hall of Fame baseball analyst Peter Gammons a Nyquil junky? If we are to use lyrics as autobiography then yes. My favorite contemporary baseball commentator wrote and recorded a blues track called Nyquil Blues.? He also wrote a song about drinking Tanqueray.? Gammons is 65 years old and a devoted Midnight Oil and Pearl Jam fan and last year recorded a bluesy album with the help of some local Boston musicians entitled , Never Slow Down, Never Grow Old.? Hard as it is to imagine? the CD? isn’t terrible and is a perfectly decent effort by a true music fan.? He plays lead and rhythm guitar well, and? does the majority of the vocal work including vocals on a cover of The Clash’s Death or Glory which allows Gammons to put a little snarl in his voice which is hidden even when he is? dressing down New York Yankee management.?

Speaking of the Yankees, one of the only Yankees I have not-hated has released his own CD entitled The Journey Within.? On it Williams plays guitar on tracks you may hear during your next visit to Linens and Things.? The sound is hokey and after extended listening terribly unpleasent.? The cover is awful as well and looks like it taken and brushed up at one of those photo booths in the mall which allow you to stylize your photo with one of two options, fuzzy or colorful fuzzy.? Williams is not a bad guitarist, he knows how to play the guitar effectively, but in the end the effect is nauseating.? Although, I would have liked to hear the rumored jam sessions in the Yankee clubhouse with Paul O’Neill on drums.?

? If you are renowned as a professional athelete? one of the most embarrising ways to present yourself to the public as a musician is to release a CD with a title that encorporates the sport that you are known for.? ? Hence naming your album Covering the Bases,? is a bad idea, as is singing in a faux barritone voice just to get that sound when covering grunge tunes. Cincinnati Reds pitcher Bronson Arroyo does an excellent job of covering famous grunge songs if the intent is to be as unoriginal as possible.? Arroyo certainly covers the bases and does not stray in the least from the original recordings.? ? In the end, despite his unoriginality, I can get behind a guy that just wants to have fun in the studio and I am sure that Arroyo had a lot of fun making this album.?

So where are my future baseball rockers?? Ruben Sierra has a couple albums but I can’t find an? copies or? a digital download.? I know that Randy Johnson and Omar Vizquel play drums.? Vizquel was able to find time to write an autobiography so where is my album?? I know Stan Musial has an album of harmonica tunes, but that entails some serious crate digging.? Ken Griffey Jr. and Coco Crisp have layed lyrics on some rap tracks and Sean Casey is supposed to be able to carry a country tune, but I want more.? Come on guys,? you have all winter.

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This past Friday, Joe Black and I embarked on a powerful spirit quest — an internet spirit quest. After inhal…, ur, finding the correct frame of mind, we began our journey through cyberspace, starting at the mind blowing portal known as YouTube. Our journey lasted late into the night and we saw many wondrous things. I have attempted here to map out our journey so that when you, dear reader, decide to go on your own isq you will be somewhat prepared. But a warning, this map requires time to view and understand. Do not attempt to rush through it, or the value will be lost.

The first sight that we beheld was the result of Mr. Black’s plunging into a dance fever. For those of you wondering who those funked-out Black guys are, it Sly and the Family, baby!

The fever did not stop there, rather it took us back to a time when an excess and passion for fashion, sex, drink and dance mirrored that of our own. Gotta love a dance beat mixed with a little Fitzgerald.

Much like life, an isq can take you in strange directions which is the only way I can figure that Joe Black and I found this piece of wonder. It’s simple, true, but hilarious and trippy and most amazingly to me, someone took the time to make think it up and then put it on cyber-paper.

By this point we had cleared our minds of the simple pleasures and were ready for something with substance. I find that this is a reoccurring desire in my life and I was pleased to find Mirador. The nature of the spirit quest does not always allow for simple communication. I will let this speak for itself.

At this point in our isq, Joe Black and I had come to a point of silence; the beginning point of inspiration and wordless knowing.

As if to remind us that too much seriousness is never a good thing, the last place in our isq left us giggling and singing the… let’s go with “catchy” theme song to this short series.

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Sleepy Blair’s been holding down the fort admirably while we all get right with the world. I am at a conference in LA feeling totally out of myself and weirded out by this city that’s a cross between Albuquerque and Chicago and Nathaniel Hawthorne and the movie “Falling Down”. I listened to a bunch of new dance songs on the way here, ate one third of a cheezborger on the plane that looked like it would feel more at home in an Atari game than in my stomach, ingested some smuggled Jameson, watched 3/4 of a weird Dutch overdub version of “Vanishing Point”, and now I’m here on the 26th floor of a gutted out building where a scene from “True Lies” was apparently filmed. Isn’t this the kind of stuff you want from your field correspondent?

Whenever I watch the end of the football sporting event, I get a kind of sadness when they say “…and up next is ‘Sixty Minutes’ except for those of you on the West coast.” I always wonder, as the sun fades and I wonder for myself, what’s next for those people? I feel even worse for the elderly, who rely on Morley Schaffer et. al., because darkness creeps in on them with much more exacting certainty. They must worry about their elderly brethren on the West coast. What are they watching?

Apparently “King of the Hill” and “TMZ”. I don’t feel so scared anymore. I can erase the weird sea-dragon on my 14th Century seafarer’s map of the unknown area to the west.

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Sleepy has been lost in Azaroth but he brought back some search results. This is what happened when I searched for “Nothing”.

I have probably watched 35 hours of football so far this season and the one commercial that has stood above all others has been this terrific Nike commercial. Everybody I have watched football with has loved this commercial and I do too, and this is before I learned it was directed by Michael Mann. I have loved Mann’s movies since I sat in the front row and watched Heat. I had never seen a better before or since. The song in the background is from one of his early movies Last of the Mohicans.

I have a soft spot for Madonna. She has made some great tunes, her voice is good, and she makes good copy. She has also made some wonderfully designed videos. This one is from a song off of Ray of Light and produced by William Orbit who made a wonderful album last year called Hello Waveforms. The clothes were designed byJean Paul Gaultier. The best part of the video may be Madonna’s dance moves. We all know she is a wonderful dancer. Her tours are always fun to watch. But this video is like a mix of Siouxie Sioux moves and the Elaine dance.

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My favorite columinst on ESPN.com is Bill Simmons, he also has an excellent podcast, and a few years back? he wrote an excellent column about one of my favorite and probably one of the most important subjects of our time- the Rules for being a true fan.? In the article he lays down 20 rules.? I am gonzo for this type of stuff.? I have a favoite team for every major sport both professional and college except for the NBA and NCAA football.? ? And I take my fandom very serioulsy.? So I am going to go through all of them one by one.? It’s time for a Sleepy Remix.?

? Attire

1.? You can’t purchase a “blank” authentic jersey from your favorite team with no name on the back, then stick your own name and number on the jersey … well, unless you want to be an enormous dork.

This is beyond true. First you should never buy a blank jersey. I have a Manchester United road jersey without a name on the back, but it was a gift. The only other legitimate reasons to have a blank jersey are if you find one in the dumpster or a thrift store. Don’t cop out and say, “but I love them all”.? If you are a true fan and you follow your team like a? true fan there will always be a guy that you just go gay? over and have to let the world know your in love with.? If you go with a blank jersey it’s just as bad as getting your teams star player on your jersey and you might as well have your mom embroider “I can’t name more than three players on my favoite team” on the back in tiny letters.?

? Which leads me to another important clause.? Be wary of putting the name of your teams star player on the jersey.? This should happen? once every fifty years.? So the guy with the DiMaggio and Jeter Yankee jerseys in his closet is in the clear but the guy who has both a Mattingly and a Jeter jersey is suspect.? ? Once again this action is worth a special emboidery.?

I know this? is starting to sound daunting but if you are buying a jersey new you have to pick somebody from your team and put their name on their back. It says? a lot? about what kind of fan you are. Example, if somebody has a Kobe jersey they are either a big Kobe fan and could care less about the Lakers or the jersey is a leftover from Kobe?s days with Shaq and they are probably a fair-weather fan or they are a big time Laker fan but such a douche that they picked the best but least likable member of their team. Now if someone is sporting a Derek Fisher jersey than they? probably? got it during the Kobe-Shaq days but were a true fan who knew his team and picked out a quality role guy with a heart or they just recently purchased it since Fisher’s? return to the team for some of the? reasons listed before but with the hope that Fisher would spark? his team’s return to glory.

Now if you choose to put your own name on the back you?re just an idiot. And don?t think just because you wear it during pick up games or recreational league games that this justifies your egoistic choice. It doesn?t, it just makes it worse. Everyone at the game either already knows your name or doesn’t care.? ? Also, this? doesn’t add any pride to your surname.? If your entire family is made up of? Cowboy fans? and for Christmas grandpa? buys each family member? a? jersey with the family name on the back? you better dig through the roster? and find some reserve right tackle on the Cowboys with the same name so you can justify your family’s creepy cosa nostra fandom.?

? There is a third unjustifiable way to mess with a jersey name. You can?t put the name of your favorite grunge singer, politician, or Star Wars character on the back either. Don?t try to send two messages with your jersey. This is a whole new category of fanboy that is rarely seen but in the hobby of jersey watching it is the white-tailed eagle. I once had a friend who was a Phoenix Suns fan and a fellow philosophy student who put Heraclitus on the back of a Suns jersey during a semester when we were taking a course in Pre-Socratic philosophy. I never gave him any grief because I didn?t want to scare him away from wearing it. He ended up wearing it during the final. I think it had to be one of my favorite moments in college.

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