There are few things more frustrating than when a favorite shirt chafes one’s nipples.

[I could explain further, but maybe I’ll just leave that as is. Just throw it out there, ya know? See how it feels? See who sends me bizarre emails discussing how I’m “totaly f’d up man about the whole nipples thing but you know i have the same problem with my favorite pair of breifs totaly cutting my sack since i put on all that wait”? That’d be GREAT times. Nah, let’s flesh out the details.]

Sunday was an abnormality, caused by my being invited to sing the Canadian National Anthem at a Philadelphia Phantoms hockey game.

<JIM GAFFIGAN>Wait, he’s not Canadian! That’s just ridiculous. He’s not even named Doug or anything.</JIM GAFFIGAN>

The Toronto Marlies (winner of the 2006 “Team Nickname That Is Least Likely To Get The Goalie Laid”) were in town for Sunday’s game, so they needed somebody to sing “Oh, Canada,” and the gal they normally used was out of town. I guess someone mentioned they needed a replacement, and the inimitable (I like that word) Brian Smith chirped up and said “My boy Hearn is ALL OVER THAT, beotch.” (Not an actual quote.) Brian even managed to scrape up some free tickets for my parents and sister so they could come entertain themselves with my gooniness.

<JIM GAFFIGAN>I wonder why his wife didn’t go. I bet she thinks he’s a loser. I heard she’s leaving him for a hotel janitor named Consuelo.</JIM GAFFIGAN>

I threw on my good suit (Calvin Klein, baby, and I assuming it’s made of dead baby seal skin, since it cost almost as much as my first car) and what is turning into my favorite shirt: thin stripes in red and purple, double button at the neck (helps to contain my goiter), and best of all: french cuffs. Suitably duded up (or dutifully suited up), I drove to the Spectrum and did my sound check.

I’ve sung in large places before, but never a massive indoor arena where I’m the only person on the mic. The sheer volume of sound is amazing; it’s not loud, but it’s inescapable, like a lawnmower at 7am Sunday morning, except with alpine echoes. For a moment, I never felt manlier. Then I remembered I was singing “Oh, Canada,” and knew that somewhere, Jesus was crying.

I did get some nice extra bonuses in that pretty young women were leading me around so I would know where the hell I was going, and I got in Kjell Samuelsson’s way 3 or 4 times. You know how sometimes somebody (usually somebody not very tall) will be like “Oh man, that guy is totally huge!” And then you meet them, and you’re like, what? This guy’s a little over 6 feet and is as big around as my ankle. I guess I’m the only one that ever notices that, but know this: I am 6 foot 3 inches tall, and I weigh approximately 235 pounds. I say this not to brag, but merely to put into perspective the following statement: Kjell Samuelsson is farging huge. He’s relatively slender, but he’s gotta be something like 6’6″ or 6’7″, and the fact that he’s aged a little bit doesn’t change the fact that he could have killed me with his wang.

<JIM GAFFIGAN>That . . . doesn’t make sense. Is it like a boa constrictor? Or is it like the “squirrel/duct tape/explosion preventative” joke that my husband tells when he’s had too much gin?</JIM GAFFIGAN>

The press box at the Spectrum is not as spacious as the one at the Wachovia Center. The whole building, come to mention it, just feels so miniature that you can’t imagine things like the 1983 NBA Finals taking place in it. There’s a lot of talk about how the technology of the arenas has improved, but having been in both of Philadelphia’s hockey stadiums in the last month, I can tell you that scale has as much to do with modernity as jumbotrons and concourses with views of the action. Have Americans enfattened that much in 35 years that they increase the size of the seats by 30%?

Yes. Oh God, yes.

The press box is also very warm, which is odd to me considering it’s in a massive building that contains what amounts to a 6″ block of ice and all the apparatus needed to keep that ice solid. After a while, I started to itch and chafe, as I am wont to do (this is why I avoid exercise: sweat turns me into one large twitching and scratching monkey), and realized that something in the material of my shirt, which was purchased in a boutique in New York City, was sandpapering my nipples. I thought I was going to start leaking like a new mother, except instead of colustrum it would have been nipple-blood. Horrible, horrible times, that. Even today my jaun is tender. My nerps haven’t felt like this since…uh, nevermind, that was, uh, nevermind.

<JIM GAFFIGAN>Nipple blood? This guy is gross. He’s gross.</JIM GAFFIGAN>
Just before gametime, I was led back down to the tunnel, where I was able to watch the Phantoms players go by (many of them are also very, very large; if I were a hockey defenseman at the pro level, I would actually be slightly undersized), and stand in Mr. Samuelsson’s way a few more times. Then they led me out, with a 6-foot walking Elmo. I watched a group of children butcher sing “God Bless America,” and then I was on.

I had spent significant time over the past days learning the words to “Oh, Canada,” but just to be on the safe side, I had a small piece of paper with the lyrics cupped in my hand. I picked a pitch (which turned out to be rather low; I sounded like Barry White if Barry White was one to sing Canadian National Anthems at hockey games) and launched away. As is my wont, I tried to connect with the audience a bit, because somebody told me that’s what good singers do, but the bulk of them couldn’t have cared less about me. They were dutifully looking up at the Canadian flag, which is when I realized I should have combed my hair into the Barry Melrose mullet.

After I was done, I wandered back to the press box and kept score for a while. At the first intermission, I caught up with Mom, Dad, and Liz (happy birthday Liz, btw, who is now old), and got a cheesesteak and a soda. The cheesesteak wasn’t half bad, for stadium fair, and it was free, which always tastes better, even if the meat was clearly grade Q.

The Phantoms, sadly, lost the game, because the opposing goalie was on fire. He ended up being one of the “three stars;” hockey tradition dictates that some impartial observer (in this case, some guy from the AP) pick the three players that had the greatest impact on the game. The “Third Star” was Jim Campbell of the Phantoms, so Brian had me go fetch him. Just so you know: athletes that have just lost a game are not, by default, talkative individuals. I told Jim he was the third star, and he grunted either an affirmative or an instruction to get the farg out of his face before he took off his skate and stabbed me with it. So I skedaddled.

One side note: the Phils are 4-0 in spring training exhibition games. In terms of the regular season, these games are about as important as a drunken Episcopal church league softball game, but I’m still doing a little dance of joy.

<JIM GAFFIGAN>In his pants? Isn’t that what he usually says? I feel like that joke went nowhere. I want my money back.</JIM GAFFIGAN>

Today’s topic: The Philadelphia Phillies!

Now, I wouldn’t blame you for disappearing. A sizeable chunk of my readers don’t really care about sports, and the rest know me well enough to realize that I know less about sports than I do about Green Party internal politics. For the one person who stayed: I’ll try and make this as painless and interesting as possible, but doing a thumbs-up/thumbs-down kinda dealy:

• Thumbs Down, as every year, to the bullpen. Taking Ryan Madsen (who’s not all that great) out of there gives us a bunch of no-name guys who collectively scare the living bejeebers out of me. We really need our starters to give us 6-7 innings to have a chance to win a game, and if someone struggles (as they always do), we’re done. Our hitters (who get a big wow from me) will probably put up some runs, but this bullpen isn’t going to be holding many leads.
• A big Thumbs Up to the Jim Thome for Aaron Rowand trade. An aging and infirm slugger who would have to split a position with a talented kid who just won NL Rookie of the Year; a young center fielder with great range, a strong arm, and who batted .310 just 2 years ago. (If only he swung lefty…) An obvious move, and yet one that I think a lot of general managers would overlook. I think this move alone could win the Phils an extra 5 games.

  Of course, Thome will undoubtedly play 150 games and hit 40 dingers. Color me thrilled.

• A big Thumbs Down to the Ryan Franklin signing. ERA of 5.10 last year, with a record of 8-15 (although he apparently had the worst run support in the league). Obviously, the Phils were falling all over themselves to give this guy 2.6 million bucks. Here’s where you’re thinking, “What, for a 4 year contract? 2.6 million over four years is chump change.” Ha ha! This is for one year! It’s like an April Fool’s prank, except it happened on January 5th.

  Notable quote from the article I linked:

  The Phillies were attracted to Franklin in part by his durability. He has averaged 31 starts and 201 innings over the past three seasons.

  That’s ridiculous. If they wanted, I’d come pitch 40 complete games a year, and I’d do it for about 200 grand. The problem is that my ERA would be like 74. Not 7.4: seventy-four. We’ve given All-Star money to a guy that we’re going to put in the starting rotation to eat up games? This is like giving $3 million to Shane Victorino so he can pinch hit three times a week. No, worse: it’s like giving $3 million to Shane Victorino so he can start in right field and go 0-2 before getting pulled for a defensive replacement, every single game. Except that Victorino never got suspended for steroid use.

  This is the signing that could conceivably knock 5 wins off the Phils’ record, thereby negating the Thome for Rowand trade.

• Thumbs Up to Chase Utley, on whom I continue to have a little man crush. He’s like Pat Burrell, but a little smaller and speedier (though he’s still 6’1″). Plus: he just turned 27, and is entering his fourth year in the majors, his absolute athletic prime. As Bill Simmons will tell you, this is probably the year he makes The Leap.

  (Hopefully he’s not TOO much like Pat Burrell, who hasn’t been able to duplicate his 2002 season [his third in the league], in which he batted .282 and slugged an outstanding .544, only to dip to .209 and .404 the following season. Ouch.)

  I’d like to see the kid hit over .300 this year. Is that too much to ask? I don’t think so.

• Thumbs Down, and it hurts me to say this, to Tom Gordon, girls who love him be darned. The man is 38 years old, and while he’s still got some serious pop in his fastball, I just can’t see how he can keep it up in a closer role all season, let alone for the next three years. (This is sort of a half-hearted thumbs down, since if he CAN keep healthy all season while pitching up to three games a week, I think he could be the team’s most valuable player. Also, considering the rest of the pitching staff is basically crap, we’re going to have to win with what looks like a pretty potent lineup of hitters. This means a lot of scores like 8-3 and 11-6, both winning and losing, so he may not really have to work too much. In short: I don’t know what I’m talking about, and you’re losing IQ points with every word of mine that you read. But that’s pretty normal, really. And if you had a lot of IQ points to start with you wouldn’t be here.)
• Thumbs Up to Ryan Howard, who occasionally gets mentioned in the same breath as David Ortiz, but is entering only his second year. I pee a little when I think about this.
• Thumbs Down to the starting rotation. (Which means I gave thumbs down to every aspect of the pitching squad! This gives me no pleasure.) Jon Lieber is a quality pitcher, but his best years are behind him. Randy Wolf always seems tantalizingly close, but never QUITE as good as we hope, and he had Tommy John surgery and is out until at least July. Rick Shanley, of course, can put his 101-mph fastball and devastating knuckler to good effect…oh wait, that’s only in my video game. (In which, it’s worth noting, Brian Smith is a four-pitch closer with an ERA, over 2 seasons, of about 1.3, and Matt Hearn is an overweight slugger who batted .373 and hit 48 home runs in 2005. And Kyle Andersn (it limits last names to 7 letters, which strikes me as bizarre) stole 35 bases.)

  And I can’t figure out what all the hoopla is about Brett Myers, exactly. Maybe his goatee is magical.

  Anyway, April’s starting rotation: Lieber, Myers, Corey Lidle, Steroid-Boy, and then any one of like 11 possibilities. Hopefully they won’t have the same kind of April they had last year, where they spent the rest of the season playing catch-up and came one game short. I would prefer this did not happen.

So here’s the rundown: lots of hitting, no pitching. My guess: 90-72, finishing 2 games behind the Braves, and losing in the ALDS in 4 games to the White Sox when Jim Thome goes yard like 18 times. Optimism: it’s for people without drinking problems.

Now, everybody just calm down. Before you work yourselves up into some kind of acidic lather over the Vice President’s “accident” (Jon Stewart has been basically having a weeklong drooling seizure of joy, and has peed his pants on the air twice), let’s all just take a deep breath, and repeat this mantra: “Sometimes stuff just happens…sometimes stuff just happens…sometimes stuff just happens…”

I’m no defender of this administration. I agree with the overarching policy of killing as many foreigners as possible, although I tend to disapprove of their methods. And if you’d told me that a Republican administration would be rampantly expanding government…well, I’d probably not be terribly surprised. Politicians are politicians, and government is government, and no administration in 80 years has decreased the size of the federal government. All that being said: I can sympathize with the Vice President.

I feel bad for the 78-year-old fellow that Mr. Cheney peppered with #7 bird shot, but from what I’ve been told, he and the Vice President had established a firing line. Mr. Whittington stepped in front of it, for reasons unknown. (Of course, all of this is on the word of the veep and his entourage, so who knows what really happened?) More importantly: I can relate to Mr. Cheney’s side of the story, and thereby hangs a tale.

When I was in high school, I spent a significant number of evenings at Brian Smith‘s house, in the basement, where he had a pool table, and all the broken microwaves and washing machines you could ever want. The pool table served four handy purposes:

1. as a surface on which people could make out with other people,
2. the actual playing of billiards,
3. the playing of pool hockey, which consisted of putting the cue ball on the table and hammering it back and forth with rolls of paper towel until somebody managed to pocket it in an opponent’s corner (a sort of poor man’s air hockey),
4. and a surface on which you could like while shooting Brian’s old Crosman BB-gun at cans set up on a washing machine across the room.

The impromptu shooting range we set up worked nicely, but it had one fatal flaw: the basement steps ended right in the middle of it. Anyone coming down into the basement would walk directly into the line of fire. Normally it wasn’t a major issue, because Brian’s mom had better sense than to interfere with the activities of 3-5 teenaged boys and didn’t do much more than yell down the steps to yell information to Brian (“Anybody want some chips or sodas,” “One of those slutty girls you like is on the phone,” “Please stop shooting at that washing machine, your father swears he’s going to fix it,” etc.). Anyone else that would come down was invariably one of us, and would be aware of any shooting occuring, and would pause at the top of the stairs to yell “PLEASE DON’T SHOOT ME IN THE ARM YOU IDIOT” and wait until the range had been declared clear (usually via “JUST COME DOWN YOU WUSS, IT’S JUST A FREAKIN’ BB”).

One day, I was lying on the pool table, taking careful aim at either a can of soda or Brian’s butt. I took a deep breath, as prescribed by good marksmanship practice, let half of it out, and began slowly squeezing the trigger. Just before the trigger broke, the basement door open, and some individual, unconscious of the mortal danger they were in, began loping down the steps. Brian yelled out “hold it!” just as my trigger finger jerked back and sent a BB downrange at what must have been 200-300 feet per second. Immediately afterwards, the figure atop the staircase bent down, and I realized it was Brian’s father (a man with whom one does not mess). He glared at me with such fire that, even now, 10 years later, I still have no visible eyebrows.

I’m just saying: it’s easier than you think to accidentally shoot another man in the face.

So: snow. As I believe Lord Byron put it, “A metric buttload thereof.” Winter has finally arrived, and with a vengeance: we got about a foot, which put the kye-bosh on church yesterday morning. Our neighborhood had actually gotten one pass of the plow when I got up to check the cancellations at 7:30, and when I got up for good at 9 the street was largely clear of snow. My neighbors down the street had a snowblower, and being the kind and intellectual folks that they are, they blew all the snow off their driveway and into the street, where it froze overnight. Thanks, guys! Good job!

The idea of spending several hundred dollars on a snowblower when my driveway is only about 600 square feet makes me throw up in my mouth a little bit, so I went out with Sarah’s old shovel and went to work. The old shovel has an aluminum blade, which suffers from the flaw that after a few scoops, snow sticks to it like burnt cheese to an iron skillet. Every minute or so I had to slam the edge of it against the concrete so that it would pick up more than a shotglass’s worth of snow per scoop. After 20 minutes or so, I had done the sidewalk and the part of the driveway behind the good car, so I called it quits and went inside for a beer. We sat around for a while, deciding whether or not we should work on the nursery (answer: No), and then showered and drove to my parents for some grub.

When I got there, they immediately put me to work shoveling their driveway. My father had already done the bulk of it, but they needed some more snow removed so that they could get the other car out. My father had one of those cool shovels with the funny bend in ’em to keep you from having to bend over so far and hurt your back. Even better, the blade had been coated with some kind of non-stick surface, so I made quick work of their drive. Good times.

Then we drank wine, ate chicken and dumplings (in my case sans boulettes) and went home to mull over the possibility of working on the nursery (we did not). Then: bed.

This morning, I had to sing a funeral (Edward Jefferson, former CEO of Dupont), which was quite lovely. Dr. Jefferson was an expatriate Briton, so we sang “Jerusalem” with the original Wm. Blake text. Also sung: “How Lovely Is Thy Dwelling Place” from Brahms’ Requiem, which we sing at every funeral, but which still tugs at the heart strings.

And now: finish up transposing a couple tunes from “Footloose” so that it can be sung by high school performers who value their vocal cords.

Last night I dreamt my wife was in labor. (Normal, after-9-months labor, not labor now, which would be at 6 months and would be beyond worrisome.) Even in the dreams, it took what felt like days, and we never even got to any really painful, drippy parts. Unless you count when (in the dream) my wife fell down trying to put on pants, which I’m sure is rooted in the time, on my birthday, when she threw out her back trying to put on pants.

The really odd thing about this particular dream set was that it recurred many times throughout the night. Normally, if I wake up for some reason, when I go back to sleep, I’ll start dreaming about something else. Only occasionally will I have a repeat dream in the same night, and this dream kept coming back after every brief awakening. (The whole thing was very disorienting; I woke up at 12:52am and went to the bathroom convinced that it was 7:30 am and I had better start breakfast. I was on my way down to the kitchen when I caught view of my wife’s clock out of the corner of my eye. Anyone who has woken up at 5am and realized they still have 90 minutes of sleep to go has the sense, but not the extent, of my exultation.)

This dream even included one of those difficult-to-explain situations in which I was explaining to someone about the dream, as if I was awake, and the other dreams had been dreams-within-dreams. Do you follow? Yeah, me neither.

Anyway, the basic plot, or as much of it as I remember: Sarah and I are on the way to the hospital, with half of my family following behind us. We get inside the building, which is a large atrium-type thing that they would have built in the 70s (think: “Logan’s Run” interiors (bonus: Jenny Agutter)), with plants and wood and stucco. It’s unclear where we need to be, but what appears to be an information desk is near the door, unmanned. My thinking is, in very non-masculine form, “Someone will return to man the desk from whatever menial task they are doing, and we can ask them where, exactly we need to go.” Sarah’s thinking is, in very non-feminine form, “I’m going to go wander off and see if I can find the birthin’ area or sumthin’.” And she walks off to the right. As she does so, a nice young lady appears at the desk, and I ask her where to go to have babies freed from their maternal gulags, and she points in the direction my wife is going, which of course results in Sarah giving me that look that says, “What, you didn’t believe me? You ass. I told you so.” It is worth noting that I have never, ever, not even once in my life, given Sarah this look, despite the fact that I am frequently right, particularly in the fields of computer and automobile operation.

It is eventually revealed to us that we have to go towards some kind of apartment building, in which apparently we will be renting a condo for a few days for the purpose of delivering a child. This small condo includes a delivery room, some kind of dressing area, and a kitchenette. At this point, I woke up and went to the bathroom.

The next part of the dream is not remembered as vividly, although it’s the part in which I’m explaining to someone about the previous dream. “It was weird, man, we were gonna give birth in a condo! Dreams, dude. Cuh-RAY-zee.” At this point, I woke up because, as I recall, a cat farted in my hair.

When I went back to sleep, Sarah and I were in the condo, getting dressed. Apparently her contractions had stopped, so we were getting ready to return home. I remember putting on a belt. My wife was attempting to put on some kind of very stretchy pants, but she nothing on which to sit while doing so, so when she tried to get the second leg in, she fell down on her butt. It occurred to me that a vastly pregnant woman should not be falling down, so I freaked out a bit and ran for the doctor, at which point I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep.

I won’t ask you to tell me what all this means (it means my wife is pregnant and I’m a mess), but I would like to report that Jon Stewart’s wife had a baby this weekend, which I didn’t find out until I watched the Daily Show this morning. Are Jon Stewart and I connected through an invisible thread of comedy and pregnancy? I leave that for you to decide.