Soul Handshake

The other day I got my first authentic black-guy handshake. A few weeks ago, I was walking up the steps to my apartment, and this black (I think he was actually mulatto) guy with baggy pants coming up behind me. He looked a little thuggish, and he looked like he was trying to catch up to me, so I was a bit concerned at first. Then he asked me if Nils (my roommate, Sven's brother) was home, as he proceeded to walk in the door behind me. At this point I was still a bit concerned, since for all I knew he could have just discovered that a guy named Nils lived there and that he wasn't me and then used that information to gain just enough of my confidence to get into our house, and he was planning on robbing and killing me (OK, so that's a slight exaggeration...). However, he turned out to be a really nice guy. We talked for some time about school and stuff for a while. His name was Shahrazad (I'm not sure if he spelled it the same as the Arabian Nights guy). Anyway, he came back over last week and when I opened the door, I got an enthusiastic black-dude handshake (you know, the kind nerdy white people do jokingly, but black guys do them and they seem cool). Probably my first and last.

On another note, this has been a depressing football season. The Red Raiders are killing me, and Drew Bledsoe...don't even get me started. He does not look like an athlete. Bill Simmons (with some help from a reader) summed it up best, I think, in his article from last week. The awkward softball game analogy is spot-on.

The Texans are clearly the second-class NFL team in Texas in every conceivable way. Why wouldn't they try to feud with the Cowboys? If you were Gary Kubiak, wouldn't you be making little passive-aggressive digs to get Dallas people riled up, like: "We have all the respect in the world for Bill Parcells, he was one of the greatest coaches ever," and "We're nervous about playing Drew Bledsoe. We've been dropping easy interceptions all season. This will be a big test for us." They really need to work on this.

My favorite random Bledsoe e-mail of the week, from Eugene in Madison, Wis.: "Did you see Bledsoe getting up after he ran that touchdown in against Philly? His teammates were helping him up like they thought his spine was broken. The celebration looked like something you would see at a company softball game, where the fat, uncoordinated boss that nobody really likes nearly kills himself trying to beat a throw to home, and everyone kinda awkwardly celebrates the fact that he scored, but they don't really like him, and they kinda wish he was a little more hurt than he was, but they pretend to kind of care that he might be hurt. Right?"

Again, I think Dallas needs to make a QB change.

Oh well, at least hockey season has started, and the Stars are 5-0. On a side note, if you are a fan of the Stars announcing team (Ralph Strangis and Darryl Reaugh) you should read this article by John Buccigross. It always makes me nervous whenever they get national attention, because I'm afraid ESPN is going to steal them or something.