"I don't know any other Romanian players," Paulescu was explaining. Someone had seen my previous post implying that there was nothing unique about the new punter and had pointed out that he spoke fluent Romanian, so I felt like I should really ask him about it. "I was born in L.A., but my parents are full-blooded. I speak fluent Romanian, and my parents were born and raised in Romania. They immigrated here, and I was born here -- they met each other here, actually, didn't even know each other in Romania."

Which is all well and good, but I know nothing about Romania. I don't even know any Romanian stereotypes to joke about. Luckily for me, Paulescu was game to try to explain his culture. Parts of it, at least. "It's a Latin-based language," he said. "Food's amazing -- they're gonna feed you."

And that's where Smoot was finally unable to stay silent. "All the food in this corner's amazing," he said. "I'm Dutch. I eat food outta wood shoes sometimes."

"I try to get rid of my love handles," Paulescu said, continuing his culinary tour of Romania, "and it just ain't gonna happen. If you're gonna eat, you've gotta eat. Those cabbage rolls, man, they're good. You got chicken, you got beef or pork, and it's wrapped up in a cabbage. They usually put sour cream on it. I don't like sour cream, but it's with sour cream and bread. They love bread. You gotta have bread."

"Yep," Smoot said. "The Dutch love bread too. Bread, milk chocolate, that's our [stuff] over here in the European Corner."

"I feel at home here," Paulescu said, "because my man Smoot here, he's Dutch." But he didn't actually say "Smoot"; what he said came out more like "Schmüth".

And that made Fred Smoot very happy indeed. "I like the way he says my name," Smoot said. "He says it CORRECTLY."

"Schmüth," Paulescu repeated, nodding.

I was skeptical. So, I said, everyone's been saying it wrong for nine years now?

"Yeah," Paulescu said. "You're Americans. It's okay. We understand."

"Yep," Schmüth agreed, "Y'all been giving me the American paraphrase of how you WANT to say it."

Paulescu shrugged. "If you were in the European corner, you'd say it right."

(As far as in-game stuff goes, Paulescu was pleased with his performance Sunday, although obviously not as pleased with the team's loss. "For myself, though," he said, "I couldn't ask for a better game. I had three punts; it wasn't a lot, but still, you wanna get good hits every time. That's the bottom line: you wanna be consistent, and I thank God for that. I really do. I had a peace in my heart out there on that field -- and I haven't been out there since last December -- and I felt more comfortable out there Sunday than I have in a long time.")

Thanks to the inimitable Brian Murphy for the photo.