I also went shopping for new sneakers today. I'm slightly embarassed to admit this, but I've been buying my shoes at PayLess for awhile (darn unemployment) which is why I now know that Shaq has some sort of deal with PayLess to sell his brand of shoes. While this may be a wise business decision (more people probably buy shoes at PayLess than, say, Foot Locker) but I can't but help wonder it's really a smart way to show his bona fides. After all, having your brand of shoes, the ultimate of ultimates in the NBA, is all about the expensive, super-gaudy, bling bling shoes and how bling bling can your brand of shoe be if it's at PayLess? Let's put it another way- I'm pretty sure no kid has been killed so someone can take their PayLess shoe. And isn't that the ultimate honor if you're a hoops star, that somebody killed somebody else just so they could wear your shoe?

The thing is, though, that they're actually pretty decent looking shoes. The pair I was interested in were just the way I like 'em- solid black and as plain as plain can be. As much as I wanted to get them, though, I wasn't sure if I wanted to get a Shaq shoe. Although I fall more in the Shaq side of the great Shaq vs. Kobe debate, which, as we all know, is the great question of our time, I still wasn't sure that I wanted to announce that to the world. It's a big step. After all, buying somebody's brand of shoe is kind of like wearing a band t-shirt and wearing a band t-shirt isn't just wearing a t-shirt, it's making a statement as to who we are. I may like the Franz Ferdinand song, for instance, but I'm sure as hell not going to wear their t-shirt because I'm not a Franz Ferdinand kind of guy. And that's what owning a Shaq shoe would be mean.

On top of that, the shoe does have the Shaq logo (that of somebody dunking a basketball) predominately displayed on the side of the shoe. The logo's kind of small, which is kind of nice, but considering the rest of the shoe is all black, it still sticks out. Besides ruining the all-blackness of the shoe, I just don't like logos. I've long had an anti-Nike ban going on that isn't really based on the politics of Nike, but just the obsequiousness of the logo.

All of which means that as much as I liked the shoe, buying it would have been very un-me. On the other hand, they were on sale. So I bought them.