Just a few things on this Friday before Festivus…

Early Christmas presents

While growing up, nearly every Christmas my siblings and I would always plead with our parents to open just one Christmas present early. We already opened some presents early anyway - on Christmas Eve. I had 3 siblings, and we would open our gifts from each other the night before Christmas (”Santa” would come that night, and we’d get the rest of our gifts the next morning.) But that didn’t stop us from requesting something even earlier. Occasionally our parents would give in. I recall a few occasions when we opened a gift several days before, or on the 23rd (a Festivus gift, perhaps, although we didn’t realize it at the time.) I’ve found that my daugther has done the same thing in years past. I believe last year we let her and her brother open their gifts to each other - just as my family did as a child. She hasn’t asked this year, but I suspect we’ll hear more about it in the next couple of days. My son, at two-and-a-half, has already opened one of his gifts once (it’s since been re-wrapped.)

I don’t have any Christmas thoughts this morning, so I’m going to share a few early Christmas thoughts from others that I’ve read. Check these out:

• The Season of Reduced Expectations (Keith Brenton)
• A Christmas Meditation (Scott Freeman)
• Santa Claus is not God (Phil Wilson)

Duke/Gonzaga

Speaking of early Christmas gifts, I got one last night as Duke beat Gonzaga 71-64 in New York. I wasn’t sure they would beat the Zags on a neutral floor right now. Duke is ranked #6, and I still don’t see them as a top 10 team. Yet, they continue to win, even if it’s often ugly. Maybe I’m just being pessimistic.

Once again they struggled shooting in the first half (22%), but there was a lot more positive in the game than negative. I haven’t watched all of the game yet - and in fact can’t. I recorded it, but the game before it on ESPN went into double overtime, and lasted until halftime of the Duke game. I watched the first 10 minutes of the second half this morning and will finish it later. However, from the recap and stats, several things were obvious.

First of all, they only had 6 turnovers. They’ve been in the high-teens recently, so to have only 6 was great. And Greg Paulus again had more assists (4) then turnovers (1), so hopefully he will continue that trend. They did pick up shooting in the second half (50%), Paulus led them with 20 points. Jon Scheyer had 14, but his biggest contribution was his defense on Gonzaga’s Derek Ravio. The Zags leading scorer was averaging 20 points per game, but managed only 4 points against Duke on 1-4 shooting from the field. I feared Ravio would hurt Duke, and he wasn’t even a factor.

Josh McRoberts once again finish with a great line - 11 points, 11 rebounds, 5 assists, 3 steals and 3 blocks. If Scheyer and Nelson can continue to shoot like they have been, and Paulus can continue to improve, McRoberts may very well have more and more of these stat lines. I was worried early on that he was not going to be the player I expected him to be. But it’s starting to look like he’s going to be much better than I expected.

A great win for Duke, their first, I believe, against a ranked opponent (even though they’ve played a number of very good teams already.) Conference play starts soon. It still won’t be easy, and they still need to solve this problem of shooting badly for a half, but I’m starting to gain a little confidence in them for the first time this year.

Famous CoCer’s

I came across this website and found it interesting. In the society we live in, where celebrity status is far more important than it should be, it’s not too surprising that religious groups would also point to famous people in their tradition. With my heritage being Churches of Christ, the Church of Christ page was of particular interest to me. Just a few interesting names I noticed, some of which I’ve heard before:

• Marvin Lee Aday - rock singer also known by his stage name, Meatloaf
• Janis Joplin - dead rock star
• Paula Barbieri - former girlfriend of O.J. Simpson who avoided being murdered by him
• Weird Al Yankovic - it’s great to have Weird Al on our team
• Wimp Sanderson - former Alabama and Arkansas-LR coach. Wimp and I were members of the same church when he coached in Little Rock in the 90’s
• Gene Stallings - former Alabama football coach. Is Alabama a CoC school?
• Jim Morris - pro baseball player, “The Rookie”
• Fred Gray - Rosa Parks’ lawyer
• Pat Sajak - he seems like a pretty decent guy, I must say
• Jeffrey Dahmer - I first heard Dahmer’s conversion story in 1995, shortly after his death
• Gwen Shamblin - can we get them to remove her from this list?? Please??

That’s it for today. Maybe I’ll air some grievances tomorrow…