Go Duke!

It appears to be Sports Day at the Year of Magical Painting. Thus, this:



It's a photo of a University of North Carolina basketball player named Wayne Ellington--a super-smoothie designed along the lines of the much-missed Walter Davis. I used to play quite a bit of basketball and, thinking back, I remember finding myself in this very same pose on a regular basis. Although, thinking back, I don't think there was 40 or so inches between the bottom of my sneakers and the playing surface. But anyway, the thinking here is this: If my name was Wayne Ellington and I was a young black man playing for the Tarheels, I would insist that everybody call me Duke.

Then, thinking ahead, whenever the Blue Devils would come to the Dean Dome and I was having a good game, the crowd could chant "Duke, Duke!" Which is complicated.

Thinking back, there was a time when I considered, should I have ever had a male child, naming my boy Jeffrey. And I'd insist on calling him either J.R. or Junior.

Same concept.