• Craving Christmas tunes? Get a boatload of holiday favorites at Holiday Brass and Organ presented by Synergy Brass at 8 p.m. Friday at Church of the Good Shepherd in Riverside. Tickets at $25 for adults and $5 for students. For more information, call 389-6222.
• The Florida Senate just announced committee assignments for the upcoming legislative session. State senators from the Jacksonville area are leading several committees: Tony Hill is chair of the Joint Legislative Committee on Intergovern is mental Relations; Jim King is chair of Education Facilities Appropriations, Rules and the Oversight and Procedural Policy and Calendar Committee; Stephen Wise is chair of Education Pre-Kindergarten-12 Appropriations.
• Jacksonville Community Council, Inc. will release its annual Race Relations Progress Report at 11 a.m. Thursday in the Renaissance Room of City Hall. The report will give the City an objective tool for tracking, prioritizing action and stimulating institutional change in areas of racial disparity. For more information, call 396-3052.
• Theatre Jacksonville and Oasis Theater Studio present “Eb Scrooge: A Southern Fried Carol” Thursday, Friday and Saturday at Theatre Jacksonville. The play is a re-telling of the Charles Dickens’ classic “A Christmas Carol” with a little southern twist. The show is at 7:30 p.m. each night with a 2:30 p.m. matinee on Saturday. Tickets are $10. For more information, call 396-4425.
• Two years in a row now the loser of the ACC Championship game (Va. Tech last year and Ga. Tech this year) has been selected to play in the Toyota Gator Bowl, but that won’t happen again for a few years according to GBA President Rick Catlett. In the future, the GBA will be able to select any other ACC team to face a team from the Big 12, Big East or Notre Dame.
• Speaking of Catlett, he’ll be on a conference call with ACC officials today at noon for a meeting that may go a long way towards deciding the fate of the ACC title game in Jacksonville. The GBA lost about $1 million on this year’s game which featured Ga. Tech and Wake Forest — two of the ACC’s smallest schools — and terrible weather.
• Folks need to remember Sheriff John Rutherford is much more than an elected official and administrator these days — he’s very much still a law-enforcing cop. Recently, Rutherford pulled over a motorcyclist who was doing 90 miles per hour and doing wheelies.