Naughty or nice?

Here’s to a year of best intentions and worst results

By Sean Becker

As this eventful annum comes to a screeching halt before turning the corner for 2016 (bonus—it’s a leap year!), we would like to take a moment to tap the brakes and review some notable happenings around town over the past 12 months. We have taken it upon ourselves to render some actions naughty and others nice.

Lest ye feel we be overly judgmental in our musings, ye merry gentlemen and women are probably right. That’s the whole point. Take heart in the knowledge that Splurge is a local publication, and we are unaware of any readers in the vicinity of the North Pole. And lighten up, already. It’s the holidays!

And now, without further delay or half-hearted rationalization for the offense that may or may not be taken upon consumption of the ensuing pages, we give you our inaugural Oklahoma City version of “Naughty or Nice.” Enjoy—or at least grin and bear it!

Nice!
Let’s start with some good news. People like us—a lot! Forbes Magazine reports that the Oklahoma City metropolitan area ranks ninth in the United States in “metro migration.” Basically, people are leaving other big cities to come to our big city. This continues a long trend of Sunbelt expansion, but OKC is now in the company of hipster hotspots like Austin, Denver and Nashville. Boomer Sooners, indeed!

Nice!
Since we’re all in a happy place, let’s stay there for a while. Speaking of Sooners, the boys in Crimson and Cream have rebounded from a disastrous five-loss season to post a stellar 8-1 record at press time. Big games remain on the schedule, but last year seems like a really long time ago. Except for that one game against that one team.
Not to be outdone, Oklahoma State, which put the exclamation point on last year’s Sooner swoon, used the Bedlam classic to skyrocket to the top of the national rankings. The Pokes recently dispatched of top-tier TCU to move to a perfect 9-0 on the season.

The regular season will be complete by the time this hits the newsstands, but congratulations are in order for the Cowboys and Sooners on great bounce-back campaigns.

Naughty!
Before we get too excited about our gift haul, it’s time for a little reality check. After, oh, eons of minimal seismic activity, Oklahoma has been shaking like a leaf for the past several years. Numerous studies have concluded that fracking is the culprit, but the natural resources lobby continues to insist that the conclusions are flawed. Now the author of reports critical of fracking, the nonpartisan Oklahoma Geological Survey, faces funding cuts. Coincidence? We thinks not.

Look—nobody wants to kill the goose that lays Oklahoma’s golden eggs. But the big bird can do a better job looking out for the goslings. Let’s make 2016 the year we all play nice together in the same nest.

Naughty!
Despite winning over 70 percent of his games as head coach of the NBA’s Thunder, Scott Brooks found himself out of a job after last season. Thunder brass rather unceremoniously dumped the franchise’s second coach after the team fell short of the playoffs for the first time since its first season in OKC. Sure, two of the best players on the planet missed significant portions of the season and played hurt for many of the games they were in. Sure, the front office let bearded scoring wonder James Harden depart for a bag of popcorn and never really signed competent bench players to work with come playoff time—but the coach gets the ax. We know that’s the way it works, but Brooks got a raw deal.
Naughty!
To add insult to injury, Thunder fans were flagged for having the worst grammar on the ever-popular social media milieus Facebook and Twitter. Maybe it’s the result of extreme frustration, but the brutality of the grammar police will hear no excuses. Let’s all take a deep breath and vow to produce only clear, concise and grammatically correct criticisms of the local professional basketball team this season.

Nice!
Since it is better to give than to receive, remember to get a little something nice for Mother Nature. After getting tormented by twisters in 2013, the last couple of years have been relatively tornado-free. Sure, the high-water washouts this summer were a little messy, but seriously, we did need the rain.

Naughty!
In a classic what-were-they-thinking-oh-right-they-weren’t episode, life in the metro imitated art recently when a local teacher and her roommate broke bad. A sting operation netted an English teacher for marijuana possession and nailed her roomie for possession and intent to distribute crystal meth. Perhaps she is the one to blame for the poor grammatical shortcomings of Thunder fans.

Nice!
Let’s end on a high note, shall we? The Delta Sigma Pi fraternity at Oklahoma State had a scheduled fund-raising run set for Saturday, November 7. As it turned out, the event came just days after the tragic Homecoming Day parade car crash that claimed 4 lives and injured dozens of other innocent bystanders. The good guys at DSP went ahead with their fundraiser then passed the buck—actually over 7,000 bucks—to aid crash victims.

Naughty or Nice? You Decide!
In the carefree days of the 1980s, when Americans were content with despising Communism instead of each other and the National Football League had yet to be sacked by hordes of lawyers, professional football broadcasts introduced a “You Make the Call” segment. The IBM-sponsored spots replayed an event from a game and asked viewers to decide whether or not a penalty had been committed. In that spirit, we give you the Splurge Naughty or Nice—You Decide! segment for 2015 (IBM or other sponsor welcome to contact the nice people in our advertising sales department).

In a bizarre tale that spans the decades, a Ten Commandments monument was placed on the grounds of the Oklahoma State Capitol in 2012, having been authorized by the state legislature way back in 2009. Constitutional arguments against the monument came early and often. While the legal arguments seemed fell on deaf ears, the subsequent requests by other groups for equal protection in the form of similar representation on the capitol grounds became overwhelming. Still, it wasn’t until the fringe “church” called the Satanic Temple unveiled their plans that things got truly interesting. The possibility of the Satanists’ monument, which resembled something akin to a Grimm’s fairy tale petting zoo, got everyone’s attention. To complicate matters, those pesky Satanists wouldn’t back down.

The Ten Commandments monument was finally removed under the shroud of darkness in October. It’s easy to blame the Satanists here, but one of the first lawsuits against the state was brought by a Baptist. And though it sounds blasphemous to say it in the Bible Belt—maybe the legislature should have known better in the first place. Although the monument was privately funded, the legal lollapalooza over the past several years expended state resources that haven’t completely been accounted for. Wire reports pegged the cost for simply removing the concrete castings at several thousand dollars.

The whole thing left this writer (I refuse to implicate my colleagues!) shaking his head in disbelief. Who was naughty? Who was nice? You decide—we’re just glad it’s over!