Packers quarterback Brett Favre is playing in tonight’s Monday Night Football game against Oakland — crucial to Green Bay’s playoff hopes — despite his father’s unexpected death yesterday.

So far, he’s playing one of the finest games of his career — 9 for 9 with two touchdowns and 183 yards. The Packers lead, 14-7.

UPDATE: Favre just threw his first incomplete pass of the night, but then Green Bay expanded its lead to 17-7, early in the second quarter.

FINAL UPDATE: Favre finished with four TDs (moving into second place on the NFL’s all-time list for TD passes) and completed 22 of 30 passes for 399 yards (just three short of his career high) as the Packers crushed the Raiders, 41-7. ESPN called it “one of the greatest performances in his 13-year career.”

“I knew that my dad would have wanted me to play,” he said. “I love him so much, and I love this game. It’s meant a great deal to me, to my dad, to my family, and I didn’t expect this kind of performance. But I know he was watching tonight.”

Yes, I blatantly stole that headline from The Hartford Courant, via my dad. :) But it’s appropriate, since I’m linking to BoxOfficeMojo.com’s day-by-day breakdown of how much money Return of the King is making.

This is great for those of us who enjoy exact figures. For instance, according to the site, ROTK’s opening-day receipts totaled $34,450,834, and not a penny less! Yesterday, it made $23,326,111 — not bad, but $4,165,942 less than what it made the previous day, Saturday.

Overall, the five-day total is $124,100,534, an average of $24,820,106.80 per day. But who’s counting? :)

UPDATE: It gets better! Here is a day-by-day comparison of the three Lord of the Rings films!

And here are a bunch more cool statistics: the top single days ever at the box office, the top opening weekends ever, the top December openings ever (this one is rather LOTR-heavy), the fastest to $100 million ever, the widest releases ever… and of course, the overall top grossing movies of all-time (after five days, ROTK is already #180!).

And there’s more! :)

An earthquake of roughly 6.5 on the Richter scale hit near Santa Barbara about 20 minutes ago. My dad e-mailed me about it. Here is the USGS info on the quake.

Becky’s sister Jen and brother-in-law Soren live in Santa Barbara, but they are in the Phoenix area at the moment, staying with their parents for the holidays.

UPDATE: I just called the Zaks, and they already knew about the quake. They also informed me of an unrelated man-made (er, woman-made) calamity: Becky is stuck at a mall or some such place, after locking her keys in her car.

Hopefully the earthquake damage won’t be too severe… and hopefully Becky will get help from AAA or whatever without too much delay.

CORRECTION: It seems the earthquake was substantially north of Santa Barbara, actually… closer to San Simeon. Well, whatever. I’m sure Santa Barbara was shaking (and possibly rattling and rolling) nonetheless.

Okay, lunch break over, back to work.

UPDATE: Three [CORRECTION: two] people died when a building collapsed in Paso Robles: