And The Winners Are... By Tom Danehy NINETEEN NINETY-SIX was a bad year for me personally, but hey, don't let me spoil everybody else's fun. There were lots of good things going on, so let's salute them. As I've done in the past, I'll have my son, Alexander, draw an award for each winner and we'll send them off. We haven't done this in a while, but in that time his ability to grip a crayon has improved greatly. BEST ATHLETIC performance. Michael Johnson winning the 400-meter run and then shattering the 200-meter-dash record in the Olympics. Johnson is one of the most popular athletes in the world, but was largely unknown in his native America. What he did at Atlanta is the stuff of legend. First of all, no one had ever won the 200 and 400 races in the same meet (virtually all sprinters do the 100 and 200). It was such an unlikely double that Olympic officials had to be convinced to change the schedules around to accommodate the quest. Johnson easily won the 400, then came back three days later to obliterate the record in the 200. Italy's Pietro Minnea had held the record of 19.72 for a staggering 17 years before Johnson shaved a couple hundredths off it in the Olympic Trials. But in the Olympics Johnson exploded to a 19.32. Afterwards, without a hint of arrogance, Johnson noted he hadn't run the curve well or the time might've been lower. This was the performance of the Olympics. Forget about Kerri Strug (and oh please God, let me forget about Kerri Strug; every time I hear a door squeak, I'm afraid she's standing behind it with a box of Wheaties in her hand. And she's going to speak...arrrrgh!) SECOND-BEST ATHLETIC performance. Evander Holyfield kicked the crap out of Mike Tyson. Whupped him like he was his daddy. Somewhat strangely, the loss makes Tyson a bit easier to stomach. He's still a rapist, but he's paid his debt to society. He's still a thug in the ring, but he's not invincible. He's still in the clutches of Don King, which means he's getting screwed way worse than he ever did in prison. BEST NEWS FROM BASEBALL. For the second straight year, Major-League Baseball held a World Series. This two-year streak leaves it well short of the record of 87, which came to a halt in 1994 due to the self-centered actions of every greedy bastard in baseball (which includes everyone in baseball with the exception of...nope sorry, no exceptions.) BEST THING ABOUT MICHAEL Jordan's movie Space Jam. After the opening credits finally end and the camera stops making love to his new style of Air Jordan shoes, what's left of the movie only lasts about 10 minutes. The only way this movie could have been worse is if it had French subtitles. Somehow they even managed to make Bugs Bunny unfunny. I got the creepy feeling Jordan had it in his contract that Bugs couldn't make fun of him. BEST MOVIE OF 1996. Lone Star, by a Texas mile. This movie defied all the odds. Released in the middle of summer along with all the brainless action flicks, it managed to rack up $25 million at the box office, even though that box office was of the art house variety. (It played at The Loft here in Tucson for more than four months.) This movie was a marvel. No exploding heads, no gratuitous shots of silicon-laden breasts, no eye-candy special effects. What Lone Star gave us was a rich, complex story, told at a leisurely pace through brilliantly written dialogue. Writer-director-producer John Sayles deserves to earn a busload of Oscar nominations. BEST CONCERT I ATTENDED THIS year. Not Reba McIntyre. She canceled hours before the scheduled start of the show, and then refused to re-schedule. 'Course, who wants to go see a woman who would do a remake of "The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia?" The best concert I saw, by far, was Gloria Estefan at America West in Phoenix. As time goes by, I appreciate her performance more and more. She was incredible. Actually, I don't go to many concerts any more. It's a drag having to sit in the geezer section. I only saw three concerts this year and all three were cool. Besides Estefan, I saw the Average White Band and Tower of Power at The Outback (an absolute geezerfest), and Alexander and I (along with 5,000 of our closest Phoenix gang friends) saw Coolio at the Arizona State Fair. BEST TV SHOW THAT NOBODY watches. Murder One. This show was very good last year when it limped along in the ratings against powerful Law And Order. This year it's great, so the dolts at ABC put it against Seinfeld and Suddenly Susan, which is suddenly awful. Murder One is the reason God invented the VCR. The recently complete eight-episode arc involving the assassination of the governor of California is among the best TV I've ever seen. It's right up there with its fellow Steven Bochco production, NYPD Blue. ABC should put it against Walker, Texas Ranger, so people with brains will have something to watch on Saturday nights.

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