Saluting Motown spirit

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the first annual Motor City Brick Awards, a totally random acknowledgement of things that happened in Detroit this past year. We're holding the ceremony in front of Belle Isle's Scott Fountain because there's a lot of space out here, and people are milling around bonfires chatting, snacking and having a genial good time. We've got some grills roasting up Detroit-grown vegetables and some Indian Village free-range chickens. Don't ask me where in Indian Village and I'll tell you no lies. There is also a garbage can full of grog created from the dregs of liquor bottles collected from 500 local New Year's Eve parties. Just dip your paper cup in and scoop up some swill.

The awards are made from bricks we've recovered from a number of crumbling buildings. Several of our local artists have lent a hand to paint them with mysterious designs of their own origin. So without further ado, let's get on with the Motor City Brick Awards.

Who Woulda Thunk It Award: This one goes to the Detroit Lions. Who would have thought the most feel-good story in Detroit sports as we enter the New Year would be the Lions? The fact that our Honolulu-blue-and-silver gridiron warriors managed to win six games isn't such a big deal. Many pre-season pundits put them in that territory going into the season. However, they way they did it, pulling off four of the wins in a season-ending streak, defied belief. They broke loss streaks — road losses, division losses — had a four-game win streak for the first time in over a decade, and they won with whichever quarterback was healthy enough to tape up and throw out there on a given week. They gave us a reason to smile on a New Year's weekend when the Wolverines and Spartans stunk up their bowl games so badly they were bigger jokes than the Lions. Michigan coach Rich Rod may well have been run out of Ann Arbor by the time you read this. Michigan State looked so lame in its 49-7 shellacking by Alabama and former coach Nick Saban that it's hard to feel like its 11-1 regular season record really represented where this program stands. Those aren't sugarplums dancing in your head; those are Lions footballs and the dreams of next season.

Miss Congeniality Award: She almost lost this award for not showing up for a pre-Christmas roll call, but considering more than 70 members of Congress skipped out early for the holiday, I'll let it slide and make outgoing U.S. Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick Miss Congeniality. I know there isn't a lot of love out there for Cheeks; after all, voters tossed her out in the August primary election. However, she took her medicine without a lot of twitching and moaning, although had it not been for the problems of her son, former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, she'd probably still be in Congress for another term. Aside from coming up with that "y'alls boy" comment during Kwame's 2005 re-election run, she pretty much stayed out of the Kwame muck. That was borne out when the federal indictments came down and her name was not on the list. I'm not saying she was the greatest legislator ever, but she lost her seat because she happened to be the mother and ex-wife of a couple of gangstas. You might say that showed bad judgment from the start, but I hear that she counseled Kwame not to run for mayor in the first place (he didn't listen) and also told him to stop running around with Christine Beatty (he didn't listen). Like I said, she took her medicine and didn't start yowling about God's plan or a comeback, and showed more class than anybody else around here named Kilpatrick.

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