Time to step into the Wayback Machine (on generous loan from Mr. Peabody and Sherman) and rummage through the past year, searching for some of its tastier nuggets.

Here at GO!, these nuggets are worth their weight in, if not gold, at least some cheaply manufactured award trophies.

Actually, times being what they are - hard - we don't even have the spare change to paste together some trophies using the backs of our empty cereal boxes for materials.

What we can offer, however, are copious amounts of ink in the form of this week's GO! section cover story - our annual flashback to the comings and goings that transpired on Pantagraphland's arts and entertainment front from January to December.

And now the envelopes, please.

The Kiddie Rock Trumps Kid Rock Award

To the touring children's rock show, "Doodlebops Live!," which played Bloomington's U.S. Coliseum last January, a week or so before their elder, Kid Rock, tore up the venue.

Confusion ran rampant as inattentive Kid Rock fans didn't read the fine print about the "kid rock" show - the one starring Moe, Rooney and Dee Dee Doodle, and featuring songs like "Wobbly Whoopsie" and "Hold Your Horse."

Imagine these fans' surprise when they found themselves being deposited in the Doodlebops' "kiddie mosh pit" (Doodlebops-speak for the concert aisles packed with toddlers crawling, scampering and, well, toddling to the beat).

The American Dairy Association's We Who Are About to Burp Salute You Award

It's a tie:

• To the forward-thinking aunt of Harlem Globetrotters star Moo Moo Evans, whose nephew followed the bouncing ball to the U.S. Cellular Coliseum for a January date.

In a GO! interview advancing the appearance, Moo Moo discussed the origins of his first name. It was earned, he said, by his mass consumption of dairy products as a toddler.

"When I was a baby," Moo Moo said, "my mom would give my aunt two or three bottles of milk to feed me." The bottles were gone, he said, "in an hour or two, easy."

Auntie suggested saving time and money by simply investing in a cow. Logistics forbade that move to sate the Harlem Globetoddler. But a nickname is forever, and she christened the lad "Moo Moo."

• To the omnipresent Kid Rock, who followed Doodlebops and Moo-Moo into the Coliseum in late January.

Trailing in the wake of his arrival was a "David Letterman Show" assertion made a month or two earlier regarding ex-spouse Pamela Anderson's latest marriage with Rick Salomon.

Quoth Kid: "I wish somebody would have given me the advice that I'd like to give her husband: Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?" (Meee-oooow-ooo-Moo!)

The Without a Trace - Not - Award

To ubiquitous, nay, omnipresent country entertainer Trace Adkins, who, it seems, just couldn't get enough of us around here and, we trust, vice versa.

His manager, a birdie told us, kept reminding him, "Trace, baby, you've been on that stage three times in a little over a year! Give someone else a chance!"

But it fell on deaf ears.

The singer who won't go away racked up no less than four area appearances, three on the same stage, in less than 16 months: March 2007, February 2008 and October 2008, all on the U.S. Cellular Coliseum stage; and, for good measure, August 2008, at the Illinois State Fair grandstand in Springfield.

The No One Will Be Seated Until You've Been Shamed Award

To Reduced Shakespeare Company founder Reed Martin, whose troupe brought their "Completely Hollywood (abridged)" to the BCPA in April.

Warning everyone to show up on curtain time, Reed advised, "We'll stop what we're doing and talk to you about it. We'll ask why you're late. If you say, 'we were having dinner,' we'll say, 'we live in California and we made it on time."

The That's the Way the Oreo Cookie Doesn't Crumble Award

To double-Emmy-winning actress Jean ("Designing Women") Smart, who was slated to appear with hubby and fellow actor Richard Gilliand in "Love Letters" at Decatur's Lincoln Square Theatre before the date was canceled at the last minute.

In her GO! interview, Smart recalled how she wooed her future spouse after his guest-starring stint on "Designing Women."

Step one:"I asked him one day to help me with a crossword puzzle I was doing in my dressing room."

Step two: "Then I plied him with Oreo cookies." (You can't tell it in print, but in person, Smart pronounced the active verb along the lines of "pliiiiiiii-ed.")

They were married soon after.

And crossword puzzles had nothing whatsoever to do with it. "The Oreo cookies - that was the clincher," confirmed Smart.

The No Offense to Ozzie & Harriet, But … Award

To veteran folk singer Arlo Guthrie, who brought his tour to the BCPA stage in May and revealed that he hadn't performing his trademark anthem, "Alice's Restaurant," in concert for several decades prior to his 2005 "Alice's Restaurant 40th Anniversary Tour."

Really?

"Really," Guthrie swore to GO!. "I figured early on that I didn't want to go through that whole Ricky Nelson thing. So I abandoned any idea of becoming a trained seal routine a long time ago."

The Blinding Epiphany of 2008 Award

It's a tie:

• To "All in the Family" actress Sally Struthers, who starred in the national tour of "Nunsense" at the BCPA, and reminded us in a GO! interview that we nearly lost Archie's "little girl" to the medical profession.

Her original intent was to become a doctor.

"I finally realized," she confessed, "that I just couldn't work on cadavers. I had enough troubles with frogs in biology class."

• To 82-year-old actor Hal Holbrook, who brought his legendary one-man show, "Mark Twain Tonight!" to the BCPA in March, just days after appearing at the Academy Awards, where he was a Best Supporting Actor nominee for "Into the Wild."

In his GO! interview, he recalled, if not a life-changing, at least a makeup-altering moment before a reflective surface:

"One night I was looking into the mirror as I was putting the lines in my face, and said to myself, 'Holbrook! Are you out of your mind? What in the heck are you making yourself up for when you don't have to put the lines in! They're already there!"

Memo to Avon: Stop calling Hal!

The Harry Caray/Robin the Boy Wonder Sacred Bovine Award

To Laura Doty, star of the national tour of "Disney's High School Musical: The Ice Tour," which skidded into

the Peoria Civic Center in March.

In her GO! interview, Doty recalled her own dark past as a collegiate-age "HSM" devotee, watching Disney Channel airings of the movie with her friends and "our Slurpies."

"We thought, holy cow! This is amazing! We've become dorky 'High School Musical' fans!"

The Now You See Him … Now You Don't … Now You Forget What the Question Was Award

To Chip Davis, overlord of Mannheim Steamroller, who played an early-spring U.S. Cellular Coliseum show, sans Davis.

Since there are two units of the orchestra simultaneously at large in the land, it makes sense that Davis can't be two places at once, right?

"I don't think there's ever been an awareness of whether I'm physically there or not there," he said in the metaphysical understatement of the year.

The Uh, Nice Meeting You Hal, Uh, We Guess Award

To comedian and former "Queer As Folk" player Hal Sparks, who took to the BCPA stage in February and recalled a time in his life when hygiene wasn't a top priority or even a known commodity.

"I was this smelly country kid from Kentucky."

"And I hadn't really learned to brush my teeth regularly."

"And I was going through puberty, so …"

Next question?

• Runner up: Comedian Brian Regan, who played a February Peoria Civic Center date and reminisced with GO! that, "After a while, I thought, 'If I'm already 95 percent clean, why not go for 100 percent?' I like a challenge like that."

Brian, talk to Hal.