Hello, everybody. One year ago today on March 12, 2006, was the day that Fairbanks met Hollywood. Because on that day, actor John Leguizamo paid a little visit to the Golden Heart City as he promoted "Ice Age: The Meltdown" by opening a specially themed kids' ice park named after the movie with then-governor Frank Murkowski joining alongside him. I covered it all in this very blog.

It was quite a major event by having a well-talented and internationally known actor like Leguizamo set foot in this town, and it paid off in the end as "The Meltdown" would open at #1 at the end of the month; that's the good news. The really good news? It buried the much-hyped and anticipated "Basic Instinct 2", which earned $3.2 million and became the ultimate motion picture laughingstock of 2006. At the annual Razzie awards that took place on Oscar Weekend, the film picked up three awards for Worst Screenplay, Actress (Sharon Stone), and Picture.

Anyway, the next day I was on media watch to see if anybody other than the News-Miner covered Leguizamo. I was disappointed, as all the local newscasts had soundbites while on the entertainment shows side, "Entertainment Tonight" had five seconds of footage. A local video production company, Moving Images, used Anchorage station KTUU's satellite truck parked outside the warm-up center to feed their video of the visit to the world...if anybody cared about it.

But yes, it all transpired exactly one year ago tonight, and now we move forward to today and the latest on the Iditarod.

Lance Mackey over the weekend has taken the lead from Jeff King as he entered Elim at 5:55pm and out six minutes later. He's followed by Paul Gebhardt, who exited Elim at 8:30; Martin Buser, King, and Zack Steer round out the top five.

Mackey won his third straight Yukon Quest weeks ago, and he could be well on his way to pulling double duty as far as the Iditarod is concerned. And if my estimations are correct, if things hold up for him, we may be seeing him approach Nome sometime around Wednesday afternoon or evening. But don't count out Gebhardt; he's hot on Mackey's trail and depending on the conditions, we could be seeing 1978 all over again (when Rick Swenson and Dick Mackey were paw-to-paw with Swenson having the advantage; but in the end, it was Mackey by a hair). We'll find out as the 35th Iditarod reaches the homstretch, and so long!