Apparently Wall Street No Laughing Matter

In case you forgot to mail in your ballot for GQ magazine’s Men of the Year contest, we have good news and bad news:

The bad news is that GQ went ahead without you and tallied the score.

And the good news? You no longer have to lie awake at night wondering which funny guy deserves top TV comedian honors. Is it Dave?

Jay? Jerry? Louis Rukeyser?

The correct answer, of course, is Jason Alexander - that’s right, the not-so-lovable George Costanza, the compulsive liar whose idea of the perfect courtship is one that ends with the tidy death of his fiancee.

Who else, GQ asks rhetorically, could confide “in the weak, quavering tones of a nervous child that he won’t keep pens in his pants pockets because ‘I fear I’ll puncture my scrotum”’?

Loose talk

Style, not athleticism, earned Michael Jordan a spot on GQ’s Men of the Year list. He’s “so stylish,” the editors gushed, “he can get away with wearing five rings!”

If only GQ had category for spunky cowgirls

Linda Evans turns 55 today

Author can do more than pull Rabbits out of hat

So who else made GQ’s Men of the Year list?

Oh, the usual suspects: Steven Spielberg for best direction; Tom Cruise for best film acting; David Duchovny for television drama.

Another familiar name - Ralph Lauren - corralled the fashion title, and the magazine celebrated Michael Eisner’s business acumen, even if his tendency to micromanage “may frazzle his executives’ nerves.”

So let’s move along to the less predictable arenas.

In the category of literature, the Man of the Year is John Updike, who “could very well have come to rest with Rabbit Angstrom in 1990, and nobody would have faulted him.”

Instead, says GQ, Updike at 65 is “still a fierce polymath, full of surprises, seemingly out to prove … that he can do it all - novels, criticism, playwriting, poetry, journalism.”

Postmodernism beats out deconstructionism

In the category of art and architecture (What? You skipped over it? Shame on you!) the winner is Michael Graves, the architect of Disney hotels, university complexes, government headquarters, “even the display cases in the Michael Graves stores that carry such Michael Graves wares as Michael Graves watches, Michael Graves goblets and the conical Michael Graves teakettles that everyone gave one another as gifts in the ‘80s.”

Now, do you think you can remember that name?

Arnie didn’t make list, but trust us: He’ll be baack

Lending the GQ list an international flair were four zillionaires from Dublin - Adam Clayton, Larry Mullen, the Edge and Bono, collectively known as U2 - along with the second-most-famous Austrian in LA, chef Wolfgang Puck of Spango fame, and “our eminently responsible friend from the north,” Canadian transplant Peter Jennings, 14-year veteran of ABC’s World News Tonight.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Photos

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Compiled by staff writer Michael Guilfoil