Lots of people think Rescue Me star Denis Leary is a shoo-in for the best dramatic actor Emmy in Sunday's contest. But Leary isn't one of them.

"I think they’re going to go with Martin Sheen – he hasn’t won it yet, he’s a sentimental favorite, and this is probably his last chance to win one,"
said Leary today during a conference call to promote the show's season finale Tuesday. "I mean, this is a guy who played Bobby Kennedy and John F. Kennedy – he could probably play Teddy Kennedy if he wanted to start drinking again and put on some weight.”

Um, yeah. Well, that sums up the spirit of some folks headed into Sunday's 58th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards contest, which has a weirder than usual amount of creaky nomination and out-of-touch recognitions.

That's why I've decided to start my own awards ceremony, curiously scheduled at the same time as the Emmys -- The Deggys.

Sunday's Floridian will have a few of my major picks; looking past the true and true to re-imagine the Emmys the way I'd hand them out.

Here's a few more:

Supporting Actress, Drama Series

The Deggy goes to: Mary Lynn Rajskub, 24 -- Who didn't dig Rajskub's crabby enabler, Chloe O'Brian -- an odd mix of the most capable and most pathological office worker ever created. Able to reroute commercial airline flight paths one minute and fall into a scathing argument over wor assignments the next, she's the best bad employee ever brought to network TV. Honorable mention goes to Robin Weigert, whose boozy, profane take on Calamity Jane in HBO's Deadwood is so vivid, you can almost smell the dried puke on her (yeah, that's supposed to be a compliment).

Actor, Drama Series

The Deggy Goes To: Hugh Laurie, House -- You may notice, I gave a Deggy to Leary in Sunday's Floridian. But that's the coolest thing about having your own awards show: you can make your own rules. So in this case, I'm giving out TWO awards. and Laurie gets his for being a British actor playing flawless American, playing handicapped and playing the kind of lovable, insulting curmudgeon we haven't seen since Dabney Coleman last had a TV job.

Actress, Drama Series

Deggy goes to: Katee Sackhoff, Battlestar Galactica. I know...I KNOW. I'm a hopeless sci fi geek who does not get it. Having stipulaed to that, hear me out. This series, which has managed to wrap all the drama of modern-day conflict with terrorism and religious zealotry into a whiz-bang update of the '80s series, has made gritty drama of a series which once starred bonanza's Lorne Green and a guy who would land on the A-Team. And Sackhoff's, boozing, romantically conflicted Starbuck is a major fulcrum, turning the character from an empty-headed con man to a woman kicking ass in a man's world with all the baggage you'd expect.

I'm not feeling much comedy these days outside the always magnificant Daily Show  and my new obsession, Late Night with Craig Ferguson (handled in Sunday's Floridian, thank you muchly).

So what do youse guys think? Put aside your well-deserved cynicism and spitball a bit on how the showbiz universe might be different if you held the reins. And feel free to fess up in this space on your choices...

(photos courtesy of FX, Fox and NBC/Universal publicity; click to enlarge)