[Sdruby] SQL refactoring question

[Patrick Crowley]

I've put together a Widget that monitors auction activity.

It hits my Rails app every 15 seconds, and returns the total amount  
raised by the auction (top bid for each item x the number of items).

But I hate seeing this scroll by in my logs:
SELECT * FROM bids WHERE (item_id = 1 AND proxy != 1) ORDER BY amount  
DESC, time DESC LIMIT 1
SELECT * FROM bids WHERE (item_id = 2 AND proxy != 1) ORDER BY amount  
DESC, time DESC LIMIT 1
SELECT * FROM bids WHERE (item_id = 3 AND proxy != 1) ORDER BY amount  
DESC, time DESC LIMIT 1

How would you guys refactor this? Can this be expressed as a single  
query?

-- Patrick