MMA - Mixed Marital Arts

My routine has changed a bit lately. I sleep a little later, and I can sometimes be seen in public after 8 P.M. This has allowed me to take in a few of those writer presentations that pop up, generally in New York, and generally sponsored by Barnes and Noble, The Nation's Bookseller.

The most recent of these outings was Wednesday night, at the Tribeca Barnes and Noble, on Warren Street, near Greenwich Avenue. This is an area slightly north of 9/11's ground zero, and is gaining a look of respectability.

On the way to the BN store I passed Park Place and looked west, from Church Street. There, plain as day was a store front's sign that proclaimed it was the Dakota Roadhouse. Normally, this wouldn't have meant a thing to me, but that was the name of a recent winning horse at Aqueduct when I was in attendance two visits ago. I even blogged about it, since the horse won in such stirring, come-from-behind fashion and made people at a table near us in the dining room appear in the winner's circle. No one had to ask them to smile for the camera.

Spotting that there were construction worker types outside the establishment smoking I somewhat assumed it was a bar. It is. It looks like a Blarney Stone, with a new name. Certainly not a fern bar. I thought about showing off to someone inside that I knew the bar's mascot had lately won a race at Aqueduct. I didn't, however. I figured I was too late for the celebration, and I didn't need to use the bathroom. Taking a picture with my cell phone closed my recognition of the Dakota Roadhouse.

The gathering at the Tribeca Barnes and Noble was a nice affair that promoted the recent release of 'At the Fights: American Writers on Boxing,' an anthology of boxing sportswriting through the ages. Living and deceased writers are represented in the book, and some of the living ones were on the stage: Pete Hamill, Robert Lipsyte, Mike Lupica, Colum McCann, George Kimball and Leonard Gardner. All had something to do with what was inside the book.

Nice introductions, with each participant asked to tell a 'boxing story.' The well-rehearsed ad libs were nearly all funny, some laced with memories of their fathers, mixed with some poignancy. Pete Hamill really does sound like the Pete Hamill you hear in dated, or recent interview outtakes that may pop up on Public television. It's a deep, sonorous voice that comes from a crinkled, hooded-eye visage that has seen a lot, and seems to remember most of it.

All the recollections were good, but one comment was the best, coming from Mr. Hamill, seemingly unconnected to anything that has just been said. Pete remarked that he had absolutely no use for watching mixed martial arts (MMA) contests. They reminded him of weddings he used to go to, "especially those between Italians and Irish."

And when you type the words, you realize that 'martial' and 'marital' have the same letters, just in a slightly diferent order.

It's our world, and we're all entitled to remember it as we like.

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