I went down to St. Mark's Bookshop, on the corner of Third Avenue and Ninth Street in Manhattan to pick up a couple of books I'd left on consignment and hadn't been sold.

(A sign on the door says that St. Mark's has been in business for 30 years and thanks us for our patronage. This is one time the customers should thank the business; please stay at least another 30 years. We need you.)

The professional and friendly Margarita, who manages the consigned books business for the store, couldn't find the books anywhere; it seems they've been shoplifted. She paid me for the books although the store hadn't sold them.

I'm staying at the Hard Rock Hotel and Gambling Emporium in Hollywood, Fla.
The lobby has road signs and I still can't find my way around. There are hallways wide and high as cathedral naves and corridors leading to promises of euphoria: slot machines, the Players Room, the Hard Rock Cafe, etc.
The obligatory rock 'n roll paraphernalia hangs on walls, but this is Hollywood, Florida, not Hollywood, California or even Paris or Las Vegas. The doo-hickeys are mostly second tier: a black silk shirt once worn by Tommy Iommi of Black Sabbath; a red Gibson that Tommy Shaw of Styx used during the studio sessions for The Grand Illusion hangs on the wall by the hotel check-in counter.

Yeah, that's right. Today I walked for Breast Cancer. I figure somebody has to root for the underdog, and with all these empowered people in pink, striding purposefully, pony-tails in full swing, with "I love Mom" and "Team Julie" stenciled on their shirts, cheered on by people lining their route and applauding from deep in their folding chairs, holding signs that read "My grandma is a hero" and "Stamp out breast cancer!," I figure breast cancer doesn't stand a chance. It's going to get its eyes scratched out, its hair pulled and then, in the immortal words of that Susan Komen foundation ad, it's going to get stomped on. So there!

A couple of weeks ago, New York-based writer Jonathan "Herring Wonder" Ames faced off at Gleason's Gym against another novelist, Craig "Crippler" Davidson, in a non-sanctioned, non-title bout that lasted three rounds.
Davidson, who is from Calgary, is the author of a new novel called The Fighter. But that doesn't go all the way in explaining this bout, which was fought in dead earnest, even if the ref had a hard time keeping a straight face at times.
Neither Ames, who is a fixture of the New York literary scene, nor Davidson, who is from the wild Canadian town of Calgary, are strangers to the sweet science.

You can imagine my surprise when a small black Peugeot pulled up in front of my house as I was leaving for work this morning and a tiny Frenchman, flanked by a pair of burly assistants in red striped shirts and berets, popped out of the back seat waving an accusatory finger in my direction.

"Just where do you think you're going?" he asked, waving a preliminary injunction under my nose, or nez.

"To work," I said innocuously.

"Just like that? I think not," he said. (French people habitually invert the verb and object of a sentence, or he would have said "I don't think so.")

He pointed to the sidewalk.