DEBATE AT LOLITA BAR: Michael Malice, Ultimate Fighting champ Matt Hughes' co-author, on "What I Learned in Hillsboro"

Start the new year off in a mental headlock on Wednesday, Jan. 2 (at 8pm) by hearing Michael Malice describe his co-writing of the book Made in America: The Most Dominant Champion in UFC History by Matt Hughes with Michael Malice.  Bring your copy of this Hughes autobiography (in some stores now and officially on sale Jan. 1, the day before the Lolita Bar event) to receive one of the signed bookplates Malice will have available.

This week, hundreds of millions celebrated the birth of “the Prince of Peace,” while dozens vented their half-witted hatred against me on a leftist “comedy” site and in Responses to my obsolete Personal Ad and to my review of Jonah Goldberg’s new book (in which Fight Club was mentioned, as it happens).  Why do they hate us?  Essentially because I noted that Mussolini was a socialist rather than a conservative — which, coincidentally, was one of the main points of a prior talk by Malice (who has also regaled Lolita Bar audiences with stories of his “urban exploration” experiences and of having his life story turned into a comic book by Harvey Pekar).

In next week’s talk, though — probably his most manly yet — Malice discusses something far more brutal than Jesus or Harvey Pekar and even more brutal than leftists such as Mussolini: namely, Ultimate Fighting, the increasingly popular sport in which all combat styles, from sumo to kickboxing, are allowed and have now, after several years, largely been winnowed down to vicious-looking “grappling.”  Malice will also describe the ongoing cultural smackdown between his native New York City and the Midwest, since writing with Hughes meant spending a lot of time in Hughes’ very different hometown, tiny Hillsboro, Illinois.

Jesus is not absent from that story, in all seriousness: Hughes became Born Again in the midst of his ongoing fighting career, odd as it might seem for the sardonic and sarcastic Malice to be the man helping to chronicle such a transformation.

Again, you can hear about it all on Jan. 2 (8pm) at Lolita Bar, basement level, 266 Broome St. near Allen St. on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, one block south and three west of the Delancey Street subway stop (free admission, cash bar, and me, Todd Seavey, introducing Malice).

P.S. For those of you more accustomed to our usual monthly Debates at Lolita Bar instead of this one-man exegesis, think of this as an opportunity to get a handle on what the Midwest is all about before the next day sees the presidential primaries begin in that region (though, for all the New Yorkers reading this: remember that Iowa is not the same as Illinois, despite the corn and general flatness).  And consider the irony that the latest Republican to bubble briefly to the top of the GOP primary stew is none other than John McCain — who has long sought to ban Ultimate Fighting!

P.P.S. As it happens, the world’s real political and religious savior, Bono, was once asked what he thought of some of Bob Geldof’s more angry political statements, and he replied that he (Bono) always tried to temper his own statements in political arguments by remembering the two founding rules of Ultimate Fighting, no biting and no eye-gouging, while Geldof doesn’t always abide by those rules.  Bono, plainly, understands the importance of Ultimate Fighting in the grand scheme of things.  Join us Jan. 2 at Lolita Bar so you understand as well.