Matthew Polly's Blog

I spent last weekend with the brilliant bloggers at fightlinker.com. Their amazing productivity rather shamed my poor performance. So after so many months away, I'm back. Here are a few updates:

1. Apparently, my book is helping to inspire David Spina, who plays for the ECHL Premier 'AA' Hockey League. If he makes it to the majors, I intend to take credit.

2. I was honored to win two American Library Association Awards. It was nominated as one of the best books of the year. It was also...

I wandered into a Barnes & Noble today and was delighted to find American Shaolin at the front of the store on the table for Father's Day Deals (20% off).

It got me to thinking...

Because so many readers have requested signed copies of American Shaolin, I decided to set up a paypal account and figured out shipping costs.

If you are interested for yourself or for The Old Man (June 17), simply email me (matthew@mattpolly.com) and we can work out the details.

The book lists for $26. I can mail...

It seems the world of acupuncture has discovered American Shaolin. Ostenzen.com put up a rather amazing post with all my videos and a link to the interview I did on the Leonard Lopate show. I still haven't figured out how to do that.

Many people come up to me and ask what tips I have for them when they are doing a kung fu photoshoot in a suit in the middle of Times Square. Until Saturday I didn't know quite what to tell them except to say that my brother is on the police force and they should leave me alone.

But thanks to The Times of London and their wonderful photographer, Shahar Azram, I now have some advice.

First it is very important when performing flying kicks in a suit that you wear the knee-length dress socks...

Most people in NY publishing consider Powell's in Portland to be one of the best, most innovative independent bookstores in the country. Frankly, I have to agree, because they wrote a wonderful review of my book and made it one of their staff picks.

Gerry and Michal: you are innovative; you are the best. I hope you'll invite me to read at your amazing store.

Steve Ersinghaus finds the conversation wonderful and the dialogue "planted" with irony. Thank you, Steve.

As I continue my baby steps into the wild world of writing for free, I continue to hold onto the crutch of making my posts about other blogs that have mentioned "American Shaolin." (Narcissism is a terrible disease.)

In that spirit, this one is a shout-out to werethylacine, who is the first blogger to use a quote from my book as an epigram. She also referred to it as "very-worth-reading." That along with the fact that she goes to art school and plays D&D makes her the trifecta.

May her "lot o...

Part of my recent conversion to the joys of blogging has come from the warm reaction my book, American Shaolin (you knew I had a book, right?), has received. Below are links to two of them.

Jeff Gabbard has done one of the most thorough reviews of American Shaolin on the web or in print, which you can read here. While this is no doubt due to his interest in martial arts literature, it is still rare in the MA community to find someone who can write as well as he can.

Riffing off Jeff's review...

It has been noted by several of my friends that I may in fact be the single worst blogger on the world wide web. Having allowed over three months between my first entry and now this my second, I am clearly having trouble adjusting to the new order. When I was young, the goal of every aspiring writer was to move from working for free to getting a gig that paid by the word. So it is with more than a little discomfort that I find myself torturing over the phrasing of this blog entry for free. I ...

I may be the only person who watched the torture scene in Casino Royale and thought: "Too bad Bond didn't study iron crotch kungfu." Sure James manages to turn his screams of pain into bitter laugher as the pervy villain, Le Chiffre, tenderizes his private parts with a carpet-beater. But that was real fear in Daniel Craig's eyes, and according to his own account he wasn't acting.

In contrast an iron crotch master would have shrugged his shoulders and rolled his eyes after each whacking. I...