TALES FROM ISOLATION ROW

Because I have been working in the past couple of months to generate traffic on two other platforms, my American football content on my Patreon site, Friday Morning Tight End, and other writing on Medium, sometimes via the Arc Digital platform, I have neglected Irresistible Targets. This should not surprise you, since I have at least twice seriously considered simply abandoning this project, which I was hoping would attract a much larger regular readership than it has.

But the lockdown has left me with more time to use, and I thought it might be time to begin working my way through books and television series and films I have read and watched, made notes about and organised ideas, but not written because, frankly, there was no money in it. So for the immediate future, at least, I'm proposing to write as many brief pieces as I can, and publish them here under the rubric of reviews or tales from Isolation Row. We'll start with a rather excellent Maigret from February....

JOE BIDEN, JEREMY CORBYN & THE US ELECTION: MY ARC DIGITAL ESSAY

I did another piece for Arc Digital on Joe Biden's claim that being 'too far' left cost Labour
the election in the UK and would cost Democrats the election in the US. Is he right? Use this link
and you can read the article on Medium without enrolling....
https://arcdigital.media/american-corbyns-does-labours-electoral-catastrophe-disqualify-the-american-left-ecc7033ad70?source=friends_link&sk=05b48ee257a3c1b585e350a07c78f4f7

BREXIT: A MODEST PROPOSAL My suggestions via Arc Digital

I've written a piece for Arc Digital suggesting an easy way to make the current conundrum over Brexit something more bearable, entertaining and successful for all concerned. The piece was recommended to readers on Medium, in their World section, and they have provided a link by which you can read it and laugh without necessarily having to subscribe there, though that's not a bad idea. You can find that link here....happy reading

JIM BOUTON: THE LAST WORD

Although I'd recorded the interview with Matthew Bannister a month ago, my appreciation of Jim Bouton has just been broadcast on BBC Radio 4's Last Word. It's a wonderful show: it begins with Peter Fonda and ends with Bouton: two icons of Sixties rebellion, of counter-culture, from different ends of the American spectrum. You can listen to the show on BBC IPlayer (actually now rebranded Sounds! to appeal to those too young to seek out obituary programmes) with this link . Fonda leads off the show; my bit is at the end, starting around 21 mins. The rest of the show is as interesting as usual, but I do love the way Fonda and Bouton play off against each other.

In case you missed my story at Arc Digital, going into more detail, you can link to that here.

THE BREXIT OUROBOROS: BORIS JOHNSON, TRUMP & BREXIT

I've done another Brexit piece for Arc Digital, this one about Johnson's ascendancy to No. 10 Downing Street, his relation to Trump, and the future for Britain and Brexit. Just a few small topics. You can find it here. The ouroboros title went by the wayside, but it was all I could do not to call it the Ouroboris, the worm that eats its own tail. Which is basically what Britain is doing via Brexit. And Boris. Give it a clap if you enjoy it.

I actually has a paragraph comparing Johnson and Trump to King Gorice and Goldy Bluszco (you can guess which one is which, I hope) from E.R. Eddison's Worm Ouroboros, until I realised that if no one would know what ouroboros meant, even fewer would have read Eddison's fantasy novel (now you know!).

BOSCH: MICHAEL CONNELLY'S TV SERIES, HIS NOVELS, HIS PODCAST

I've done another feature for Arc Digital, 'Obsessive Justice: Harry Bosch, American Crime, and Michael Connelly'. You can link to it here. It was based on an interview I did with Michael back in October, when he was in London to promote his novel Dark Sacred Night. We talked a bit about Bosch and a bit about his then-upcoming Murder Book podcast. When it came time to publishing the interview, the Bosch TV show was the hook that had the most biting power, but it also proved a good entry point for the kind of piece Arc wanted, one that would draw in new viewers/readers/listeners to Bosch.

That fit in well with the relatively general nature of our interview, now almost six months old, but because we were also into true crime territory, I could also draw on what I wrote in my afterword to Crime Beat, which I had originally 'full disclosured' right at the top of the story.

One of the things Michael and I discussed in October was the fact that I first reviewed Trunk Music (1997) in The Spectator; I believe it was his first mainstream UK review. I met him right after that appeared, by almost accident; I just happened to see that he was doing a reading in a bookshop in Melbourne, Florida, where I was visiting my parents when covering WLAF preseason practices in Orlando. He has been not only the best of interviews, but a very generous, not least commissioning me to write that afterword. There are few writers I've met whom I admire more, and if this piece does him justice and helps spread the word, I will be pleased.

COLIN KAEPERNICK & THE NFL: THE BUSINESS AND THE GAME

Last week when Colin Kaepernick's collusion suit against the NFL was settled, I wrote about what the settlement meant, and the issues behind it. If you don't subscribe to my Friday Morning Tight End column at Patreon.com, you can now find the column at Arc Digital, here. A quick summary: the settlement has very little to do with knees, and lots to do with owners; note that I wrote it before Robert Kraft took his chauffeur-driven Bentley down to the Orchids Of Asia....

https://arcdigital.media/colin-kaepernick-the-business-and-the-game-37be3626619?sk=03f72df243354388786af77d496c1587

BREXIT, TRUMP, AND HISTORY'S HAND: MY ARC DIGITAL ESSAY

I've written a piece for Arc Digital on Brexit from the point of view of a dual national American living here in Britain, and lamenting my inability to look with schadenfreude at my adopted country from the point of view of an American, because when I look at America from the point of view of a Brit (or even an expat Yank) I see something just as horrific.

I should point out that schadenfreude, and indeed angst, with which I end the essay, are both German words happily emigrated into the English vocabulary, and neither is likely to be invited to leave the OED if and when we cut our ties with the EU.

In fairness, the piece wound up being less about my own personal dilemmae, and more about a history of Brexit for Yanks and others who remain unaware of it, and a pointing out some parallels between the world of Brexit and the world of Trump. You can link to it (Arcdigi publish on Medium) right here. Many thanks to editors Bonny Brooks (who suggested the topic) and Berny Belvedere.