Well, since I'm hiding from the comments section this week anyway, after another round of Elementary versus the world . . . I do that occasionally, being something of a cowardly blogger. But I am honest, which is why I'm going to tell you what I'm about to tell you. It's not going to score me any points with the Sherlockian world, but just needs to be entered into that giant data storage archive we call the interwebs one more time. It's like an annual Christmas special with a touch of melancholy that rolls around at the same time every year.
Another friend got invited to the annual dinner of the Baker Street Irregulars of New York this week. And as always happens when a new invitation finds someone I like, or an Irregular shilling is bestowed upon a long-waiting Sherlockian of my esteem, I found myself feeling a little sad.
The person in question is always delighted, congratulations shower down, and happiness abounds. I'm glad for their happiness, of course, in a distant sort of way. About twenty-five years distant, at this point, which was the last time I felt something close. One might compare it to an long-married crone considering a young bride, I guess. Or one might go with a different marriage analogy.
For me, it's a little bit like someone who'll be completely happy with weddings again when everyone can marry whomever it is they love. I'll be completely happy about someone going to the Baker Street Irregulars dinner for the first time again when everyone can go for the first time.
This isn't some whimsy I came up with last week, or tonight, in a desperate attempt to find something to blog. My hope for an open Baker Street Irregulars dinner started in a day when one particular gender didn't get invited, and then grew over time, as changing management suddenly dropped invitees who seemed on the verge of membership, as my own distance from the core membership made me a sympathetic ear for those frustrated with long years of waiting to see the inside of the banquet room. I've been writing and re-writing on this topic for so long that its a little same-old, same-old, and I should probably give it up.
But like beauty pageant entrants who must regularly hope for that maybe unrealistic dream of world peace, I have to annually voice a maybe unrealistic dream of an open annual dinner from America's elder Sherlockian society.
And so, with that annual tradition done for another year, I can go dream of sugar plums or Turkish delights or . . . whatever Sherlock Holmes liked instead of jelly babies. You know there was something.
Merry BSI invitation time, everybody!
The ongoing investigation of Sherlock Holmes, reported from the Peoria, Illinois outpost of Baker Street's dirtiest half a dozen.
I think part of the excitement behind getting an invitation to the BSI Dinner is that it's an exclusive event. The moment you make it an open event, that's when the shine will wear off of the wonder of receiving such an invitation. You can't really have it both ways.
ReplyDeleteDear B.S.I., as Groucho Marx may have put it, "I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as one of its members." Or, "You ain't getting me to N.Y.C. in January." Damn fools can't make Holmes' birthday in July or August? Have a great time at that yawn feast everyone, once is enough.
ReplyDeleteMy invitation must have gotten lost in the mail, AGAIN!
ReplyDeleteAn open dinner has possibilities. It could move from mid-town Manhattan in January to the spacious "Hog Pen Room" at the Piccadilly Cafeteria on I-67, halfway (as the crow flies) between Buzzard Nut County and Jeebus Junction. In August. During the Annual Corn Dog 'n' Deep-Fried Lard Festival.
ReplyDeleteBut, seriously, the best model is that of the Five Orange Pips of Westchester. And hardly anyone has seen said model in action because there are only 10 members.
Better still is the late and dearly missed Burr's approach to the annual dinner.