Hot Sherlocks

Excuse me while I take out my figurative long cherry-wood pipe ala Sherlock Holmes. The mood this morning is "a disputatious rather than a meditative mood."

Ahem.

Okay, we all know the world is pretty messed up right now. You don't need me to go into details, we all know. SO messed up. But there are lines, folks. There are lines that once we cross them, we're just going into cloud cuckoo land and never coming back. And today, I think I saw some folks happily stepping over that line, and even though it may risk me getting cancelled, I'm going to call it out.

A troubling poll

Somewhere out in the Twitterverse -- let me run the math here -- one hundred and fifty-four followers of The Baker Street Journal on Twitter have something odd going on where they don't quite understand what the word "hotness" means.

Where I come from, it has always meant "someone who sexually excites you." It does not mean "someone who is your favorite at what they do." I get the feeling a lot of older cis-het guys were skewing the numbers on this one. Cis-het guys have long been the mainstay of The Baker Street Journal, and I doubt they all went, "Well, since I'm not attracted to Sherlock Holmes, I'm sitting this one out."

Yes, I have met women who found Jeremy Brett attractive in the day, some who prefer older men, etc., but they've usually been the outliers. Sherlockians, as a whole, do react to most stimuli in the variety of ways that non-Sherlockians do, and presented with that list of four, I don't think you're going to find a sudden variation from those norms just because someone was a Sherlockian.

I mean, seriously. Do people not have Netflix accounts?

Cumberbatch is cool as hell and is the man that actually brought sexy Sherlock to the world. Not just to fans of Sherlock Holmes who were staring at Rathbone anyway when the mood hit, but the guy that caused folks to actually go, "Wow, Sherlock Holmes in nothing but a sheet is something I was ready for."

Robert Downy Jr. is one of the world's most charming human beings. His bod may not be in the best shape all the time, but that guy can get it done.

And Henry Cavill? Henry Cavill? Superman? The Witcher? The baddie who does that cool shoulder-cocking move before helping Tom Cruise destroy a restroom in Mission Impossible: Fallout?

I am sorry, but I'm calling total BS on the idea of a majority of actual humans putting Jeremy Brett over those three lads in any true "hotness" contest. Hell, I'm 98% straight, but I'd stop to think about if one of those three propositioned me. Jeremy Brett, at the age he played Sherlock? Well, we might have a lovely tea.

We all know (I hope) that we shouldn't base our current view of reality on Twitter, where chaos is constantly reigning and K-pop fans rule the Earth. Same goes for Facebook, which skews whatever way it thinks you need to be skewed to make their ads effective.  There are certain subjects we need to step back, observe as objectively as Sherlock Holmes himself would, and look for the facts behind the spooky tales of demon-dogs, Peruvian vampire-women, and Jeremy Brett's hotness.

I mean, Sir Ian McKellen. Sir Ian McKellen.

Really. Put those DVDs away and watch some stuff.