Sherlock's Cousin Carl

 When you're a lifelong fan of something, you tend to see the world through fan-colored glasses.

When Harry Potter blew up, there was something about the phenomenon that felt very familiar to me, much like when Sherlock Holmes blew up in the late 1800s and early 1900s. 

Sherlock Holmes was helping his readers transition to a new world of using logic and science to solve mysteries. Technology was built on math, physics, chemistry, all those reason-based fields that said, "Hey, if we think about things hard enough, we can solve mystifying problems." Sherlock Holmes foreshadowed a new age rolling in.

Harry Potter helped readers deal with a new age as well. His magic-based reality, to my mind, was a transitional metaphor for a level of technology that was beyond our understanding. Instead of a two-way mirror, we say a magic word like "Siri-call-mom!" into a screen and another person's face can even appear if we're using the proper phone app. We're pretty sure it's not magic, but can most of us build, or even fully explain, all the tech that goes into making that happen? Working in IT, I've seen more and more people become accustomed to having their wishes become true that they think this magic can make anything available to them. And a lot of times, it does.

So, flying to and from 221B Con, I had picked up a very popular book called Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman. Well-written, and with the feeling of a Harry Potter level fan favorite, the story of dungeon crawler Carl hit me with one of the feelings of transitional echoes that Sherlock Holmes and Harry Potter gave me.

The planet Earth, as we know it, has basically been strip-mined for elements, and the surviving millions of residents are placed in a reality-TV D&D sort of game show of survival, where just getting by through the next day is the best achievement one can hope for. Getting fans, the attention of an TV show host or the patronage of the ultra-wealthy aliens that run the galaxy-wide streaming service is how one best places one's self for survival.

Now, one could see this as Jonathan Swift level parody, and it is, somewhat. But as I read the book, it lowered my stress levels about all those stupid, stupid things we see in the news. Not just due to the escapism, but because, like Sherlock Holmes and Harry Potter, I could relate to Carl. And in relating to Carl, it seemed like, yes, there is a way to get through all this. One day at a time. One confrontation at a time. One moment at a time. 

Good fictional characters are there, not just to entertain, but to inspire and to make the day-to-day more manageable. And I was glad to find another one who does the job.

The Land of Sherlockian Lakes

 Minnesota, when we're not thinking of it as the home of the great university Sherlock Holmes collection, is also known as the "Land of 10,000 Lakes." As I recover from the grand weekend of 221B Con, I'm thinking that Minnesota being a Sherlockian center, as well as this land of many lakes, is very appropriate.

Because when you do a head count of Sherlock Holmes fans involved in a specific thing, Sherlockiana can seem like a very small pond. Three hundred people is a great success for a live event, be it in New York, Atlanta, or anywhere. Three hundred people, that three digit number 300, compared with an American population of 342,000,000, or something like American football where a single game pulls an average of 70,000 attendees. A very, very small pond indeed.

But we know that there are more Sherlock Holmes fans than that. There have to be. There are TV shows.

But some of the truth of that came out this weekend as I ran the Alpha Inn Goose Club Trivia Hour, and tested a full room of my fellow Sherlockians on what I thought was common Sherlockian knowledge. One of the categories was "Those Non-Canonical Baker Street Regulars," in which I selected a character from a Sherlock Holmes TV show who appeared regularly, but was not in the original stories. Molly Hooper, Marcus Bell, Sergeant Wilkins, Amelia Rojas, and Ingrid Derian were the names that answered each of five questions, each of those characters coming from a TV show that reached millions of viewers and was made due to the popularity of Sherlock Holmes.

Someone in the crowd knew the answer to almost all of them. (We shall forgive no one knowing Wilkins, as his TV show was in the early 1950s, even though it's readily available on YouTube.) But it was a different someone each time, and not many someones.

Because even with our most widely viewed Sherlock Holmes media, we are not a small pond -- we are a collection of small ponds. Sherlockiana is, like Minnesota, a land of ten thousand lakes.

It's easy to look at one's own view of the elephant, to switch to the metaphor of the blind men and the elephant, and think that it's the whole elephant. (I think it was former U of M Sherlock Holmes Collections curator Tim Johnson who first made that comparison with Sherlockian fandom.) The older the part of the fandom, the easier it is to see that as the whole. And maybe that's the comfortable level we want to make a part of our lives, sticking with the original Canon, BBC Sherlock, creating our own pastiche version of 1880s Baker Street, whatever trips our trigger. But we can never forget that our piece is part of the Minnesota of the whole Sherlock Holmes culture.

An annual dip in the 221B Con pool, figuratively speaking -- I've yet to indulge in post-con "nerd soup" at the Atlanta Marriott pool -- is a good thing for reminding one's self of all of the diversity of thought within the fan culture of Sherlock Holmes. Because it isn't just a pool. It, like Minnesota, is a land of lakes.

Napoleon Bust of Crime Does Con!

 I'm sorry . . .

221B Con 2026: Sunday Always Comes

 Well, here I am at the airport, hours early for my flight, but past security and full of a breakfast from Bantam and Biddy's on the C concourse. (Recommended. Good bacon.) My father-in-law always said, "If you have to wait somewhere, so you might as well be where you need to be." And now I have a little time to reflect on Sunday's 221B Con life.

Sunday's are hard at con, because you know the ride is almost over and you can see the place where you have to get off. Saturday night was a late one, whatever your version of late is, and that first 10 AM panel is not going to be as lively as some. Of the choices, I picked the Sherlolly panel, because I still think the hypothesized escape from the Reichenbach Fall that involved Sherlock kissing Molly Hooper as she facilitated his smooth survival strategy was part of my preferred theory on that bit. And the sweet girl deserved it . . . and let's not even get into how the bad sister used Molly against him later. I have thoughts.

And even though BBC Sherlock doesn't dominate 221B Con like it used to, you have to tip your hat to the one who brought everyone to the party on day one and inspired so much of what this convention is thirteen years later. The massive surge we saw at the start from the show has faded, and the con has gone from over eight hundred attendees to just under three hundred, but the current number still makes it one of the biggest things in Sherlock Holmes fan stuff, as well as a viable event. And that was important this year.

The transition in management this year went smoothly, and it still seemed like the familiar weekend I've known for over a decade. The Atlanta airport Marriott treats us well, and this year I even dicovered how easy it is to fly in and out with that hotel as a base. But back to the con . . .

As usual, socializing kept me from Mycroft and Lestrade panels, Conan Doyle's supernatural stories, consumption and brain fever, but I did make Raffles and Bunny for a while, before wandering off to talk to friends and take advantage of the food truck again. I was telling someone that I just go to the single-thread speaker weekends to see other Sherlockians, but since you're all in the room where the talks are going on, you have to listen to the talks. The multi-thread, multi-room nature of 221B Con makes it too easy to play hookey, and a lot of folks do. You always hear comments like "If there are almost three hundred people here, why were there only three people at panel X?" We have all of those people to talk to! And then there's the dealer's room.

I restrained myself as much as possible from a dealer's room spending spree this year, so much so that I almost missed picking up a beautiful book I had already paid for.  There's always a great array of things to shop for in the dealer's room, but I tend to focus on art. I missed getting a commission from one of the artists that was doing really good work for folks, but still managed a pretty decent array.

There are lately two final events that close out the con on Sunday afternoon the first is "An Hour with Ashley and Curtis," which is an always entertaining ramble on something from the original Sherlock Holmes stories that sometimes involves a dance. No dance this time, but a lot of good back and forth on the topic of "Dick Men in the Canon," predicated upon the fact that wherever you find a woman in the Sherlock Holmes stories, there will also be a dick man. And he might even be Sherlock Holmes.

The talk was punctuated with t-shirts thrown at the audience, as the con was purging its bins of previous con t-shirts. No injuries occurred, thankfully.

We had a half hour before "Our Last Bow," the con's final panel, so I dashed up to my room to squeeze in a nap, still feeling the effects of the day before. I returned, much refreshed, and plopped on the floor to let someone else have a chair in the filled room for the annual con recap panel. Announcements on the 2027 con, some final housekeeping, suggestions for next time, and more of those leftover t-shirts to give away (so many smalls -- none of us as as small as the attendees of that first con year these days). Everyone was appreciative of all those who helped create this year's event, and things weren't quite so emotional as when it was news of the con ending or not ending were topics.

And with that, the con was over. Those who weren't immediately flying out figured out dinner options. "Nerd soup" happens at the hotel pool. And we get the side restaurant space for any after-parties, but suddenly you realize it's 9 PM, you're very tired, and have to fly out in the morning. A few last chats and off for final packing and bed.

As with any great Sherlockian weekend, there are so many thoughts, potential projects, and follow-up e-mails to fill the days ahead as you digest this banquet of Sherlock Holmes fandom. For now, however, it's time to fly. Next time, Atlanta!

221B Con 2026: Saturday

 Well, it's Sunday now, but let's talk Saturday.

Wandering down to the hotel lobby at about 7:20, it turned out the 221st Southumberland Waffleers had already headed out for their latest campaign, so I settled on some Starbucks chai tea and a cinnamon roll to break my fast, went for a lovely morning walk about the perimeter of the hotel grounds, and general preparation for the day. 

The official 221B Con programming starts at 10 AM, but there was a little breakfast reception for the Diogenes Club supporters of the con, so I swung by that room for a little continental second breakfast before going down for the first panel.

Dynamics of a Podcast, the world's only Moriarty podcast, was connecting with South African co-host Dixie from the other side of the world to discuss "people from history or fiction who Professor Moriarty would recruit for his organization." Local (London), regional (UK), global (world-wide), and cosmic (anywhere in the universe) were all categories considered. Much discussion happened, many characters were brought up, from Robin Hood to Q from ST:TNG, but in the end James Bond was the winner for Moriarty's best possible recruit, through whatever means.

Next on my list was the CBS Watson panel. There's a lot to say about CBS Watson, since we podcast about it on The Watsonian Weekly every week, and since one of the panelists was someone I discuss the show with every week, there's wasn't much new on this one that my memory has retained at this point. I tend to get much more from panels on things I know less about, and that would be my advice for anyone trying a 221B Con situation for the first time: Don't limit yourself to your favorite topics -- challenging yourself might find you some new favorite topics. I have a whole list of fun things I've gotten into from going off my normal tracks at con.

Next came a screening of "They Might Be Giants" with Curtis Armstrong doing some opening introduction and notes. Having seen the movie a few times, I stayed for the intro, then slipped out. One "They Might Be Giants" virgin, Max Magee, caught me in the hall and tried to coerce me into returning, but I was starving and the food truck was a short walk away. So let me talk about the hotel food truck, parked just outside the con doors.

Jackfruit barbecue on a vegan bun. Housemade potato chips. Broccoslaw. Roasted turkey and fancy cheese I can't remember sandwiches. Cobb salad with chicken. Big chocolate chip cookie. Those were all things I ate at the food truck in 24 hours. It's a good food truck, and when you're running from happening to happening, you need quick meals! The hotel restaurant is good, but committing to a full hour or more for a meal costs you content!

The day passes so quickly at 221B Con between panels, events, trips to the dealer's room, and just hanging out with old and new friends. And suddenly it's 4:30 and I have to sit on the panel for Sherlockian chronology, which continues to get a good crowd at con.

Max Magee, Chris Ziordan, and I did a little intro to the subject and its challenges, and then we dropped right into building a timeline of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes with our audience, who all got a copy of the 2026 edition of The Sherlockian Chronologist Guild Handbook just for coming. We had to hustle at the end but we did make it through the first twelve short stories and, hopefully, inspired some new chronologists.

Immediately after that, I sat on the John H. Watson Society panel, which went from explaining the many aspects of the society and then became an art show, where I handed folks markers and large magazine acid-free backing boards and had them draw their favorite Watsons for the audience to guess. We got some amazing portraits, ranging from Edward Hardwick to Dr. Dawson, and many photos were taken, but I was so busy hosting the art show that I didn't take any. (I did get a couple of the amazing pieces of art. Bluebell was especially kind in letting me keep her work.)

The two hours that followed were, for me, prep and resting up for the Alpha Inn Goose Club Pub Trivia Hour, a great fun game I run with my co-host Steve the Goose. (You might have met a fellow named Steve Mason, who doesn't look like a goose, because he's not Steve the Goose. Steve the Goose is Steve the Goose.) But immediately before the trivia hour, there was one more thing to do.

Rita Smith, one of my podcast pals, was treating us to a one-woman show entitled "Snakes I Have Known" originally presented at the Harrisburg Fringe Festival, which wove "The Speckled Band," truth, family, and domestic violence. I had known in advance that I'd have to leave a half hour into it to run the trivia hour next door, and the show was engaging enough that I waited until the last possible moment to leave, which then allowed me to make an entrance for the trivia hour, which somehow heightened my energy for being basically a game show host for the next hour.

The Alpha Inn Goose Club Trivia Hour had run successfully at 221B Con before, and like many a franchise then tried to expand into a longer after-dinner version at a "Holmes In The Heartland" weekend. Being back home at 221B Con and an hour -- especially an hour at nine PM after cocktails had been ingested, made for a much livelier crowd. The two teams, based on knowledge bases of Holmes's world, the British Museum and the London Library, were quickly roused to chant their team name, which they started doing with enough enthusiasm that I worried about the rooms next door and hoped we weren't disturbing them.

We played trivia Family Feud style with five players from each team lined up in the front of the room to take turns competing head to head in categories like non-Canonical regulars from Holmes based TV shows, Sherlockian music, Sherlockian art, numbers of books in novel series that spin out of . . .

Okay, I have to take a break for a second, because I'm writing in the "Raffles and Bunny" panel, and the purple demon girl came in and sat in front of me. Have I mentioned the purple demon girl? (No, I'm not hallucinating.) There is a completely purple demon girl, who may not be a demon, but I always think that, who sits quietly in the front row of many 221 B Con panels. When you're sitting on a panel the first time this happens, you can't help but find you attention drifting in that direcetion, simply because, a.) It's a really good cosplay, and b.) Most of us don't see purple demons every day.

Back to trivia. We had a nice, rowdy hour, with disputes (of course), boisterous cheers, triumphs and  tragedies, and unlike a couple of years ago, Madeline Quinones and Ashley Polasek did not dominate so thoroughly, even though they were on the same team. The scoring ran neck-and-neck for most of the hour, but when we came down to a "Final Jeopardy" type final question, where the teams could bet a number of their souvenir Alpha Inn Goose Club Scoring Pence, the London Library was a few pence in the lead. Both team's representatives got their final question right, so the bets didn't affect the outcome that much and the London Library won the night, getting an exclusive "Big Honking Winner" blue badge ribbon to apply to their con badges.

The London Library Team with me and Steve the Goose

It took me a minute to clean things up, tote things to my room, and get back down, but next came Drunk Canon, which I missed the intro to, and was fumbling its way through reprising Sherlock Holmes stories. Perhaps a certain comic book creator was not as well versed as the theatrical ladies on the panel, and a certain school teacher was in an entirely different mode, perhaps because he was sitting closest to the bottles, but I shall let them remain anonymous and not detail the chaos that followed (if I even could). I will, however, post this redacted photo . . .

After that, and a lot of loud conversations that required one to leave the room to speak with more sober attendees, a number of us retired to Mrs. Hudson's, the 221B Con lounge full of celebrity standees, inflatables to sit or lay upon, the front door and fireplace of 221B Baker Street, and a photo-friendly TARDIS, whose constant working TARDIS-hum is so comforting. We relaxed, we chatted some more, and sometime after midnight, I decided sleep was my next priority.

But once in bed, my mind still took a bit to wind down. Because it's 221B Con weekend.

221B Con 2026: Friday Night Random

 Sometimes you can be your own worst enemy with something like 221B Con.

There are so many paths open to you, so many choices to be made, and then there are your personal little obsessions entering in. How do you consume as much of an idea banquet as possible when you can only take one bite at a time? Sometimes only one course is offered, as when the con starts at 5 P.M. with a little intro session from the con board, but for the most part, choices must be made.

After a stop in my room, for example, I was headed to my first discussion of the evening, on the recent Amazon Young Sherlock Holmes show, which had been a fun watch. But then I saw a late arriving friend Rob Nunn) in the bar and went to say hello. Rob, however, was sitting with Curtis Armstrong and Ashley Polasek, and when Curtis suggest I take a chair, I eventually took a chair and just chatted with Rob, Curtis, and Ashley for an hour, as well as consuming one of the house specials for the con, a mixed drink in a bag called "The Scarlet Claw" after the Rathbone film of that same name.

After that very happy hour had passed, however, there was going to be a remote conversation with Paul Waggot from New Zealand, the actor playing John Watson in the amazing Sherlock & Co. podcast. While Paul is not John Watson, closing your eyes, you could imagine that familiar Watson from the podcast was the one on the screen at the front of the room. Congoers got to step up and ask Paul questions about his portrayal, got a lot of great answers, and then, at the last, got a surprise drop-in from Acushla-Tara Kupe, Paul's wife and his Watson's Mary Morstan from Sherlock & Co. The whole thing was an wonderful opening-night feature for the con.

Another hour of chatting with friends and my next stop was one of those little off-Sherlock-topic panels that are the spice of 221B Con's main meal. And if former con-runners Heather Holloway and Crystal Noll are going to discuss a topic they love, you know it's going to be a fun listen.

And so I went to (buckle up, dedicated Sherlockians!) the con's Fast and the Furious panel. It's nine o'clock at night and there are a "Crimes of Sherlock Holmes" and an erotic fanfic panel overlapping, so a lot of folks were otherwise engaged, and, as happens sometimes, a panel has less attendance than expected. But that never stops the good time. And it sure didn't here.

From there, I headed to an 18+ fanfic writer's workshop, where random prompts are handed out, and everyone in the room starts writing fanfic. There's not nearly enough time to finish a full tale, but just getting a story started from such random prompts as "plane," "inappropriate snowstorm," and "somnophilia." Adding to my personal challenge -- I had forgotten my laptop, had to run to the room to get it ... 

Okay, let's be honest here. If you go full 221B Con, you really don't have time to keep up with blog post entries, guerilla podcast recording, or any side activities. Just staying hydrated is good. Right now, I'm sitting the the big room where the Sherlolly panel is happening in twelve minutes, the start of SUNDAY'S programming. That starts at 10 AM, and nobody is even here yet due to all of the hijinks of the previous evening -- the Nautical themed prom (multiple jellyfish costumes) and Drunk Canon (a bit fiesty at times, but what I thought might be a chokehold turned out to be a hug-from-behind on a seated person). So, yeah, con life can be pretty immersive. But back to Friday . . .

So I had to see if there were any character prompts for the writing, and there weren't, so I went with Mycroft Holmes and Greg Lestrade, since that's the favorite of one of my fellow podcasters.

Just another flight out of Atlanta on a summer. day. The heat and humidity required extra effort to ignore, but Mycroft Holmes was a champion at ignoring the small annoyances. Greg was already on the Diogenes Club plane waiting at the Diogenes Club underground hanger beneath a popular airport hotel that pretended to be part of a popular chain, yet was completely Diogenes Club. The plane was being rolled out to the airstrip, where Mycroft would board, and his timing was perfect. 

Here came the plane, here was Mycroft.

And then the oddest of things happened. First clouds silently rolling in without perceptible wind. And then snow. Lovely large flakes that, given time, would close down the airport. 

Mycroft walked toward to coming plane slightly faster than normal. He waved for the support crew to get the door open and the steps down slightly faster than normal. And he climbed the steps into the plane, slightly faster than normal.

Where he found Greg Lestrade laying, stretched out upon the couch, fast asleep. Like Snow White, like Sleeping Beauty, like a Scotland Yard Disney princess, laying so perfectly on his back that he seemed to be awaiting a prince’s kiss to wake him.

A voice came over the cabin intercom.

“Sir, they’re holding all the planes until the snow situation is sorted. It’s gotten quite thick quite fast but it seems to have stopped. They’re saying thirty minutes.”

I'll let you figure out where that was going. After that, I wandered back to the hotel bar where a bunch of my friends had just finished playing Pictionary using the sixty original Sherlock Holmes stories as prompts. Apparently it was the most hilarious game of Pictionary ever, and they walked me through every one of the pictures to see if my guesses confirmed their own. The picture they seemed to fixate upon the most was this one.

The story this was depicting was "The Adventure of the Nobel Bachelor," and the folks telling me about it had a lot of "Why is there a star?" and other questions. My one thought, was, "I have materials in my room to cosplay that piece of art." So let's jump ahead to the next night's Drunk Canon, where the art met the artist . . .

 After all that, I went up to my room and collapsed. On to Saturday . . .

Flight to 221B Con 2026 and Waffle House Time

 Typically, at this time of year, I start writing about the road to the great Sherlock Holmes convention of the last decade, 221B Con in Atlanta. It's a twelve hour drive from Peoria that I typically split into a couple days, but this year . . . this year . . . well, direct flight, anyone?

Flying from a little regional airport into ATL is quite a transition, but for the hour and fifteen minute flight time, descending into the massive rivers of humanity at a Delta hub is not all that bad. The airport shuttles weren't hard to find and very regular and often to the Best Road Marriott. I was safely ensconced in the familiar confines before mid-afternoon after a leisurely morning.

Wandering the hotel a full 24 hours before the actual start of the Canon is always a smorgasbord of encounters. I helped unload TARDIS parts from a trailer, had appetizers with some prominent Sherlockian publishers, got dragged to an imaginary Italian restaurant by a notable Texas Sherlockian, returned to the hotel for some podcasting, then some miso soup and blackberry cobbler in the hotel bar with a world-travelling Sherlockian. 

Eventually, you have to go to bed, and if one wakes up in time and the leader of the 221st Northumberland Waffleers has assigned a time for a Waffle House breakfast, there is an All-Star Special in one's future.

And this time, Friday morning holds one more special Waffle House treat -- a reservations-only tour of the one and only Waffle House museum at the site of the first Waffle House in Avondale.

It's important to note: There is no food served at the Waffle House Museum, even though it is, truly, a Waffle House. 

The Belanger Brothers at the Waffle House Museum

It's a reproduction of the first Waffle House restaurant at the site of the first Waffle House restaurant, the building of which was sold at some point and served as a few other things, including a Chinese restaurant, before being bought by Waffle House to make it their museum.

Tours of the museum have to be arranged, and our guide was the Waffle House archivist and museum curator, Julia Buschman, who told the Waffle House story, answered questions, and scored our scavenger hunt papers after we perused the other side of the museum.

There was even a working jukebox featuring Waffle House related songs.

And, if you successfully completed the scavenger hunt, one of the prizes you could pick was a 45 record of one of the Waffle House songs. 

How could things get any better on such a day? Did someone say "comic book store restaurant/bar?"

"My Parents' Basement"

Lunch at any place subtitled "Your Friendly Neighborhood Comic Book Bar," sitting on its open air patio on a sunny day, is a lovely follow-up to the Waffle House Museum, and when we finally made it back to the hotel for the con to begin, we'd had a pretty great day already.

And 221B Con was yet to come.

The Napoleon Bust of Crime

 And now for something completely different . . .

Saturday Later Dayton 2026

 Okay, I'll admit it. I had to take a nap.

Stayed up too late, got up too early, not really a napper, but sometimes, ya just gotta recharge. As a result I missed George Skornickel's "Every Poster Tells a Story." Ed Petit from the video podcast Sherlock Monthly had started his presentation when I rolled downstairs again, even though I'd set an alarm for myself.

Ed spoke about how his job at the Rosenbach collection in Philadelphia evolved, under the title "Sherlock Monthly: Smoking, Drinking, and Talking My Way Through the Canon." Having found Ed outside the hotel front door with a few others smoking cigars last night, the love of smoking he speaks of during his talk is already well evidenced this weekend. Smoking a pipe and drinking during his podcasts has become a habit, and he's made sure he had a drink in hand for his talk. Mary Alcaro, his show's mixologist, was on the program but unable to attend, and, if I remember right, was the designer of "the Great Mogul" that's being served at the bar this weekend. Her Sherlock Holmes story based recipes get a little bit of celebration. 

Cocktail hour, quite appropriately, followed. Folks change clothes, some dressed up, some dressed down, no real pattern. Many Great Moguls were ordered and visible amongst the crowd in the bar. And then we all headed in for the dinner banquet. Toasts (all of a reasonable length and not whole presentations looking for a timeslot, as sometimes happens) were proposed and cheered, the most memorable of which was to the orangutan from "Speckled Band," a character whom I don't remember getting such attention in decades of Sherlockian presentations and toasting, with a notable orangutan impression supporting the toast from the crowd. Dinner was a buffet with all the meats (and salmon) which was very nice. I was lucky enough to sit at the speaker's table which got to go first. Both the cost and added benefit, however, was sitting at a table of very smart and learned folks where you occasionally think, "Man, I'm the dumbest person at this table!" (which is definitely good at keeping the old ego in check).

The after-dinner speaker, and reason for our choice place in the buffet line was the never-boring Erika Dowell, speaking up "The BSI Archive: From Every Point of View." The archive, held at Indiana University's Lilly Library and its storage facilities, is a key resource for anyone studying the history of Sherlock Holmes fan culture in the United States, not just the Baker Street Irregulars, and Erika gave us a sense of the unexpected connections that can be made delving into the documents, photos, manuscripts, letters, etc.  It was a great talk for a nice after dinner treat, and Kyndall ended the evening program with a few remarks before the crowd headed their different directions.

At the previous hotel, the little bar would have karaoke until the DJ got sick of us, and there was a valiant attempt by the organizers to have some late-evening karaoke that just didn't catch on for a few different reasons, so we didn't even get Ira doing "Baker Street," or even an attempt at the theme from Young Sherlock, which seems like an excellent karaoke choice. (221B Con is much more karaoke friendly, so we still have that to look forward to.)

A few of us played Mystery Fluxx while the first episode of BBC Sherlock played on the big screens, which was a nice post-event wind-down. By the end of the episode, we were just watching the show, which was made a nice circle back to the initial talk of the morning. 

After that, we talked about the conference in general, and how much the new hotel improved things. The issues that did come up were mere fine tuning compared to the issues of the previous hotel, and overall it was deemed a successful weekend. Dayton will surely continue as a destination for Sherlockian spring doings.

With that, I will apologize for any errors, or photos that might not portray the true handsomeness of our day's speakers of either gender and call it a weekend. Safe travels to all, wherever you roam this Sunday.

Saturday Midday in Dayton 2026

 Breaks never seem quite long enough at Sherlockian conferences, and sometimes conversations just want to keep going. They went from fifteen minutes to thirty this year, and I have to admit I was listening to someone else and not the introduction to our next speaker when Bob Bernier was introduced, and I am pretty sure I was far from the only one.

Bob's talk, "Transporting Sherlock Holmes," covered all those modes of transportation in Holmes's day -- rail bicycle, horse-dawn cab. 

Ann Margaret Lewis came next, kindly taking a vote on how we wished her to say the name "Irene" as she spoke on "Irene Adler: The Life of a 19th Century Opera Diva." (Inspector Lestrade was a little more forceful in telling us how to pronounce his name in that early talk today.) Ann walks us through the probable training and career path as a successful opera singers of that day. Europe, patronage, American opera houses both small and large, and, of course, La Scala. Toward the end we get to hear the full presentation of the piece Irene is heard to sing briefly in the Granada adaptation of "A Scandal in Bohemia." Timothy Chalamet's recent comments come to mind, if one is up on the Timothy Chalamet gossip.

Hotel box lunches follow, with some more conversation, some more spending at the dealer's tables, and at 1:45 we're back in our seats for the learned remarks of Bob Katz.

Bob's talk "Don't Drink The Water" is about the importance of Watson's enteric fever (a.k.a. typhoid), mentioned in A Study in Scarlet from before he met Sherlock Holmes to the rest of the Canon, from Watson's perspective, Conan Doyle's perspective, and a personal perspective. Bob Katz is the only person who could have given us the talk he gave today -- the unique sort of presentation we come to these weekends for. (Besides all the wonderful chance to socialize and see our friends.)

Our next speaker is a longtime Dayton attendee and a first time speaker. Mark Curtis is quick to point out that he's the first Amish speaker we've ever had at this conference, with an opening survey of the audience that points out his gaslit lifestyle is "always 1895." The talk itself "Was Holmes Unfair to Watson's Brother?" focuses on that pocket watch with which Holmes deduced much of Watson's "unhappy brother." Mark is a collector of pocket watches and very knowledgeable on the topic, and again a little personal experience and a little humor add a lot to a talk. Numbers scratched into the back of the watch, scratches near the key hole -- both of these can have innocent explanations, yet Watson's brother gets disparaged.

Time for another break! More to come.

Saturday Morning in Dayton 2026

 If you get up early enough, if you're not otherwise encumbered with Sherlockian conference duties, and if you hit the hotel lobby at the right time, there are always the 221st Southumberland Waffleers, the society of Sherlockian Waffle House fans. 

Steve Mason typically drafts this volunteer patrol to gather intelligence of local Waffle House breakfasts at the site of Sherlockian events, though there are many others. And among these stalwarts are always a standout hero or two, one of whom is Erica [Full Name Withheld for HIPAA Considerations -- Her Waffle House order is practically a medical condition.]

Ever seen someone eat hash browns with every possible topping? Waffleers have.

Back at the hotel, registration was soon starting at 8:30 and the dealer's tables were open. The BSI and Wessex presses always have their new wares at Dayton if you missed them in New York in January, and there art pieces of art, an array of old books, and even a few baked goods available.

Kyndall Potts, the general manager of the symposium, starts of the program with an intro and the general business of the day. Regina Stinson then gave a short tribute to the late Jacquelynn Morris, whom Regina met online in an AOL chatroom, then first met in person at the Dayton conference in the late nineties. I first met both Jacquelynn and Regina here back then, at which point they introduced me to sushi, a food that was not nearly so omnipresent around the year 2000.

The Susan Diamond Award, usually presented in New York, wound up being presented here as Ann Andriacco recognized Carolyn Senter's contributions to the Beacon Society.

The first talk of the day brought Kyndall back to the podium to provide a wonderfully comprehensive talk entitled "BBC's Sherlock: Phenomenon and Lasing Impact." Results of a survey of over a thousand Sherlockians were presented both on screen and as a handout, and were fascinating, and a perfect follow-up to conversations that some of us had the evening before. The key to any conference is always that first talk, setting the tone for the day, and Kyndall did good work here.

The Q and A afterwards gave a lot of folks the chance to spout their opinions about BBC Sherlock season four and more, which always gets dicey, as you have to listen to people airing their grievances about something you may have yourself enjoyed. But some good discussion as well, and the attendees are definitely engaged at this point.

You won't believe what came next . . .

Inspector Lestrade marched up to the podium to give new recruits to the police force their indoctrination to Scotland Yard, Sherlock Holmes, and the writings of Doctor Watson for starters. She then went into detail on the uniform and tools of Victorian policework. Did I say "she?" Well, despite the British accent, Lestrade's voice sounded a lot like that of Erica of Waffle House fame. Nightstick use, the needs of extra officers to get the screw-lock darbies around the wrists of a perpetrator, and the riff-raff of criminals one would expect to encounter on the streets of London. An amazing bit.

We get a half hour break after Lestrade/Erica, which is good, because who would want to follow that?

So I will break here as well. More to come.

Friday Night in Dayton 2026

When Sherlockians come to Dayton, Ohio, somehow we're always somewhere else.

Mentally, we're with our Baker Street friends, fellow irregulars in service of Sherlock Holmes. Physically, our hotels are always, technically, somewhere else. In the recent past, that was Clayton, Ohio at the old, dilapidated hotel. This year, after something like two decades, we've returned to Fairborn, Ohio and the Doubletree, which used to be a Holiday Inn. And they really seem happy we're here.

After checking in, getting the luggage to the room, etc., I wandered to where the dealers were setting up their wares for Saturday, and several early arrivals were just hanging out. Kyndall Potts, a key player in the Holmes, Doyle, & Friends weekend let me know that in addition to the visual elements welcoming us to the hotel, the bar was featuring a Sherlockian cocktail, "the Great Mogul," named after a diamond in a Basil Rathbone movie. And I'd be having one of those before the evening was over, to be sure.

Many conversations ensued, but as I'd had an early lunch, I wandered over to a nearby group of restaurants and had a ramen bowl at Hoshi Ramen, my first dinner of the evening, as when I returned to the hotel, I quickly fell into conversation with friends who would soon decide to try Tandoori Crust Pizza, a pizza/Indian fusion place, where normal pizzas and things like the butter chicken pizza shared the menu.

So many folks to greet on any arrival night for a Sherlockian conference, so many conversations to be had. Getting to see people you'd only socialized with online previously. The ongoing speculations of the hobby's future and the generations to come. Maybe some chat about that one Sherlockian that gets on everyone's nerves. But mostly our delight in being together again and all the myriad ways we celebrate our love of that one great detective Sherlock Holmes, who keeps some of us very, very busy.

I could go into greater detail, name names, go deep on some great topics that were discussed, but there's a Waffle House breakfast with my name on it and a foray of the 221st Southumberland Waffleers into the Ohio world, so I will adieu for now. More to come.

Days are forgotten, young Sherlock!

 After about fifty years of Sherlock Holmes, I just love it when he still tickles me.

Because Sherlock Holmes isn't my comfort food, he's what he's always been, wild spirit of curiosity and intellect running wild, not content to be constrained by a sixty story box. And, man, is he running wild this month. He's even different Sherlocks, but still my Sherlock Holmes.

We have entered the multiverse phase of our entertainment icons. Doctor Who and James Bond did it the old fashioned way, each incarnation dutifully taking turns. Spiderman got a whole movie to show us how it work if we just got them all at once. And this week felt a little like that, as we recorded next week's Watsonian Weekly podcast and spoke of the Sherlock & Co. podcast, Young Sherlock on Amazon, and CBS's Watson. All so different, yet all showing us sides of Sherlock Holmes. (Including Morris Chestnut giving us a Watson who plainly learned Holmes's tricks and pulling them off splendidly.)

Guy Ritchie's Young Sherlock on Amazon is getting my main focus this week as I cruise through it. It's a fast-moving thing, as a young Holmes would truly be. It's giving us origins for Lestrade, the Baker Street Irregulars, James Moriarty, and a dozen other things, all behind a real James-Bond-movie corker of opening credits to an abbreviated version of Kasabian's "Days Are Forgotten" from decades past. (And yes, I've gotten very into the full tune after listening to it time and time again as the show started.

I just love the lyrics to "Days Are Forgotten," as "Hey son, I'm looking forward. You're leaning backwards. Of this I'm sure," applies both to the plot of the show itself and an accidental side-comment on Sherlockiana's tendency to stick with the past. The full lyrics, which conjure old ghosts and disappearing history, fit the show well, and the energy behind it is pure Sherlock. Sherlock Holmes was never a cozy man, and the Xena-like cries in the tune just seem to fit Sherlock's mental electricity to me.

There's a lot of running in Young Sherlock. There are a lot of big action pieces. And there's a big, big international plot that might remind one of a previous Guy Ritchie outing in its scale. Like Batman, some folks aren't content to just let Sherlock Holmes stop local crime -- he has to save the world a lot, too. But this is Sherlock Holmes at big-screen level, big scenes full of people, lots of travel, big moments that hearken back to not just the original Conan Doyle, but so many other things we love to see about Sherlock Holmes.

I could go on. But I'll call out one thing and then call it a night, and that's this:

Best Sherlock's Mom Ever. I do hope she makes it through the series intact.

Back to watching!

The Return of Guy Ritchie

 Let's be honest up front. While an actor can transform themselves from role to role, and while Robert Downey Jr. is a great actor, his Tony Stark was really hard to get over for his Sherlock Holmes. And there was the fact that if he wasn't a known Hollywood star, nobody would have cast someone with his look as Holmes. But Guy Ritchie did two fun, terrific movies with RDJ as Sherlock Holmes, and in 2009, we had just endured a very long Sherlockian drought.

So it was great.

But there was definitely a Downey problem. 

He had other, bigger movies to make. And director Guy Ritchie had other things to do as well, but one always had to wonder what Ritchie could do with Sherlock Holmes if Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law weren't the famous faces selling tickets.

And now we know.

Young Sherlock on Amazon Prime is one of those lovely cinematic TV series that we get from those streaming services with money to spend. It would look good in a theater. It's based on a book series that, to be honest, I lost interest in fairly quickly, but it's also a Guy Ritchie TV series, and he's put his stamp on it.

Sherlock Holmes is young, but not so young that he doesn't have a beard from months in prison. He starts out in a prison fight, reminding us a bit of RDJ's movie Sherlock, except that this Sherlock is better at dodging and not-fighting in a fight than punching. Sherlock is studying crime from the criminal side, yet is still incredibly clever and full of smarts. And even before the James-Bond-level opening credits, we get a tease of a Holmes coming out of Baker Street . . . who is another Holmes we're always delighted to see. Getting the two Holmes brothers as our opening and introduction to our new, young but not a child, Sherlock Holmes is just a delight.

I'll admit, I haven't watched the second episode yet. And that's because I'm watching the first episode a second time. I tried to take notes during my first watch, as I do with CBS's Watson, but not this show! It's too much fun.

And as much as we hate to see lesser talents parading Mycroft, Moriarty, Lestrade, and company out to make up for their storytelling weaknesses with the big names, Guy Ritchie and company are not lesser talents. Young Sherlock is a delight. A confection for the modern Holmes fan.

As I said, I tried one of the books this show is based on and wasn't a fan. But this first episode pushed Downey's Sherlock Holmes, BBC Sherlock, and every other Sherlock Holmes film or TV tale out of my head while it did its thing. It's Sherlock felt like a Sherlock, and the intriguing characters in the world of Oxford university he was surrounded by were terrific.

This being more Guy Ritchie than Conan Doyle, of course, Sherlock Holmes seems more in danger of becoming a criminal than a detective. But he always was a special fellow in his way, and that he is here. But he is not the only special character here, with young James Moriarty and Princess Gulun Shou'an (whom I hope survives this series), matching his wits in their own ways. I was not expecting to like a young James Moriarty, but Donal Finn creates a fine current friend and future adversary for Sherlock.

Young Sherlock is one of those creations that you didn't know you needed until you have it, and I am very glad we now do.

Sherlockian Spring!

 Here it is, March already.

The Dayton Sherlockian symposium is nearly here, 221B Con is coming soon, two different Sherlock Holmes inspired television shows started/resumed this week, and the ongoing weekly podcast adaptation of the sixty cases is blowing the doors off doing a modern adaptation.

"Stockbroker's Clerk" . . . they made it an audio action movie. And it worked.

There are plenty of things to read, if you want to consume words. Charge bills are recovering from all the annual renewals to things Sherlockian. And plots are being hatched for so many things. So many.

It's Sherlockian spring!

A thousand things to do and so little time to do them. Tonight I broke the usual Watsonian Weekly podcast recording segment into two segments to economize and still keep up. My other podcast, Sherlock Holmes Is Real, is prepared to expose another Moriartian plot in a couple of weeks. Planning for a all the different weekend events ahead -- because sometimes one just can't merely "be there" -- and chipping away at larger projects just combine with it all to take advantage of the warming-from-winter temps and the enthusiasm that comes from sunnier days.

One might even start to blog post a bit more.

On we go.

The Singular Voice Of The Machine

 Even a hobby that grew out the 1800s can't hide its head in the sand when it comes to tech.

I mean, we try sometimes. Scott Monty really tried to get some of us into RSS feeds at one point, and, boy, did I resist that one. And a certain major Sherlockian or two who did not shy away from the description of "Luddite" never helped in certain areas. But when the robot monster is in the room with you already, you need to learn to recognize its moves.

We saw AI art invading some spaces first, with its added thumbs, bad eyelines, and having a certain someone siting in what appeared to be mid-air in a Baker Street scene seen by a goodly number of folks. It looked like good art to someone without an eye for detail or style, but it was definitely problematic.

And this past weekend, I made my first attempt at reading a book that was aided by AI and several software utilities in the writing of it. Some had an interesting idea and turned to the machine to fulfill that idea's promise. And the result was rather generic.

I was having an issue trying to describe how the writing style felt, and then I ran into a line in a Harvard Business Review article that seemed to get at what I was thinking:

"AI provides a single synthesized perspective, but creative insight depends on exposure to multiple human viewpoints." 

A single, synthesized perspective. The style of writing becomes the style of the AI. Maybe it's just cleaning up the grammar, suggesting a more perfect way to express an idea, or . . . suggesting a better version of the idea. But in the end, the software becomes the true author, ghostwriting in its ghostiest form, no different than if you said "Hey, could you rewrite my book for me to make it better?" to another person. But since it's not another person, just a tool we're using, it seems okay. But if we all asked the same person to rewrite our work? It would all wind up sounding like that person.

I couldn't get over how vanilla the style of the book I was reading was. I had no sense of the author's true voice. Their characters also all spoke in the same voice in dialogue, like a world populated by Mr. Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation. 

AI is getting smarter. And I'm sure someone with start working with prompts to tell it "Rewrite my mystery in the style of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle," then touch it up a few times and get something less generic sounding. And some "writers" (note the quotes) are not shy about admitting leaning on the software genie to do their work. As I wrote this blog the New York Times came out with a piece on a romance writer bragging about how she could "write" a book in a couple hours. She used a great number of pen names to keep pulling this fraud, but since AI can also track AI, there are those who are tracking the number of AI-written books out there by phrases no human would use, like "ragged prayer." Certain word combos turn out to be the "missing finger" of AI word slop.

It was telling fact that today's news feed also had an article about reading and writing reducing the risk of dementia as we age. But reading and writing also reduce the risk of being just plain stupid in your younger years, and . . . well . . . if AI writes for us, and then starts to read for us, synopsizing things into video explanations by AI pundits . . . you can see where we're headed. At some point, Sherlock Holmes isn't just a fictional character. He also becomes an unrelatable wizard whose mental magic seems inhuman and disappears from our cultural landscape.

Sigh.