A letter to Mr. Sherlock Holmes

A few days a  Sherlockian request came from Ted Cowell on Facebook . . . which is odd in itself, as I have rare few Sherlockians on my Facebook roster, seeking to keep some mystery in life. Ted's request was both simple and, at the same time, a bit of a challenge. For what he wanted was this:

A handwritten letter to Mr. Sherlock Holmes, as might have been transfixed to the great detective's mantelpiece with a jack-knife.

Easy enough sounding, isn't it? Handwriting is not yet such a lost art that we can't all do it, and sending that letter off in another envelope to Ted via snail mail is still workable enough to most of us.

And yet, consider it for a moment. A piece of unanswered correspondence that seemed worthy of sticking to the mantel for future consideration by Sherlock Holmes.

What date would the letter have? What sort of paper would be used by the writer you had chosen to have sent such a letter? Known Canonical character or new creation? Indeed, one could spend a long, lazy day just pondering such trivial matters and finding just the right, and most appropriate tale for one's letter to tell.

Unfortunately, my time was very short this week, so the letter I came up with was the mystery at the other end of a mystery . . . which short-circuited many of the detail questions I had, just by the very nature of the person involved. What if their situation had them unsure as to the actual date? What if some detail of their stationery added to that puzzle upon close examination? And what if the situation was such that Sherlock Holmes would not be able to take immediate action, due to some factor?

I've always been a fan of the Sherlock Holmes artifact, and it was great fun to try to create one, even if time might not have allowed me to put as much thought into it as I would have liked. And mantelpiece letters are a simple and fun thing that might even make a good activity for a Holmes society club night, in the right company.

My contribution to Ted's letter pile goes out tomorrow, but that is one idea I'll have to file away for use at another time as well.

When it comes time to move the Sherlock on . . . .

Every now and then a comment gets promoted to the main blog, and the latest comes from Ian Schoenherr, who writes:

"I wonder how - 2 1/2 years after posting this - this situation panned out. I'm in a similar state: years ago I boxed up all the tacky, vaguely SH-related tchotchkes, ugly reprints, awful pastiches, multiple duplicates, clippings, etc., but I can't bring myself to cart it all to the Salvation Army, six blocks away. I still hold out hope that I'll find somebody who really - passionately - wants that Snoopy-wearing-a-deerstalker eraser, the Sherlock Hemlock finger-puppet, the grubby paperback novelization of 'Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother'... Help me." 

The blog post he was commenting on came in autumn 2012, as I was trying to figure out how to start weeding out my "everything Sherlock Holmes" collection, built up over three decades. Little did I know, at that moment, things were going to get a whole lot worse in a very short time.

My longtime friend and neighbor, Bob Burr, who had gathered a collection almost identical to mine in the same period I had, passed on and left me his entire collection as well. In a few short months, my collection, quite literally, doubled.

As Ian writes, one hates to cart such joyfully-gathered tributes to our beloved Sherlock Holmes to the Salvation Army, where the chances of them getting picked up with the love you know is out there. But it's just silly to hang on to the stuff. And nobody is getting rich selling Sherlock stuff from the 1970s and 80s, even if you want to go to the trouble of dealing with eBay. So that spring I came up with two different solutions.

In scenario one, Mohammed came to the mountain. I offered a Sherlockian friend who lived a few hours away a massive amount of Sherlockiana and Doyleana for his scion's annual auction, as well as for his own colection. In return, he offered to drive up and pick it up. If you've got anything worth a drive in your clean-up pile, this solution has its merits.

In scenario two, the mountain goes to Mohammed. I loaded up my own car with a massive amount of pastiches, plushies, and sundry items and took it to the first 221B Con in Atlanta, where I gave it for dispersal to the con organizers, panel discussion folk for giveaways, and event-holders for contest prizes.

A huge amount of Sherlockiana left my house in 2013, and I am astounded at the incredible amount that is still here. Some day when I become an ascetic practitioner of Zen Sherlockianism, I will disperse the lion's share of that as well, probably picking some other event where younger Sherlockians gather, like 221B Con, to spread things around. Sure, it takes a little effort to cart all that stuff somewhere, but you can have a lot of fun doing it.

Even before 2013, I slimmed down my duplicates, etc., but getting a dealer's table at a weekend symposium or two and running a Sherlockian dollar store. Due to the location, you know the stuff will find a good home, and people will pay a buck for about anything.The Sherlockian dollar store wasn't about making money (though it's funny how the dollars add up), but it makes the items a little more meaningful to people than if you just put a sign out that said "FREE STUFF" (in which case certain sorts would grab everything their arms can carry, whether they want it or not). You don't have to spend time pricing or tagging items, just pile up all that stuff you'd be willing to let go for a dollar. And most of us have a bit of that.

So those are all my schemes, to date, for getting rid of large amounts of Sherlockiana that you just couldn't help but collect. Let me know if you have any others, because, you know, there's always going to be another time to unload . . . .

Time for a man-to-man with ol' Benedict Arnold Cumberbatch.

"Wow. Benedict Cumberbatch got married!"

"Don't tell me such tragic news before I start a nap."

"He's getting married, that's happy!"

"Not if it ruins my chance at him after I divorce you."


Great move, Cumberbatch. You not only ruined Valentine's Day for the millions and millions of Cumberbitches out there. You didn't do us significant others of Cumberbitches any favors either. Or guys in general.

Let's be honest now. If guys could get rid of any holiday on the calendar, make it go *poof!* and never have existed, no leave any after-effects in its wake, what would that holiday be?

Valentine's Day.

Valentine's Day is a holiday a man can only lose at. There is no winning, just performing up to expectations, and those expectations can be unimaginably high. And just like bridal boutiques, every business that can milk this moment of expectation just makes matters worse for all involved. Just like you, Benedict Cumberbatch.

I mean, did you have to marry your sweetheart on Valentine's Day, of all days, giving the thing that much more power by your act of obeisance to Cupid's will? Have you not been attending your guy code meetings? What's up with you, Benny boy?

Sure, we don't expect you to be Sherlock Holmes in real life. There was a man's man. No "softer passions" without "a gibe and a sneer." Not letting such influences unbalance his keen intellect. Colonel Valentine Walter was the only card he'd accept, and then only wrapped in the box of prison bars. But getting married on Valentine's Day itself? Would even Watson go that far?

You don't see Jonny Lee Miller doing this kind of stuff. So as much as I might have had a problem or two with his Sherlock show this week, I'm afraid it's getting a few more shillings on its side of the balance scale today, thanks to Jonny Lee not getting married today.

Yep, it's like that, Benedict. Oh . . . and you're a husband now. Don't go spoiling that for the rest of us, either.

Bad pastichery tips for future TV shows having some association with Sherlock Holmes.

Pastiche: An artistic work that imitates that of another.

Bad pastiche: The same as a pastiche, but not done very well.

In the first five minutes of last night's Elementary, the recap, comprised of scenes from several episodes told us the story of both Joan Watson's boyfriend and her nemesis, Elana March. A full five pre-credit minutes were spent with Joan confronting March anew to explain how she tracked the assassin in the gap between episodes and found a tie to March . . . with no conclusive evidence.

The rest of the episode, until an epilogue-like finish to the March affair of similar brevity, had to do with unrelated missing zebras.

As has been its modus operandi, this poorly run show seems to shoehorn its character work around the already-decided mystery story of the week, and this week's specimen was one of its most infuriating examples. Any novice creative writing student is familiar with the advice that you should not include anything in your story that build that same story, and, well . . . apparently Elementary is not being run by a novice creative writing student, or anyone who was one at one time.

But in contemplating the bad pastichery of last night's Elementary, I realized what the show has truly needed from day one is an out. Some simple mechanic that makes its every flaw okay and possibly even endearing. What would such an out look like?

Simply this. Mr. Elementary, who goes by the name "Sherlock Holmes," is actually the grandson or great-grandson of the real Sherlock Holmes, and had an only brother named "Mycroft" by parents who were overly enthused about the family lineage.

Suddenly, the whole show makes perfect sense. The hiring of a Dr. Watson as a companion by a wealthy eccentric parent (whose wealth is the Holmes family fortune, started by Sherlock and the bachelor Mycroft and built up by succeeding generations). Mycroft's complete lack of mental acuity. This whole "insane criminal genius who calls herself Irene Adler one moment and Jamie Moriarty the next" thing.

The premise of Mr. Elementary as a descendant of Sherlock Holmes even adds something for the writers to work with, as people confuse/compare/comment on the famous Sherlock in relation to descendant Sherlock and give the twitchy Jonny Lee Miller character something to actually be such a jerk about, instead of just randomly doing it just because.

And I don't think I would have complained about Elementary at all, had it originated with such a premise. Bad pastiches are just a part of Sherlockian life, and a Holmes descendant who doesn't quite live up to the legend? Well, of course, he can't! We're talking Sherlock Holmes here.

Such a premise would have immediately solved CBS's worries about not treading on BBC's potentially lawsuit-sensitive toes, after it had just done a modern adaptation of Sherlock. Sure, it wouldn't have helped the weird "Aren't we not sexist!" sexism of having a female Moriarty and a female Watson who are apparently in a cat-fight of the minds over the man they both are magically drawn to, but, hey, bad pastiche! It just excuses sooooo very much.

(And on a related note, Baker Street Irregular Paul Herbert is winner of the Sherlock Peoria no-prize this week for identifying the Trivial Pursuit-like factoid around which this week's mystery was based: The quagga was an animal with a front half like a zebra and a back half like a horse, cloned Jurassic Park style out of extinction-- at least on Elementary. I'm sure Mr. Elementary explained this at some point while not trying to bring Watson's boyfriend's killer to justice, and I just missed it in my perturbance at that other issue.)

E3:14. Elana Marching to a different drummer.

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WARNING! Big Elementary spoilers ahead, if you can spoil
something that's already rotten to the core. WARNING!
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Last week, between two and three percent of the total U.S. population watched CBS's Elementary.

318.9 million folks in the United States, 7.87 million of those decided to join our little society, the Thursday Night Elementals. Not sure how many of those club members came back for this week's meeting in front of the TV set, but it was kind of key to finding out why last week's episode was called "Hemlock."

Hemlock was the poison used to kill Joan Watson's boyfriend at the very end of last week's episode, a turn of events that had nothing to do with the rest of the show's plot and a poison that was not identified in said episode. So, as titles go, pretty bad title. Luckily, TV shows never put their titles up front these days, with a few pleasant exceptions.

The poisoning of Joan Watson's boyfriend has one very curious result. Not only does she not tell her former partner, Mr. Elementary, their friends at the NYPD don't seem to know about it either. Her boyfriend's father knows that his son was poisoned by someone trying to poison Joan Watson. And Joan is trying to figure out what her arch-nemises, Elana March, had to do with the murder from her prison cell, serving a life sentence that Joan was responsible for getting her.

Meanwhile, Mr. Elementary and Marcus Bell are tracking stolen zebras.

Let's go over that again: Watson's love is murdered in an attempt on her life, and the "Sherlock Holmes" in her life is not only ignorant of the situation, which occurred in his very city, he'd not even looking into it at all. He's chasing zebras.

What the hell?

Okay, i understand there are some real Watson fans out there who think the good doctor (or the failed doctor, in Joan Watson's case) should be taken as an equal to Sherlock Holmes. But splitting a Watson off as a consulting detective of equal status, giving them an arch nemesis, and then contriving a plot where the Holmes just meanders blindly off on something trivial just to allow consulting Watson to face a murderous plot by her arch-enemy as a sort of side-plot?

Are these people even trying?

So much wasted potential for . . . oh, wait, Mr. Elementary is bringing Joan some lasagna. I guess he does know that her boyfriend was murdered. HE'S SUPPOSED TO BE THE GREATEST FREAKING DETECTIVE IN THE WORLD, AND HE'S BRINGING WATSON LASAGNA INSTEAD OF TRYING TO CATCH HER BOYFRIEND'S KILLER!

What the hell, Elementary? Seriously!

Is this show even written by humans? Are we supposed to be more interested in extinct equines than a murderous attack on Dr. Watson? Or are they just trying to pad that bit out for more episodes with a zebra plot? Why not just have Mr. Elementary come out with, "I'm sorry, Watson. I will get around to solving your disposable boyfriend's murder eventually, but we have like ten episodes left in the season! Or maybe you'll get to figure it out at some point, but for now, ZEBRA BABIES!"

Okay, so they're not zebra babies, they're "kwah-hahs" or some other combination of nonsense syllables. The point is, this plot that none of us care about while Watson's life is endangered and her boyfriend killed just keeps going on . . . and on . . . could they have designed this episode to be more annoying?

Joan Watson and Elana March just seem to have been a teaser to get us to watch all this talk of "zeh-bras."

Zeh-bras, zeh-bras, zeh-bras.

Zeh-bras, zeh-bras, zeh-bras.

Oh, wait, Joan got some mail from Elana March! Mail! Now that's exciting! Sort of.

But back to the zeh-bra plot. ARRRGH!

Look, I have to be at work early tomorrow, I was hoping for a little relaxation, a sleepy little Elementary plot like so many before, to ease my way to slumberland right after it's done. But this? I haven't been as thoroughly irritated by this show's idiocy for all of the current season. And they're dragging the stupid zeb-bra plot out by having the culprit escape.

"The fire of deduction cannot be kindled without the free song of person-to-person contact." Oh, that Mr. Elementary quote was worth the frustration . . . not. Filler episode, filler episode, filler episode. Marcus Bell is the new replacement Watson, sleeping at the brownstone, going to breakfast with Mr. Elementary, helping him enjoy life while Watson stews over her dead boyfriend and the threat to her life.

And Mr. Elementary uses his pseudonym of "Sigerson" for no especially good reason, to do what Marcus Bell could have done without him. And how long have we ignored Watson's mail from Elena March . . . oh, no, Watson's arch-enemy has been killed by Jamie Moriarty, who is apparently Watson's true arch-enemy.

Lets get this straight: Mr. Elementary ignored the villain going after Joan Watson and the killer of her boyfriend, and Mori-freaking-arty solved the crime, protected Watson, and dispensed justice. (Which she explained in a voice-over.)  Of course, Moriarty is just saving Watson so eventually they can go off Reichenbach Falls together in this Bizarro Sherlock world.

If this thing were a book instead of a low-grade hypnotic produced by a TV network, no Sherlockian on Earth would be giving this silliness a thumbs up. Just another wacky pastiche by some misguided fan.

But y'know, Backstrom is on before it now, so the night's not a total loss.

Wherefore art thou, Mr. Holmes?

We all can well understand how the recently discovered the 1916 William Gillette film Sherlock Holmes is nowhere to be seen just yet. It's a rare antiquity that will be rolled out for an appropriate audience at the appropriate time. And nobody is really promoting it. What's starting to baffle me, however, is another "old Sherlock Holmes" movie that is apparently complete and getting some promotion, but no release date.

This Ian McKellen Mr. Holmes movie, that we've been seeing so much about of late, has been shown at one Berlin film festival, is getting reviewed from there, with five actual reviews on Rotten Tomatoes . . . and yet no release date for America or anywhere else in in sight.

You can check IMDB. Nada.

Does the film not have a distributor? Is some other background bit of the film industry holding it back? Is it going to wind up direct-to-video?

All we know it that there is a finished Sherlock Holmes movie out there and we're not sure when we get to see it. The Mr. Holmes folks are about to start making BBC Sherlock look like less of a tease, at this point.

One more thing we wait for, I guess.

Being nice really isn't very interesting.

Let my apologize for today's blog from the outset. I'm going to try to write about something without writing about it, and whether or not this proves to be a worthwhile exercise . . . well, I'll let you decide.

You know what I love about Sherlock Holmes products produced by corporations for the commercial marketplace?

When they're crap, you don't have to hold back. Somebody got paid to produce whatever it was for the public, and with that job comes the expectation that one can handle public criticism. As a member of the public, therefore, I feel like I can freely criticize said commercial work a bit more -- whoever paid them for the job will judge their work on its own merits and either pay them for more, or not. It's the marketplace. You produce stuff worth buying or nobody buys it, and that's how it works.

But when you get to fan productions, things produced entirely for love, because the person doing whatever it was just couldn't help themselves . . . well, that's another story. We love people who love Sherlock Holmes, and if their talents don't quite live up to their enthusiasm? You still have to give them points for trying. And being really critical of a gift given out of love seems just mean.

Well, I finally looked up something I had been hearing about this morning. It might have been a podcast, or it might have not been. It might have been an e-book, or this entire sentence might be a red herring. And it might have had something to do with Sherlock Holmes, or it might not have, depending upon a certain point of view. And . . . oh . . . I'm just sorry.

As the digital age has brought us new mediums for creativity, we've gotten to see art forms taking their first steps, learning to walk, as it were. And we've see the common mistakes that get made time and again. Some of those mistakes even get built into the format of a particular creation, as the creators apparently don't ever step back and take a look at what's working, or what isn't.

Or maybe, because it's a fan thing, whose primary consumers are friends of the creator, no one has ever sat them down and went, "Sweetie, this just has a few problems you need to work out."

In any case, sometimes you run into something that has had a whole lot of time and energy put into it, which you have to admire, but, oh, my dears, there are some problems here.

And, out of the fear of hurting someone's feelings, I can't even come close to giving an honest opinion. I mean, they're just trying so hard!

Only trying hard should also include some attempt at objective self-criticism or finding someone to give you an honest opinion on occasion. You shouldn't be over two years into something and still come off like you've been doing it for two weeks.

Because you don't want people feeling like they have to be nice. Which this morning, I am.