Anthropomorphic conversations with Canonical objects.

Okay, here's a question that hasn't been asked in a Sherlockian venue before: If you somehow moved something from the Canon of Holmes to the world of PeeWee's Playhouse, could we talk to it?

Take Black Peter's sea-chest, for example. A sea-chest has kind of a mouth to it, to open and close its lid as it talks. If a part of the carvings on Captain Peter Carey's chest could pass as eyes, it would quickly fit right in. One imagines its voice to be something like the pirate that sings the SpongeBob Squarepants song. So how would that conversation go?

"So. Black Peter's sea-chest. You're probably full of stuff, right?"

"Yes. But no South American securities, no, sir. None of those."

"How would you know if you had South American securities in you? You have some papers in you, certainly. Papers are papers."

"They taste like yams and peanuts. South American papers always taste like yams and peanuts."

"Not sure I believe you, but okay, let's move on. Did anyone dig through you after Captain Carey got harpooned? Stanley Hopkins? Some other policeman?"

"I'm a sea-chest, but I have my pride. I'm not going to discuss the intimate details of who I open my lid for. Bad enough that Watson guy publishes that a land-lubber banker was using me for a stool."

"I always wondered about that. You had the tantalus sitting on you, too, correct?"

"That's different! That tantalus and me, we have been mates going way back. And don't look at me funny about that -- liquor cases and sea-chests are always pal-ing up at sea. It's a lonely life in the captain's cabin! Things happen."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply anything. I'm just trying to find out if the crime scene got a full investigation. It seemed like they paid more attention to the tantalus than you."

"Yeah, yeah, everybody always eyes the tantalus. That's why he's so locked up tight. Look, I'm traumatized, here. I saw the captain, a man I'd spent all my life with, harpooned like a great gray whale."

"The crime scene layouts I've seen had you pointed the other direction. I don't think you saw anything."

"Okay, okay, I have South American securities in me. Here, they're right under the sewing kit on the right. Just reach in and move it over . . ."

"AAAAAAAH! MY HAND! YOU SON OF A . . ."

"Serves you right, you nosey Sherlock-lover. Now get out of here before I bite down on something more important, like that thing you think with."

Maybe it isn't such a good idea to start moving items from the Victorian crime world of Sherlock Holmes to the anthropomorphic land of Peewee's Playhouse. Some of them probably wouldn't have pleasant personalities of Chairry or Mr. Window. But it does give a different perspective on certain elements of the Canon, and as Sherlock Holmes once said:

"It is, I admit, mere imagination, but how often is imagination the mother of truth?"

Be careful of sea-chests, in any case. You never know where they've been.

Evidentally, I'm writing a blog post tonight . . . .

"Evidently, Flower Mound resident is an expert on Sherlock Holmes."

Thus ran a headline on the Dallas News site this week.

The wording of it made me chuckle. Even though "evidently" basically means the same thing as "plainly" or "obviously," it has a connotation of a Nigel Bruce-like cluelessness, a bit of surprise at the discovery of the thing.

Sort of a "What? Don Hobbs knows something about Sherlock Holmes?"

And that made me laugh.

News articles about Don Hobbs like to get to his collection quickly. Twelve thousand items, one hundred and eight languages . . . impressive numbers. But the numbers describing a room in his house are just that, numbers. They make a nice shorthand in an eight hundred word article trying to get its head around the complex workings of a devout Sherlockian.

My favorite write-up of Don Hobbs is still the five-hundred-and-twenty-part exploration of his thoughts on Sherlockian life that appeared between 2002 and 2012 in his Maniac Collector's blog. So many travels. So many people. So many books. And more than those countable things. So many thoughts on what it was to be a Sherlock Holmes fan, and the changes that take place as the years pass in a Sherlockians life.

News articles like to focus on the massive number of books, but Don was always at his best when talking about just one of those books and what he went through to get that book. Friends made, connections sought. A collection that spans the world isn't something one picks up at the local Barnes & Noble.

Evidently, there's a Flower Mound resident who is an expert on Sherlock Holmes.

I guess not everybody knows that yet. But one of these days, well, you never know.

E3: 17. "Not the Sherlock! Not the Sherlock!"

"What makes Joan special is that she's not Sherlock."

Lucy Liu, quoted in People on-line

But that's what makes all of Elementary special, isn't it? The "not Sherlock" quality of it all. And I don't just mean "not Sherlock," but you know that by now.

The electricity is off at the Elementary brownstone. There's trouble in the refrigeration industry. Joan Watson's brother might be having an affair. And Mr. Elementary is droning on pseudo-intellectually about family ties.

There is no "happy" here, on either side of the screen.

Ah, CRYO NYC, the shoddy cryogenics firm enters the picture, in an attempt to make things more interesting with a lot of frozen corpses whose demises aren't a mystery. But it leads to another murder mystery with one of the cryogenics customers, so basically, we just wasted a half hour to get to the murder mystery whose solution will solve in initial murder mystery. Unless, of course, one enjoys listening to the voices of Lucy Liu and Jonny Lee Miller rambling on and on with no real excitement.

Oren Watson, Joan's brother, displays the most passion on the show this week, and he's literally phoning his performance in. On a phone, so it's just voice. But then, Warren is having an affair, so he actually has real relationships with people who are just letting him hang around with their pretend career. At least Oren got to call Watson on the phone, and not just be a voice in her head while she read a letter from him, like Jamie Moriarty a few episodes ago.

Having looked up the spelling of "Oren Watson," it finally, three seasons in, occurs to me that he's a tribute to O-Ren Ishii, the Lucy Liu character from the Kill Bill movies. I think I thought his name was Warren Watson. He probably could have been called John Watson, since Joan's mother is Mary Watson.

And Mary Watson is apparently in denial about her failing mental faculties, but then, that's pretty much going on with every character on this show. And the creators. And the . . . oh. Sorry. Boredom can make one a bit mean. But this subplot about Joan and her mother just seems like the random flailing of a show that doesn't really know what its point is.

And what is the point of Elementary, really? To be a show about Sherlock Holmes? Well, since they aren't actually using much of anything from any past Sherlock Holmes creation, and there aren't many solid touchstones other than the occasional name, it isn't really about Holmes. To be another bland CBS police procedural? Well, since Mr. Elementary and Joan seem to work as if they're a part of NYPD, using their offices and interrogation rooms freely. That's definitely their minimum requirement to stay on the air.

In the end, Mary Watson's illness is a way for Mr. Elementary and Joan Watson to have a little bonding moment as he helps Joan deal with the issue. Because they have to do bonding moments, just to show they have a relationship, since nothing else about their weird psychic Siamese twin pairing makes any sense on a human gut level.

I miss Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson on these Thursday nights.

The Sherlock Holmes ice cream flavor.

There are actually fields of endeavor untouched by the legend of Sherlock Holmes, as impossible as that may seem.

Take ice cream flavors, for example. Ben and Jerry's, Baskin-Robbins, any of the great ice cream flavor creators . . . have any of them come up with a "Sherlock Holmes" flavor? I don't think so. And why should they? Tobacco is probably the flavor most associated with Holmes, and there's an ice cream variety that no one has ever gone looking for.

So what would the perfect Sherlock Holmes ice cream flavor be?

Watson seems easy. Described as "thin as a lath and brown as a nut," something with thin strips of caramel laid through a nut-filled ice cream would work just fine for Watson.

And brother Mycroft? Well, occasionally he is "the British Govern-Mint." Something with a solid minty flavor would do nicely.

But Sherlock Holmes. Good old Sherlock Holmes . . . what flavor would we concoct for him?

Something tied to that little "chocolate and silver volume" he pulled down from his garret to look up "The Lion's Mane?" Too minor a reference, and "silver" doesn't bring anything tasty to mind.

Something with teeny-tiny red licorice pipes mixed in? Little gummy trouts in the ice milk?

Ah . . . milk.

As in "milk and biscuits," something served to a client at Baker Street in "The Adventure of the Priory School." Biscuits, that thing Sherlock Holmes used to break his fast in "The Dying Detective."

Biscuits, or as we say in America, cookies. And milk, well, it does contain cream in its unhomogenized state. So if we go for "Sherlock Holmes's Milk and Biscuits Ice Cream," we're basically getting a "cookies and cream" variant. Throw in a touch of Sussex honey into the recipe, and I think we have a winner.

"Sherlock Holmes's 221-Bee Biscuits and Milk." And that's my final answer.

Have any Sherlockian ice cream flavor ideas of your own? Give it a go, because nobody loses with more ice creams.

At Least One Hundred and Five Shades of Sherlockian Gray.

Occasionally, one gets a very dull week Sherlock-wise. True, one could go on-and-on about that last little thing, or maybe actually dive back into the Canon, but eventually one starts getting truly desperate. Like "Maybe I should go see Fifty Shades of Gray at the theater and look for Sherlockian references!" desperate. But that road leads to sheer insanity, and besides that, I hadn't seen Will Smith in Focus yet.

But given what I had heard about the dismal literary level of the novel Fifty Shade of Gray, the thought occurred to me that the Canon of Sherlock Holmes, being of a much higher quality of writing, had to contain many more than fifty shades of gray -- double that number at the very least!

So, in order to amuse myself during this otherwise dull Sherlockian week, I set about a rough enumeration of the shades of gray in the sixty tales of Sherlock Holmes. Nothing sexy about it as you will soon see. Also, I decided to use the Jay Finley Christ abbreviations to those stories to blatantly mock newcomers to the Sherlockian world whose intellects cannot be bothered to suss out that "HOUN" equals The Hound of the Baskervilles. (Yes, mocking. With an evil laugh, even! BWAH-HA-HA! BWAH-HA-HA! HOW I RELISH MY ABBREVIATION SUPERIORITY!)

So, anyway, on with at least one hundred and five shades of Sherlockian gray:

1. Pearly pill gray -- STUD, Part 1, Ch. 7
2. Summer saline alkali dust gray -- STUD, Part 2, Ch. 1
3. Dull earth gray -- STUD, Part 2, Ch. 1
4. Shawl parcel gray -- STUD, Part 2, Ch. 1
5. Background rocks gray -- STUD, Part 2, Ch. 3
6. Wedded hair gray -- STUD, Part 2, Ch. 1
7. Dawn gray -- STUD, Part 2, Ch. 6
8. Sombre dress beige gray -- SIGN, Ch. 2
9. Turban gray -- SIGN, Ch. 2
10. Cold, distant light gray -- SIGN, Ch. 7
11. Portly man's suit gray -- SIGN Ch. 6
12. Side whisker gray -- SIGN, Ch. 9
13. Curly hair thick shot gray -- SIGN, Ch. 11
14. Keen Mortimer eye gray -- HOUN, Ch. 1
15. Common envelope gray -- HOUN, Ch. 4
16. Lawyer head gray -- HOUN, Ch. 5
17. Melancholy hill gray -- HOUN, Ch. 6
18. Boulder gray -- HOUN, Ch. 6
19. Grim impression gray -- HOUN, Ch. 7
20. View of the place gray -- HOUN, Ch. 7
21. Small hamlet gray  -- HOUN, Ch. 7
22. Lonely road gray  -- HOUN, Ch. 7
23. Between age thirty and forty suit gray  -- HOUN, Ch. 7
24. Plume of smoke gray  -- HOUN, Ch. 7
25. Circular rings of stone gray  -- HOUN, Ch. 7
26. Clothes gray  -- HOUN, Ch. 7
27. Stapleton neutral-tinted eye gray -- HOUN, Ch. 7
28. Stone hut gray -- HOUN, Ch. 8
29. Burned letter writing gray  -- HOUN, Ch. 10
30. Wreaths of rain gray -- HOUN, Ch. 10
31. Franklin whisker gray -- HOUN, Ch. 11
32 Dull that goes with green gray -- HOUN, Ch. 11
33. Slope-side shadow gray  -- HOUN, Ch. 11
34. Great bird soaring gray  -- HOUN, Ch. 11
35. Dancing Holmes eyes gray  -- HOUN, Ch. 12
36. Grand meenister hair gray -- VALL, Ch. 2
37. Peculiarly keen Douglas eye gray -- VALL, Part1, Ch.3
38. Moustache gray -- VALL, Part1, Ch. 6
39. Heavy reefer jacket suit gray -- VALL, Part 1, Ch. 6
40. Tweed suit gray -- VALL, Part1, Ch. 7
41. Graybeard gray -- VALL, Part 2, Ch. 3
42. Shepherd's check trouser gray -- REDH
43. Worn gloves gray -- IDEN
44. Harris tweed trouser gray -- IDEN
45. Sharp and penetrating eye gray -- IDEN
46. Long travelling cloak gray -- BOSC
47. Wall gray -- BOSC
48. House on the right gray -- BOSC
49. Blotted ink gray -- TWIS
50. Street dust gray -- BLUE
51. Drawn face gray -- SPEC
52. Premature hair gray -- SPEC
53. Gables gray -- SPEC
54. Lichen-blotched stone gray -- SPEC
55. Long dressing-gown gray -- SPEC
56. Balefully lit eye gray -- ENGI
57. Pavement gray -- BERY
58. Pearl trouser gray -- BERY
59. Carpet gray -- BERY
60. Little roof gray -- COPP
61. Tiled outbuilding gray -- SILV
62. Faded reds gray -- SILV
63. Slate paper gray -- GLOR
64. Archway gray -- MUSG
65. Old footworn stone gray -- MUSG
66. Peculiarly light watery gray -- GREE
67. Steel gray -- GREE
68. Mist gray -- EMPT
69. Dull plumage gray -- DANC
70. Country doctor head gray -- DANC
71. Flannel suit gray -- DANC
72. Old building gray -- SOLI
73. London slate gray -- SOLI
74. Bearded man gray -- SOLI
75. Dark trouser gray -- PRIO
76. Low village gray -- PRIO
77. Limestone boulder gray -- PRIO
78. Haggard woman hair gray -- BLAC
79. Keen gleaming brightly eye gray -- CHAS
80. Anger and mortification gray -- CHAS
81. Wonder hair isn't gray -- MISS
82. Inn Road gray -- MISS
83. Pair of brougham horses gray -- MISS
84. Iron hair gray -- WIST
85. Broad opium-drugged iris gray -- WIST
86. Thick winter curtain of gloom gray -- REDC
87. Grown in the Service gray -- BRUC
88. Sullen, menacing eye gray -- DYIN
89. Cold face with fiery soul gray -- LADY
90. Morning gray -- LADY
91. Ashen gray -- DEVI
92. Irish eye gray -- ILLU
93. Awful London castle gray -- ILLU
94. Straggling beard gray -- BLAN
95. Fierce eye gray -- BLAN
96. Very loud check suit gray -- 3GAB
97. Old gentleman gray -- 3GAB
98. Austere eye gray -- 3GAR
99. Irregular masses gray -- SHOS
100. Stonework gray -- THOR
101. Cold eye gray -- THOR
102. Quick eye gray -- THOR
103. Intense eye gray -- CREE
104. High-stepping carriage horse gray -- SHOS
105. Tinted sun-glasses gray -- RETI

Well, that's that. It occurs to me that Fifty Shades has been around so long that some much quicker sort probably came up with this idea already months ago, but like Sherlockian chronology, sometimes it's just entertaining to do it for yourself.

It's just been that dull a week.

E3:16. Jubal Early versus Mr. Elementary! Hooray!

Watson's basement lair has lighting that does her no favors.

Mr. Elementary is doing ridiculous Salvador Dali experiments to make himself smarter, the way a very stupid person would try to make their self smarter.

Weird sad cello music is playing over the soundtrack as Mr. Elementary experiences self-doubt and is plagued by the suspicion that he killed someone without knowing it. Mr. Elementary takes a beating on the street, almost like he wants it.

This is one of the TV episodes where the protagonist is well off his game, for whatever strange reason. Mr. Elementary actually interviews a witness by offering his hand to have the bones broken with a wrench in exchange for answers. There's something a little sick and wrong with this episode, in the direction, in the camera-work, in that weird, sad cello music.

And yet, whenever an actor named Richard Brooks shows up on the screen, speaking in a particularly distinctive character-actor voice, I'm finding myself filled with delight.

The final episode of the cult favorite space opera, Firefly, was called "Objects in Space," and it featured a marvelous character named Jubal Early. And Jubal Early was played by one Richard Brooks.

Mr. Elementary is being pathetic, loser-y and as much not Sherlock Holmes as he's ever been this week. T'were Richard Brooks actually portraying Jubal Early and not Detective Demps, this would be Elementary's last episode, as Jubal would have easily killed the wretch. He's the kind of fellow that would have made a worthy adversary to the real Sherlock Holmes.

Side note: Culver's claims their tartar sauce is a 40-year-old family recipe. When I was in high school, I figured out you could make tartar sauce our of mayonnaise and pickle relish . . . which makes my combo an over 40-year-old family recipe, at this point. Suddenly I am not as impressed.

And just as I'm getting more interested in Culver's commercials than Elementary, Jubal Early is back and dragging Mr. Elementary off to Alliance prison. Oh, River Tam, where are you when I need you?

Well, for a few moments tonight, Elementary reminded me of a good hour of television I saw once. So if it can't remind me of Sherlock Holmes, I suppose I'll take that.

The unexpected importance of Nimoy.

The passing of actor Leonard Nimoy this week could be seen, from a distance, as a minor blip on the Sherlockian radar. He played Sherlock Holmes in the William Gillette play in the 1970s. It wasn't a performance that would have been especially remembered by Sherlockians were it not for who he was, and that is the key to the Sherlockian importance of Leonard Nimoy. Who he was.

Leonard Nimoy was an actor ahead of his time. Not in the thespian sense, but in the position he was put into. Nimoy took a role in a single production that would set the course of not just his entire life, but the lives of literally a million others. He wanted to be an actor, known and respected for his work as an actor, and not typecast into something cartoonish, like a George Reeves or Adam West. But fate chose his role to be something much more than that, to be not just an actor who played a character, but to be an actor whose character became a wild fan favorite, and then a cultural touchstone, and eventually, an icon.

And this is where we come back to Sherlock Holmes.

In the late 1800s, no character expressed the forward-thinking, "logic and science will save us" optimism of the time more than Sherlock Holmes.

So in the late 1900s, when another logic-centered character was created in a hopeful vision of the future, that character could not help but be thought of as the modern version of Sherlock Holmes.

To an entire generation, Star Trek's Mr. Spock was our back-up Sherlock Holmes. If we couldn't have Sherlock Holmes to watch on TV, Spock was not a bad alternative. He wasn't a spin-off detective who was sort-of like Sherlock Holmes, like TV's Monk. He was a completely new, original character who had nothing to do with Holmes, and yet was so very Sherlock Holmes.

Articles were written in Sherlockian journals comparing how close the two were in their habits. Stories in Star Trek fanzines were written where Spock would either act as Sherlock Holmes, be transported back to Victorian England to meet Sherlock Holmes, or somehow actually wind up being the real Sherlock Holmes. No two so different fictional characters have ever been so close as brothers as Sherlock Holmes and Mr. Spock.

Over the decades it was interesting to watch Leonard Nimoy's path as he fought to resist typecasting and being identified solely with that role, going so far as to publish a book early on called I Am Not Spock. But as the years passed, and he saw his character becoming more than just a cartoon, as he saw Spock inspire a generation of scientists, developers, and tech workers of all stripes, Leonard Nimoy took on a sort of gracious custodial view of this gift he was allowed to give the world. He didn't milk it. He didn't keep doing "Hey, look at me!" grabs for attention like another Star Trek actor we all know. He set the kind of example we'd love to see a Benedict Cumberbatch follow, not leaving the character behind, and also not hurting that character by trying to make it more like him.

Benedict Cumberbatch looks to have a fine acting career ahead of him, but on one level he's going to be following a trail that was pioneered by Leonard Nimoy. Being a top-level fandom favorite who will always be able to supplement his income with a convention appearance any time he wants. Having news articles constantly tie his character to him. And oh, the fan art, the slash fiction (oh, yes, Leonard Nimoy was one of the two actors they invented slash fiction for), all of that stuff that follows having your TV creation be worshipped like a god . . . Leonard Nimoy is the guy that had to deal with all of that first. 

Because in the pantheon of our modern media Olympus, Mr. Spock joined Sherlock Holmes as a "deity" some time ago. And Leonard Nimoy is who we have to thank for so much of that.

So, thanks, Leonard Nimoy. You gave Sherlock Holmes his true other brother besides the fat guy. And that makes you a big part of our Sherlockian world, though the play was nice, too.

Rest well and prosper.