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.