Ugly cake

Spend much time as a character of the internet and you learn one important rule, unless your soul is so dark and uncaring that you're in the sociopathy ballpark, and that rule is this: Try to stay on things you're positive about.

But with this morning's reveal of the Cake Boss episode that was filmed in New York last January, I couldn't help but react with an "Ugh!" upon seeing the first pics.

I mean, "Yay! TV exposure of Sherlockians!" and "Yay! Folks we know on TV!" . . . but that cake, though . . . .

I sure hope it tasted good.

The look of the thing, unfortunately, brought up an unfortunate trend that has dogged Sherlockiana since time immemorial, the caricature of the big-nosed Sherlock.

I had hoped that our alien-yet-pretty-somehow, younger-Holmes Cumberbatch awakening had gotten us past the giant honkers of Sherlock cartoons of yore. But no!

Look at the beak on this guy! That isn't just a big nose, that's some kind of breathing-flap that would actually interfere with eating spoonfuls of soup if he held his head in a normal posture. The long-term neck strains this poor guy is going to suffer somehow makes potential morphine addiction seem like a logical choice.

Not blaming the bakers here, as they are just pawns in an ongoing cultural backlash to Sherlock Holmes's wonderful intellect, the "Yeah, he may seem smart, but he fugly and got no social skills!" crowd. "And he wears that funny hat!" I know, it's hard to be a stupid person and see a character who makes even the smart people you know look not so bright. And since Sherlock isn't overweight, which is their first go-to, they head for that nose which has been over-exaggerated by stage and screen. (Remember when Germany actually gave Christopher Lee a big fake nose to play Sherlock? It happened.)

We've seen much research and writing going into tracking the pedigree of the deerstalker cap through time, yet no one has gotten to the cartoon beak yet, probably because I don't think Sherlockians do enjoy it. Large nose fetishists out there, forgive me. You are a special breed, and you really don't have to direct me to bignoselovers.org or somesuch to demonstrate your supposed numbers.

In fact, everyone please forgive the preceding blog post. I plainly woke up in a bad mood this morning, and am now going to go stare at Benedict Cumberbatch for a while until this negative attitude goes away.