A pikachu wears the hat

Ah, it's cranky old man morning here at Sherlock Peoria. Get ready for it. Here it comes.

Do we really consider Detective Pikachu any sort of interpretation of Sherlock Holmes, just because he's wearing that non-Canonical hat?

He's a talking pikachu. He wears the hat that is synonymous with the profession of detective. But is there anything more Sherlock to him than that?

I like Pokemon a lot. Played three or four of the video games heavily, watched the cartoons when they first came out, even though I was wee bit older than their target market, love Ryan Reynolds movies, and am definitely going to see the Detective Pikachu movie when it comes out. But not because I'm a Sherlockian. Simply because it looks like a fun movie.

My Sherlockian side is going, "C'mon, it's just the damn hat. Are we that desperate for Sherlock Holmes getting noticed as a cultural icon at this point?"

Like I said, cranky old man morning.

People are going to collect something, and Sherlockians picking up little character tchotchkes in deerstalkers is a tradition going back a long long way. I suspect that spoon with ventriloquist dummy Charlie McCarthy in a deerstalker on the handle might be one of the earliest, but I don't know if the question has ever been fully researched: What is the oldest trinket with a non-Sherlock Holmes character wearing a deerstalker?

We've seen the deerstalker on Snoopy, Garfield, Daffy Duck . . . oh, wait, Daffy was in a legitimate Sherlock Holmes parody, wasn't he? Daffy was more in the mode of Will Ferrell's coming Holmes and Watson interpretation, which makes one wonder how many Sherlockians enjoy Daffy but pooh-pooh Ferrell already. Not to be species-ist, but Will Ferrell at least has "human" going for him.

Ah, humans. Few are the humans who don't go negative on something touching their favorite thing at some point, even in their private hearts while pretending it's all good in public. Or maybe it's just me, early in the morning before my cocoa.

Onward to breakfast and less-cranky thoughts!