Miss "Sherlock Holmes Is Like" Talent Night!

The ill-concieved and poorly manage beauty pageant celebrating the release of the book Sherlock Holmes Is Like eventually had to get to the talent portion of the program. And as the preliminary rounds come to their final line-up, that page from the pageant playbook finally came due.

And what talent should someone who is like Sherlock Holmes compete with?

Well, there's always sword fighting. Sherlock Holmes was an expert swordsman. And who among our contestants tonight will be competing with the sword?

D'Artagnan. Zorro. Peter Pan. Doctor Who.

We're going way off book for this one, so hold on. Doctor Who learned the sword from Cleopatra's guards, and practiced with Richard, Cyrano, and Errol Flynn. D'Artagnan learned sword from his father. Zorro learned swordplay in Spain. And Peter Pan just learned swordplay through an immortal life of fighting other boys and pirates, over and over again.

In the four-way duel that comes from this part of the contest, Peter Pan rises quickly to the fore, as he is not only a superb swordsman, he's the most experienced of the lot, a smaller target, and his ability to fly makes up for his shorter reach. (I tried not to make the characters fight this time around, but with Karen Ellery, Bob Coghill, and Monica Schmidt's choice of characters facing my own, it just had to be).

Our next talent on display is that of oratory, something Sherlock Holmes did well in front of the small groups of clients or Scotland Yard officers he provided explanations to.

Competitors for this half of the round are the Mighty Oz, Lucy Van Pelt, Alice Liddell, and the Third Little Pig.

Well, the Pig likes to respond with a rhyme and is famous for "Not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin," which was not original with him, so he's not faring too well. Lucy Van Pelt prefers an audience of one, and that one having low self esteem, so she's not really pulling here either. Alice just tends to exclaim things in a very declaratory manner. And Oz, the great and powerful politico who both ruled a city and worked in a carnival with one's livelihood depending upon vocal skill . . . well, there you go. (Beth Gallego, Steve Mason, Resa Halle, and Gayle Lange Puhl are all much better at this that the bulk of the contestants they put into the Miss "Sherlock Holmes Is Like Pageant.)

With Oz walking away with oratory and Peter winning at swordplay, tonight is a double naming of finalists, and they both move into tomorrow night's finals.

Will this competition finally come to an end? Does Brad get to blog about something else? And how many words is this stealing from his NaNoWriMo marathon?

We shall see.