The Mystery of the Silver Blaze Wikipedia entry.

A very handy site for the follower of Elementary who hates to miss an episode is the Wikipedia episode list for the show, which serves as a show-specific TV guide for what is happening on a particular week. Since I've been saving up episodes for an eventual marathon of powering through the latest batch, I went out and checked the page this morning and found this curious entry:

Usually the page gives a two or three sentence synopsis of what the characters actually did during the case, but apparently this week the writer found the "Silver Blaze" nod significant enough to ignore the characters and steer folks to the story. The weird problem with this is the use of "The Mystery of the Silver Blaze" as the seeming title and the conclusion that "the cases were otherwise unconnected."

As with all Wikipedia entries, this one will probably be updated, tidied up, or rewritten eventually, but I enjoyed the curiousness of its present form that I wanted to preserve it for posterity here.

(I will continue to look forward to watching the episode, however, just to find out what a "Marchioness" is.)

And an afterword on this year's Irregular invitations . . . .

Running through the comments on this week's blog on the BSI dinner invitations, a bit from Scott Monty caused me to ruminate a little further upon the subject. Scott wrote:

"I think part of the excitement behind getting an invitation to the BSI Dinner is that it's an exclusive event. The moment you make it an open event, that's when the shine will wear off of the wonder of receiving such an invitation."

And that is the whole thing about the exclusive invitation. And the cryptic membership selection process whereby the Irregular-in-chief picks a handful of people to announce as members each year. The exclusivity, the haves-and-have-nots, the chance to rise and be among the . . .  dare I say it . . . elite. Big thrills all.

But it's such a big thrill that the "who gets made a member this year" list is the biggest news to come out of the BSI dinner every year. It seems to eclipse and predominate the whole of the hobby on that one night, even above Mr. Sherlock Holmes. 

And yet, the sister society of the Baker Street Irregulars, the Sherlock Holmes Society of London, seems to get by without all of that, existing just as long and just as well. Apparently Americans aren't nearly as well behaved as our cousins across the pond, and need more screening.

It would be very interesting to see what the Baker Street Irregulars of New York would look like without all the focus on who got invited and who got in. Who knows what might surface if all that mental energy got freed up for other uses?

I might have gotten off the subject with that thought, but Scott was also kind enough to put a link to my BSI blog in his "I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere" column, the link emanating from the words, "to sulk for those who don't receive an invitation." Which made me start to wonder if I hadn't received an invitation to the BSI dinner. Perhaps Scott knew something I didn't.

I checked the pile of mail that tends to grow in our entryway . . . you know how it is in the electronic age, all the good letters come via the internet. No invitation to be found. Which wouldn't be all that odd, if not for the fact that they used to send invitations to members of the Baker Street Irregulars. I say "used to," because I had heard a story last year of a certain Irregular who has often criticized the current management and got dropped from the mailing list, only to protest same. If the head of the Irregulars decided to clean out his Facebook friends, so to speak, I wouldn't be surprised if I got dropped from the membership mailing. I mean, have you read my blog? Heck, he could even be an Elementary fan. But no protests here. I didn't dig that deep into the mail pile looking for an invitation. A little bit busy this year.

Whatever my status of my membership in the Big Society of the Invited, I shall continue to be a (and perhaps the only) proponent of open membership for the Baker Street Irregulars. It's American's main Sherlockian society, I'm an American and a Sherlockian, and with even that little invested interest it just seems like the right idea to me.

Sneer a little sneer for me.

What does James Windibank of "A Case of Identity" have that I don't have? Sure, he was an amazing enough actor that he could fool his own step-daughter into thinking he was a completely different person. (Traditionally, Sherlockians blame the victim there, rather than praising his amazing talents, but we saw the girl -- she wasn't that brain-dead.) And maybe his acting skill was a part of why he could do something I can't seem to master. And what might that be?

James Windibank could sneer.

I've been trying to sneer all morning, and I'm just not getting it. Maybe a bad Elvis smirk. Maybe something that looks like disfigured comic book cowboy Jonah Hex. But no sneer.

The Jonah Hex thing may be the closest, because the hideous beggar Hugh Boone of "The Man with the Twisted Lip" had a repulsive sneer, and his lip was twisted and all. And I am not the only one with problems mastering it, either, as Professor Coram of "Gold Pince-nez" managed "something like a sneer," according to Watson's accounts, but just wasn't there with it, apparently.

Lord Cantlemere had a distinct sneer in "Mazarin Stone," but as with all things "Mazarin Stone," we have to wonder if that was real or not. That story's just a bit questionable all around.

If we take that Sherlock Holmes was good with a sneer, especially when the topic of "softer passions" came up, whatever they are, and add it to the rest of the data above, I really think one has to conclude that it takes an actor, or someone with good natural acting talent, to pull off a proper sneer.

Windibank, Boone, and Holmes were all masters of disguise/actors. They also could sneer.

I'm not an actor nor a master of disguise. I can't seem to do it.

Of course, in written text, especially in internet comment sections, people seem to be able to sneer very easily these days, like Scotland Yarder Athelney Jones who could sneer with his voice. But to get one to actually appear on your face? That either takes pure talent or the sort of life that I just haven't lived.

So give sneering a try and let me know your results. I am just not getting it.

"It's a BSI invitation, Charlie Brown!"

Well, since I'm hiding from the comments section this week anyway, after another round of Elementary versus the world . . . I do that occasionally, being something of a cowardly blogger. But I am honest, which is why I'm going to tell you what I'm about to tell you. It's not going to score me any points with the Sherlockian world, but just needs to be entered into that giant data storage archive we call the interwebs one more time. It's like an annual Christmas special with a touch of melancholy that rolls around at the same time every year.

Another friend got invited to the annual dinner of the Baker Street Irregulars of New York this week. And as always happens when a new invitation finds someone I like, or an Irregular shilling is bestowed upon a long-waiting Sherlockian of my esteem, I found myself feeling a little sad.

The person in question is always delighted, congratulations shower down, and happiness abounds. I'm glad for their happiness, of course, in a distant sort of way. About twenty-five years distant, at this point, which was the last time I felt something close. One might compare it to an long-married crone considering a young bride, I guess. Or one might go with a different marriage analogy.

For me, it's a little bit like someone who'll be completely happy with weddings again when everyone can marry whomever it is they love. I'll be completely happy about someone going to the Baker Street Irregulars dinner for the first time again when everyone can go for the first time.

This isn't some whimsy I came up with last week, or tonight, in a desperate attempt to find something to blog. My hope for an open Baker Street Irregulars dinner started in a day when one particular gender didn't get invited, and then grew over time, as changing management suddenly dropped invitees who seemed on the verge of membership, as my own distance from the core membership made me a sympathetic ear for those frustrated with long years of waiting to see the inside of the banquet room. I've been writing and re-writing on this topic for so long that its a little same-old, same-old, and I should probably give it up.

But like beauty pageant entrants who must regularly hope for that maybe unrealistic dream of world peace, I have to annually voice a maybe unrealistic dream of an open annual dinner from America's elder Sherlockian society.

And so, with that annual tradition done for another year, I can go dream of sugar plums or Turkish delights or . . . whatever Sherlock Holmes liked instead of jelly babies. You know there was something.

Merry BSI invitation time, everybody!

Zismanian scholarship?

One of those things that attracted me to Sherlock Holmes fandom when I first encountered it in the 1970s was a little thing we like to call "the Game." Call it grand or great or whatever you like, the Game was a unique little thing Sherlockians did that caught my imagination: They researched Sherlock Holmes historically, approaching their work with the basic tenet that Sherlock Holmes existed just as much as Abraham Lincoln, Edgar Allen Poe, or any of those other folk mentioned in the Sherlock Holmes stories.

It made Holmes fans unique among the Trekkies, the lovers of Gone With The Wind, and all the other fandoms that existed at that time.

At that time. It's a different world now.

Blending fiction and reality has gone far, far beyond our little Sherlockian writings these days, as evidenced by a little film I saw tonight called Bad Grandpa. The basic premise of Bad Grandpa is that of a reprobate grandfather who transports his unwanted grandson across the country, having a lot of misadventures along the way. The grandfather, Irving Zisman, is an actor in make-up. The grandson, Billy, is a child actor. But the people they interact with along the way are all real people, living their everyday lives. Basically, it's the old Candid Camera show with a plot. (Though MUCH more offensive than the old Allen Funt half hour TV show.)

The premise isn't that new. Sacha Baron Cohen has done it with a couple of films. Johnny Knoxville's take in Bad Grandpa is much less flamboyeant, making Irving Zisman's fictional nature seem a little more like one more real person interacting with the real world a lot more often than Cohen's versions. In the end credits, Knoxville gives the game away, unlike Cohen, showing his practical joke victims getting let in on the joke, and making his tricks seem a little less predatory. The best Sherlockian scholarship never let the trick slip, and it didn't need to, as it never intruded into the lives of anyone who didn't invite it in.

And if somebody did think Sherlock Holmes was a real historical person, just like millions have even without our help? Well, what harm was in that? How could the existence of Sherlock Holmes be a bad thing, as his inspiring influence on forensic science and many great men and women over the years has shown?

Comparing the work of Father Ronald Knox with Johnny Knoxville may seem a little sacrilegious to the devout Sherlockian, but both men mixed fact and fantasy for laughs. The mediums and the level of brazenness may have changed with the times, but the similarities between the borderline realities of Sherlock Holmes and Irving Zisman do lend credence to one old adage: The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Or, if you want to go with Sherlock-wisdom: "The old wheel turns and the same spoke comes up. It's all been done before and will be again." And sometimes, that's okay.

A report from the front lines.

Well, I tried being positive about CBS's Elementary. Pretending it was a bit of harmless televised fun, "all Sherlock Holmes is good Sherlock Holmes," and all that. Go team. Rah.

But then a comment came in this week, reporting exactly what I knew was going to happen, way back when this ridiculous show began. T'was a tale of a Sherlockian who went to work on Halloween, dressed as Sherlock Holmes, and it went like this:

Here I am, dressed as a classic Holmes, and all the people at work either thought Lucy Liu was Holmes or wanted to know where she was. A few said, "Are you supposed to be that guy, what's the name of the guy on Elementary?" "Oh, you mean Jonny Lee Miller." "Who? Is that his name?" No one person said Basil Rathbone, Jeremy Brett, Robert Downey, Jr. or even Mr. Cumberbatch. I need to change jobs or move out of the U.S.A. Curse you, Elementary!

I sympathize completely with the writer of those words, as I've been in similar spots. While any co-workers I've had long-term eventually get a fair education on Sherlock Holmes just by the osmosis of casual conversation over time, there was always a starting point. Most people have had some contact with Sherlock Holmes over their lifetimes. Whether that contact was an obvious parody, like the Dudley Moore Hound of the Baskervilles or the cartoon Sherlock Holmes in the Twenty-Second Century, you usually had a baseline of solid Canonical ties to work with. The basic story points were there.

And let's face it, as much as Elementary's supporters might strain to pull out Canonical detail from the show, would you rather encounter a new acquaintance who had never heard of Sherlock Holmes, or one that had only watched Elementary? Personally, I'd rather work with a blank slate than have to undo the web of weirdness that Elementary has laid over the top of our familiar story cycle.

"No, Professor Moriarty was not Sherlock's lover. He wasn't even cute, really. No, Watson was not a failed surgeon who solved half the cases. He was a great guy . . . yes, a guy. Sherlock's brother was actually more gifted than Sherlock . . . no, Sherlock didn't sleep with Mycroft's fiancee. Or Watson's friends . . ."

Given that most of these changes are the sort of lurid details added to feed the ratings beast with casual viewers, the sort that wouldn't be interested in Sherlock Holmes under normal conditions, Elementary's take on Sherlock Holmes can easily be judged as exploitative rather than adaptive. The story it's passing on to its millions of viewers is not the one Sherlock Holmes fans grew to love at some point in their lives. It's something much more calculatedly commercial, designed to appeal to a large television demographic. Which is why a number of Sherlockians actually like it -- it was built to be liked.

The question I still have to raise, however, is "Was it built to be Sherlock Holmes?"

I don't think so. And no matter how positive I try to be about that show, that answer remains solid, with more evidence supporting it every single week. Anyone who comes into the orbit of a devoted Sherlockian is going to learn about Sherlock Holmes. But having that first Sherlock Holmes talk with a new friend is like having a sex talk with your kids: you hope you don't have to undo a bunch of crap they learned on the streets. And Elementary at the moment, seems to be "the streets."

"From Sherlock Holmes."

Sometimes, it's the little things.

Little, but a trace of something much larger. 

So, tonight, I decide to watch Conan O'Brien. That's not such a big deal.

And at the start of the show, Conan introduced his guests. Not so exciting, right?

And then he says, ". . . from Sherlock Holmes . . ." my little ears perk up. Cumberbatch is on? I heard nothing of this.

And then Conan finishes, ". . .  Rachel McAdams!"

Let that sink in for a moment. The movie Sherlock Holmes came out in 2009. It's sequel came out in 2011. And yet, it's still being used to introduce the actress who played Irene Adler in 2013. 

The Notebook, Morning Glory, Wedding Crashers . . . all notable Rachel McAdams movies. Red Eye certainly stuck with me. But Sherlock Holmes get top introduction billing even now.

And it brings a silly little moment of joy to the Sherlockian heart.  

(Even if Morning Glory is still my favorite Rachel McAdams movie. I don't think it counts as "a Rachel McAdams movie" unless she lives all the way through it and/or its sequel . . . well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.)