LESTRADE SPEAKS! And speaks, and speaks, and . . . damn!

"Do you have an aversion to cocks?" he says to Watson.

Yes, that is what Mr. Elementary's writers consider the clever conclusion of an opening scene in their "Baker Street NYC" moments for this week's Elementary. The thought of an emulator of Sherlock Holmes wasting his time breaking up a common cock fight as a use of his detective prowess was actually offending me enough that the punchline to it all was a relief. "Oh, that's what they're doing. At least it wasn't pointless."

Lestrade is back this week, and he's just talking and talking and annoying Mr. Elementary. I'm finding I kind of like the grizzled inspector, too. In a Bizarro Sherlock world, I guess that would make sense, but it also could be that all the talking Lestrade is doing might actually be quieting Mr. Elementary's amount of dialogue to that of a normal Sherlock Holmes. Go, Lestrade, go!

Gregson phones it in, and he's seeming a little sleepy next to Lestrade, who's now doing a "DOUG Talk" on Mr. Elementary's TV. (Of course, Mr. E. should be happy Lestrade is doing the off-brand and not a real TED Talk.) Of course, nothing lasts forever, and eventually Mr. Elementary has to do a long procedural discourse on his reconstruction of a bomb's blast, which is a bit dull. But just when I start to despair, here comes Lestrade once more!

Gareth, as opposed to Graham or Greg, or George, or whatever those other Lestrades' names are, is just ruling this episode. He even offers Joan Watson a job as his partner . . . which actually wouldn't make a bad show if Jonny Lee Miller ever gets tired of the CBS payroll. Joan could solve the cases while Gareth puffs up and claims credit.

Mr. Elementary apparently bakes some sort of puff pastry when he's feeling stressed. And of course this would be the ONE time he doesn't explain every detail of what he's doing, because they actually look tasty. Given that his older brother is a restauranteur, cooking in the blood must take the strangest forms in this odd exploration of how far the outer reaches of calling someone "Sherlock Holmes" will reach.

Wow, when Jonny Lee Miller and Sean Pertwee are doing a key scene together with just them, you can almost imagine this is some cool Brit crime movie and not just another CBS procedural with aspirations of Sherlock-ness. There's actually a relationship moment there, which is something I usually find missing in Elementary, despite its fans' claims otherwise.

But, alas, it's just one scene, and then we're back to business as usual. And as usual, one of the most appealing regular features of Elementary are the scenes of Joan being woken up in the morning, just to see what she's wearing to bed -- this time a cool tie-died rib cage tank top. (And she's at first wrapped in a white puffball sort of bedspread like my grandmother used to have.)

The mysteries of these little procedurals are usually pretty ignorable, and mostly this one is, too, but Sean Pertwee is actually making this one compelling when he talks about it. The thought that he's going to be playing Alfred Pennyworth (yes, Bruce Wayne's butler) in the WB Batman prequel series Gotham is kind of intriguing, even though he doesn't seem the traditional Alfred.

"The One Percent Solution," as this week's episode is titled, ranks as one of my two favorite episodes of Elementary, next to last season's "Snow Angels." Well, except for those damn cocks. They have to return at the end of the show, but like Lestrade (who is seen coming to stay with Mr. Elementary and Joan), I'm sure they'll be gone next week. Which is too, too bad . . . in Lestrade's case. Not the roosters.

And now, I just ramble about nothing at all.

Forgive me for getting off-topic tonight, but this particular blog has nothing to do with Sherlock Holmes.

We seem to be in a season of awards. Olympic medals. Oscars. All that stuff. Which always makes me wonder: What if such trophies were awarded based on the judgement of one man?

You spend your whole life on figure skates or skis, you get really, really good, and no matter how your performance is at your event, that one man gets to decide whether or not you get a gold medal, a silver medal, a bronze medal, or no medal at all. Those who get medals are really going to like that system. Those who don't are probably just going to go, "Bah! I care nothing for Olympic medals!"  The Olympics would claim to have the best in the world, but there would always be a seed of doubt.

The Oscars handed out in that scenario are a little easier to visualize. Many a movie critic decides his top ten movies of the year every year. Just replace the accountants on the annual Academy Awards show with that single critic going, "Yep, this is what I decided this year," and you have it. But as we all know with movie critics, they tend to have their prejudices, their little peccadillloes, and their tastes rarely align in perfect harmony with the general movie-going public. The one-critic Oscar system, however, would have its contented believers, of course, aaaand a whole lot of folks who'd refuse to accept such a thing.

And why not. This is America. We will accept the rule of one man or woman when they're supplying a paycheck, but otherwise we usually like a little more balanced system with some accountability to it. Baseball, ballot boxes, and apple pie. Fastest times, juries of our peers, and Neilsen ratings.

It's a happy place, and generally we like things that way.

Thanks for your forbearance with this little musing. Like I said at the outset, it has nothing to do with Sherlock Holmes, the exposing of hidden truths, and that eternal hope that justice and a fair shake is just a hope and a knock on 221 Baker Street's door away.

Nothing at all.

A quick look at the quick beer.

It seems like I can't get away from the subject of beer these days. The explosion of craft beer labels, destination brewpubs, and specialty beers has made it a hobby among some of my friends at the level that Sherlock Holmes reaches for Sherlockian. And it's not without benefits for us fans of the great detective, as even Peoria has at least one British pub where we can pick up something akin to English cuisine.

And though we tend to think of Sherlock Holmes as a wine guy, he did have at least two beer moments. The first, in "A Scandal in Bohemia," featured a beer brought by a Mrs. Turner, whom I have my own theories about. The other is a holiday beer in "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle," which Holmes plainly ordered just to start a conversation with the landlord at the Alpha Inn.

Watson doesn't describe Sherlock drinking the beer, doesn't talk about his own beverage enjoyment in that later tale. If fact all we get, other than Holmes's preliminary compliment to a beer he hasn't even tasted yet, is this toast:

"Well, here's your good health, landlord, and prosperity to your house. Good-night!"

Consider that toast carefully. A toast usually is made prior to the first drink, and since Holmes is talking non-stop before he makes it, that would see to be the case here. He also ends his toast with "Good-night!" which indicates he's on his way out the door. And after all his other friendly conversation with the landlord, he surely didn't just leave the beer untouched.

No, Sherlock Holmes plainly made his toast, shotgunned that beer, just like Gary King and the boys from the movie The World's End, and was off to his next destination.

Lucky for him, things were simpler then, and Holmes could chug that one quick beer and be on his way. Were he in the same situation today, he would have been expected to sample a flight of seasonal brews or at least discuss the comparative merits of the Alpha Inn's beer to other craft beers. Who knows if the Blue Carbuncle mystery would have ever got solved?

So sip on that, modern connoisseurs of the yeasty grainy liquid. And let's get back to that Imperial Tokay.

Waiting for Uncle Sherlock.

There are a lot of women in Sherlock Holmes's life these days.

Whether it's girlfriend Janine, partner Joan Watson, apprentice/wife Mary Russell, or whatever role Irene is taking in a given moment, it's not just a boys' club at Baker Street any more. Even Mary Morstan has stepped up her game with the great detective.

So I guess I shouldn't have been surprised to find Sherlock Holmes had a niece during a trip to the local Barnes & Noble. Chances are I had heard it before, but something about the cover of the third book in the Evelina Cooper series caught my eye, so I backtracked to find the first of the set, 2013's A Study in Silks by Emma Jane Holloway.

Evelina Cooper is Sherlock's niece on her non-circus-folk side. She lives in a steampunk/magical London of 1888. And she doesn't seem to be in any hurry to drag out Uncle Sherl.

I picked up A Study in Silks out of curiosity, a little light reading with a Holmes connection, but . . . interesting thing so far . . . Emma Jane Holloway doesn't seem to be looking for "pasticheur" as a job description. Evelina Cooper seems to be living her own life, without any hovering from Uncle Sherlock. And that seems like pretty much a good thing . . . for a time.

But as the pages flip by, and Uncle Sherlock doesn't stroll into frame, one starts going, "Hey, he was mentioned three times on the book's cover!" Evelina is only mentioned four. That's practically equal billing. So then one starts to wonder: Just how much Sherlock Holmes does a book need to have before it can list Sherlock Holmes on the label as an ingredient?

Like anything else in the arts, I suppose it depends upon the skill and talent of the artist. As I'm still working on Evelina's adventures, the jury is still out on that one. But at least, with all the other women in Sherlock Holmes's life these days (and the creators of Sherlock talking about how much they like adding them), niece Evelina is giving him some space.

Essential reading?

Last night I had a dream that I wrote an article for a Sherlockian print publication. I printed it out in the san-serif font and paragraph format requested by said publication, a smaller but esteemed journal of the sort I used to enjoy writing for in the 1980s. And then I stopped and went "Now I have to mail it?" That little moment was enough to disconnect me from the dream-reality and wake me up.

So today, I woke up thinking of Sherlockian print publications, the role they used to play in my fannish life, and the cameo appearances they seem to have now. The subject had been on my mind this week, as finally catching up on Baker Street Babes podcasts (after holding back on the Sherlock spoiler-filled episodes for a month) presented commercials for The Baker Street Journal  described as "essential reading for anyone interested in Sherlock Holmes." Which made me wonder:

Do any Sherlockian print publications really qualify as essential reading for a Holmes fan any more?

The Baker Street Journal is an interesting time capsule of the events-and-solid-objects part of the Sherlockian world, but its articles aren't currently anything you're going to feel bad for missing out on at the next Sherlockian cocktail party. When a quarter of an article's total length is devoted to footnotes, chances are that it's not going to set the world on fire with original thought, and the BSJ does attract a few of those due to its institutional standing. It does have its moments, though, but essential for the non-collector? I don't know. I let my subscription lapse for a year a while back, and haven't really felt a void from that hole in my collection or Sherlockian life. (Yes, I'm a villain of a Sherlockian, I know. It brings me no joy to report it.)

Other journals I subscribe to, like The Serpentine Muse or The Camden House Journal connect me to certain sets of people that, while distant and not oft-seen, have significance in my Sherlockian life. It's nice to see what they're up to these days, even if I don't make it out to their gatherings as I would like. I'm horrible about keeping my subscriptions up, however, and occasionally lose one in the mix. The Illustrious Clients News slipped by me last year, and by the time I did notice its absence, I had missed most of the year, and still need to rectify that situation. I blame the periodical nature of the periodical. The gap between issues is so long that in the swiftly-turning world we find ourselves in these days, one loses track of when things are due to arrive.

Once a year, The Baker Street Journal lists "Sherlockian Periodicals Received" and their latest list holds twenty-three publications, a goodly share of which I subscribed to, back when they were the only game in town. And that's definitely part of what has eroded the essential nature of the Sherlockian print publication -- not being the only game in town. Most of the publications you'll find listed in the Journal serve a local audience, where they literally are the only game in town to this day. But for the more global Sherlockian?  The right combination of internet watering-holes can keep one feeling fairly current on Sherlockian matters without having to drag one's self out to the post office to mail a check every now and again.

There's so much talk of the "twenty-four hour news cycle" and its effect on our lives anymore that the phrase is a bit worn out. But thanks to Twitter, Facebook, and the like, we Sherlockians have our own sources to check on a daily basis, our own twenty-four hour news cycle, and that has slammed the impact of newsletters and journals more than anything. Technology is a bastard that way. Most of us still like horses, want horses to exist, and love to see them when we do . . . but do we ride horses? Only on very special occasions.

The Sherlockian print publication is our horse. Once vital, now not-so-much, it has those who love it dearly and will keep it stabled and fed, while most of us drive our cars to work. Now, it becomes also like the moss rose that Holmes picked up in "The Adventure of the Navel Treaty" -- "an embellishment of life, not a condition of it." And what did Holmes say about such embellishments?

"It is only goodness which gives extras."

And as Sherlockiana is a hobby of embellishments of life and extras, I think we will find the print publication as one more proof of goodness in the world in the years ahead. Somebody went to the trouble to create them, not out of greed or grasping for power, but out of love. Even if and when the subscriber lists dwindle to a rare handful, so many of them will still probably exist. And how can that be anything but goodness?

Now I just have to get off my butt and get my subscriptions paid off for next year.

The million monkeys.

For starters, let me just say this: I love monkeys.

It's not a perjorative term to me, by any means. And the concept of the millionth monkey who types Shakepeare . . . now I really like that one. Even came up with a concept for a superhero once called the Millionth Monkey, about a guy who figured out how to fly just by random applications of physics. (Yes, physicists, that makes little sense, but let's talk about monkeys.) So it's not surprising that looking at what modern fan fiction has become, I started thinking of the million monkeys.

There's a temptation, when first coming upon the infinite variety of Sherlocks and Johns that is Sherlockian fanfic to write it off as immature nonsense, and many a Sherlockian does stop at that first impression. Winglock, Tunalock, Tutulock (or whatever Sherlock ballerina fanfic is called) . . . there's a "What the hell?" factor that naturally might scare a more conservative type off. But if you step back and look at the big picture, see what's really happening here, it's the most Sherlockian thing of all:

Logical synthesis.

Logical synthesis, mentioned in "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches," isn't as sexy as the "mind palace" concept, but it's pure, undiluted Sherlock Holmes.

"I have devised seven separate explanations," he explained in that same story, "which would cover the facts as far as we know them." Seven separate ways the world could have produced the circumstances Holmes walked into. Only one of them would be true, meaning that Holmes actually thought up six alternate universes that could have produced the same conditions at that point in time. And alternate universes are a big part of fan fiction these days, a way to respect the integrity of the original work and still explore the possibilities of the contents of that work.

Sherlockian fan fiction has been going on almost as long as Sherlock Holmes. Sherlockians have long liked to fancy things up, so "pastiches" suited us just fine, whether it was the work of professional writers or those who paid a vanity press to publish their Holmes-work. When fan fiction first began its rise with Star Trek fanzines in the sixties, Sherlock Holmes eventually got pulled in, most notably with 1978's inaugural issue of The Holmesian Federation, which celebrated Sherlock/Trek crossovers. (The poem by Edgar Smith in that issue about Moriarty and Darth Vader can be quite a head-scratcher until one notes it is Edgar B. Smith and not Edgar W. Smith.) But were we doing alternate universes back then?

Not really. It was all one big happy universe back then, and pulling Captain Kirk into Sherlock Holmes's universe just made it all the bigger. (Though I'm sure Trekkies thought they were pulling Sherlock into Kirk's universe.) Even in the middle 1990s, when the comb-bound 221 B Baker Street collected Jeremy Brett's Holmes fanfic into four large volumes, writers were still playing in the world that they saw on PBS and on video tape, not tweaking it into their own worlds.

Perhaps the earliest foreshadowing of modern AU fanfic was something like "Teddylock," when Poul Anderson's 1957 book Earthman's Burden, collected tales of a race of cute little bear-folk who mimicked Earth cultures, including Sherlock Holmes. But even that was set in our universe, where Holmes was a human in a book. And, at that, Poul Anderson was just one monkey with one typewriter, and that keyboard certainly wasn't connected to the internet.

A million monkeys typing Twihard fanfic brought us 50 Shades of Grey, which will soon be coming to the big screen in its own right. And while it's far from Shakespeare and hasn't really caused a wave of bondage and S & M to take over our country, its emergence as a popular work in its own right cannot be denied. (Kind of like Elementary . . . sorry, I have a quota to keep up.) Who knows what our lovely million Sherlockian monkeys are going to come up with?

I expect it will be something better than Anastasia Steel and Christian Grey, but, hey, we're starting with Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. Crafting from such precious metals is bound to bring us something valuable one day. Go, monkeys, go!

Standing where you might get finger slipped.

"For long time readers of Mr Keefauver’s blog, it’s sometimes unclear where exactly he stands regarding the brave new Holmesian world we find growing around us every day."

-- Matt Laffey, Always1895.net

Yep, Matt hit the nail on the head in his comment in last week's round-up at Always 1895. And, as Lady Coincidence would have it, I have never been more unclear on that stance than tonight.

Being a little behind on my podcasts, I was catching up on the Baker Street Babes today with their 52nd episode, "A Finger Slip Web Series." Now, a little Googling will very quickly catch you up on what "A Finger Slip" is all about. You'll learn:

a.) "A Finger Slip" is a fan fiction tale told entirely in text messages, an idea taken from another fan fiction based on the TV show Glee.

b.) "A Finger Slip: Web Series" has a Kickstarter that has already raised $13,000 toward adapting that fan fiction into video. Their goal was $10,000, so they're doing pretty well.

c.) A "finger slip" is a technique for touching a woman's private parts, according to the description you'll find in the Urban Dictionary.

And apparently, "A Finger Slip" has touched a lot of folks's mental private parts.

Now, having listened to the Babes' podcast, read a bit of the fic, and checked out the Kickstarter, here's what I have to say about it all: Listen to the Babes' podcast, read the fan fiction, and check out the Kickstarter. And see what you think.

We live in an age where a young dreamer can get an idea to adapt an idea based on an idea, with both of the last two ideas based on two other ideas, then raise $13,000 to fulfill that dream, funded by folks who want to see that dream come true. Now, there's a temptation to be a little cynical about all of that, and maybe a wee bit of that has crept into my words tonight, but here's the thing:

OH, MY GOD, IF THIS KIND OF POWER HAD BEEN AVAILABLE IN 1982!!! I'D HAVE . . . AND I COULD HAVE . . . AND . . .

But here we are, in this brave new Sherlockian world, and any of us could do such things. Young or old. Some of those who are doing them could seem a little naive as to the ways of the world at times, a little wet behind the ears, etc., etc., but hey, if they're doing it and we're not, good on them.* Perhaps it's not knowing some of the possible pitfalls out there that gives them such enthusiasm to move ahead.

I'm less and less sure of where I stand in our modern Sherlockian world for one simple reason: It's a much bigger place than it used to be and there are just so many, many places to stand now. And with so many available, you have to move around a little bit just to get the view from a few different angles.

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*This statement only applies to amateur endeavors and not big-budget corporate efforts that could be a lot better given the resources available to them. You know who I'm talking about.