The Return of Deerstalker Duck.

Sigh.

Five times. Five times now. And every time I give him away, he just comes back.

I think I have a problem.

It's this duck with a deerstalker.

The Deerstalker Duck

He's a example of one of the worst symptoms of Sherlock Holmes fandom -- the urge to own things that have a deerstalker hat on, whether or not they have anything to do with Sherlock Holmes. But this mad-eyed mallard, often seen with a canteen, does not even own a particularly good deerstalker cap. And he's more interested in saving wetlands than investigating mysteries, being that odd sort of beastie who seems to be working against his own kind, hence the hunting headgear.

The non-duck Sherlock Holmes actually seemed to enjoy duck-hunting, if we go by the evidence in "The Gloria Scott," and he was surely no Elmer Fudd at the sport. Holmes probably exterminated many a member of Deerstalker Duck's kind, during that summer between college semesters. Which could be why this duck stares to balefully in every Sherlock Holmes collection he's placed in, displaying a bug-eyed terror at seeing sharp-shooter Sherlock so much in evidence around him.

I must not be particularly fond of this duck, as I always find some reason to give him away, as a prize, as a gesture, as . . . well, any occasion that arises.  And yet, when he turns up during my travels, as he did recently at the Pink Elephant Antique mall, for the reasonable sum of five dollars and ninety-five cents, I seem to automatically tuck him under my arm and march to the checkout counter.

And then here he is again.

Had I saved every specimen of Deerstalker Duck that I've encountered over the years, I could have hosted a lovely duck hunt of my own some summer. And I may yet.

But for now, the curse of the deerstalkered duck continues. I should just be thankful it's not a Baskervillian hound from Hell.

You had just one job, Joan Watson.

Ah, the season cliffhanger. That final episode with the unfinished plot twist, leaving us to speculate during the hiatus between seasons on what just happened, why that happened, and what is going to happen next. As the summer moves along and my mind occasionally drifts to CBS's Elementary, however, it almost feels like the series is over, having come full circle and ended quite sadly.

To test that feeling, I decided to go back to the beginning and see if the circle was indeed complete.

The first thing we see of the main characters in Elementary's first episode is Joan Watson waking up. Alone and of her own accord. And then she goes jogging. As the series progresses, one of the running gags revolves around Joan Watson waking up . . . or being woken up, in some creative new manner.

Jogging Joan Watson gets a call during that first episode. Not from Archie Stamford, but from a "Hemdale."

"Hello. Yeah, I'm coming to get him in . . . I'm sorry, did you say he escaped?"


A second call, plainly to the voicemail of the father of the "him" in question:

"Hi, this is Joan Watson. In the off chance you haven't already been contacted by Hemdale, your son left rehab a little early this morning. I'm already at his house to see if he's here. I'll call you if there's a problem."

Prophetic words, those. "I'll call you if there's a problem." It took three seasons for her to make that problem call, but she did.

As Joan makes her way up the steps to what apparently is the place where "him" lives, she she's a rather seedy looking lady putting her clothes on in the entryway. Said woman does not want to talk to Joan as she passes . . . giving that "him" has had no time to build his network of emotionless sexual transaction partners that would come later, it's probably a prostitute, getting on about her business.

So "him" escaped rehab early, and has seen a prostitute already. This guy has "winner" written all over him, doesn't he?

"Hellooo?"

"Excuse me, Mister . . . ."

"Shhhhhhh!"

"My name is Joan Watson. I've been hired by your father to be your sober companion. He told me he was going to email you about me. I'm here to make the transition from your rehab experience to the routine of your everyday life as smooth as possible, so I will be living with you for the next six weeks which means I will be available to you twenty-four seven."

"Do you believe in love at first sight?"

That line, and all of "him"'s first speech to Joan Watson are words he stole from a soap opera he had been watching on television. He is a young, tattooed problem child living in the "shoddiest and least rennovated" of his father's five Manhattan properties. And he's messing with the hired help from square one.

And people wonder why I hate Elementary so . . .

John H. Watson came to Bart's with a friend to meet a possible flat-mate and wound up meeting the best and wisest friend he would ever have. He found a place for himself in the world, as chronicler and partner in adventure, not just as an added tool for the police in catching murderers, but helping people with their lives. There is success at every point in this tale. Watson's life is better for meeting Sherlock Holmes, Holmes's life is better for having Watson in it. It's a good and happy thing.

Joan Watson, on the other hand, found herself literally thrust into the life of a spoiled man-child to handle a job she seemed to have little to no training for, after failing at the job she was trained for. She loses that job and becomes a paid "apprentice" to the man-child, has a failed relationship with his brother, sees another of her relationships murdered due to her involvement with that troubled individual, and eventually sees him relapse into the addiction she was brought in to help with. Not a good nor happy thing at all. Quite tragic, actually.

The third season cliffhanger to Elementary left us with "him"'s father returning to New York to deal with his son's heroin addiction once more. Why that man would let Joan Watson be involved with that process at all is beyond me, given her track record. Yet, in order for the show to go on for yet another season, she must be involved with the heroin addicted son and he probably has to somehow be over his addiction once more, which will probably come with more of the deus ex machina character-shoving-around that the show's writing has become known for, rather than some actual growth.

And what all this has to do with Sherlock Holmes anyway, is a question that has yet to find a good answer. That, as ever, will continue to be Elementary's greatest mystery.

Holmes and Watson in love: Then, now, and on the way.

T'was a big day in America today. But I'm not going to talk about that just yet. Maybe not even at all. Because this is what I was thinking about blogging today anyway, and y'know, sometimes things just line up.

At his point in our timeline of Sherlockian fandom, I know that there's many an old school fan of the master detective out there who considers Johnlock fanfic a weird little sideroad off the main Sherlock Holmes highway. True, among dedicated fan fiction enthusiasts, Johnlock sometimes seems so vanilla that it often gets taken for granted, but to the world at large, and elder Sherlockians in general, Sherlock Holmes and John H. Watson aren't quite a couple.

They're partners, yes. No one will dispute that.

"I should prefer having a partner to being alone," Watson tells Stamford at the very start of the ACD Holmes Canon.

And the greatest of friends. No one can argue that.

"As to you, friend Watson, I owe you every atonement for having allowed your natural curiosity to remain so long unsatisfied," Sherlock comments in "The Adventure of the Dancing Men"  . . . a story where he curiously refers to the doctor as "friend Watson" more than once, making one wonder what had recently gone on between the two to require such affirmation. But friends they are, indeed.

And love?

"Quick, man, if you love me!" Holmes exclaims to Watson in "Dying Detective."

Ah, but that's the cheaper one. Any good Sherlockian knows to go to "Devil's Foot" for the good stuff.

"You know," I answered with some emotion, for I had never seen so much of Holmes's heart before, "that it is my greatest joy and privilege to help you."

This is the John H. Watson who truthfully called Sherlock Holmes "the best and wisest man I have ever known.

Oh, yes, there was love there. Call it a "bromance," call it what you will, but it was the greatest love two manly men could show for each other in that era. No woman was ever closer to either man than the other. They were true partners, to the last, or at least "His Last Bow," which is as last as it gets with those two.

So now that this next generation of Holmes fandom has taken to letting those two take it a step further in their fan fiction . . . to be partners, friends, and a couple. A couple as in -- dare I say what so many already have in so many ways -- lovers.

The only thing holding them back from being lovers before now was our own preconceptions of what a relationship between two men in polite society could and should be. And that, if you hadn't noticed the headlines today, is changing.

So wrap your head around this, and wrap it well: Within the next ten years or so, we're going to get at least one motion picture with Sherlock Holmes and John Watson as a same-sex couple. It's coming, as surely as babies being born.

What's that you say? "No way, that's fan fiction stuff!" Have you heard of a little film called "Fifty Shades of Gray," and tracked down its roots? Fan fiction today quickly becomes the mainstream media of tomorrow, and these days hungry, hungry producers are looked everywhere for the next new idea, especially if it spins off a marketable old idea . . . like Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson.

Except they're in love.

It's coming. And the quality of that first attempt in the mass media will totally depend upon how good the Holmes, how good the Watson, how good the script, the director, etc., etc., etc. Because Dr. Watson finding Sherlock Holmes the most fascinating man he ever met, and Sherlock Holmes finding Dr. Watson a loyal and true partner, those are things that don't really change when the kissing starts. Or shouldn't have to.

It's a big day in America. But bigger days are ahead for Sherlock Holmes fans.

Get ready.

A subject that does exist, even here.

It really doesn't seem appropriate to discuss a subject as serious and complex as race relations in a Sherlock Holmes blog. The topic of Sherlock Holmes is, for most of us, an escape from the cares of our daily lives, a charming fantasy of reason winning out over chaos. And yet, a part of what we love about the Sherlockian Canon is its ties to our reality, its solid connection to our lives.

And in a year when assorted tragedies remind us that we still have some distance to travel in America with the issues that lie between our citizens of different ethnic backgrounds, the stories of Sherlock Holmes serve a different purpose . . . they remind us that we can't hide in a fantasy that all is right with the world, and that being human will always mean struggling with certain issues.

The Canon gives us the good of racial relations in a tale like "The Yellow Face." It also gives us the bad of that issue in "The Five Orange Pips" and "The Three Gables."

We'd like to ignore some aspects of it, like the character of Steve Dixie in "Three Gables." He's a horrible racist stereotype and we'd like to make excuses for Conan Doyle, the same man who wrote the beautifully acceptance-filled story of "The Yellow Face." But recognizing that even Conan Doyle had both good intentions and a racist side is a very important thing.

We're human. We have some horrible impulses, some not-so-good cultural traits, every single one of us. And yet most of us strive to rise above those parts of us. And that is where we are at our best. Not because we were born perfect creatures, but because we struggle to be so.

There is a move afoot, in response to our latest tragedy, the killing of nine people just because of the color of their skin, to remove the Confederate flag from stores and government venues. It's a marvelous gesture, given what that flag represents to most of us. It won't solve anything, to be sure, but it makes a statement than can't hurt: We want to rise above our past. Our past will always be with us. Our past can never be forgotten. But it is our past, and sometimes we must leave things of that past to museums and history books.

My first draft of this particular blog was about removing Steve Dixie and "The Three Gables" from our Canon, just as the Confederate flag is being removed from Walmarts -- the sort of over-the-top idea I'm very fond of in these pages. Steve Dixie is a true embarrassment to Sherlockians, a part of our beloved Canon we don't celebrate and ignore as much as possible. And yet that embarrassment, that little test of what we'll tolerate, serves as a reminder that we still have progress to be made, and that some issues were there over a hundred years ago are still with us.

If you read Conan Doyle's play "Angels of Darkness," which the author rightly hoped none of us would ever see, you'll see both Dr. Watson's first role and a whole lot of Steve-Dixie-type stereotypes. An African American, an Asian, a Brit, and a guy from New Jersey are all played as the worst caricatures of stereotyping. Yet two of those are meaningless to us now, silly remnants of past ideas that have no emotional impact today. We've grown beyond them.

And maybe one day, all four sterotypes from "Angels of Darkness" will seem equally silly and have no impact upon our current lives. Maybe one day, we'll all just look upon Steve Dixie as just a badly written character and no more than that. I truly hope that day comes. But that day isn't today.

The Canon of Sherlock Holmes reminds us that we still have issues that can't be ignored, even as Sherlockians. And it also reminds us that there is good in us, too, and reason to hope.

So we keep on trying. Even here.

Was Grover Cleveland actually Jack the Ripper?

So I'm sitting in the bar at our local Old Chicago pizza-pub today. I had just seen Jurassic World, the sequel that combines words from two previous movies in its title, one word of which was inspired by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. ("World" as in The Lost World.) And as I'm sitting there, a commercial comes on one of the dozen flat screen TVs prominently featuring Conan Doyle.

Not sure if that TV was playing a sports channel or a pub quiz, but what I saw was the following question:

"Was Arthur Conan Doyle actually Jack the Ripper?"

The ad went on to promote a book that I won't even mention here, as I really hate to publicize claptrap that a few lucky Sherlockians might happily otherwise miss. (As opposed to, say, a network television show.)  And the book really doesn't matter. What matters is that damned commercial, on a screen in a public place, where the thought being placed in the mind of any bored patron browsing the multiple TVs was this . . . .

Conan Doyle = Jack the Ripper.

Of course, most folks knowledgeable enough to know that Arthur Conan Doyle wrote the Sherlock Holmes stories probably aren't going to take such an allegation seriously. And it doesn't take much of a net search to find Doyle listed among the most ridiculous Ripper suspects ever. But you know there's some idiot out there who had a few too many beers and was liable to go home and tell his kids, "You know the guy who wrote those Sherlock Holmes stories was probably Jack the Ripper."

Or maybe I'm just being a pessimist, having had my lunch interrupted with such a stupid, stupid idea being used to promote a book.

Personally, if we're going to go silly, I think we should promote the idea that the U.S. president of that time, Grover Cleveland was really Jack the Ripper. Say he gave Britain some ground over Canadian fishing rights for a free hand at killing a few prostitutes in a country other than his own. (A bachelor president at first, Cleveland had only recently married a 21-year-old college girl, so who knows what bad habits he was trying to purge with a London spree.) Grover Cleveland needs a little juicy gossip added to his historical record, and Conan Doyle certainly doesn't -- fairies and ghosts cover those bases nicely.

The idea of Grover Cleveland as the Ripper may be pretty darned ridiculous. But we live in a world where the media likes to promote any goofball thought produces a headline, marketing people have even less scruples, and Conan Doyle just got publicized as Jack the Ripper in a Peoria restaurant bar.

Sherlock Holmes is becoming a better and better role model for us all the time . . . as a man who made it a point to find the truth behind every outlandish tale that came his way.

Because we're getting a lot of those these days.

"It's like the Avengers . . ."

The big prize in Hollywood these days seems to be creating a movie "pyramid" like Marvel Studios did with "Marvel's The Avengers," building a number of movies about individual characters then bringing those characters together in one final super-blockbuster of a movie. Let's ignore the decades of backstory and existing fans for those heroes, of course, and how hard it is to create just one successful film. There have been writer's rooms and corporate meetings out there like crazy, trying to come up with any possible intellectual property that could be built into such a model of success. Which makes you wonder . . .

Who out there is looking at Sherlock Holmes this way?

Sure, most  tend to think of Sherlock Holmes adventures being all about Sherlock and his supporting cast, but wait a minute. And list some of that cast.

Sherlock Holmes, the world's first and foremost consulting detective.

John H. Watson, M.D., late of the Army Medical Department.

Irene Adler, celebrity, adventuress, mistress of disguise.

Mycroft Holmes, the man who is the British Government.

Porlock, the one good man inside Professor Moriarty's criminal empire.

Hmm. Five movies there? Maybe. Porlock being the weaker of the set, one might want to give him Kitty Winter and Porky Shinwell as back-up for his film. In fact, there's a legion of characters out there to toss into all five of those characters' movies.

And then, after telling all five tales, then it comes time for them all to band together to bring Professor Moriarty down.

Possible? Definitely. Probable? Not likely.

Still, it is awfully fun to consider. And these days, you just never know what could happen, so it's not entirely out of the question.

Like throwing heroin in front of Mr. Elementary . . . .

You may call him "Howard Ostrom." I call him "Oscar."

Oscar, it will be remembered, is the character from Elementary's season finale who lured, pestered, and generally shoved the titular Mr. Elementary into returning to his old heroin addiction. My personal Oscar, Howard, tossed this tidbit out on to Twitter today:

Now, I am a firm believer that one of our great human failings is that urge from earliest childhood to exclaim "Again!" whenever something delights us, and thus eventually drain any happy surprise of its joy by regular repetition. So I fully expect bad things to come from trying a sequel set of captions to a photo of Mr. Elementary in a refuse area. But unfortunately, I'm willing to try, despite at least one "Can't we all play nice in the sandbox?" plea after that last attempt. Poking a needle into Elementary's veins has become an addiction that I'm just a little too susceptible to. So, without further ado, let's get to the captions for Howard's photo . . .

Well, it's not the worst thing I've seen on an episode of Elementary.

Swim to the sea like Nemo, Clyde. The lid is staying down.

Eli Stone's law offices became less and less prestigious as the visions continued.

Mr. Elementary begins his research on the 247 varieties of paper that one
might wipe one's posterior with. What that had to do with crime,
no one would ever know. As with most of his studies.

Eventually he found that with enough mental focus, he could teleport
his bodily waste through several layers of cloth and plastic.

Joan Watson pressed her face and hand up to the fogged window, as Mycroft
took her against the alley wall. Neither of them really knew why.
It was almost as if God was really bad at writing fanfic.

This month in GQ: What does your body language on the toilet say about you?

Yes, it is a tribute to Joaquim de Almeida in "O Xango de Baker Street."

"Here I sit, all broken hearted . . ."
So began the love poem that caused Jamie Moriarty to fake her death yet again.

Tirelessly, he worked on his interpretive dance choreography through every waking moment.

A few moments before the sink actually tore itself from the wall and walked off the set.

Captain Gregson and Detective Bell were actually supposed to be in this scene,
but Quinn and Hill believed the stagehand's  admonishing "Do NOT go in there!"

Okay, let's flush this bit and let it mercifully swirl away, as so many sequels should probably do. On to better things and the hope that "Oscar" Ostrom lets rehab work its magic.

And a late P.S., just because I forgot about this one . . .

Instead of doing "Speckled Band," Elementary decided to pit their consulting detective

against the horror legend, the Ghoulies. Somehow, it just seemed to fit.