Other words besides "continents"

The line is oh, so familiar . . .

"In an experience of women which extends over many nations and three separate continents, I have never looked upon a face which gave a clearer promise of a refined and sensitive nature."

And ye olde boys of old, who must do as we boys do, chortle "Experience, heh, heh, heh . . . sexual experience."

Then, ignoring all the rest of that sentence, with the limited mental capacity of sexy-time doofusness we focus on the big word, "continents," ignoring the smaller word, "nations," as in "many," did not then stop to go, "Wait, the John H. Watson we saw in as loyal friend to Sherlock Holmes, that kind and just John H. Watson, was just hopping from bed to bed across many nations?!?" Seems a bit cavalier for our Watson, one would think!

And, with Watson as Casanova, we don't even get to the latter part of the statement. Taken alone, it stands as simply this:

"I have never looked upon a face which gave a clearer promise of a refined and sensitive nature."

So we're to believe Watson goes from bragging about banging the babes of MANY nations and then just drops into a lower gear and talks about how none of those women were as refined and sensitive looking as Mary Morstan? That's a really huge tell for "madonna-whore complex," if we're actually reading it as being about a man who went from sex-sex-sex to true love in a single statement.

Taken at a more reasonable, not-so-horny view of the world, Watson had simply met women in many nations, nations in three continents. No big deal there, as we know he hit Europe, Asia, and either Australia or America, depending upon which theory you prefer. And if you give a good dose of saltpeter to that first part of the quote, the second part is rather interesting to analyze.

Why was Watson looking for a woman of "a refined and sensitive nature?" He wasn't entirely sure he had found it yet, which is why he speaks of its "promise." But he plainly has hopes that he is going to follow up on, to see if Mary Morstan is as refined and sensitive as she seems.

So why does he need her to be so refined and sensitive? Watson is not some posh noble needing all the social graces that "refinement" usually calls up. And a man who pals around with a murder investigator and is a medical doctor himself probably would not do well with a very sensitive wife.

No, Watson would only want "refined and sensitive" in a wife because he needed those traits to complement something in him. Sensitive to his special needs and refined in her attitudes to something in Watson's character. He needed a wife who would understand.

And in Victorian England, a wife who "will understand," could mean a couple of things. One, that his war wound, that mixed-up thing of shoulder or Achilles tendon, or both, had taken out his manhood as well, and that he couldn't produce children. Or, two, that it was not a wound that kept him from performing husbandly duties, but a lack of interest in said duties. And you can follow that thread where you will.

The fact that Watson asked Mary Morstan to marry him based on a "promise" that she didn't actually make, a potential that he just saw when he looked at her, could be the very real reason why we never hear the name "Mary" again in reference to his wife after that proposal was made and accepted. Perhaps Mary Morstan was not all that her looks promised she'd be. You can't judge a book by its cover-that-reads-like-it's-all-Sherlock-Holmes-and-then-is-half-anti-Mormon-propaganda . . . oh, wait, that was the other one.

We love Watson's Victorian prose, its elegance, its colour (spelled with a "u" of course), but, man, sometimes you wish he would just come out and say exactly what he means. (Or not, as that's where the fun is.)

Ready Player Sherlockian

Occasionally something comes along that, on the surface, has nothing to do with Sherlock Holmes whatsoever and still evokes a feeling that is oh, so familiar to the Sherlockian mind. It could be that some of us are just so deeply immersed in Holmes that we see everything through Sherlock-colored glasses that we can't see anything outside of our love of the great detective. Or it could be there are actually some insights there. So today, I'll let you judge.

Stephen Spielberg's new movie Ready Player One is a complete and utter love letter to the 1980s, from a young male perspective. The plot involves a time when all of society seems to be as devoted to online virtual reality as the biggest World of Warcraft addict, with one little twist -- the online virtual reality that everyone loves? It's totally built on 1980s nostalgia.

It's not hard to imagine a similar fantasy about a 1920s America where the great game of Sherlockiana became a national past-time, and 1880s nostalgia ran rampant. Sure, the 1920s didn't have all the electronics needed for virtual reality, but they still had the printed word, and the printed word is where our virtual worlds have always been built before the tech caught up. (Personal case in point: my long out of print book, The Armchair Baskerville tour, where I drag the reader around the Dartmoor of the novel like it's a tourist attraction.)

In fact, I'd argue that John Kendrick Bangs's A House-Boat on the Styx from 1895 was very much a Ready Player One in ways, as Bangs gathered historical avatars together for comic fanfic. In Bangs's time, of course, he didn't have ordinary folk putting on the skins of the popular characters filling his novel, but the gathering of icons still comes from a similar urge. Comics writer Alan Moore and novelist Kim Newman have played the same game. Yet none of these folks focused so much nostalgia on a single period as Ernest Cline did in writing the book Ready Player One, which inspired the new movie.

The 1880s-1890s heyday of Sherlock Holmes was full of iconic images that residents of the 1920s loved. Hansom cabs, gaslamps, and the like, that triggered happy memories as much as the sight of Mario or a DeLorean does for soon-to-be residents of the 2020s. (Ready Player One is set in the 2040s, true, which in reality will be a time for 2000s nostalgia, rather than the 1980s love for a modern audience.) Tying it all to specfic years can get messy, but the guts of the matter are definitely about one thing: Nostalgia and looking backward.

Imaging a future full of comfort items from the past was a big part of where Sherlockiana originated for the original players of the game, and that is also where Ready Player One finds its heart and soul as well . . . at least from the point-of-view of at least one over-Sherlockianly-minded blogger.

If you get to the theaters this weekend, you can see what you think for yourself.

Did someone declare open season for Sherlock hating?

Remember that popular, award-winning TV series called Sherlock? Had episodes played in movie theaters, its own conventions, all that? The biggest thing in Sherlock Holmes culture in decades?

Well, as when a dominant aging lion takes his first stumble, it seems the jackals are always waiting to pounce. With no new episodes in sight and a last season that wasn't well received by its fans, it seems a little like those who never much liked BBC Sherlock are starting to take this opportunity to raise their hater flags and declare they were right all along.

"Come to the dark side, we welcome you here," they seem to croon to the disaffected Sherlock fan. "Watch the Sherlock we've always liked best instead of the one who drew you in and then failed you."

To paraphrase one oft-mentioned sage of Sherlockian Twitter, it wasn't like other favorite Sherlocks didn't struggle with their later installments. Weird hairstyles. Over-padded plots stretched too far. And those were the good ones.

To read some comments of late, one would almost think BBC Sherlock was a failure in every way imaginable.

Yes . . . except that it wasn't.

Those trying to raise their personal flag by stepping atop the supposed corpse of Sherlock might just want to rethink that course. Yes, there were some wounds inflicted. Yes, some fans have gone to the dark side. But the love of Sherlock and its influences upon Sherlockian culture are far from over.

And some of us actually had a such a good time in parts that might have strayed too far from tea-and-doilies for a few. Mrs. Hudson driving an Aston Martin in a police chase? Makes me smile every time I think about it, especially with the contents of that trunk. Pirate Sherlock standing tall atop his seafaring vessel? Moriarty disembarking a helicopter to a Queen tune? That improbably, impossibly mad genius named Eurus? Oh, good, good, and oh, yes, she plays well with we truly mad Sherlockians. If you can't handle the heat, stay off Sherrinford island.

Mmmmmm, so tasty.

See? Sherlock is so good at points that I can't even stay mad at the haters. It's just been so much fun, and you can't have fun and hold on to actual anger. And how can you be mad at someone who is missing one of life's pleasures?

Like everything else of late, if you step back in time and go "Where were all the Rathbone haters?" the answer is simple: They had no internet. Their words were expressed at club meetings and occasional articles to journals that printed sixty copies. And we didn't have legions of YouTube channels of people whose actual career in entertainment is just bagging on stuff. It was hard to get validation when you really didn't like Basil Rathbone or Jeremy Brett. (Picturing a William Gillette hater frantically pecking out Morse code at a telegraph office is something Family Guy would have showed this week, if it was ultra-Sherlockian-savvy.)

Circles of life, and all that. The big lion is getting a bit old . . . but I suspect he still has some bite left in him, and may surprise us at some point down the road.

Lucky there's a Sherlock Holmes guy!

One of the great things about living in "the future," as we aged ones sometimes like to call the present, is not having to miss a particular TV show just because you didn't know it was on. For example, I just discovered this morning that Sherlock Gnomes wasn't the only animated adaptation of Sherlock this weekend. Fox's Family Guy went completely Holmes and Watson this week, and I was able to watch it this morning as soon as I heard about it.

More Canonical than Sherlock Gnomes? Maybe just a little. As with the real Canon, the first thing a Sherlockian chronologist notices is that the 1896 date doesn't jibe with Watson getting married or Professor Moriarty being dealt with, it seems more Robert Downey Jr. based than Doyle based.

And like every other episode of Family Guy, its comedy is mainly based on pop culture references. Sometimes it accidentally parodies the Canon, as when Watson's wife-to-be shows up. Her name is "Constance," which would fit an 1896 fiancee. And the main mystery "V is for Murder" involves a murderer who kills women whose names begin with "V," and as "Violet" is the stand-out female name of the Canon, it almost seems like somebody knew what they were doing with the script.

But then a prisoner says he's in jail because "I Rathboned somebody's Cumberbatch," and you're back to the true level of research that went into this romp.

Downey Steampunk? Check! Oh, wait, that robot is more Sherlock Holmes and Dinosaurs than Downey! You know, watching Family Guy with a brain that's Sherlockian enough can actually make it seem deeper parody than was actually intended.

Could really do without the gay chimney sweep jokes, though, that seem to have been written by a thirteen-year-old from 1985. Most of the jokes, however, seem based on the Victorian setting, like the commercial for "Room Temperature Gin."

As with every episode of Family Guy, they throw enough random stuff at you that you might get one good laugh. And while those devoted Sherlockians who managed to see both Sherlock Gnomes and "V for Murder" on Family Guy this weekend probably aren't going to give either high ratings, they do both show what Sherlock Holmes is to the non-Sherlockian public consciousness: An old-timey smart guy who chases Professor Moriarty all the time.

But, hey, it's blog material!

When the merch gets weird

We've had a few articles this week on "the Sherlock Holmes tartan" as the PR department of its registrants push the thing into the Sherlockian zeitgeist. Publicity photos show a guy dressed in a deerstalker and Invernesse cape made of the pattern, which really makes about as much sense as Sherlock Gnomes when you think about it.

Because, in the first place, Sherlock Holmes was not Scottish.

Tartans are typically the material for making your kilt out of, not your deerstalker. And Sherlock Holmes was never a kilt guy. Ever. Was there even a pastiche where he wore a kilt?

And in the second place, even if a Scottish Sherlockian wanted to wear a kilt in his honor, this thing does not invoke Sherlock Holmes whatsoever. If you showed it to someone out of context, they'd take one look and go "Hey! He's dressed up for St. Patrick's Day!" It's just that green.

Scottish-Irish mixed messages aside, the tartan's main provenance is that it was designed by the step-great-great-grandaughter of Conan Doyle, who had no direct descendants as Chris Redmond quickly pointed out on Twitter.

And now the Conan Doyle Estate is pushing for actors in Sherlock Holmes movies to wear this green monstrosity. The timing of its release to come out at the same time as the movie Sherlock Gnomes is interesting as Sherlock Gnomes wears a primarily green outfit that isn't the tartan in question. (The danger of it being called "the Sherlock Gnomes tartan" would be very real, if tartans and gnomes had any shot of going viral this weekend.)

Given that tartan patterns have a fairly limited market, I would suggest that a more profitable venture might be a Sherlock Holmes camo pattern. Coming from the midwest, where every Walmart and Bass Pro Shop is overflowing with camo pattern clothes and merchandise, I'm pretty sure camo is a bigger money-maker than tartans.

And really, when you come down to it, it makes just as much sense.

Sherlock Holmes's Other Sister

After a ridiculously deep snowfall and a power outage this morning, it seemed like a fine time to catch up on some reading. Top of the pile: The Case of the Missing Marquess by Nancy Springer.

With Nancy Springer appearing at 221B Con this year and her main character, Enola Holmes, cast to be played by Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown, the first book in this series for younger readers seemed a must-read, so I contented myself to sit down and give the book that rare "one sitting, start-to-finish" read.

I was wondering at first if I was going to get into the book, as the start seemed a little more Jane Austen than Sherlock Holmes, but The Case of the Missing Marquess is an origin story, if ever there was one, and every hero's origin has to start somewhere in order to get somewhere else. And, boy, did Enola Holmes get somewhere else.

Enola Holmes is fourteen years old. In Victorian London.

And as Nancy Springer lays out the obstacles in Enola Holmes's way, I have to admit, I didn't have much in the way of expectations for poor Enola. Mycroft is a complete jerk, as he can be. Sherlock is a bit better, but still having Sherlock's blind spots. One starts to expect that Enola is going to be resigned to boarding-school mysteries with brotherly guest appearances.

And then Enola starts kicking ass. Not literally, like she's a kung fu master out of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but in experiencing a coming-of-age that has nothing to do with discovering boys. Enola takes responsibility for her own life, finds her own path, and becomes a separate-but-equal member of the Holmes family, fitting in her own niche as well as Sherlock and Mycroft do in theirs.

As someone who was a fan of crazy ol' Eurus Holmes as a new Holmes sibling in BBC Sherlock, I found I was just as pleased with Enola Holmes as an original Canon sibling. They're completely different characters, but just as it was a joy to first discover Sherlock Holmes had a brother who was actually smarter than him, it's a joy to discover these little sisters who are even more clever in their respective ways. And unlike with Eurus, I get to look forward to at least five more adventures with Enola.

We've seen a lot of Holmes spin-off characters over the years, but it seems like the ones we're getting lately are a lively bunch. Charlotte Holmes, Enola Holmes . . . can't wait to see who's next.

Doctor Watson's Daredevil cane

For a very simple movie, Sherlock Gnomes does have a detail or two worth discussing in regard to our larger Sherlock Holmes picture.

The example that fascinated me most in this very non-Canonical tale was Dr. Watson's cane. What could be so fascinating about a cane, you ask?

While on the surface, it's an indirect reference to his war wound, in Sherlock Gnomes it took exactly the opposite meaning: It was Watson's super-power.

The cane itself seemed modeled after the blind man's cane that Matthew Murdock used in many a Daredevil comic. The hook at the top detaches to string out a varying length of cable that Daredevil could use to swing about New York like Spiderman. And that is exactly how Watson uses it in Sherlock Gnomes.

This being a kids movie, the grappling-hook cane replaces the pistol as Watson's utility accessory. (Especially appropriate on the weekend of the "March for Our Lives" anti-gun protests, led by kids.) As Watson is modeled after the Nigel Bruce mode of Watson in Sherlock Gnomes, it's ironic that his grappling-hook cane seems almost more useful than anything Sherlock Gnomes brings to the table. Gnomes need a lot of height-compensating measures, and the cane is all about that.

The lack of balance in the Gnomes/Watson relationship is a key element in Sherlock Gnomes, and, despite whatever else one can say about the movie, does portray a very common point of view about the genius detective and tag-along doctor, especially after BBC Sherlock's emphasis on Holmes having social awkwardness issues. (Among the many little cookies in Sherlock Gnomes is a large air conditioner unit branded "Moffat & Gatiss" -- not sure how purposeful that symbolism was.) But Watson's cane gives him an importance in the partnership in this movie that foreshadows things to come.

Despite the reviews and myriad reasons to hate this cute little cartoon (Johnny Depp, will you please just retire!), there are some things to find interest and joy with Sherlock Gnomes. Still not suggesting that every Sherlockian needs to pay money for it, but if you have ten bucks to spare and ninety minutes to kill, there are worse movies out there to sit through. (Oh, yes, there definitely are worse.)