Negativity can be okay.

Sherlock Holmes probably didn't think much about negativity.

Google's fabulous N-gram viewer shows use of the word in 1888 as less than .00001% in printed works, and its dramatic rise since the 1960s. It's definitely a term of the current age.

I bring it up, as I heard it used lately by someone who didn't want to truly discuss the topic at hand and proclaimed, "I just hate all the negativity!" Negativity is something you tend to hear a lot, if the thing you're in favor of is in the minority. People don't like what you like, and, thus, negative. But stating it that way seems like a sort of passive-aggressive blanket way of saying "All those people are wrong!" without coming out and actually actively disagreeing.

Case in point Holmes and Watson with Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly. As a fan of Will Ferrell movies, my reaction to the first trailer was definitely on the side of the angels. And when some folks I admire and respect jumped in immediately with "What a load of crap this is going to be!" I could go to shaming them for going negative, but I as someone who has enjoyed so many Will Ferrell movies that most people will declare stupid comedies, I didn't really feel they were over-reacting. Will Ferrell movies are something that a whole lot of people actually react very badly to.

Anger, hatred, disgust . . . all negative emotions, yes, but also part of the human systems designed to protect us. Sitting in a theater watching Holmes and Watson might seem harmless enough on the surface, but it could actually ruin someone's digestion following a good dinner . . . IF it's just not their kind of movie. Their revulsion at that preview is actually protecting them from potential harm, as minor as that harm might seem.

Yes, it's only a movie. It's not rape, murder, slavery, or any of those things we should be angry, revolted, repulsed, and driven to actively fight against. Going negative against bad things needs to be done. And if you taste some bad fish on your dinner plate, and your friend is about to take a bite, you might want to express your reaction to warn them off. And if someone else at the table, goes, "No, it's great!" then your friend is left to make their own choice.

Is the rise of the word "negativity" the sign of a rise in actual negativity? We see internet entertainers who base their entire focus on mocking things like bad movies. But pre-internet, we used to entertain ourselves for many an evening watching awful  movies like Plan Nine From Outer Space and laughing at their flaws. I used to run a regular columnist in The Holmes & Watson Report who continually picked apart old Holmes movies issue after issue, but it always seemed like good fun. Of course, both of those situations were limited-audience affairs. Neither made it out to a world-wide stage where the actual fans of those things could go, "HEY! QUIT MOCKING MY FAVORITE MOVIE!"

The whole concept of negativity leaves us with a big question: Do we still get to go "Mazarin Stone sucks, and Conan Doyle really crapped The Strand on that one!" Or do we hold back, for fear of stepping on toes? Luckily, life doesn't always limit us to single actions.

You can scream at the gods at how awful "Mazarin Stone" is, if you feel the need, but knowing full well that damage could be done, listen for the gasps and yelps of the other diners in the restaurant who might have been put off by your outburst. And then speak more quietly as needed.

And maybe, then just to show you're not an ogre all of the time, start going on about how great "Speckled Band" is. There's good and bad in the world. Positivity and negativity. And the application of both, where needed is actually useful for keeping things running.

And while Sherlock Holmes never spoke of negativity, he did put a lot of stock in awareness. And trying to be as aware as we can is always useful in keeping those forces in balance. So, as always, let's try to be more like Sherlock Holmes.

(Except for those drugs, kids. Don't do drugs. Except appropriately prescribed by a doctor. Well, maybe unless the doctor is Watson and he's pushing brandy again. Aaaaa, figure it out for yourself.)

That "Holmes and Watson" trailer!

As the knives have already come out for Holmes and Watson starring Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly, a December movie we saw the first preview for today, my contrary nature has inspired me to not just leave matters at enjoying the trailer twice. No, given the Sherlockian headwinds this admirable romp faces, honor demands that I stay up and go deep on this risky bit of business . . . Movies with Mikey deep. (Though at not nearly Mikey's talent level.)

So, the Holmes and Watson trailer. Trailer spoilers ahead, despite the fact some might say it's impossible to spoil this any further than it already is.

If you watched it on the official Sony Pictures YouTube release, as I did, you got to open on John C. Reilly and Will Ferrell shouting as loudly as they can, just standing in what is surely 221B Baker Street. Classic Reilly and Ferrell. No doubt this is those two doing a movie like those two do, whatever comes next.

After we are told this is the OFFICIAL Holmes and Watson trailer, the royal fanfare starts up, we get Queen Victoria, played by Pam Ferris, an actress who has been all over British television, including a run as Mrs. White in Cluedo. So right off the bat, someone with a mystery pedigree, right?

Queen Victoria is introduced to "the greatest detective of all time, Sherlock Holmes, and Dr. John Watson."  Watson, ever the ladies man of the pair, immediately says an earnest "I love you!" to the Queen, which seems to put her off and she turns and walks away, but Holmes backs his friend up, agreeing that Victoria is "stunning." So in the very first scene we're shown from the film, we get Watson in military dress, Watson womanizing a bit, and Holmes demonstrating what close friends they are. Good Canonical stuff!

Watson goes on to narrate the next bits, as we see Sherlock Holmes dusting for prints, showing his skill at disguise (which fools Watson, just as it did in the Canon), and doing a bit of Robert Downey Jr. mental fighting calculation, showing that the film has an appreciation for other media Holmeses as well as the original material.

We get bees, of course, and as Elementary and Mr. Holmes have already paired Holmes with his retirement bees in the public mind, and this freshest of Sherlockian bits . . . Watson trying to shoot bees out of the air. Now, the bee-shooting segment of this trailer is a delight that, by itself, will draw me to the theater, just as the Quicksilver segments of the last couple X-men movies did. No matter what else happens in the film, the image of John H. Watson shooting at bees indoors is just too perfectly Sherlockian, combining key bits of Sherlockiana into a shining alloy of a moment.

The plot is spelled out pretty plainly -- there's a murder in Buckingham Palace and Professor Moriarty has challenged Holmes to solve it or else he'll kill the Queen. (A threat foreshadowed by Watson's bee-shooting, eh? For what bee would one want to shoot if now the queen?) And Moriarty is played by Ralph Fiennes, looking tremendously like the bearded Moriarty of the Rathbone films.

We get the Baker Street Irregulars, one of whom is a sassy young lady who spouts "No shit, Sherlock!" with all the guttersnipe gusto she can muster, providing what is perhaps the first time I ever thought that cliche has been used well at all.

A female rival (perhaps with her own Watson) shows up, and the preview rolls into clippy-action mode, boxing, shooting, croquet, a ship exploding, all to the tune of Thin Lizzy's "The Boys Are Back in Town." (And if you think that doesn't fit the Victorian setting, watch the movie A Knight's Tale a few dozen times and you'll lose that inhibition.) It's impossible to tell how all these random scenes will fall together, but when things slow down again, it's for Watson to try to get a Victorian selfie with Queen Victoria and Holmes, ending with Watson smacking the queen with her camera.

It's definitely more Police Squad than Seven Per-Cent Solution, and the physical comedy looks like it's working . . . well, for those of us that like physical comedy. And over-the-top foolishness. And there was something about the relationship between the two, that most key element in any Holmes and Watson adaptation, that felt good even with wackiness going on.

I'll even go out on a limb and say that Will Ferrell seemed to be turning in a performance that looked like he had paid attention to how a good Sherlock Holmes is played, even if his character was tilting more fool than genius. So much better than Sherlock Gnomes, which I went positive on just for fun . . . this movie looks like I'll actually be having a good time without having to gin up the happiness level on purpose.

And, truth be told, it's already been a good time for me and worth giving them my ticket money. Watson is shooting at bees. Actual bee-shooting! How has this never happened in a Sherlock Holmes pastiche or parody before? Did I miss something? No!

'Tis a pity they moved its original release date back from my birthday weekend at some point, as I'd have loved sitting down for this one before the Christmas crowds show up. (A traditionally horrible time to see movies, as people drag their boorish family members who haven't been in a theater ever, don't want to be in a theater, and just talk way too much . . . oh, wait, this movie is full of yelling. That might work after all.)

I can't wait.

The most unexpected Elementary cliffhanger of all

Well, it's been a little while since the end of season six of CBS's Elementary, and I'm finding that the unintentional cliffhanger they've left us with quite a puzzler, for a few reasons. Spoilers ahead, if you're one of those "wait until the season is done to start watching" folks.

So . . . that happy ending. That very happy ending.

Jonny Lee Miller's character finds himself in a London office, hearing the details of an actual Conan Doyle based Sherlock Holmes mystery, yet plagued by noises from his next door neighbor. Eventually, he goes out his front door, we discover his office is 221B Baker Street and the door right beside is 221A Baker Street, which Joan Watson comes out of. And they do a sort of "walk off into the sunset" moment talking about how they're "two people who love each other."

It's a happy ending, not a cliffhanger setting up the next season. And taken altogether, it's almost like a dream . . . in fact, that's my strongest theory for the start of the seventh season: Jonny Lee Miller wakes up from a dream and finds himself back in the New York brownstone. As much as we all hate the "it was all a dream" twist, that five minutes of the final episode of season six felt like a dream when placed next to the rest of the series. (I swear that was a different 221 Baker Street from the last time they were in London.)

But the biggest loss for me, the biggest part of that dream that throws it off kilter, is that Joan Watson resides in 221A Baker Street. Because we all know who belongs there. And actually, it's someone who belonged in a lot more Elementary episodes: Ms. Hudson.

Remember Ms. Hudson from "Snow Angels," one of my favorite episodes of Elementary, back in the first season? Ms. Hudson, who returned for two more appearances over the course of six seasons?

Finding 221 Baker Street with a suddenly side-by-side first floor A and B doesn't seem to leave a place for that classic downstairs resident, the lady named Hudson, a bit like the tight four-person main cast of Elementary never really left room for anyone else to last more than a season or so.  But then, we always looking sentimentally at what might have been. Clyde the turtle really could have used more character development, fan favorite and all.

Had Elementary ended its season with a mere threat to the lives of one of its characters, or one more schism in their relationships, one might have wondered a little bit, as one does. But this happy ending in lovely London? Something that looks entirely different from the previous six seasons of the show and give a bright and sunny outlook for the future of the two consulting detectives?

This is a turn that makes one wonder most of all, I think.

The unanswerable questions

There are facts in this world that we shall never know.

No matter how good the investigators, the scientists, the sociologists, etc., certain answers will never be within our grasp. And those things fascinate me, especially around things I love.

For example, BBC Sherlock came out in 2010, and we know it brought with it a wave of new Sherlockians. But how many new Sherlockians? How do those numbers differ from the waves that came with The Seven-Per-Cent Solution in the 1970s, Basil Rathbone in the 1940s, or Jeremy Brett in the 1980s?

How many of those fans came into the traditional Sherlockian groups, how many started new groups and new traditions, and how many just kept to their solitary fan life, just going about their days with a new secret pleasure?

I'm not sure what all of these impossible statistics would tell us, or what good they might be for anything . . . only having them in our hands would give us their meaning and usefulness. But still, I wonder . . . .

How many times has A Study in Scarlet been reprinted since that first Beeton's day? And how many for every other one of the sixty? How many people have read each story? And how many people read each story twice, three times, four times, etc.?

We have statistics for Holmes TV shows, and you can find that BBC Sherlock peaked with "The Empty Hearse" and 12.72 million viewers when we were all dying to find out how Sherlock survived that fall, or that CBS's Elementary hit 20.8 million that night it got the post-Super Bowl time slot. We can find that Robert Downey Jr.'s Sherlock Holmes made $524,028,679 worldwide gross. And yet even those numbers don't tell us some stories we'd like to hear.

How many people watched each on a given medium? How many people were inspired to read Conan Doyle, write fanfic, or go to a Sherlock-based event from each of those major mainstream productions?

One wants to ask, in a child-like voice, "Where do Sherlockians come from?" and even though we see many an essay on individual routes to Holmes, the full numbers will always be just out of our grasp . . . finding all the Sherlockians just to get them a survey is an impossible task these days, with so many different ways of enjoying the master detective out there.

But one still has to wonder at it all. The more data we get, and we are getting a lot these days . . . the more we'll wonder about the data we can't get our hands on.

Some mysteries are just meant to never be solved.

The Conan Doyle Cinematic Universe

Well, after one failed attempt after another, Hollywood seems to be giving up on most of their attempts to replicate the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Star Wars has been slowed. "Universal Monsters" seem to have been held at bay. And the few that remain, like the Godzilla/King Kong or Shyamalan franchises are quietly and hopefully moving along one film at a time.

If the cinematic universe business had been more successful, would we have seen the movie business eventually getting to Conan Doyle?

Sherlock Holmes would start the Conan Doyle Cinematic Universe, of course. Irene Adler, Professor Moriarty, Mycroft Holmes . . . all the usual suspects . . . would be quickly considered for films, of course. But after that?

Well, Professor Challenger has to get a movie. He's met Sherlock Holmes in fiction before, though that meeting was not from Doyle's pen.

Brigadier Gerard would be another option, though he lived and died long before Sherlock and company, though a distant prequel would be interesting. Gerard could even run into one of those cursed Baskerville kids or do something else to set up a later film in the series.

Conan Doyle's historical characters really are the hardest challenge for a Conan Doyle Cinematic Universe. Sir Nigel and the White Company, both existing in the 1300s, might fit with each other, but getting that connection to the Victorian era five hundred years later is practically going to take some time machine borrowing from H.G. Wells.

Throw in the pirate Captain Sharky and one starts to see that the Conan Doyle Cinematic Universe has to play across time to get its full use of the author's characters. But pirates, knights, detectives, dinosaurs, and a little comedy as well? There's a lot of fun to be had if someone could have worked it all out.

But, alas, the cinematic universe trend seems to have moved on before working its way to ACD. The thought of what could have been still intrigues, though.

2019 awaits!

When the first announcement of registration opening for the annual Dayton Sherlock Holmes weekend came this week, my first thought was, "Wow, that was early! They just held tha . . . . oh, wait."

2018 has hit its autumn, and 2019 is barreling toward us at surprising speed. All of those summer things I remember working toward for so very long are in the rearview mirror, and bright new future events are starting to pop up in the distance.

The Left Coast Sherlockian Symposium has a Twitter account and a month, but no set date yet, but with Portland, Oregon being one of those places in the U.S. that Sherlockiana hasn't taken me yet, combined with that wonderful "first time" aura, rife with possibility and nervousness . . . well, definitely keeping that on the calendar for 2019 if possible.

But the calendar for 2018 is far from done. "From Gillette to Brett V" is almost here for Sherlockian film buffs and those who just want to gather in the happy presence of like-minded souls. Hate to miss that one, as good memories from previous FGTB events abound . . . of course, some of those are so old they literally involve drinking Petri wine. (One of those little Sherlockian accomplishments from the event creators that may go unsung, but still very memorable.)

And Christopher Redmond's Sherlock Holmes Is Like collection is being published soon. After About Sixty and About Being A Sherlockian, Chris has shown a real talent for gathering a varied and inclusive mix of writers for some delightful varieties of work on a given theme, and I'm very excited for the chance to settle in and read this one . . . and maybe even blog another tournament of essays, as I did the first. (Doing the second would have pitted Sherlockian life against Sherlock life, which was a bit too much of a cage match for my taste.)

But the fact that it's already time to start looking forward to 2019 and all the usual suspects for Sherlockian fun is rather astounding . . . and I hope I'm not committing a faux pas like stores putting Christmas items out in August just by mentioning it already. This year still needs focus!

Peoria's own Sherlock Holmes Story Society has "Resident Patient" on tap for this Thursday and three more 2018 meetings after that, so I'd better give this year a little more attention!

A Canon full of questions

I have questions.

Sometimes tales like those of Sherlock Holmes and John H. Watson can bring out the child in us, and when my inner child comes out, it usually has that classic kid question: "Why?"

Any given page brings its own questions. Turning to "Black Peter," I find "He had hardly turned to leave the hut when Hopkins's hand was on the fellow's collar, and I heard his loud gasp of terror as he understood that he was taken."

There goes that Victorian collar grab again, which was well demonstrated in St. Louis last month as a technique Holmes used. Why the collar grab? Were collars so much better made back then that they made an effective man-handle, which we lost use of as cheap, tearable t-shirts came into fashion?

Flipping a mass of pages turns the book to this line: "Mr. Sidney Johnson, the senior clerk, met us at the office and received us with that respect which my companion's card always commanded."

Why was Sherlock's card so commanding of respect? The case is Bruce-Partington. The year is 1895. The British public, one would assume, still thinks that Sherlock Holmes died at Reichenbach Falls. But maybe the "always commanded" had a job-specific focus that Watson left out. Mr. Sidney Johnson was a British government clerk, the area of employment where a person might internally react, "Holy crap! It's the little brother of Mycroft Holmes! Get your act together, Sidney, we don't want to get on his bad side." Instant respect at government offices from handing out a card with "Sherlock Holmes" on it . . . that I can see.

Another page and . . . Sherlock Holmes had "flashing eyes" in A Study in Scarlet?

"Anthony Jones" is a Scotland Yardman in The Sign of Four?

Sherlock Holmes can tell Watson has put on 7.5 pounds since his marriage, within .5 pounds of what Watson has apparently recently weighed himself to find?

Why?

Oh, descriptive license, a textual variant, and he got a lucky guess, if you want to go simple, but . . . why was Watson weighing himself all the time? Was that a doctor thing, or did households have bathroom scales already in 1887?

Why has Watson only seen the seventeen steps to 221B "hundreds" of times after living there six years? It would have to be thousands, wouldn't it?

Why did Miss Morrison have "blond" hair? That was boy hair, wasn't it?

Why does Dr. Mortimer keep important 140-year-old documents in his pocket?

And don't get me started on Billy. Something just not right about that kid. But when one runs into one the the Canon's larger little mysteries, like Billy or Watson's wound, it's time to cut and run, before things get too deep. Though really, one can go deep on just about any detail in the Canon, which is what makes it such fun.

So many "why"s that one can't help but be a kid again, reading of Sherlock Holmes. Which is the answer to one "why" -- why we keep going back.