The View from Sherlock Peoria
No. 420, July 25, 2010

A Dream of a Morning Paper

It’s probably an age tell among old school Sherlockians that a goodly share of us still read a morning newspaper over breakfast. I don’t know how many young fans of Sherlock Holmes hold on to that ritual as a Victorian affectation, but I know among my younger co-workers and friends, newspapers are about as common as land-line phones: next to nil.

This Monday, however, I found myself in a near-fantasy world where the practice got kicked up a notch, at least in my mind. After stepping out on the porch to grab the paper, I passed the tea cart where we keep the daily mail and noticed that I hadn’t looked at Saturday’s haul. And right on top was a newly arrived copy of The Illustrious Clients News.

Taking this as a happy chance, I put my Peoria Journal Star aside and pulled The Illustrious Clients News out of its wrapper to read over my bowl of frosted wheat bales.

Now, it’s not like I haven’t read the News before. The cover featured photos of Charlton Heston, Peter Cushing, and Vasili Livanov, which immediately signalled that the Illustrious Clients’ annual film festival was coming up. I sighed, knowing I was surely going to miss yet another lovely time down at Indy with the Clients – having to prepare for the upcoming Minneapolis trip, even if I didn’t have other social obligations – but I still knew that the News would be a fun read. So inside I went.

Don Curtis, the longtime chief of the Clients, held forth on page two, as always giving a friendly welcome and introduction to the theme of the next meeting. The film festival was, as expected, the meeting in question, but Don uses Henry Wood and his tavern mongoose show as a lead-in. Most of us may be entertaining ourselves with 3D digital projection instead of hunchbacks and mongooses these days, but I suspect in some local taverns things haven’t changed all that much.

I skip the “Canonical Quote Quiz,” being a grumpy morning sort with no time for testing, and move on to Pat Ward’s reportage of what the Clients did at the previous meeting to foil their arch-nemesis Baron Gruner. The June visit to a bee farm that the Clients took would be just the thing to intimidate the tender facial tissues of the Baron, so they seemed to have had a excellent time, documented on the next page by the traditional Steve Doyle photo essay on that same event. How Don Curtis II managed to pet a queen bee without the aid of a beekeeper’s protective garb was pictured there, but I still find it hard to believe.

Once again the Clients proved they are everything a Sherlockian society should be with their little investigation into things Canonical, but the issue of The Illustrious Clients News doesn’t stop there. Regular columnist, and sometimes chronologist, Vince Wright tells of starting a new Sherlockian society based around the finding and photographing of Holmes-related gravestones, calling it “The Last Silent Resting Places.” It’s been a while since I heard of anyone coming up with a quirky special interest Sherlockian group like that, and since Vince also refers to this site’s Hansom Cab Clock Club, I couldn’t help but be delighted to hear about this one.

A one-page pastiche by the able hand of Ann Lewis and a cartoon by Rikki Niehaus come next, adding some pure entertainment to the issue, as if the newsier parts weren’t entertaining enough, and then it’s back to current events as Pat Ward writes about the films coming up in this year’s festival . . . and the Clients do always manage to seek out something choice. Charleton Heston in The Crucifer of Blood would be the prime draw for me, having see the other offerings during one of old friend and video buff Jennie Paton’s evenings of video long ago. But for not-so-ancient Sherlockians, every bit of the fest should be a rare treat. (July 31st at noon at the Zionsville, Indiana public library, if you’re interested.)

By the time I get to the letters column on page 11, and Nashville’s effervescent Gael Stahl has written in to extol the virtues of The Illustrious Clients News, among other things, I’m right there with him. Of course, every letters page is best when the editor gives out treats in his short responses to the letters, and Steve Doyle is no slouch there . . . the mention of another Indianapolis Holmes conference comes up! Great news for the start of any day, but especially a Monday!

There were only sixteen pages in this issue of The Illustrious Clients News, but you’d swear there were more. More articles, news and reviews, a store page, and very specific meeting details were all in there besides the things I’ve talked about. Here’s a link if you want more details about the Clients and their newsletter:
http://illustriousclients.ning.com/profiles/blogs/illustrious-clients-faq

After years of reading the daily Peoria paper as a morning ritual, a single morning of getting to imagine reading a daily Sherlockian paper, thanks to The Illustrious Clients News was almost like moving into a parallel universe of Sherlock Holmes afficianados. But then, the grass is always greener on the other side of the state line, especially if you’re across said line from Indianapolis!

Your humble correspondent,
Brad Keefauver

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January 3, 2010
Seventeen Steps to A Great Holmes Movie