PBS Mystery? Me? Oh I'll watch anything that begins with ....
A shadowy figure stalks across the moonlit moor and begins digging a hole in the middle of a barren field. Silence except for the grinding of pickaxe blade against stone and clammy clay: is he burying something? Or digging something up? It is impossible to ascertain the exact nature of his labors for a cobalt mist suddenly rises from the nearby marsh and obscures our view. When the dense fog lifts the figure is gone, his solemn and mysterious task has been completed and we are none the wiser.
Meanwhile, back at the dark, grim Victorian Asylum perched high on the steep, forbidding cliffs above bottomless Loch Lobotomy, the new brain transplants have finally arrived. Crouching behind one of the throbbing EST machines, Jock McHatchet, the infamous Edinburgh ear thief is assuming the identity of horribly murdered Swiss neurosurgeon Dr Friedrich Scalpel. He hides his hairy knuckles in the pockets of his blood soaked lab coat and lurches off down the corridor towards the operating table and the waiting patient.
Meanwhile, across the loch at Naughtie Manor, local beauty Lasciviousia de Slatterne has been posing without her clothes again for yet another of Master Johnny’s amateur invocations of ancient Egypt in gouache and ink. Lasciviousa is both oiled and veiled, and draped nakedly across Master Johnny’s antique leopard skin divan, a golden urn clamped between her gleaming thighs. Grrrrr, Lasciviousia motions with her ruby lips and pearly teeth. Although this minimal tableaux does not capture much of Cleopatra’s sandy Alexandria, Master Johnny would shriek that authenticity is not the point, and that you, philistine, do not understand his work.
Meanwhile, “What’s that rattling noise?” says Master Johnny, his attention suddenly distracted from the easel by this errant sound. “It’s coming from the golden urn. There’s something inside.”
He snatches the urn away from Lasciviousia’s gyrating hips and turns it over, shaking the contents out onto the floor. Out falls a single human ear with a note securely tucked inside the lobe: “Which You Were Ear” scrawled in green felt tip.
“What’s it mean, Johnny?” Lasciviousia purrs. “What do they want?”
“I’ve no idea.” Master Johnny replies through gritted teeth. ‘It’s a dense web of bad puns and grubby metaphor. Only one man can solve this damnable riddle, and his name is Sherlock Holmes!”
“Oh no!” Lasciviousia cries incredulously, “You don’t mean that arrogant faggot drug addict with the fatboy sidekick who lives with his mom?”
“Ah, that’s a good point.” Master Johnny concurs, “I’d forgotten about his disgusting personal habits. Perhaps we can find someone else instead ... or do it ourselves, even.
Meanwhile ... Continued on page 2467.
A web of dastardly intrigue, insidious conspiracies, strange happenings in the dead of night, sudden disappearances, and tantalizing clues that lead into a labyrinth of the unknown...PBS funding.
Posted by: Inspector Nayland Smith of Scotland Yard | June 28, 2005 at 12:01
Lemme hear you pronounce that "Naughtie", ya scallywag.
Posted by: Fcb | June 28, 2005 at 12:28