A seething mass of turgid drama.

I never got to see Willie Mays play. Nor did I ever interact with him. But he loomed large in Giants history, and I did see him a number of times from a distance - at the ballpark a number of times, and at the 2010 World Series victory parade. Had I gotten to speak with him, I probably would have stammered something like "It's an honor to meet you."

Sleep well, Say Hey Kid. You were the best.

We watched four episodes of Foundation and I am done. (Dun dun dun!) I don't care about gender/race swapping - I actually thought it worked better with Gaal Dornick to emphasize her naivety and not fitting in. But it's clear that this adaptation has some names in common with the books and nothing else.

The books were a product of their time, as well as the author's viewpoint, in their emphasizing rationality and science over faith and superstition. They also had very little action, usually two or three people talking about what happened. So sure, changes and updates needed. But instead the series deliberately subverts the original - the TV Salvador Hardin says "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent" - a core tenet of the character in the books - is "an old man's philosophy." The series goes totally woo-woo with visions, mind-links to dead characters, and seems to have ripped off large parts of Dune. It turns the Foundation settlers into a religious cult. (I think the conceit of the book would have worked better: that the Foundation thinks it is there solely to safeguard learning by producing an Encyclopedia Galactica. Up until the first Seldon Crisis when he disabuses them of that notion and they have to flail upon losing their core purpose.)

Also, a robot kills people. Who invented the Three Laws of Robotics? Oh, right, Isaac Asimov.

I don't get it. If you dislike the original material so much that you want to discard and disavow all of it, why adapt it in the first place?

It was a busy weekend, even though objectively it wasn't actually hectic.
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Last night we went to a screening of a 2015 Hamlet stage production, starring Benedict Cumberbatch. Benadryl Cabbagepatch. Whatever.

It was pretty good. The costumes were modern military dress and suits, which was more-or-less standard. They had a very large stage, and took full advantage with extremely high sets using multiple levels. (I am profoundly jealous.) The last couple acts were staged with burned-out cinders covering the stage, I guess to show the decline of the royal house. But it made things look odd when they shuffled around in inch-high clinker.

The script was abridged, of course, but not overwhelmingly so; the film was 3.5 hours including a 20-minute intermission. Some of the non-Hamlet soliloquies were shortened (Polonius didn't say "Never a borrower nor a lender be", and most of Ophelia's songs were cut).

Speaking of, Ophelia was the actress playing Sherlock's sister in the latest season of Sherlock. I had no complaints about the actors, although Laertes was a bit tedious - but he often is, given that he doesn't have much motivation other than "Kill Hamlet". Cumberbatch did a fine job.

I was trying to mentally rate this compared to other productions I've seen. And I realized: I can't actually pinpoint a favorite. I actually just want to see the full Slings and Arrows version.

Gibson's... well, let's just say that Zeffirelli's production is sumptuous and it's got Glenn Close and Helena Bonham-Carter as good actors. Branagh's I liked for showing the full monty (and Billy Crystal nailed the gravedigger role) but as a director, Branagh had fallen in love with the swirly-cam and went overboard with it; the directing distracted from the text and acting. Tennant's was fine but didn't grab me. I think I fell asleep during Ethan Hawke's version. And I don't remember any live stage productions that really stood out...

"(author x) is not your Bitch" is the go-to response to any complaint that a book hasn't been released. And I understand why Neil Gaiman wrote that. From the author's perspective, it's totally true - readers do not have a claim on authors.

But. Brent Weeks, a mid-B-lister author, wrote something a few years back that stuck with me. He pointed out that A-listers are generally going to have their audience regardless of when they write. If GRRM were to ever write another Game of Thrones book - which I personally doubt, but I've been wrong before - it'd be a bestseller. Perhaps less so since the TV series, but still. Gaiman can sell as many books as he can write, and it doesn't matter how long it is between releases.

Weeks was apologizing for reworking the third book in a trilogy (which ended up as, so far, a five-parter) and delaying publication. His fear is that B-listers like himself don't have that guaranteed audience. If they don't maintain their fanbase and mindshare, the readers will simply go someplace else to read what is being published. And maybe they don't come back.

That's what I've done with GRRM, actually. I devoured the first two books, instantly bought the third and fourth when they came out, and eagerly awaited the next. And then less so. And now... I might get it from the library but I really don't care anymore. I'm no longer invested. That never would have happened had the books come out on some vague schedule.

I'm not arguing that authors should constantly pump out dreck solely to publish, Piers Anthony-style. I am saying that the reader's side also matters.

Friday we went across town to the Balboa, an art deco theatre in the Richmond. It takes less time to drive down to Palo Alto than it does to drive from one side of SF to the other. But SF in SF was hosting a free showing of Bubba Ho-Tep, which I had never seen; and Joe Lansdale, who wrote the short story the film was adapted from, was there to sign books and talk about the film and story.

I haven't actually read any of Lansdale's stuff, but it sounded like a good outing. We had a fine time and I enjoyed the movie a lot more than I expected to. It's not just a low-budget goofy movie with Bruce Campbell.

The wife reminded me to ask my standard author question, which I got from George "Kill 'em All" RR Martin: on the spectrum of gardeners to architects, where do you put yourself? Gardeners plant seeds and see what comes up; architects plot structure before building. I find it to be a non-fanboy question that sometimes leads to a good discussion.

Oddly enough, hardly anyone admits to being an architect. There's no best answer, because the one that works for the author is the right one. Too much gardening leads to unconnected scenes, with no plot or story structure; too much architecting probably feels forced.

As I get time (ha!) and effort (ha ha!) to sum up...
Omnivore Books had an event for Stephen Grasse, the founder of Sailor Jerry rum (which I have not had) and Hendricks Gin (which I have and liked). He's got a new book out: Colonial Spirits, about the US history with founders and booze. Short version: if it could be made into booze, they did. Jefferson "made shitty wine"; Washington was smarter and distilled whiskey, which they have re-opened on Mount Vernon.

Grasse is an interesting guy. He's apparently a bit of a rock star in the booze consulting world. He knows it and certainly has some diva qualities. On the other hand, he's got lots of good stories and knows how to play to an audience be it large (the bookstore was pretty full) or small (six of us went out to dinner with him afterwards). It was a fun time and I may try some of the adapted colonial booze recipes from his book. Some of the punches look good; they made a sample at the event that I quite enjoyed.

I'm going drinking with Charles Stross tonight!
Details tomorrow.

This is Aardman's best film since Chicken Run. It might even be better, since there is no intelligible dialogue. Tons of sight gags, ranging from juvenile (pantomime horse fart jokes) to ones that mostly adults will get (the prison jokes in the jail, I mean animal containment unit). The staring dog wrecked me. Every. Single. Time. But there's also a plot with emotional arcs and everything.

Nice Ferris Bueller joke at the end, too.

Not written or directed by Nick Park or Peter Lord, which shows that they have a deep bench.

I've mentioned it before: Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles are part of my comfort books. It's good to know that others feel the same way.