Corflu

The Drink Tank Presents...

A A Canticle Canticle for for QuireFlu QuireFlu

Well, well, well...if you’re reading this, the odds are you saw me at CorFlu, even for just a minute. I was really nice to see you. I hope we’ll run into each other again shortly. I’ve decided to put together a little zine along the lines of what I do most every week in The Drink Tank, but also be much briefer as I understand that 60 or so is the magic number to get out to most of the CorFlu attendees. This issue of The Drink Tank Presents is dedicated to all of those things that I’m always writing about: wrestling, women and wine. More of the first two that the last, though. So, away we go! The Story of M Lloyd’s Trip to Santa Clara by Christopher J. Garcia I didn’t know she was going to be visiting. In fact, I wasn’t sure of her state of health of late. M Lloyd, once of my best friends, knocked on my cube wall at 11 am on Wednesday. “Come on. I’ll buy you a calzone.” She said, before she was even announced. “What the hell are you doing here?” I asked. “Buying you lunch, if you get off your ass.” I did get off of my ass and headed over to give her a hard hug. “It’s good to see you.” I said, feeling dumb. Last I heard, she was successfully fighting ovarian cancer, though she’d suffered a setback that she’d never specified with me over the phone. I remembered that when I saw her standing on the other side of my monitor and now that we were walking downstairs, it worried me greatly. “Don’t worry, I’m not dying.” She said, always able to read my shallow little mind. “I’m just out here because I’m donating a hundred grand to the Internet Archive.” I smiled. “Still throwing your money away on that ridiculous Internet, are ya? It’s just a fad, you know.” I said, joking as usual.

“Shut up.” She said with all the force of a flung wet towel to the face. We headed into town in my car. As was often the case, she had taken a cab to the museum and was going to be taking a cab to San Francisco. We ended up at my favourite place in Downtown Mountain View, Kapp’s, owned by former pro footballer Joe Kapp. “So, you’re out here to donate money but you’ve come out before and not visited. What’s the business?” I asked as the order of cheesy garlic bread hit the table. “Well, I’m not sure what’s going on right now.” She said, her hands quickly grabbing the largest piece of bread. “It’s a weird time for everything. I’m OK, the cancer’s not spreading, SaBean and Jay are good and it’s wonderful that the three of us can finally make a real go at it, and the Twins are a handful, but they’re so cute. I’m just, I don’t know, tired. I thought seeing you might brighten things up.” “Well, you’ve got a right to be tired, babe.” I said, grabbing my own piece. “I mean, you’ve got your husband, your girlfriend, your girlfriend’s sister, your ex-boyfriend, his wife and a set of twins all living in your house. You’re lucky you’re not insane.” M has this look. It’s somewhere between a false smile and a real sneer. She only uses it on me, it seems, when she’s hiding something. “Well, Mike and Kath moved out. They’re living on the property still, in the old servant’s quarters of the old house. Judith’s been in Washington for the last couple of weeks. She’s working with the office of some Congressman to put together an art exhibit. She’ll be back next month.” “Ah, so you’re lonely.” M gave me the look even harder than before. “About six weeks ago, SaBean started doing some modelling. Nothing fancy, just a few photos for this guy in town who loves to do the dress-up thing. She’s so gorgeous that there’s no question she’s a star. So, she goes into town once a week, spends all day and most of the night, and then wanders home into the bed and sleeps like she’s dead.

Jay’s great with the kids, but he’s working on that magazine that he started when we were in Moscow and that takes up all of his time. That and the boys. It’s just that, I dunno...” “You finally feel like you’re really married?” “Exactly, only to three different people and their jobs!” We ate more bread and talked some more, including a lot about medical issues that M’s been going through. In truth, a lot of it had no place around a lunch table. I took a long lunch (we didn’t get back until after 2) and walked around Mountain View. She had stories to tell about the move (and Kevin Costner as a neighbour) and I told her everything that was going on in my life...which she’s already read about in The Drink Tank. It was just nice to chat and even nicer to have her settle the bill.

The Matter of The Drink Tank by Christopher J. Garcia In many ways, The Drink Tank is my dark mistress. It’s hard to put it any other way. I love it, I really really love putting it together and doing the writing and finding the art and such, but sometimes it’s a hideous bitch goddess that devours me while I’m supposed to be sleeping. Such a night came recently to me. I was at home and had just settled down for a long winter’s nap. That is to say that I’d just taken Afrin to clear my nasal passages which had been congested like the 101 at 9am on the day after a long weekend. I was breathing free and clear and I put my head to pillow and waited for the pull of slumber to bring me down. Only that never happened. In the back of my mind, the place where I usually store baseball stats and the phone numbers of girls I’ve broken up with, there was a little tickle. Work on me! I knew exactly what it was. It was The Second Annual Giant Sized Annual of The Drink Tank calling me to work on it some more. I’d only laid-out two articles and still needed more art. I wasn’t planning on putting it up for another week, but apparently that portion of my brain either didn’t know or didn’t care. It just kept houndin’ me as I lay there all comfy, warm and snot-free. After about two hours, I gave up and walked over to the computer. You know that feeling when your eyes have to fast adjust to new light? I had that for almost twenty minutes while I worked on the beast. I laid in another story, figured out how to place the images that had been embedded in the text and I just worked and worked. After about an hour, I figured I should go to bed. My Brain stopped me. And so, I am a slave to my subconscious’ need to do some zining. Luckily this is pretty rare, but it does explain how so many typos make it through. I mean, who spells good at 4am?

‘Rasslin’ by Christopher J. Garcia How often do I get to write about Wrestling? Quite a bit, actually. I do a twice weekly column for FanboyPlanet.com and I hit a lot of the wrestling boards that are around the web. I grew up watching it and talking about wrestling at School. When the web came around and any yahoo could go and put up a website to give people their opinions, I started one and ended up gaining a very small audience...as in no one. I found a home at FanboyPlanet and have been there ever since. I can’t say what it is about wrestling that gets me. It’s got theatre running through it, that’s for sure, and it’s got action. One of my biggest complaints about most ballets is that there’s not nearly enough jumping. There’s more to it. There’s characterization and storytelling in the most basic sense. Often, mostly in the past, wrestling sold itself as a battle between two men to prove which of them is better. When wrestling really works, it’s still about that basic premise. No matter how much complex booking you go through, you never match the excitement generated by a battle between guys trying to figure out which of them is better. It happened in the 1980s when Hogan took on Andre the Giant and again in the 1990s when we got Goldberg taking on Hulk Hogan and again in the 2000s when we had Steve Austin up against The Rock. It’s simple storytelling that works in wrestling, and in movies too.

I guess that’s why all my dreams of filmmaking involve wrestling in one form or another. This has been true since I was a little kid playin’ on the swings casting stories in my head starring Nick Bockwinkel and Jimmy Superfly Snuka. When I started writing screenplays for real, some of the first ideas I had featured wrestlers. One idea was for a movie version of El Paso, the song by Marty Robbins. Lita would have played Felina, the Mexican girl that narrator falls in love with, only to discover that she’s the girl of the leader of the Cowboys. Lita has a charm that borders on evil and she’d be perfect for the role. I even told her so when I met her, but it’s the type of movie someone who’s made movies would make, not a guy like me. The next was the story of a Mexican family with wrestling in their blood. The Patriarch was murdered years before and the family gave upon Wrestling, except for the black sheep, the oldest daughter Magda. The story followed her as she tries to unravel the murder of her father and the mysterious disappearance of her younger sister. It had a lot of wrestling/ family significance as it was kinda a story about my position in my own Mexican family. And then there’s The Loose Cannon: The Brian Pillman Story. Brian Pillman was a wrestler who lived a crazy, and all-too brief life. He was a star, a high flier, and he was a crazy man who sometimes lived inside his gimmicks. He died of a heart problem in 1997 and his legend stuck around for years. I always wanted to do the story from the point of view of Dave Meltzer, the World’s Leading Wrestling Journalist. He wrote a beautiful Obit and combining it with the film of Brian’s life would be amazing, and produce a film that would humanize wrestlers and their kin.

Band Geeks for Band Geeks by Christopher J. Garcia It’s true, there’s something that gets ridiculed more strenuously than Band Geeks. They are the Band Geeks that turn their sights towards Surf Rock. I hear you say ‘Wait, what about the Beach Boys or Jan & Dean? They were cool.’ and the answer is that’s one stream of surf rock, but the other came out of the guitar vistas of Dick Dale and his Fabulous Deltones and The Safaris. Those guys get the dirt kicked in their face when the bands all get together. And why is that the case? Well, they’re SF geeks at heart. Bands like El Pollo Del Mar, Captured by Robots, Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet, and Man or Astroman all have wide-ranging science fiction themes to their music and often their get-ups. Being a band seen as a gimmick act isn’t a plus to most folks, but choosing a gimmick like being a band of robots who were made into men who can only communicate through their instruments (like Beast Machine, a German Surf Band) isn’t a way to get a lot of respect, save from those folks like me. And then there’s the whole Wrestling Mask Crew. The band that really started that thing was Los Straitjackets. They’re a bunch of white guys who started playing together in 1988 as The Straitjackets. They were good, but they broke up, only to reform six years later as Los Straitjackets. There was a minor difference in them by this point: they were performing while wearing wrestling

masks and speaking no English. That allowed them to break through to a weirder audience, one who both loved surf and wrestling. In other words, to me. They play really well. They have fast licks and really strong beats too. The spit fire delivery of the heavily accented Spanish that introduces many of their songs is awesome, as is their cover of My Heart Will Go On. It’s just awesome. The big story is that these guys are now beloved to the point that they can play the free concerts in Palo Alto (which means that they’re kind of seen as safe for all ages). Los Straitjackets are far from the only ones that dresss strange. There’s The Bomboras, a band that doesn’t stick to just one thing but will wear everything from Halloween masks to Tiki Heads. The recently brokenup The Apemen played in full Ape costumes and still managed to shred a guitar line. Add groups like The Ghastly Ones (Surf Rock Undertakers) and They Will Know Us By the Twang of Our Guitars (a SurfBilly band that uses a Post-Apocolyptic theme) and you’ve got a fully formed bizarre genre view. So you see, there’s a lot of strange music out there and a lot of it happens to be Surf Rock. If I ever start a music label, I’m going to call it Gimmickry and have nothing but bands with weird gimmicks. I mean, why concentrate on the music when there’s something else to distract you from it?

And here I say Goodbye! Well, that was quick! I wrote this in a single day, February 1st, 2007. I did it when I realise that if I was going to do 50 or so copies of my most recent issue of The Drink Tank, it’d take me hours and hours of printing and collating. Never let it be said that I am not lazy in my own way. I’m hoping I’m having a good time at the con (or that I’ve had a good time at the Con if you’re reading this after the fact) and I’m betting we had at least a brief chance to chat. If we didn’t then how the Hell did you get a copy of this piece of crap? Huh? ANSWER ME!!! Sorry. Anyhow, I hope you’ll give a read of The Drink Tank (eFanzines.com) and perhaps check out the Second Annual GIant Sized Annual or The Montreal Issue (Issue 114 and 115). You might wanna drop me a line at [email protected] or just drop by the Computer History Museum and ask the receptionist (Shannon) to see Chris. I’d like to thank M for getting SaBean to give me the photos (it’s nice to see that SaBean has put on some weight after years of being so damn skinny!) and for popping by and chatting. As always, I gotta thank my artists. At least if you’ve got something pretty to look at you’re less likely to care about the fact that the writer/editor has all the English skills of an NYC Cabbie who learned English from Porno Films. I think it’s a very pretty little ish. And there’s so much more to say. If you’re a FAPAn, I’m sure I’ll mention running into ya in Claims Department for the next mailing. If you’re BArea-based, come to BayCon and Westercon! I’ll be running the Fanzine Lounges at both and I’ve got some fun planned, including a silent auction to benefit TAFF. We’ll have a Frank Wu piece up, a few old zines and a couple of surprizes. That’s how I do things! And other than that, I hope I’ll see some of you again at NASFiC in St. Louis, or perhaps even CorFlu next year. I’m plannign on making it...unless I gotta fly over large bodies of water!

Art In This Issue

The photos of SaBean are from Bak Lietnas, or something like that since she told me over the phone. They were taken in mid-Dec. The cover is by Action Wolfe. You can find him on DeviantArt.com. The small piece on page one is Selina Enriquez, page two by Alice Southwick, page three by Alejandro Mota, Page four by Draztic (deviantart.com) and page five by Selina Phanara (who is my new fave). The Lita drawing is by The Monkey You Want (DeviantArt) and the Wrestling drawing is Solomon Akutes. The two pieces on page four are from Alex Zu.