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 un-
derstand 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 visit-
ing. 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 Wednes-
day.
“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 fight-
ing 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 wor-
ried 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 hun-
dred 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 mu-
seum 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, Sa-
Bean 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 gor-
geous 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 mar-
ried?”
“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 god-
dess 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 breath-
ing 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 embed-
ded 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 zin-
ing. 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 Wres-
tling? 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 wres-
tling 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 story-
telling 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 be-
tween guys trying to figure out which of them
is better. It happened in the 1980s
when Hogan took on Andre the Gi-
ant 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 screen-
plays 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 Patri-
arch was murdered years before and the fam-
ily 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 Lead-
ing Wrestling Journalist. He wrote a
beautiful Obit and combining it with
the film of Brian’s life would be amaz-
ing, 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
masks and speaking no English. That allowed
ridiculed more strenuously than Band Geeks.
them to break through to a weirder audience,
They are the Band Geeks that turn their sights
one who both loved surf and wrestling. In other
towards Surf Rock.
words, to me.
I hear you say ‘Wait, what about the
They play really well. They have fast
Beach Boys or Jan & Dean? They were cool.’
licks and really strong beats too. The spit fire
and the answer is that’s one stream of surf
delivery of the heavily accented Spanish that
rock, but the other came out of the guitar vis-
introduces many of their songs is awesome, as
tas of Dick Dale and his Fabulous Deltones and
is their cover of My Heart Will Go On. It’s just
The Safaris. Those guys get the dirt kicked in
awesome.
their face when the bands all get together.
The big story is that these guys are now
And why is that the case? Well, they’re
beloved to the point that they can play the free
SF geeks at heart. Bands like El Pollo Del Mar,
concerts in Palo Alto (which means that they’re
Captured by Robots, Shadowy Men on a Shad-
kind of seen as safe for all ages).
owy Planet, and Man or Astroman all have
Los Straitjackets are far from the only
wide-ranging science fiction themes to their
ones that dresss strange. There’s The Bom-
music and often their get-ups. Being a band
boras, a band that doesn’t stick to just one
seen as a gimmick act isn’t a plus to most folks,
thing but will wear everything from Halloween
but choosing a gimmick like being a band of
masks to Tiki Heads. The recently broken-
robots who were made into men who can only
up The Apemen played in full Ape costumes
communicate through their instruments (like
and still managed to shred a guitar line. Add
Beast Machine, a German Surf Band) isn’t
groups like The Ghastly Ones (Surf Rock Un-
a way to get a lot of respect, save from those
dertakers) and They Will Know Us By the
folks like me.
Twang of Our Guitars (a SurfBilly band that
And then there’s the whole Wrestling
uses a Post-Apocolyptic theme) and you’ve got
Mask Crew.
a fully formed bizarre genre view.
The band that really started that thing
was Los Straitjackets. They’re a So you see, there’s a lot of
bunch of white guys who started strange music out there and a lot of
playing together in 1988 as The it happens to be Surf Rock. If I ever
Straitjackets. They were good, but start a music label, I’m going to call
they broke up, only to reform six it Gimmickry and have nothing but
years later as Los Straitjackets. bands with weird gimmicks. I mean,
There was a minor difference in why concentrate on the music when
them by this point: they were per- there’s something else to distract
forming while wearing wrestling 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 col-
lating. 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 bet-
ting 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 An-
nual or The Montreal Issue (Issue 114 and
115). You might wanna drop me a line at
garcia@computerhistory.org 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 chat-
ting. 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
Art In This Issue
Films. I think it’s a very pretty little ish.
The photos of SaBean are from Bak Li-
And there’s so much more to say. If
etnas, or something like that since she told me
you’re a FAPAn, I’m sure I’ll mention running
over the phone. They were taken in mid-Dec.
into ya in Claims Department for the next
The cover is by Action Wolfe. You can
mailing. If you’re BArea-based, come to Bay-
find him on DeviantArt.com.
Con and Westercon! I’ll be running the Fanzine
The small piece on page one is Selina
Lounges at both and I’ve got some fun planned,
Enriquez, page two by Alice Southwick, page
including a silent auction to ben-
three by Alejandro Mota, Page four
efit TAFF. We’ll have a Frank Wu
by Draztic (deviantart.com) and
piece up, a few old zines and a
page five by Selina Phanara (who
couple of surprizes. That’s how I
is my new fave).
do things!
The Lita drawing is by The
And other than that, I hope
Monkey You Want (DeviantArt)
I’ll see some of you again at NAS-
and the Wrestling drawing is Solo-
FiC in St. Louis, or perhaps even
mon Akutes.
CorFlu next year. I’m plannign on
The two pieces on page four
making it...unless I gotta fly over
are from Alex Zu.
large bodies of water!