The Drink Tank 038 (2005).pdf

Take Care, Gentle

Readers. There

are Strange Things

Afoot!

The

This issue is not for

the weak of constitu-

tion nor the faint of

heart!

Drink Tank

The Thirty Eighth Issue

I was hoping that

this would be the year of

my man Donato Giancola,

but no, Jim Burns took the

Best Pro Artist instead. Donato’s been de-

serving of one for years, and he’s a Chesley

fave, but he’s never won himself a Hugo. He

really needs one.

The big winner had to be Dave Lang-

ford. He won the Best Fan Writer, beating

BASFAn and fellow producer of The Pork Au-

thority Cheryl Morgan. This was expected.

Ansible beat another former fanzine turned

Semi-Prozine Locus to win its i rst best

Semi-Pro Hugo. That shocked me. Frankly,

there were better choices, including the New

York Review of Science Fiction, and I even

preferred the IRoSF last year to either Locus

or Ansible.

The Best Fan Writer held no surprises

either. Cheryl Morgan took second, Claire

Brialey third.

The Best Fan Artist went as I’ve been

saying for a while now: Sue Mason won,

Frank took second. Frank Wu was close

again, running second to Sue for the second

time in three years. Steve Stiles was third,

which I think was his best i nish in a while.

No way anything other than Plokta

was going to win the Best Fanzine award.

Still, it was closer than I thought with Cher-

yl’s Emerald City grabbing second before

she heads over to the Semi-Pro category with

Charlie Browne and Dave Langford.

The shocker for me came from a lit-

tle award called Best Dramatic Presenta-

The Drink Tank Issue 38 was written by Christopher J. Garcia, M Lloyd, Frank Wu, Liz Batty, and a

few others whose names all appear where they were used. Got a comment? garcia@computerhistory.org.

Wanna write something, I’m looking for an article on 1960s fandom. That is all.

World Con

I got most of my

predictions right, with

a couple of notable (i.e..

GIANT) mistakes. This year’s crop of Hugo

winners was one thing above all else.

English.

That’s right, the hometown crowd

won almost everything. It’s not surpris-

ing, I fully expect Mike Glyer and folks to

do better than he has in recent years when

WorldCon comes to you live from LA, but

this was even surprising by those stand-

ards. The All-Brit best novel was won by

Susanna Clarke and her i ne work Jonath-

an Strange and Mr.. Norrell. I liked it a lot,

but I really thought that China Mieville’s

Iron Council was gonna take it, instead,

it ended up running i fth! What the hell?

Iron Sunrise even topped it! Iron Freakin’

Sunrise!

I can’t argue much with the short

stuff, though there are choices that would

have more suited my tastes. Charlie Stross

won one, which I think was my favourite of

his stuff. I was sad to see Ben Rosenbaum

not take it for the original story that ap-

peared in Wheatland’s Zeppelin Adventure

anthology.

The big win in my eyes was Ellen

Datlow. Long and well-deserved her win

was, that’s for sure. She’s had such a great

run that I hope we get to see her name on a

couple of more rockets (and if the split hap-

pens, I’m sure we will).

peared in Wheatland’s Zeppelin Adventure

anthology.

Looking at the Hugos

tion. The long form was a given to The In-

credibles, which shocked no one, though I

still wanted Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless

Mind. The Short Form was given to the Bat-

tlestar Galactica episode 33. I’m not really a

fan, but I certainly think that Angel should

have won for Smile Time, but the votes were

split with Not Fade Away, the series closer.

I really don’t much

care for BSG, es-

pecially since it

doesn’t have Dirk

Benedict or Lorne

Green.

All in all, this

was the year of the

Brits and good on

them. They put out

great stuff every

year and a lot of it

gets over-looked by

US voting World-

cons.

topless. This would never l y in a children’s

museum in the U.S.

Not only that, but there was a TV ad

for a Mazda 5, wherein mannequins taken

for a ride are so excited by this bit of ma-

chinery that their nipples become tumes-

cent.

Yet again, oh my.

I asked some

UK fans about all

this, and they said

that folks here

simply laugh about

these things and

then move on, with-

out getting their

knickers in a wad.

But the question

remains: Are Ameri-

cans simply too

prudish, or do the

British have too

much of a childish,

Benny Hill-like fascination with bums? How

much butt is too much butt is in the eye of

the beholder. Yet, I shudder to wonder what

someone might think who’s coming from a

country where women are covered from head

to toe. No wonder we hate and misunder-

stand each other.

Frank Wu’s Random Observation About the

UK #17:

Here in Europe you can buy, if so in-

clined, an ugly little car with a big posterior

called the Renault Megane. To celebrate the

vehicle’s anatomical distinctiveness are TV

ads which show various nubile females wav-

ing their derrieres like l ags, while the song

“I See You, Baby, Shakin’ That Ass” plays

over and over and over again. One quick

shot even shows peaches bouncing around,

displaying their butt cracks. Oh my. I un-

derstand that standards vary from country

to country, but, um...

When I went across the river Clyde to

the science museum, I was amused to see

a strange little puppet show - apparently

inspired by “The Thunderbirds” and other

programmes from Gerry Anderson. This

puppet show told us about Dolly the cloned

sheep, organ transplants, and Laika, the

dog the Russkies shot into space. The organ

recipient was wearing a hospital gown with

a breezeway in the back, and you could see

all his posterior wares. Again, oh my. And

the Barbie doll used as the heart donor was

Feeling crappy about not winning a

Hugo this past weekend? Think about

this. Approximately 210 people have

won Hugos (not counting Dramatic

Presentations). A total of about 538

Hugos have been given (counting

Dramatic Presentations and ties, but

counting Hugos split between multiple

authors only once).

The total world’s population is now

about 6,450,000,000, with about 1/

5 of everyone born in the last 6,000

years being alive today.

Thus, the average number of Hugo

awards won per person who has ever

lived is: 0.00000002.

You Want Candy by Jay Lake

Art by J. Andrew World

Taking a brief break from the

WorldCon stuff, I used to run a

Semi-Pro called As Of Yet Untitled.

Sadly, I sold the company that

owned the rights to As Of Yet Unti-

tled before the i rst issue came out

and realised that I was no longer

allowed to use the stories I had

bought. One of them was by an up-

and-comer name of Jay Lake.

This year at BayCon, I paid

him his kill fee for the story and

then asked him if it would be OK if

I were to use it in The Drink Tank.

He said Yes and now, I am proud to

present, Jay Lake’s You Want Can-

dy!

your spit runs red across the pillowcase.

Or maybe sneaking a bag of M&Ms into

church and slipping them into your

mouth through folded hands as the

cripples toss their crutches across the

l oor only to collapse once the cameras

turn away.

Well, the candyman’s got the real

deal now. The goodie train stops at

my loading dock i rst. This here blows

every sugar rush or caffeine buzz or

raw, nerve-jangling smack high right off

the tracks. Knock your dad’s block off,

make momma sorry for everything she

didn’t do, stake that sophomore bitch

Sue Anne Rawlins over a slow i re --

ain’t none of that going to make you half

so happy as this shit.

Here it is. See for yourself. The

biggest blue pill ever made. This, my

friend, is happiness in a gelcap. You

can’t do any better. Hell, it’s even

sweet. All it costs is everything. Every

last thin dime -- your car title, your

kids’ college fund, grandma’s silver

service. Just load it all on the truck for

me, won’t you?

Tell you what, I’ll even throw in a

money-back guarantee. If you’re not a

hundred percent satisi ed, I’ll unload

the truck for you. All you have to do is

ask.

You Want Candy

Jay Lake

What does candy really mean? A

treat, right? That rush of fats, maybe

starches, l ooding across your tongue,

the brief high from the sugar, the sense

of satisfaction from scoring one off old

Mother Nature. Back when we i rst

dropped out of the trees to pick lice off

each other’s scalps, joy like that was

scarce as dog feathers. Now we got it,

all the damned time.

Me? Oh, friend, I’m the

candyman. I can get anything you

want, tell you exactly how it will kill

you, give you the day of your death, and

you’ll still turn out your pockets to i nd

that last dime nesting down among the

lint and the i ngernail parings. There’s

a reason “crave” rhymes with “grave.”

So what does candy mean to you?

Hiding under your covers, listening to

your mom shriek and your dad break

beer bottles, scari ng juju beans until

Here you go. Enjoy.

Honest, ofi cer, he just took off his

clothes and ran off howling. No, I didn’t

try to catch up to him. Last thing I saw,

he was jumping from tree to tree in the

park over there, hooting and pounding

his chest.

I don’t know, but he sure had a

big smile on his face.

Say...I’ll bet you have a sweet

tooth, don’t you?

Frank Wu’s Random Observation

about the UK #35

Did you know that Scotland has its own

currency? I didn’t. It comes in the same

denominations as British notes, and can be

used 1:1 for them, but really only in Scot-

land. Unlike regular UK money, you can

forget about changing it in the U.S. Some

Americans thus likened it to Monopoly mon-

ey.

Except that instead of Mr. Moneybags,

some of the Scot-

tish money features

the face of golfer

Jack Nicklaus, who

is not Scottish.

I am not

making this up.

Why I’m Bummed That I Missed

WorldCon: A Stream of Consciousness

M Lloyd

Nicklaus, who is American of course,

is beloved here, partly because he won the

British Open twice here in Scotland at St.

Andrews - the most ancient golf course in

the world. And also because Glaswegians

- who still have a reputation for roughness-

consider him “a nice guy.”

And, no, in Scotland, you don’t have to be

dead to be on the money. In addition to the

Queen, her mum was also on their bills.

Some of the other Scottish money features

Robert the Bruce, who kicked British arse at

the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. This to

me was the most bizarre thing I’d found here

in Scotland - other than potato chips (called

crisps) lavored like roasted chicken or beef

and onion. A foreign golfer and a national

hero greatly responsible for Scottish inde-

pendence, both on their bills.

There are books and they smell like antique

rooms of antique houses in antique neigh-

bourhoods and they are for sale and they

tell stories that I am desperate to hear brush

against me as I stand in the stall looking at

the pages lip by for as long as the vendor

will let me stand there and read and there

are people talking about fanzines and feuds

and iery rhetoric about iery topics that

add up to nothing and there are friends who

complain and I love them.

There are people in costumes and yelling

loud phrases and playing games and being

silly and I realise that I’m happier at home

with my shelves of books and my telephone

and cigarettes and large glasses of wine well

at hand.

Nope, we’re not in America anymore.

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