The Drink Tank 012 (2005).pdf

The Drink Tank

This one makes a Dozen!

Post-Cinequest THoughts plus

other Fun and frolic edited by

Christopher J. Garcia

Cinequest and the Con Life: A Comparison

I think the best way to describe my time at Cinequest is to think of it as a two week long Con.

That explains why I get less than 5 hours of sleep every night during it and why I always come out

of it desperately in need of decompression. Still, it's a great time that is amazing to those of us

that love films.

In fact, I'd like to spend some time giving you a look at the types of folks who live Cinequest for

two weeks a year and their corresponding types at various cons I've been to over my life-long

addiction to fandom.

-Mr. Everywhere

The 'Mr. or Mrs. Everything' is the completist. At Cinequest, there is one guy, Jason, who sees

between 35 and 50 movies every year. There's a couple, the Bynums, who see just about as many

movies, though they don't have the visibility of Jason with his huge hair and constant front-row,

centre seating preference. At cons, these are the folks who use highlighters to mark where they're

going next for the paneling, who are at every piece of programming and see at least one panel in

every slot. I have been known to fall into this catagory at many cons.

- The Complainer

At Cinequest, like all festivals, some films get selected due to politics. These films can vary in

quality, sometimes being absolute hits, someimes being terrible misses. The Complainer will pick

up on these and rail against them, often to the point of forgetting that the vast majority of the

films they saw were excellent. They'll also pick up on any late film (fest starting times are, at best,

suggestions) and point out any projection trouble. The same type exist at Cons, and at BayCon,

one of Cinequest's complainers is always at the Hiss & Purr stirring things up.

- The Snob

The phrase 'It can't be good, it's not from Norway' has been uttered. There are folks who believe

that only a specific type of film is worth seeing and will often shun anything else. There are five

major flavours of Snobs: the Asian-Film snob, the FemmeSnob, the subtitled Snob, the

Documentary Snob (I have been one of these over the years) and the Genre (or anti-genre) Snob.

The Con versions are all over the place, with the literary snob, the media snob and the fannish

snob all having large numbers.

- The Fun-guy

Interested in the party atmosphere, mingling and chatting up the honeys, Fun-guys, or the

corresponding Fun-Grrl, are the ones that you want to go drinking with and the ones with the

knowledge of every party. They are also far less interested in the films than in the scene. A lot of

my friends at the fest and at BayCon are Fun-Guy types. Never attend a panel, might make the

masquarade, but if there's a party, they are so there.

- The Entry Level

At Cons, these are the writers who come to make connections and find a way to enter the

business through fandom. At festivals, these are the filmmakers who are always looking for more

deals and schmoozers. Every year, I come out of Cinequest with at least one new project (this

year, I came out with three) and I certainly have been accused of being Entry Level at many cons

back in the day, though I am certainly no longer on that track. At times they can be annoying,

especially at conventions, but on the fest circuit, you have to learn to love them.

The Drink Tank

This One makes a Dozen

Riverside Quarterly

Of the things I bought at Corflu, one held my interest as a historian. The Riverside Quarterly

from August 1972 was academic, well-written, and far too intellectual for the likes of me. Still, I

can't help but say that I was happy to read it.

The biggest thrill for me had to be the article looking at the function of time travel in Kurt

Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five. It was a great look at one of the few Vonnegut novels I've never

managed to read (I know, I know, I'll get to it sooner or later). I feel that I no longer have to read

it since I can talk about it so solidly now that I've read this.

There are two excellent articles, one on the works of Alfred Bester (I've never been a big fan, but

I must say this has made me think more about reading his stuff) and a look at HG Well's The

Time Machine. Again, highly academic, and at times I don't follow the logic of the writer, but I

was set deep enough to keep reading. Editor Leland Sapiro also has an article on clichés in old

super-science stories. This was good, and as I read a lot of these sorts of things as a kid, it

brought me back to those days. I really did think that this was the only article that fell into

academy a bit too deeply, but I still enjoyed reading it.

Poetry also rears its ugly head in this one, and most of it is pretty pedestrian. Tatoo was OK,

reminding me of some of the works of Bill Knott, but mostly, it was what I'd expect to read in this

type of publication; just good enough to get me to read it once and never need to go back.

The highlights were the LoCs and Harry Warner's look at a bunch of fanzines. Joyce Carrol

Oates, who I had a few sessions with while in college, had an LoC that was actually not very

interesting, though Oates writing anything has some merit. Warner's reviews are great. I always

thought of HW as the foundation, the one guy you could always count on to get the direction of

the wind right no matter what you were trying to do with your fanzine. His look at ALGOL is

exactly as I would look at the good ole piece. Harry's look at Granfalloon, my early childhood

fave, made me more annoyed at my Mom for tossing them in the late 1980s. It's interesting to

think of the evolution of the aesthetic evolution of fanzines. I'm sure someone is working on a

book on the subject.

I'd say that Riverside Quarterly would be thought of as an academic journal today, in all

probability. I'd love to get a few more issues of RQ to look over, esecially the ones from 1969

when folks like Phillip Jose Farmer were frequently submitting LoCs.

I'm planning on looking at more and more old fanzines and the like. Shortly, I'll take a look at

Seamonster and Holier Than Thou.

My Favourite Celebrity Sighting

Let me start by saying that I've met a lot of very cool celebs over the

years. I've played chess against George Takei, I've spent an hour

watching bar flies argue with Dan Akroyd, I've hit on Gwen Steffani.

All of those were fun little deals, but meeting one of my fave actresses

at Cinequest was a treat.

Sara Rue is best known for her ABC comedy Less Than Perfect. She's

a doll and a half and she's done a lot of fun movies. I actually used a

line she said in Can't Hardly Wait to open my book on Teen Films

called Friday Night With Popcorn. I met her husband, Misha, and we

chatted. Sara came a few days later and we talked while walking on

the way to the afterhours party. She was a delightful lass and when I

said I'd love to get her for my next film, she politely said "send me a

script and I'll read it. Yay!

The Drink Tank

This one makes a dozen

Cinequest had some great films. A lot of them. Far too many of them

to allow me to see them all. Two of the best that I saw prove to me one

thing: the crazy musician is the greatest of all archetypes.

Bernie Worrell is the keyboardist most responsible for the sound of

Parliament/Funkadelic. He is the funk pioneer and one of the guys

who gave the Talking Heads a new dimension. He has played recently

for groups like Gov. Mule. Stranger asks a lot of questions, and by the end, has not answered

the most important one: will anyone remember him. Even the guy who has spent his career

detailing the lives of George Clinton and the rest of P-Funk has to pause before he can answer

what he thinks will be remembered of Bernie Worrell. The doc shows Bernie as a genius, playing

beyond the troubles that his life presents. Everyone says that he has changed music, that his

sound created new directions for artists like Dr. Dre and much of Hip Hop. The fact that so few

seem to know him, save for the thousands of musicians who worship him, is a sad fact. Had he

stayed a classic pianist, he would likely have become one of the truly great pianists, but he went

the pop music route and now, his legacy is on shaky pillars.

The best film at Cinequest was Accordion Tribe. The Tribe was a group of five

Accordionists/composers led by New York's Guy Clusevec. While all five of them are interesting

and shed light on the relationship between musician and music and instrument, one of them,

Otto Lechner, is amazing. Lechner steals every frame he shows up on. He's blind, he's funny, a

look at a trip to a Prague train station is touching. We are driven through his tale and want to

find out so much more.

Plus, he's amazing on the accordion. He's a Jazzbo, playing with a passion and a brilliant

sense of urgency. He also throat sings, a skill usually only used by Tuvan singers. His entire

combination of sound and attitude and challenge is compelling. His stuff isn't easy to find in the

US, but if you happen to be in Austria or Germany, he's got a lot of work out there.

The thing these two have in common is the fact that the two of them play above their problems

and give amazing results. Bernie gives us amazing creations, new soundscapes and incredible

energies. Lechner gives passion, intensity and an immediacy that seems like it all coming to him

from God on High. These two could do a duet that would turn the world to ash. If you get a

chance to see Accordion Tribe or Stranger: Bernie Worrell on Earth, do it and do it now.

A Very Short Story

A Jazzbo Plays Shiva's Entrance Music

The future of my writing outside of The Drink

Tank seems to have taken a massive up-

swing. other Magazine, which published my

first majour story on Chicanos and their

reactions to Classy Freddy Blassie has asked

that I write another piece. My book got

picked up for fall 2006 and I'm writing for

another site starting in June. I'm excited

though it means that it was also the right

time to cut this back to one a week since it

means that I'll have more writing to do on a

daily basis, especially if I choose to do the

National Novel Writing Month thing, though

I'm thinking of making that a TDT feature.

Milton walked into the club wondering if he

should open with Eve of Destruction or Until The

End of the World. Either one seemed appropriate

for the situation. He took at a seat at the

keyboard, cracked his knuckles as they always

did in those black and white movies. He began to

hammer the opening of some REM tune that folks

seemed to half-recall. He pounded and the

strings protested with noisy clangs and key-

popping.

The noise grew as explosions rocked the club,

the encore featuring the collapse of the club's roof

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