The Drink Tank 166 (2008).pdf

The Drink Tank issue 166

There’s no way to Explain

I think of cons, it is highly colored by what

Iʼve been through at various BayCons. Itʼs

a well-run con, most of the time, with all

the problems that every con has at one time

or another having happened at one time or

another. Itʼs always been a fun con for me,

with few major problems that have ever

affected me. Iʼve been to cons all over the

place, and itʼs one of the most fun cons Iʼve

ever been to.

the best MMA matches in history. I watched

Ric Flairʼs retirement ceremony on YouTube

and I got myself a little bit teary-eyed. He was

such a big part of wrestling in the years when I

got into wrestling in the 1980s. I totally thought

that heʼd die in the ring at 75, never having

retired, performing in front of 200 fans in some

National Guard Armory in North Carolina.

Now, I know that wrestlers seldom retire and

stay retired, but everyone seems to be saying

that Ricʼs out for good. And they gave him a

great way out with the entire roster coming out

to play tribute. Way to go.

And of course, thereʼs Dancing With

the Stars. I love Dancing With The Stars, but I

seldom get to watch it since they moved it off

of Wednesday, which I still think is the perfect

day for it. I have to say that they referenced Sh-

eryl Crow songs (and by extension, the Talking

Heads). I do have to say that I think they should

try and release a Cd of the versions theyʼve

done of Popular songs. They did a fun version

of Blue Monday.

They also had a commercial for vita-

mins with Larry Seil (I think thatʼs his name)

one of the guys from the old Square 1 TV) and

that was awesome. He works a fair deal, but

seldom does he get much to do. I always liked

him.

And I should also mention that having

a non-cable TV now is kinda nice. I was happy

to get to watch some Psych on NBC. Psych is

a great show and the ﬁ rst season was so good

and the second season started good and ended

up even better. Iʼve only seen one episode of

Season 3, but it was a good.

You can see, Iʼve been kinda scattered.

ever been to.

Things seem to be changing all over the

place. The latest thing is BayCon, which made

a change that is really a return to some kind of

normalcy. Grizz, a great guy who would have

made a good con chair, was removed and that

led to Michael Siladi, a friend of mine and a

guy who I think knows how to run a BayCon

better than almost anyone else. He founded the

thing so I guess that really says he should have

a solid way to do it. There are people who have

toruble with his management style, but Iʼve

always thought he does a good job. BayConʼs

hitting a new hotel, which is stressful, but not

impossible to go through as they managed to do

a good BayCon last year in the Escher Marriott

in San Mateo (future home of Con-X-Treme

Two: The Shocking Sequel). The funny thing

is I think itʼs a good idea to move around the

chairmanship of any con, but sometimes you

need to shore up and put the mantle on someone

whoʼs been around. Thee press release listed

the reasons as unresolvable differences, which

is a bad thing, but they happen sometimes. Iʼve

heard nothing, but Iʼm hoping that it was one

of those cases that a single point stuck and they

couldnʼt reach a compromise and this was what

happened.

BayCon is my home convention. When

And this year, Tim Powers is the Writer

GoH.

And to me thatʼs a big deal. Tim Powers

is a great writer, a guy who I think gets too little

credit for the way modern fantasy has grown

and who sometimes gets left out of discussions

on good SF-tinged fantasy ﬁ ction (Iʼm think-

ing of books like Expiration Date) and is really

one of the great writers of urban fantasy. Thatʼs

a genre that is so wonderful, but often takes a

backseat to books by mainstream authors that

happen to have elements of fantasy to them.

Think Letham and Chabon on those matters.

I am working on a tribute zine for the

Fanzine Lounge. I need to work on it shortly

and try to make it a fantastic zine. Iʼm hoping

that Iʼll get to use his art that once ran in Amra.

Itʼs always good to get to use lesser known art.

I know that he drew a Christmas card in the

Green Room at LosCon in 2006 (Selena, my

favourite fan artist, got it, I believe) and I need

to ﬁ nd a way to get back to him shortly.

And of course, that brings up my other

passion: wrestling. There was WrestleMania

a couple of weeks ago and sadly I missed it. I

also missed the Frank Shamrock vs. Cung Le

match held in San Jose that was called one of

The funny thing is that I always get

ideas for new projects right when I start to get

busy with other things. Iʼve already got the plan

to write the lame story of the three guys on the

eve of Prohibition who go to San Francisco to

score enough liquor to get them through the rest

of their Senior year at Stanford by splitting up

and having two of them ﬁ gure out a way to ﬁ x

a wrestling match between Stanilaus Zybysko

and Ray Steele while the other would go off

with a beautiful Latina and rob a ship. That

story would be good to work on, and since I see

it as a musical, I just wanna work on the story

and get it out to someone.

And now I got a new one. A very

darque idea that will be hard to write. I actually

mapped out the basic story and the characters

and I now know that Iʼll start it as a part of my

NaNoWriMo this year, but thereʼs no way Iʼll

ever ﬁ nish it. You see, itʼs a big twisted story

with a ton of characters who all bounce off each

other in a Altmanian sort of way.

It was inspired by the ﬁ lm Festen and

The Wild Party. The idea is this: a guy has seri-

ous erectile dysfunction and goes to a shrink

who puts him under and they recover the

memory of his abuse at the hands of his father.

He is then invited to a ﬁ ve hundred dollar a

plate dinner to support his run for Senate. His

sister ﬁ gures out what heʼs going to do and then

has to come up with ways of stopping him from

ruining the event since sheʼs her fatherʼs cam-

paign manager.

Then thereʼs the speech writer and her

girlfriend, the conservative academic who are

the Lesbian Couple of All Conservatives. They

broke up nearly a year ago, but since theyʼre so

involved with the campaign as the face of their

GLBT front, they have to fake like they are still

a couple, including having one of them get a

new girlfriend but has to act like theyʼre just

having an affair and not a relationship. I thought

about this as a separate story once, but it ﬁ ts so

nicely here.

Thereʼs the hired killer who dresses as

a security guard and kills a reporter who was

coming to attend the event, but when he chang-

es into the dead guyʼs jacket because his was

ripped, the Campaign manager thinks heʼs the

reporter and ushers him into the house. Thatʼs

another story I had in mind once that I thought

would ﬁ t.

And then thereʼs the actor who was

once the best teen actor in the world during the

1960s. He ended up falling out of the limelight

and when the Queer ﬁ lm explosion happened

in the late 1980s, his agent convinces him to

play like heʼs gay and he starts to get roles, but

then decides that heʼs tired of being in ﬁ lms that

no one sees and that donʼt make much money.

He goes back to his church and falls out of the

limelight, leading the PR people to call him as

a part of bringing gay people into the campaign

limelight because of homophobic comments the

candidate made. He sees it as a chance to get

back into the public eye and restart his movie

career.

Then thereʼs the guy who wants to be a

documentary ﬁ lmmaker and keeps ﬁ lming the

event and taking everything onto ﬁ lm. Thereʼs

the girl whoʼs a wrestling promoter in Hawaii

who is trying to get into regular society by sup-

porting the senate run. Thereʼs the Irish comedi-

an who is known for his imitations who is asked

to MC the entire event, but canʼt seem to pull

it together. Thereʼs the brother who has to deal

with the girlfriend he left behind when he went

on to the biggest ad ﬁ rm in Silicon Valley.

And then whole thing is a comedy...kind

of. Itʼs a comedy in the same way that Dancer

in the Dark is a comedy.

Yeah, itʼs one of those kinds of things.

I got all these ﬁ lm snippets that I keep

seeing and as I went rhrough making the outline

(which I did yesterday morning), I realised that

this would make for a great three hour movie by

Paul Thomas Anderson, but itʼs not something

that I could ever do myself. Still, Iʼm gonna

write it and play with doing a script, but thatʼd

take forever because itʼs a huge piece that Iʼm

envisioning. I could cut back, but all those snip-

pets seem to play with one another and feature

all the stories collapsing in on themselves.

So, I come up with all these ideas and

they take over my thinking and make it hard to

play with. Iʼve gotta stop playing like a ﬁ ction

writer. Iʼve gotta just go out and write stuff

thatʼs fun for me to write.

Eastercon: The Report

from the Legendary Liz Batty

head to my room and go the

wrong way around the loop of

bedrooms, and take a hundred

yard detour when Iʼm actually

a stoneʼs throw away from ops

and green room. My room is

ready at 9am and I think Iʼll go

and register, except registration

isnʼt open until 10am. Ah. I sit

in the lobby and chat to Paul

Cornell, who is awaiting the

Hugo nominations. Next time

I see him the nominations are

out and heʼs running back to his

hotel to blog about it, ﬁ eld-

ing congratulations on every

side. (And as an aside, I know

Blink is a fantastic episode but

so is Human Nature/Family of

Blood, and if Paul gets a Hugo

I started Eastercon early this year.

Wednesday, to be precise, when I went over

to Ely to help move the art show equipment

from Tim and Marciaʼs garage (which is larger

than my entire ﬂ at) and into a van which would

head off to Heathrow the next day. I have never

actually made it into an Eastercon art show, but

having shifted what seems like several tons of

steel for it I vow to actually go in this year.

On Thursday I cram all my stuff, in-

cluding a large box of cake, into a couple of

bags and head towards the hotel. I get about

three feet into the lobby before encountering

Judith (the chair) who knows a willing volun-

teer when she sees one, and I go to help the art

show unload. The reason Iʼm there on Thursday

this year is partly that as a programme organ-

iser I felt a sense of obligation to help set up

and not just turn up on Friday expecting all the

programme to run smoothly, but as it turns out

thereʼs not a lot for me to do and I was a lot

more useful as part of the art show assembly

crew. It was also because I wanted to go to the

aforementioned Jonathan Coulton gig without

having to get back to Cambridge, and since the

gig ﬁ nished after the last train home this was

a sensible decision. I ended up waiting in the

rain for a night bus and getting back to my

cheap hotel about 1am before crashing out.

Friday morning I get up early and head

to the Radisson Non-Euclidean.

Which I actually ﬁ nd fairly easy to

navigate, with the exception of the ﬁ rst time I

I think he might actually explode with joy on-

stage. You know you want to see that, Denven-

tion members.)

At some point on Friday morning I

acquire the programme ops radio, which I will

be wearing for about half the rest of the con.

This gives the impression that I am super-busy

at all times, when in fact the amount of times I

will be called over the radio over the next four

days is minimal and most of Friday I spend

trying to work out what the people on the radio

are saying and ﬁ gure out which way the volume

control goes. By this point the Third Row have

assembled to mock my new cyborg enhance-

ments, and there are panels to go to.

Graham is on the panel about Hein-

lein, which I decide to skip in favour of more

beer. Niall responds by giving me text message

updates on the madness of the panellists, so I

feel beer was the right choice. The ﬁ rst panel I

make it to is The Hovercraft of Disbelief, about

suspension of disbelief and what you can and

canʼt take in a book, and it starts with the kiss

of death to any programme organiser as the

panellists sit down and profess they donʼt know

what theyʼre doing on this panel or have much

of an idea what itʼs supposed to be about. And

then they proceed to do a great panel and show

why theyʼre on it.

When It Changed is the panel where I

stuck a bunch of female authors on stage and let

them talk about their careers. Many thanks to

Juliet McKenna for stepping in at the last min-

ute on this one, I thought it was good but didnʼt

ever really catch ﬁ re.

The best part was seeing

Tanith Lee, who I hadnʼt

seen before but is a great

panellist - gracious,

interesting, and opinion-

ated.

The BSFA Book

Launch was the fullest

I ever saw the Tetworth

room, thus proving that

free booze really does

conquer all. I left after

half an hour for a mighty

Third Row curry, where

the usual suspects ac-

quired a Paul R, Shaun G,

Paul C and his agent Si-

mon for a trip to a curry

house a mile away, which

Saturday I got up

waaay too early for break-

fast, so I could go collect

my radio and go to a

10am panel on the My-

thology of Fantasy. My

ﬁ rst encounter with the

Neil Gaiman effect - I

have never seen so many

people at a 10am pro-

gramme item. I would

guess there were 350

people in there. Unfortu-

nately I think it was a bit

early for the panellists too,

despite Nicʼs Gaiman-up-

staging pint, and the ques-

tions were slightly odd

- like “Whatʼs your favou-

rite god?” and “What gods

I was starving by now, so I turned in my

radio and went to MacDonalds, and came back

to ﬁ nd that the Hay lecture was about to begin

and no one had sorted out the tech. This was

the ﬁ rst problem I actually had to deal with, and

marked the ﬁ rst (but not the last) time someone

would check that Iʼd remembered to eat and

sleep that day. Luckily it was all sorted and I

went to have a pint and go to a different panel

about editing, only to discover radio cover-

age in the distant Tetworth room was distinctly

scrappy and Iʼd better go back to the main

building, which turned out to be a good idea as

there were more things to sort out for the BSFA

awards.

Post-awards, we attempted to eat in The

Pheasant pub, only to ﬁ nd they were already

ﬁ lled up, including Paul Cornell having dinner

with Neil Gaiman and taunting us. We ate at

the Marriott hotel next door and arrived back

in time for Right to Reply, aka should authors

reply to reviews, aka the panel I was thinking

might start an argument. My programme phi-

losophy was to write a panel description with

questions in it, get at least a couple of people

with differing viewpoints on there, and let

them ﬂ y. Right to Reply was a panel where this

worked well, as there were enough points of

disagreement to get some debate going but

not enough to start stand-up arguments, and

all the panelists were witty and affable even

at 9pm. See later in the report for those panels

which worked less well.

I decided to stay in the bar rather than

go to At Least I Can Get a Fanzine Article Out

of That, which I regret now as apparently it was

a great panel. Ah well, you canʼt have it all, and

youʼd think was a twenty mile trek through the

arctic wilderness for all the complaints I got

about the distance. It was a very good curry,

and the staff were unfazed by an impression of

Emperor Palpatine commenting on the Clarke

award shortlist and by sixteen people generally

being disorganised and chatty. We returned in

time for me to not go to the UK Short Fiction

Markets panel and sit in the bar and the atrium

for the next four hours until I admitted defeat

and went to bed. I never actually got to the

Newbury bar, and it seemed that the atrium

and real ale bar were where the social focus of

the con was - understandably, because it was

easy to drift out of the programme rooms

and never get any further than the atrium. Also

after 11pm it smelled of bacon.

would you put in the Big Brother house?”. I

caught 20 minutes of China Mievilleʼs GoH slot

(seeing only parts of panels would become a re-

curring theme of my con), but that was enough

for me to see why the man has so many fans as

he did a speech which combined words such

as “hegemonising” and “fucking wrongheads”,

and itʼs doesnʼt hurt that heʼs extremely hot.

Next up was Fantastic London, a natu-

ral panel for a London Eastercon about the

how and why of using London in your genre

ﬁ ction. I saw most of this and really enjoyed

it - Graham moderated Neil Gaiman, Geoff

Ryman, and Louis Savy, and it was a great mix

of people on an interesting topic. In a room the

temperature of a meat locker, but you canʼt have

everything.

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