The Drink Tank 224 (2009).pdf

The Drink Tank 2+2=4 - Garcia@computerhistory.org

Thank you, Frank Wu! This cover is a

piece that I saw on his wall at his old place. I

said something like “Hey, where did this run?”

and Frank said “I never inished it” and then he

did and now, here it is!

This issue? Why, I’m glad you asked! It’s

got a Taral piece that is the start of a series I’m

referring to internally as the Introductions for

various things that are up on eFanzines, but

that we think you might have missed. There’s a

couple of other things, including a special look

at a special lady...Lady Gaga!

Food Glorious Food: Cookin’ with Chris

Garcia!

just ground hominy) and it’s lovely. I igured I’d

put it in with the tomato juice, which was to-

mato sauce in this case, and see what happened.

I got home, changed into my pajamas

(which I always do on Fridays when I don’t have

to go anywhere) and started cooking. I sliced

the onion (I went with strips) and then ground

a ton of black pepper, shook out a bit of mace

(the outer husk of the nutmeg, inely ground)

and threw in some cumin, a couple of habane-

ros I cut into, but not through, so I could easily

removed them after they’d given up their heat

and lavor, and celery salt along with some dark

mirin. It was a good combo. I started the crock-

pot for an 8 hour cooking.

The next part was adding the tomato

juice, which in this case was tomato sauce. I

dumped it in and let it warm for a while. It was

a good idea because with having used sauce

instead of juice, it wouldn’t penetrate the meat

unless it was warm when the meat got in there.

The next was the secret weapon: Pepsi.

True, I would have preferred to use Coke (and

there’s an excellent 1960s Coke cookbook),

but I had Pepsi and I sure as hell wasn’t going

to drink the crap. I poured about 1 1/2 cups in.

This would help give it a lovely color and add

some sweet notes. I let it warm for about an

hour.

Browning a big roast is not easy, espe-

cially where you’re doing it on a griddle. It took

me a while and a complitcated series of tongs

and skewers. it was fun, though. After the roast

was brown, I gently lowered it into the mixture,

and started the cooking.

I watched Watchmen (so it was me all

along) and after it was done, I went in and re-

I often write on Twitter about my food

cooking exploits. They vary, you see, from the

excessively low-brow to dumbed down ver-

sions of high-brow eatin’. It’s something I have

fun doing.

Lately, I’ve turned slightly away from

Sous-vite, the method of cooking in a sealed

bag (Mostly because it takes so long) and have

been experimenting with my Crock Pot. You

remember Cock Pots, don’t ya? Those slow

cookers that were popular in the 1970s. I’ve al-

ways had one, largely because my mother loved

them. I have a large one in my kitchen an dI use

the hell out of it.

The irst time I pulled it out, I really

wanted to do some sort of stew, but not just

any stew: a delicious stew. I went to the Safe-

way and found that I really wanted to do a

pot roast instead. I found a lovely tied roast

and paid less than 6 bucks for it! I am pleased

with the discounts that inancial ruin brings

along with it. I wanted it to be very lavorful,

so I started with tomato juice, knowing that it

goes well with roast, only, for some reason, I

bought tomato sauce. I got some garlic, some

onions, but I wanted something else, something

with a bit of substance that would eat hearty

for an entire weekend. I was walking down the

Ethic Foods aisle, thinking that there must be a

noodle that would work, when I came across a

large can of Hominy.

You’ve probably heard of Hominy, it’s

typically lye-treated corn that forms large ker-

nels. It’s the main component of grits (which is

moved the meat for a few secong, opened the

huge can of hominy, rinsed it three times (trust

me, if you don’t, the lavor can over-power just

about anything) and added it into the bottom,

setting the roast back on top of it. I also added

just a bit more Pepsi to replace the lost water.

I went off and watched Nick & Nora’s

Ininite Playlist. it’s a very cute movie.

After it was inished, I took a bath. it

was nearly 10, but I had to be clean when I en-

countered the roast. I got out, got dressed and

there it was, gleaming in the pot, waiting for me

to remove it and carve it up.

I took it out and let it rest. I tried the

sauce that had ensued and man was it tasty.

Lots of big lavors and the heat was strong, but

not over-powering at all. I was happy.

The hominy was magical. It probably

would have gotten more lavor from the to-

mato juice that ws sauce if it had really been

juice instead of sauce. The entire thing just

exploded, and the onions! I was glad I hadn’t

pre-cooked them because they still had some

structure, and ther’s nothing worse than com-

pletely limp onions (except on top of hot dogs,

but that’s another story). I ate well on the stuff

for three days. it was magical. The meat was su-

per tender and the tomato and Pepsi had given

it both great color and beautiful lavor. I re-

served the sauce and used it as a Tomato Sauce

for pasta over th enext few days. it just lat-out

worked!

I did a similar set of Short Ribs the next

weekend, but it wasn’t the same. No Pepsi that

time, but a bit of root beer, and I used actual

Tomato Juice. Maybe the sauce was a better ac-

cident than the true intention!

Green Tits & Fur

A Look Back, by Taral Wayne

attracted by conventions, not comics. They

were into costuming, gaming, and most of all

role-playing. The internet reached into millions

of homes, and FurryMuck recruited thousands

whose idea of fandom was adopting a funny

name, and pretending to be a magic fox or

bisexual pony. This didn’t sit well on many of

the older heads. While some adapted, others

withdrew into their own circle, or faded out of

the picture entirely.

By 1993 this new face of furry fandom

had become the norm, and it was possible to

satirize it.

Whether or not this was a good idea

was contentious. But the chief culprit behind

Green Tits & Fur was never shy about making

an outrageous statement. Another way of

putting it, was that he made a lifestyle of

speaking irst, and thinking about its effect on

the public later… if at all. Then, when the smut

hit the fan, he would wonder why he was so

misunderstood.

He was Kevin Duane. Kevin had

been a marginal igure in New York fandom

for years, and had a few writing credits for

Warren Magazines under his belt. He had also

published a somewhat amateurish paperback

cartoon collection called The I Hate Unicorns

Book that had missed a distribution deal by

a mile, and ended up mostly pulped by the

publisher, who hadn’t been paid. A box or

two of copies survived the debacle. Despite

signiicant contributions by Kelly Freas, Shary

Flenniken, Larry Todd, Dan O’Neill, and Michael

T. Gilbert, I don’t foresee The I Hate Unicorns

Book ever becoming a collector’s item. For

one thing, it’s so obscure that not even many

Before 1993, furry fandom was still

almost young. It had passed through its early

phase, when most of the members were

comics or animation fans who hung around

the margins of SF cons. In those days, the

deining characteristic of an anthropomorphic

fan was his collection of independent comics

like Omaha the Cat Dancer , Cutey Bunny , Captain

Jack, Critters , or Usagi Yojimbo . Back then even

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were a real furry

book, and not merely part of the mainstream

of commercialized properties. But the indies

were already dying, and the rapid growth of

furry fandom had led to radical changes in

its make-up. Most of the newcomers were

collectors are likely to have heard of it.

Kevin emigrated to Toronto around

1991 or ’92. I recall getting a strange phone

call from a fan I had heard distant warnings

about from New Yorkers I knew. He persisted

in making my acquaintance, in spite of a degree

of skepticism (and downright

rudeness) on my part that would

have put off anyone with a greater

sense of dignity. Thus began a long,

sometimes fertile, usually futile

relationship.

I had only known Kevin

for a year or two, perhaps, when

he came to me with one of

his hare-brained, brilliant ideas.

Surprisingly, it was a brilliant idea.

He wanted to do a spoof of Dr.

Suess that was also a send-up of

furry fandom. I gave him guarded

encouragement. What he came

back to me with was a script, and

layout, for a booklet more than 30

pages long – far more work than

I had any intention of signing on

for. Moreover, Kevin was someone

who loved every word he wrote,

just as he loved the sound of his

own voice. I thought 36 pages was

much too long. He had made his

point midway, and was beating a

dead horse (so to speak) for the

last half of the book. Regretfully, I

declined to be the illustrator.

Kevin had another ace up

his sleeve, though. Where, exactly,

he met the unknown graduate of

Sheridan College’s animation course I don’t

know. But Ray Larabie was his man!

On the whole, the book came out

well. With covers and end papers, it bulked

out to 40 xeroxed pages of 8 2 by 14 paper

folded over and stapled. Ray’s imitation of

the Suessian art style was close enough to

fool even a second look. Nor was the text

anything less than clever. Its main weakness as

a spoof was simply that Kevin could not edit.

What might have been a gentle spoof became,

in effect, a comprehensive put-down of all furry

fandom.

Moreover, he misjudged

his audience. Kevin no doubt

expected furry fandom to love

him for the poke in the eye he had

given it, and was caught totally by

surprise when some furries took

a swing back at him. This was

prophetic, as Kevin’s future career

in furry fandom demonstrated.

The booklet left an

impression, no doubt of it. Though

hated by many, copies at a dollar

or two dollars each soon sold out.

There was a second midnight run

on the xerox machine at work,

and then it was out of print. Ten

years later, though, most furries had

never heard of it. For that matter,

with the still-rapid growth of that

fandom – and its detachment from

any sense of its own history – most

furries by 2009 have probably

never heard of Kevin Duane, either.

But in the years after Green

Tits & Fur , Kevin went on to create

Digital Impudendum . Under that

name he produced a dozen or

so collections of furry smut on

CD-Rom. Digital Impudendum ,

according to Kevin, loosely

translated as the “rude inger.” I immediately

felt this was a mistake, and said so. Had he

called himself merely Flipping Bird Inc., it might

have worked. But with Digital Impudendum

there was a sense that he was trying to pass an

insult over people’s heads – another example of

Kevin proving himself clever at other’s expense,

and turning out to be too clever for his own

good. Whether or not my misgivings were

justiied, he stuck with the name.

The early DI disks went over well.

But problems set in early. Kevin was no

businessman. He made ruinous deals with

retailers at cons. He gave away too many

samples. He took money and forgot to mail

the disks. In the end, he never paid all the

contributors.

To understand the full impact of stifing

the artists, you have to realize that Kevin was

an eternal optimist. He made lavish promises

based on dubious reasoning. I recall many

arguments in which he would produce statistics

such as “millions on the internet, hundreds of

thousands of potential furries, thousands of

sales.” I could never explain why, but knew

all the same that sales weren’t like that. Not

everyone was as skeptical, though. I’ve no

doubt Kevin convinced a lot of his artists that

they were going to make hundreds, if not

thousands of dollars. Instead, many got nothing.

The early DI disks were produced in

batches as large as a thousand, and based on

selling all of them, at the full retail price, Kevin

reasoned they had to return huge proits. But

of course he never sold them all at full price.

Worse, he wasted money on promotional

gimmicks (such as ice-cream parties at cons,

and balloons) that ate up proits without selling

the product. As reality set in, he altered his

tactics somewhat, but the new approach wasn’t

likely to help matters either.

Kevin cut down on convention traveling,

then sold most of his disks to other dealers.

He didn’t see the obvious law in the plan,

unfortunately. Nor did he see the drawback

of attempting to pay artists who contributed

by giving them disks to sell instead. The result

could have been foreseen by anyone other than

Kevin. At some cons there were three, four, or

more dealers, and several artists at their tables,

all selling the same disks and undercutting each

other.

Needless to say, the thousands of

dollars Kevin was certain he would make, and

the handsome payments he promised to his

artists, never materialized. He did as well as

he could to pay out of his own pocket, but

inevitably there were many artists who lost

patience after a year or two, and gave up on

him. It was usually “irst come, irst paid,” and

many found Kevin with empty pockets – if they

saw him at all.

More self-defeating behavior followed.

As if driven by Furies of his own nature,

Kevin poured more and more art into the

disks. From a couple of hundred iles, the last

productions grew to ive hundred. I pointed

out that the more art, the more money he

owed to the contributors for each disk. There

were more contributors, as well. If the point

sunk in, it had no noticeable effect.

Toward the end, surprisingly, Kevin

found an investor willing to sink a large amount

of money into Digital Impudendum . I knew

the investor well, and questioned his decision.

But he felt that as a silent partner, he could

exercise some restraint on Kevin and improve

his business practices. In the aftermath, he

would rather his name not be mentioned in

connection with Digital Impudendum , Kevin, or

CD Roms.

Rather than pay off outstanding

liabilities, once he had a substantial amount of

money, Kevin went into hyper-drive. His plans

expanded to the production not of one or two

new disks at a time, but eight or ten all at once.

No thought was given to whether the potential

customer could afford the new series. In the

end, not all the proposed disks were produced.

But something like six were – and predictably

they glutted the market. Where someone

might have bought one or two disks that were

new, now they bought one or two out of a

large choice.

It was increasingly clear that Kevin

produced disks not as a business, but out of an

addiction to pornography. Digital Impudendum

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