I wandered into line about 6:30 last night outside the Cinema 21. The show I had come for, the sixth annual HUMP! Amateur Porn Festival, had been sold out for days. Tickets went fast for all of this weekend's six screenings. I lucked out and managed to snag a rush ticket and was one of the last five "pervs" allowed into the theater. I managed to find a spot towards the back of the balcony and had to stand up the entire time.

I've been curious about the festival for a few years now. Given that HUMP! is sponsored by The Seattle Stranger and The Portland Mercury, I figured that the shorts would be closer in nature to a Suicide Girls spread than a RedTube video. And who comes to something like this? I figured the crowd would be comprised entirely of leering guys in trench-coats.

Actually, the audience was an even mix of men and women. An usher stood watch in a corner of the balcony, occasionally telling viewers not to sit in the aisles, but also watching to make sure no one got too "excited." A few times he ran over and a shined a light on people for reasons I don't really want to know about. He definitely kept a close eye on one couple that were sharing a seat.






The shorts themselves are mostly humorous. A film parodying Mad Men features a dead-on intro of a black silhouette tumbling from the Space Needle. Drained Balls involved a couple going at it on top of Robocop pinball machine. There's also The Coffee Boy, a send-up of porn cliches that also mocked Portland stereotypes. In this one, a delivery boy is seduced by a hipster girl in a studio apartment over near NW 23rd. In the middle of everything, she tears open a bag of ground coffee and flings it around the room. Another crowd favorite, The Nun and the Bum, involves a sister who takes who love for Jesus far past the point of piousness. And I should also mention "The Hotel Uranus," a Claymation film clogged with Play-Dough aliens merrily enjoying an orgy on an otherwise dull interstellar Saturday night.

Other selections fall flat. A short featuring a satanic baby is irritating and shocking for the sake of being shocking. "Attack of the Triple Ds" is incomprehensible and, worse yet, features 3-D that doesn't actually work. The festival's second short contains enough misogyny to fuel a entire Womens Studies thesis.

My favorite HUMP! short was the bittersweet "Hi, I'm Pon." It consisted of a series of snapshots set to an awesome, slow-build electronic soundtrack. What starts out as a series of sickly-sweet text messages and an ensuing Hallmark-esque relationship mutates into a tale of well-justified revenge after the protagonist discovers a lewd message on her boyfriend's phone. The last shot is perfect. Since you'll likely never get a chance to see this, I'll reveal it here. "Where's the cord for your digital camera?" "Why?" "Oh, there's some pictures I'd like to get off it."

I can see why tickets for the festival sold out quickly. Here's hoping next year's edition adds a few more screenings.

Labels: hipsters, sex, Vices

I really can't come up with anything snarky about this so I'll just say, "Get well soon, Hung Far Low sign."

Labels: chinese food, sex

A few potential titles for this:

"Veep Throat"

"One Hard Beat Away"

"Impalin' Palin"

"V.Pee" (that is if the movie includes "water sports.")

"Behind the Screen Door"

"The West Bada Bing"

"I Can See Russia From the Front Door of My Kinky Sex Dungeon"

"Sexecutive Order"

"Sexecutive Order Part 2: Sexecutive Privilege"

"The Ovular Office"

"Do It Like the Caribou Do"

Ok, that last one is especially lame. A tip o' the hat goes out to "DA" and "SI" for coming up with a few of these.

Three cheers for poor taste! Vote Quimby!

Labels: politics, sex

I know people who have worked as baristas and they'll tell you that it's a bad idea to brew coffee while wearing sneakers and outright insane to do it while dressed in a swim suit. Nonetheless, coffee shops with bikini-clad hostesses have been popping up all over the country. A Bikini Coffee Co. location recently opened in downtown Portland, drawing plenty of local headlines and a few protesters last week. But is the coffee any good?

I wish I could tell you but, honestly, when it comes to coffee I have the tastes of a 14 year-old girl. I'm the sort of person that dumps sugar on Frosted Flakes and actually likes the flavor of Red Bull. Regular coffee tastes like acid-flavored acid to me and I can only drink a cup if I dump in a few handfuls of sugar first. Still, mochas aren't half bad and I can even go so far as to say I like the Snickers-flavored stuff that Dutch Brothers sells.

Fortunately, the downtown Bikini Coffee location sells a similar drink. Unfortunately, it tastes like it's made out of a new hybrid-brand of super sweet sugar brewed in a lab by sadistic flavor scientists. It's just too damn sweet, even for me. As for the rest of the Bikini Coffee Company's menu, it's similar to what you can find at other coffee shops with a few exceptions. There's a "make your own drink" flavor list and a few other offerings named "Blond," "Redhead" and "Brunette."

The downtown location is much smaller than I was expecting and has a sort of tropical theme. I figured the bikini girls only worked the register but I was wrong. They brave the machines themselves and I'm amazed that they're willing to do this, given the possibility of, you know, permanently scarring themselves with 180-degree cups of near-boiling liquid.

In a city that still supposedly holds the record for the highest number of strip clubs in the country per capita, it's hard to get upset over a coffee shop with girls dressed in swim suit tops and shorts. There's at least two strip clubs within a few blocks of the Bikini Coffee Company and who knows how many others within a mile radius. If it makes the protesters feel any better, if this location takes off (no pun intended) it'll open up the opportunity for some local entrepreneur to open a Bikini Briefs Coffee Co. As for myself, despite the perky staff, in more ways than one (har-de-har-har), at downtown shop, I think I'll stick with Dutch Brothers and Stumptown Coffee.

Labels: coffee, sex