At HUMP! even the ballot boxes get in on the action...

Audience members at HUMP! get to vote for Best Sex, Best Kink, Best Humor, and Best In Show, and they get to stuff their ballots into one of two boxes: Boyhole Starfruit Ballot Box or Girlhole Twatsnatch Ballot Box. (The ballot boxes were named by HUMP!'s majority-female door staff.) And which voterifice do HUMPers prefer? By a two-to-one margin, HUMP!ers prefer Boyhole Starfruit to Girlhole Twatsnatch. We dump out both ballot boxes at the end of every show and there are always twice as many ballots in Boyhole Starfruit as there are in Girlhole Twatsnatch. And it's not just gay dudes who are stuffing it in Boyhole. While gay dudes are responsible some of this year's best films—the fags really brought it—they don't make up 2/3 of the HUMP! audience. Straight girls, straight guys, gay guys, bisexuals: everybody loves Boyhole Starfruit.

In other HUMP! news...

All of today's shows—4, 6, 8, 10, and Midnight—are sold out, but there are rush tickets available before each show. Last night we were able to get almost all rushers in. So if you don't have a ticket and you want to get HUMP!ed, get down to On the Boards 45 minutes before a screening and line up. (If you bought more tickets to a screening than you wound up needing, let us know at the door and we'll sell your ticket to a rusher and give you the money.) Please note: there's a lot of construction on Mercer and traffic is a nightmare. Budget extra time, if you're driving, so you don't miss any of the films.

Also... for folks who've already seen HUMP!, this is your open thread to discuss this year's entries. Did you catch the duct tape in Mythical Proportions? Freaked out by Don't Call Me Missy? Gutted by Knife? Was your mind blown by Go Fuck Yourself? Were carbphobes freaked out by Donut? Creamed by Teenage Dream?

Discuss!

UPDATE: A HUMP!er who stuffed his/her ballot in Girlhole Twatsnatch asks...

Good question! We only got one submission with girl-on-girl-on(-donut) action this year, and it's in the festival. We've certainly had more dyke porn in the past and we would've loved to have had more this year. We've noticed that in the years when we get lots of gay porn, we don't get as much dyke porn and vice-versa. This year the gay boys brought it. Hopefully next year the dykes will bring it. Consider this a challenge, lady-lovin' ladies.

UPDATE 2: More HUMP! Questions!

Some folks leave notes on the backs of their ballots—penetrating questions for the curators and organizers of Seattle's biggest, best, and only amateur and locally-produced porn festival—and I'm going to reproduce some of them here and answer 'em to the best of my ability. Some people just leave boob doodles on the backs of their ballots. We'll reproduce those here too. (Spoilers ahead, click carefully.)

It's not true that there are only two films this year without dicks. There are a few lady-self-pleasurin' films with no dicks in 'em at all. But there is—without a doubt—not nearly enough dyke and/or girl-on-girl and/or dickless action this year, as I acknowledged earlier. And here's what a lesbian on the HUMP! jury had to say about the general dickfulness of this year's HUMP!: "There weren't any girl-on-girl films submitted but the one," says lesbian HUMP! jury member who is sitting beside me here at OTB. "We didn't turn any away. It would've been nice to have more." I'll translate: If you want to see more dyke or girl-on-girl porn in HUMP!, make more dyke and/or girl-on-girl porn for HUMP!

Nice!

Mild spoiler alert for folks who haven't been to HUMP! yet: of the 23 films in HUMP! this year, twelve are hetero, seven are gay, two are ladies-only-self-pleasurin', one is girl-on-girl action, and one is girl-on-girl light saberin'. So it's mostly hetero, grumpy hetero HUMP!er. Yes, you had to watch some gay stuff at HUMP! But the gays had to watch a lot more straight stuff. So chill the fuck out, 'kay?

Random!

Four grand prizes are awarded at HUMP!—"Best Kink" ($1000), "Best Sex" ($1000), "Best Humor" ($1000), and Best In Show ($4000)—with winners chosen by semi-secret audience ballot. (Sometimes I ask people who they're voting for when they're filing out of the theater.) All films qualify for "Best In Show." People are free to vote for a film in any category that it qualifies in. Films without actual sex in them, or without any kink in 'em, or that aren't in the least bit funny, don't qualify for sex or kink or humor awards, respectively.

Why not let the audience sort it out? Well, take the sex prize. There's a lot of erotica in HUMP!, some great animation, and some hot films that feature simulated sex. We love those films, and on more than one occasion one of 'em has won "Best In Show." We created the "Best Sex" prize because we think filmmakers and performers who actually have sex on camera—we count masturbation as sex—deserve special recognition. It's a porn festival, after all. That's why we don't allow you to vote in the "Best Sex" category for a film with no actual sex in it.

And allowing a few random/confused people to vote for a film in a category that it doesn't have any chance of winning—allowing kink votes film with no kink, or humor votes for a film that isn't funny—could drain votes away from a film in the category or categories that it actually has a chance of winning, which wouldn't do the filmmakers any favors.

Beautiful!