This is my new favorite yearly tradition:

The Pacific Northwest’s biggest, best, and most beloved amateur-and-locally-produced porn festival returns this fall. …The Stranger and the HUMP!™ 2011 jury invite local filmmakers, actors, kinksters, exhibitionists, and notorious sex-havers to get to work on their films for HUMP!™ 2011. The HUMP!™ jury is composed of local sex experts (ahem), sex-positive film critics, and sex-obsessed porn fans. The HUMP!™ jury looks for hotness, humor, and originality. Films do not have to be slick or professionally produced. They do have to be hot or funny or hot and funny.

NEW PRIZE CATEGORIES: Until 2009, HUMP!™ had two grand prizes: a $2,000 prize for Best Humor and a $2,000 prize for Best Hardcore. But some HUMP!™ audience members complained that the categories were too limiting. How were you supposed to vote if your favorite film wasn’t particularly funny or all that hardcore? So last year we created new prize categories and added more money to the purse:

• Best Humor: $1,000 First Prize, $500 First Runner-Up Prize
• Best Sex: $1,000 First Prize, $500 First Runner-Up Prize
• Best Kink: $1,000 First Prize, $500 First Runner-Up Prize

And…

• Best in Show: $4,000 Grand Prize

Prizes will still be awarded by audience ballot. It’s possible that a film could win more than one prize and that a single film—perhaps a hilariously kinky film with a scorching-hot sex scene?—could sweep the HUMP!™ Awards! It’s like the Oscars™ with Orgasms™.

This year’s extra credit props are the number 7, super soakers, and duct tape. I’m already a little wary of the super soakers and duct tape. But I absolutely loved it last year (NSFW), so I can’t wait.