The MCs onstage punctuate almost every routine with punny zingers. Sometimes it’s pithy commentary on how the latest routine went over, and sometimes the MCs just see an opportunity for wordplay and can’t resist. Many in the crowd share the exact same affliction, so the running commentary is welcome. It’s part of what they’re here for. Every now and then, though, the insatiable urge to make puns leads our hosts down a dark path. When a plucky young woman with apricot hair gives a spirited performance about pastries, the judges are surprisingly stingy with her score. As the low hum of booing begins, Gary clears his throat.
“The audience wants to curve your score,” he says to the woman. “Can you show ’em your curves?”
Ariel and Ally look at each other like they each accidentally swallowed some rotten wasabi.
“Are you serious?” Ally says.
Onstage, the punster’s glasses briefly levitate with rage, but she quickly recovers and walks away, stoic, giving the incoming performer an eye-contact-free high five. If the MCs feel any residual awkward tension from the moment, it doesn’t show.
A lot of people turn up at the O. Henry dressed for the occasion. When Darren Walsh, winner of the UK Pun Championships, competed years ago, he performed in a chicken suit. Just last night, Andy Balinsky accepted his award for International Punster of the Year in full Shakespearean garb. Still, even after these previous signal flares, the pageantry and props of the O. Henry take me by surprise. Former champ Dav Wallace wears a sheriff’s outfit to make an inspired stream of Color puns. An old man who looks like a Bill Plympton cartoon pulls out a stalk of broccoli and says, “Give me your money—it’s a broccoli rabe!” A guy wearing a medieval leather doublet over a blousy shirt and steampunk boots slays with a Game of Thrones routine, while another dude decked out like a Spanish conquistador flounders with his saga of Puns de Leon. Andy Balinsky accentuates his outfit from last night with a pink tutu for a vanity-free turn combining Elizabethanspeak with dance puns—only too well, though. He crams in so many puns, so densely clustered together, that it sounds like pure madness, glittering gobbledygook. By the time he gets to the line “But softshoe, what tights do yonder swingdow breakdances,” each word feels like an English professor tap dancing on my medulla oblongata.
The performer who gets the most mileage out of a costume, though, is Michael, the blond guy we met last night who’d been grinning like he had an ace up his sleeve. He did. Michael walks onstage in a crisp, tailored suit, carrying a tripod covered with a drop cloth. He turns away from the crowd and pulls out a tufty wig, like hay-colored cotton candy. Then he removes the cloth, revealing a mock campaign sign, dotted with bits of broccoli, which reads turnip: make america green again.
“Very exciting,” says Sam, straightening up. She is not being sarcastic. This is by far the grandest entrance yet.
The one unifying element during all these months of punning is that everywhere I’ve been, everyone despises Donald Trump. Despite any differences between the Austin and Brooklyn crowd, he is something we can all agree upon. Trump has come up already as a brief punch line in at least three routines so far today, but this turn is totally dedicated to him—a stump speech using all vegetable puns. Vegetables have proven far more popular at the O. Henry than I had anticipated, by the way. Michael is the fourth person who puns on this topic, aside from me, the broccoli rob guy, and a woman in awesome white cowboy boots who had the inverted version of my routine, using meat puns to talk about being a vegan. Michael is committed to the bit, stomping around the stage in a contained frenzy, pointing at the crowd and saying things like, “We will not cabbage-ulate to radish-al Islam.” When the judges scores go up, it’s all 10s. We may have found our winner already. I don’t see Jerzy around anywhere, but I imagine him pacing much faster now, his footsteps razing the grass and leaving grooves in the dirt.
As many routines as there are about vegetables, Michael’s perfectly scored turn is one of only two dedicated to Trump. So far, that is. When Tim appears onstage, in calf-length jorts, tattoo of a sentient pineapple peering out beneath his shirtsleeve, the entire Brooklyn group greets him with supportive screams. Tim looks emboldened by the applause and right from go, he is charged up and talking faster than I’ve ever heard him speak. Tim’s focus is trashing Trump, but there’s no second angle—like, say, vegetables—so the puns are about anything and everything.
“Before he was in real estate, Trump was a pickle maker, but he couldn’t master the art of the dill,” Tim says, one arm in the air like alas, poor Yorick. “He had a side business selling terrible meat; it was a low-steaks operation. He also had a winery but he quit when he couldn’t make America grapes again.”
Tim rapidly rolls through food puns, Hitler puns, and currency puns—his blink-and-you’ll-miss-it delivery a sharp contrast with Michael’s sermon-like Trump routine, which he played to the cheap seats. The crowd is laughing the entire time, and Tim ends up with an almost perfect score, a 39. He looks satisfied as he leaves the stage to await his turn in Punslingers.
Although Jerzy is still nowhere in sight, Jordan has now joined our enclave beneath the tent, and he’s brought the rest of his family with him. It turns out Jordan made it into Punslingers at the last minute, and so has the much-anticipated third Gwiazdowski brother. Toby Gwiazdowski has never been to O. Henry before, but he’s a frequent champ at Pundemonium, the Punderdome equivalent in Milwaukee. If Jordan has a tendency to dress like a hipster vampire, and Jerzy looks like an art professor or magician, depending on the day, Toby looks more like a dad—probably because he is one. He has on a short-sleeve red gingham shirt and keeps his phone inside the breast pocket like Joaquin Phoenix in Her. Although he’s the middle brother, Toby has the most receding hairline, and looks most like his dad, who in turn is wearing a keep calm and eat perogi shirt, which is just incredibly on-brand for someone named Gwiazdowski. The family migrated here to meet us, but more important, to get an unobstructed view since Jerzy is almost up.
Every now and then, a pun is so bad, the crowd revolts beyond the level of mere groaning. They draw out the word Awww so that it projects something between scorn and sympathy, like “Why have you done this to us?” One brainy, grating routine about rhetorical devices is delivered so clumsily the audience looks shell-shocked by the time it’s over. “I shouldn’t let e-pipha-me off so much, but I believe in-the-end-you-don’t let me down about that,” the punster says, with a ta-da flourish. When one of the judges holds up an 8, Isaac suggests that perhaps this judge is that punster’s father.
Pun fatigue has set in. We haven’t quite hit the three-hour mark yet, matching Punderdome length, but the repetition of watching one person after another march onstage and recite puns in a recursive loop requires far more spectator stamina.
By now, Nikolai is just yawning and swiping away on Tinder.
“It’s all UT students,” he says, when he catches me looking at his phone. “I’m maybe a bit past the point of dating college girls.”
He’s only a few years out of college himself, but every man must have a code. I think: Niko-lay, but dare not say it.
Tim and Meghan soon join our area in the tent, toting a twelve-pack of Lone Star and a flask of whiskey.
“Jo Firestone told me the most important thing is to bring a blanket and lots of beer,” Tim says, still flush from his victorious turn onstage.
Nearly everybody grabs a Lone Star.
Jerzy suddenly emerges from wherever he’d been practicing and waits in the wings with Ben Ziek. Jerzy is pointing at the performer currently onstage, and Ziek is nodding along, as though the two are appraising a painting. When this punster is finished, Gary Hallock and Steve Brooks take great care to mention that he braved a trip to the O. Henry all the way from New Jersey.
“‘Speaking of Jersey . . .’” Ally says in a dopey voice.
“Speaking of Jersey . . .” Gary says a second later, prophecy fulfilled. Gary is then briefly drowned out by all the clapping and whooping from the Punderdom
e group and Jerzy’s family. Much of his last year has all been leading up to this moment.
Jerzy looks too focused to inhale oxygen. He is a slingshot stretched tight, a wheezy teakettle, a starved Doberman who smells steak on the other side of the door. He keeps touching his hair and nodding while the MCs introduce him.
“How many times is this for you?” David asks.
“This is my fourth time.”
“May the fourth be with you,” Gary says, before adding, “and sometimes metaphors be with you.”
A hero in the audience yells out “Don’t stop!” and chortles like a mall teenager.
It is with the squelch of microphone feedback that Jerzy launches into his opening line, which explains the premise of this routine: “Stop the wedding! I just walked through all fifty countries in Asia to be here. Actually, I ran.”
He hits the ground flying, cranked up to an 11 from the moment he opens his mouth. It feels like overkill at first, you can practically taste how bad he wants to win. Jerzy is trying to bludgeon the crowd into submission through intellect and sheer force of will. Every word is deliberate and necessary, though, with no filler whatsoever. His hands pulsate in the air like hummingbird wings—stay with me, watch what I’m doing—as he finds a sweet spot between cerebral and silly, and soars higher and higher.
“I been in a malays-since ya left,” he yells. “But I think the jig isn’t up for me, because I think tajikistanding up for what you believe in. Afghanistan up for myself. Be-kazakhstan here knowing I don’t stand alone, that’s what gives me the kyrgyzstan. I look as John stands. I look uzbekistans. And John as you’re by Becky and Becky as you’re by John, now there Armenia us, the whole pakistanding up. Yeah-men!”
The crowd noise is a rumbly orchestra of goofballs going gaga. Steve and Gary onstage look riveted, grinning ear to ear. Today is their Christmas.
Jerzy loses his place for an instant, shaking his head, eyes wide—ninety-second airhorn blowing as he stutters. Then he inhales deeply and says, “Listen, here’s what I’m trying to say, baby.” Text merges with subtext and he’s talking directly to the crowd, not his fake international lover. Disregard that flub, the closer is coming.
Just before the bell dings, he squeezes in his final line: “I can’t go Lebanon without you, because what we have Is-rael!”
The cheers that follow are Yankee Stadium–level, far surpassing Punderdome, and they go on and on. Jerzy lets out a breath and clutches his stomach like he’s going to collapse. His score is 10s all across the board.
“We could’ve saved a lot of time if he’d gone first,” Steve Brooks says.
Max looks at me and we both just shake our heads. Jerzy is on another level. His is the second perfect score of the day, though, so the trophy doesn’t have his name engraved on it yet.
As the next performer takes the stage and launches into a resoundingly average punologue, some people get up to stretch their legs. The momentum of Jerzy’s turn quickly dissipates and is replaced by something between amusement and indifference. There’s still plenty of crosstalk going on when former champ Southpaw Jones takes the stage next, so the audience is taken aback when he starts to crush. Southpaw is equally as passionate as Jerzy, but more chipper. His topic is Birds and he manages to cram in dozens of avian puns as gently and fluidly as one of those drinking bird toys.
“Beek kind to me, don’t thrush to judgment, I’m not robin anyone, hawking anything, talon tails out of school, ducking responsibilities or emulating anyone,” he says, getting a huge laugh. When he’s finished, he takes a knee, looking just as drained as Jerzy did after his turn. The crowd response is similar, too. It’s the third perfect score of the day, something completely unprecedented at O. Henry.
The judges aren’t pushovers, either. Unlike the Punderdome clap-o-meters, these guys don’t shy away from giving 5s and 6s. They won’t candy-coat contestants’ scores for the sake of self-esteem, and when they’re turned off, they let it be known. The judge who looks like the American Gothic farmer, for instance, always seems at least a little aghast, especially during the occasional sex pun. The O. Henry is a family-friendly event, light on racy material. We make it almost all the way to the end of Punniest of Show, for instance, before getting a seriously filthy entry. Then a young guy with a lumberjack beard starts with a pun about handjobs, and gets way raunchier from there.
“I had thought about making pasta but I’m very particular about it,” he says, flatly, “because I’m an anal linguini-ist.”
Before today, the O. Henry has never seen three perfect scores before, nor had it ever heard a pun about eating ass. It’s a historic day.
The judges give this performer lots of 6s and 8s, but Gracie holds up both a 6 and a 9. None of the other judges seem aware why folks are pointing toward them and laughing.
In an unfortunate case of timing, the star slam poet Big Poppa E is up next, his long-awaited return to the O. Henry stage after five years away. The man born as Eirik Ott has won here before with his bawdy routines, partly because they were such a break from all the PG-rated material preceding them. When everybody in the crowd has just heard a guy make a pasta-based analingus pun, though, they just may be too desensitized to perk up much for a guy talking about going to a dog park with “my big fat wiener hanging out.” It’s like being offered dessert after pancakes.
Big Poppa E—diminutive, bushy bearded, clutching a Moleskine—gets some laughs, but his face buzzes with awareness that he’s not killing. When the judges score him, he gets all 8s and 9s. Afterward, E shuffles offstage and over to a beach blanket beneath the pavilion, looking deflated. His wife puts a tender hand on his thigh, smiling warmly. There’s always next year. Maybe not, though.
When Ben Ziek is finally up, he takes a moment before his turn to address the crowd.
“Can I just say really quick, to everyone’s performances so far: you guys are amazing, you really raised the bar.”
As the crowd claps, seconding Ziek’s praise, Gary adds, “No pander intended,” and the cheering tapers off.
Ziek’s primary forte is Punslingers—he’s won it four out of the past six years—but he’s also won Punniest of Show twice. His turn today makes it obvious why. Although Ziek has the build of a certain kind of wrestling heel, he’s surprisingly limber on his feet, miming his way through a routine that’s all about dancing. Andy Balinsky may have had the same topic earlier, but Ziek puts his own unique spin on it, and his puns have the same effortlessly dense quality as Southpaw Jones’s.
“I’m in a two-step program,” he says near the end. “Will it twerk? Hula hell knows.”
It’s an impressive turn, but after three perfect scores already, the ceiling for impressing the crowd is high. The judges give Ziek a 37, and he betrays no disappointment with it. He still has another chance to win, with Punslingers, but from his unruffled demeanor, winning appears not to be a concern.
After all thirty-two contestants have finished, Gary summons Jerzy, Southpaw, and Michael to the stage for a clap-off to decide the winner. In place of the audience-pleading and body-gyrating Punderdome version, Gary instructs each of them to perform thirty seconds of their routines again. Michael is up first, still wearing a full suit and flouncy Trump wig. He launches right back into the middle of his routine, leaning into a campaign speech voice. Without the momentum leading up to this excerpt, though, it falls a little flat. Jerzy dials down the enthusiasm a notch during his turn—the emphasis on clarity, rather than beating the clock—and the audience laughs in kind. Southpaw sounds just as exuberant as before, but he loses his place toward the end and gives up, yelling, “That’s all I have!”
When David asks the crowd to cheer for Michael, the Trump surrogate raises up his giant blue campaign sign—make america green again—and there’s a note of reserve in response. Everybody is holding back, but for whom?
Jerzy’s face is at war with itself in this moment before his applause is to be weighed like a prize fish. He’s smiling, but it’s a tr
embly smile. Nobody looks as worried as someone trying hard not to look worried. But then Jerzy steps forward and the tremble is gone as the crowd reacts to him. Everybody in the Punderdome group is on their feet, dumbing out, and when I look over the crowd, several people in the sprawling field behind O. Henry’s house are standing up, too, overhead clapping like a Springsteen audience during “Born to Run.” Onstage, Jerzy whips out his phone and takes a picture of this ovation, which keeps going even after the airhorn blows to end it.
“Sounds like somebody has some special delegates,” David says, gesturing toward where we’re sitting.
Southpaw draws more crowd-love than Michael did, but the audience seems to be holding back again. The people have spoken, and the MCs recognize it immediately.
“I think we have it decided,” David says, looking across the stage at Gary and nodding. “In third place: Michael Kohl.”
Jerzy betrays no worry from where he stands onstage.
“Second place: Southpaw Jones,” David says.
All the Punderdomers are on our feet again, cheering. Jerzy has just won Punniest of Show at the O. Henry for the second time. Of course, there’s still the matter of Punslingers, the only trophy Jerzy hasn’t won yet. He came here to retrieve it, and he’s about to get his chance. However, first he’s going to have to get past Ben Ziek or possibly Isaac, Ariel, either of his brothers, or any of the other contenders. Even though Jerzy is already exultant, pumping his fist onstage, the real battle is about to begin.
13
Punslingers
The first round of Punslingers is endless. In what humans call time, it takes less than two hours. Considering we’d already sat through hours of puns beforehand, though, it feels more like the interminable unfolding in which yarn is knitted into fabric and sewn into clothes and those clothes go out of style.
Away with Words Page 20