Bukowski Tavern writing contest ($2500!!)

[--Ed.]

(Team Jargon took second and third place last year. Let's see if we can sweep this time...)

The Annual "Pint" and the "Pen" writing contest.

1st Prize: $2500
2nd Prize: $1000
3rd Prize: A set of dollar store steak knives.

All entries must be typed.

All entries must include the word PINT, the word PEN, the name BUKOWSKI and the name HARPOON. The word count must be between 50 and 750 words.

All entries must be submitted at either Bukowski Tavern location. Email and fax entries will not be accepted. Entry forms available at both Bukowski locations and www.harpoonbrewery.com.

Entry deadline: Monday, March 3rd.
Announcement Party: Tuesday, March 11.

[timothygager]

I dropped mine off yesterday to some bartender. Last year they had a box. I'm not trusting of bartenders with big greasy hands and eggs hanging out of their mouth.

They call if you are in the running. Post if you got the call. Expect it next week.

[timothygager]

Anyone get a phone call or hear about anyone else receiving one?

[--Ed.]

Ain't heard nuttin' yet, but what's that mean?

[timothygager]

They usually call the finalists...

[dnucci]

I got a call... but it was just Digs and his usual heavy breathing. It's not funny anymore.

[timothygager]

this came in my e-mail--I'll be willing to stand in for someone at my usual rate of 5%...

This is a change. It used to be that you HAD to be there. Now you can have a stand in which means that someone not local can know someone local....

ATTENTION ALL PARTICIPANTS:
The announcement party for the Pint and Pen contest will be held tomorrow (Tuesday) March 11th at Bukowski Tavern in Cambridge Ma. The party will begin around 7pm, with the first winner being announced shortly after, followed by the runner-up and first place winners. Harpoon Brewery and Weekly Dig representatives will be on hand with trivia, and our Master of Ceremonies Dana (from Improv Boston) will be providing additional entertainment. Winners will be asked to read their story aloud. If for any reason you cannot be on hand should you win, please make sure someone is there in your place. (Respond to this email if that is the case and let us know who will be standing in for you). Bukowski Tavern will be closing at it's normal time (1 am). Better to get here early, as seats are limited, and please remember to drink responsibly. Thank you all for entering! Cheers!
Bukowski Tavern

still have questions? call Bukowski Tavern 617-497-7077

[--Ed.]

Team Jargon swept out of the finals.

Congratulations to all the winners. I didn't hear any of the stories properly, or really catch their names. The acoustics for this show were wack. I hope all three show up either in print or on the Weekly Dig, because I'd like to read the winning entries.

A writing contest held in a bar that awards this good a prize to the winner is a cool thing for Boston to have, and I hope they keep doing it.

I'm going to post my losing story on here tomorrow. We can use this as a forum for anybody else who wants to have some fun and share their defeated entry.

[--Ed.]

“Let’s just hold hands from now on”



I was walking home after missing the train and this girl on roller skates started circling me. “Those knee-high socks are killer,” I said, “but if you’re going to keep smiling at me, I’d like to know your name.”
After a few hours of effortless conversation and genuine beams of joy, we ended up in the stall of a Pizza Hut bathroom. Enthusiasm overpowered coordination. There was a pop and I screamed. My harpoon was bent in the middle.
After three days of swollen pulsing, I had to go to the doctor. “Let’s have a look at the waterworks,” he said, whistling as he inspected the area. “You have a LOT of bruising here. I think Bukowski wrote a story about something like this happening.”
“Who’s Bukowski?”
“Some writer from the ‘60s. You should check him out, you won’t feel so bad about yourself. You’re going to need surgery.”
I told him I didn’t have insurance, and he referred me to a different doctor.

* * *

She held her head in her hands. Her red hair fell down over her face. “It’s all my fault. You’re the second person I’ve done this to.”
“I don’t want to think about you doing that to other people.”
The lounge we were in had pint glasses filled with hard boiled eggs lined across the bar. I asked her to put her hand flat on the bar. I cracked an egg across the big ring on her middle finger and continued to hold her hand.
“Everybody in this dump is ugly, single and drunk. Let’s not be like them. Do you want to be my girlfriend?”
“You should probably meet my mother first.”
“What’s she like?”
“She makes beef jerky and sells it at renaissance fairs and truck shows. Her boyfriend is named Lothar, and he’s in a secret society.”
I had been living off of cheese sandwiches and tap water. Thinking of beef jerky made my mouth water.
“Is she home?” I asked.
“They play Risk for cash every Friday night. I can get us into the game, but it’ll cost us twenty dollars apiece.”
“If we win, I can use the money to help pay for the surgery.”
* * *
In the car, I asked her if she ever heard of that guy Bukowski the doctor was telling me about.
“Sometimes I read him before I go to bed, but I can never get too far.”
“Why not?”
“It gets me kind of hot.”
She gave me an embarrassed look, then put her hand high up on my thigh. I reminded her that I was still in a lot of pain.
“What does it feel like?”
“Like that fire you feel when you wake up and you’ve been sleeping on your hand all night.”
“Can I look?”
My phone went off. It was on silent, but she could feel it vibrating on the side of her head. “Get it,” she laughed.
I did the pocket wiggle and slid it out. It was the doctor, giving me the floor and room number for the surgery. I took a pen from the side console and wrote the info down on my wrist. She was still down there when I got off the phone.
“I’m jealous for the guys who get to work on you tomorrow.”
The muscles in my lap started to loosen. I put the pen in my mouth and angled for a dark parking lot but got cut off by a laundry truck. My brakes and tires were old. There were wet leaves and there was a fire hydrant.
When the airbag went off, it pushed the pen through my teeth and skewered my tongue, pinning it to the back of my throat.
I was vaguely aware that I wasn’t the only one choking.

[timothygager]

Matt, Your story is a least better than the 2nd and 3rd place winners.

[magpie]

i agree. tim too. here's mine

Socko Bukowski and the Dance of Dynamite

You might have heard rumor of this story I’m about to relate, but its best that someone who was there take a pen to it so there are no distortions. The tale of Socko Bukowski and the Dance of Dynamite:

Ol’ Socko’s face was bone white. Whiter even than you might expect of a Polish lead miner. “Pale as a Pole that’s spends his days down the rabbit hole,” Socko would say. Against that winter backdrop stood a monument to a life of refuge in moonshine: the bulbous red nose, a nose as red as a crying babe with a cold. Socko was always gassed, and no amount of damp could dim the flame. You might say he was the harlequin in our outfit, both in conduct and appearance, or maybe ‘Socko’ is just a mite easier to pronounce than Szczepan.

For all his nonsense he was a plum lead miner, deadlier with a pick after a pint of rotgut than John Henry after a pot of coffee; and handier in a pickle than Jesus Christ himself.

We had just mucked out the last of the day when there was a shout from inside the mine followed by the terrible echo of a pocket collapse. A rush of gas escaped the hole, pelting us with bits of stone and blowing an oil lamp off its hook. We all watched dumbly as the godforsaken lamp made a grand jeté through the air and shattered on a pile of fifty pound satchels of E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company dynamite. The lamp oil caught fire and the flames danced gaily across two of the satchels.

Most of us just gaped like dogs being taught the alphabet. Ol’ Socko, bless his name, was the only one with his head on straight. He snatched up the two flaming articles and took off like a harpoon boat. He humped it far enough away that it wouldn’t injure anybody or touch off the rest of the explosives or do any other kind of evil. Socko knew he had done it, but that he had also done himself. There wasn’t time enough to get away so he did the damnedest thing you will ever see, and I don’t care if you’ve been to the moon:

Socko Bukowski did a kind of happy jig. O’Malley said it was a soft-shoe.

The lot of us burst into laughter in spite of ourselves. It might have been the lead in my blood but I swear I saw Old Man Death standing there with him sawin’ a fiddle just about in half.

A moment later and there was a deafening boom and Socko vanished in a tremendous tower of dust. Tiny rocks and other debris rained down on our heads. The dust cloud rolled through and until it passed each of was left alone with our thoughts of Szczepan “Socko” Bukowski, patron saint of the lead miner.

[timothygager]

Nice one. It actually has a narrative voice, unlike...oh well.

[baumerworld]

ehhhh...another story about writer writing

He didn’t drink. He was no Bukowski. His friends dragged him to bars, but most nights it was pretty much a waste of his time. In a way he couldn’t help but be a little bit jealous of them. It seems everybody he knew had a past littered with imaginary trophies in honor of their barroom accomplishments. He doubted his pub history even warranted an honorable mention ribbon and most nights, if he was lucky, all he got was a congratulatory “Thanks for coming” pat on the back as he was leaving. Sometimes he grabbed a handful of peanuts before heading out, but their reward was fleeting and by the time he got home it was nonexistent.
There were times when he sat in a bathroom on the toilet and read while everyone else enjoyed themselves. When he first started getting suckered into tagging along he would take out a book and read it at one of the tables, but he got tired of everyone asking what he was reading. It wasn’t uncommon for these same people to call to him across the bar using a variety of unoriginal nicknames like, “Professor” or “Nerdbrain”. One time someone called him “The Sober Ernie Hemingweights.” He enjoyed that name, but hasn’t heard it since. So, now it’s off to one of the bathroom stalls if he wants to read, but even in these confines he can still hear the yells and cheers of those enjoying a drinking life and many times he can’t help but imagine scenes of men sliding belly first down the bar and woman hanging upside down from the chandelier. Not that any of the bars he ever gets dragged to have a chandelier. Sometimes he writes in the stalls, just a few notes. He has trouble spelling chandelier. It took him three tries to get it right. He still looked it up when he got home to see if he was correct.
To be honest, he doesn’t think too highly of himself. He wonders if there is even much to like about him and this reminds him how he gets nauseous at the smell of ketchup and sometimes throws up a bit in his mouth when he hears the sound a ketchup bottle makes when there isn’t much left inside.
When people try and buy him a pint he politely asks them if they wouldn’t mind making that a Dr. Pepper. They usually lose interest and he’s left buying his own soda. He just asks for water instead.
And of course, there’s always that question, “Why don’t you drink?” He’s been thinking a lot about this lately and for a while he wasn’t even sure. At one point there had been a valid reason, but all the ones he can think of nowadays are petty and snooty. There were, of course, a few years when he really thought he was better than others because of his habits, but now he realizes he was not much better off. Not wanting to get into a long discussion on the ethics of the matter he’s recently enjoyed answering this question by quoting lines from Moby Dick.
“All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever present perils of life.”
Occasionally, he’ll use this one as well, “Art thou the man to pitch a harpoon down a live whale's throat, and then jump after it?”
These were two of his favorites and they work. He hasn’t found a person yet who isn’t confused and who doesn’t leave him to his lonesome once he finishes either line.
In the end though, I think it comes down to him not wanting to be just another alcoholic writer. Jack London, William Faulkner, Raymond Carver, and all the rest have taken the lifestyle of wielding a drunken pen as far as it can go. He knows his struggles would never match their efforts and he’d just turn into a lush fighting the temptation of what comes next: the written word or another sip. So, he sits alone in the stall reading and thinking of the next story as the life around him passes by without him finding much enjoyment in it.

[renaissancejones]

admin said:

“Some writer from the ‘60s. You should check him out, you won’t feel so bad about yourself. You’re going to need surgery.”

Yes Yes Yes! THAT is what I'm screaming! Why fuck with badger milk when there are people who can write this stuff?
I haven't seen the winners but they better be pretty effing good to beat this. YES.
Wet leaves and fire hydrants...
I doff the hat.

[--Ed.]

renaissancejones said:

Why fuck with badger milk when there are people who can write this stuff?

Becasue I'm the most uncreative person you could meet. I couldn't come up with something like badger milk, and I'm jealous of people who can write about things they haven't experienced.

Thanks for the knob-job, but you're still going to have to go through the submission process like everybody else.

[timothygager]

I still havent' seen the winning story on-line.

[renaissancejones]

admin said:

renaissancejones said:

Why fuck with badger milk when there are people who can write this stuff?

Thanks for the knob-job, but you're still going to have to go through the submission process like everybody else.

OUCH! Don't worry about that, just you keep rejecting and I'll keep sending...
Still liked the story and still hate badger milk.

[--Ed.]

Here's the winner. I think it's pretty good:

www.weeklydig.com:80/news-opinions/feature/pint-and-pen/200803/mute