Postscripts

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O.Henry Pun-Off

The 24th Annual O.Henry Pun-Off World Championships take place on Saturday, May 19, noon-5pm, at the O.Henry Museum (409 E. Fifth). I can't resist reprinting last year's winning entry, by Tiffany Wimberly of Fayetteville, Ark. She bounded onto the stage in a pink princess outfit and said, "Fair ladies and noble gentlemen. I, Rapunzel, have a hair-raising tale to shear with you written by the brothers Trimm. When I was a young curl, a jealous queen locked me in a tower. I was stranded -- at my split's end -- truly a damsel in dese tresses! The queen thought it was a permanent solution, but day after day, knight after knight would try to rescue me from a tower so tall the follicle you! They would climb my braid, and if they weren't that handsome, I would give them the brush-off. (Gee, I wonder if that's where I got the reputation for being a big tease?) One day, a handsome knight named Prince Latherrinse tried to rescue me. He was head & shoulders above the rest. I said, 'Comb and shave me!' The queen found out about it and cut off my hair. And let me tell you, hell hath no fury as a woman shorned! She'll have hell toupee because I am not someone to tangle with. Prince Latherrinse whisked me away. We got married and had twins but we didn't live happily ever after because he placed too many conditioners on our marriage, which was really crimping my style. So we parted ways and a custody battle ensued and it came down to splitting hairs, so he took one twin and I took the other. So now I don't date princes anymore because I don't want a lather rinse repeat. I've gotten back to my roots by changing my hair from blond to brown, and this new color is to dye for. After all, brunettes have more pun. Well, that's the long and short of my hairy tale story. I bid you all a do."… Stephen Graham Jones is a visiting writer at Texas Tech whose book The Fast Red Road: A Plainsong (FC2, $13.95) is aptly described by those sometimes deadly words "unconventional narrative" but it's also a good read. It is, according to the publisher, "a gleeful, two-fisted plundering of the myth and pop culture surrounding the American Indian. … Indians, cowboys, and outlaws are as changeable as their outfits; horses are traded for Trans-Ams, and men are as likely to strike poses from Gunsmoke as they are from Custer's last stand." That may have "hip" written all over it, but there's something enduring happening in this book: Jones' half-blood protagonist, Pidgin, traverses bleak places in New Mexico like Clovis reconciling his father's death with the white version of Native American history. Jones is a talent to watch. He'll be at BookPeople on Thursday, May 24, at 7pm… David Lindsey will be at BookPeople on Tuesday, May 22, at 7pm to talk about and sign his new thriller Animosity… Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review celebrates the debut of the spring/summer 2001 issue on Saturday, May 19, at 8pm, with a poetry reading at Pieces of the Past (411 W. Monroe)… The Austin Public Library's Riverside Drive Branch, 2410 E. Riverside Drive, has recently reopened; it had been closed for renovation. The Mystery Book Club will reconvene on Wednesday, June 13, and Internet classes will be offered again starting Saturday, May 19. Call 448-0776 for more info… Last week, I said that Tuesday's party at the Katherine Anne Porter Literary Center that celebrated the release of From Texas to the World and Back: Essays on the Journeys of Katherine Anne Porter was happening on what would have been her 101st birthday. She would think this is rude, but Tuesday, May 15 would actually have been her 111th birthday.