Let's Win the New Yorker Caption Contest

I am so proud of mine.

"Dippy dippy dive and so socialize; how ya gonna make a black nation rise?"

i actually kind of like my "i can't even swim" one, but honestly i don't know what the hell to do with this ugly fucking picture.

"You're honor, but I actually have a real estate license."

^^ whoops that should be "your"

The expressions of his retainers make it seem as though he should be saying something they respectively find in poor taste & shocking.

"Can you explain to the jury exactly what you were doing in the ball pit at Chuck E Cheese?"

His right arm's positioning suggests he is arguing a point.

Ha, Roberto, that's great!

"I misunderstood the meaning of sub-prime."

"I would say I am fairly confident of escaping from Alcatraz, yes."

I'm a little worried about going over the 50 nominations threshold again. Is there any reason that polls are limited to 50 options? I feel bad when it's poll time and I have to delete caption entries.

Is the diver's mouth open, or is his bottom lip jutting out in defiance?

ZS we shld do like we did with the poetry contest and everyone gets to pick the favorite one of theirs they've come up with.

Pick whichever one of mine you like. None are very good.

I thought about that Abbott, but I'm worried it would just get too complicated to do since there are already 2 different threads dedicated to the caption contest.

i liked dan's marco polo one.

You could probably fix all of mine by deleting the preambles.

Actually, did anyone ever submit their own caption? I get the feeling that no one did.

I did for the first one.

eh, i guess i like my speedo and chuck e cheese ones. you can definitely can the rest.
looking back over, i like the flight risk one, the snorkel/acquit one and the free willy one. good shit given the weakness of the source material.

xposts - i submitted the first two weeks' but i didn't see the third one until today.

The flight risk one is pretty excellent.

xpost

Yeah, I wonder about that too. On one hand, I could submit the winner myself, but then if it actually got to top 3 territory I'd worry that I'd somehow be outed as a fraud because it wasn't my caption, and plus it would feel wrong to see my name listed as the caption writer.

And plus, anyone who writes a decent caption should enter, for sure. The more we enter, the better the chance that an ILXor will make it to the top three.

So then it's tempting to say "why have a poll and choose a winner?" But if we eliminate the poll, this whole idea will probably be dead within a few weeks (it may anyway, I suspect).

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_jMCplra4Obw/SdI-9HkdumI/AAAAAAAAAo0/7LtEUfVSj9U/s400/teachers-head-explodes.jpg

i don't get the flight risk one ;_;

The three NYer finalists for the plane caption:

http://i43.tinypic.com/2dhtqu0.jpg

“She thinks her bomb bay makes her look fat.”
Submitted by Eric Schares
Portland, Ore.

“It's a pretty good aircraft, except that it keeps nagging you to ask for directions.”
Submitted by Adam Pfeffer
Boca Raton, Fla.

"She's a lover, not a fighter."
Submitted by Robert McLean
Tampa, Fla.

The three ILXor nominees:

"she was a bitch to land today"

"If comfort were a concern I'd take the train."

"I call her Ladybird, because she's my lady."

Was "If comfort were a concern I'd take the train" entered? Because that one is more New Yorkery than any of the official 3.

ugh those official 3 suck

ha ha bitches want you to ask directions

Seems like they're tired of satirising contemporary middle class mores, going for straight-down-the-line sexist gags. Good job.

Eric Schares, Portland, Ore.; Adam Pfeffer, Boca Raton, Fla.; Robert McLean, Tampa, Fla.: not funny

and they think they look fat! do u see the comedy!

florida is the saddest state

The last one is way, way funny compared to the first two.

None are as good as ours.

i don't get the ladybird one?

yeah, the fact that the winning captions routinely aren't funny kind of removes the one criterion we are all concentrating on.

i just want to know when "new yorker cartoon captions" and "brick-wall comedy hell" started sharing the same tired jokes? or have i not been paying sufficient attention

as a weekly reader of the new yorker, i can't think of the last cartoon they published that even made me smile.

okay, i have modified my approach. how about: "Uh oh, I'm in deep water now!"

it made me cringe just the right amount. i think it could be a winner.

"Well, your honor, I was going down on your wife when the incident occurred."

'So then it's tempting to say "why have a poll and choose a winner?"'
The winner should be entered automatically by Ignatius Lem Xanadu, lest sloth tempt the winner not to enter.

baby ruth?

Agreed.

for the flight risk one, in the poll please put "your honor said" instead of "you said"

he wouldn't fuck w/ court etiquette

I think italicizing "flight" might help too

I'm going to enter "If the snorkel doesn't fit, you must acquit," I think it might be obvious and unfunny enough to have a chance.

"I knew I should have taken that left turn at Albuquerque."

"I've been dressing this way since my business went under."

Yes, I do like this one. It's a pun, but it's elegant. And it has that New Yorkery "oh, the rich" dimension to it.

oh wow, I didn't even get the "under" dimension -- not to workshop everything here, but maybe there's a way to bring that out

(it might be too, umm, specialized a reference to work it into something about a mortgage being "underwater," right?)