Aug 21, 2017

Sour Grapes?

I love The New Yorker’s cartoons. Well, I love the ones I get, at least. Only a pretentious ass would claim to understand all of them. At least one in each issue is hopelessly obscure. Perhaps it is a drawing of an elegant couple dining in what appears to be a very snooty restaurant. The caption might read, “So Jablonski mispronounced ’Keynesian’ again today” or maybe “Dogs, you say?”

There will be at least a few gems in the same issue. This one that tickled my funny bone is a good example.

Online, the magazine runs a caption contest. Seems to be a fun idea and every so often I submit an entry. Most of my entries are crap, of course. A few are better than that, but no winning entries so far. Click on the thumbnail image at the top of this page. I’ll wait…

So you’ve seen my caption: You thought “hive mind” was just an expression?

I thought it was pretty good. The judges? Not so much. When I read the three finalists, though, I had concede they were pretty good. Better than mine? Probably. I had no complaint really—maybe mine placed fourth. I could live with that.

A winner?

Then a new cartoon, and I nailed it! Here’s my entry in the contest for which voting opened today:

My entry.
A winner, right? Top three certainly. I looked forward to seeing my pixelated name on the website of The New Yorker today. Cheek-by-Jowl with J D Salinger, John Updike, and Andy Borowitz! Only a sad miscarriage of justice or, unlikely but possible, three Pulitzer-worthy, epically funny captions could keep me off of the ballot.