Sunday, November 24, 2013

My Entries in the Moment Cartoon Caption Contest for September/October 2013

After I became a finalist in the very first Moment magazine Cartoon Caption Contest I entered, there was no way I wasn't going to try again. Cartoonist Bob Mankoff created a great gag for the September/October issue and I came up with no fewer than seven entries. Moment is a magazine of Jewish religious thought and culture, and so I tried to fashion my entries somewhat accordingly.


This time around, I submitted my entries as I came up with them, rather than waiting till the very last minute. In this way, I attempted to preclude someone else beating me to the punch line. Here are my seven caption entries.


"Okay, so she left you.  Why go and spoil adultery for everyone?"
"Only ten commandments?  Piece of cake!"
"What do you have against vowels?"

"Why can't we all just do whatever we want?"
"Let's add one more about not leaving socks lying around."
"Why don't I carry that down for you, Butterfingers?"
"Well, I'm free to covet my neighbor's husband. Are you married, Moses?"

Well, there you have it. Adultery, socks, and a klutz who's about to drop the tablets. What could be funnier? Well, I don't get to decide what's funny. Cartoonist Bob Mankoff gets to decide. He just happens to be the New Yorker's cartoon editor, so he may know a little something about the subject of humor. Once again, he let me into the circle of finalists and I'm very grateful. Let's see what he thought was my funniest caption:


January 13, 2014 Update:  Winning caption

Note:  In his roles as cartoonist and cartoon editor of The New Yorker, Bob Mankoff has been the subject of not a few of my blog entries which you can read here, but can he draw a porcupine? As I explain here, we may never know.

Bob Mankoff's superb New Yorker blog is here. Yes, it's that good! I wish he would take my advice and write a memoir.

Here is Mr. Mankoff's New Yorker work in the Cartoon Bank. You get extra credit if you can name the founder of the Cartoon Bank.

You can read all the latest news about Bob Mankoff on Ink Spill here.

Check out the current Moment Caption Contest here. You might even enter the current November/December contest yourself and then vote for one of the September/October caption finalists. You can vote for the funniest, the wittiest, the most effervescent caption. Or you can vote for mine.

Read my previous entries in the July/August Moment Cartoon Caption Contest here. I was a finalist last time around too, you know. While I did not win the contest, I did come up with one of the best captions ever to use the name of a common household water-displacing lubricant. In addition, more than half a year's worth of my misfired entries in The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest can be found here.

Danny Shanahan's website is here. His own monthly Caption Contest is going strong, particularly if you adopt a loose definition of monthly. As you may have surmised, I like to try my hand at the various caption contests that are out there in a contemporary variation of the old principle that if you give enough monkeys typewriters, you'll eventually find a Shakespeare. You can see my non-Shakespearean entries in his first contest here.

Today, my blog has reached 300,000 all-time page views. My younger daughter sums it up nicely: "Dad, you're not even getting paid."

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