In Which I Try To Win The New Yorker’s Seinfeld-Themed Caption Contest
Drawing by Mick Stevens
Well, I’m still in the midst of my blogging ”vacation.” (Okay, I’m actually home. I use “vacation” in the sense that it’s July, no one’s doing anything, nothing’s happening, and I have to build up my stamina to bang out 1,400 NFL, fantasy football, baseball stretch run, and pop culture posts once summer winds down in late August and interesting shit starts happening again.) Nevertheless, I’ll be popping up with some left-field topics to fill the void until that aforementioned “shit” does indeed start “happening,” and today’s topic is a slam dunk. For their weekly caption contest, The New Yorker has decided to run, sans caption, the cartoon Elaine drew in the classic ninth season Seinfeld episode, appropriately titled “The Cartoon.” To refresh your memory in case you haven’t seen the episode during one of the show’s 40 daily airings in syndication, the plot revolved around Elaine’s attempt to come up with her own take on The New Yorker’s classic single-panel comics after becoming frustrated with an admittedly indecipherable joke published in a recent issue. She eventually finds that her cartoon—a pig at a complaint department puling about his diminutive stature—unwittingly stole the entire idea from a Ziggy comic and …oh, just watch the clips:
Well I wouldn’t dare be the charlatan who steals the irreverence and wit of a Ziggy and passes it off as his own, but I am certainly capable of coming up with a few original ideas that would serve as a worthy successor to Ms. Benes’s indelible creation. With “Inappropriate Photo Caption” on hiatus since the NBA Finals, this serves as the perfect opportunity to dust off the old captionin’ skillz and try to win this esteemed magazine’s weekly contest. And while we’re at it, why not incorporate a little democracy into my efforts and let Between the Beers decide what I should choose as my final entry? (To be frank, I’m likely to go Middle Eastern-style democracy and disregard whatever you pick and go with the one I originally wanted anyway.) My ten nominees are listed below. Vote in the accompanying poll, pitch some suggestions of your own in the comments, and let’s give those snooty high society literati a taste of the blogosphere! (Unless they pick my entry, in which I case I humbly and graciously thank the resplendent publication that remains a time-tested literary beacon consistently offering an erudite, sophisticated explication of the cultural zeitgeist.)
1. “The New Yorker is literally stealing someone’s ideas.”
2. “I’d like to report two things: First, my disgust and outrage at Daniel Tosh’s appalling rape joke; second, an actual rape.”
3. “Orwell’s estate has been shorting my residual checks again.”
4. “I tried to report it to every other department at Penn State and they eventually sent me here.”
5. “Holy shit, dad from Family Circus? Yeah, I can keep a secret.”
6. “Can you choke me while I masturbate?”
(Note: This one has zero chance of winning, but it would be funny if a glitch caused it to be mistakenly posted as a finalist. I’d enjoy reading David Remnick’s press release apologizing the next morning. It would definitely feature the word “crude” several times.)
7. “Considering your job, I’m not going to tell you to put the gun away, but can you at least direct me to the bathroom first?”
8. “That drunk son of a bitch is subletting my sty to vagrants again!”
9. “No, my complaint is about the rashes on your strippers. The buffet was surprisingly delectable.”
10. “I wish I was taller. Also, I wish I was of a species that wasn’t brutally slaughtered en masse to fulfill inventory needs at Denny’s.”
Anyway, cast your vote below. And even if I don’t make the finals, you can still vote for the successor to Elaine’s worthwhile “gem” when The New Yorker announces the finalists after voting ends Sunday night. If a handful of voter fraud-obsessed governors have their way, this might be the closest thing we have to democracy in 2012.
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