Day: July 2, 2014

                      “Let me see your license, registration, and mortgage.”

                                                    (by Cary Antebi)

                                   “License, registration and mortgage.”

                                                     (by Dale Stout)

My original caption: “Okay, Mac, where’s the foyer?”

Yes, it’s a tie! Amazingly enough, the two almost identical winning captions were submitted practically simultaneously. I approved and posted them both at the same time, so there was no hanky-panky copying involved. Congratulations, Cary Antebi (fifteenth win) and Dale Stout (fifth win). You are definitely two of the funniest people around!

Other captions that I was considering for top honors:

“Your dining room light is out.” (by John Platt)

“Actually, I’m not sure if I can give you a ticket because your car is now in New York even though your trailer is in Jersey.” (by Ritchie)

My original caption is an unforgivable pun, of course. I still fantasize that there must be a motorcycle cop somewhere out there, just itching to pull over a speeding gigantic RV or trailer so that he can ask, “Okay, Mac, where’s the foyer?”  Disgraceful pun or not, I really liked the cartoon a lot and had great hopes for selling it to some big publication.

Here’s a short, short story about the cartoon:

I was so enthusiastic about it that I included it in a batch I was bringing to Bob Mankoff, Cartoon Editor of The New Yorker, on a Tuesday “Look Day”. I was doing this even though it was common knowledge that cartoons with puns were frowned upon, if not totally banned, at The New Yorker.

So there I was, facing Bob Mankoff across his desk, as he was going through my batch, separating the flatout rejections from the ones he would be holding. I watched as he looked at this cartoon and then put it face down into the “Reject” pile. I couldn’t help but make a comment. I said, “I guess you don’t like to print puns in The New Yorker, huh?”  There was total silence from Bob Mankoff as he stared at me for a moment. Then he did a classic double-take, picked up the cartoon and turned it over. After studying it again for a few long seconds, he placed it back in the “Reject” pile and muttered, “Well, not that one, anyway.”

End of story. Also the end of my enthusiasm for the cartoon.

Keep up the good work, folks. A new caption contest will be coming up soon.