CARTOON CAPTION/ANTI-CAPTION CONTEST CONTINUES! The winner of Contest #26 (monster truck at classical concert) is “That concludes tonight's performance of ‘Pimp My Ride of the Valkyries.'" This victorious entry, by Nancy Doig of Oakland, California, further establishes the Golden State as dominant, with a 5-3 lead over second-place Pennsylvania. (Perhaps it's time to rename the New Yorker competition the Californian Cartoon Caption Contest!)

A tricky thing about Contest #28 (two onlookers watching a modern businessman hail a helmeted horse-borne warrior carrying a mace), is that two characters in the cartoon seem to be talking. There's the businessman...and there's also one of the onlookers in the background. That wasn't clear to many online competitors, including myself.

Anyway, the nominee that I currently favor is something said by an onlooker: “Uh-oh. That last village must have been incorporated.” That's by Jason Bennett of Crozet, Virginia, longtime home of Crozet Pizza. My own submission was said by the businessman: "Listen, buddy...around here we've got poop-scoop laws!" (Did you notice that the horse appears to have pooped?)

Meanwhile, at Dan Radosh's Anti-Caption Contest, the winner of Contest #29 (Gahan Wilson drawing of a DC guy — let's call him "Cheney" — going over a weird map of the United States in front of another DC guy — let's call him "Bush") is "...to sum up, complex patterns are an effective way of differentiating adjacent areas on a map when color printing is unavailable." That's by Patrick Broderick — another Californian!

And here's the spanking new Contest #30.