CARTOON CAPTION/ANTI-CAPTION CONTESTS CONTINUE! As the weekly New Yorker contest enters its second year, it seems that some interesting patterns are taking shape.

First and foremost, there's that California thing. The winner of Caption Contest #47 (businessmen talking at desk while another is pursued in a corridor) is John Maynard of Berkeley, California with

"How soon can you start?"

This victory moves caption front-runner California into double-digit territory with ten triumphs, leading second-place Pennsylvania by four and third-place New York by five.

So if you had to be from any state, it would be California.

Another, possible, trend (it might turn out to be a blip) is that Anti-Captions have started to turn up as nominees in the Caption Contest. That's what happened in the above case. As previously noted in Blog About Town, the very first entry in Anti-Caption Contest #47 was Peter Moore's

When can you start?

"How soon can you start?" also happened to be the first caption that came to my mind.

Now, among the nominees for Caption Contest #49 (three clergypeople walk into a bar), there's this from Kelly Younger of Los Angeles, California:

"Stop me if you've heard this one."

As Anti-Caption master Dan Radosh notes today, that [oops--nearly] matches Matt's submission in Anti-Caption Contest #49. (And it's ironic, you see, as the winner [oops--nominee] has, in fact, been heard before.) My loser was

"My regulars come here religiously."

Meanwhile, in Anti-Caption Contest #50 (woman talks to man who's wearing something resembling tree bark), the winner (chosen from a multitude of imaginative submissions) is TG Gibbon with

"Did you know a section of the Amazon rainforest the size of a city block is cut down every minute? Oh, of course you did. That's like the holocaust for you people, right?"

My loser was

"If you wait a minute, darling, I’ll change into my dog suit and pee on you. And then it’ll be off to work for the two of us!"

Caption Contest #51 is here. Anti-Caption Contest #51 is here.

Image by David Marc Fischer using Samsung cameraphone