CARTOON CAPTION/ANTI-CAPTION CONTESTS CONTINUE!

One week after repeat nominee Lynn Tudor finally won the Caption Contest, another repeat nominee surfaces: Lawrence Wood of Illinois, who is already the winner of Caption Contest 92 (Danny Shanahan dolphin looking for handouts). This time Wood offers this caption in Caption Contest 123 (bull smashes window by red curtain):

"You should be happy. How many husbands even notice window treatments?"

That's up against

"Have you thought about mauve?"
Katy Tracy (Rochester, NY)

"You should see him on Valentine's Day."
Jennifer Just (Woodbridge, CT)

Not in the competition is my submission, which I think was pretty good:

"If you think that's bad, you should see what he did in the china shop."

Winner-wise, top prize in Cartoon Contest 121 (Harry Bliss's funny-face assembly line) goes to

"Yeah, that one's funny, too. Next."
James Keegan (Milton, DE)

Yes, you saw correctly: That's a first win for Delaware, beating out two nominees from New York and keeping the Empire State from tying California in the first-place position!


The winner of Anti-Caption Contest 124 (men crawling across a desert) is

"Kejo: You are overthinking this considerably and *still* being illogical. All the crawlers know that there is no water in the direction they have come. Therefore everyone, upon suddenly coming across a wave of parched crawlers coming the opposite direction, should realize that there is also no water in the direction they are going, and try crawling in a direction that no one is crawling from. Therefore they should make a left or a right turn, although it is impossible to determine which. (Making a 180 degree turn would just send them back where they came from, dooming them to certain death.) In my caption, I hypothesize that most of the crawlers are unable to generate this optimal survival strategy, addled as they are by thirst."
Francis

To get it, I recommend you also check out the Finalists and the first Honorable Mention.

What's that you say? My losers??

"Check out that guy with the bleeping visor cap. I would call him a lucky so-and-so, but I wouldn’t want to offend anyone’s you-know-what sensibility!"

"Reading the Sunday Times just isn’t the same online."

That second one? It's funny in the way it refers to a famous...Roz Chast cartoon? (I've been having trouble finding it.)


Caption Contest 125 is here. Anti-Caption Contest 125 is here.


In other cartoon-related news, Brian Parks has rated New Yorker rating cartoons by the issue for The Village Voice. Don't expect the kind of, um, deep analysis you find here.


THE STANDINGS

Here is the current New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest breakdown by state. You can find it all mapped out here.

20 California

19 New York (17 from the Big Apple)

10 New Jersey

6 Massachusetts
6 Pennsylvania

5 Virginia (two from Richmond)

4 Connecticut (two from New Haven, two not)
4 Illinois (three from Chicago, one from Lake Bluff)
4 Maryland (none named Mary)

3 Georgia (includes two-time winner Carl Gables)
3 Minnesota (Minneapolis 2, St. Paul 1)
3 North Carolina
3 Ohio
3 Texas

2 District of Columbia
2 Mississippi
2 Missouri
2 New Hampshire
2 Oregon (both named Eric, both from Portland)
2 Rhode Island
2 Utah
2 Vermont

1 Alabama
1 Alaska
1 Arizona
1 Delaware
1 Florida
1 Iowa
1 Kentucky
1 Michigan
1 Nevada
1 New Mexico
1 Oklahoma
1 Washington

Map Introduction

Thanks to Andriy Bidochko for Map Builder.

Image by David Marc Fischer using Samsung cameraphone

CARTOON CAPTION/ANTI-CAPTION CONTESTS CONTINUE!

Before moving along to this week's winners and nominees, here's a nod to Erik Gunther's thorough interview with Emily "Emdashes" Gordon over at Yahoo! Picks.

And now for the main course....

In Caption Contest 119 (Danny Shanahan's businessman in large cradle), the winner is

"If he wakes up, you can give him a Martini."
Alan Schulman (Richmond, VA)

That makes two winners in a row from Virginia, which is now in fourth place. Va-va-voom!


New York, long in second place, now seems perched to provide a real challenge to front-runner California—especially if Lynn Tudor finally enters the winner's circle. That's because the nominees in Caption Contest 121 (Harry Bliss's "funny glasses" factory) are

"This part of the job is easy—it's the whoopee-cushion testing that annoys me."
Eric Lindstrom (Ithaca, NY)

"Yeah, that one's funny, too. Next."
James Keegan (Milton, DE)

"I'm just glad we don't make lingerie."
Steven Scher (Bronx, NY)

My appallingly clumsy loser:

"If only the masses understood the hard work behind their laughter."

On reflection, I think I should've gone with

"It wasn't even funny the first time."

In Anti-Caption Contest 120 (P.C. Vey's judge doing dishes), the winner is

"As a liberal judge, I need to keep my hands soft so those slaps on the wrist don't hurt too much. That's why I use Palmolive. It's more than just mild, it softens hands while you do the dishes. Palmolive: tough on grime, but soft on crime!"
Walt

My crude loser:

"Anyone who needs to take a piss while I'm doing the dishes can use the urinal on my left."

Caption Contest 123 is here. Anti-Caption Contest 123 is here.


And the latest on the Thanksgiving cartoon contests can be found here and here.


THE STANDINGS

Here is the current New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest breakdown by state. You can find it all mapped out here.

20 California

18 New York (16 from the Big Apple)

10 New Jersey

6 Massachusetts
6 Pennsylvania

5 Virginia (two from Richmond)

4 Connecticut (two from New Haven, two not)
4 Illinois (three from Chicago, one from Lake Bluff)
4 Maryland (none named Mary)

3 Georgia (includes two-time winner Carl Gables)
3 Minnesota (Minneapolis 2, St. Paul 1)
3 North Carolina
3 Ohio
3 Texas

2 District of Columbia
2 Mississippi
2 Missouri
2 New Hampshire
2 Oregon (both named Eric, both from Portland)
2 Rhode Island
2 Utah
2 Vermont

1 Alabama
1 Alaska
1 Arizona
1 Florida
1 Iowa
1 Kentucky
1 Michigan
1 Nevada
1 New Mexico
1 Oklahoma
1 Washington

Map Introduction

Thanks to Andriy Bidochko for Map Builder.

Image by David Marc Fischer using Samsung cameraphone