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May 15, 2006

No, I mean it. Stop me.

"Stop me if you've heard this one before." —Submitted by Matt as the worst possible caption for New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest #49 (rabbi, priest and minister walk into a bar), April 30.

"Stop me if you've heard this one before." —Selected by New Yorker editors as a finalist for best possible caption for Cartoon Caption Contest #49, May 15.

[Click here for an index to the New Yorker Cartoon Anti-Caption Contest.]

Posted by Daniel Radosh

Comments

To be fair, I added "before," and as the infamous "Fusilli" caption demonstrates, one word can make all the comic difference in the world.

Oh, you're right. Somehow I thought they were exactly the same. The thing that kinda kills me is that one thing that makes this a good anti-caption ought to ruin it as a real one. Not the unfunniness -- that's a given -- but the fact that it makes NO SENSE for the bartender to be saying this to the person on the phone. It's a punchline that ignores a key part of the set-up.

My view is that it kinda of makes sense. Guy picks up the phone as these folks enter the bar, calling a friend. My view for what made it bad was the sheer boring and banal obviousness of it.

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