All hands brace for a rift in the space-time continuum
It had to happen. For the first time in history, an anti-caption contest winner is a finalist in the actual New Yorker caption contest.
Harry Effron, who signs himself just plain Harry in his anti-caption submissions, was honored for his entry, "The hours here are obscene." (I'll let you figure out what the cartoon was.)
Attentive anti-captioners might find that a bit familiar, so here's the behind-the-scenes scoop.
Harry's father, Eric Effron, is a colleague of mine at The Week who sometimes submits to the New Yorker contest but not to the anti-caption contest. A couple of weeks ago, Eric forwarded me his submission for the dingbat clock toon: "The hours here are obscene. Yesterday, I couldn't leave until #@^!." My reply was that it could make a good anti-caption if he changed it to ""The hours here are obscene. Yesterday, I couldn't leave until 7:30. Also, someone has defaced my clock."
As a little inside joke, Harry then submitted that anti-caption to this site -- while also streamlining his father's entry to the actual contest. A few hours later, anticaptioner mypalmike, not knowing any of this, wrote, "Predicted real winner: The first sentence of Harry's entry: 'The hours here are obscene.'"
So let's make that prediction come true! Head over the The New Yorker and vote for Harry Effron (not that he needs our help, given the competition).
Comments
Hey, thanks!!
Just a few nitpicking things, my dad's entry was:
The hours here are obscene, yesterday i didn't get out until #@^!.
Also, the link leads to the entry form, not the voting thing.
Well, thanks again!
Posted by: Harry | July 31, 2006 12:31 PM
What happened to the last Boy Scout anti-caption contest?
Posted by: Charles | July 31, 2006 1:05 PM
Harry: Right. I got ahead of myself. Fixed.
Charles: I didn't think anybody cared? Does anybody care? I'll be happy to post another one as long as I don't have to choose a winner.
Posted by: radosh | July 31, 2006 3:54 PM
Congratulations, Harry! I voted for you.
Posted by: Deborah | July 31, 2006 6:31 PM
You link to Prussian Blue?
Posted by: Meg | July 31, 2006 9:15 PM
Oh, I'm a dick. Sorry. Delete anything I said...
Posted by: Meg | July 31, 2006 9:17 PM
Consider it deleted (although it's not actually). But now that I check that anti-PB blog for the first time in a year, I see that it hasn't actually been updated for a year, so I should probably remove it from the ol' blogroll.
Posted by: radosh | August 1, 2006 9:24 AM