The prize for this week's anti-caption contest is a copy of The Rejection Collection Volume 2: The Cream of the Crap, signed by a dozen New Yorker cartoonists. The book collects cartoons submitted to the magazine that didn't quite make the cut, and not necessarily because they weren't funny.
As you may know, the cartoons used in the caption contest begin their lives as rejections. But instead of killing them outright, editor Bob Mankoff strips off the cartoonist's caption and lets readers take a crack at improving it. Often, I'm told, the winning entry is very similar to the rejected original. But sometimes, the cartoonist's punchline is lost forever... until now.
As a special treat for Radosh.net readers, Rejection Collection editor Matt Diffee has agreed to contact his fellow cartoonists and ask them to reveal the original jokes for some of your favorite caption contest cartoons. Obviously, I'm already requesting The hours here are obscene, Everyone knows your parrot's a clip-on and There is a man pinned under this truck. Which others are you dying to know?
