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April 3, 2009

The Anti-Captioner's last laugh

Friends, The New Yorker magazine desperately needs your help. The success of the caption contest has inspired them to launch an actual cartoon contest, wherein readers have been invited assemble an assortment of pre-approved elements into a funny cartoon about a dogs at a bar.

You have less than four days to prevent this from being an utter disaster. Below are three of the current top vote getters. That's right, these are the best of the bunch. In addition to rescuing the contest from itself, you can win a copy of the Complete Cartoons of the New Yorker. Humor, anti-humor, anything... just enter now, then link your cartoons in the comments section here and we'll all go stuff the ballot box.

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Posted by Daniel Radosh

Comments

Am I spoiling the joke by pointing out it's a Worth 1000 contest, not an official New Yorker contest?

No, it's an official NYer contest "hosted" by w1k but "sponsored" by Conde Nast if you read the fine print. New Yorker editors are doing the judging. Frankly, I'm surprised by the poor quality considering w1k's track record. Usually their stuff is pretty funny.

WWCBD? (What would Charles Barsotti do?)

An email from farley katz:

Hello Caption Contest finalists and winners,

Sorry to bother you with this pesky email, but I thought you might like to
hear about the New Yorker's new cartoon contest game. Entrants are
challenged to make a cartoon from pieces--no drawing skill required. We'd be honored to have skilled captioneers such as yourselves try your hand at the
contest.

This week's theme: dogs at the bar. Only three days left to enter!

http://newyorker.w1k.com/

Caption on,
Farley

Assistant Cartoon Editor
The New Yorker

I thought it was too much a of a pain in the ass, but the experience inspired my entry


Very user unfriendly, but here is my first attempt.

hey -- i didn't get no email from farley!

if it wasn't for daniel i wouldn't know about this fantastic timewaster of a contest!

I couldn't do anything with that editor. I couldn't make dogs appear. And I couldn't make them disappear without Microsoft Paint. So, here's a link to mine.

Here's my entry:

http://newyorker.w1k.com/entry?entry=98z6241a1-EB

Sort of an anti-captiony corny humor that doesn't make sense.

Damon -- You have 1 vote -- from me! This contest seems altogether too complicated unless you're already a photoshop expert, or know how to use feathery peacock layering in that other program i've never seen before. Is this meant to be for average middle aged new yorker readers or for some new young cool computer literate demographic? Either way, it seems to be missing the mark

Richard - Thanks! I have no idea. I consider myself to be pretty damn computer savvy, and I couldn't get it to work after 10 min. of trying. All I could make was something approximating a dog orgy. And there was no Michael Vick to drag and drop.

ok -- harry and j.d. i voted for you too

I'm sorry, I have to remain anonymous...but please vote for my seriously gross entry anyway - before they take it down!

http://newyorker.w1k.com/entry?entry=98z720d65-EB

Uh... how come everything's badly drawn? I don't get it.

Is it so as not to intimidate, or to keep the level of drawing skill commensurate with the "amateur" level of humor they expect?

Funny Times' longstanding build-your-own-cartoon feature, with Matt Wuerker images, is more fun, though, it must be said, sadly lacking in dogs-at-bar components.

I tried to post one but it just wouldn't take. So just imagine two dogs at a bar and one says to the other:

"Fifi, you crazy bitch! How are you?"

This was hard to navigate. Anyway, here's my entry:

http://newyorker.w1k.com/entry?entry=98z8aa4b9-EB

Deborah FTW

My entry has zero votes!

http://newyorker.w1k.com/entry?entry=98z8312f3

Now I understand why my entry got zero votes. Someone else had already done a much better version of the same line.

Better version is here:
http://newyorker.w1k.com/entry?entry=98z5ac92b

I'm going to wait until they have a contest where you can win a collection of all the New Yorker cartoons ever except Roz Chast's. That is all.

http://newyorker.w1k.com/entry?entry=98z3aa45b-EB

Oh word, the voting thing really just needs to be scrapped: http://newyorker.w1k.com/Entries?sort=TotalVotes+DESC

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