Friday, November 22, 2013

NEW YORKER CAPTION CONTEST, YOU ARE MY EVEREST!!!!! (Caption a New Yorker Cartoon)



Time again to Caption A New Yorker Cartoon (in case the post title didn't help you figure out what's going on here.)  It's 6:25 a.m., Mr F is swinging off to my right, and I've got the 1982 Thanksgiving episode of "Family Ties" on Netflix -- I've been watching every old Thanksgiving episode of sitcoms that I can find, to help me with the SUPERTHANXGIVIN' spirit, so I am READY for this.

Let's go.  Okay. Lady staring at giant turkey. The butcher is talking. Are there still butcher shops? Possibly. Maybe New York is as stereotypically New York as John Cheever and Jerry Seinfeld have made it seem?

The obvious joke here is the butcher is explaining how the turkey got so big, and I'd bet about a zillion people are going to go with some kind of steroid joke, so let's go ultrareference with that.

"It was A-Rod's pet turkey."

I kind of like that.  But I want to think weirder.  How about if the butcher is saying:

"It comes with a cement truck to mix the stuffing."

Better.

"We're gonna need a bigger oven."

Thanksgiving-Jaws mashups being the hot thing this year, right? They SHOULD be.

NOTE: I've sort of lost the thread of the storyline on "Family Ties," where the parents were going to protest nuclear weapons on Thanksgiving and somehow ended up in jail.  Alex's grandfather I think is one of the Darren's from Bewitched, which also had a Thanksgiving episode (Wikipedia has a list) but that show isn't on Netflix Instant. I don't know why a movie or TV show wouldn't be on Netflix instant. It makes no sense to me: "We want to make it harder for people to watch our show."

BACK TO WORK, YOU!  OK focus.

"You should see our yams."

I like that because even though it doesn't make sense -- butchers don't sell yams, in case you didn't know -- the word "yams" is funny.  Even though it didn't make the arbitrary list of 100 funniest words in English ("pandiculation" makes the cut, but not "yam"? STUPID KATHRYN HARRIS)(OBSCURE REFERENCE ALERT).

"Yams" also sounds like it might be just a little naughty.

"We ship them in from Texas?"

No, too obvious. Plus, why would The New Yorker want to pay a compliment to Texas?

Right now, Elyse is talking about the jail cell:

Elyse: You know, this place could use some redecorating.
Steven: First thing I'd do is take out those bars.

Ha, the 80s!

How about

"If that's not enough I can get the big one."

I like that one the best, so far.

"We don't deliver."

I'm going to go with "If that's not enough I can get the big one."

UPDATE: I entered it, and now I think I should've gone with yams.

UPDATE, 2: I ran them by Sweetie, who liked "We're gonna need a bigger oven," and liked A-Rod second best, so I tried to enter that under her name by going back to the form but I didn't realize that I'd left my original entry (If that's not enough...) in so now it looks as though Sweetie and I both entered the same caption. CRAP CRAP CRAP.

UPDATE 3: I entered "bigger oven" using my work email.

Anyway: the episode ended (SPOILER ALERT!) with the family eating Thanksgiving dinner in the jail, after Grandma brought it down. When asked how they got the food in there, Grandma said something about how there wasn't a guard in the jail who hadn't gotten a taste of her dumplings.  Which is EXACTLY the kind of discomforting joke about elderly women having sex with multiple partners that made the 1980s the 'family friendly' era we all remember so fondly.

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A few quick announcements:

I'm STILL open for PAID submissions for my writing blog, lit: you can get paid for stories and/or enter a contest that might get you paid even MORE.  Submissions are starting to come in but I need MORE MORE MORE BWHAHAHAHAHA... wait, that ended badly.  CLICK HERE FOR DETAILS including the email to submit to.  

Over on Me, Annotated I've been revisiting Thanksgiving memories by posting what I call SUPERTHANXGIVIN', so check that out if you need to remember that Thanksgiving is an actual holiday.  (I'll be in line at Best Buy.)  CLICK HERE TO GO TO THAT SITE.


Your other links to check out?

Here's that list of the 100 funniest words I made a reference to.

If you're done here, why not check out Tina Downey's blog? She writes about grilled cheese with a skill that would make that guy who actually wrote all of Shakespeare's plays jealous. Click here to go to her site. (If you tell her I sent you, you get 10% off admission to her All Night Spectacular.)

PS: Tina, you'd better put together an "All Night Spectacular." Don't want to let these people down.  You might get literally ones of people coming from this blog. 





5 comments:

Crystal Collier said...

I think your first entry was the best. Reading through all those, it was my favorite. Although, the Yams comment was pretty hilarious too.

Andrew Leon said...

I'm undecided on which is best. I mean, the oven one is good, but it's also obvious. I bet it gets submitted a lot.

Now I'm thinking maybe something like, "I'll just take the drumstick."

I do have a story that I'm working on, but I should probably talk to you about it.

Briane said...

I like yours, Andrew.

Crystal: If there's one thing all of us can agree on, it's that yams are funny.

Andrew Leon said...

I responded to your Oblivion comment, just by the way. I'm not sure if it's re-comment-worthy or not.

Liz A. said...

Bigger oven is my favorite.