Lars Kenseth’s cartoon is set in a bar, where two businessmen are having a drink. To their right, drinking by himself, is a pig in a suit. One of the businessmen is saying something to the other, who’s looking sideways at the pig.
Because pigs are dirty, I came up with these two captions:
- “I’m surprised he ordered it neat.”
- “He’s neither clean nor sober.”
I then alluded to the famous nursery rhyme:
- “That little piggy played the market.”
- “That little piggy got smashed.”
When I was young, misogynists were called male chauvinist pigs, so I thought the businessman might be saying: “And they call us sexist?”
Finally, I combined references to the three little pigs and one of Martin Scorsese’s films: “He got fired by the big bad wolf of Wall Street.”
Now let’s see how you did.
There were many puns this week, and these ten were surprisingly good:
- “He’s a banker.”
- “I hope he gets his baby back.”
- “I didn’t know this was a swine bar.”
- “He caught his wife with another pig in a blanket.”
- “There’s too much pork in Washington.”
- “He’s managed to stay clean since leaving the pen.”
- “You know, though, he might be a capitalist.”
- “Look who just pork bellied up to the bar.”
- “He wasn’t always so pig-headed.”
- “Such a boar.”
Here are the best allusions to the Mother Goose rhyme:
- “This little piggy majored in Marketing.”
- “This little piggy went into market research.”
- “Bad day in the market.”
Here are the best references to the three little pigs:
- “I do know that he lives in a brick house.”
- “That’s the developer that’s building all the brick townhouses.”
- “I understand that his two siblings were not as successful in real estate.”
- “Wrongful death suit over his two brothers.”
And here are the best dirty pig captions:
- “There’s rich — and then there’s stinking, filthy rich.”
- “He cleans up nice.”
- “You’d think he’d order a dirty martini.”
This sports reference doubles as a dark joke: “His whole family is in the NFL.” And the best sick joke suggests that the pig’s trying to drown his sorrows: “He lost his family at a luau.”
As this entry acknowledges, “pig” is a derogatory term for the police: “Stay cool. Undercover cop at 3 o’clock.”
Here’s a fitting reference to a very successful advertising campaign for pork: “The other white-collar.”
This next caption explains how the pig became, against all odds, such a successful businessman: “He broke through the corrugated ceiling.”
And this entry serves as a commentary on the cartoonist’s decision to draw all his human characters as neckless wonders: “I’d kill for that neck.”
Take a common expression used to indicate that something will never happen, combine it with a method used to prevent terrorists from boarding commercial aircraft, and you get the following caption: “I’ve heard that he’s on the no-fly list.”
In the next entry, the businessman’s explaining why he made a particular toast: “But he does have mud in his eye.”
This caption suggests the businessman is pretty hostile while noting that bacon comes from pigs: “I eat guys like him for breakfast.”
And, finally, this caption notes that one part of the pig is shaped like a corkscrew: “They just opened a bottle of wine with his tail.”
This week’s winner is a pun: “I didn’t know this was a swine bar.”
ENTER THIS WEEK’S CAPTION CONTEST
Lawrence Wood has won The New Yorker’s Cartoon Caption Contest a record-setting seven times and been a finalist two other times. He has collaborated with New Yorker cartoonists Peter Kuper, Lila Ash, Felipe Galindo Gomez, and Harry Bliss (until Bliss tossed him aside, as anyone would, to collaborate with Steve Martin). Nine of his collaborations have appeared in The New Yorker, and one is included in the New Yorker Encyclopedia of Cartoons.