Caption Contest Commentary

Jack Ziegler updated a German fairy tale by turning Rapunzel’s tower into an apartment building. She’s leaning out a fourth story window and letting her long hair cascade down to the sidewalk below, where a man is standing in front of the building’s entrance and shouting up to her. My first several captions identify easier…
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Before we get to this week’s commentary, I want to let you know that I am for the first time in more than two years a finalist in that other caption contest at the New Yorker. I’ll let you know in two weeks whether I can claim my eighth victory, or whether I have lost…
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In Bob Eckstein’s cartoon, a doctor who’s bandaging a patient from head to toe is pushing his foot against the patient’s back for leverage, and delivering the line that will serve as the caption. Focusing on the tape, I first made an insurance joke: “If you had Medicaid, I’d have to use red tape.” I…
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Drew Dernavich has drawn a man standing at an ATM and speaking to the guy behind him. Standing inside the machine is another man whom we see only from the shins down. I have a lot of affection for this cartoon, as it brings me back to 1965, when my older sister, Barb, and her…
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Kim Warp has drawn two thugs on the roof of a building. One of them is holding a man upside down by his ankles and, it would seem, threatening to let him fall to his death. The man who’s hanging upside down is talking. He looks annoyed (his arms are crossed) but remarkably calm given…
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