Last month’s contest featured a drawing by Tim Mellish, who joined our judges’ panel from Brisbane, Australia, at 2:00 a.m.
His drawing is set in Heaven, where St. Peter is standing by the pearly gates and addressing a man with a leaf blower. Tim’s original caption was, “Surely, you jest,” which is very close to this entry: “You’re joking, right?”
Leaf-blowers, some of you noted, are incredibly loud:
- “We’ve had complaints from the choir director.”
- “What part of ‘Rest in Peace’ don’t you get?”
- “Thanks, but we wake the dead ourselves.”
- “So much for resting in peace.”
- “State your name, loudly.”
The second and fourth entries are essentially the same joke, but the fourth is superior because it ends on a better punchline. (I’m guessing many of you disagree because the second entry was the winning entry in crowdsourcing).
Many of you emphasized the fact that leaf-blowers annoy everyone:
The Almighty:
- “Nature may abhor a vacuum, but God abhors leaf blowers.”
- “There’s a limit to God’s mercy.”
St. Peter:
- “You’d have a better chance with bagpipes.”
- “You most certainly can’t take it with you.”
- “You can’t take it with you.”
- “I’ve heard enough.”
And neighbors (some of whom can be driven to violence):
- “You’d be amazed how many ‘accidental’ deaths involve a neighbor, a shovel and 7:00 AM Landscaping.”
- “It says here your cause of death was ‘refusal to hire a professional.’”
- “I’m afraid too many people prayed that you’d go to hell.”
- “Sorry, but your neighbors all damned you to hell.”
- “I see you’re a victim of justifiable homicide.”
- “7 AM Saturday. We’re expecting you.”
- “Thou shalt not annoy thy neighbor.”
- “I assume someone killed you.”
My fellow judges accuse me of liking any and all sex jokes, but I have standards. Of the two sex jokes we received for this contest, I hated one : “We haven’t had a leaf blower here since Adam and Eve got horny.” But I loved the other: “Blowing leaves at dawn was bad, but the cardinal sin is what you did with the suction setting.”
The first sex joke has several problems, including the fact that it confuses Heaven with The Garden of Eden, as do these two entries:
- “That wasn’t just a leaf. That was Eve’s entire wardrobe.”
- “Careful with the fig leaves.”
I wish those jokes made more sense because they create funny mental images. So does this entry—“Those were banned after the ‘toga incident.’”—but angels wear long, flowing white robes; not the large, white woolen blankets that Romans draped over their tunics. Still, that toga caption made me laugh out loud. If only the person who submitted it had substituted “robe’ for “toga,” they might be $500 richer.
The following entry has St. Peter rejecting the leaf-blower’s attempt at an excuse: “‘But I only use it on Sundays’ is actually worse.”
This pun initially struck me as clever—“You’re late for the Fall.”—but it’s not because leaf blowers have nothing to do with Lucifer’s expulsion from Heaven. In a good pun, the “primary” meaning makes sense, while the “secondary” meaning also fits the subject. This caption doesn’t pass that test, though Greg Borislow, who’s won both The New Yorker and the CartoonStock caption contest and is an expert on puns, may write in to tell me I’m wrong.
“Blow to hell” is a twist on a common expression, but I prefer this version of the same joke: “There’s a special place for you, but it sure as hell isn’t here.”
This caption explains how the man with the leaf blower died while also noting that there are significantly quieter alternatives to gas-powered leaf-blowers: “If you had an electric one, you would have heard the truck.”
This next caption is almost identical to the one that Trevor Hoey’s nine-year-old daughter June wanted to submit: “God already has a leaf blower. It’s called wind.” That’s not a veiled insult. June is hilarious.
Speaking of Trevor and his daughter, they live next to a country club where the members constantly playing pickleball, so he liked this entry: “Whatever it takes to drown out the pickleball pops.”
These next two captions cleverly focus on the mythical, pearly-white entrance to Heaven that St. Peter is guarding:
- “As a gated community we have very strict regulations regarding noise pollution.”
- “You’re going to have to check that at the gate.”
God made Earth a living hell for Job, and this caption suggests that the leaf-blower will do the same thing in Heaven: “Job is not going to like this.”
Here’s the best reference to a Kevin Costner movie from the ‘80s: “They need you at the Field of Dreams.” It’s also a pretty good pun.
All the judges liked this entry—“We called about the feathers.”—but disagreed about its meaning. I thought the man with the leaf-blower had blown all the feathers off his fellow angels’ wings, and was therefore being reprimanded by St. Peter. My fellow judges, however, pointed out that the man with a leaf-blower is not an angel because he doesn’t have wings. He’s a mere mortal whom St. Peter has summoned to Heaven to clear away all the feathers that have simply fallen off the angels’ wings. My fellow judges are probably right.
This next entry suggests that St. Peter puts annoyingly loud angels together: “You’ll be sharing a cloud with the chainsaw guy.”
I’m going to end this month’s commentary by highlighting two terrible captions that Joel Mishon included among his top ten:
- “At first, Billy couldn’t decide if his jet-pack invention had just exploded or had worked rather too well.”
- “You turn that on and you’ll spin like a top.”
The first entry is not a caption; it’s a title. The second is nonsensical. According to Joel it’s a clever reference to the fact that there’s zero gravity in Heaven, but as Bob pointed out: “It’s Heaven, not a space station.”
Congratulations to DANIEL BENEDETTO, who won the contest with, “If it makes you feel better, your neighbor is in custody.” The five runners-up are:
- “‘But I only use it on Sundays’ is actually worse.” PAUL ANGIOLILLO
- “You’d have a better chance with bagpipes.” THOMAS ANDEL
- “There’s a limit to God’s mercy.” IGNACIO SANCHEZ“So much for resting in peace.” NICOLE CHROLAVICIUS
“I’ve heard enough.” AMY E. BAER
If you want to see how we made our selections, we recorded the process and posted it on our website.
Like what you see? Subscribe to our YouTube channel for more Caption Contest episodes.
Next month we’re changing the rules a bit. The winner will get half the money we collect from entrants (which could be far more or far less than $500, depending on the level of participation), and the five runners-up will split the balance. Furthermore, there is no longer a limit to the number of entries you may submit, but after the first three you submit for an entrance fee of $5.00, each additional entry costs $3.00.
The prize money increases with each participant, so encourage your friends to play.
And if you haven’t yet ordered my book on the caption contest even though it’s been out for almost two years, click on the following link: