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Last month\u2019s contest featured a drawing by Isabella Bannerman, who worked on <\/span>Pee-wee\u2019s Playhouse<\/span><\/i> and is, along with five other women (including <\/span>New Yorker<\/span><\/i> cartoonist Mary Lawton), one of the panel artists for the syndicated daily comic strip \u201cSix Chix.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Isabella\u2019s drawing is set in a restaurant in hell, where a demon waiter is holding an order pad and addressing a man and woman who are seated at a table. The demon has a somewhat haughty expression and the couple are sweating, either because of the heat\u2014they\u2019re surrounded by flames\u2014or because they\u2019re worried about eternal damnation.<\/span><\/p>\n We received a record-breaking 634 entries for this contest, and the pot was nearly $1,400.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Isabella had two captions for this contest, and both suggested that the flames of hell would make all the dishes really hot:<\/span><\/p>\n A few of you went after the same joke:\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n We got a lot of puns, and these were the best:<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n That last pun is especially good. It addresses both food and the wages of sin because the punchline, which rhymes with desserts, comes from the archaic noun meaning \u201cthat which is deserved.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Here\u2019s a pun Bob didn\u2019t get\u2014<\/span>\u201cYou\u2019ll be my servers tonight\u201d<\/i><\/b>\u2014until I reminded him that Bob Dylan\u2019s \u201cGotta Serve Somebody\u201d includes the lines, \u201cWell, it may be the Devil or it may be the Lord, but you\u2019re gonna have to serve somebody.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n And here\u2019s a joke that, initially, only Bob understood: <\/span>\u201cYour spouses will be joining shortly.\u201d<\/i><\/b> It suggests (at least according to Bob) that the couple\u2019s in hell because they\u2019ve been cheating on their partners, and that their partners have also cheated on them. But is the adulterous man\u2019s wife cheating on him by sleeping with his lover\u2019s husband? And is the adulterous woman\u2019s husband cheating on her with her lover\u2019s wife? That would be some coincidence. Or is the implication that the demon\u2019s torturing the cheating couple by having their innocent spouses join them for dinner? But why would the innocent spouses be in hell? In the end, we decided the caption didn\u2019t really work because it raised too many questions and made our heads hurt.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Bob criticized this entry\u2014<\/span>\u201cThey\u2019re just called \u2018eggs\u2019 down here.\u201d\u2014<\/i><\/b>on the grounds that it begs the question, \u201cWhat would demons call regular, un-deviled eggs?\u201d Maybe he\u2019s right, but I liked the caption because it reminded me of a scene from \u201cModern Family,\u201d Season 8, Episode 1 (\u201cA Tale of Three Cities\u201d). Jay Pritchett, an old white man, is at a wedding in Juarez, Mexico, where he discovers Galletas Marias (sweet plain biscuits), and asks his sister-in-law, \u201cHey, have you tried one of these Mexican cookies?\u201d She says, \u201cThey just call them cookies.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Vegans annoy me, so I loved this entry\u2014<\/span>\u201cAsking for vegan is what got you here.\u201d<\/i><\/b>\u2014which reminded me of a brilliant Alex Gregory cartoon:<\/span><\/p>\n In an on-line blog called \u201cThe Vegan Strategist,\u201d Tobias Leenaert, who wrote <\/span>How to Create a Vegan World: a Pragmatic Approach<\/span><\/i> (Lantern Press, 2017), scolded Gregory for what he called \u201cdo-gooder derogation.\u201d\u00a0 God help us.<\/span><\/p>\n This entry\u2014<\/span>\u201cAnd for dessert, also kale.\u201d<\/i><\/b>\u2014made me laugh out loud, The addition of the word \u201calso\u201d suggests not just that kale would make an awful dessert, but that it\u2019s the only item on the entire menu. It\u2019s a great joke, and it reminded me of this classic by Roz Chast:<\/span><\/p>\n There were, like the kale joke, many entries suggesting that hell\u2019s kitchen would serve only terrible food (e,g., <\/span>\u201cEverything comes with raisins\u201d<\/i><\/b>). Two of the best played on the comic trope that British food is bland, overcooked, and generally unappetizing, and to his credit, our English judge, Joel Mishon, championed both:\u00a0<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n Shorter captions are punchier and therefore usually better, but in this case I prefer the longer version because (1) \u201cBritish\u201d is a better punchline than \u201cBritish food\u201d, and (2)\u00a0 \u201conly serve\u201d should be \u201cserve only.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n This caption is not only funny but kind of deep: <\/span>\u201cIs everyone happy with their choices?\u201d<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n This next entry goes after the same joke\u2014<\/span>\u201cNo menus. You\u2019ve already made your choices.\u201d<\/i><\/b>\u2014but it doesn\u2019t work because life choices wouldn\u2019t appear on the menu. This other entry, which I suspect was entered by the same person, works better: <\/span>\u201cNo menus. You\u2019ll get what you deserve.\u201d<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n This caption\u2014<\/span>\u201cThe coupon? It expired when you did.\u201d<\/i><\/b>\u2014would work better as a short declarative statement: <\/span>\u201cThe coupon expired when you did.\u201d<\/span><\/i> But even if it was worded perfectly, the joke wouldn\u2019t make sense because no one would have a coupon for a restaurant in hell before they died.<\/span><\/p>\n This next caption alludes both to the fact that many waiters introduce themselves by name (why?), and to the fact that the Devil is called, among other things, Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub, Belial, and The Prince of Darkness: <\/span>\u201cI go by many names, and I\u2019ll be your server tonight.\u201d<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n This caption suggests that it\u2019s impossible to escape hell: <\/span>\u201cTo go? I\u2019m afraid not.\u201d<\/i><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n This caption would be better without the first sentence: <\/span>\u201cLet me save you some time. There are peanuts in everything.\u201d<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n These two entries both highlight the fact that there\u2019s no way to slake your thirst in hell:<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n Many of you noted that dining in hell would be, at best, a frustrating experience:\u00a0<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n Here\u2019s a good example of turning a common statement into a fitting caption by changing just the last word: <\/span>\u201cWe\u2019re just waiting for the rest of your party to die.\u201d\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n This entry does the same thing by changing the second-to-last word: <\/span>\u201cAre we celebrating a specific sin tonight?\u201d<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n Finally, here\u2019s a joke that makes the demon oblivious to his surroundings: <\/span>\u201cOh, we don\u2019t do flambe. It\u2019s a safety hazard.\u201d<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n We had an unusually difficult time choosing the winner and finalists this month because there were so many good entries.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Congratulations to GARY BORISLOW, who made nearly $700 with his winning caption: <\/span>\u201cExcellent choice. You\u2019re going to hate it.\u201d<\/i><\/b> The five runners-up were:<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n I don\u2019t usually do this, but if I were judging the contest by myself I would have knocked out the entries submitted by Kyal Shepard and Joseph Sills\u2014sorry, guys\u2014and replaced them with these two captions:<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n If you who want to see how we made our selections, we recorded the process and posted it on our YouTube Channel.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n
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