This actually happened about a month ago, but I just noticed (in my bathroom magazine basket reading stack) this excellent submission to The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest. For some reason, this one hit me squarely on the funnybone and I was literally "L"ing "OL," as the kids say. In fact I nearly "L"ed "MAO." But my laughter turned to warm fuzzies when I noticed the winner, one of my favorite people in the world, Roger Ebert. A little research led me to this interesting article, which included this Ebert quote:
I have entered the New Yorker’s Cartoon Caption Contest almost weekly virtually since it began and have never even been a finalist. Mark Twain advised: “Write without pay until somebody offers to pay you. If nobody offers within three years, sawing wood is what you were intended for.” I have done more writing for free for the New Yorker in the last five years than for anybody in the previous 40 years.
It’s not that I think my cartoon captions are better than anyone else’s, although some weeks, understandably, I do. It’s that just once I want to see one of my damn captions in the magazine that publishes the best cartoons in the world. Is that too much to ask?
Congratulations, Roger, you did it!