My own feeble attempt:

"The late Mr. Jenkins had inadequacy issues about his instrument."

1. "You want me to tune all of these today?!"


2. "All women need a little black number in their closet."


3. "OctoMom called about the pianos -- she'd like to know the delivery date."


4. "These traps are huge! Just how big are your mice??"


5. "It looks like the medication is working -- they're starting to open up to me."

Cool! -- some "popular culture"

What is this? Grand Central Station!

Pretty sure the New Yorker won't publish this one:

"I TOLD you to order from Hamburg, not New York! How are we supposed to sell any of them?"

The three finalists:

"Well, where did you think baby grands came from?"

"We buy everything in bulk."

"I don't play. I just really hate elephants."

(This last one is really bad. Some of you came up with much better ones, IMO.)

In my extremely humble opinion almost all of ours were better than any of those, even mine.

And several were spectacularly better than any of those three.

I completely agree with you and Piano Again. Did you PW folks send your captions in?

I sent mine in. I was a little bummed when i saw the ones they picked. It was like hmm, am i missing something? I guess there's no accounting for taste

I didn't send mine in, because I don't want fame.

Also because many of the others here were much better.

Those are terrible. The New Yorker I remember was a very witty magazine. Further proof of the decline of western civilization.

Maybe someone should set up a poll so we could vote on ours, establish our own winner?

I've heard the cartoonists all hate this contest. I've noticed the drawings for it are all pretty bizarre -- like from the bottom of the reject pile.

I think it's just a way to get more people on the mailing list and to bring eyeballs to the website.

My caption, btw:

"Steinways are a better investment right now."

I think someone should point out this thread to them.

Many of the captions you folks suggested are much better than those they picked.

Agree totally.


It was? I could never tell because I never "got" their stuff.

Well I guess I did get it once.....

There was a cartoon with this guy sitting in a doctor's consultation room, and the doctor is talking to him, only the doctor is a cat. And the doctor says:

"I'm ordering a CAT scan."

I did get that one.

I think it's a fair statement that none are worse.

Somehow that last thing reminds me of a recent piano contest.....

Love the idea!
Let's do it!

(Do it! Do it!)

I'm thinking that the folks at the New Yorker probably don't get piano humor. They probably don't even have a piano. (maybe just a small organ!) Oops! That one slipped!

I think in this case we need a cartoon to match the line.

BTW.....I think you're the only PW member who has his own baseball card.

"We just never anticipated such a huge response to our "Cash For Clinkers" promotion"

I agree. I think yours should have won. Runner-up should have been the one about the "last of the herd." The actual three final entries were all inferior to the ones folks posted here (IMO).

Chris

"They're just S's right now, but in a few weeks, when we take them out of the brooder, they'll be B's"

What's depressing is that Charles Cooke wrote "Playing the Piano for Pleasure" while he wrote for The New Yorker. Those were the days, I guess.

An old favorite book of mine.....influenced me quite a bit.
If anyone's interested ....I have a fond 'review' of it on the Amazon page.

my effort. it's late, best i can do:

"find the corners first... now show me the front of the box again?"

Obviously the editors who picked the finalists aren't pianists. I don't even get the caption about the elephants.

Ivories ... elephants ... get it? Ha ha.

[Light bulb goes on] Oh! I get it now, thanks. It still ain't funny.