Literally captioned New Yorker cartoons make New Yorker cartoons funny for once

By Steve Heisler  |  January 7, 2011 | 4:00pm
Aux Features Books

Captioning the weekly New Yorker cartoons with mediocre jokes is a ritual almost as old as the act of writing mediocre jokes. To lube up the ol' mind noodle of wannabe geriatric comedians, the magazine provides fairly generic images with ONE unexpected twist! So it'd be wise to assume the captions themselves were the centerpieces of the humor.

Yet The Monkeys You Ordered, yesterday's hot Tumblr, demonstrates the key to unlocking the images' full potential: Extremely literal captions.

"Sorry this piano doesn’t sound very good — it’s filled with water and dead fish."

"Gary sure has gotten mauled a lot by that tiger on top of the filing cabinet."

It just goes to show that no matter how lame something is, you can always squeeze some sweet, sweet meta-humor out. And the New Yorker cartoons are painfully lame. Why else would juxtaposing them with Kanye West tweets or quotes from Wicker Man work so effortlessly?

Your move, Internet: Let's do something similar with clips from Lopez Tonight.

 
Join the discussion...