After years of trying, Roger Ebert finally won the inscrutable, esoteric thing that is The New Yorker caption contest, and it’s admirable enough that he kept trying: According to The Wall Street Journal, many other celebrities who used to submit captions have now given up. The most notable among them may be Zach Galifianakis, who finally had enough in 2007 when his caption for a cartoon of two dogs discussing their stick-throwing canine friend, “Big deal. I can DRIVE a stick,” was passed over for the winning entry, “He’s his own best friend.” (You will find, as Galifianakis did, that puns almost never work.) Other stymied submitters include Brad Paisley and Maureen Dowd (and the Paisley ones are actually pretty good!), but New Yorker cartoon editor Robert Mankoff guesses that Galifianakis’s failures hit him hardest. “I think he was hurt,” said Mankoff. “It’s the thing that drives him now.” [WSJ]
