Caption Contest & Super Bowl

A Quick Follow-Up & Gentle Reminder

UPDATE: I’m doing fine. I have CNN and MSNBC and BBC on in the background, simultaneously, 24/7, with the sound off. I am under doctor’s supervision—I stress-ate French toast five times in four days and put on 8 lbs—and introduced sleeping again into my regiment.

I will return to drawing the Super Bowl, as I used to do many years ago for The New York Times. This time I will be drawing for The New Yorker and the drawings will be shared after the game, instead of live, on the magazine’s social media outlet and on my own Instagram, Notes, BlueSky, and Facebook (Click on any of those platforms if you wish to follow me there).

Appeared in AirMail

Caption Contest

A cartoon caption contest is afoot! Conducted by The Hot Sheet newsletter, the prize is a signed copy of my new book, Footnotes from the Most Fascinating Museums (AirMail’s Book of the Month).

You can enter by either subscribing to The Hot Sheet (which covers the publishing industry) or email entries to editor@hotsheetpub.com. The deadline is Tuesday, January 28th. Good luck!

I showed the following piece to a couple of humor friends before shopping it around. It’s certainly beyond silly and out-of-step from the humor pieces I see running in McSweeney’s and Points-In-Case and places of that ilk, so I wasn’t surprised that my friends advised me to trash the piece and consider it a warm-up. But it has an ease to it, a readability to my ears that I convinced myself there was no harm casting the line out there in the lake. I got responses immediately—two Nos but two adamant Yeses. I’d rather have one or two people love it and some hating it than most readers finding it just agreeable. Thank you Funny Times for being one of the two editors who really liked it.

This cartoon and the following story appears in the next Funny Times

What’s In Your Cabinet?

CONFIRMATION HEARING ON THE NOMINATION OF HON. CAP’N CRUNCH TO BE SECRETARY OF DRY CEREAL OF THE UNITED STATES

Chairman: Name and spelling?

Cap’n Crunch: Cap’n Crunch. C-A-P, apostrophe, N. Last name C-R-U-N-C-H. Cap’n Crunch.

Chairman: The floor recognizes the Senator from Transylvania.

Senator Count Chocula: Thank you, Chairman. I just vant to ask a few questions. As Captain, what branch of the military do you serve and for how long have you held this position?

Cap’n Crunch: The Navy. I lead the good ship Guppy for Quaker Oats since 1963.

Senator Count Chocula: Did you see any action during that time?

Cap’n Crunch: We went to war against General Mills.

Senator Count Chocula: Would that be Brigadier General Thomas D. Mills?

Cap’n Crunch: No, General Mills, the food conglomerate based in Golden Valley, Minnesota.

Senator Count Chocula: Was this your only adversary?

Cap’n Crunch: No, in the 1980s, there were the Soggies, space aliens shaped as blobs of milk. They made everything on Earth soggy.

Senator Count Chocula: Why would they vant to do that?

Cap’n Crunch: To ruin breakfast. The only defense the Pentagon came up with was to serve the boys and girls of this great land Cap'n Crunch cereal. I defeated the Soggies and their leader, Squish the Sogmaster.

Senator Count Chocula: That’s all. I give the excess of my time on the floor to my colleague, Senator Franken Berry.

Senator Franken Berry: Thank you, Senator Chocula. What were your responsibilities as Captain Crunch?

Cap’n Crunch: I was the face of a $14 billion global food enterprise, provided children a nutritious start to their day and kept cereal from getting soggy.

Senator Franken Berry: You oversaw keeping cereal from getting soggy, while wearing that hat? It’s a Napoleon-style hat. (In French accent) You are French, no?

Cap’n Crunch: I was born on Crunch Island, a magical island in the Sea of Milk. It has talking trees and Mt. Crunchmore, which is made from Cap'n Crunch cereal.

Senator Franken Berry: Captain, do you regularly take any illegal substances?

Cap’n Crunch: Each day I wake up to a new morning and—

Senator Franken Berry: Please, only yes and no answers.

Cap’n Crunch: No.

Senator Franken Berry: Hallucinates?

Cap’n Crunch: No.

Senator Franken Berry: Mushrooms?

Cap’n Crunch: No.

Senator Franken Berry: I’d like to submit to the House, article 923, that states Crunch Island is totally fictional.

Cap’n Crunch: Define fictional. Cap’n Crunch Peanut Butter Crunch is made with real peanut butter.

Senator Franken Berry: Let’s move on because I have some important points to make, and my time is limited. The Wall Street Journal reported in 2013 that the U.S. Navy had no record of a Captain Crunch. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service, NCIS, has opened an investigation against you for impersonating a naval officer. Do you care to comment on this?

Cap’n Crunch: That’s because I never said I was a Captain, I’m a Cap’n. Thus, all charges were dropped and the next year I came out with Cap'n Crunch's Sprinkled Donut Crunch.

Senator Franken Berry: I’m glad you brought that up. You have continually stated you believe in a healthy, nutritious breakfast. Your Cap'n Crunch's Sprinkled Donut Crunch was donut-flavored cereal rings with candy sprinkles.

Cap’n Crunch: That was an anomaly.

Senator Franken Berry: Anomaly? You later came out with the flavors; Cap’n Crunch's Strawberry Shortcake, and Cap'n Crunch Blueberry Pancake Crunch.

Cap’n Crunch: Why aren’t you bringing up my brand-new Sea Berry Crunch with ocean blue Crunch Berries? The proceeds from sales go to the non-profit organization Ocean Conservancy.

Senator Franken Berry: Was Cotton Candy Crunch your idea?

Cap’n Crunch: Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

Senator Sonny Cuckoo Bird: Do you know, or had any dealings with, Sammy the Toucan?

Cap’n Crunch: No.

Senator Sonny Cuckoo Bird: Tony the Tiger?

Cap’n Crunch: No, sir.

Senator Sonny Cuckoo Bird: Lucky the Leprechaun?

Cap’n Crunch: I don’t believe so.

Senator Sonny Cuckoo Bird: You’ve been quoted as saying, “It's got corn for crunch, oats for punch, and it stays crunchy, even in milk.” Is that correct, sir?

Cap’n Crunch: That needs context—

–END–­­_­­

Freelance Memories… I recall being at a party where I was speaking to an Art Director who was good friends with two illustration friends at the party who worked with her. When I paused after making chit chat with her, she leaned in and in her Southern droll said, “God bless you ,” and walked away. Doesn’t get worse than that. I was reminded of this when yesterday someone on Facebook told me, “God bless you” and said they were blocking me.

On the same thread someone observed, “We are watching a country of addicts. And their drug of choice is abusing other human beings.” The MSNBC website ran a group of my best cartoons and inspired only nasty comments (welcome news to those who wrote me that my cartoons don’t make sense to them.). I’ll share the nicest one here:

“Okay this guy has some chuckles here, but this new addition here of cartoons are sadder and unfunny than they were the last three generations. Gaham (sic) [Wilson], where are you when we need you?, (and more from the Far Side.)”

The other comments weren’t as kind, plus asking why I don’t ever attack the “Dems” or “the egregious Joe Biden” in my cartoons, “Where is the humor?”

Well, I’d like to answer a couple of questions here:

1. Gahan has sadly passed away. He was the first cartoonist I was exposed to. I knew him and loved his work, which was genius.

2. Some cartoonists like seeing collegues getting vicious attacks on their work. It’s comforting.

3. Why I have I injected so much political stuff in a newsletter meant to be about cartoons and writing? Well, it’s my newsletter and reading the room, and with what everyone is experiencing in their own way, it is impossible to ignore the elephant in the room. Certainly, cartoonists as well as humorists are feeling the pressures to stay in line and not have their voice heard. This on the surface may sound like an exaggeration but the pressure the editors are feeling to tone it down and be nonpolitical is definitely trickling down to me, and I will assume to many others.

Fellow writer Cheryl K. Johnson has book on improving the quality of life, especially during lunch, called Box Lunch Lifestyle. It has a ton of good reviews.

Special thanks to “Ruben Boiling” of Tom the Dancing Bug Subtstack and welcome to all the new readers here reading this, thanks to his recommendation. (Tom the Dancing Bug was my favorite cartoon when I worked at The Village Voice and read all the alt cartoons. Very clever stuff. And very sweet guy.)

Mike Sacks, author of And Here’s the Kicker and Poking a Dead Frog is starting a Substack called Sub-Sacks, “a bi-monthly paid-subscription-only column about comedy, the nuances behind writing comedy, fresh interviews with those in comedy (both performers and writers), lists, thoughts, trivia, essays, an occasional nudie shot of myself, wearing only a rented top hat, holding a #1 Champion pennant.” $8 a month or $80 a year. To subscribe, go to https://doinit.substack.com/subscribe.

Finally, I did a radio spot with the good people at West Side Rag, thanks to host Claire Davenport. LISTEN HERE. (Claire is a journalist and works for the First Aid Kit podcast.)

Thank you for reading The Bob…I know you have many choices of newsletters written by disgruntled, disillusioned gag cartoonists and hack humorists and I thank you for choosing this one. Please share with a friend who has free time.