By JAMES D. WATTS JR. Scene Writer on Nov 5, 2010, at 4:36 PM Updated on 11/05 at 4:36 PM
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For the third time in four years, something I've written has been published by The New Yorker.
Granted, it's been the exact same thing thing each time. And by now, I'm not entirely certain that I can legally say it's mine. But I still receive credit for it.
My work's most recent appearance in The New Yorker is the issue currently on sale, dated Nov. 1, 2010. It's the magazine's annual Cartoon Issue, and the final two pages of its 18-pages of nothing but cartoon are devoted to "Best of the Caption Contest."
Five years ago, the magazine began this contest, where readers could try their hand at creating captions for images by some of the magazine's regular artists.
In those five years, the magazine has received, and I quote, "something like a million and a half entries to produce 257 winners."
"In honor of this anniversary," so goes the paragraph on page 89, "we decided that it was time to cast our own vote, so we reviewed all the contests and picked what was, in our opinion, the best caption of each year."
For the year 2006, the caption selected as the best was mine.
It's not easily accessible on the magazine's website, so I'll have to describe it: Two soldiers in full combat gear and the stereotypical mime -- black and white striped t-shirt, white-face, beret -- are peering around a shattered wall in an obviously war-torn locale. One soldier is looking through binoculars, and all three are staring intently into the distance.
What I came up with was: "It's not good -- looks like they've got a full interpretive dance troupe."
This is the third time my caption to Alex Gregory's cartoon has been appeared. The first time was when it was one of three finalists that readers were to vote for, the second was when it was chosen the winner. This makes three.
I have a framed version of the cartoon at home, which is the prize people receive for writing a winning caption in The New Yorker's contest.
I'm not one to meticulously document everything I do, but when I learned that my caption was chosen as one of the best in The New Yorker Caption Contest history, I started to do a bit of figuring.
What I came up with was that, in the course of my career as a journalist, I have probably written something in neighborhood of 5 million words about various subjects.
But I have the feeling that the 12 words that make up my caption to Alex Gregory's cartoon will likely be the words for which I am best remembered.
And that's fine. After all, those 12 words allow me to claim, with all sincerity, that I have been published by The New Yorker.
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