Breaking news: Bob Mankoff sheds light on the age-old "New Yorker" Question of Québec

If you really want to, you can watch Episode 5 of The Cartoon Lounge here.

"Any legal resident of the United States or Canada (except residents of the province of Quebec), Australia, United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, age eighteen or over can enter, except employees, agents, or representatives of Sponsor or any other party associated with the development or administration of the Contest, or any member of their immediate family."

-- from The New Yorker's "Caption Contest Rules"

by Ken

Confidential to New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff: Wherever you got the idea that You Oughtta Be in Pictures, the idea is nuts. Possibly it's your Web people pressuring staffers to generate more video content, for reasons that would be plain to a Web person but escape me. Whatever the reason, as excellent an idea as your weekly blogposts were, The Cartoon Lounge kind of sucks. It kind of sucked back at Episode 1, and it's still kind of sucking at Episode 5, "Technophilia."

And not just because most of the time when I try to watch these videos, I don't get video, I get a still image that lasts until (assuming I'm lucky) it's replaced by another still image a couple of minutes later. I would assume that this negates whatever point there was thought to be in doing these videos. Of course I can't confirm this because I don't know that point that might have been, except the peeps want videos, dude. This peep will, with reluctance, watch a video if it holds out some plausible promise of even minimally enhancing his life experience. Otherwise this peep's position is: If you've got something to tell me, ferchrissakes tell me and let's get on with it. If you succeed in conning me into watching a video that turns out to be a waste of my time, I promise to hold it against you.

As to this week's Cartoon Lounge, yes, we know that technology excites you and you're a long-confirmed early adopter. Goodness knows we know this. And if we didn't, or if you thought there was some new angle on this worth sharing with us, then the accompanying post at the same link is a viable way to do it. Having a camera roll while you display a bunch of gadgets on your desk and telling us that most of them are obsolete (as I gather you do in Episode 5) -- this is not compelling video. I gather that you also show us some of the cartoons you've done on technology issues, which I might have enjoyed seeing, but didn't. You know how you used to post cartoons with your blogposts? I always enjoyed that.

As to the subject of the posted post, your infatuation with Google Glass, or rather the hard time you're having with the hard time Google Glass seems to be having ("Rumors that it's on life support abound, and everyone seems to be either bad-mouthing it or giving it the evil eye, or both"), well, this is at least a topic. It's not a topic that much interests me, in the same way that Google Glass itself doesn't much interest me, but that could just be me. However, among the reasons you offer for your persistence in your infatuation, there's one that strikes a chord: "I don’t waste this much money on something without wasting lots of time on it as well." As much as I try to exercise care regarding the things I waste large amounts of money on, I often miscalculate too, and have a similiar response. I may never get my money's worth, but I will damn well get, well, something, even if it's just a proportionate waste of time as well.


ALL THAT SAID, HOWEVER, THERE'S
STILL THE QUESTION OF QUÉBEC

At the end of each Cartoon Lounge, Bob answers a reader question. Again, it's not exactly mind-altering video, but this week's question is pretty much the question:

Why are Québecois readers specifically barred from entering the celebrated New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest?

The question happens to come from a Québecois reader who is bitter about not being allowed to enter the contest, and therefore has an obvious interest, but as a non-Québecois reader, I've been gripped by this question every time I've read this seemingly peculiar contest stipulation. I mean, that's a pretty specific exclusion: If you're 18 and a legal resident of the United States, Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, or the Republic of Ireland, you're good to enter -- unless, poor soul, you happen to be a resident of (shudder) Quebec. (I sometimes wonder about other exclusions among the world's English-speaking populations, like New Zealanders, but at least they don't have to suffer the stigma of being singled out week in and week out.)

I'll leave it to DWT readers to judge their level of interest in Bob's presumed "comical" answers and jump to the actual one, which not surprisingly comes from the lawyers. Québec, it seems, has a whole set of regulations about contests, and apparently they apply even to one that offers no greater prize than a signed copy of the cartoon. Some of the regulations, not surprisingly, have to do with the provinces legally mandated bilingualism (everything about the contest would have to be posted bilingually), but there are also specifications like al

l contests having to be registered with some Québecois authority or other. The obvious and inevitable result is to bar all citizens of the province from participating. Apparently they're legally permitted to read the feature, though this may just be a problem of the difficulty of enforcement.


POSTSCRIPT: I TRIED ONCE MORE TO WATCH
CARTOON LOUNGE EPISODE 5, AND GOT LUCKY

Thinking I would want to quote Bob's actual explanation of the above, I made one more attempt to watch the video, and had more success. I decided it wasn't going to be worth the possible trouble involved in stopping and restarting the clip enought to transcribe the portion I wanted. But this time I did at least get to the old technology-themed cartoons of his that Bob displays. He says this one from 1984 sums up his relationship to technology (or something like that):

"All my gadgets are old. I'd like some new gadgets."

Okay, noted.

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