#147: "Never Bet on the Chicken"
Never bet on the chicken in an egg-and-spoon race.
Arthur Trope Presents: The Inscrutables
No. 147
“Never Bet on the Chicken”
The Caption Committee meetings have been tense lately. Artie hasn’t been in the office for two weeks, and he’s gone from disgruntled to passive-aggressive in his submission notes. My feeling is you just have to let creatives be creatives, but the Committee isn’t responding well. Artie sent #147 in with the caption “Always bet on the chicken in an egg-and-spoon race.” This led to a long debate in the Committee meeting about the merits of this advice. Inky used to do some handicapping in Boca, so he was unusually engaged in the discussion. He felt strongly that you should *never* bet on the chicken in an egg-and-spoon race. The chickens, he said, would move too slowly in order to protect the egg, and assuming there were 7 or 8 other competitors, which would be typical in an organized field day-type event, each would have more incentive to take the risk of moving faster, and you had to figure it would pay off for at least one of them. Relative to the chicken, that is. I don’t usually get a vote in the Committee meeting, I’m just there to take notes, but they asked my opinion and I sided with Artie, because creatives, you know. That made it 4-4 with seven official opinions plus mine, so they called in Hanelore the intern, who was still there even though it was well past 5:30 at that point. She voted for “Never” on the basis that the chicken in Artie’s sketch looked too nervous to win anything. If the gag is to always bet on the chicken, the chicken should look confident, she said. This was enough to swing two of the Always votes over to Never. So that’s what they went with and Inky finished it. I uploaded it into the syndication system, reluctantly, and then had to email Artie with the decision. I haven’t heard back. Anyway, here’s #147, which I post with noted reservations. -Ed.
