Being funny isn't so easy

I've always been a fan of the New Yorker and its cartoons and always thought it would be an easy way to make a living. However, when they started the caption contest at the back of the book I realized how hard it can be. Isn't that always the case -- an end product that is concise, well constructed is often incredibly difficult to achieve.

(Reminds me of a conversation in college when we were all sitting around marveling at how much money was made over such simple things such as Post-It Notes, etc. Someone then challenged the group to come up with an equally simple, and profitable, idea by the end of the night. Suffice to say I'm still thinking.)

Here's a fascinating look at the selection process for New Yorker cartoons from the Washington Post. An excerpt:

Picking cartoons isn't as easy as it looks. "The funniest cartoon is not
necessarily the best cartoon," says Mankoff. "Funnier means that you laugh
harder, and everybody's gonna laugh harder at more aggressive cartoons, more
obscene cartoons. It's a Freudian thing. It gives more relief. But is it a
better joke? To me, better means having more truth in it, having both the humor
and the pain and therefore having more meaning and more, uh, uh . . . " He
searches for a word, then finds it: "poetry."