Internet Zillionaire

And the winner is:

The Centaur called me last night and asked me if I’d bit off more than I could chew with this contest. I told him I only ate one of the hot dogs seen in the picture below.

“That’s not what I meant,” he said.

He was referring to the quality of the entries I presume. And the difficult task of picking a winner. And he was right. There was a snow-globe flurry of entries on the last day and they ranged from the completely obvious to the total left field. Just what I had hoped for. So thanks again everyone for playing along at home.

But in the end there was one entry that had me baffled initially. On first read, it was neither clever nor funny. I wondered why someone had submitted it at all. Then, 24 hours later as I was looking back at this caption and studying the photo, it all became clear. Big bonus points for having the guts to play such an understated hand.

So congratulations Tom! If you contact me, I’ll hook you up with that invite.

When you see this many hot dogs on a grill, you instinctively pull out your camera, snap a picture, post it on your blog, and wait for the clever captions to come pouring in. It’s a pretty tired formula. But this time, there is a twist for the music lovers, nerds and geeks out there. On Monday at Midnight (EST), I will award an Oink (oink.me.uk) invite to the most clever, funniest caption as deemed by me and me alone. And if you don’t know what Oink is, do as the King James Bible says and “Ye, go forth and google it.”

But I can’t just leave it at that. I have to set some sort of bar, however low. So here are my top 5 captions for the photo:

1. I guess if heaven is a grill, then all dogs do go to heaven. I don’t think I want to go to grill heaven though. Good thing I am not a dog.
2. {To the tune of the Reading Rainbow TV theme song} Take you one, it’s in a bun-Weiner Rainbow.
3. How many lips and assholes are we looking at here?
4. Is it just me or do all the dogs in their buns look like turtles in various poses? The third one from the top left looks like it’s trying to whisper a secret.
5. 99 hot dogs in buns on the grill. 99 hot dogs in buns. Take one down, pass it around. Why are we passing around hot dogs in buns?

Yes, I just wasted your time with those captions. They were purposely bad. The real fun is now in your hands. Put yourself in my shoes. Spend a few minutes thinking about it. Be brave. Throw something out there. There is nothing to lose. Don’t worry if it’s not spectacular. Who cares. You can hide behind the great invisible walls of the Internet just like me. It’s kinda cool back here.