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The Great Drywall of Dubuque?

Sheboygan PressThe Sheboygan Wisconsin Press wants to know why artist Paul Noth used the name of their fair city in the caption of his recent New Yorker cartoon.

Noth’s response? “The Great Drywall of Dubuque” is just not as funny.

This entry was posted on February 15, 2008 at 8:43 am and is filed under Dubuque. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

5 Responses to “The Great Drywall of Dubuque?”

  1. erik hogstrom Says:
    February 15, 2008 at 6:56 pm

    “it’s not a place commonly found in punch-lines — unlike, say, New Jersey, Dubuque or Schenectady.”

    How commonly is Dubuque found in punch-lines these days?

  2. Mike Says:
    February 20, 2008 at 1:50 am

    Search results from the New Yorker’s Cartoon Bank:

    Top results for Keyword: dubuque yielded 0 results.
    Top results for Keyword: iowa yielded 8 results.

    While Dubuque does not appear to be commonly used as an overt or formal punch line in jokes or cartoons, subtle humorous allusions to Dubuque are easy to spot online. I’ll try to post more examples of these here.

  3. Mike Says:
    February 21, 2008 at 10:21 am

    Here’s one current example from the Thousand Oaks Acorn, a newspaper in California:

    “Whether you’re going to Dubuque, Disneyland or Dubai, Take Your Thousand Oaks Acorn on Vacation . . . . It’s easy. Take a front page of any edition of the Acorn the next time you go on vacation. Have someone hold the front page so it’s visible in the photograph with the background depicting scenery of wherever you are.”

    The idea of taking a vacation to Dubuque is humorous, especially in comparison to Disneyland or Dubai. And I think this use of Dubuque has more resonance than Paducah, Kalamazoo, or maybe even Timbuktu.

  4. Mike Says:
    February 22, 2008 at 12:47 pm

    Another one, from a Sherman Oaks, California blog called Last Left Turn Before Hooterville

    The Lost Continent of Atlantis Has Been Found - and it’s the Answer to the Sub-Prime Mortgage Crisis!

    DUBUQUE, Iowa — In an astounding discovery, a scientist has announced the most amazing archaeological find of the twenty-first century - the Lost Continent of Atlantis!

    Can anyone spot more Dubuque references like this?

  5. Margarita Says:
    March 3, 2008 at 4:46 am

    Here are a couple of “subtle humorous allusions to Dubuque” that are historically a bit older, but still seem worth noting to those who can’t get enough of Dubuque trivia:

    1. Mark Twain, To the Editor of the Dubuque Herald, 24 April 1874

    2. Chris Lehane, Democratic strategist on whether Al Gore should run for president in 2008: “The guy is enormously happy, ” Lehane said. “For him, the decision is: ‘Let’s see, could I make a lot of money and be on stage in front of a billion people, or would I want to be spending the next two years in a Holiday Inn in Dubuque, Iowa?’”

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