Texas Monthly skips the dog

I just received Austin-based Texas Monthly's 2007 Bum Steer issue. While it doesn't appear a single original thought went into designing the cover, I still chuckle every time I look at it:

The small print: "Yes, this is a photo illustration. If we don't say so, Dick Cheney will shoot us in the face."

As the editor acknowledges in the Editor's Letter, "...there are no original ideas in the magazine business; there are only good, worthwhile, creative riffs on original ideas."

The cover is obviously a parody of the iconic National Lampoon cover from January 1973 (one of the American Society of Magazine Editors' "Top 40 Magazine Covers of the Last 40 Years"):