So You Want To Be President: YouTube Edition

Author: Judith St. George
Illustrator: David Small

So you want to be president? Well, be prepared to be sent through the ringer, my young friend.

All presidential candidates must endure an unbelievable amount of scrutiny, but this year the long arm of the internet has really taken it up a notch. This election will undoubtedly go down in the history books as the YouTube election. From Obama Girl to McCain's 10,000 years to Clinton's Bosnia travails, YouTube exposure is playing a huge role in selecting our next president.

So the burning question is: How would past presidents have been affected by the all seeing eye of YouTube?

William Howard Taft
About This Video

His 1909 election was nearly cut short when the embarassing footage of Taft winning the 1897 Cleveland Deviled Egg Eating Contest hits the internets.








Franklin Delano Roosevelt
About This Video

FDR's presidency was severely challenged by this leaked footage of him playing Murderball. His poll numbers took a plunge, not because America realizes that their president is in a wheelchair, but because he only scored one point and fouled out midway through the second quarter.



Richard Nixon
About This Video

This clip of Nixon's star-making turn as Eliza Doolittle in the Whittier College Drama Club's production of My Fair Lady actually helped Nixon's popularity by revealing his seldom seen human side.







We'll keep searching the archives for more long lost YouTube gems, so stay tuned!

The Secret of Water

Author/Illustrator: Dr. Masaru Emoto

In this book, Dr. Emoto utilizes the mind-boggling power of photography to reveal the magic behind our most precious natural resource: Water. While the book does a good job of showcasing the glory of our liquid friend, the book is a little antiquated--because, as well all know, plain water just doesn't cut it anymore. Not when we've got:

-Gatorade: Nothing Hydrates Better On Any Planet
-POWERade: Power Up With POWERade!
-SmartWater: Electrolyte Enhanced Hydration, Vapor Distilled Purity

And now the latest offering of uber-water: Snapple Antioxident Water: Designed To Protectify!. (Note: I didn't make up any of those slogans. I could only hope to be so funny.)

But plain old tap water? How boring. How passe. How last century.

Plain water has taken such a vicious PR hit lately that local governments have taken matters into their own hands. Recent studies have found all kinds of goodies in tap water--apparently cities are taking a hint and looking to infuse their boring product with a much needed dose of awesome.

NYC Water! Designed to Soothify and Freakify!
Our water quenches your thirst and your soul with an enlightened mix of drugs that will take care of your aches, infections, seizures and high blood pressure all with one spiritually satisfying sip--and for all you cougars out there, we've added a dose of hormones to help out with that pesky menopause... rrrrowr!



DC Water: Scientifically Proven to Rock Your World!
Engineered by an illustrious (almost-certified) group of scientists, our water is ultra-fortified with anti-seizure medication, two anti-inflammatory drugs, two kinds of antibiotics, a common disinfectant... and because you've got places to go, people to see... CAFFEINE!!! That's right, we put the "what?!" in "water"!




Hmmmm... on second thought, after hearing about the medicine cabinet that's pouring out of my faucet, maybe it's better if I don't know the secret of water. I'll just play it safe from now on... someone pass me a Guinness.

So Few of Me

Author/Illustrator: Peter Reynolds

A kid named Leo is swamped by all the things he has to do and thinks "I wish there were two of me." Poof! Just like that, there are two of him! Naturally, it doesn't stop there and the clones begin to multiply. Surprisingly, Leo soon finds out that his workload hasn't gotten any smaller with his new help... instead, his list of things just keeps growing.

Given the mounting insanity of his workload, young Leo poses the zen-like question of "What if I did less--but did my best?" That's fine... but you'll never get into a top-notch college with that attitude, young man!

With the increasingly competitive (and insane) nature of college admissions, you would think that students these days would need clones just to keep their resumes up to snuff. When you look at some of these applicants, it seems impossible that one human being (let alone one teenager) could do all this without the help of a clone or two. For an example, check out this pretty typical sample resume:



And we wonder why teenagers are so miserable! It would not surprise me if the most ambitious parents would attempt to harness the power of cloning technology in order to build the most luscious and eye-popping transcript for their children, something guaranteed to blow admissions officers out of their chairs.

Problem is, once a few people resort to cloning, everyone else is going to have to follow suit just to keep up. The whole admissions process will become more corrupt as applicants who must rely on their own abilities will be at a distinct disadvantage to those who can afford a small army of overachievers. Soon cloning will be as prevalent as SAT prep courses (Kaplan, with their finger on the pulse of the lucrative college admissions industry, will soon offer Clone Management courses to go with their standard slate of test prep classes).

Unfortunately, this would not stop with college. Because of the massive student debt that you are burdened with upon graduation, you will need your army of clones to work multiple jobs just to make your monthly payments. One poor soul will work in an investment banking firm, one will struggle as a freelance journalist, one will grow interesting facial hair and work for tips at the local a coffee shop... you get the idea.

Luckily, the odds of this cloning dystopia becoming a reality are slim because most of us are already familiar with the dangers of cloning. This is thanks in large part to the prescient warnings in the groundbreaking scientific treatise, Scientific Progress Goes "Boink" by the eminent scientist and philospher, Bill Watterson. How he didn't win a Nobel Prize for that invaluable contribution to humanity still blows my mind.

Strega Nona

Author/Illustrator: Tomie dePaola

This is dePaola's classic story that revolves around an old woman and her wonderful pot. (No, it's not about Courtney Love). Strega Nona is the village medicine woman who has a magic pot that, when the right words are spoken, produces pasta. To stop the pot, she recites another spell... and blows three kisses.

Her goofball of an apprentice (Big Anthony) jealously watches Strega Nona casting her spell over the pot, but misses the 3 kisses part. This lack of attention to detail soon leads to some Sorcerer's Apprentice-like mayhem (Note: the Sorcerer's Apprentice was not originally written by Walt Disney).

One day, Strega Nona goes out of town and leaves Big Anthony in charge. Of course, he goes out and tells everyone about the magic pot and then casts the spell, unleashing the magical pasta producing power of the pot and curing everyone's case of the munchies. Big Anthony is the man of the hour!

Unfortunately, Big Anthony doesn't know how to properly shut down the pot and it begins to boil over. A dangerous wave of noodles threatens to bury the entire village. Now everyone hates Big Anthony. That's life in the public eye for you. One minute you're on top of the world, the next minute you're being chased by an angry mob and thrown into a jail cell with Lindsay Lohan.

In the mid 80's, a community theater in Woodstock, Vermont gained national attention for their politically charged interpretation of dePaola's story. Critics flocked to this tiny hippie hamlet to see the play, which had re-imagined the story as a parable about the prevalent economic policy of the times: Reaganomics. The play was called Streganomics.



Left: A scene from Streganomics with Scott Robinski (middle) playing the Reagan-inspired character of Big Anthony, a generically handsome but bumbling doofus.






In the play, the director compares Big Anthony's short-sighted attempt to wield the power of the magic pot to the conservative party's unwaverying belief in the power of the free market. (In a particularly brutal pun, the directors replaced trickle-down economics with boil-over kitchenomics. There's a reason you've never heard of this play.)

Just as the pasta pot dangerously boils over, the U.S. economy eventually spins out of control. The economy takes on a life of its own and ushers in an era of unparrelled economic stratification. People always seem to overlook the fact that the market does not have a moral compass built in. Therefore, it should not be relied upon to magically set our social guidelines. The market must be regulated to some extent in order for it to reflect the morals of our society. (In this case, the three kisses represents the compassionate restraint imposed by socially-conscious regulatory policies.)

Just like Magic, Capitalism isn't inherently evil (as some zealots will tell you), but it's not inherently good either, and therefore its power must be wielded with wisdom and restraint... two qualities of which many politicians (on both sides of the aisle) are notoriously lacking.

In the book, Strega Nona returns to find the city under seige by pasta. She utters the magic words and blows the three kisses to bring the starchy surge to a halt. In the play, however, all does not end so well... Strega Nona doesn't come back.

The play casts Strega Nona as an exalted FDR figure, and her magic of containment is meant to represent the wisdom of the New Deal. However, just as the egalitarian principles behind the New Deal seem like a distant memory, Strega Nona's unique ability to put a lid on the magic pot is lost forever and it appears that the rising tide of pasta is irreversible.

Several people take the helm from Big Anthony, but no one has the courage to utter the magic words that might stem the tide... words such as, "progressive tax code," or "increased corporate regulation." The curtain drops with the citizens of the town buried under a sea of pasta and Big Anthony being airlifted by a private jet and flown off into the sunset.


Note: In the widely overlooked sequel, Strega Nona Meets Her Match, a mysterious stranger appears with a magic fondue pot. Lightning strikes and the two instantly fall head over heels in love. They join forces and with their two magical pots create an unending supply of Macaroni and Cheese, transforming their village into heaven on earth. Now THAT is what I call a happy ending.

Stick

Author/Illustrator: Steve Breen

This is the first picture book for Breen, the Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist. With the story of Stick, a headstrong young frog who likes to do things on his own, Breen displays an impressive sense of humor and comic timing. One day, when Stick shoots his tongue out to catch a dragonfly, he gets carried away (literally) and embarks on a wild airborne adventure. Through a series of surprising developments, Stick excitedly explores the wild world... but will he ever make it back home?

Stick is merely the latest in a long and celebrated line of frog explorers. Indeed, nature's first true explorers were the frog's distant ancesters, those intrepid souls who first ventured out of the primordial ooze: the early amphibians. Frogs are direct descendants of those brave few who left the comforts of their homes to explore the unknown lands above the surface of the water. It's almost as if wanderlust is genetically encoded in frog DNA.

Young Stick also owes much to the most persistent explorer in frog history... an adventurer whose exploits are so well-known that he is known simply as: Frogger. Before Frogger, the frog population had to be content with life around the dank world of the pond. But Frogger yearned for more, he want to stretch the boundaries of his world and boldly go where no frog had gone before.

While people still wonder why the chicken crossed the road, no one questions the Frogger's motives. Frogger did not set out to conquer the world, he set out to conquer himself. Despite frequent setbacks and increasingly dangerous traffic, he refused to quit until he crossed every street that he came across. His indomitable spirit would not be denied... he would either succeed or get flattened in the process.



Left: An 18th Century Tapestry depicting The Wondrous Adventures of Frogger: Explorer Extraordinaire.





Other notable amphibious explorers:


Mr. Toad: Not content with life at Toad Hall, our hero follows Dante's lead and explores the depths of Hell. This harrowing journey is well documented in his memoirs: Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.



Kermit: Perhaps the most famous frog in history, Kermit was the ultimate explorer, blazing trails and opening doors at a prolific clip. He first burst onto the scene as the first frog in space ("One small hop for frogs, one giant leap for frogkind.").

Returning to a hero's welcome, Kermit leveraged his newfound fame into a legendary career in film and television. After conquering the entertainment world and winning every award possible, Kermit begins to feel that familiar itch to touch the void of the unknown... it was not in his nature to be content. So he set out to explore what he believed to be the frog's final frontier: Politics.

Stealing a page from the GOP playbook (which turned the celebrity of Reagan, Schwarzenegger, and possibly Fred Thompson into political gold), the Green Party convinces Kermit to make a run for the presidency. Kermit immediately accepts the challenge. In the first in a series of shrewd moves, Kermit selects his longtime advisor Fozzy Bear to be his running mate (Fozzy's down-to-earth charm and folksy humor polls extremely well down South).

Despite a spirited campaign, Kermit's bid for the highest office in the land eventually falls short (though, being a third party candidate in America, they never really stood much of a chance anyways). While he may have lost the election, Kermit once again wins our hearts when he ends his concession speech with a tearful rendition of "It's Not Easy Being Green."

Who knows, perhaps young Stick will go down in history as the next great frog explorer. But if so, it should be noted that he did not do it alone... he was standing on the shoulders of giants.

Say Something

Author: Peggy Moss
Illustrator: Lea Lyon

Winner of the 2005 Teacher's Choice Award, Moss's book is a quietly powerful tale about silence in the face of bullying. A popular girl turns a blind eye to bullying and teasing until one day she becomes the butt of the joke. This is an adaptation of the powerful poem First They Came by the Pastor Martin Niemoller. Niemoller's poem (an indictment of complacency in the face of rising Nazism) admittedly dealt with more serious issues than junior high bullying... but the basic premise remains the same.

First they made fun of the Nerds, and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Nerd.
Then they made fun of the Dorks, and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Dork.
Then they made fun of the Geeks, and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn't a Geek.
Then they made fun of me, and by that time there was no one left
to speak up for me.

Note: The book is extremely well done... until you get to the appendix. After the story, there is a guide on strategies for dealing with bullying. One section says:

If you are bullied, speak up! Things to say are: "Please stop." "That hurts my feelings." "I haven't done anything to you." Don't be afraid to tell an adult.

Ummm... yeah, right. Follow that advice and there's a good chance that you will either get laughed out of the gym, or pummeled on the playground. While the Say Something approach is well-intentioned, a better strategy (at least for guys) may be to use the Say Anything method:

Lloyd Dobbler's Easy 4 Step Plan for Overcoming Your Dorkdom

1) Take up kickboxing. Tell people its for your own self-satisfaction or to impress the ladies... but really it's just so that while you're getting your ass whooped by jocks, you can at least get one kick in before the ambulance arrives.

2) Wear a trenchcoat. Yes, it's weird and kinda creepy, but do it on the off chance that people will think you're eccentric or mysterious.

3) If you want to get the girl, embarrass yourself with an overly dramatic public demonstration (see picture above). This is NOT optional. Why not? Being a bumbling doofus, you don't have enough going for you to hold anything back. So set your pride aside and put it all out there. It's your only hope.

4) Star in a cheesy but endearing romantic comedy that will ruin the lives of guys everywhere (especially bullies) by warping the romantic expectations of all women who lived in the 80's, thereby sabotaging the relationships of all men (and making Chuck Klosterman's head explode). That's called having the last laugh.

The Saggy Baggy Elephant

Author: Kathyrn Jackson
Illustrator: Gustaf Tenggren

Written in 1947 as part of the Big Little Golden Book series, the Saggy Baggy Elephant is the harrowing tale of an elephant who cannot escape the social pressures to keep a slim and trim figure.

Our story begins with a happy little elephant dancing through the jungle. Happy until an obnoxious parrot begins to make fun of the elephant for its sagging skin. Suddenly the elephant becomes extremely self-conscious about its appearance and considers a series of drastic measures to try to improve itself.

Despite the fact that the television age was still in its infancy in 1947, literary critics maintain that the Saggy Baggy Elephant was written as a prophetic warning about the effect of television (the parrot symbolizing the squawk box/tv) on our self-image and predicted the resulting rise of the plastic surgery industry (and in the case of some disturbing reality television shows, the apocalyptic combination of the two). In 2002, a letter to the editor of Jack & Jill Magazine (signed mysteriously as only K.J.) was published in the March edition of the magazine. Below is a revealing excerpt from the cryptic and rambling letter.

"Even in the early days, I could see the dangerous influence of this little box that would soon be the centerpiece of everyone's living room. Say what you will about the flaws of a patriarchical society, but is it any better to replace the father figure with the television as the most revered and most listened-to family member? Television is a vehicle for the vast marketing machine, a machine that is only successful if it convinces us that was are in need of something. This can come in the form of a new car, a new toy, or even a new body. People make the mistake of assuming that commercials are the only things trying to sell us something. This is naive. Every image that comes on that screen is constructed to make you want. Every second is designed to entice you to consume. Each attractive person that saunters across the screen is another straw on the camel's back, weighing him/her down with the burden of unrealistic expectations. The sad truth behind the Saggy Baggy Elephant is that with television's satanic voice incessantly chirping in our ears, presenting us with skewed visions of physical norms, it is only natural that the we develop acute neuroses about our bodies."

(Note: If the author of the letter is indeed Kathyrn Jackson, it should be noted that she wasn't exactly Rita Hayworth... so the preceeding rant may just be a case of sour grapes.)

But back to our story about our saggy baggy pal. The elephant, newly aware of its short comings, is presented with a series of remedies, each of which has dangerous side effects. This is the part where Jackson truly earns her keep as the modern day Nostradamus of picture books:

1) A hungry tiger offers to bite off a few pounds for the elephant--a blunt symbolic representation of the modern medical procedure known as liposuction.

2) The elephant tries soaking itself in water to shrink its skin--a reference to the disturbingly popular botox revolution.

3) Finally, the elephant foresakes all of these quick-fix remedies and hides in a dark cave--which eerily predicts next year's Hide All Ugly People In A Dark Cave Initiative that will be passed by a near unanimous bipartisan vote in Congress (Senator Joe Lieberman will abstain for obviously self-serving reasons... let's just say you won't find him in People Magazine's Sexiest Men Alive issue any time soon).

Shrek!

Author/Illustrator: William Steig

"His mother was ugly and his father was ugly, but Shrek was uglier than the two of them put together."

This timeless opening line ranks right up there with "Call me Ishmael" and "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." on the short list of greatest first sentences of all time. And so was born the juggernaut that is the Shrek multimedia empire.

With Shrek The Third in theaters everywhere, I thought it'd be interesting to look back at the original Shrek story which was written by the incomparable William Steig. Before it was given the brilliant Pixar treatment and turned into a rollicking pop-culture adventure through fairytale land, Shrek! was a charming but quaint little story about an ugly ogre.

The original Shrek was one of the first truly successful anti-heroes of children's literature. Children delighted in the devilish Shrek as he takes a casually destructive stroll over traditional fairytale convention. What makes Steig's tale so appealing is that he resists the urge to provide us with a tidy moral and does not feel the need to redeem Shrek from his badness. We like Shrek precisely because he does bad things and in the process he makes the good guys look silly. (To quote the great Dark Helmet, "Evil will always triumph because good is dumb.")

The Disney/Pixar film takes this story and pumps it full of steroids... and then filters it through old issues of US Weekly and Rolling Stone. While the original Shrek! was appealing in its simplicity and irreverence, the Shrek movies are wildly successful because of they are complex and layered with a neverending supply of pop-culture references that appeal to adults as well as children. Comparing the two is like comparing a chili cheese dog with a Thanksgiving dinner. Or more accurately, it's like comparing Tecmo Super Bowl to Madden 2007 (for the record, I'd go with Tecmo Super Bowl 9 times out of 10).

Scorecard: Since the book and the movie are so vastly different, it can be hard to figure out where to lay your allegiance. Not that you have to--it's okay to like both. But in case you did want to make a comparison, here is a quick scorecard to get you started:

• In the book, there is a cameo appearance by talking donkey. In the movie, you have Eddie Murphy's purposefully and endlessly annoying jackass. (Book 1, Movie 0)

• Shrek 2 has Puss 'N Boots. (Book 1, Movie 1)

• Shrek 2 has a passing reference to Justin Timberlake. (Book 2, Movie -539)

• In the book, Shrek breaths fire and shoots lasers from his eyes. In the movie, he has a Scottish accent. (Book 27, Movie -539)

• The first movie has the politically incorrect (and hilarious) "Do You Know the Muffin Man" torture scene. (Book 27, Movie 5)

• Mike Myers (the voice of Shrek) also starred in The Cat in the Hat movie. (Book 27, Movie -453,234,497,328)

That should be enough to get you started. Obviously, I haven't seen Shrek the Third yet (I'm apprehensive to say the least), but it could drastically alter the standings. However, the fact that Justin Timberlake has an actual role in this movie automatically knocks it back another 3,072 points.

Stanley Mows the Lawn

Author/Illustrator: Craig Frazier

This is a wholly unexceptional book. I'm not even going to mention what happens... because I already forgot. That's how unexceptional it was. I found out later that it is critically acclaimed for its "bold" artwork. It even won some awards. Usually, this would make me reconsider my original assessment. But not in this case. My original assessment was that book sucks and I'm sticking to it.

What was notable was that the author's biography mentioned that Frazier was the "designer of the Adobe Typeface Critter." Now that is interesting. No one ever really thinks about the face behind the font. For instance, who was the genius that invented the universally accepted Times New Roman? What tortured soul that came up with Showcard Gothic? And most importantly, what the heck is up with Wingdings?!

Slaughterhouse-Five (or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death)

Author: Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

In memory of the recently departed Kurt Vonnegut, here is an excerpt from Slaughterhouse-Five (abridged for the sake of out-of-context clarity) that, I think, would make a wonderfully poignant children's book.

For some context, one of the characters--Billy Pilgrim--turns on the tv and watches a movie about American bombers in World War II. However, because of his unusual circumstance (you have to read the book to understand), he sees the movie unfold backwards--starting at the end and ending at the beginning. Now, a guy watching a TV movie wouldn't necessarily make for a great kid's book... but what he saw would:

"The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks.

When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again."

Paired with the right illustrator (i.e. Bryan Collier of Martin's Big Words or the Marla Frazee from New Baby Train), this would make for a beautiful and powerful picture book... and a fitting testament to Vonnegut's vehement opposition to war.

(r.i.p.)

Sparks Fly High: The Legend of Dancing Point

Author: Mary Quattlebaum
Illustrator: Leonid Gore

In this charming bit of Virginia folklore, Colonel Lightfoot, a vain country gentleman (otherwise known as a "foppish dandy"), must evict a vagrant who is squatting on his land... which proves difficult because this particular vagrant happens to be the Devil himself. The Devil, knowing that Lightfoot is extremely proud of his dancing ability, challenges the Colonel to a dance contest. Stakes are high: winner gets to stay on the land.

While this may seem rather quaint and silly today, at the time, dance-offs were a socially acceptable form of negotiation. Keep in mind that in the early days of colonial America, property law was still in its infancy and contract litigation had yet to develop into the art form that we see today. Without a standard legal protocol for this kind of conflict resolution, people had to rely on the only reliable tool they had: Dance.

Even in the not-to-distant past, dance-offs were still commonplace as a method of resolving property disputes. The turning point came in the mid-fifties when a brutal New York turf war between two rival gangs forced the government to step in and outlaw any form of confrontational gyration. (The violent showdown was definitively captured in the classic documentary West Side Story.) This shocking example of inner-city violence ignited a media storm that caused a nationwide fear of dance. Inevitably, the widespread panic infiltrated America's heartland, as small towns started to ban dances of all kinds. This mass hysteria was met with some resistance, as small youth-led revolutions arose to oppose this latest wave of puritanical hysteria. The most notable case was the Illinois "Dance Dance Revolution" led by the anti-establishment icon Kevin Bacon. (For more information see his stirring biography: Footloose.)

Despite the small pockets of grassroots resistance, dancing remains illegal as a method of settling property disputes (otherwise Donald Trump would never have been able to build his ridiculous empire... unless he made a deal with the devil, which I'm sure he did anyway). However, dancing is still used as a negotiating tool, but almost exclusively in the realm of sexual negotiation. Typically, the two parties involved will take to the dance floor to grind out a mutual understanding for a potential emotional/sexual contract... usually set to the hypnotic beat of a devilishly bad song about "bringing sexy back" or "my humps" (aka lovely lady lumps). I guess that's what you call progress?

The Story of Babar

Author/Illustrator: Jean de Brunhoff

This story starts out with a bang. Literally. Babar's mother is shot dead by a hunter. Luckily, Babar finds solace in the comforting arms of french aristocracy and drowns his sorrows in designer clothing. Having learned big-city ways, Babar returns to the jungle to introduce his fellow elephants to the benefits of civilization... particularly the wearing of funny hats. As a result, he is named king and has to exchange his funny hats for the burdens of the crown. The story ends with one lingering question: Can Babar handle the moral complexities of transforming a jungle-based economy without becoming a puppet of French colonial rule?

Story Idea: A grown-up Babar teams up with a disillusioned Bambi and other bitter children's literature characters to avenge the untimely deaths of their parents. They soon discover that "the hunter" that killed each of their parents is in fact the same person... looks like we have a serial killer on our hands, boys. Two homicide detectives, the uber-cautious Piglet and the borderline insane William Wonka, follow a twisted trail of clues to find the murderer (while trying not to kill eachother). Meanwhile, Babar and Bambi take to the streets to extract their own brand of vigilante justice. The Hunter has become The Hunted.

From the DVD Special Features-Alternate Ending: The elusive hunter turns out to be Vice President Dick Cheney. This was changed before the final version because focus groups thought it was too predictable.