Everybody do the Boardroom Shuffle! Man, here we always thought that in corporate America the role of any board of directors worth its salt was to hibernate 98% of the time and then emerge from their holes every couple of months, meet in a room with a really big and expensive table, and then fight over who gets the last jelly donut. Not so, Spanky; there are signs of life in them thar hills! Maybe Larry Ellison's recent departure from Apple's board was a trendsetting moment (what with Larry being the world-savvy, jet-set go-getter and all) and other directors are following suit. Or maybe BusinessWeek's recent naming of Apple and Gap Inc. to its list of the eight companies with the worst boards in the country struck a nerve. Who's to say?

All we know for sure is that, boardroom-wise, things are getting all shook up, uh huh huh, uh huh, yeaaaa-heaah. (Insert Elvis lip-twitch and hip-swivel here. Don't worry, we're only filming from the waist up.) Following hot on the heels of Larry's resignation from Apple's board to go play with boats, faithful viewer Matt points out that now Gap has announced Steve Jobs's resignation from its board of directors, allegedly so he can "focus on other priorities." Other priorities? A likely story. What other priorities? Being CEO of two major corporations? Spending time with his family? Getting his bowling average up over 230? C'mon, even all of that stuff added together probably leaves him, what, eight or ten hours of free time per day, right?

We really can't help thinking that BusinessWeek is indeed a major factor in these shifts; after all, two of its biggest criticisms of Apple's board were that Larry Ellison was dead weight (problem solved) and Gap CEO Millard Drexler was on Apple's board while Apple CEO Steve was on Gap's (also solved). In fact, that second problem is doubly fixed, since Drexler isn't even Gap's CEO anymore-- Gap announced that he was replaced last week. So now all Apple has to do is get Micro Warehouse's Jerry York off the board and then persuade Steve to buy a few fistfuls of Apple stock and give back the jet, and BusinessWeek will have nothing more to complain about.

Meanwhile, we understand that wonky Apple conspiracy theorists are flying high these days, drawing relations between Gap's new CEO Paul Pressler being "a 15-year veteran of The Walt Disney Company" and Steve's sudden ensuing departure from the Gap board. Did he beat a hasty retreat? In other words, is this yet another tenuous Disney-Apple connection to bolster the dear-lord-it-just-won't-DIE-already rumor of a buyout of the latter by the former? Well, let's just put it this way: you do know that Millard Drexler goes by the name "Mickey," don't you?