Hands up, who's jonesing for a Stevenote? Well, if you don't think you can keep it together without a Reality Distortion fix all the way until the Worldwide Developers Conference on the 28th, we've got some good news: as faithful viewer Benjamin informs us, Apple has posted a QuickTime stream of last Tuesday's European launch of the iTunes Music Store, at which Steve addressed members of the media at Old Billingsgate Market in London. Finally, not only a timely dose of Steveness, but the chance to see the man strut his stuff in the UK for the first time in... well, geez, practically ever, as far as we know. (Which is none too surprising, actually, given the man's thinly-veiled and unexplained vendetta against the nation in years past.)

But don't get your hopes up too high for a near-lethal blast of RDF-y goodness, because this hour-long event comes off as somehow lacking in the oomph department. Maybe it's because we found ourselves a little too preoccupied with worries about Steve's health to get into it; faithful viewer Shaun Woods was the first to comment on how much weight Steve appears to have lost, and he's right-- while Fearless Leader was never particularly chunky, in the London footage he looks positively gaunt. And before anybody says "Atkins," let us remind you that Steve is vegan, and the intersection between Atkins-friendly foods and vegan ones is darn close to the empty set-- although if Steve's been eating nothing but peanuts and Styrofoam for the past few weeks, that would certainly explain his vaguely undernourished appearance.

It gets worse, though. These keynotesque presentations are Steve's bread 'n' soy margarine, and while performing he's always seemed fully at ease and in his natural element. For the life of us, we can't recall the man ever having totally lost his train of thought while onstage-- but if you tune in to the stream, at right about 27:25 you'll witness His Steveness absolutely and completely at sea for at least fifteen solid seconds. He says, and we quote, "And, uh, you know I've got a, uh... I've got a, uh... umm... ... ...let's see... ... ...I've got, um... a way to... ... What was I going to show you? Oh, yes! Sorry." And then he's off and running again, but boy howdy did that throw us for a loop and a half.

We'd like to attribute all the weirdness to jetlag, but Steve's a seasoned world traveler who never seems this disoriented during his Paris keynotes, or even his Tokyo ones-- and jetlag wouldn't explain the weight loss. From our perspective, there are two possibilities, here. The first is that Steve was fighting an extended and unprecedented bout of nerves; he was entering the belly of the beast, after all, and there was a decent chance that some Brit still traumatized by the loss of the British-localized Mac OS has been waiting for just such an occasion to try out his new sniper rifle. The second scenario is that that wasn't Steve; the real Steve sent a slightly thinner and less keynote-savvy double in his stead so he wouldn't have to risk personal injury by visiting the UK himself.

We suppose you could also chalk it all up to a recent spring cold he's just getting over, if you wanted to be all pedestrian and obvious about it.

But if Steve was under the weather, the audience was on a frickin' slab. We realize that this was a press event and not a Gathering of the Faithful, but geez, at least at the U.S. press shindigs the assembled masses still respond to certain stimuli. If you're going to tune in, be warned: it's a little painful to hear Steve pause for the usual laughter and/or applause and be greeted with dead silence. No wonder he was off his game. Maybe he should have had Alicia Keys warm up the crowd before his spiel, not after-- although even she was taken aback by the silence at first: "Are you okay out there? You sure?" She eventually did manage to get a response from them, though, at one point remarking, "They're alive! They are alive, Steve, they're out there!" Ah, the exuberance of youth.

In any case, while this event isn't likely to win an award for Bestest Steve Appearance any time soon, it's still worth checking out-- especially if you're in dire need of a pre-WWDC dose of Steve. (Or a reasonable facsimile thereof.) Oh, and Steve-- if you are ill, let us know. We'll send you some Ginger-Carrot Soup. Mmmmm...