Tangent time! Like we said, not much is shaking Apple-wise right now, so it's nice that Steve has another job that we can occasionally mine for drama nuggets. We speak, of course, of his CEOship of Pixar, which, as you all know, has left him hovering at the periphery of the oh-my-lord-can-you-believe-this-is-still-going-on Disney CEO crisis for the past ten or twelve decades. The last thing we want to do is retread all that nonsense to bring you back up to speed, but here's the Stick Figure Theater version sans the stick figures:

Disney CEO Michael Eisner hates Steve Jobs; Steve hates Eisner; Eisner hates Disney board member and nephew-o'-Walt Roy Disney; Roy hates Eisner; Eisner gets Roy tossed from the board after calling both Roy and Steve "Shiite Muslims"; Roy tries to get shareholders to toss Eisner out; Steve cancels Pixar-Disney negotiations just in time to make Eisner look bad; Eisner receives the biggest vote of no confidence from shareholders in history; Eisner is removed as chairman but stays on as CEO; Eisner finally decides to "retire" come September of 2006.

Needless to say, Eisner leaving at the end of summer the year after next isn't nearly soon enough for Roy and his merry brigade of Eisner-despiseners, and he's still trying to get the Disney board to boot the guy posthaste, but in the meantime, the board is taking its own sweet time sniffing out Eisner's successor to the throne at the Magic Kingdom. Naturally, that's opened the door for every pundit and his pundit grandmother to offer suggestions, and billionaire Steve "Mr. Flat Tax" Forbes is evidently no exception. (Whether or not his grandmother posts a rebuttal remains to be seen.)

As pointed out by faithful viewer Pedro Henriquez, an article by Steve Forbes oddly dated "11.15.04" (apparently when you're that rich, time travel ain't no thang) mentions that Disney's CEO-huntin' board "couldn't do better than to go all out to tap Steve Jobs, cofounder and CEO of Apple Computer and CEO of Pixar." Forbes cites Steve's unparalleled knowledge of high tech, Hollywood, finances, and "the critical importance of creativity," something that hasn't been overly evident in the current Disney regime. And since it's only a matter of time before video and movies are distributed at high volumes over the Internet (he means legally, BitTorrent-boy) just like music is starting to be, who better to have helming the U.S.S. Disney than the guy who got the first successful music downloading service hashed out and up and running?

Of course, the biggest monkey wrench in that beautiful dream is that Steve is already just a leetle bit busy running Pixar and Apple, but Forbes insists that Steve is "enormously creative and energetic" enough to "head Disney and be, as he is now, Apple's guiding spirit." Toss a "Pixar gets bought by Disney, after which Pixarians come in and take over all of Disney from the inside just like the NeXTians did when Apple bought NeXT" scenario in there and it just may be possible. Dare to dream!