Today the Walt Disney Company bought Pixar Animation Studios. Steve Jobs is now largest single stock holder in the Walt Disney Company. Amazing! Steve Jobs basically owns Disney! He can call all the shots! Amazing!

I hope that Steve and the boys from Pixar gut the animation studio like a fish! Remove the layer upon layer of management that exists over there! Why are these people there anyway? Compared to what they used to do, there's almost no animation being done there these days. If there's no animation being done, why are there so many managers? Why do they need assistants? What do they do all day?

Maybe now, they can actually hire back actual animators in the animation department. They can now bring back the real people behind creating the best animated films on the planet! The artists! They obviously know a little something about how to do that at Pixar. I can only hope they will bring that magic spark back to Disney.

-steve

Finally got to see King Kong. Saw Jerry and Aaron's Dad today. None of us had seen King Kong, so we went to see it. Actually Aaron's Dad treated us. It was pretty darn good. A little long, but really well done. The acting/animation of Kong was amazing! At some point, the Academy may have to go ahead and add a "Best Achievement in Animation" category. Simply having "Best Animated Picture" and "Best Visual Effects" just isn't going to cut it with such great performances as this. Naomi Watts is no slouch either. She did a really great job. You really believed she was right there with the giant ape. Kudos to Peter Jackson bringing a classic back to the big screen and remaining true to the original.

Go see this movie in the best theater you can!

-steve

No, I don't have a Video iPod. That doesn't mean I can't convert stuff to play on it! Here's one of the most comprehensive online guides on how to do it whether you want H.264 or MPEG-4.

The Last iPod Video Guide You’ll Ever Need

-steve

If you are as old as me, you can remember a time when local radio station here in L.A., KROQ used play some of the best music around. You would also remember the DJ's at the time. Dusty Street, Freddie Snakeskin, Swedish Egil and of course Richard Blade. While Jed the Fish is the sole survivor still currently on KROQ, you can find the rest of the 80's crew on Sirius Satellite Radio. They have their own channel called 1st Wave - Ch 22. Scott had them on in his car the other day and I picked up on Dusty's voice right away. Sirius has a 3 day free trial plan that you can test out and hear on the net. So check it out if you get a chance.

-steve

Steve Jobs gave his keynote speech at Macworld yesterday. You can view the whole thing here. Among the things he introduced were the cool new iMac and MacBook Pro both with duel Intel processors. My only gripe is that Apple makes such good computers, my current Mac (almost 4 years old) works just fine, and I can't really see buying one of those 20" iMacs just yet. Damn you Apple, you make the computers too good! Well, there's always next year!

-steve