bizzarest thing at macworld keynote

The strangest thing at MacWorld was the musical guest that they invited this year.

This year they invited Randy Newman, the guy who wrote alot of the music to several Pixar films like Toy Story. You know that kind of folksy bouncy laid back buddy movie.

Anyway, he talks about how he went to Europe and they didn't really like Americans, so he wrote a song about it. And the song went on to say how our empire is waning and we don't have the best leader, but it's still better than Caesar and some of the crazy Roman leadership who made the 2nd in command a horse. The song continues on that it's not as bad a Stalin, or other violent leader. But yet how he wished the current supreme court wouldn't outlive him and compared the two Italian Americans in the court to some historical Italian names that I didn't immediately recognize. he didn't say how America was all that great either, but didn't think we were as bad as the Europeans thought in comparison to Europe's historical leaders.

So here you have it, political commentary that both defends but doesn't glorify America, with references to European political leaders known and obscure, all wrapped up in a bouncy, care free melody of a cartoon buddy movie. It was critical but it wasn't totally angry and you had to be quite geeky and book read to get some of the references. It was all very very...um...strange.

He sang "You've got a friend in me" from Toy Story, but not before talking about how he likes watching CNBC because he liked watching all the numbers go by and because his uncles were gambling addicts and stocks is kind of the same thing. I don't know how that tied to anything, but again, if his intent was to make the audience go, where are we and who is this guy, it was working.

Then he comments about how great this/Apple corporation is, but that he's not one to usually support corporations and is generally against all of them, except for this one because this one is different. And then says how the guy from 20th century Fox was the nicest movie head he's ever met, but he's only saying that so he can stayed employed.

After I came down from my confusion and realized where I was, I found him quite hilarious actually. He's that aging hippie type you can imagine sitting at European cafes and philosophizing and debating about any random thing, and if you don't stop him, he'll take your ear and drag you on the journey he seems to constantly be on with or without the drugs. A kind of genius madness. And really it felt like a crazy mind trip figuring out his lyric references that seemed to collide with the casually bouncy buddy movie music. If you were serious at figuring out what he was actually saying, it might make your head explode. I had a great time! Truly a real character!

Then when he's done with those songs, Jobs comes back and says, "that was Randy Newman." and really, what else can you say but that.