Move over, James Brown, because anyone paying attention knows that Steve Jobs has long been the hardest working man in show business. Or would be, if he were actually in show business. Which he sort of is, what with one of his CEOships being for Pixar and all, plus the act of running Apple primarily consisting of a starring role in a neverending soap opera that, surprise surprise, translates uncannily well to the small screen. (Look, ready-made plots! Writers? We don't need no stinkin' writers. Nor do we have any, which ought to be painfully evident to anyone tuning in; just count the number of complete sentences in this scene so far, assuming you can find any to begin with.)

Okay, so Steve-o works hard for the money, so hard for it honey-- just how much money are we talking about, here? Well, we're far too lazy to go digging up his salary at Pixar, but faithful viewer Frozen Tundra kindly forwarded us a Reuters article which reports that, once again, Steve was paid a whopping one dollar for his work at Apple last year. This marks the fifth consecutive year in which Steve's annual salary as CEO of Apple equates to the pay for, what-- about ten minutes spent flipping burgers at Wendy's? Oh, sure, there have been a few minor perks along the way, such as a jet and stock options that would have been worth some serious ducats had Apple's stock not tanked shortly after he received them, but the fact remains that, paycheck-wise, Steve is being paid only a dollar more to run Apple for a whole year than you're paid to breathe for five minutes. And you can breathe while you sleep. Probably.

Indeed, reportedly none of the bigwigs at Apple is cleaning up in the paycheck department; despite finally lifting "a salary freeze that had maintained employee and executive officers at 2001 levels" just this past November, Apple didn't give end-of-year raises to any of its executives for the third year running, nor did it hand out any more stock options. At least non-executive employees got merit increases, so not everyone's hurting, but yeesh. Here's hoping that execs were already making enough moolah not to seek greener pastures-- well, execs other than Steve, we mean, since even a 15% merit raise would only score him a free iTunes Music Store song if he saves up for seven more years. (Good luck keeping him around if Disney ever makes an offer. Then again, Steve collects CEOships like he collects recording artist lawsuits; pile 'em on, he's got all the time in the world.)

That said, it's not like Steve is starving or anything; he is a billionaire, you know, and while he didn't receive any sort of bonus from Apple last year, the company was kind enough to give him "$74.75 million in restricted stock in exchange for his outstanding stock options," which you probably figure should keep him comfortably in Pez and video rentals for another year. There's just one problem, though: the so-called "restricted stock" doesn't vest for another couple of years, but we expect he can stretch his savings to hold him above water until then. He might have to economize a bit in the meantime-- for example, hiring generic hit men to smite his enemies instead of enlisting the expensive brand-name ones. Will the belt-tightening never end?

Geez, what is it with beverages and digital music, anyway? You all know about the Pepsi tie-in with iTunes, and indeed many of you have distilled the art of scoring free song downloads into a hardcore science. (Tilting, shmilting-- we really like that some of you are shining super-bright LED flashlights through the caps of unopened bottles and reading the printing like you've got x-ray vision. Lex Luthor called; you qualify for membership in the Evil Genius Society.) Then there's Coca-Cola, which actually launched its own downloadable music store in the UK. And now, just to keep the trend rolling, omnipresent java chain Starbucks is getting into the act, too. Potable liquids and digital songs; who knew?

According to an article in BusinessWeek, Starbucks has teamed up with none other than Hewlett-Packard to hook up a "songs-to-go" service in selected locations. When the system goes live, apparently you'll be able to browse through a library of 250,000 songs on a borrowed Tablet PC (wow, someone's finally going to buy one!), sample the selection through a pair of headphones, purchase any songs you like along with your cup o' joe, and the barista can foam your milk while burning your selected tunes to a CD for you to take home.

So, wait-- is this a rebranded and specialized front-end to the iTunes Music Store or not? At first we figured it probably was, since HP is in on the Starbucks deal; as you all know, HP joined itself at the hip to Apple a little while back with the agreement to preload iTunes on all HP and Compaq home computers and sell corpse-blue HP-rebranded iPods, which are themselves joined at the hip to the iTMS. And then Hal Gaba (co-owner of Concord Records) is quoted in the article as saying that the Starbucks music thing is "a significant enhancement of the iTunes experience," which implies at least a little that the setup is an applied extension of Apple's store.

Dig a little deeper, though, and it becomes very clear that whatever this thing is, it's not powered by iTunes. For one thing, it has a song catalog half the size, and Starbucks apparently had to negotiate its own "licensing agreements with most of the major record labels." For another, BusinessWeek opines that "Starbucks will have to keep a wary eye on its digital competitors such as Apple's iTunes." Read up on it a little and you have to bend your mind back to those ancient days of yore when music only came on CDs. The Starbucks music service won't allow you to load your purchases directly onto an iPod or any other portable MP3 player, or even onto your laptop; all they'll give you is a CD. The upshot, of course, is that-- from a technical standpoint, at least-- the separation from the iTMS is irrelevant; Starbucks is selling custom-burned mix CDs, not music downloads.

We imagine it's possible that Apple might feel hurt that HP has entered into a non-iTMS-based digital music partnership, but we doubt it, since the Starbucks thing is unlikely to put even a ding in iTMS sales. They cater to very different audiences, after all; iTMS customers want instantaneous digital music for their computers and iPods, while people who use the Starbucks service will probably be java hounds making caffeine-fueled impulse buys because compiling a mix CD is a nifty way to kill time during the latest coffee infusion. Heck, we'll probably give it a whirl ourselves. We have to occupy ourselves somehow while we anxiously await beverage-centric digital music initiatives from Yoo-hoo, V8, and SunnyD.

So by now we're sure you're all wondering, is it still International Week here at AtAT? You betcher sweet boots it is, buddy! But after our recent plot jaunts to France and China, this time we thought we'd reel it in a bit, because all this thinking about intercontinental travel is really messing with our internal clocks. Virtual jetlag: almost as bad as virtual leg cramps, virtual ear-popping, virtual turbulence-while-peeing, and virtual packs of peanuts that are just too freakin' small, already. Seriously, all this nonexistent flying is the virtual pits, so this time we thought we'd pick a country we could think about driving to, instead.

Helloooooooo, Canada!

Yes, Canada, our lovely neighbor to the north; remember, folks, it isn't the 51st state yet, so it's totally fair game for an International Week installment, even though it's only a few hours away by car (for us, anyway). Virtual road trips are far less irritating than all that tedious pretending to sit around in airplanes. And here's the Canadian plot twist of the week: apparently Apple's going completely nutso with the iPod ads over there. Not TV commercials, which aren't even really at saturation levels here in the states (and why would they be, since iPods and miniPods are selling like crazycakes already?), but those posters that Apple's so fond of plastering all over the place. The thing is, Apple has reportedly taken the whole poster thing to a whole new level-- one which some mental health care professionals might well categorize as "obsessive."

Check it out; MacMinute reports that the St. George train station in Toronto has been made over into a veritable "Apple dreamland," in the words of one eyewitness: "iPod ads adorn nearly every object of the station-- posts, walls, stairs, and even newspaper recycle bins." Scope out the provided photographs to see what they mean; our favorite is definitely Elongated Silhouette Dude™ jammin' venetian blind-style on the front surfaces of some three-dozen stairs. Call it overkill, call it art, call it anything but subtle. Not a single soul passing through St. George will be able to say he hasn't heard of the iPod. Of course, all he may be able to tell you about it is that it's some white thing with wires that people who paint themselves black like to hold while they pose in front of brightly colored backdrops, but hey, that's brand recognition right there.

So clearly Apple has set its sights on Toronto as the next city to be taken over by shuffling, vacant-eyed 'Pod people who are strangely slow to respond to phrases like "I can help you down here, sir" or "Are you ready to order?" or the ever-popular "For God's sake, get out of the way-- I have no brakes!" Meanwhile, sources indicate that the iPodified St. George station is an irresistible beacon to famed spraypaint vandals the Neistat Brothers, who are already planning a road trip across the border to stencil every possible surface at St. George with the slogan "iPOD'S NONREPLACEABLE BATTERY LASTS ONLY ABOOT 18 MONTHS, EH?" Here's hoping the Mounties give 'em what-for.