The convenience and the technological wizardry of iPods and portable DVD players and blue-tooth enabled hand-held gaming are more than just forward thinking and cutting edge. There is contained in them and their yet-to-be-born more mind-boggling cousins a tangible magic made available to the dreamer in every man. Through technology, art may be delivered to everyone trapped in the here and now of a crowded, demanding, invasive, encroaching world; a world in which the Beacham is now a nightclub, and too many people attending movies behave as if they’re at a taping of Jerry Springer.

I don’t want paint myself as some crusty, out of touch geezer suddenly dazzled by the “new fangled gizmos�? of the day. I tend to keep my 19 year old nephew up to date on what I read about newer and larger plasma screens and I could (can) waste an entire Sunday morning downloading videos to the iPod. What suddenly excites me is that through these alternative methods of delivery, animation might actually do more than merely entertain us, it might, it just might once again inspire us.

So it is that John Lasseter’s eager response of “yes, absolutely�? to the question of whether or not there is any possibility of traditional 2-D animation being produced at Disney once again has me dreaming not of a great hand drawn feature film, but of the real renaissance traditional animation could experience if it were to be unleashed with abandon from Disney directly to pockets and our desktops. There are plenty of people who have, for some time now, been doing as much on varying scales. There’s plenty of toon content out there, that’s for sure. Most of it is in Flash, a great deal is CG, and a truffle or two of newly created traditional may be reaped by the diligent among us. But it isn’t the quality of what Disney/Pixar is capable of producing.

So, what if children (and adults) ran eagerly to the store to plunk down $1.99 in seat-cushion cash each month not just for the old shorts, but for new stuff - the latest installment of Mickey and Donald and Pluto, once again squashed and stretched about the landscape at the hands of Andreas Deja, Ruben Aquino, Mike Surrey, Ron Husband, Russ Edmonds and James Baxter? What if Disney began to invest in a program that rotated animators off of a feature project onto a short films unit, a kind of spa for the creative mind where it was no-holes barred and open to the wildest ideas? A place to get their chops back with a pencil in their hand, to inform their hearts and hands and heads all at the same time, making them better animators on the keyboard and tablet as a result? What if an actor’s gym was both a profitable playground and a prolific source of income that spread the excitement and the anticipation for quality, 24 frames a second, top-notch, home-grown animation that was only available to be downloaded and carried around like the latest copy of “The Avengers�? rolled up in your back pocket and savored under a shady tree on a sunny summer day?

The late, great Joe Grant believed that the short film was the birthplace of great animation, and the proverbial home to which it could and should return in order to achieve its best. The charm, inventiveness, inspirational delight and pure silliness of the compilation features like “Melody Time�? and “Make Mine Music�? still stand as testament to this theory. John Lasseter and Ed Catmull have at their disposal the tools, the ambition, the infrastructure and the hardware to bring that feeling back. Pixar, in fact, is one of the few studios that regularly grew artists and ideas through the short format. Happily, Disney has recently completed a hand-drawn short based on “The Little Match Girl�? that, so the buzz goes, is so compelling and moving that it rivals the best full-length fairy tale narratives.

Act one proved that Robert Iger has an authentic vision. He has chosen as his co-star in this drama an equally inspired visionary, Steve Jobs. They are backed up by the most energized, passionate and capable champion of great animation since the founder of the company, John Lasseter. So will they seize this opportunity at a critical turning point and take the kind of risk that could make this journey culminate in something truly historic? Places gentlemen...Curtain up!