Random: Robyn Hitchcock, StarShipSofa, and (H)Amsterdam

Just got back from Vinyl Fever, where they were having special in-store performances and sales. I just got my advance for the nonfiction collection, and am a big believer in celebrating each book by indulging in something cool, for myself or someone who helped with the project. In this case, I was really selfish and got this cool Robyn Hitchcock boxed set called Luminous Groove, which contains three CDs with extra tracks--Fegmania!, Gotta Let This Hen Out, and Element of Light--as well as A Bad Case of History, a two-disc set, one studio one live, of rare and uncollected tracks. Good, good stuff.Unfortunately, my stepdaughter Erin was finishing up her last day at Vinyl Fever, too. In a couple of weeks she and Mr. R, pictured here expressing his jaded disdain for Rush Limbaugh......will be moving to Amsterdam. :( Gonna miss them, although Mr. R will be back in the summers to visit us and his Alabamy Grandmammy. And I guess it does give us an excuse to visit Amsterdam. Cold comfort that, though. We'll have to get on skype ASAP. Maybe even send him his own blow-up giant penguin.And, just to make this an entirely random post, except that it will involve skype, StarShip Sofa has started doing a cool podcasty show thingee, which you can subscribe to via itunes. Guests of the first show included long time listener and creator of Fiction Crawler, SF writer, photographer, and web designer, managing Editor for Escape Pod, creator of twitter @Future! Jeremy Tolbert, and Damien G Walter, writer of weird and speculative fiction who writes for the Guardian online and has been published in Electric Velocipede, Serendipity, and Transmissio. I've agreed to appear on the May 15th and May 21st shows, maybe more, depending on how it goes. What will I be doing? I dunno. Spreading rumors and gossip? Divulging top sekrit info? Giving instructions to the squid navy? Just depends. I'm in a fickle mood these days. Ask Ann--she's had to put up with fickle Jeff for a few weeks, and anything is possible.Last note: I'm behind on getting Secret Lives orders out. Just had a monstrously bizarre couple of weeks and certain things I can concentrate on and others not. Will get them out soon.