I’m writing from a hotel room in sunny California (which as you know I hate) where I have flown in order to podcast from E3 for Popular Science magazine. Who did what to the what now? Let me explain: E3 is the Electronic Entertainment Expo where all the makers of games, and players of games, and models paid to wear Lara Croft costumes come to party. As you know if you have been following every aspect of my life very closely, I have done a few podcasts with my friend John Hodgman that relate to our Little Gray Books show in Brooklyn. I have also done a little writing for Popular Science magazine. As it turns out, these two great tastes taste great together. John and I will basically spend a day interviewing people and walking around and talking about things we see, and then post the whole thing as an mp3 on the Popular Science website. There will be three half-hour shows, and they’ll go up Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of this week. These shows may also include some potential Popular Science theme songs, or fragments thereof, if I can stand to make them public.

The plot thickens. Yahoo has just launched their own online music service. It’s subscription-based like Napster and Rhapsody, so if you stop paying your monthly fee, all your songs turn into pumpkins. Napster and Rhapsody are both about $15/month and this is significantly cheaper at $7/month, or $5/month if you get an annual subscription. None of these services work with the iPod, or with Macs.

Strangely, Where Tradition Meets Tomorrow is already up on the Yahoo service, though Smoking Monkey is not. CDBaby doesn’t report sending either CD to them, so I wonder if they just piggybacked off some other service’s catalog. Or something.

It will be interesting to see if people prefer renting music to buying it. Personally I think it’ s important to own your music and be able to play it on any device you want, but $5/month is pretty cheap for unlimited listenings to any of a million songs. This could change the landscape completely. Anybody use and love/hate any of these subscription services?

Well, it was nice while it lasted. My star has faded. The new It Girl is a band called “Brobdingnagian Bards” with their albums A Faire to Remember and Memories of Middle Earth. Yes, that’s Renaissance flavored music inspired by The Lord of the Rings.

I sadly remove my geek crown, tenderly pack it away in its leather case and place it up on the shelf next to my Star Wars action figures.

I was going to apologize for all of these postings being about me. But guess what, it’s my website. It has my name on it. I mean, what did I think I was doing when I set it up? Regardless, here is my new favorite blog posting about me:

The Mighty Kymm

in which the author wonders about why my website includes no photos of me. She speculates that either I am a complete troll, or I am so gorgeous that it my looks would be a distraction from my music, and suspects the latter. Well, she’s right. Ask anyone who knows what I look like, I’m a total babe. (As long as you like beards. Er, and the goiter.)

I should point out that my first CD, Smoking Monkey, does include a picture of me standing in front of one of the dishes at the Very Large Array radio telescope thing in New Mexico. I am backlit, so the goiter doesn’t really show.

I will also note that The Mighty Kymm has hand-coded her site in html, which is hott.

Hooray, hooray, it’s the first of May. Spend it with someone you love…