Possibly worth the price of admission

With my car's lease about to expire and recent term leasing agreements about as appealing as a pimple on the tip of your nose, Mrs. S and I decided to go ahead and buy a car. Fortunately, the company my dad retired from (Generous Motors) is basically giving cars away right now (seriously: we didn't pay one dollar for the car, although we'll have to start forking over a couple hundred a month to GMAC next month), so we went ahead and became a two Vibe family, purchasing a very sleek, very sharp, midnight blue 2009 Pontiac Vibe.

("Dammit! I thought 'late to jazz' would be about music!" It is. Just hold on and keep reading.)

As anyone who's purchased a GM vehicle lately knows, they come with free Onstar and free XM satellite radio for a couple of months, to possibly get you hooked and make you want to subscribe. Well, I'm here to tell you after two days of driving with the XM jazz channel tuned in (not to mention my eight day business trip over Christmas when I had an XM-equipped rental), I'm thinking a subscription to XM might just be the way to go. I mean, hell, I just put on the main jazz channel, and that's what I get: jazz! And not that lame-ass Kenny G, Dave Koz, "would've been Ferrante and Teischer if born thirty years earlier" jazz. We're talking Italian saxophonists covering Miles Davis, Bud Powell, Count Basie, some Czech guy live at the Bohemian Caverns... Real "real" jazz.

Now, on a good day, I only spend forty minutes in the car, but with school, if I end up actually going twice a week, that would add another two hours a week to my in-car time. I'm thinking, for the exposure to different music, musicians and songs in the jazz genre that XM will provide over the four and a half hours I'll spend in the car each week, listening to real jazz but not the same old CD's from my collection, $12.99 a month just might - might - be worth it.

I don't have to make a decision until my introductory subscription runs out, so I've got a couple of months anyway. If you're a jazz fan and/or XM fan, let me know what you think: to XM, or not to XM?