Rich Mintz  

New IFC series starring David Cross and Will Arnett coming this month? Why wasn’t I notified?

I have the Rockford Files (as often happens) on in the background tonight, and at the beginning of this episode, Angel (Jim’s troublesome ex-cellmate, played by perennial character actor Stuart Margolin) is walking into the fleabag SRO where he lives, and over the mailboxes is a sign with the quote “Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens.” I had to look it up; it’s from Daniel Webster, the last person I expected to see associated with a cheesy ’70s TV series. But the quote is actually not a terrible thing to see up on the wall of an apartment building full of hopeless people trying to turn their lives around in a bad neighborhood, at least viewed through a generous paternalistic lens. And certainly in context it’s humanizing. Some propmaster or Minister of Scenery or whatever, back in 1977, decided to put that up (or leave it up); nice touch.

I have to confess that in the past I’ve only been able to take the comedian/actor/artiste David Cross in small doses, and have once or twice given voice to the thought. (The Boon Companion can confirm.) I think it may have been after seeing him on Bill Maher’s show, which tends to encourage the kind of pontificating I find hard to take, so I’m not sure Cross is entirely to blame.

But after watching most of Season 2 and part of Season 3 of “Arrested Development” in less than a week, I have to apologize — David Cross’s portrayal of Tobias Fünke is one of the consistently funniest, most creative, most boundary-pushing comedic characterizations I can remember seeing anywhere. And it just goes on and on, episode after episode, and somehow he plays these unlikely situations, delivers these absolutely impossible lines, without busting up laughing.

Here’s a little snippet of Cross on politics:

And here’s an itty bitty snippet of insight into Tobias Fünke:

The NYT informs us that prolific TV writer Jackson Gillis died this month. No, I didn’t know him either, but IMDB informs us that he wrote 24 episodes of “Columbo” (including several memorable classic episodes from the first two seasons), 99 (!) episodes of “Perry Mason,” and scattered episodes of over two dozen more formula TV dramas from the 1960s and 70s.

One of Gillis’s “Columbo” episodes was “Short Fuse,” shot in Palm Springs — including a memorable hand-to-hand fight on the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway (pictured here).

Actual real-life Hoarders contrast photo, taken 4 minutes ago:

If you’ve never neatly folded and put away nine loads of laundry at once while watching Hoarders, you should try it. Highly recommended.

Bonus comment: Where in the world did the name Standolyn come from? Now the mystery is solved.

Extra bonus comment: When someone on Hoarders says “And we have ten cats who live with us,” the proper reply is “Yes, of course you do.”

OK, I’ve done it: I’ve subscribed to Sirius XM satellite radio. This despite owning hundreds of CDs and gigabytes of ripped and downloaded music, having streaming music available at my command bundled with Time Warner and Roku products and services I’ve already paid for, having a Pandora account that I basically like, and, you know, having access to the Internet, which contains for free (for those willing to dig) every single musical note ever played in the history of man, multiplied a zillion times over.

So here’s the deal. In the course of my one-week free trial, I discovered that despite all that music I already had access to, I actually listen to a lot more music via this Sirius XM/iPhone/docking station three-way marriage than I’ve listened to since I gave up my XM subscription. A lot more, like five times as much. And that music involves a broader variety of genres, and a broader variety of songs, including both songs that awaken my nostalgia and songs I’ve never heard of before. And about half of the background music I’m adding to my media diet is directly crowding out background episodes of reality TV. Good stuff, right?

One of the business facts I’m reminded by all this is that people don’t just pay a premium for innovation in product, they pay a premium for innovation in delivery experience, too, and in packaging of that experience, and especially in the consistency and reliability thereof. It’s worth money just not to have to think — to be able to take for granted that something will just work. Netflix figured that out with DVDs-by-mail, and then figured it out again with streaming, and Apple of course figured it out ages ago and has put it into practice half a dozen times, in a range of sectors that are gradually converging. FedEx figured it out, by taking something (overnight delivery via USPS) that was perceived, rightfully or not, as a dicey proposition and making it 100% trustworthy.

So now, wherever I plop myself down, I dock my phone, I hit the Sirius XM button, I fiddle with the display for just a moment, and within 10 seconds I’m listening to an interesting stream of music. I don’t even think; I just do it. Now that’s the kind of reliability I’d happily pay $12 a month for.

I think I’m readdicted to satellite radio (that didn’t take long, did it?). It’s a whole new ballgame now that my iPhone, combined with the docking speakers that are already strategically placed around my life, can play satellite radio anytime I feel like it.* Sure is easier than hauling that boom box around in the car, like I did in 2002!

In honor of my new addictions, here’s a musical gem turned up for me by the inspired programmers at Sirius XM: “Indiana Wants Me” (1970), a Canadian #1 and American #5 hit, by R. Dean Taylor.

*Some of my docking speakers aren’t compatible with iPhone 4. Fortunately, they’re the crappy ones I already hated…

…and that means bluegrass and Nashville country, both via satellite radio and iTunes. Here are a few of the background albums that will keep me productive today:

And here’s a little flavor of what’s rumbling through my office. Or try this:

Or, for a total change of pace, this:

I bought into the idea of satellite radio quite early, right around the time I moved to Atlanta in 1999. Often what brings us to try new technologies is the recommendation of others, but I didn’t need one for this, because satellite radio seemed like a no-brainer — commercial radio at the time was awful (maybe it still is, but who listens anymore?), I was living in a place where I couldn’t get consistent NPR, I missed the bluegrass and community programming on WAMU — and then this New Thing came along.

From the start, I was an XM loyalist, and not just because I knew several people who worked at their headquarters in DC (although that was part of it — and I loved the company’s roots in the District itself, where they outfitted studios in a then-ratty neighborhood off New York Avenue NE before it was obvious to everyone else that the gentrification of that part of DC would actually work). XM was the purist’s choice; in their founding narrative, which I’m sure was more than a little true, they amassed a stupefying collection of recordings, hired the world’s best music curators and on-air talent, and set out to make something worth our loyalty, in response to the appalling field of steaming manure that commercial radio had become in the ClearChannel era. Sirius, by way of contrast, always felt like a naked money play.

So XM raised a stunning amount of money (there were satellites involved, after all — and if I recall correctly, one of the early ones went off course toward Mars or fell into the sea or something, and they had to build a new one — I’m sure it’s on the Internet, you can look it up), and over the next several years, they stumbled in the direction of profitability without ever quite losing their soul. I remained a subscriber for 8 years (!), upgrading my radio once or twice. I’m no music snob — I’m not even that much of a connoisseur — but there’s music I just plain like that you can’t hear on commercial radio and that’s too much work to steal off the Internet or rip from CDs. And besides, part of the point of radio has always been that an intelligent editor programs it for you, at least in theory, so that you can learn about things you’ll like but wouldn’t have found otherwise. Services like Pandora achieve a similar aim in a different way, but I find they require too much thinking to make me happy.

With XM, I was able to indulge my love of legitimate bluegrass, and dance and electronica, and even (to my secret shame) kickass Nashville country music. (Anyone who doesn’t like Kenny Chesney after listening to this or this, or Tim McGraw after this, or Trisha Yearwood after this, needs their head examined.) I bought multiple boomboxes and accessories so I could listen in the car and at home and especially in my bookstore (Peachtree Highway Books, in Atlanta’s Candler Park, 2002-2004, R.I.P.), where I spent most of my waking hours for two years. (Yes, XM, I was an occasional terms-of-service violator, as were many, many other intown Atlanta small businesses in those exciting entrepreneurial years.)

When I moved briefly to Little Rock in 2003-4, I discovered other XM loyalists among my friends. So apparently it wasn’t just me! We traded tips and occasionally even shared equipment. XM kept me company on those long, long drives from Atlanta to Little Rock (usually with an overnight in Tupelo). And in 2005-6, as friends and I founded BusyTonight in New York and tried hard to make a go of our technology business, XM was one of the things that kept me sane during that turbulent period.

I ended up canceling my XM for a combination of cost reasons and lack of use — for a period of several months, I just wasn’t home much, in that way you can get in a city like New York before you get your grownup footing. But now I’m feeling the hankering. Among other things, I feel the lack of editorially programmed bluegrass in my life, and the podcasts I listen to aren’t doing it for me. So I think I’m going to resubscribe. I just passed four hours on JetBlue in the past 24 hours with satellite radio playing in my ears continuously — and I like it. I was worried that the Sirius/XM merger would wreck everything, but most of my old favorite channels are still there, so it’s time to give it another try.