Road listens

As already mentioned, I spent much of my time on the road this past week in silence, lost in thought, reflecting on both the year past and the one upocoming. I didn't spend it totally in silence however; I also passed a great deal of time listening to dramatic CDs ... not music for the most part, but a great selection of old-fashioned radio plays courtesy of my friend Gregg and the good people at his operation at Decoder Ring Theatre.

I've blogged about Gregg's stuff before; the original six episodes of The Red Panda still stand, in my mind, as a classic homage to The Shadow. Gregg and his peeps are now up to episode nine of what I guess are the prequels: in the days before the Red Panda was Canada's greatest elite Nazi-busting spy, he was a superhero keeping the streets of Toronto safe with his sidekick the Flying Sqirrel.

And as an additional treat, he's also created six episodes (so far) of a hard-boiled series titled Black Jack Justice, which follows the noirish exploits of private dick Jack Justice and his partner Trixie Dixon, Girl Detective.

All episodes downloadable from the Decoder Ring Theatre website, link provided at the right here. A strongly recommended listen -- it certainly helped the miles fly by.