blast from the past

Twenty-seven hours ago, I discovered the radio show.

Well, maybe "discover" is the wrong word. "Stumbled across" might be better. Like Columbus.

My co-worker and I were sitting around in the late morning typing, and it was quiet so turning on the radio seemed like a good idea. But sports didn't seem like the right choice, or pop, or news.

So I went into the iTunes radio, and looked for some big band music. For whatever reason I kept looking through the stations and found one that was old-time radio shows (AM 1710 Antioch). Later in the evening I tuned in again. It's so interesting. The commercials are more fun because they're so polite and...almost amateurish. Like something I would have written.

You do have to tune in on the half hour, pretty much, to get the beginning of a show. Programs tend to run in half hour chunks, though episodes may be 15 minutes, and many are serials, meaning they're always continued from a previous show. But they're pretty good about catching you up at the beginning of each episode. (Except with "Magic Island" -- I've listened to a couple of episodes and still don't understand what's going on exactly.)

I have now successfully listened to two consecutive episodes of "Speed Gibson of the International Secret Police." This afternoon I went to vintageradioshows.com and saw I could download 106 episodes!

They're great for if you're trying to get some work done. Today, for instance, I've been tuned in for a few hours while I'm doing some fall cleaning. Sometimes (especially with Speed Gordon) I get so immersed in the show I find I'm not working at all.

How could you help not liking programs such as "I Was A Communist for the FBI" or "Have Gun, Will Travel"? I want to hear some of the classics like "Superman" or "Sam Spade" or Charlie McCarthy and Edgar Bergen.