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Radio Daze

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105.7 What's this? A radio drama? My narrative-starved ears perk up, as a mother and father leaf through their photo albums. Boy, they agree, the kids sure grow up fast, don't they? Mom's been having trouble sleeping lately, but she finally catches some Z's. Or does she? She has a strange dream, or is it a dream? The backyard is full of kids she doesn't recognize. She asks for their names -- they don't have any. She shoos them away, and they all go, all that is, except for a little girl named Tilly, whom Mom invites inside and plies with sandwiches. Tilly peppers Mom with lots of wide-eyed, innocent questions. Meanwhile, Dad is away in town. Seems a couple of weeks ago, he and Mom were at a funeral, and Mom got agitated when she walked by a grave for a single-monikered kid named, you guessed it, Tilly. Dad goes to the funeral home and asks the mortician about the grave, and the mortician spills the beans. Tilly, he says, was a late-term abortion. Even though she was aborted, the mother insisted on having a funeral for the tiny, mangled corpse. And with that, Focus on the Family mullah Dr. James Dobson interrupts the proceedings and says we can hear the remainder of this powerful play later. (Evidently, The Twilight Zone has gotten right with God.) For the first time, I splash a little vodka in my Red Bull.

7:35 p.m.

KCOH A rollicking Step Rideau zydeco stomper is followed by Beyoncé's "Naughty Girl." Two local tunes in a row! From different genres! On commercial radio! And only one of them by a superstar! KCOH rules.

7:49 p.m.

KPRC At last, Savage is on full boil. "If these pieces of human o-fall come to power, yours will be one of the skulls in the mountain they will build!" A caller from Houston rings in to say he was a gay for Bush and that he wants to talk about gay marriage. "I'm not interested in gay marriage," Savage snaps. "You deviants -- nobody bothers you in your bath-house bacchanals! Why do you now assault the family!" The caller says something about separation of church and state. "You're not gonna confuse me like you do your dupes in the gay bars! The socialist agenda -- part of the plan is to break the family. It's in Karl Marx's manifesto. You gays who want to marry are communist dupes. Don't you understand that I stand for your freedom, and the commies want to put you in a concentration camp?"

8 p.m.

KTRU I come in at the changing of the guard between a soul-funk show and an Americana one -- Don Covay's soul stew is followed by John Hartford's harmonizing bluegrass. Thank God for KTRU.

8:07 p.m.

The Box More local music -- Slim Thug's slammin' "Like a Boss." No mainstream commercial station does more for the local scene than the Box. Good on 'em.

8:20 p.m.

KPRC I can't tear myself from the clutches of Savage Nation. Now he plays a sound bite of a gay activist protesting the inaugural. "Shut up, you toilet paper with a mouth!" Savage screams. (Keep in mind, this is the AIDS walk station.) Then he plays a tape of Michael Berg -- father of Nick Berg, the telecom businessman beheaded in Iraq. The elder Berg lays the blame for his son's death on Bush's doorstep. "He's a lifetime communist/socialist, I can tell," Savage opines after Berg says a few things. "He's a psychopath, I can tell," Savage says after Berg says a bit more. And as Berg wraps up, Savage concludes by saying, "He's just a broken man, an example of the human refuse that fills the streets today." I too can spot a psycho when I see one. Bonsoir, Monsieur Savage!

9:20 p.m.

KTRH GOP patsy Alan Colmes is away from the mike, but fear not, vast right-wing conspiracy, his replacement -- a guy named Major Garrett -- is just as wimpy. Unlike on the conservative shows, Garrett lays out both sides of the "Did the inaugural cost too much?" issue. The first caller says he supports Bush 100 percent. Wow, this liberal radio could topple the president! A Canadian trucker calls in next and says he's a liberal but that he doesn't let that fact slip in the truck stops. "They would say I'm in the party of faggots," he says. Then he says that he doesn't think Bush is smart enough to be a cynic. Instead of scoffingly agreeing, Garrett waffles. "Hmm…Interesting," he mumbles.

10:20 p.m.

KPFT At least you can trust the authenticity of the leftist talk at KPFT, which has returned to local programming. They're still stuck on the inauguration, though. A tipsy woman calls in from San Francisco and doles out mad props to the locals here, to whom she has been listening on the Web. "You guys were the only one of the five [Pacifica] sisters that didn't contribute to suicide today," she merrily slurs. "You were really funny." She adds that she has joined the movement to help Vermont secede from the Union and then plugs some sort of Internet gizmo she has invented. Her buzz is infectious -- I have another vodka and Red Bull to toast Free Vermont and the fact that I have passed the 12-hour mark.

10:36 p.m.

Country Legends Waylon's "Bob Wills Is Still the King" is followed by Anne Murray's "Could I Have This Dance for the Rest of my Life." They almost get it.

10:39 p.m.

The Buzz At last, something tuneful: the Killers' "Smile Like You Mean It." Hey, I've checked in only 12 times over the past 12 hours.

11:17 p.m.

KPFT "Uncompromisingly liberal" local talk show host Glen Urbach lives up to his self-billing. He weighs in with a sharp few takes on the day's haps -- he notes that Condoleezza Rice forgot to put her membership on Chevron's board of directors on her résumé, and tears into Senator Joe Biden for going soft on her. (Any of you commercial stations looking for a tough, local liberal host? Here is your man.) Tipsy Frisco calls in again and repeats that KPFT was the funniest of the five sisters, though this time she doesn't plug her Net invention or Vermont secession.

11:58 p.m.

KCOH And so we enter the wee hours. One of the things I always loved about radio long ago was how it was an antidote to post-midnight loneliness. It was cool to have that voice nearby, one that came from somewhere in town, not some Big Radio nerve center. Today, that's almost gone. On the AM dial, KCOH is alone. Right now, as it does every weeknight at this time, it's playing the slow-burning R&B/funk jam "Return of the Mack," which normally segues into Paris "The Prophet" Eley's overnight show, easily the best local commercial overnight radio. Tonight, Eley's away, and the song fades into a soul-blues number.

12:22 a.m.

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