Radio Daze

5:56 p.m.

KPRC Less than an hour later, Savage is already starting to simmer. "Liberalism is a mental disorder," he hisses. "The Taliban collapses brick walls on gays, and yet you have gay commies out there who love the Taliban." Commies? What is this, 1963?

6:26 p.m.

KTRH Chris Baker is barking at a woman caller. "Did you not like the president's message of freedom?" "I did," she says. "But what about Iraq? He didn't even mention it." Her accent is a deep East Texas drawl. "A reporter called it a disastrous debacle, and ah agree," she adds. Baker disagrees, and asks her why she thinks we're over there. "We're there for awl," the woman says flatly. "He didn't attack us, there were no WMD, they didn't do 9/11…" "Well, hoo-kaaay," Baker sighs, as if the woman just told him that JFK was assassinated by Adolf Hitler and Joe Stalin was on the grassy knoll.

7:02 p.m.

Mega 101 A spindly reggaetón remix of Snoop's "Drop It Like It's Hot" plays. It's splendid, as ornate as the original was minimalist. Puerto Rican rap hero Tego Calderon drops a superb guest verse. The remixes here alone are worth the price of admission, even if you're not Latino.

7:07 p.m.

KRBE And it seems that reggaetón is already closing in on crossover success. Here, on the city's pop station, is Christina Milian's "Pop That Thing," an English-language reggaetón.

7:09 p.m.

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!