DIALSCAN: BALTIMORE APRIL 5, 2009

Before this or any other dial gets turned, I would be remiss if I did not give a tip of the cap to Sarah Vowell, author of Assasination Vacation, The Partly Cloudy Patriot, and above all, Radio On: A Listener’s Diary, the book that inspired these blog entries. Admittedly, I only skimmed through Sarah’s book like we all skim through radio stations, but I pray that Sarah takes no umbrage. One other thing, and I realize this is akin to a boxer telegraphing his punches, but because I follow the New York Yankees like a bloodhound follows a murderer’s trail, as the Bombers go, so goes the Dialscan. Again, I hope you don’t mind.

There is one thing I wish to mention as I get into a crabcake state of mind, and my sister Sarah, who works at the Westin Key West, may find this interesting. It may just be my imagination, but the Westin BWI Airport, when viewed from Google Earth, looks eerily similar to home plate. Just a thought. Well, now that preliminaries have been safely dispensed with…

I start at WJZ-AM 1300, which is little more than ESPN Radio’s national feed. I think it used to feature local personalities, but apparently they have all migrated to a sister station on the FM dial, leaving us with the dictionary definition of blandness. I guess, however, that this only about seventy-five percent of the time. Just at the moment, two “local yokels” are discussing the fate of the Washington Capitals hockey team…wait a minute. They’re about done. Now it’s time for an NBA game. San Antonio vs. Cleveland. They’re about halfway through the ballgame. No excuse for that. I believe that if you’re going to broadcasr a sporting event, you should do so from start to finish. What’s the point of buying a ticket for half a game. You pay for four quarters or nine innings, you should get to watch or listen to all of it. I turn it off, if for no other reason than I don’t want to wander too far off track.

Maybe I’ll have better sporting luck with WNST-AM 1570—“We Never Stop Talking”. Some other testosterone case is talking to a caller who is pontificating about the American League East and who apparently eats, drinks and sleeps baseball. I love baseball above all sports, but unlike the doofus on the blower, I wouldn’t want to marry baseball. The man who’s hosting this exercise in how to waste time just identified himself, but he said his name so damn fast that I forgot what his name was—Bob Haney or Hiney or some such. At this point it hardly matters. He will shortly be replaced by another full-on gonad case.

Over at WCBM-AM 680, it’s John Katsafanas, a mortgage lender. He may as well be named Harry Baffalakakopuos or Frank Fishimmel; I pay about as much attention to hour-long mortgage sales pitches as I do Celebrity Ballroom Dancing. Which is to say, absolutely none. So I skip it entirely.

Eureka! WBAL-AM 1090. They’re usually good for something. Not today, however. They’re broadcasting Sporting News Radio, which is secret radio code for “We take Sunday Afternoons off.” At least they’re not like WJZ-AM, which seems to be the polar opposite—“We only work weekends.” (Side note: As a rule, I never listen to the other teams’ flagship stations. In Baltimore, that’s WJZ-FM 105.7. They might once have been interesting to listen to, as they used to be the Baltimore affiliate of The Don & Mike Show. But you know, painfully by now, what happens to all good things.)

Good Lord. Radio in Baltimore on a Sunday must be as barren as the Mojave in July. Over at WBIS-AM 1190, it’s more real estate advice. I can sum up my real estate advice to you in just one word: Rent. I skip that, too,

In every desert, there is an oasis. And so I come upon WBJC-FM 91.5. Classical music, pure, simple and no NPR aftertaste. I kneel, grateful and parched, like William Holden’s character in The Bridge on the River Kwai just before his rescue. Charles Ives’ Symphony #2, stars wafting through my Sony earbuds and I sip gratefully from my cup of lemon tea, and I lean back in my chair at Indigo Coffee’s Hyde Park branch in Tampa, FL. I’m grateful to have had something to distract me from the fact that outside, there is an art festival, where hundreds of cars made it almost impossible to find suitable parking, and where a thousand or so people and several tents are crammed into a tiny street.

I feel taken away, borne on a cloud of glorious musical notes, bound where angels roam, fairies dance and the real world seems benign at long last. When baseball season begins tonight and into tomorrow, I’ll feel like I’ve gone even higher…