Getting Buzzed

Stacy’s mom has a penis.

This may surprise you, it may shock Stacy, and it really might fuck with Stacy’s dad, but it’s not exactly stop-the-presses material at KRBZ 96.5 (the Buzz). Probably because it gave her the penis.

The Entercom radio station has also been sticking it to its rivals at Infinity Broadcasting’s KMXV 93.3 (Mix 93) with increasing regularity these days. Equipping Mrs. Stacy with pinky and the brains is one of several jabs that the worker bees at the Buzz have landed on Mix 93 in the past several months in a mildly amusing rivalry that has involved arson, hermaphrodites and an illegal pelican-smuggling ring made up of albino circus midgets from Omaha.

OK, I made up that last one. But this is what passes for entertainment in the largely homogenized world of on-air cordiality in Kansas City. Watching a low-level slap-boxing match between two conglomerates like Entercom and Infinity would normally be like watching the Los Angeles Lakers play the Los Angeles Lakers or Ted Turner calling out Rupert Murdoch for another 24-karat-gold pissing contest. Nobody really gives a flying shit.

But here in the holly-jolly heartland, the airwaves are generally a phonetic Pleasantville barren of any real controversy, diversity and/or pulse. The kind of place where every FM station in December is playing either “Winter Wonderland” or Outkast‘s “Hey Ya.”

At least there’s some joy to be had when an assembly-line station routinely undergoes exploratory rectal surgery performed by a competitor. On that front, the Buzz doesn’t dick around.

Correction: Dicking around is exactly what they do. Ask Stacy’s mom. The station’s Chief Dickhead, drive-time host Lazlo, seems particularly to relish giving rivals like Mix 93 some savage prison love.

When Mix 93 hosted Fountains of Wayne on November 21 at America’s Pub, the Buzz was on hand to infiltrate the proceedings and skewer the Fountains’ hit single “Stacy’s Mom,” a feel-good ditty involving a little perv fantasizing about feeling good all over a friend’s mother.

A handful of Buzz killers showed up for the show in shirts printed with the image of a well-endowed woman and the warning “Careful Kids: Stacy’s Mom Has a Penis,” then proceeded to create a mild disturbance that managed to catch the band’s attention and momentarily disrupt the concert.

“We sent some people in to cause a little trouble, just to cause a little scene and mess with the band,” Lazlo says.

That performance paled next to the May 21 Good Charlotte concert. The Buzz handed out 10,000 of its stickers before the show, some of which ended up plastered on Mix 93 vans parked outside. Inside the City Market, a number of “Fuck Mix” signs were visible, and a Buzz part-timer was arrested, charged and released after being spotted holding a Mix banner engulfed in flames.

The Buzz’s latest sting came December 2 at Mix 93’s airbrushed estrogen fest Jingle Jam 5. Buzz cronies stood outside the Uptown Theater trying to convince Jingle Jam fans to exchange their tickets for passes to the Buzz-sponsored Jane’s Addiction show on December 8.

“I’m just offering people a good deal, being Monty Hall,” Lazlo says. “You can’t be a 27-year-old man and listening to Hillary Duff. I mean, come on.”

Jon Zellner, vice president of programming at Mix 93, chuckles at his antagonists.

“I don’t think anybody at Jingle Jam really knew who Jane’s Addiction was, so it wasn’t a real successful venture,” Zellner says. “We don’t really have a problem with it. I think it’s immature, but they are such a nonplayer, it’s not even a blip on the radar.”

Ouch. Of course, the Buzz’s lower ratings have allowed the station to venture deeper into the otherwise placid airwaves with its juvenile bits, dwarf mascots, “Take Your Queer to Work” days and its actual playlist, which is typical alt-radio fare garnished with artists of considerable rock-geek credibility. And though the Mix 93 squabbles have resulted in heated off-air exchanges, no official disciplinary action has been taken.

“Tempers are going to flare when we do something like this, but after everything calms down, people realize it’s just having fun” Lazlo says. “We’re not doctors. Nobody’s getting hurt. It’s just our way of busting their balls.”

Or Stacy’s mom’s penis.