Feels good to finally get a little (river) 4.2.02

Council Bluffs own 89.7 The River is doing a bit of fundraising this week so I thought as a former Iowa State DJ and current fan of college radio, I would take a minute to plug my favorite radio station. Don't worry it won't hurt. Or will it?
Then I will get knee deep into a subject that is so depraved, so disturbing you will not be able to turn away. Read on ... if you dare.
Iowa Western has been impressing me lately. In my ignorant youth - and isn't youth mostly about ignorance? - I used to call IWCC K-Mart U., Wild Western or the high school after high school.
Between The River and the newly revamped channel 17/CBTV coming to a cable line-up near you, I have to give mad, phat props out to this fine institution and its communications program that seems to be on par with some major universities. I know it has Iowa State beat. Our much hated former president Martin Jischke took it upon himself to sell our television station out from under us and the ISU student radio station was pretty much a bunch of jackass kids who took great glee in pushing the vulgarity envelope between songs broadcast almost to the edge of campus.
I will probably still call IWCC K-Mart U. and Wild Western, but now I will do it with love and respect.
How often does any college radio station get to dominate the local market the way The River does? The best part of this station for listeners is NO COMMERCIALS. You tune in to The River and you actually get to hear music without the interference of cheesy, locally produced ads for car dealerships that blow you right out of the car and have you singing jingles until madness sets in.
When you call The River with a request, you get the DJ who will play your song if they've got it.
There are no major telecommunications companies telling River DJs to play N'Sync and Britney Spears every 15 minutes and not John Lennon. If you want local music, they've got that too.
The River is also Council Bluffs one best shot at true respect in the metro. It's been voted favorite radio station in the metro for the last two years and it is dominating the ratings.
Plus we don't have have to worry about them picking up and moving across The River across the river the way other stations have in the past.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, media is what make a city. Media give a city its voice and personality and as long as any city is dependent on another for its news, local programming and radio, it looks and feels like a seccond class burg.
The flip side of this is River radio goodness is they have to do fund raising - a small price for quality. They do seem to have fun with it.
That enormous radio tower The River uses to broadcast all the way to Lincoln costs a bit to keep up. So if you are a River radio listener tune in then call in a pledge. If you are lucky, you can get one of the college kids to perform some bizarre stunt like shaving his entire body or singing "Let's Do It" for 20 bucks.
With CBTV on the horizon, it just feels good to finally get some local media built up in this town. I am hoping to get my own TV show one day called "What the hell are you looking at?" where I walk around town asking people of all creeds and variety the important questions of the day like "what the hell are you looking at?"
The camera would follow me as I got into fights from the CAF museum to the Mall of the Bluffs to the Ameristar parking lot. A real rating booster.
It wouldn't really be that different from my average day accept for the camera man.
And now, as promised, the gripping conclusion to this Wednesday's exciting column.
I always had a great fear of basements ever since I was a kid. Not the smooth finished basement with the rec room, but the kind of old basements we have in town here where the concrete floor was more of an afterthought and around each corner was a shadow blacker than pitch.
Dirt-floored basements are the worst. What secrets do they hide?
In my current abode, strange sounds like tortured spirits can be heard at all hours, but mostly every night at 3 a.m. I never drink water before going to bed in case I might have to get up in the middle of the night and hear what I casually refer to as the sounds of the damned reaching out to eat my soul. It's quite, quite maddening.
In the middle of my basement is a hold nearly three feet deep and 8 feet wide. Inside the hole are thousands of white painted pine cones. No one knows how they got there or why they keep coming back night after night no matter how many times they are removed and no matter how many times the hole is filled in.
Well, later.
- Greg Jerrett is a Nonpareil staff writer. His column runs on Wednesdays and Saturdays. He may be contacted at 328-1811, Ext. 279, or by e-mail at gjerrett@nonpareilonline.com.