What to Listen to this Weekend...

• Of course, you should be listening to WFMU 91.1 all weekend - they are in full-fledged Marathon mode, and the station tends to present the most-entertaining and least-annoying pledge drives I've ever heard. Plus all the deejays will have co-hosts, to make things even more... entertaining, I guess. Plus there's all that swag! Of particular interest will be Station Manager Ken Freedman's mid-Marathon "State of the Station talk and listener phone in" Saturday (tomorrow) at 9 AM. He'll be talking about various station developments - technical, program-related and financial. Call in questions at 201-536-9368 from 9:30-10:00 am, or they can e-mail questions ahead of time at ken@wfmu.org.
• Tomorrow (Saturday) night at 10 pm on Air America WLIB 1190: Part 2 of David Bender's fascinating chat with Gore Vidal on Politically Direct. (Meanwhile, feel free to compare and contrast with yesterday's Leonard Lopate segment with Gore's old nemesis Norman Mailer, which you can listen to and/or download here.)
• I've found WABC 770's Sunday morning program Religion On the Line, which is the station's longest-running show (!) and can be heard between 7 and 10 am every Sunday, to be thoughtful, gentle and reassuring... that's probably because it's hosted by two pleasantly-voiced religious guys who get along incredibly well, Father Paul Keenan (Director of the NY Archdiocese's Radio Ministry) and Rabbi Joseph Potasnik.
• Sunday at Noon: Arthur's back! After leaving WOR in a huff in 1996 after the station hired right-wing "hate-mongerer" Bob Grant - who had himself just been fired from WABC - Arthur Frommer has returned to WOR 710 for his weekly program The Travel Show, which airs from 12-2pm. This return has surely happened because Grant recently has been let go from the station, leaving the coast clear for Arthur's comeback. Frommer's show is about "...travel with respect; an opportunity for learning that impacts your mind in a way like no other, from a cost-conciousness point of view." OK, then!
• Elvis! One of my all-time fave songwriters will be Kurt Anderson's guest tomorrow (Sunday) evening at 7pm on WNYC-AM 820 on the always-fine and diverse Studio 360. Plus a chat with Paul Haggis (writer/director of the Oscar-nominated Crash) and a story about how the love of Maurice Ravel's Bolero lead a near-deaf man to the forefront of neurosurgery: bionic hearing.