COAST TO COAST

Each weekday for the past five years, I lurch to consciousness to a familiar voice on the radio. It’s a voice by turns witty and disgusting, irritating and charming. A voice whose egomaniacal, 37-year-old owner hovers between New York cult hero and national celebrity. A voice that makes us privy to more details of its owner’s flatulence than we ever wanted to know. A voice that causes my friends to groan: “How can you listen to that horrible show?”

Theoretically, there’s no way a basically PC feminist type like myself would listen to the Howard Stern Radio Show. Stern may hang out on the air with the hippest of the hipperati, but he’s happiest grilling guests or callers about their sex lives. Sometimes he’s so crude, I switch the radio off--recently he offered two “Terminator 2” tickets to any woman willing to show her breasts to him (he extended the deal to any man willing to show his genitals to his co-host, Robin Quivers). But inevitably, I turn it back on--I and three million other fans in my hometown of New York City, and in Philly and Washington. Why? Well, when Howard’s not being a schmuck, he is wildly funny.

Now Angelenos will have the chance to see if they can brave this true New York sensibility. KLSX-FM (97.1) just closed a deal with the shock jock, Quivers and the show’s writers and producer. Starting at the end of the month, they will come live from New York at 3 a.m., with a taped repeat from 5 a.m. to 10 a.m.

Some of you already know Stern from his appearances on “The David Letterman Show” or his syndicated TV show on KCOP Channel 13 Saturday night. When the radio show hits L.A., expect more and better of the same: Howard sparring with pseudo-celebs Richard Simmons and Jessica Hahn, comedians Andrew Dice Clay and Gilbert Gottfried, his own nagging Jewish mom, former mental patients and assorted other fringe elements. Expect Sting to drop by, Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.) to call, or young M. C. Hammer to rap out a song he wrote about Howard.

Most of all, expect the rude, abrasive qualities you love to hate about New Yorkers. But don’t say we didn’t warn you.