The other side of the story

From the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s Sunday Magazine.

Written by Christopher Evans, photo by Eustacio Humphrey.

04/14/02

 

Every Wednesday at 6 p.m., Stella Cultrona takes her seat in Studio C of WRUW, 91.1 FM, the radio station of Case Western Reserve University. She slips on a set of headphones and cracks the cap on a bottle of Dole's ruby red grapefruit juice. She takes a sip and clears her throat. Then she clicks a button on the control board in front of her and leans into the microphone.

Her subject is nothing less than the decline of civilization, or, as she puts it, "how stupid, horrible, ignorant and apathetic people have become."

Despite her grim world view, Cultrona carries on a chatty monologue that mixes controversy and conspiracy with paranoia and patriotism.

"This show's about getting people to think," explains Cultrona, who describes herself half-jokingly as a "Christian right-wing extremist with leftist tendencies."

She is not your typical college radio talk-show host. She is a 35-year-old, happily married rubber stamp maker and thrash metal fan who is teaching her three cockatiels to say, "No U.N."

"There are two sides to every story," Cultrona says. "I like to bring out the other side."

Her husband is here tonight to help her. His on-air moniker is A.P. (for American Patriot) Magee. ("That was just something I called him out of the blue one day and it stuck," Cultrona says.) He prefers it to his real name, Mike Salamone. A.P. Magee also has a radio show on WRUW. "It's called Domestic Terrorism," Magee says. "I do punk metal and politics."

He also plays the straight man on The State of Decay. While Cultrona perches on a stool, Magee hovers next to her, a skinny guy with long blond hair tied back over his ears in a ponytail. He drives a delivery van for a local dry-cleaning company and plays drums in a punk band called The Anti-Socialists. He and Cultrona dress alike in black pants and boots. They both wear T-shirts. Magee's reads "The U.N. - Peace Through Terror." Cultrona's warns, "Freedom Is Dangerous. Be Brave." She tilts her head toward Magee and speaks into the microphone.

"A.P.," she says, "can we give out the Web site?"

"W, w, w, dot, geocities, dot, com, forward slash, domestic decay," Magee says.

"What do we have there?" Cultrona asks. "What kind of documents?"

"We have documents like State Department publication 7277, the Freedom From War Act about disarming the United States military and handing it over to the U.N.," Magee says. "We have a picture of [U.N. Secretary-General] Kofi Annan that you can print out and throw darts at."

"I want to rant about Elvis' birthday," says Cultrona, switching subjects. "I was never a big Elvis fan, although I had a lot of people fooled that I was, including A.P. Magee, who one year for Christmas bought me an Elvis music box."

"I should have put a mustache on him," Magee says.

"Somebody sent me this sticker," Cultrona says. "It was the greatest sticker I ever had in my life. It had a big picture of Elvis and it said, I'm dead.' It was great."

"You know what I say about Elvis?" Magee pauses dramatically. "No king, but King Jesus."

Cultrona laughs. "You know that Elvis was just a BFD," she says. "A big, fat druggie. And speaking of BFDs, how about that big, fat dope Rush Limbaugh? Have you listened to him lately?"

"I never listened to him, even before I was in politics," Magee says. "I considered him an egghead."

"He was doing this rant on homeless people," Cultrona says. "He called them every name you could think of. He doesn't realize, because he's so damn rich, that people are down on their luck these days, especially here in Cleveland. People are living paycheck to paycheck. They lose one paycheck, they're homeless. This guy is such a conceited, arrogant egghead. His show sucks so bad. That was my rant on him."

"Did you know that Rush Limbaugh didn't register to vote until he was 35 years old?" Magee asks.

"No, I didn't," Cultrona answers. She turns away from Magee and shuffles through a stack of papers. It is time for The State of Decay stories.

"I fish through the Internet for things that sound interesting, or horrifying," Cultrona explains.

She begins with a short wire story that describes how a 71-year-old shop worker in Berlin foiled a robbery by hitting an armed robber in the head with a tin of sauerkraut.

"Now you see you can use anything as a weapon," Cultrona muses. "Maybe if someone on one of the planes that hit the World Trade Center had a tin of sauerkraut they could have thwarted the terrorists."

Magee shrugs.

"You know I'm just being sarcastic here," says Cultrona with a chuckle.

She goes on to the next item. "The makers of Minute Maid orange juice are strongly denying suggestions that a television ad campaign featuring Popeye the Sailor Man promotes a homosexual agenda."

Cultrona stops and looks at the telephone. "We haven't received any calls yet," she says. "Nobody has any opinions, I guess."

A phone line lights up. "Hi, you're on the air," Cultrona says.

"Hi, how are you?" a woman asks.

"OK," Cultrona answers.

"I just have one opinion," the woman says.

"OK," Cultrona says.

"Shut up!"

Cultrona laughs. "Turn your radio dial, dear. No one's forcing you to listen to this show."

Another call comes in.

"Howdy," the caller says. "This is Rick."

Rick is Rick Ray, a local musician who wrote the theme song for The State of Decay, a catchy, guitar-driven lament with lyrics like "I can see the whole world going mad."

("He's a guest on my show a lot," Cultrona says later. "He does Bible prophecy. He talks about how the events from Revelations correspond with things that are happening now.")

This evening, Rick wants to talk about the number 11 and the terrorist attacks. "The two towers make an 11," Rick says. "Flight 11. The number of people aboard the planes. Ninety-two on one. Sixty-five on the other. Nine plus two is 11. Six plus five is 11. It goes on and on and on."

"That's incredible," Cultrona says.

She loves this stuff. It's as oddball as she is.

"I was always the different one," Cultrona admits later. "There's this song from the band Pennywise that I love. The lyrics go, I'm not cut from the same old mold, I don't read from the same old story.' That's kind of how I've always been."

Stella Cultrona grew up in Maple Heights. She was the only daughter in a working-class family of three boys. Her father, who died in 1983, was a grave digger at Calvary Cemetery in Cleveland.

"I was a beatnik," says her mother, Caroljean. "I did a lot of reading and studying of philosophy so I wouldn't get duped."

Her daughter ran with a hard-core crowd. "I used to go to Canada every year with my grandmother," Cultrona remembers. "She had a trailer up there. I met this guy, Tony. He was a big-time punk. He's the one that got me into the punk and the metal and the anarchistic tendencies. We were supposed to get married, but he got cold feet at the last minute."

Cultrona was a single mother at 16. But - with the help of her mother - she graduated from Maple Heights High School in 1985 and worked her way off welfare. One of her few pleasures during those grim teenage years was listening to college radio.

"There was a show, Metal on Metal, that I really liked on WJCU out of John Carroll University," Cultrona recalls. "They had this contest and I won an hour of free air time. I went down and did the show and I loved it. I loved the whole thing about being able to control the music. I hate commercial radio because they just force-feed all these songs down your throat. I love being able to play whatever I want."

Cultrona decided to get her own show. Most of the colleges she contacted, though, only permitted enrolled students to go on the air. Case Western Reserve University was an exception. "I didn't have to be a student, but I had to pass this training program," Cultrona says. "Then I got a time slot. I did 2 a.m. to 5 a.m. for quite a few semesters, which killed me."

Her show, Wrath of the Thrash Queen, debuted on WRUW in 1986. "It was all-metal," Cultrona says. But that changed over the years as she began to talk politics between ear-blasting anthems by Biohazard and Napalm Death.

"A lot of these younger kids today don't care about what's going on in the world," Cultrona says. "All they care about is the newest game, or the newest album. I kind of played the music to draw them in and then I would throw in different things that were going on in the world, things that irritated me."

Cultrona does have a temper. In 1998 - the same year she changed the name of her show to The State of Decay - she pleaded guilty to a first-degree misdemeanor assault charge. It involved a domestic dispute with her then-16-year-old son.

"He was trying to steal beer out of the refrigerator," Cultrona says.

She was put on probation for a year and ordered to complete a 12-week anger management class. She hasn't been in trouble since.

"I'm a good kid now," Cultrona says. "I funnel my anger in a different way."

She keeps it on the radio. While her show hasn't brought her fame or fortune (all WRUW deejays volunteer their time), it did snag her a husband.

"When I was the thrash queen, A.P. was one of my listeners," Cultrona says. They were married in 1993.

"How would I describe her?" asks Magee, thinking for a moment. "She's a strong woman. I consider myself very lucky because very few women actually care about politics."

Caroljean describes her daughter as "an informed free thinker." She takes pride in her accomplishments.

"She made all kinds of mistakes when she was young," Caroljean says. "I'm very happy with her now. I've watched her go from ugly to beautiful."

Michael O'Neil, the general manager of WRUW, believes Cultrona brings a commitment to her show that is "inspirational."

"I don't share a lot of her world view," O'Neil says. "But I know she believes in it wholeheartedly and that gives her a credibility in my eyes that is lacking in the painted faces of many on-air journalists."

Caroljean never misses a show. "A lot of times I don't agree with her," Caroljean says. "She might be a little paranoid, but her show is not easy to forget."

"It really gets your ears up," says Nancy Sysack, owner of the Sysack Sign Co. in Old Brooklyn.

Sysack describes herself as a "moderate conservative with some issues I feel passionately about, like government is too intrusive." She was so taken with the show, she promoted it last summer on a billboard at the corner of Pearl and State roads. "For more information on how your gov't is usurping your constitutional rights listen to The State of Decay," it advised passers-by.

It featured the startling image of a hand with red fingernails, pointing a pistol, a touch that gun aficionado Cultrona particularly enjoyed. She owns a 9 mm handgun and a semi-automatic rifle. Twice a year, she travels to Knob Creek Gun Range in Westpoint, Kentucky, for a machine-gun shoot.

"It's a nice rush," Cultrona says.

So is stunning her listeners with articles such as "Defecating Figurines Part of Holiday Display." Cultrona reads the Washington Post piece about a tradition in the Catalonia region of Spain that involves spicing up Nativity scenes with statuettes of people in bathroom poses.

"These are ceramic figurines of the pope, nuns and angels with their pants down," Cultrona reads. Then she pauses and looks at Magee.

"I thought I had heard it all," she says. Then goes back to the article. "Modern renditions of the figurines include Osama bin Laden."

That makes her laugh. "What a fitting tribute, huh?"

A phone line lights up. When Cultrona answers it, the caller makes a sound like a cat strangling.

"We've got the jokesters out there tonight," Cultrona says. Another phone line blinks. "Let's see if we have a real comment or a loser," she says.

"This is Kenny," the caller says. "I heard that guy talking about the number 11."

"What do you know about that?" Cultrona asks.

"I got this book, Number in Scripture, about numbers and their significance in the Bible," Kenny says. "It says the number 11 marks disorder, disorganization, imperfection and disintegration."

"Wow," Cultrona says.

She closes the show talking about downtown. "Just look at Euclid Avenue," Cultrona says. "I remember when I was young, my mom would take me to Halle's and get the malted whatever it was. We'd go to Woolworth's." She sighs. "There's nothing there anymore. It's desolate. I heard today they're gonna be closing the Galleria except for the food court. Who in their right mind wants to go downtown and shop when there's nowhere to park? It's much easier to pull up to a mall."

A phone line blinks.

"You're right about downtown," the caller says. "It's a ghost town. I hope somebody is listening because what we need down there is an OfficeMax."

"And some nice shops," Cultrona says. "Places where people can sit."

"Forget the Flats," the caller says. He sounds like an older guy. "The police have ruined it. You can't even raise your voice and say, WooooHoooo!' Or they'll come jump on you and throw you in the wagon."

Cultrona chuckles.

"If the mayor is listening, I got two things to say," the caller concludes. "Jane, rein in the police and stop towing everybody's damn car!' What do you say?"

"Amen," Cultrona answers.

 

Cultrona and her husband, A.P. Magee, who likes to tell U.N. jokes. "How many U.N.s does it take to screw in a light bulb?" A.P. asks. "Zero. They rely on the ignorant populations to do it for them."

 

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