"What's the frequency, Kenneth?"
After hearing this countless times, I finally decided to look up online what it really meant. While googling the phrase will get mostly hits about R.E.M.'s song of the same name, there were a few Rather references. This explanation was one of the better ones....
http://www.ape-o-naut.org/innuendo/
It is actually a sad story and it is one of the few stories about Dan that make me feely sorry for him.
The assault was pretty serious and Dan got beat up pretty badly. No one (well almost no one) deserves that kind of beating, even a liberal narcissist.