Shock jockette: Internet-radio host hopes to become a female Stern

IT'S 9:30 P.M. on a recent Wednesday, and from a studio in Old City, the strains of the David Rose Orchestra's iconic instrumental, "The Stripper," begin pinging their way through cyberspace. A male announcer, approximating the cadences and inflections of an old-time burlesque emcee, begins his spiel:

"Ladies and gents, next up is a hot little southern Jew. She's sexy! She's funny! She's naked - HEH! She's meshuga. She's Lois Burak, and this is her story!"

For the next two hours, Burak and several guests riff on life, love and sex, especially sex, as "The Lolo Show" beams over voltaradio.com.

In this digital-dominated age, anyone with a computer and an Internet connection can have a "radio" program. But "The Lolo Show" (a nickname from Burak's childhood), which has been airing weekly since September, is a key step in Burak's carefully conceived master plan to become the female Howard Stern. Or, at the very least, to become a personality on Howard 101, one of two Sirius-XM satellite-radio channels run by the self-proclaimed "King of All Media."

"I wanna work for Stern in the worst way," the former Daily News Sexy Single told a reporter about a week later, as she picked at a salad at a Bensalem diner. "I said to Tim Sabean [a programming exec for Stern's operation], 'I either have balls of steel, or I'm completely delusional.' I know that [being on the air] would be like me going to Southwest [airlines] and saying, 'I wanna be a pilot.' They'd say, 'How many hours do you have [in the air]?' And I'd say, 'Well, my dad was a pilot.' "

This all sounds highly unusual for a woman who had spent her entire adult life running a Northeast Philly beauty salon - until she closed it and put it up for sale earlier this year. But then again, what would you expect from someone whose life story reads like a particularly overheated novel?

Burak grew up in Feltonville ("We always called it 'Sears and the Boulevard' ") and is the daughter of Marvin and Cyndia Burak. The Jewish Marvin, readers of a certain vintage may recall, was a groundbreaking, if financially unsuccessful, radio talk-show host in the 1960s. Cyndia was a Christian, Louisiana-born burlesque performer who billed herself as "The Cajun Queen." Not exactly the image of an ideal American family of that era, to say the least.

"I always described it as 'dysfunctional, but disciplined,' " said Burak, whose gym-toned, va-va-va-voomy figure, halo of dark, tightly curled hair and stylishly sexy fashion sense make her seem at least a decade younger than she is.

"I could tell you a lot of crazy stories about my dad and what went on in that house. But on the other hand, one of the reasons I think I'm so grounded, even morally grounded, is, even though there was all this nudity and sexual talk, it was not a big deal in my house. Some people may look at that as child abuse or deviant behavior or whatever, but they instilled values."

Confused? Burak can explain.

"There may have been shenanigans going on that dealt with sex - whether it was strippers' pictures hanging on the wall, or I could overhear my parents having sex in the next room, or him talking about my mother's act. But when we went out with them, me and my brother [Jeffrey, five years older] were such good kids. We sat perfectly quiet; we were well-behaved."

While her mom was bringing home the bacon as a stripper, Burak's dad struggled to build a career in the then-nascent field of talk radio. He never made it onto a major local station but bought time on several local outlets, including the old WXUR-AM & FM, Media-based stations owned by the late, controversial fundamentalist preacher Carl McIntire.

In an age when talk radio was far more genteel than it is today, Marvin Burak was a left-wing flamethrower, espousing a socialist philosophy, advocating civil rights and taking to task the rich and powerful (oddly enough for one so liberal, he was anti-abortion, Lois said). Despite the marginal, low-power outlets, Burak was something of a media celebrity thanks to his take-no-prisoners approach to broadcasting.

According to newspaper clips, Marvin Burak's broadcasting career ended in 1969 after he was convicted on obscenity charges for running a Center City studio where customers took photos of nude women.

But his biggest local media splash was to be his last: In January 1982, Cyndia shot and killed her husband.

"They came home and they were fighting all night," recalled Burak, admitting she's "blanked out" many of the events of that fateful winter's evening. "In my head it almost seems like there were two days' worth of fighting."

Burak said she was upstairs when she heard her mother yell, "No Marvin, don't!"

"And then I heard a little bit of a crash, and I walked down the stairs and I stood in the middle of the steps. I was gonna tell them off - 'That's it, we're a family. We need to bond together, to stick together.' I got halfway down the steps, and I saw her in the corner and the piano bench had fallen.

"All I remember is him turning around and walking over to the bottom of the steps . . . and then, before I knew it, I was shot in the leg. 'Boom, boom, boom!'

"I remember him laying on the floor with the dogs all running around. [Cyndia] called the police from the kitchen. I said, 'Is he dead? Is he dead?' "

Her dad was fatally wounded, and 16-year-old Burak injured. She laughed recalling that, at the time, she was sure she'd lose her leg.

In 1984, Philadelphia Common Pleas Judge Charles L. Durham found Cyndia Burak not guilty of third-degree murder, agreeing with her attorney that Burak acted in self-defense.

Today, Burak sees her quest to be part of the broadcasting crew for an envelope-pusher like Howard Stern as "almost like redemption for my father a little bit. For me, it's to help me with closure."

Stern's satellite-radio fiefdom is the only place she could possibly go, Burak insisted, mainly because sex, in all of its infinite varieties, is her favorite subject. She has a foot fetish blog on CD Baby, and a regular feature of her weekly broadcast is reading from her "sexting" sessions with men.

"It's tongue-in-cheek," she offered. "I'm trying to make sex fun."

Interestingly, that doesn't sit well with Burak's mother, the ex-burlesque star and more-recent breast-cancer survivor who shares a Bucks County home with her daughter.

"I'm not crazy about the [content]" of the show, Cyndia Burak said. "It's too much. I don't see a need to be vulgar." But she supports her daughter's goal of a career in radio.

Lois Burak acknowledged her professional efforts have backfired when it comes to her personal life. She has never married, and a 10-year relationship ended some years ago.

"I don't sleep around," she insisted. "But because I'm talking about sex on the radio, that might be perceived as perverted, that I'm a whore. I'm not a prude, but I'm not a slut. That's where it's frustrating. Ever since I've been in the business, you'd be surprised how many guys have tried to get a little somethin'. "

Yet Burak soldiers on. So far, she has made minor inroads, such as appearing on the Howard 101 program "Superfan Roundtable," in which die-hard Stern loyalists discuss all aspects of his show. That's where she met Tim Sabean. He wouldn't tip his hand in regards to Burak's future employment, but he complimented her determination.

"She's just a tenacious woman," said Sabean, who previously oversaw operations at the five Philly radio stations (WIP-AM, KYW-AM, WPHT-AM, WYSP-FM and WOGL-FM) owned by CBS. "I don't know who she is or where she came from, but this woman has the 'eye of the tiger.' "

Such is Burak's determination that she claimed she has no backup strategy should her dream of working for Stern fail.

"I don't really think about Plan B at this stage," she said. "Because I feel, especially after meeting [Sabean], I'm not gonna give up, I'm not gonna go away. I'm really not."