FAIRFAX, Va. -- Sweet Mother of God, what is this?! In the parking lot of Panda Express, the Chinese joint on Lee Highway, a young guy with two steaming cartons of pork lo mein climbs into a Honda Accord and punches the radio dial, and out of the dashboard now comes a hurricane of noise, a driving, hypnotic chant that sounds like an angry mob taunting patients at a rehab clinic: "Junkies! Junkies! Junkies! ..."
The guy with the lo mein grins.
He powers down the passenger side window and waves a gravy-stained carton in the direction of a nearby hill and yells over the noise: "You looking for the Junkies? Top of Oak Street, dude. Tell 'em the Boss Man says hello."
The Boss Man. Right. Ohhhh-kay.
A few minutes later, in the cramped, dimly lit first-floor studio of WJFK-FM, a place with all the charm of a meat locker, the "Sports Junkies" nightly sports-talk show begins.
Somebody hits the chant loop -- "Junkies! Junkies! Junkies! ..." -- and seconds later the airwaves fill with the adrenalized voices of Eric "E.B." Bickel, John "Cakes" Auville, John-Paul "J.P." Flaim and Jason "Lurch" Bishop.
For the next four hours, these four lifelong buddies from Bowie will deconstruct, among other things, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, hot-looking women, the Mark McGwire-Sammy Sosa home run derby, Cakes' recent vacation in South Carolina, celebrities who are screw-ups, athletes who are thugs, the scary new creakiness of Cal Ripken Jr. and the just-concluded "J.P. vs. Cakes Golf Challenge," an exhibition so horrendous ("J.P. thought he was in 'The Blair Witch Project,' he was in the woods so much") that it probably set the game back 200 years.
Listening to the Junkies' hip, edgy rants on every topic under the sun, one thing becomes abundantly clear: This is not your old man's sports-talk show.
"Sports is the unifying theme of our show," says Flaim. "But at least half ... is not about sports."
Ratings domination
If "Sports Junkies" sometimes feels like one long, profanely funny Gen-X howl -- all four hosts are in their late 20s -- it has become immensely popular in the Washington market, where it dominates the ratings in its 7 p.m.-11 p.m. time slot. (Since May, it's been airing five nights a week in Baltimore on WJFK-AM, 1390, although it's too soon to gauge the size of the listener audience.)
"It's a different kind of sports-talk show," says Bishop. "It's not ... about numbers and stats and who's the back-up quarterback for this team.
"It's like when you go to a bar and hang out and talk with your boys. I think [listeners] relate to the fact that we're not experts."
Whatever the reasons for their popularity, the Junkies are white-hot right now.
They just landed a 50-market syndication deal with the Westwood One radio network, and Sports Illustrated gave them a nice writeup in its July 12 issue.
Sure, the local sports media critics have hammered them for being crude, tasteless, homophobic and sophomoric, for constantly talking over each other, and for the annoying rock or rap music that serves as a constant backdrop throughout the show.
Picky, picky, picky, respond the Junkies.
Because all in all, it's been a hell of a ride so far for four guys who had absolutely zero broadcast experience four years ago, a ride the Junkies couldn't have envisioned in their wildest dreams.
"Are you kidding?" says Flaim. "We're waiting for some sort of cataclysmic event to end all this!"
Not really rags-to-riches
How the Junkies managed to snare this sweet gig is already becoming the stuff of radio legend.
It's not a rags-to-riches story, because they weren't exactly heating cans of beans over a hotplate before, and they're not lighting their cigars with hundred-dollar bills now, either.
Anyway, the story goes like this: It's the summer of '95 and all four guys are stuck in a dreary post-college limbo.
Auville is in retail management for Toys R Us, a swell job, he says, if you like making no money and working the kind of hours that would make a migrant worker keel over.
Bickel is finishing his master's in education, Flaim is in law school, Bishop is a marketing intern with the Philadelphia Eagles.
One day, they're watching this Bowie cable-access talk show at Bickel's girlfriend's house. The show features some young guys, stiff as storefront mannequins, shooting the breeze about politics.
"You guys could do that!" says Bickel's girlfriend's mother suddenly. "You guys could do a sports-talk show!"
Anyway, it's like in the cartoons. A light bulb goes off over their heads, and the guys think: why the hell not?
So they put together a weekly cable-access show, on this cheesy set filled with rickety wood furniture that could have been fished out of a Goodwill bin and football banners hanging everywhere.
It resembles some horrible hybrid of "Wayne's World" and "NFL Countdown." They call themselves the "Sports Junkies" and wear nice shirts and ties on the air and look about as comfortable as four guys waiting for a colonoscopy.
But somehow it eventually ... works.
They're making zero money but there's an energy there, a passion, four young guys talking about something they love, something lots of young guys love: sports.
They get a glowing review from The Washington Times. The review is read by Jeremy Coleman, the young program director at WJFK who has been studying the sports talk show landscape and seeing the same middle-aged, ho-hum blowhards pontificating about what a jerk Albert Belle is and what's wrong with NBA basketball in every town big enough to have a Shell station.
Coleman asks the Junkies to send him a tape, and he feels this "tremendous chemistry" between the guys. And just like that, the Junkies get a tryout, then a weekend gig, then, in May of '97, their present time slot.
Is that a great success story or what?
The Junkies think so. Within weeks they were building an ardent fan base and beating the competition like rented mules in the coveted demographic of males aged 18-49.
And the more comfortable they got behind the mikes, the more outrageous they became.
Making it work
Soon, they were breaking out all these goofy features. They'd sound off on Paycheck Pillagers (pro athletes who come up small after signing huge contracts) and the Bad Boys Honor Roll (idiot jocks in trouble with the law).
They began a popular segment where they'd ambush a famous sports figure over the phone in his or her hotel room. (Miami Dolphins coach Jimmy Johnson hung up on them; the controversial judge of the Evander Holyfield-Lennox Lewis fight, the one who saw Holyfield hit with everything but a tire iron and still awarded the champ the decision, spoke to them for 20 minutes.)
And they began compiling an impressive, and eclectic, list of in-studio and phone guests, everyone from Baltimore Ravens head coach Brian Billick and Duke All-American forward Elton Brand to figure skater Oksana Baiul, pro wrestling manager Bobby "the Brain" Heenan and Scott Kerman, author of "No Ticket? No Problem!," famous for sneaking into mega-events such as the Super Bowl and World Series.
Oh, sure, the Junkies would study hard and make sure they covered the "meat and potatoes" of sports.
But in-between, they began seriously experimenting with the boundaries of high silliness.
They got swimsuit model Kathy Ireland to whistle the theme from the old "Andy Griffith Show." They invited listeners to chime in on who's hotter, Jennifer Aniston or Sandra Bullock.
And they ignited a spirited and long-running debate over who would win a fight between a great white shark and a 25-foot crocodile.
"On a neutral site," clarifies Bickel. "Has to be out of the ocean."
"Has to be on land," Bishop clarifies further.
"Jason's a hard-core croc man," explains Bickel. "The rest of us think the shark would win."
Of the Junkies' non-sports-related hijinks, Flaim says: "Are you gonna take four hours and talk about the latest trades? No. That would be pretty boring."
Showing their true colors
Another thing about the Junkies: They don't just give listeners a glimpse into their lives. Heck, they meet you at the front door with a glass of wine in one hand and the family photo album in the other.
Flaim, for example, opened the envelope containing the results of his bar exam on the air.
This was after the Junkies invited listeners to bet on whether he'd pass or not. (He failed that time, passed on his second attempt.)
And a seemingly innocent discussion of whether Flaim, a non-golfer, could shoot within 15 strokes of Auville, who'd been playing for 10 years, soon degenerated into a serious $50 bet between the two and an invitation to Junkies listeners to join the boys at Pleasant Valley in Chantilly, Va., for the showdown.
"I publicly stated that if he beat me, I'd throw my clubs in the lake," says Auville.
It got ugly early that day on the golf course. Often, they ended up so deep in the woods, Daniel Boone couldn't find them.
Still, it was riotous fun. Cakes finished with a 106. J.P. shot a very ugly 134, took in too much sun and left lighter in the wallet.
Yet despite the energy and upbeat nature of the show, despite their impressive knowledge of sports and pleasantly self-deprecating natures, the Junkies are not, it must be said, for everyone.
You would not, for instance, want to prop your great-aunt Sadie in front of the radio during some of the Junkies' more ribald bits, such as the night they lapsed into a hilarious -- OK, hilariously juvenile -- discussion of which "older" woman they'd rather sleep with, Fran Drescher or Kathie Lee Gifford.
"If you locked me in a room with both of them, I'd scratch my eyes out," Bickel announced grandly.
Kathie Lee was then roundly dissed for being phony, annoying and, quite possibly, a direct descendant of Satan. And although all four Junkies voiced concerns over whether they could handle her nasal voice and New York accent, Drescher was (crudely) deemed more sexy.
Then there's the Junkies' penchant for trotting out porn stars as in-studio guests.
"Don't call 'em porn stars," says Bickel, wincing. "Call 'em, um, adult film stars."
Look, you could call them Candy Stripers, but the fact remains that X-rated superstars such as Jenna Jamison and Nina Hartley have graced the show, with the leering Junkies peppering each, Howard Stern-style, with all manner of lurid questions.
"We asked them the usual: 'How'd you get into it, what's the money like, is it fun?' " Bickel says with a straight face.
If Aunt Sadie was listening to that show, they were probably breaking ammonia capsules under her nose a few minutes later.
"People clamor for it," insists Auville of the concept of porn stars as guests. "When we don't do it for a while, we'll hear from [listeners]."
The future of radio?
On this steamy night in Fairfax, however, there are no lecherous overtones to the show.
The Junkies are tired and sunburned from their long day on the golf course, but they keep the energy levels high as they dissect the latest "bombs" from McGwire and Sosa, the obvious withdrawal Cakes has suffered from the music of Limp Bizkit and Kid Rock, and where does a nobody like the Yankees' Jim Leyritz get off dissing future Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn?
"The Junkies: We're the future of talk radio," intones Bishop at the show's close.
And as you cruise down Lee Highway, past the Panda Express and McDonald's and the bright lights of the strip malls, the streets clogged with young people in hot cars, their engines throbbing loudly in the sultry air, you wonder if he might not be right.
Pub Date: 8/10/99