And now, the healing begins. As

cretinous, maniacal, certifiably

homicidal Woodstock '99ers

definitively immolated the

Spirit of the '60s in a blaze of

folding chairs and looted ATM

machines (a conflagration

inspired, nicely enough, by a

performance of Jimi's creaky

Summer of Love hit "Fire"), we

could only grab our receding

hairlines and blurt out an

anguished "WHY?" The rioting

that ended the show seems to

have hurt relatively few, and

its causal link to the show's

handful of personal tragedies is

questionable at best. But we need

to understand why

these evil children of

Littleton seem bent on senseless

destruction, when their tripped-

out forebears were content just

to off a few pigs and watch the

Hell's Angels disembowel a

hippie or two. The standard

answer so far — that the kids

just have it too easy — is a

little too pat for our tastes

and doesn't address the concerns

of youngsters who have been

clogging the air with protests against

the rock-and-roll power structure.

And therein, we suspect, lies

the reason for the free-floating

discontent. Sure, today's young

people don't have to worry about

war, depression, race riots, or

Da Bomb, but man, think how hard

it is to see your favorite bands

commoditized.

Last week Hooters Inc. issued a

press release touting its belated

entry into cyberspace with a

Web site. The company's apparently

forgotten that it already has a

Web site run by Hooters of

America Inc., which recounts the

highlights of the restaurant

franchiser's history (the

Hooters Community Endowment

Fund; the 100 Hooters Girl march

on Washington, DC; its

delightful children's menu ...).

Also present are details of its

lingering confrontation with the

nation's Equal Employment

Opportunity Commission. It's

accompanied by some defensive

cant about how its controversial

use of female employees simply

affirms a woman's right to

choose her own career — "be

it a Supreme Court justice or

Hooters girl" — but the page

makes the telling concession

that only 12 percent of the

chain's general managers are

women. Bungled publicity is

about what you'd expect from a

corporation whose sole business

plan consists of stuffing women

into shirts with the company

logo. But if it's hoping to

position itself as the

standard-bearer for tasteless

exploitation online, Hooters may find

that the Internet isn't the

seller's market it once was.

It's already facing heavy

competition from geek-friendly

sites like The Borg Implant

Hooters page, The Computer

Hooters of Dr. Ivan, and for

that matter, Hooters.org.

Strange bedfellows are

everywhere. In an article

appearing in both the San

Francisco Chronicle and the Los

Angeles Times, Jesse Kornbluth

once chronicled the responses he

got while pretending to be a

female, "TrixiDo," in AOL chat

rooms ("I'm a bright, sharp

young m who seeks

interrogation/humiliation

scenario administered by

superior f ..."). Now he's

editorial director of AOL

channel programming. And he's

been busy. He co-founded an AOL

e-commerce area that hawks

literary gems like Tom Clancy's

Power Plays: Politika as the

"BEST Clancy exclusive ever!"

("I didn't write it," Tom Clancy

told the San Francisco

Chronicle. "Marty Greenberg and

another guy put it together.")

But Kornbluth outdid himself

recently, unveiling an insidious

hybrid of cross-branding titled

Now You Know, Reactions

After Seeing Saving

Private Ryan and culled

exclusively from an audience of

AOL users. Kornbluth even goes

so far as to describe the book

as "a testimonial to the film,

to our veterans — and, not

least, to the AOL community."

Though all proceeds from the

book go to a D-Day museum in

Washington, Kornbluth landed

AOL a priceless PR coup by

associating its service with a

heartland cause. Just remember:

If your veteran grandfather

fought in the Pacific or has an

EarthLink account, he's out of

the discussion.