For the record, I had never been to Hooters' myself. I had heard all the claims of the rampant sexism, etc. though was somewhat morbidly intrigued to see what all the fuss was about. My first impression was that it had the atmosphere of the atypical sports bar; light wood colors, lots of TVs and pitchers of beer. Then the perky little Hooters women started popping out of everywhere like munchkins to greet us. As soon as we found ourselves a table and sat, we were more or less ignored by everyone but our waitress. Despite Lois' recommendations for the great wings, I ordered up a steak and cheese sub, which turned out to be a minor mistake...for some weird reason the onions had this vague flavor of chlorinated water which threw the whole sandwich off. It came with cole slaw (instead of chips or fries?) which is one of those things that falls into QE's theory of food ("just because you *can* put it in your mouth, doesn't mean you *should*")

Now, being a part-time philosopher and hack social commentator, I obviously can't let Hooters go without a look at the charges of sexism. Hooters is sexist...rampantly so. According to the corporate web site, Hooters fully admits to having certain "standards" when hiring their female only wait staff. Yet there's also something vaguely...impressive to Hooter's level of tackiness. Signs all over the restaurant, on the website, and on the backs of the Hooter's girl's tops fully admit to the restaurants complete lack of tack, and almost revel in the concept, though it does seem to manage to pull off a bit more class than something as dumb and moronic as "The Man Show". When one stops to think of it, Hooters is actually fairly tame....there are no topless waitresses, no dark strip shows, no overt sexual lewdness...Hooters, much like Playboy or HBO completely waters down the whole sexuality of the place. Hooters almost brings the whole concept to a cartoon-like level, but not in some japanese erotic manga sense, more like Ralph Wiggum saying "I saw Principal Skinner and Mrs. Krabople in the janitor closet, and they were making babies, and one of the babies looked at me." On one level, Hooter's is just plain tame, on another, the underlying corporate atmosphere smacks of ickiness, on another, Hooter's is just so tacky and stupid it almost reaches the level of kische, on another, just that anyone could *build* a corporation of something so blatent is almost funny, on another...well, Hooters is just a conundrum that keeps rolling around.

In the end, though the food got no 5 stars, Hooters get's QE's stamp of pop culture approval. Its just dumb...but so dumb its fun. Like watching "Deathrace 2000". An institute even tackier than they themselves could possibly understand.