Scene & Herd - It's like Hooters ... on speed

Hey, let's think of a really bad movie and open a theme bar based on it. We'll make a fortune.Damn, someone beat us to it.

Coyote Ugly Saloon is opening in Buckhead next week. To find attractive female bartenders (aka coyotes) to staff the bar, management held auditions Sunday at Park Tavern. Perhaps because they admire my discerning taste in women, or more likely to ensure that I included the event in my column, I was invited to be one of the judges. Naturally, I accepted the invitation.

For those of you who don't remember it (or have wisely chosen to repress the memories), Coyote Ugly is a 2-year-old movie about a bar in New York City staffed by attractive women who are constantly coming up with impractical and acrobatic ways to serve drinks. It's Cocktail meets Showgirls. The bar in the movie was actually based on a real bar in New York. In a fit of post-movie expansion — made all the more remarkable by the fact that the film sucked and was a relative failure at the box office — the bar is replicating itself.

A lot of people I mentioned the auditions to were bitterly cynical about them — they assumed the event would just be some sort of degrading tit-fest. I'm happy to report that they were dead wrong. The women's asses were just as important as their tits, if not more so. The audition was basically a booty-shaking contest performed to stripper anthems such as Motley Crue's "Girls, Girls, Girls."

Highlights included contestant No. 34, who humped the stage so vigorously that it smoked a cigarette afterward, and contestant No. 7, who pointed at me and winked. It's hard to pick a single low point, but if pressed, I'd say it was contestant No. 40's white armpits. Honey, if you're gonna go sleeveless, use clear deodorant.

Frankly, I wonder if the bar is gonna succeed. In a city filled with strip clubs, it seems that Coyote Ugly Saloon could have a hard time competing for our "I wanna get drunk and ogle women" dollars. Maybe I'm wrong though. If I was business-savvy, I probably wouldn't be a newspaper columnist. Maybe it'll be a huge success and there'll be a flood of movie-themed businesses in its wake. Attack of the Clones fertility clinics, Gandhi weight loss centers, O Brother, Where Art Thou? private investigators. The possibilities are endless.

Wanna Lei?: Aficionados of tiki culture gathered all over town last weekend for Hukilau 2002, a Polynesian hoedown whose name apparently comes from a Hawaiian song celebrating the joys of communal fishing. Of course. In a place where the state fish is called humuhumunukunukuapua'a, what could be more joyous than communal fishing?Saturday's portion of the party took place at Trader Vic's, a Polynesian-themed restaurant in the downtown Hilton. The crowd included lots of Star Bar regulars, which makes sense when you consider that the tiki culture boom coincided with the rockabilly boom that the Star Bar celebrates.

The night started off with a slide show by Sven Kirsten, author of The Book of Tiki, Amazon.com's No. 6 best-selling book in North Hollywood, Calif. Despite Kirsten's monotone (think Ben Stein as the science teacher on "The Wonder Years"), The Book of Tiki is a humorous look at artifacts of the tiki pop-culture phenomenon. Next up was UberEasy, a loungey local band perfectly suited to Trader Vic's, which is, well, a lounge. The performance included a lovely take on Burt Bacharach and Hal David's "The Look of Love" and "The Hukilau Song," with the chorus "We're going to the Hukilau. Huki-huki-huki-huki-huki Hukilau." (Note to Coyote Ugly Saloon contestants who weren't hired: The drink lines at Trader Vic's were pretty long. Perhaps you should apply there.)

What Am I Doin'?: At the North DeKalb Cultural Center, Dunwoody Stage Door Players are currently staging Closer Than Ever, a musical revue by composer David Shire and lyricist Richard Maltby Jr. The staging is pretty low-key. There's no dialogue and only a minimal set. It's all songs, performed by the heavily initialed cast W. Greg Williamson, Maura C. Carey, John Jones and Mary M. Nye. The revue is touted, somewhat vaguely, as being "about life." More specifically, it's about urban and suburban relationships, work and fitness woes. "Miss Byrd," performed by Nye, is a bawdy song about a straitlaced secretary getting it on with her building's superintendent and is typical of the show — very Broadway, in a DeKalb sorta way. Note: Maura C. Carey is hot. She also has very vibrant, healthy-looking hair. Beer, balls and squirrels: Members of the Atlanta Beat pro soccer team traveled to Gordon Biersch in Midtown last Wednesday to tap this season's Hefeweizen keg. Sadly, the team does not travel in an oversized, soccer-ball shaped bus. They made up for it though by pouring and serving beer and, along with the bar, donating the proceeds to Soccer in the Streets, which, despite its alluring "extreme sport" name is actually a charity. I'm at a loss for words about it all, which is really unfortunate considering my chosen profession. The players were gracious and fun. The band, The Squirrelheads, was loud and fun. The coleslaw, free at the buffet, was out of this world. So let's review: Atlanta Beat players — fun. Squirrelheads — loud, fun and not actually the heads of squirrels. Coleslaw — delicious.