After a trip to "Hooters of Beaverton" back in April, I wrote a negative review and posed the question: "Why do people go to Hooters when they live in a place with more strip clubs per capita than any other city in America?"

"Adrienne," a Hooter girl, sent in the following last week via the feedback forum. It doesn't provide much of an answer to this riddle but she does (basically) call me a loser. And isn't that worthy of a post? Here's what she had to say:

Hey guys,

I am Adrienne, a Hooter girl myself. I have found what you all wrote extremely entertaining, i admit, are food is no 4 star quality, and our outfits are a bit 80's, however it is a fun environment and a bunch of great girls work there. If you find it nessesary to state your opinion, just know that it is only of the hooters you have been to, there are some Hooters that actually have good food and great atmosphere (like the one i work at). Lastly, if Hooters is such a horrible place, why do you take the time out of your day to obsess over it on the internet

To answer your question, Adrienne, it's not because of the bad food, lame atmosphere, terrible beer selection, dumb puns, or even the uncomfortable wooden stools. Sure, all of those things don't earn the franchise any brownie points but, above all else, I hate the franchise because of "Hooter." He's a character from Captain EO, the defunct Disneyland attraction that closed its doors after Michael Jackson's career hit the skids. I couldn't even find a picture of Hooter on the internet so I had to settle for a Hooter-less screenshot from the film (see below).

As Hooters franchises started popping up all of the country, Americans began associating the word "Hooter" not with this long forgotten fictional character (or owls or boobs for that matter) but with the restaurants. A Google search on "Hooters" turns up 774,000 matches. A Google search on "Hooter" yields more 317,000 links, many of them relating to Hooters instead of Captain EO's alien pal. And that just ain't right.

So until Hooter scores much belated respect, or gets an airline named after him, I'm going to continue holding a grudge against your employer.