Hooty

Kegel has a distant, underpowered chorus and a dull orchestra. Tempos are too rushed for effect, and the interpretation is downright delicate - totally inappropriate. A hooty, scratchy soprano and a stiff baritone don't help.

Berg's partner here, Sophie Daneman, a young British soprano, has a small, pure, lyric voice that occasionally turns hooty (characteristic of many Britsh sopranos).

The hooty noise came again and this time seemed much closer.

Oh, there are plenty of animals in which males and females team up to raise young, as we do, that form “pair bonds” of impressive endurance and apparent mutual affection, spending hours reaffirming their partnership by snuggling together like prairie voles or singing hooty, doo-wop love songs like gibbons, or dancing goofily like blue-footed boobies.

It's the kind of hooty melodrama Burnett used to spoof, but new series doesn't know where to look for laughs, with lame ideas lamely written (a cavewoman discovers cow's milk; Burnett is forced to impersonate her own celebrity look-alike) and others (a gay guy in Antarctica, Spike Lee ripoffs) that are striving so hard to be hip.

Every time you turn around, there she is this summer in The Very best of Cher: The Video Hits Collection (Warner Bors. Records), not to mention her hooty '60s movies Good Times and Chastity (both MGM Home Video).

In this hooty gay twist on those "choose your own adventure" paperbacks, you have to save yourself from zombie drag queens