TRYING TO HOOK UP AT THE LILITH FAIR I can't stand Sarah McLachlan. Feminist icon and decent singer/songwriter or not, I think she's a pompous ass out mainly to exploit a marketing niche for her own self-aggrandizement. Did you know she's on a billboard in Times Square, all dolled up and touting the new issue of 'Vogue'? I love using SAT words like self-aggrandizement when I rant. Apologies extended to my brain cell-barbecued core readership. Anyway, rather than attempt a potentially biased concert review of McLachlan and her Lilith Fair, I decided to stroll around the Rose Bowl last Saturday and do the story I would much rather have read anyway... The Hunt For Available Straight Women at the Lilith Fair. This is not a very professional article. I'm warning you before it begins. Roving bands of half-naked and wholly beautiful women rimmed the Rose Bowl perimeter. And, although many of them roved arm-in- arm, the odds were still decent for a horny straight guy like me: about 70 percent of a Lilith Fair crowd is always female. ''You're beautiful,'' I told one tall and stunning brunette. ''Are you gay or straight?'' I envisioned this to be a good prelude to goofy conversation and, perhaps at some future point, goofy sex. ''You're rude!'' the young woman said, refusing to identify herself or her sexual orientation. (Such is responsible journalism: You just told me off. But can you give me your name for my article?) I was shocked by the response. Here I was, all irresistibly witty and freshly shaven. Plus, I was wearing my crisp, new, white Gap T-shirt, the ridgy kind that cost $10 more than the non-ridgy. Maybe she sensed my Lilith antipathy. ''Isn't Natalie Merchant great? I love your Birkenstocks!'' I practiced over and over to myself before approaching my second victim -- an equally stunning blonde sitting with five friends. ''I'm gay,'' she said, munching a hot dog in defiance of the Freudian significance. ''What exactly is your story about?'' said another woman, identifying herself as the blonde's lover. ''Who is this jerk?'' someone else chimed in. Suffice to say, no names or ages were forthcoming from this party either. Phone numbers seemed out of the question. One funny thing about a female-overrun concert is that the line for Starbucks Coffee is usually four times as long as the one for beer. Selflessly attempting to equalize this discrepancy, I patronized the Bud Light booth -- several times more than I should have. OK, I got plastered. Rejection can be hard to take when you're aware of what's happening to you. This probably explained much of the reaction I was eliciting at what was slowly becoming, for me, the Chilith Fair. ''Corey, you are smooth with two beers,'' said my buddy Bryson Jones, second-in-command of this important mission and the designated driver. ''But you are definitely not at the top of your form with four. Girls keep waiting for you to say something witty and you just stand there.'' Let me take this opportunity to officially apologize to Kelly Collins, 30, of Manhattan Beach, who told me she was going out with her boyfriend later that evening. ''So fool around with me now,'' I said, ecstatic to finally find a friendly straight woman. ''How is your boyfriend going to know later?'' Another funny thing about the Lilith Fair is that 16 of the Rose Bowl's 50 or so men's rooms were converted into women's rooms. This fact becomes extremely significant after consuming four large Bud Lights. Men's room after men's room I wobbled by with weakened knees were draped with banners rendering useless the banks of precious urinals inside. ''Women,'' they read. ''Shh! Don't tell them about this bathroom, they might convert it, too,'' said Chris Adams, 27, of L.A., with whom I later bonded while flushing. Adams says he was dragged to Lilith by his wife. Most of the males I encountered felt compelled to offer some similar excuse for submitting themselves to the gender oppression they associated with attendance. ''She has been after me for six months now,'' Adams says. ''The next time I want to go to a show, she owes me big. I think I'm gonna take her to Metallica.'' Heather was my first -- and frankly, only -- hope all day for a Love Connection. She was the severely attractive woman tending the Biore Pore Perfect Strip booth. A Pore Perfect Strip is basically a sliver of tape women affix to their nose then, for some reason, voluntarily yank off. So popular was this beauty device, Heather had only one sample left when I arrived at 5 p.m. And she was going to be choosy about whose nose it affixed to. ''Do something outrageous for it,'' she told the next woman in line, who offered to flash her breasts but chickened out. Intelligent, feisty and fun, Heather was perfect for me, even if she was lacking one quality I value highly in beautiful women: low self- esteem. Another woman, with a crewcut and a shirt reading ''2QT2BStr8,'' stepped up to the booth, sized me up and offered to arm-wrestle me to impress Heather. The stakes were too high to back out. The male gender had been called into battle, and I was the specimen chosen to represent it. I locked hands with my muscular opponent, my mind flooded with thoughts of how unimpressed Heather would be if my frailty forced her to give away her very last Pore Perfect Strip. It was tough-going at first, but I focused like a Zen master. My bicep eventually responded to my desperate pleas for strength and things began to go well for me. That is, until... ''I beat a lesbian! Woo!'' I announced, pumping my fists in victory. By the look on the faces of all those in earshot, I had not endeared myself to the Lilith community. I'm fairly certain that's the point at which Heather stopped talking to me, too. I had some other great exchanges that night. But I can't remember them at all and I can't read what the hell I drunkenly scribbled in my notepad about them. ''Frsh clopt your tren,'' one entry says. One thing I do remember is running into one of the Lilith Fair publicists. She had been kind enough to get Bryson and me in for free earlier in the day. ''Are you enjoying the concert?'' she asked. Concert? Oh yeah.