Millennium

Heidi Siegmund Cuda missed the boat with "Party Town Misses Its Millennial Moment" (Jan. 3). She claims Los Angeles "got caught with its pants down" because we had no massive New Year's Eve festival, and blames the empty streets on Y2K fears. Nonsense. (And did it occur to her that perhaps Pink's closed early due to those empty streets, not out of millennium panic?) Our sprawling metropolis has no central gathering place, and thus had no central celebration. Instead, we had a most American--and Californian--alternative: a wide array of choices.

A lot of people don't realize that their data files might be more vulnerable to the "millennium bug" than their hardware or software. I became aware of that recently when I ran Norton 2000, a $49.95 package from Symantec that checks for year 2000, or Y2K, compliance on Windows 95, 98 and NT systems. Unlike some Y2K compliance programs, Norton 2000 goes beyond checking the hardware and operating system and checks your application software and data files. My hardware checked out fine.

Auld Lang Syne 2000: The famous lighted ball that drops at Times Square every New Year's Eve is finally getting some competition. San Francisco's St. Francis Hotel plans to usher in the year 2000 with a huge lighted olive that will plunge 32 stories into a massive electronic martini glass. The hotel will also launch fireworks from its roof and is offering a special "millennium suite" for just $99,000 (which might sound expensive, but it also includes free dance lessons). Naturally, we hope other cities will follow San Francisco's lead.

Millennium hype triggered plenty of New Year's Eve events a year ago. Conversely, the comparatively pedestrian prospect of ringing in 2001 seems to be contributing to fewer New Year's Eve events this time around. The local concert schedule appears particularly sparse, which may reflect, in part, the tepid response to some New Year's Eve shows a year ago. Nevertheless, there are many special events and activities available for those looking to get out of the house on New Year's Eve.

The worst-case scenario shapes up like this: Nearly half a million Muslim worshipers throng the Old City for the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan, overwhelming police who try to screen and protect the crowds. Apocalyptic Christians stake out the nearby Mount of Olives in fevered anticipation of the Second Coming of Christ. Standard everyday terrorists, alarmed that Israel and its neighbors are making advances in the pursuit of peace, plot bomb attacks.

Now that the New Year's festivities are but a faint memory, it's time to get serious about 1999. Trend forecasters certainly are. It's their job to tell us what we'll be doing, feeling, thinking and wearing in the coming year, based on observations, polls, statistics and our behavior. So hold on to your party hat--if you can still find it.

Your millennium issue on Hollywood at the close of the 20th century was interesting, but would it not have been more appropriate to wait for the actual start of the new millennium and new century, both of which, of course, start in 2001? Richard A. Pierce Burbank

Now that the year has turned 2000, it is an excellent time to pass some legislation so that the espresso-laced hucksters who bombarded us with "millennium this" and "millennium that" last year will not be able to do it to us again this year, the true dawn of the 21st century. JAMES MAVERICK Los Angeles