I think this is the best answer so far (++). It leads to the question ... is "CGI the protocol" clunky? OR is "CGI the implentation" (fork/exec) clunky? Or is "CGI the CPAN module" clunky?

The protocol is fine.

The implementation *may* be clunky for certain classes of web applications but in your average environment (decent sized machine with reasonable user base), the fork/exec model is really not as bad as everyone thinks. 50K - 100K hits per day is not going to stress a decent setup.

As for the CPAN module. I always consider CGI to suffer from multiple personalities. The one personality is a top-notch CGI (the protocol) parameter parsing beast that should not be dismissed. The other personality is a mediocre templating system that should be avoided like the plague (IMHO). The great thing Lincoln did was create the module in such a way that using CGI for it's parameter handling features alone is possible and you're not really incurring any penalties by ignoring the HTML generation/template features.

So yes, CGI::Application combined with a decent templating system is the next logical step from a pure CGI approach.