Festering again - with jazz, oysters, Germans and dino-rock

Just a week ago, I was alone in a crowd at Grant Park in Chicago, splayed on a lawn trying to listen to genius jazzman Ornette Coleman play his sax among the din of yuppie conversations. I moved closetr to the stage to get a better hear, the postcard I bought earlier from a beggar in my back pocket. That was to make up for not buying the guy with the kid who was looking for food for him and his kid anything. Hey I couldn't find a McDonald's close by, and I was in a naive, giving, tourist mood.

Sometimes you have to fest by yourself. Other times, the fest comes to you.

For this weekend, for whatever reason, complete strangers were coming up to me and starting conversations.

Maybe I looked bold and sexy wearing my White Sox jersey on the North Side to the Guinness Oyster Fest in Roscoe Village.

Eating raw oysters has a slight potential to cause hepatitis. But since I don't recall that being a question they ask people who give blood, I figured what the hell? Maybe Irish beer kills the germs.

I did have to listen to a Dave Matthews tribute band, which was sort of scary as the lead singer was a method actor type and would not break character between songs, talking in a voice that sounded like the mush mouthed Matthews. And sort of oddly fitting to hear this band at a fest honoring animals found in brackish water as Matthews' tour bus once dumped crap into the Chicago River.

The band had its own groupie, a 30ish blonde woman who automatically turned into a bad dancer, flailing about and whooping it up to every noodling violin solo, her pants marching, crashing into tripping Billy...oh make your own damn joke. More amusing was a woman in a weird pink, punk ballerina skirt who bent over to pet a dog revealing a pair of red underwear.

And a middle aged gay couple came over to share the scant table space with me and a pal, offering extra oysters for the room. Never one to turn down free eats, I had two, upping my raw total to 14 and my total oyster intake to 20 (six of the cooked, Rockefeller genre). Per what I mentioned before, if you were thinking of having sex with me, this alone should rule out that thought - for several reasons, actually.

Next it was German Fest in Lincoln Square, where Canadian beer, Labatt's, was considered a domestic, and where it was $10 for a big plastic stein of it. Here the Sox jersey worked its magic twice, once with a nice woman in line for a sausage of some sort, who talked baseball with me until we learned the line was way shorter at the booth just 20 feet from where we stood.

Next was a guy in lederhosen and sunglasses who also wanted to talk baseball and to share his big line for the weekend about wanting to go to caribou hunting with Sarah Palin. What a hoot! And where do you look when you are talking to a guy in lederhosen without wanting to laugh. I mean, you look like an oversized Pinocchio.

In fact, trad German party clothes are way more fabulous than those of my people. Sure, you can look like you've been in your grandma's closet - or like an ugly Catholic school girl - if you put on a kilt and don't know what you are doing (example: this guy with Phil Donahue hair who was emcee at the Fox Valley Irish Fest Friday night, who tucked his tie dyed t-shirt into his man skirt). But if you do wear it well, well hell, you could front a metal band - or bounce at a leather bar.

That is way more butch than German carnival clothes, which look like something out of Liberace's closet.

Speaking of over the top performers, next up on my round o' fests was happening upon a horrible Led Zeppelin cover band, which I hated because: they had a freaking drum solo!; the quartet collectively weighed 250 pounds; they were wearing Steve Nicks' old wigs.

The band was at a free concert for the Boys and Girls Club of Elgin fundraiser, the Duck-a-palooza, so named because they have one of those duck drawings. Please, let's have a moratorium on calling anything a "palooza."
And on Zep tributes. Or tribute bands of any sort.

I was waiting for an actual blues band, not cock rock from the 70s warmed over - which would make it Viagra metal. Fittingly, the port-o-john I used was coated in Jon Bonham style vomit. As I wiped my shoes on the grass, a straight couple started a conversation. One of their friends had the same crappy crapper experience and somehow we bonded over this and over the fact I looked like a lot of the dude's buddies. But let's be honest. Who doesn't have an orc with a goatee and a shaved head as a pal these days?

They were actually there to see the fake Zepsters, and sort of invited me to head out to the bars of Elgin with them. But deep down I knew I don't rock like they do, and politely bowed out. I mean I would have probably wound up with another piercing, a raunchy tattoo or two, some blow in my glove compartment and some dead hookers.

Plus, I was supposed to go to Ikea Sunday - I mean, out on my Harley.

So we heard one more band and gave up before the headliner took the stage, leaving the 75 or so people in the park to dodge drizzle without us.

I was home by 10:30 and all fested out - at least until next Saturday.