Tom Lynch

The oysters have pissed everyone off.

What started as a light, good-natured outdoor gathering of some of Chicago's North Side residents has turned into a fiasco full of suppressed anger and beer burps. Waiting in line for the portable toilets at the New City YMCA for the Guinness Oyster Fest, the natives are getting restless. Especially since the Guinness could be running out.

"Are you the stupidest person that ever existed?" one oyster shucker yells at another chatting unaware into a pink cell phone.

Punk band Kill Hannah, playing on the main stage, provides the soundtrack for the pee-waiting as well as a pee-wee game at the north end of the field. Ben Folds will follow shortly. Most of the festival-goers, however, are stuck in line for the toilets. "That bitch wouldn't move," a young red-faced woman says to her friend as she tries to advance to the front, a move prohibited by another young red-faced woman who obviously likes her place.

"Man," one guy with a Cubs hat says to anyone who will listen, "I've never seen so many pissed off people at a Ben Folds show."

And then comes the announcement. "Guess what?" Eric from Q101, the sponsoring radio station, announces, "We just broke the Guinness Book of World Records for most oysters shucked in one night."

The crowd cheers with pride. They are one again.

(2003-09-10)

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"If you really want to know for sure that the human soul resides in the brain, you could cut off a man's head and ask it," begins chapter nine of Mary Roach's "Stiff."
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Doing the deed
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Lights, Camera, Hurry
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Temporary rock stars
(2003-03-05)

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