Ya can't keep him on the farm after he's seen Grande Paris..... - post WW1 folk song
Moving into my parents guest room after a year of travel was something of a welcomed comfort and lesson in humility. Looking for something to do, I once again turned to the widely dispersed and loosely knit CouchSurfing community of the San Gabriel Valley. The post was simple, "Normal male, 26, funny, living with parents after a year of traveling, please help me celebrate Halloween."
Popola Sandtoes is the phonetic pronunciation for the Brazilian art student at the Claremont College that responded. Her idea was that every guest should bring a performance, song, or dance, damn good costume, and something to eat. "The Cremation of Sam McGee" preformed by a real pipe smoking, lantern illuminating, suspender wearing miner made a much stronger impression than the chalky cornbread he made.
"Uh, I can't made it."
"Why not?"
"My suspenders are being repaired..."
"Shut up. I'll pick you up tomorrow. Wear old clothes and bring safety glasses."
LACMA was hosting a show that gave artists the motivation to waste food so we can examine how food is consumed in a non typical environment with focus on the presentation of....blah blah blah.... and cleverly named, "Let Them Eat." If you want to read a proper article, skip to the end of this blog.
Papola, Marjan Vayghan, and I arrived at 2pm at LACMA. A 20 by 28 foot, carpeted stage was set surrounded by white 8foot walls, and bleacher seating of dubiously near proximity. Teams were formed, ammunition runners volunteered, the fight began, the crowd went wild....and quickly dispersed to avoid getting sprayed with tomatoes. 
At first I felt a bit shy to be engauging strangers in tomato combat, so most of my efforts were directed at Papola. She took the attention in good sport for the first few minutes, then she reminded me that all her brothers studied Brazilian Jujitsu with a handful of tomatoes in my shorts.
After about 15 minutes, that felt like 2 hours, approximately half the tomatoes remained and all of arms were tired.
When all the tomatoes were gone there was some thought given to how we should clean ourselves. Eventually a maintenance worker arrived with an underpowered power washer. The acid in the tomatoes caused skin and hair to become amazingly smooth. 
People congregated on the roof to assess what the rest of the evening held. My adrenaline was still pumping hard enough to elevate the heart rate of a few spectators with a bit of 5-story acrobatics.
After working up an appetite we milled around LACMA, collected some dishes, scoped some wild hair, and then crossed the street for Ethiopian food.
The following was written by Mike Reed
Jeanne Dunning, an artist based in Chicago, whose work involves food and the body, staged a tomato fight for the closing activities of Fallen Fruit’s year-long project, EATLACMA. Her tomato fight, inspired by La Tomatina of Spain, was a contained performance that contributes to the discussion of art, the museum, food, and human relationships -- topics that Fallen Fruit’s greater project asks us to consider.
La Tomatina Buñol is an annual public tomato fight which started in 1945, unrelated to anything religious or political, that draws 20,000 participants who throw over 90,000 pounds of tomatoes at each other -- simply for fun. Dunning’s staged performance, placed within the context of the museum, created a separation between participants and viewers. The fun of the eleven participants and 3,400 pounds of tomatoes was framed, allowing the viewer to examine this phenomenon that many around the world have begun to duplicate.
Outside, Dunning created a 20 by 28 foot carpeted, white walled room; a gallery space. Her rules to the participants: Use up all of the tomatoes, make sure they are all squished, use the juice if you want, don’t intentionally splatter the audience. The performance was to end when the tomatoes were gone; there was no pressure to hurry. During the approximately thirty minutes of the performance, the spectators observed the transformation of the room and participants. They witnessed a Jackson Pollack like collaboration of self and surface and other where aggression was not personal. As a participant, I was the painter even as I was painted. My actions on others triggered their actions on me and together we created something else. The room and our bodies were the evidence of this conversation.
The viewers knew that this was a food fight, but couldn’t deny that the splattered red on the walls looked like blood. The participants were painted red, engulfed in squishy, oozing, organic matter that transported the viewer between the battlefield of play and one of fatal violence. As the tomatoes flew and splattered, as the participants’ energy dissipated and waned, movement began to slow. We had committed to a process, but as I looked around and saw no more dry people to attack, I questioned the point of continuing. I was consuming resources, no longer sure why, just continuing what I had started, wondering what might be next. I examined the carnage, the waste of food, the waste of war, the necessary release of energy. I thought about the Pax Romana.
For a moment I sat on the floor and threw the salvaged mush of the ground. I looked at the jewel like reds of the remaining bits of taut skin mixed in with the pink mash. I thought of Bakunin’s words that the urge to destroy is also the creative urge. This food’s intended purpose was to move from seed to can to nourishing people. Can our efforts, our appropriation of this resource become food for thought? Does this fight that is not a fight represent an activity of creation that involves the participants and the environment?
Personally, three old revulsions were foregrounded. I have never taken pleasure in throwing things whether for sport or as an act of violence and I have the remains of an elementary school fear of being hit by flying balls. But here, the objects thrown were not hard, but soft, and there were no teams or victims. My fear of performance was assuaged, as the rules didn’t include a definition of failure or poor performance or inadequacy. I was able to give up all that I associated with ball sports, the violence and competition, and simply participate. There was no pain from the impact of the tomatoes, though the acidity did burn my eyes. Did this fun at some point cross over to the world of the abject? Perhaps. My childhood distain for tomatoes had been exacerbated by working in a tomato cannery while in college; picking out the shriveled testicles as fast as I could, breathing in the stench of tomatoes and chemicals. I have always awkwardly had to deny everybody’s favorite summer garden gift. So I was surprised that the inevitable taste was almost sweet, and I was able to rewrite my experience of the vegetable that is really a fruit.
In then end, though my voice grew thin from shrieking and squealing, I was calm and happy from the focus, from the luscious soft wet sensuality of the tomatoes, from engaging in an entirely delightful way with a group of playful strangers. And as the evening continued, I began to chew on the ideas presented.
