I went this one alone. Factors contributing to the solo
mission go as follows: Ralph is soon to be a father and has a laundry list of
responsibilities a presidential candidate couldn’t handle at the moment,
therefore he had to split right after performing the show; Todd had to be at
his cousin’s wedding reception- notice how I said “reception” and not
“ceremony”; And Patrick- well, Patrick just had to go be cool elsewhere.
Watching him grow into his mid-20’s I’ve noticed his interest sway from the
party & bullshit to the finer things in life. Can’t blame’em, Pat’s his own
man- and a good one at that. Him and
Linden made, and make, a perfect combo for Lazlo Supreme- both music picky,
very detailed when it comes to live performance, and natural born introverts.
I don’t know it yet, but this would be the last hurrah for
my old running shoes. They wrapped my feet tight enough to maneuver the
upcoming apparatus, paired well with my running Nike shorts and overpriced
simple tank top. Although the event was dubbed as the Midwest Tomato Fest, the
entrance sign read “This Way to the Tomato Fight”. The fight was all the
mattered, and I had to come back after performing with The Blend earlier in the
day for the full day event to find out. To say the least for the anticipation
building toward the Tomato Fight was incomprehensible at the moment. Kamal, a
youth I had mentored and taken care of back when I had just graduated high
school, now a full grown man and University of St. Thomas graduate had told me
the tomatoes being used for the fight were soft as salsa. I would find this to
be discreetly untrue in about 60 seconds.
The crowd is clearly drunk. Crushed cans of Grain Belt
Nordeast bedded the pavement leading to the fenced tomato fight area. Women shouted
obscenities at their male compatriots, perhaps to relieve the excitement or
anxiety an outdoor food fight was capable of producing. The tomatoes seemed
harmless at a the view of several layers of crowd from the entrance. A drunken
woman and her friends began leaning over the entrance fence to blindly launch
tomatoes in the air upon the crowd in waiting.
A glimpse of clarity streaked my conscience. The gentlemen to my
left were wrapping their belongings in plastic, hiding it away in their shorts
or underwear, a visibly drunk couple prepped their protective eyewear
(goggles)- Sweet Mother of Breakfast, this fight was going to get downright
immoral. SPLAT! Debris from the drunken girls next to the fence hit a foot away
from me. Another gentlemen dodged it as well. The clarity ended with a strong
voice in my head declaring, “Are you bullshitting me?!? There are 60,000 lbs of
tomatoes ahead of you in an empty parking lot soon to be pitched with the furor
of Curt Schilling (circa 2004, game 6 vs. NY Yankees) and you’re shuttering at
a little bit of tomato paste? Negro, please!”
No prep signal, no moment of silence, no countdown….
VOOOOOM- the fence dropped to the parking lot. The people in
front of me baby stepped pushing the crowd ahead of them. Video footage of
soccer stadium riots riddled my brain for a split second thinking I’d be
trampled to death. Press on, damn you,
press forward! These people are unrelenting drunks, you must overpower the
pace!
A woman went down hard in the pavement. One of her legs was
caught in the crowd, stepped on, soon her skull at this pace. I pause to reach
back to her. I couldn’t live with reading the tabloids tomorrow morning “YOUNG
WHITE WOMAN SKULLCRUSHED IN TOMATO FIGHT ENTRY”. Dammit lady take my hand! Die
during the fight, not before it!... Alas it was not to be- I was too far ahead.
She’d become a casualty to the game… or her friends would help her up.
Toppled the first mountain of tomatoes. Kamal’s analysis
wrought false- the tomatoes were less the consistency of soft salsa, and more
the density of a softball. Before I could let one rip, before I could commit my
arm to the destruction of someone else’s face by vegetable- BAM! A tomato
disintegrated into my neck. Thrown at the speed of a bank robbery, I turned to
the direction I thought it came from- BLAP! Another vegetable straight to the
thigh. There was no time to think- adrenaline surged to the point the pain had
forced me into a blind rage of melee. I couldn’t feel, see, or hear anything.
It was at this exact moment I said one thing, and one thing only. It was the one
quintessential phrase that need be uttered at a moment while standing atop a
mountain of tomatoes- the sheer embodiment of what needed to be done, what a
mercenary with no country to go home to says, the words of a samurai with no
living family left declares…
“BRING THE RAAAAAAAAAAAIN”
The phrase exploded from my vocal cords out of its own
volition. I quickly grabbed several tomatoes, clutched the lot of them into my
left hand, jut my left knee out as if to make a twist to throw a shotput and
whipped my right arm around palming but one tomato. It was a swift and deadly
shot. I’d directly struck a man in the chest 5 feet in front of me. The blow
was merciless, bloodless, and absolutely uncalled for. He looked me in the eye
for a moment, speaking with his eyes “What the fuck bro?!? It’s just a tomato
fight, chill out!”
There would be no chilling out, I stared back at him, blood
pulsing, eyes cold, veins pushing away from my neck and forearm as if I were
bench-pressing the world… There would be no chilling out whatsoever. The one
sense that came back to me was fleeting, but helpful. My sight. When you’re in
the belly of the beast with vegetables flying at over 30 miles per hour, the
one thing you’ll notice more than anything is the air and sky before turn to
red. To put it bluntly, you can’t see shit. If you have goggles, make sure they
are strap-ons, because 2 minutes into the fight, the regular goggles were
strewn about the ground
BLAP! “Shit!” Another neck shot, this time straight on to the
larynx- BOOM!... … …
My right ear went deaf for a few seconds. This hit had
pushed my sunglasses, doubling as goggles, into the bridge of my nose. Blood
began to let from my face. The combination of hits was ripping my psyche to
shreds. I’d exuded the confidence of an undead monster returned to wreak havoc
on a small village, but the larynx shot had rendered me gasping for air while
trying to remove my sunglasses to wipe the sauce from my eyes from the earshot.
I had to find someway to defend myself. The shots were coming from everywhere.
After a few painstakingly close shots to the family jewels,
I cupped my groin with my left hand and scooped tomatoes with my right. I had
to protect the groin. These rapscallion sons of bitches were slinging faster than
Strasburg before the Tommy-John surgery- if one were to strike me in the groin,
I’d have to leave for surely. I didn’t want to leave though. I wanted to make
sure everyone that entered the arena knew my pain. So, I made a rough draft of
a plan… and committed to it.
I staked out the first mountain I’d encountered and kept
close to the crowd. The more open
space you find around yourself, the more likely you are to catch a death shot.
Average tosses don’t scare. In the red swarm of sauce flying amidst the air
directly in front of you, the adrenaline and sheer fun of the fight numbs you
to a simple strike. However, should you find yourself near an open space where
no on is nearby, then I have no remorse or sympathy for the danger you put
yourself in. How it works is the more open space you leave between yourself and
the next crowd, results in the more elbow room an on looking participant has to
wind up and deliver a game changer straight to your clavicle. I digress, I
stayed in close to the crowd, gathered as many tomatoes with my left as I
could, stayed low- always stay low! The
second you pop your stupid ostrich head up is the second you catch a 50-mile
per hour vegetable to the forehead. It’s not fun and games at that point- I
looked towards the entrance. Then, with a vengeance I sped a fastball straight
to the dome-piece of a newly entered participant.
The goal was to have each of them know they were entering
the dragon- for each of them to understand there was no love, mercy, or human
compassion on this side of the fence. Recourse, adjudication, accountability
would all take a leave of absence until the final vegetable was thrown.
The fastballs I delivered became more deadly and precise as
time went on. I made strident effort to pitch them as far back as I could, to
take out the onlookers that per chance just wanted to pay witness to the
senseless violence taking place. If they were to watch, they would have to pay
a tax. The tax was the line of fire. If I could reach’em, they would be touched
by the tomato.
As time passed on, the ground became awash with tomato
paste. The pavement slowly drowned beneath 3 inches of sauce and water. At this
point, all the tomatoes you could actually grasp and let rip had disintegrated
to mush. To fight at this juncture in the event was to be a chicken hawk. The
company released the hose, sadly only one hose, to wash down the participants
looking to leave.
What became an obstacle was to make an exit after washing
off. The hose was in the field of play, so after hosing the acidic stick of
tomato paste from every orifice of your body, you still had to trek through a
long line of douche baggery participants looking to sling hand-fulls of sauce
on to your newly washed skin.
An overweight gentlemen with a cut-off t-shirt stood near
the hose; Discombobulated, drunk, staring aimlessly at the last of the sauce
being tossed in a lost tomato fight. A good solid tomato unleashed from the small
fray of fighters at the end of the war, striking the overweight
gentlemen square in the chest. He did not flinch, his eyes rolled toward the
culprit in his view. The audience surrounding him carried looks of astonishment, as if they paid witness to a stray bullet taking out an innocent bystander. Then, the only words that could be given to the moment a tomato fight has turned to mush and a lone asshole who pocketed the last fresh vegetable decides to peg an innocent in cold blood... were spoken. “Fuck you man” said the overweight gentlemen to the culprit. It resonated through the air as somewhat of a poetic conclusion to the madness.
Sauce continued to fly through the air, but the fight was
over for me. What felt like at least an hour of insanity, was only 20 minutes.
20 minutes of absolute fun, senseless violence, and immaturity well worth it.
Given the chance again, I will formulate a team, make t-shirts, and ransack the
hills of tomatoes once more.
Until then, I tip my hat to the Midwest Tomato Fest and all
its greatness it had to offer for several thousand people amidst a downtown
block on a Saturday afternoon that would otherwise be assuredly spent in a less
fulfilling manner.
