Did someone MAKE you do this?

Yesterday, we talked about the San Fermin Festival in Pamplona, Spain, where humans undertake the foolhardy task of running through cobblestone streets as bulls, unhappy in the knowledge that they are about to die in a bullfight, try to exact the same bad ending on the humans among them.

Spanish tourists can round out their summer of fun by partaking in La Tomatina on August 28.  That's the day when 20,000 people will waste food, and an afternoon they might have spent reading, by heaving 30,000 pounds of tomatoes at each other in Buñol, a little village near Valencia, Spain.

I saw the story on "60 Minutes" this Sunday past about Chef Massimo Bottura  ("The Pavarotti of pasta") who has worked out a way to take food that's about to wave goodbye to its expiration dates from grocery stores and use it to feed the unemployed and homeless.  This takes place in "refettorios" - high grade shelter food service spaces - and there are six of them: London, Paris, Rio de Janeiro and three in Italy, and more are planned.

Bottura is a man who makes paper out of seawater to wrap around his filet of sole. He gets $500 for a 12-course tasting menu supper. so maybe he would have a better use for 30,000 pounds of tomatoes than this wanton waste.

                                        Quite frankly, the worst of this is the unconscionable waste of food, and the other appalling aspect reminds me of when people started wearing Doc Marten shoes when they didn't have to orthopedically, but just wanted to be like everyone else, lugging around a pair of anvils all day for fashion's sake. I used to wonder what they would say if someone forced them to wear those shoes, or if being chased by bulls or pelted with ripe tomatoes were some sort of punishment or forced prank.


















I guess I'll never know.