Hey all you mater heads!

Anyone who is a mater head or who wants to be a mater head should have been at Nashville's Tomato Arts Festival yesterday. It was held in East Nashville at Five Points and was a lot of fun despite the horrible heat. They had a stage with live music, and booths with typical arts and crafts and companies selling their wares.

What makes this festival usual is that it is totally devoted to tomatoes. Why, I am not sure. But a lot of artists painted paintings, shot photographs, or made jewelry, all with a tomato theme. They were quite good.

There were contests and events all day: a tomato sidewalk chalk art contest, bloody mary recipe contest, a tomato toss--patterned after a similar event in Spain--where everyone threw tomatoes at a building that was scheduled to be demolished immediately thereafter, a red head contest, biggest and littlest tomato contest, salsa dancing, a tomato jingle contest, and the most beautiful tomato contest. They also had a booth with the ugliest tomatoes, but one of these entries actually looked like lips, which I thought was kind of pretty actually.

And of course, there was a parade, with the crowning of the tomato king and queen.

But I think the real winner was East Nashville, which really showed off its stuff. Over time, it has really become more and more of a community, and there are now more stores and restaurants over there. Note to self: look at East Nashville when considering buying a home in a couple of years.

If you missed the festival, not to worry. Since this is the 4th annual, there will probably be a fifth next year.


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I start back to law school tomorrow, so I am desperately trying to finish at least a couple of personal projects today that I have put off all summer. One of them is to quickly read through all of the Nashville Scenes that have stacked up over the year. I like the alternative paper--it has some quirky stuff in it. But I had to laugh when I saw that they originally had said that Buck Dozier was going to be Bob Clement's main competition in the mayoral race. Boy, did they get that wrong! Buck didn't even come close in the election a couple of weeks ago, and he will not be in the runoff on Sept. 11. And the paper completely dissed Karl Dean for no good reason, and now they have endorsed him. ??????????? I really miss the days when Bruce Dobie edited the paper.