Baseball

“I wrote 63 songs this year. They’re all about Jeter.” Just kidding. The game we love, the players we hate, and more.

Culture and Criticism

From Norman Mailer to Wendy Pepper — everything on film, TV, books, music, and snacks (shut up, raisins), plus the Girls’ Bike Club.

Donors Choose and Contests

Helping public schools, winning prizes, sending a crazy lady in a tomato costume out in public.

Stories, True and Otherwise

Monologues, travelogues, fiction, and fart humor. And hens. Don’t forget the hens.

The Vine

The Tomato Nation advice column addresses your questions on etiquette, grammar, romance, and pet misbehavior. Ask The Readers about books or fashion today!

Feeling The Passion
April 16, 1998 · No Comment

I don’t go to church anymore, except on Christmas, and I only go then because I like to listen to the Christmas carols, and I also like making snide comments to my father and brother …

I Know Victoria’s Secret
April 16, 1998 · 9 Comments

Victoria’s Secret sucks. All the men who lovingly tote the catalog into the bathroom with them for a little light reading might disagree, but I don’t care. Vicky can bite me, and furthermore, I won’t …

Bathroom Talk
March 16, 1998 · No Comment

Back in the day, “going to the bathroom” meant squatting over a chamber pot, then tossing its contents out of an upper-story window and onto unsuspecting passersby on the street. (Sometimes, when I stay over …

My Baloney Has A First Name, It’s O-S-C-A-R
March 16, 1998 · No Comment

I can’t wait until the Academy Awards. More precisely, I can’t wait until the Academy Awards end. If I have to see one more “news” item on who plans to wear what designer’s dress to …

Happy Birthday To Me
March 16, 1998 · No Comment

On Sunday, March 22nd, I will celebrate my twenty-fifth birthday. Not only does this mean that an entire quarter of a century has passed since I made my bald, underdressed, and typically hostile debut into …

Madonna, The Child
March 16, 1998 · No Comment

I remember the first time that I really became aware of Madonna’s existence. During my elementary school and junior high school years, my parents did not allow me to have the radio on while I …

Love Me, Love My Eighties Tapes
February 16, 1998 · No Comment

Back in college, after a night of standing around in some taproom or other, occasionally I had the good fortune to bring some unsuspecting boy back to my room for a little bit of smooching. …

Nagano Mercy
February 16, 1998 · No Comment

My father despises Jimmy Carter. Not that he has an ongoing love affair with the rest of the Democratic Party either, but he reserves the full weight of his contempt for Carter. A time-honored “Dinnertime …

Holy Matrimony, Batman!
February 16, 1998 · No Comment

In elementary school, my best friend and I played elaborate games of dress-up involving our mothers’ cast-off clothes and shoes, and when I look back at some of the scenarios we imagined ourselves inhabiting, I …

Spanking Baby New Year
January 16, 1998 · No Comment

Once again, the overrated kerfuffle of New Year’s has descended upon us. Bloated with Christmas cookies and eggnog, crushed beneath the accumulated debt of profligate holiday spending, and driven to the edge of madness by …