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!

Home » Archive by Category

Articles in Culture and Criticism

Girls 103: Is this about the scarf?
April 30, 2012 – 12:10 AM | One Comment
<I>Girls</I> 103: Is this about the scarf?

From my Girls recap of “All Adventurous Women Do” over at Press Play:
He walks off to enjoy being That Guy and wearing his blazer collar turned up. Marnie rushes inside, locks herself in a bathroom, and …

Recently in the Snacksiverse: Reel 17E, Pizza Pringles
April 26, 2012 – 5:22 PM | 5 Comments
Recently in the Snacksiverse: Reel 17E, Pizza Pringles

Lately in the Field Guide to Revolting Snacks: pizza-flavored Pringles!

Girls 102: He’s not your boyfriend
April 23, 2012 – 4:56 PM | No Comment
<I>Girls</I> 102: He’s not your boyfriend

From my recap of Girls 102, “Vagina Panic,” at Press Play:
Hannah then gets concerned that Adam thinks she’s too flip about the issue, because of course it’s a big deal—but the dialogue raises some interesting, sticky …

Recently in the Snacksiverse: Reel 22A
April 19, 2012 – 9:29 PM | 5 Comments
Recently in the Snacksiverse: Reel 22A

In case you missed it, the latest from the Revolting Snacks lab:
Streetos!
Shrimp crackers!

Girls 101: One Final Push
April 16, 2012 – 12:39 PM | 19 Comments
<I>Girls</I> 101: One Final Push

From my Girls recap at Press Play:
[H]e pulls a move he obviously thinks is super-hot, biting Hannah’s lower lip and stretching it like four inches off her face; Hannah’s expression in response is equal parts “henh?” …

Death of a Salesman: Strange new world
April 12, 2012 – 10:10 PM | No Comment
Death of a Salesman: Strange new world

Ben Brantley’s New York Times review of the current production of Death of a Salesman at the Barrymore is very complimentary, but also regretful — that the version doesn’t quite land with him; that, like …

Narc and the art of stillness
April 10, 2012 – 12:40 PM | 4 Comments
<I>Narc</I> and the art of stillness

I kind of liked Smokin’ Aces, the Joe Carnahan feature that followed Narc with a real more-than-ten-days’-worth budget and some actual names. A number of critics blew off the effort as Tarantinoid, derivative, shallow — …

Product Break-Up: MAC metallic nailpolish
April 3, 2012 – 2:25 PM | 41 Comments
Product Break-Up: MAC metallic nailpolish

Number of hours it took for the mani to chip: 10. (Number of those hours I had spent sleeping: 7.) And it isn’t just a bitty “caught the corner of a Diet Coke can tab …

Too Much Money
March 27, 2012 – 5:07 PM | One Comment
<I>Too Much Money</I>

Doddsie, who put propriety above everything else, had never forgotten nor forgiven Elias Renthal’s reverberating fart on his exit from the Butterfield nearly eight years earlier, after he had been kicked out of the hallowed …

The Crushed Film Festival presents: Tex
March 26, 2012 – 8:06 AM | 23 Comments
The Crushed Film Festival presents: <I>Tex</I>

The Movie: Tex
The Crush Object: Jim Metzler
The Story: Tex McCormick (Matt Dillon, rocking the standard-issue lank-haired butt-cut of the era) is having the customary operatic S.E.-Hinton-verse adolescence: his mother died of pneumonia when he was …