“I wrote 63 songs this year. They’re all about Jeter.” Just kidding. The game we love, the players we hate, and more.
From Norman Mailer to Wendy Pepper — everything on film, TV, books, music, and snacks (shut up, raisins), plus the Girls’ Bike Club.
Helping public schools, winning prizes, sending a crazy lady in a tomato costume out in public.
Monologues, travelogues, fiction, and fart humor. And hens. Don’t forget the hens.
The Tomato Nation advice column addresses your questions on etiquette, grammar, romance, and pet misbehavior. Ask The Readers about books or fashion today!
The TWoP site director asked me to do a little write-up for TWoP of my adventures on Friday — presumably in exchange for disrupting the office — and you can read it here. When you’ve finished, click back to the TWoP homepage to see me looking inexplicably plaintive. (Photo by Bo Powell.)
I’ve (re-)discovered a few things over the course of the recent Days Of Rage. Some of them are great!
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a lonely girl in possession of a library card must be in want of a twin. The child who spends a lot of time in books also spends …
Dear Sars,
Welcome back! Dear cracking dry hands season, not so much. I’m here to ask you/the readers about a product I could swear I saw mentioned on the Vine ages ago, but I can’t find …
Sars: I just wanted to take a moment to compliment you on your writing skills. As someone who learned to read at 4 and hasn’t quit since, I have to say that you are supremely gifted. I enjoy your essays more than anything else you do, although The Vine rocks deeply. As I’ve said before, you? Are awsome.
It was totally Sassy that mentioned the show. And I had no idea that people did not like “Weekend”; it was one of my favorites, though admittedly I was 14 at the time.
The Show That Hooked You on the internet says a lot about people, I think. Unfortunately, mine was the X-Files.
AHAHAHAH, truly awesome photo on the homepage, you look so SAD!
“…damn cranberry bog…”
The blurb next to the picture was hilarious – sorry if my adding it to the tomato dance pool was unauthorized, it just made my day this morning and I wanted to share.
I went to TWoP earlier for a completely different reason and *cracked* up at the picture on the front page. Your expression is priceless!
And as for the show that hooked you to the ‘net, sadly, Star Trek:TNG. I am a massive nerd. I was like 13 at the time! Don’t judge me!
@Maren and FloridaErin – I think both of those shows contributed to my involvement with the internet. No shame!
The X-Files is to blame for hooking me to the internet and for my introduction to TWOP and TN. Someone linked to one of Jessica’s recaps and the rest was history!
That photo is awesome and your expression priceless! Since everyone is confessing” the shook that hooked me to the ‘net was Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I know, I know.
Am I the only loser who came to the net to shop? All I remember is discovering Fametracker during my first (fantastically boring) job and never looking back.
Then again, I remember being reeeeeeeeally into HP fanfic back in the day, too, so maybe that’s the culprit.
I’m a hardcore lurker on here but I just had to comment. I loved your piece at TWoP. It made me all nostalgic for my old Prodigy account and my CompuServe email address with a million numbers and a comma added for good measure.
The show that hooked me on the ‘net was Deep Space Nine and its fan-fiction (though it was years before I learned that name).
You’re awesome!
I can beat the previous comments – the show that hooked me on the internet was Forever Knight.
Haven’t thought about baud rates in years, but oh, how I remember them, and how much my sitting online would piss off my sister. And that reminds me of using Mosaic as my navigator. Good God, I’m old.
Also: fending off the “I love you” virus with our notebooks? Awesome. And: hee!
i don’t know, something about the way your arms are just hanging limply out of the tomato (as opposed from the usual limp arm hangage from a human) amuses me almost as much as the look on your face. and speaking of your face, your makeup looked really good. i know i was supposed to be focusing on the dancing tomato aspect and all, but the makeup? good.
It wasn’t the show that hooked me to the ‘net (I was a longtime addict already) but it was When TV Met The Internet for me: ANTM Spoilers on TWoP. You don’t need to say anything — I already know.
The TV met the Internet for me out of necessity. I was living in Europe with no hope for viewing the final season of Sex and the City (I know, I know, I’ll probably get kicked off the site for that) and discovered TWOP and I’ve been hooked since then as well!
@smarty: Since everyone else got a credit? MAC, the lot (except the base, which is Revlon SPF 15).
Kristina: Yes! Fametracker — esp. Blind Items — made life more interesting at a very slow point in my personal history. Those were the first boards I ever joined.
I didn’t get net-hooked because of a show, but i did get introduced to TWoP through Alias (specifically, an article in the NYT).
BWAH on fending off the I Love You virus with notebooks. I remember the day that virus broke. I was relatively new in my first professional level job. I was one of the first people who’s inboxes it hit and then it e-mailed itself to everyone in the company with my name on it. I had about ten minutes of raw terror thinking I was going to be fired for sexual harrasment.
And my shame on the show that introduced me to the Internet far tops all of you: Days of our Lives. Look, I was in college and it was always on in the lounge between classes! Don’t judge me!
Love the background story, LOVE the video! But what I really wanna know is where’d you get your bag that you were accessorizing your tomato costume with? I’ve been looking for something similar. Thx.
MSCL brought me to the internet as well. I am 37, have two children, and *still* clean house in my “Operation Life Support” sweatshirt.
@Squirrel: Brooklyn Industries. It’s a great bag.
@Carrie: I wore that t-shirt to rags.
i loved that shirt. but i had to stop wearing it because people thought it signalled affiliation with that anti-abortion gang, what was their name…operation rescue, maybe?
As a true nerdario, I got hooked onto the net to ftp and gopher science databases. And we had Prodigy on the Mac Centris. Of course, I had already gone through a IIe, a IIc, a Commodore 64, and a Tandy portable by that time, and remember hooking up to a mainframe at my dad’s work via something that looked like a combo typewriter/teletype at my dad’s office around 1978.
Knitting patterns and bands on tour are what really got me hooked, though.
Great story, great writing, great memories.
Hissyfit.com, Fametracker and BTVS on TWoP – how my internet addiction started.
Oh, my what a forlorn looking tomato. I woke up my kids this morning laughing at that picture.
The show that sucked me into TWoP–Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In the later seasons (especially the last), those recaps and the all the snark on the boards are what kept me watching till the bitter end.
I loved this piece so much because of the time in my life it brings back – the 2400 baud modem, the CompuServe account with the string of numbers (I’ve still got ’em memorized, all 9 of ’em), the debating about TV and movies and life with people from across the country and around the world, back when it felt totally new and exciting. I’ve always wished someone would write a book about that moment when the Internet was just blossoming, but not yet commercialized – where it really was just people talking to each other. It was fantastic and I haven’t really found communities like those since (or maybe I just don’t have the time since I’m no longer an overly precocious high schooler who didn’t believe in homework…)
I saw you looking so sad on the front page and read the whole thing. Instead of studying. Actually, in general, I can probably blame the internet when I fail out of school.
The reason I’m posting is because I love that the comments have become “Shows that brought me to the internet” and I have to add mine in. The X-Files brought me here, but Buffy really hooked me in. And I still love the both of them.
Comics hooked me in to the net.
The West Wing discovered TWoP, but Buffy and Angel cemented it.
Oh the sad little tomato.
I can’t go to TWOP at work, so haven’t read the article, but it wasn’t a TV show that got me hooked on the internet. It was the “CB Simulator” on Compuserve (that is, the chat room), which was a premium feature, and with which I ran up $200 bills. oops.
I discovered MBTV after the shocking ER show when Lucy and Carter were stabbed. I was sitting in my living room, so stunned at what I had just seen, and I thought “doesn’t anyone review tv shows? I need to discuss this and see what others think!”. I searched (using Yahoo, no Google yet) and found the episode thread for ER. And the rest is history!
It was an old “ER” recap website that led me to TWoP, and it was the X-Files that hooked me (and XF that got me online in the first place, come to think of it). I still giggle insanely when I read Jessica’s recap of “Bad Blood.” Ah, good times.
And yeah, the arms hanging limply out of the tomato costume was really cute.
I didn’t need a show to hook me onto the Internet, but the first internet-TV link I made was an X-Files usenet group, to which I was UTTERLY ADDICTED.
I didn’t discover TWoP until 2001 (still MightyBigTV at that time), thanks to a fellow Buffy fan at library school. But the TWoP show that really sealed the deal was, believe it or not, “7th Heaven.” There was just no way NOT to watch that show when Sara M was writing such devastating recaps. I would never have stayed through the horror otherwise.
I discovered TWoP by accident; I forget why, but I was looking for a Star Trek: Enterprise plotline (obviously I’ve blotted the memory out aside from that fact), and found Keckler’s reviews. I’ve been hooked ever since. You all have provided me with invaluable entertainment that I would never trade!
The show that got me hooked on the internet was… wait for it… Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. I’m not sure I’ll ever live that down.
From there came X-Files (far more respectable), and a million things since then. But, yeah, the whole fusion of internet and TV and fandom has really had its magical (and not so magical) moments.
I still have (and use as primary) a Netcom e-mail address. They were acquired by Earthlink, and I could switch if I wanted, but I have a fondness for the old-school Netcom flavor, plus…it was my first. Call me sentimental.
Buffy was my gateway TWoP; Alias expanded my use. I can’t remember life before that.
Sadly, I am willing to admit that it was searching for Dawson’s info that led me to MBTV (!) and getting addicted to the internets. But, like many, it was BtVS that kept me sucked in.
Actually, my best friend and I agreed to educate one another on our respective TV addictions- I would watch Buffy, and she would watch The Creek. Clearly, I got the better end of that deal.
ST:TNG brought me to the “WEB” – it was Prodigy I was using at the time, long before this Internet thing was all connected. And my baud speed – please I think it was 1.
Buffy, however, brought me to TWoP and I’ve been there ever since. TWoP brought me to Tomato Nation (and a bunch of other DHAK sites) and for that I am thankful. Sars as a tomato was just icing on an already wonderful cake.
I was already an Internet addict, but what got me to TWoP was 90210 recaps. I’ve never seen a single show, but someone was writing malarious recaps and posting them online somewhere, and while searching for them I found the precursor to TWoP.
I stayed for the America’s Next Top Model recaps, the American Idol recaps, the …. oh dear. I think I’m addicted to TWoP more than I am to TV!
Buffy brought me to the ‘net, but it was the Bronze, and Bronze Beta; I stumbled over TWOP later – I think through Dawson’s? And the mocking thereof?
But Buffy is what got me into posting, and fandom, and all the joys and trauma therein.
Beautiful! You are so awesome. I can’t be the only one who found Mighty Big TV before the transmogrification to TWOP. I was a nerd from way back with my math message boards and my Commodore 64 but it was MBTV’s recaps of Once and Again that introduced me to the modern message board and good writing. :) The funny thing is that I never actually watched the show. I clicked on a rerun once (many years ago) and couldn’t figure out how I knew what what going on when I was certain I had never seen these people before in all my life! I like to think of TWOP/MBTV as Homer would say “Teacher, Mother, Secret Lover.”
Keep on keeping on girl!
Gilmore Girls was the show that brought me to TWoP. When I first discovered the site, I had just moved to England, where (to my extreme horror and disbelief) the Gilmore series had not been picked up for broadcast on any of the television networks.
Reading the recaps during my time abroad not only allowed me to keep on top of Rory’s rapidly degenerating life at Yale; it also provided a rather unexpected — and much-needed — forum in which I could make fun of her at the same time. Shut up, Rory.
Of course, Dawson, Popular, Smallville, Buffy and House have all ensured I will stay a loyal reader forever, whether or not I happen to have a cable connection at my disposal. (God, I haven’t followed Smallville in awhile. Does the recapper still do The Gayest Look of the Episode and make fun of Clark’s makeup? That was AWESOME.)
Naturally, TWoP eventually brought me here — and the rest, as they say, is history. A long, moderately embarrassing history involving many hours spent destroying my eyesight on the interweb.
The need to dissect the first TAR season finale brought me to the well. Local fans were few & far between in Melbourne, but I was overjoyed to find not just a finale recap, but the entire season! After wallowing in the snark for several weeks, I lifted my gaze & realised that there were recaps & forums for OTHER shows as well.
Many happy hours later…..
All, TV aside, I kind of forgot about Sassy untill you mentioned it, and now I’m really missing that magazine. Not for myself, but for all the girls out there now who have nothing of substance to read. Bring back Sassy, and make it the good Sassy, not the sold out Sassy.
I got addicted to the internet from a clarinet-playing listserv. I think that might actually be dorkier than TV shows…
It was Pamie’s GG recaps, I think, and House, that finally got me stuck on TWoP. Before that I didn’t appreciate the need for the snark, but when GG got bad, man, it got BAD. The snark was very much needed.
The show that addicted me to the internet (and snarky recaps) was Melrose Place. Good times!