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!

Oscars 2011 Death Race Preview: The Social Network
January 11, 2011 · 12 Comments
Oscars 2011 Death Race Preview: <I>The Social Network</I>

You’re not an asshole, Mark. You’re just trying so HARD to be.
That presumed attempt to make Mark Zuckerberg marginally more likable to the audience is one of the few feet Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Network …

Bradelor! DUN!: Principles of Inertia
January 11, 2011 · 10 Comments
Bradelor! DUN!: Principles of Inertia

In this week’s episode of Bradelor! DUN!, Miss Alli and I almost accidentally co-watched the second hour on a weird intra-IM time delay, and Alli impressively kept secret from me a final rose ceremony that, …

Tomato Nation Read-Along #7: A People’s History of the United States
January 8, 2011 · 20 Comments
Tomato Nation Read-Along #7: <I>A People’s History of the United States</I>

Howard Zinn edges Shannen Doherty at the last moment — how many times to do you get to write that sentence — to make A People’s History of the United States our 7th read-along book. …

The Vine: January 7, 2011
January 7, 2011 · 14 Comments
The Vine: January 7, 2011

This morning I had one of those terrifically weird mind bends, where a single spoken word instantly invoked a completely unrelated image-slash-memory.
What I am remembering is a game we played as kids. This would be …

Oscars 2011 Death Race Preview: The Fighter and A Film Unfinished
January 6, 2011 · 8 Comments
Oscars 2011 Death Race Preview: <I>The Fighter</I> and <I>A Film Unfinished</I>

Discovered after the war, the unfinished work, with no soundtrack, quickly became a resource for historians seeking an authentic record, despite its elaborate propagandistic construction. The later discovery of a long-missing reel complicated earlier readings, …

The Vine: January 5, 2011
January 5, 2011 · 79 Comments
The Vine: January 5, 2011

Dear Sars,
My partner and I wouldn’t win any awards for housekeeping, but our house is clean enough — it’s not filthy, unhygienic, or unsafe. We’re not going to be ambushed on any house-cleaning reality shows …

Bradelor! DUN!: A Not New Enough Beginning
January 4, 2011 · 28 Comments
Bradelor! DUN!: A Not New Enough Beginning

To date, I’ve only seen one season of The Bachelor — the one I recapped for TWoP, which happened to feature Brad Womack and his “horrible” “rejection” of two women he barely knew and did …

Against the Machine (for no good reason)
January 3, 2011 · 22 Comments
<I>Against the Machine</I> (for no good reason)

I have a mildly antagonistic relationship with my BlackBerry — I name all the significant inanimate objects in my life; this one’s called “the Dingle,” so there you go — but I admit that I …

Tomato Nation Read-Along #7: Poll
January 2, 2011 · 3 Comments
Tomato Nation Read-Along #7: Poll

New year, new batch of books to choose from! David Foster Wallace finally got his moment last time, but there’s another Wallace-adjacent book in the poll this time around, we’ve got a couple of true-crime-ish …

The Vine: December 31, 2010
December 31, 2010 · 13 Comments
The Vine: December 31, 2010

I’m hoping your readers can help me find a video clip I’m looking for. Unfortunately, this all happened before YouTube (say 1999 to 2005-ish), or I’m sure it would be everywhere.
Years ago, my sister …