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!

The Vine: January 9, 2009
January 9, 2009 · 92 Comments

Those bastards at Proctor & Gamble have discontinued my deodorant.
No more for the Secret Platinum Soft Solid. I tried their new product the “Flawless” and it’s ill-named. It never quite, I don’t know, dries …

The Vine: January 7, 2009
January 7, 2009 · 50 Comments

Hello Sars,
I write about the lovely Robert, who is not actually our landlord, but the legal caretaker for our absentee landlord’s buildings and tenants (absentee landlord lives in Europe).I lived with three wonderful roommates in …

May I introduce Professor Nevermet Catsbefore
January 7, 2009 · 41 Comments

I cannot stop laughing.   Cannot!   I don’t know if it’s the blur of angry pets, the “okay, here’s the thing: NO SIR” expression on the lefthand cat’s face, or what, but 1) that …

Update: Nate The Christmas Kitty Finds A Home
January 7, 2009 · 18 Comments
Update: Nate The Christmas Kitty Finds A Home

From our faithful cat-placement correspondent Nacho:
Nate went to his new family on Friday.   Like the ridiculously perfect kitty heis, he didn’t even make a chirp during the car ride.   (He doesn’t meow; hechirps.) …

The Runner
January 6, 2009 · 4 Comments

Good writing; bad example of the genre.

Man On Wire
January 5, 2009 · 14 Comments
<I>Man On Wire</I>

While watching Man On Wire, I kept wondering to myself, “Why isn’t that guy bugging the crap out of me? He’s tweeing around the streets of Paris on a unicycle with his Mick Jagger hair …

The Vine: January 2, 2009
January 2, 2009 · 9 Comments

Seven years ago in freshman English, we read a book that I’ve almost forgotten but am dying to reread.
A girl grows up in a small African-American community and lives with her great aunt or …

The Enforcer
December 31, 2008 · 3 Comments
<I>The Enforcer</I>

It’s not an unlikeable movie; it has good bits, and Eastwood’s reaction shots as Harry during certain exchanges almost imbue The Enforcer with a point.
But the plot is both excessively convoluted and not meaty enough …

Leverage
December 29, 2008 · 26 Comments
<I>Leverage</I>

I DVR’d this initially because I expected it to suck really bad, in that special way a Timothy “I Won An Oscar, So I Just Won’t Even Try” Hutton project sometimes has of sucking.
It doesn’t …

The Vine: December 26, 2008
December 26, 2008 · 10 Comments

This one is for you and the readers. Last summer I was studying abroad in Italy for a month and discovered these awesome little cookies in the grocery stores there. It’s pretty much my favorite …