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 Winter Is My Discontent
January 19, 2000 · No Comment

It happens on a different day every year, but every year there comes a day when I stand at a crosswalk, hunched against the wind, shivering, my nose not merely running but sprinting on pace …

Staying Drunk
December 19, 1999 · No Comment

When pop-culture mavens bemoan the suck-assity of movie sequels, we usually point to a few universally recognized examples of overt greed, poor judgment, and sixty-eight cracked-out chimps locked in a room, the better to bludgeon …

The Canon According To Tomato Nation, Part Two
December 16, 1999 · No Comment

When I ask the Biscuit to hold my messenger bag for a second so I can re-layer my clothing or whatever, he often makes a big show of staggering underneath its weight. I usually greet …

One Of These Days…
December 16, 1999 · No Comment

My friend Fur and I sit in neighboring cubicles at work, and while we type, we carry on a desultory conversation back and forth over the cubicle partition. Today, we had a few new topics …

Commutants
December 16, 1999 · No Comment

7:20 am. Alarm goes off. Surface from a very pleasant dream to hear the words “thank you, Jesus, for this cloudy Monday morning” (radio tuner is set to an FM Christian-witness station, the better to …

New From ETS: The Tomato Nation Aptitude Test
December 16, 1999 · No Comment

Last week, I took an online intelligence test – a big mistake, and one you’d better believe I won’t make again. Not only did I waste forty-five minutes answering incomprehensible questions involving sequential order and …

Off His Rocker
December 16, 1999 · No Comment

For four years in college, I had to listen to kids who didn’t know Cape May from Port Elizabeth spout a bunch of ignorant bushwa about how much New Jersey sucked. Everything they knew about …

Love Letters
November 16, 1999 · No Comment

Dear Amtrak,
Thank you very much for yet another overcrowded, unkempt, and inexcusably tardy train-travel experience. I truly enjoyed rushing to Boston Back Bay Station and dashing through the terminal with my breasts flailing about, and …

Mr. Rogers Can Bite Me
November 16, 1999 · No Comment

I would like to begin today’s column with a disclaimer and an announcement. First, the disclaimer: I do not have the most horrible neighbors in the world. My neighbors do not deal drugs, or discharge …

Whatcha Got Cookin’
November 16, 1999 · No Comment

Recently, I achieved immortality. Yes, you read that right — in spite of wretchedly unhealthy lifestyle habits like smoking a pack a day, drinking beer, ordering my bagels with a sizable cumulo-nimbus of lox spread, …