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: February 8, 2013
February 8, 2013 · 40 Comments
The Vine: February 8, 2013

There’s a historical romance I’m looking for. I can only remember some parts of it. I read it in the early ’90s.
It starts out where this girl is with her father in this field (United …

Les Miserables: Uch, haine
February 7, 2013 · 30 Comments
<I>Les Miserables</I>: Uch, <I>haine</I>

Never have I been so delighted to break a review screener in half as instructed. Les Miserables is everything I mean when I say I hate musicals: loud, obvious, sincere, leaden, fucking goddamn endless. Every …

The Vine: February 6, 2013
February 6, 2013 · 40 Comments
The Vine: February 6, 2013

Even with searching through the Vine and TN, I’m at a loss over this: my sister’s cat keeps defecating (and possibly peeing) on a corner of the dining room rug. Now that a small table …

Little Joe, 199?-2013
February 5, 2013 · 245 Comments
Little Joe, 199?-2013

Angels, prepare to receive among you my little friend. Please make him welcome with people food, especially Kix, because he likes to chase them, and lettuce, because I still don’t know why, but I know …

Film Fiber: Frenzy brings it all back home (and shouldn’t)
February 2, 2013 · 16 Comments
Film Fiber: <I>Frenzy</I> brings it all back home (and shouldn’t)

(or, “Hitchcock Completism Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up To Be”)
Frenzy is adequate. It’s not great; it’s not quite good, even. Alfred Hitchcock’s penultimate film is miles better than the stillbirth that preceded it in his …

The Vine: February 1, 2013
February 1, 2013 · 12 Comments
The Vine: February 1, 2013

I’m hoping you can help me track down a book I loved as a kid so I can give it to my nieces. It was a collection of fairy tales (predominantly European), set up so …

Tomato Nation Read-Along #17: Poll
January 31, 2013 · 3 Comments
Tomato Nation Read-Along #17: Poll

Or, “Time to hack this pile of Christmas books down to a manageable size.” It’s a fiction/true crime/pop culture fest…with some overlaps there (Bourdain is the first and last things; Spungen is the last two …

Elsewhere in the Tomatoverse: Carrie, commercials, Kingles
January 31, 2013 · 8 Comments
Elsewhere in the Tomatoverse: Carrie, commercials, Kingles

On The Blotter, I talked about the ambiguity of Zodiac‘s ending with Matt Zoller Seitz and Mike D’Angelo, and reviewed an excellent Jack the Ripper book. (Coming soon: a “compleat Betty Broderick” line-up from me and …

The Vine: January 30, 2013
January 30, 2013 · 77 Comments
The Vine: January 30, 2013

How do you push yourself into having sex if your body/gut instinct doesn’t necessarily want to? I know from reading previous columns that you’re normally a fan of “getting it over with” with a good-enough …

Zero Dark Thirty: Fatigue(d)
January 28, 2013 · 16 Comments
<I>Zero Dark Thirty</I>: Fatigue(d)

I wonder what I missed; I didn’t have a strong reaction to Zero Dark Thirty either way. I didn’t think the depiction of torture was fetishistic, or cynical, or too much or too little (I …