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!

Too Much Money
March 27, 2012 · One Comment
<I>Too Much Money</I>

Doddsie, who put propriety above everything else, had never forgotten nor forgiven Elias Renthal’s reverberating fart on his exit from the Butterfield nearly eight years earlier, after he had been kicked out of the hallowed …

The Crushed Film Festival presents: Tex
March 26, 2012 · 23 Comments
The Crushed Film Festival presents: <I>Tex</I>

The Movie: Tex
The Crush Object: Jim Metzler
The Story: Tex McCormick (Matt Dillon, rocking the standard-issue lank-haired butt-cut of the era) is having the customary operatic S.E.-Hinton-verse adolescence: his mother died of pneumonia when he was …

TN Movie Meet-Up: Steeeeeeeeeve!
March 25, 2012 · 10 Comments
TN Movie Meet-Up: Steeeeeeeeeve!

Thanks so much to everyone who came out for The Trouble With Bliss and post-movie pints — such fun to meet everyone and talk sports, stripper names, and more. And to that waywardly hilarious soul wailing …

The Vine: March 23, 2012
March 23, 2012 · 9 Comments
The Vine: March 23, 2012

I hope the Vine readers can help a girl out! I’ve been looking for a reasonable facsimile of the red shoes that Amy Winehouse wears in her “Rehab” video, and Google either gives me absolutely …

The Vine: March 21, 2012
March 21, 2012 · 22 Comments
The Vine: March 21, 2012

When I switched jobs about a year ago, I moved my family (husband, 18-month-old, and dog) from New York to California. I also moved our nanny and her teen son with us (after asking nicely …

Let’s go out to the lobby — and get ourselves a Couch Baron
March 20, 2012 · 26 Comments
Let’s go out to the lobby — and get ourselves a Couch Baron

UPDATED MARCH 23: The inaugural TN Movie Meetup is set! We’ll see The Trouble With Bliss on Saturday, March 24 at 3:30 PM — then step around the corner to Blue & Gold Tavern for a …

TN Read-Along #14: The Great Influenza Discussion Thread
March 20, 2012 · 18 Comments
TN Read-Along #14: <I>The Great Influenza</I> Discussion Thread

Institutions are a strange mix of the mass and the individual. They abstract. They behave according to a set of rules that substitute both for individual judgments and for the emotional responses that occur whenever …

Myra Breckinridge: Beyond the Valley of the Vidal
March 19, 2012 · 6 Comments
<I>Myra Breckinridge</I>: Beyond the Valley of the Vidal

You could view Myra Breckinridge as a nervy meta-commentary on identity in Hollywood, on narrative recycling, on the tragic self-regard of the heroine of Sunset Boulevard, on the rejections of the aged and the outlier. …

Word Of The Day: “hargh”
March 18, 2012 · 2 Comments
Word Of The Day: “hargh”

From some of the same people who brought you “hew,” a handy portmanteau of “hee” and “ew,” comes this new coinage, compliments of the Couch Baron.
hargh. interj. Combination of “hee” and “argh,” used to express amused …

From the Platonic cave of amazing thank-you notes
March 16, 2012 · 11 Comments
From the Platonic cave of amazing thank-you notes

Yesterday, I received a delightful thank-you note in the mail from the White Russian, her partner Drummer, and their toddler for the holiday gifts I got her and the fam. Yes, the winter holidays. Yes, …