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: December 21, 2011
December 21, 2011 · 3 Comments
The Vine: December 21, 2011

This is one of those “some friendships have a lifespan” problems, I suppose. Years ago, when I was at secondary school, I was friends with L. We were really close, but being teenagers we fell …

20/31: The Artist
December 21, 2011 · 6 Comments
20/31: <I>The Artist</I>

My esteemed colleague Couch Baron, blowing off The Artist with the combined force and economy of that air-puff glaucoma test you get at the eye doctor, described the film as, among other things, “so up …

19/31: Coriolanus
December 20, 2011 · 4 Comments
19/31: <I>Coriolanus</I>

Adaptations of Shakespeare: not for me. In fact, Shakespeare’s plays, page or stage: not for me. Shakespeare’s verse is a different story, and yes, I know he wrote the plays in verse, and yes, I…know. …

18/31: Incident at Oglala: The Leonard Peltier Story
December 19, 2011 · 2 Comments
18/31: <I>Incident at Oglala: The Leonard Peltier Story</I>

John Douglas has a line in The Cases That Haunt Us where he’s wrapping up the Lindbergh case, and after reviewing all the evidence, disputed and otherwise, he’s like, “So, did Hauptmann do it? I …

17/31: West Side Story
December 18, 2011 · 32 Comments
17/31: <I>West Side Story</I>

I don’t like musicals. I realize it’s ridiculous to complain that they come off stagey, but they do, and I don’t care for it.
But I do like the songs from musicals a lot of times …

TN Read-Along #13: Inside Scientology Discussion Thread
December 18, 2011 · 59 Comments
TN Read-Along #13: <I>Inside Scientology</I> Discussion Thread

William Poundstone is pretty good with a low-pH zinger. In Bigger Secrets, a book I’ve reread a hundred times thanks primarily to Poundstone’s “…seriously?” prose, he gives this account of Scientology’s handling of Hubbard’s death:
Finally …

And Now A Word From Our Sponsors: Grayling Cross
December 17, 2011 · 61 Comments
And Now A Word From Our Sponsors: <I>Grayling Cross</I>

“Why is magic still a secret in Edmonton? Good PR.”

16/31: In the Shadow of the Moon, or “A Teeny Oral History of Communally Experiencing the Space Program, Courtesy of My Parents”
December 17, 2011 · 11 Comments
16/31: <I>In the Shadow of the Moon</I>, or “A Teeny Oral History of Communally Experiencing the Space Program, Courtesy of My Parents”

I never get tired of the stories of the Apollo missions. Apollo 13, of course, is one of those poppy-fields movies that I can never not watch, and I think I put In the Shadow …

The Vine: December 16, 2011
December 16, 2011 · 18 Comments
The Vine: December 16, 2011

Last year, my husband and I spent a great deal of cash money to renovate our house. Underneath the grody taupe carpet, we found gorgeous oak floors that are original to the house. Imagine our …

15/31: Rampart
December 15, 2011 · 6 Comments
15/31: <I>Rampart</I>

The title of the film refers to the LAPD Rampart scandal of the late ’90s, but the story follows a single cop, Dave Brown (Woody Harrelson), who’s trying to hold everything together by any means …