Blog: Today's Tonic From ModernTonic.com

Television is rarely adept at depicting high school angst without burying it under melodramatic histrionics (90210) or several pounds of cheap hair extensions (Gossip Girl) or a vicious cycle of comas and organ-eating dogs (http... more

The blogosphere's a-twitter with country singer Chely Wright's coming out in the latest People (news of which leaked early). Wright won a... more

Modern Tonic has two copies of Court Yard Hounds' self-titled debut to give away. To enter 1) "Like" us on Facebook, 2) Post today's email on your Facebook wall (see the Facebook share button above) and 3) tag @Modern Tonic in your post. You'll show up on our Facebook wall and you will be entered! We'll pick winners... more

Admit it, drama queens. Without heartbreak we'd have nothing. We love it when Divas voice our romantic disappointments, whether it's Streisand pining about "The Way We Were" or disco dolls bellowing despair at 120 bpm. But nothing turns us into a puddle faster than a sexy man laying it all bare before us. ... more

Like 2009, this year is chock-full of exceptional songs, with some fantastic music videos to accompany them. Here are three of our current favorites. The Apples in Stereo: "Dance Floor" (feat. Elijah Wood) Froddo Baggins... more

If YouTube democratized the film distribution process, paving the way for mass dissemination of videos showcasing keyboard-playing cats and children biting each other, xtranormal has nudged... more

Two Door Cinema Club doesn't have anything to do with the movies, but this band of ambitious Irish boys makes widescreen electronica that feels tailor-made for a punky, soulful indie film — or at least a climactic episode of Grey's Anatomy. Don't hold that against them. The drummer-less trio (they create beats from a laptop) sounds like _blank... more

When you pass a homeless person on the street do you a) dig in your pocket for change, b) speed up your gait and talk louder into your cellphone or c) sheepishly mumble "sorry" and feel bad. Kate doles out twenties. Daily. But she's still wracked with guilt and she won't buy her daughter the $200 jeans the acne-plagued 15-year-old desperately wants. It's the... more

Modern Tonic has three copies of Hole's Nobody's Daughter to give away to our readers. Email s%20mailing... more

As one of show business' all-time great survivors, Joan Rivers has become such a ubiquitous presence that it's easy to take her for granted. But the dishy and riveting Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (premieres at the Tribeca Film Festival April 26, in theaters... more

When our country was being settled, mining towns appeared overnight — bastions of rugged individualism in the ever-expanding New World. Trinidad, Colorado is one of those settlements, and now it's a frontier for a different sort of pioneer. The documentary Trinidad (airing... more

The title of Sarah Silverman's new memoir, The Bedwetter (out today), is no random non-sequitur. The guttermouthed comic's nighttime bladder issues of her youth ruined countless sheets, sleepovers and summer camps (she "peed on mattresses up and down the Northeast Corridor)." She eventually outgrew it but, lucky for us, Silverman has stayed hilariously... more

It takes a bold drag queen to pull off a Bettie Page hairdo, Joan Crawford eyebrows and a dominatrix-esque Thierry Mugler bustier. It takes an even bolder one to pull it off while dancing in a line of puppet chorus girls, spinning in a gyroscope, singing the hits of Led Zeppelin and The Beatles and being spanked by life-size demon marionettes. But Joey Arias — star of/life force... more

For a film to get the funny and painful intricacies of family dynamics just right — without being mawkish or melodramatic — is a challenge in itself. For that same movie to subtly but powerfully tell a story about how subsequent generations value or dismiss the cultural treasures of their parents feels like nothing short of a miracle. That's exactly what French filmmaker Olivier... more

Just send off a massive check to the federal government? There's no better post–tax-time pick-me-up than Ariel Leve's marvelously murky It Could Be Worse, You Could Be Me (now in stores). This ironically cheerful collection of Levy's "Cassandra Chronicles" columns (they ran... more

The gospel according to whichever path you follow can be a tough thing to reconcile. But from the Bible to the Torah to the Qur'an, spirituality and sexuality need not be mutually exclusive. That's what out singer-songwriter Levi Kreis has argued since his 2006 debut http://itunes.apple.com/us/alb um/lonely-sunday-morning/id128 687041?i=128687106... more

Like an obnoxious but hot ex-boyfriend we tell everyone we're over before we repeatedly and covertly hook up with him, we just can't quit reality TV. But according to Reality Matters (out today), we're in good company. This mildly ashamed yet passionately argued paean to the supposedly unscripted time-succubi that clog our TiVos reveals that some serious authors, journalists... more

This year's Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film achieves something rarely seen in Hollywood: With a cinematic sleight of hand, Argentine writer/director Juan José Campanella's The Secret in Their Eyes (opens April 16) turns the taut trappings of a thriller into a meditative romance. Retired Buenos Aires criminal court investigator... more

Last year, Lily Allen released a bright, bouncy B-side called "Fag Hag." Its sweet and perky chorus went "I could be your fag hag / And you could be my gay / I'll never make you feel sad / When you come out to play." Now Farah —one of indie-disco's most detached ice queens —... more

Rock is littered with sibling acts, but the first ones that spring to mind aren't the Gallagher brothers or the Radiohead guitarists, but the Osmonds, http... more