“I just want to say that I truly love u all… remember if u r lonely… I’m thinking of you… & I know how it feels to be alone. I want you to know that you are beautiful and sexy and I love you.” That was a tweet from Sophie Anderson, the beloved pornstar and viral sensation, who passed away earlier this week at 36-years-old. She died two weeks after the sudden death of her husband, former soccer star-turned-pornstar Oliver Spedding.
“My ma died in February.” Ada Calhoun and I are at the International Bar in the East Village, and I’m telling her the specifics of my mother’s death. The afternoon is gray and rainy, but the day-drinkers around us are jovial, and the Guinness I’m sipping warms my chilled bones a bit. Ada kindly listens while I talk, she herself having lost a parent in October of 2022—which, if I’m being honest, is probably why I called her to ask if she wanted to go on a walk.
Abdulla Awad, artist and visionary behind Yafa Bakery & Café in Somerville, MA, told me he learned at the best culinary school in the world. Culinary Institute of America? No. Le Cordon Bleu? Nope. YouTube star Babish? Uh-uh. Abdulla smiles and with all the love says his culinary education was in his mother’s kitchen. Of course. I also learned at a similar school, so I understand. His mother cooked every day for their large number of family and friends where they lived for generations in the Beit Safafa Palestinian neighborhood in Jerusalem.
Written some 700 years ago, Dante’s Divine Comedy remains one of the greatest works of world literature. Religion, politics, history, love, war, money: it has it all. The three-book epic plumbs the depths of hell and reaches for the highest clouds of paradise, while always remaining grounded in the here and now. In an interview with The Octavian Report, Alison Cornish—who’s an NYU professor, president of the Dante Society of America, and author of the book Vernacular Translation in Dante’s Italy—explains why The Divine Comedy has stood the test of time, what makes it so influential, and why its politics resonate today.
Welcome to Flashlight & A Biscuit, my Southern culture/sports/music/food offshoot of my work at Yahoo Sports. Thanks for reading, and if you’re new around here, why not subscribe? It’s free and all. Man, I love stunt food. You know, the ridiculous over-the-top creations you find at suggestively-named food trucks, captive-audience amusement parks, Instagram-thirsty pop-ups, the State Fair of Texas, trendy we-charge-extra-for-artisanal-ice restaurants, and — most often — at ballparks. Your resistance is already low at ballparks, you’ve got nothing to do but sit around and digest, and there’s at least a chance your team is losing … why not devour 5,000 or so calories of intestine-scouring delight?