Author Nick Hornby booked for Ballroom Book Bash at Highland Inn Oct. 18

It's turning out to be a brilliant week for author Nick Hornby's legion of readers.   On Tuesday, Hornby released "Lonely Avenue," an inventive new album with singer-songwriter-pianist Ben Folds (the writer wrote the lyrics for the 11-track project).   Now comes word from A Cappella Books in Little Five Points that the British writer (who first achieved fame via the 1995 instant mancave classic "High Fidelity") is heade

Top Chef 9.9 recap: Oh, the sexiness!

I get the feeling that at this point in this season of Bravo's Top Chef, with nine contestants left, the cooks are kinda hard up. I’m using some serious powers of deduction here, but when Grayson Schmitz says to a tank top- and apron-clad "Malibu" Chris Crary "I think you look beautiful," or Chris Jones wonders "did I put it in the right hole," or Grayson tells head judge Tom Colicchio her food is going to be "like sex in the mouth," it seems food porn is no longer cutting it for the competitors.Any aspiring hook-ups are squashed, though, as the contestants look worse and worse each week. Chris J. of Chicago’s Moto appears to have put on an unfortunate paunch, and the Texas heat—a big plot point in this week’s episode—keeps them soggy and smelly.Though he oozes little sensuality (and, notably, very little perspiration when other chefs are soaked), the "beautiful" Chris C. of Whist Restaurant in Santa Monica apparently has his own freaky side. We learn this week that when he’s not cooking, he likes to paint pictures of nude women, specifically their breasts and butts. “It’s definitely something I like to do,” he says in a clip from his casting video, as the camera pans over what look like a fourth-grader’s naughty drawings.He shares this tidbit as a means to segue into the Quickfire Challenge, which requires the chefs to create a modern art dish, as described in the lauded Nathan Myhrvold’s six-volume Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking, a chart-heavy Bible for devotees of molecular gastronomy.The chefs have forty-five minutes to whip up something kooky, and the winner will win immunity and five of the books (why not all six?), which the competitors seem to think are as hard to get as a Zhu Zhu Pet at Christmas. (Psst, guys, you can get the collection on eBay for $448.)Poor, poor Beverly Kim of Aria Restaurant in Chicago comes across again like a ditz, this time spraying the judges with her ill-conceived curry foam and knocking over a bunch of trays. "Is she an oddball? Yeah," says Edward Lee of Magnolia in Louisville, Kentucky, ever the sage.Chris J. is waaaay excited by this challenge—even going so far as to say, "A lot of the techniques in this book, I’ve actually maybe done first"—and puts together a deconstructed cheesecake and sparkling water with lemon and lime. The key to his dish is something called Miracle Berry, a red tablet that changes the flavor profile of what you eat afterward (allowing host and judge Padma Lakshmi to take a big bite of lemon and declare it delicious). Guest judge Myhrvold calls it a "hell of a dish," but Ty-Lor Boring of Brooklyn wins for watermelon with vanilla bean honey and black pepper, topped with olive oil that has been rendered into a powder using maltodextrin.Now it’s on to the main challenge, in which the chefs will split into three teams and spend all night barbecuing three types of meats that will be served the following day to 300 people at Austin’s famed BBQ joint, the Salt Lick.The teams stay up through the night, mopping brisket with sauce, stuffing beer cans into chicken butts, and inhaling smoke and each other’s sweat fumes. Beverly lights up a pan of bourbon inside one of the nearby RVs, setting off the smoke alarm and solidifying her role as village idiot, prompting Chris C. to say, "I feel for Beverly. She’s really book smart, but when it comes to common sense, she’s missing a few chapters."When morning dawns, the sun beats down on the chefs, kicking the sweatiness up yet another notch and sending Sarah Grueneberg of Spiagga in Chicago (who grew up in Texas and, annoyingly, has adopted the accent out of nowhere) to a medic. With an oxygen mask in her hand, she is wheeled to the hospital. Teammate Ty-Lor seems to recogniz

Anchor Woman

Monica Kaufman had just turned off the I-85 South exit for Newnan when the blue lights flashed in her rearview mirror. It was the fall of 1975, and the twenty-seven-year-old University of Louisville graduate was just months into her new position at WSB-TV.
John Lewis funeral Atlanta

His final message published, John Lewis honored in a powerful ceremony at Ebenezer Baptist Church

Three former U.S. presidents, civil rights leaders, family, and members of John Lewis's staff all gave speeches during the funeral service before Lewis was buried at Atlanta's South-View Cemetery.

October 2011

As I write this in early September, the National Weather Service has just confirmed that the swath of damage through Cherokee County on Labor Day was caused by a tornado. While it wasn’t a particularly powerful twister, as these things go, it stayed on the ground for a long time, cutting a twenty-four-mile path through the county, damaging 400 homes. Maybe you heard the tornado sirens. When my wife and I did, we turned on the television, where the local weathermen were all giddy at the notion.Of course, the rains that came with the tornado didn’t do enough to lift us out of the drought that, once again, is bedeviling Georgia. The southern counties were parched by June. Agriculture, Georgia’s biggest business, is hurting. Consider pecan trees, which produce a crop every other year. This was supposed to be an “on” year for most of Georgia’s pecan trees, but the forecast, as of the summer, was grim: 80 million pounds, or what the state usually produces in an “off” year. Farther north, U.S. Geological Survey stream gauges are showing record daily low-flows in rivers—the Chattahoochee, the Oconee, the Chattooga. The list goes on. So far this year, 450,000 acres in the state have been struck by wildfire.Oh yeah, the heat. This summer was the hottest on record in Georgia. We got off easy in Atlanta, where it was merely the third-hottest in the past 133 years. (Can you imagine a hotter one? There have been two—in 1980 and 1993.) The average—average—high was 92.5 degrees. At just over six inches, Atlanta’s rainfall was half what it usually is. It almost makes you forget that in January, the city was essentially shut down for a week because of an inch of ice that wouldn’t melt.Anyone who denies the realities of climate change needs his head examined. If it seems like the weather has gotten crazier, it’s because it has. While you can debate the causes, the effects are indisputable, as Justin Heckert’s story shows us. The series of twisters this past April that tore apart Alabama and parts of Georgia hit a little town you probably never heard of called Vaughn. The other tornadoes that touched down in more populated areas got all the attention. But Vaughn . . . well, Vaughn is gone. Justin’s story is about one harrowing night, but more importantly, it’s about the days that followed, and what it means to come from a place that no longer exists.Steve Fennessy is our editor. Learn more about him | Contact him

Life in the Fairlane

It wasn’t the most comfortable ride, or the most exciting, but it managed to light up every single one of my senses in a way that resonates with me to this day.

Where to make your sweetheart swoon on Valentine’s Day in Atlanta

Looking for where to eat on Valentine's Day in Atlanta? Here are 25 restaurants offering specials.
Atlanta-based influencer Reese Blutstein’s collaboration with Target is now available

Atlanta-based influencer Reese Blutstein has a new collaboration with Target

Reese Blutstein started an Instagram account out of her Georgia State University dorm room in 2015 to share her outfits with the world. That account now has more than 351,000 followers and the 20-something has become known for her distinct style. Blutstein has parlayed that style into impressive business opportunities, the latest of which is a Target collaboration: Future Collective with Reese Blutstein, which launched this month.
HBCU merch

Time to represent: Check out these cool pieces of Georgia HBCU merch

No one rocks the merch quite like the students and alumni of historically Black colleges and universities. Have you planned your Homecoming wardrobe?

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