Ozzy Osbourne funeral procession to ride through UK hometown
The heavy metal legend, who died July 22 at 76, will ride through the streets of Birmingham, United Kingdom, on the morning of Wednesday, July 30, according to the Birmingham City Council.
Osbourne's body will travel in a hearse accompanied by a brass band and head to Black Sabbath Bridge and bench, where thousands of fans have already paid their respects with flowers and tributes, per a release from the council. A live stream of the Black Sabbath bench is available online.
The Grammy-winning Prince of Darkness and legendary rocker died just weeks after reuniting with Black Sabbath for a final show in England. The July 5 concert was a reprieve from the English singer's harrowing battle with Parkinson's disease, which had rendered him unable to stand or walk without assistance.
Black Sabbath bassist reflects on rehearsing with 'frail' Ozzy Osbourne for farewell show
The U.K. procession will take place ahead of a private family funeral, which has yet to be disclosed. Osbourne's family will be covering all costs for the procession.
A family statement shared with USA TODAY after his passing said the rocker died in Birmingham, England, "surrounded by love." He leaves behind Sharon Osbourne, his wife of more than 40 years, as well as daughters Jessica, Aimee and Kelly and sons Elliot, Louis and Jack.
Johnny Depp joins Alice Cooper for Ozzy Osbourne tribute
Osbourne was one of the most iconic figures in rock, molding the sound and perception of heavy metal with his one-of-a-kind voice and shocking antics. He followed his rock zenith with a reality TV career, making him as well known for biting the head off a bat on stage as his bemusing bickering at home with his wife and kids.
Contributing: Melissa Ruggieri and Edward Segarra
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Vox
2 minutes ago
- Vox
Meet the Substackers who want to save the American novel
is a senior correspondent on the Culture team for Vox, where since 2016 she has covered books, publishing, gender, celebrity analysis, and theater. In book world, the summer of 2025 is officially the summer of Substack. Over the past few years, Substack has been slowly building a literary scene, one in which amateurs, relative unknowns, and Pulitzer Prize-winning writers rub shoulders with one another. This spring, a series of writers — perhaps best known for their Substacks — released new fiction, leading to a burst of publicity that the critic, novelist, and Substacker Naomi Kanakia has declared 'Substack summer.' Vox Culture Culture reflects society. Get our best explainers on everything from money to entertainment to what everyone is talking about online. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. 'Is the Next Great American Novel Being Published on Substack?' asked the New Yorker in May. Substack 'has become the premier destination for literary types' unpublished musings,' announced Vulture. Can Substack move sales like BookTok can? No. But it's doing something that, for a certain set, is almost more valuable. It's giving a shot of vitality to a faltering book media ecosystem. It's building a world where everyone reads the London Review of Books, and they all have blogs. 'I myself think of BookTok as an engine for discovery, and I think Substack is an engine for discourse,' said the journalist Adrienne Westenfeld. 'BookTok is a listicle in a way. It's people recommending books that you might not have heard of. It's not as much a place for substantive dialogue about books, which is simply a limitation of short form video.' Related How BookTokers make money Three years ago, Westenfeld wrote about Substack's rising literary scene for Esquire. Now, Esquire has slashed its book coverage, and Westenfeld is writing the Substack companion to a traditionally published nonfiction book: Adam Cohen's The Captain's Dinner. That progression is, in a way, par for the course for the current moment. All the sad young literary men that are said to have disappeared are there on Substack, thriving. With both social media and Google diverting potential readers away from publications, many outlets are no longer investing in arts coverage. The literary crowd who used to hang out on what was known as 'Book Twitter' no longer gathers on what is now X. All the same, there are still people who like reading, and writing, and thinking about books. Right now, a lot of them seem to be on Substack. What strikes me most about the Substack literary scene is just how much it looks like the literary scene of 20 years ago, the one the millennials who populate Substack just missed. The novels these writers put out tend to be sprawling social fiction about the generational foibles of American families à la Jonathan Franzen. They post essays to their Substacks like they're putting blog posts on WordPress, only this time, you can add a paywall. All the sad young literary men that are said to have disappeared are there on Substack, thriving. On Substack, it's 2005 again. Substack is a lifeboat in publishing… or maybe an oar Writers can offer Substack literary credibility, while Substack can offer writers a direct and monetizable connection to their readers. In a literary landscape that feels perennially on the edge, that's a valuable attribute. 'As long as I've wanted to be a writer, as long as I've taken it seriously, it's been mostly bad news,' said the novelist and prolific Substacker Lincoln Michel. 'It's been mostly advances getting lower, articles about people reading less, book review sections closing up, less and less book coverage. Substack feels like a bit of a lifeboat, or maybe an oar tossed to you in your canoe as you're being pushed down to the waterfall. You can build up a following of people who are really interested in books and literature or whatever it is you might be writing about.' Substack summer, however, is not about the established big-name novelists. Substack summer is about writers who are not particularly famous, who found themselves amassing some tens of thousands of followers on Substack and who have recently released longform fiction. They are the ones whose works are getting discussed as central to a new literary scene. In her original 'Substack summer' post, Kanakia identified three novels of the moment as Ross Barkan's Glass Century, John Pistelli's Major Arcana, and Matthew Gasda's The Sleepers. To that list, Kanakia could easily add her own novella, Money Matters, which she published in full on Substack last November. 'No other piece of new fiction I read last year gave me a bigger jolt of readerly delight,' the New Yorker said in May of Money Matters. It wasn't quite Oprah putting Franzen's Corrections in her book club, but it was still more attention than you would reasonably expect. When Barkan and Pistelli's novels came out in April and May, they garnered a surprising amount of attention, Kanakia said. The books were both ambitious enough to be of potential interest to critics — Glass Century follows an adulterous couple from the 1970s into the present, and Major Arcana deals with a death by suicide at a university. Still, both books were from relatively small presses: Belt Publishing for Major Arcana and Tough Poets Press for Glass Century. That kind of book traditionally has a limited publicity budget, which makes it hard to get reviewed in major outlets. (Not that coverage is all that easy for anyone to get, as Michel noted.) Nonetheless, both Major Arcana and Glass Century got reviewed in the Wall Street Journal. A few weeks later, Kanakia's Money Matters, which she published directly to Substack, was written up in the New Yorker. It wasn't quite Oprah putting Franzen's Corrections in her book club, but it was still more attention than you would reasonably expect. 'I was like, 'Something's happening,'' Kanakia says. ''This is going to be big. This is going to be a moment.'' 'Had this novel been released two or three years ago, it would have been completely ignored,' says Barkan of Glass Century. 'Now it's been widely reviewed, and I credit Substack with that fully.' Pistelli's Major Arcana is even more a product of Substack than the others. Pistelli originally serialized it on Substack, and then self-published before Belt Publishing picked it up. The book didn't garner all that much attention when he was serializing it — Pistelli's feeling is that people don't go to Substack to read fiction — but after it came out in print, Substack became the peg for coverage of the book. 'A lot of the reviews, both positive and negative, treated my novel as kind of a test of whether Substack can produce a serious novel, a novel of interest,' said Pistelli. 'The verdict was mixed.' The theory that Substackers have about Substack is this: As social media and search traffic have both collapsed, the kinds of publications that usually give people their book news — newspapers, literary magazines, book specific websites — have struggled and become harder to find. Substack, which delivers directly to readers' inboxes, has emerged to fill the gap in the ecosystem. 'It's very easy to talk to people and it's very easy to get your writing out there,' said Henry Begler, who writes literary criticism on Substack. 'It feels like a real literary scene, which is something I have never been part of.' While there are lots of newsletter social platforms out there, Substack is fairly unique in that it's both a place for newsletters, which tend towards the essayistic, and, with its Twitter clone Notes app, a place for hot takes and conversations. The two formats can feed off each other. 'It creates an ongoing discussion in a longer and more considered form than it would be on Twitter, where you're just trying to get your zingers out,' says Begler. The buzzy authors of the Substack scene are also all associated with the Substack-based literary magazine The Metropolitan Review. Barkan is co-founder and editor-in-chief, and Kanakia, Pistelli, and Gasda have all written for it, as has Begler. 'Basically, we're just a group of friends online who read each other's newsletters and write for some of the same publications,' said Kanakia. For Barkan, the Metropolitan Review is at the center of a new literary movement, which he's dubbed New Romanticism, that is 'properly exploiting the original freedom promised by Internet 1.0 to yank the English language in daring, strange, and thrilling directions.' Barkan's idea is that the kind of publications that used to host such daring, strange, and thrilling speech no longer do, and the Metropolitan Review is stepping into the breach. He argues somewhat optimistically that the Metropolitan Review, which has around 22,000 subscribers, is 'one of the more widely read literary magazines in America.' The combined mythologies of Metropolitan Review and Substack summer have given these writers the beginnings of a cohesive self-identity. The world they've built with that identity is, interestingly, a bit of a throwback. The literary culture of 2005 is alive and well Here are some characteristics of the literary world of 2005: an enchantment with a group of talented young male writers who wrote primarily big social novels and a lot of excitement about the literary possibilities of a nascent blogosphere. Here are some characteristics of the Substack literary scene: a lot of young male writers, a lot of social novels, and a lot of excitement about the literary possibilities of newsletter essays. Glass Century and Major Arcana are both big, sprawling novels that take place over decades, and Glass Century, in particular, reads as though it was written under the influence of Jonathan Franzen. That's a departure from what's been more recently in vogue, like Karl Ove Knausgaard's titanic autofictional saga. 'I think there's a lot of nostalgia for a time when the novel was maybe a more discussed form or a more vital form or trying to capture a lot more of contemporary society.' 'The big trend in the world of literary fiction for the last decade or so was really autofiction, the idea of you would write a slice of life first person narrated often in a kind of transparent, not very adorned prose,' said Pistelli. 'I think there's been some desire to get back to that bigger canvas social novel that has been lost in the autofictional moment.' Literary Substack in general also seems to espouse a desire to return to a time when literature was more culturally ascendant. 'I think there's a lot of nostalgia for a time when the novel was maybe a more discussed form or a more vital form or trying to capture a lot more of contemporary society,' said Begler. 'It's partially just a shift from one mode of thinking to another, and it's partially a nostalgia for your Franzen and your David Foster Wallace and whatever.' This desire is, in its way, very Franzenian. Franzen famously wrote an essay for Harper's in 1996 in which he describes his 'despair about the American novel' after the jingoism of the lead up to the first Gulf War. Franzen thought that television was bad for the novel; he hadn't yet seen what TikTok could do to a person. While the Franzen mode pops up a lot with this crowd, there are outliers to this loose trend. Gasda's Sleeper is very much a product of millennial fiction (detached voice describing the foibles of Brooklyn literati), and Kanakia's work on Substack, which she calls her 'tales,' tends to be sparse, with little attention paid to description or setting. There's also the question of gender. The amount of men in this literary Substack scene is particularly notable in a moment so rich with essays about the disappearance of men who care about and write books. Some observers have drawn a lesson of sorts from this phenomenon: The mainstream literary world alienated men. They had to flee to Substack to build their own safe haven. 'The literary establishment treats male American writers with contempt,' wrote the writer Alex Perez on his Substack last August. His commenters agreed. The answer, they concluded, was building a platform and self publishing. 'I'm a middle-aged, straight, white, conservative, rich male who writes literary fiction. It's like a demographic poo Yahtzee. I don't stand a chance,' wrote one commenter. 'But I have 85K Twitter followers and an email list with thousands of people, so I can self-publish and sell 5,000 copies of anything I write.' 'These aren't manosphere men who are constantly raging against the influence of women on fiction. These are men just writing.' For the Metropolitan Review crowd, the amount of men in Substack's literary scene is mostly value-neutral. 'I do think there's something to the fact that when I got on Substack, I was like, 'These are people that are producing work that I'm actually interested in and I actually find compelling,' and that they were probably majority men,' said Begler. 'Overall, it's a rather welcoming environment for all,' Barkan adds. 'These aren't manosphere men who are constantly raging against the influence of women on fiction. These are men just writing.' Kanakia thinks the narrative about literary white men is more complicated than literary white men let on, but ultimately harmless. 'In 2025 the varieties of men advocating for themselves — most of them are very horrific. This variety is not so bad,' she says. 'If they want a book deal at Scribners, like, fine, if that'll make you happy. That'll be great. I have no problem with that.' In the meantime, literary Substack keeps expanding. Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon just signed up. 'It's smart of him,' says Barkan. 'If I were Michael Chabon and was working on a novel, I would be on Substack. I think more literary writers who have platforms already should be there.' The closest antecedent to this moment did not last. The literary moment of 2005 was blown apart the way everything of that era was: under the pressure of the 2008 recession and the so-called Great Awokening, under the slow collapse of the blogosphere as social media took off — and everything that came along with them. Will the same thing happen to this crowd? It's hard to know for sure this early. At least for right now, Substack is having its summer.
Cosmopolitan
an hour ago
- Cosmopolitan
'Absolutely vile': Tesco launches nostalgic birthday cake sandwich - 7 reviews on the viral food moment
This been the summer of viral food trends. First it was Dubai chocolate everything, then M&S released a wave of internet faves including chunky cookies, and a strawberries and cream sandwich, and now Tesco has entered their hat into the ring with their latest invention - a birthday cake sandwich. Yesterday (4th August) the supermarket launched a new limited edition sandwich as part of its meal deal. Except this isn't your standard lunch fare. Inspired by a childhood classic of a birthday cake, the new sandwich features the flavours of classic Victoria sponge and sprinkles. It's £3.00 on it's own or £4.00 with a drink and snack. The new sandwich is available for just four weeks, so if you want to try it, don't delay in heading to your nearest Tesco. But is it actually worth trying? Well already many shoppers have been down to their local Tesco to try it out. The Liverpool Echo reported the sandwich said the "cream cheese icing and jam were overpowering compared to the brioche bread" and added that it in fact "didn't taste much different to your standard birthday cake." We're not sure we'll be replacing our usual birthday cake for this though. Others were less convinced with the new sandwich, with TikTok food creator Angelina PJ criticising the sandwich and saying how it was far too sweet. Speaking to camera in her review yesterday she said: "Oh my gosh it's so sweet, I can't. As you can see I'm a bit speechless". Meanwhile over on this morning's [5 August] edition of Lorraine, host Christine Lampard reviewed the sandwich alongside guests Sarah Hewson and Ayesha Hazarika, who were in agreement over not liking the sandwich. And on X many people were complaining about hte sandwich with one person trying it and saying it "wasn't worth it", and reminded them of B&M's birthday cake candle. Another said it looks "absolutely vile" and another questioned why the sandwich had bread and instead argued they could have used thin slices of cake. Over on Instagram foodie account Newfoodsuk reviewed the viral sandwich and gave their verdict: "Trying the new Birthday Cake Sandwich from @tesco 🎂 Wow, it was very sweet indeed! You do also get a strong cream cheese flavour too! 😅 Very intriguing sandwich for sure!". Will you be trying it? Lydia Venn is Cosmopolitan UK's Senior Entertainment and Lifestyle Writer. She covers everything from TV and film, to the latest celebrity news. She also writes across our work/life section regularly creating quizzes, covering exciting new food releases and sharing the latest interior must-haves. In her role she's interviewed everyone from Margot Robbie to Niall Horan, and her work has appeared on an episode of The Kardashians. After completing a degree in English at the University of Exeter, Lydia moved into fashion journalism, writing for the Daily Express, before working as Features Editor at The Tab, where she spoke on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour and Talk Radio. She has an encyclopedic knowledge of Gilmore Girls and 00s teen movies, and in her free time can be found with a margarita in hand watching the Real Housewives on repeat. Find her on LinkedIn.
Boston Globe
2 hours ago
- Boston Globe
In ‘The Broken King' Michael Thomas chronicles his experiences with fatherhood, being Black in Boston, and mental health
The memoir also emphasizes place. While he currently lives in Brooklyn, Thomas paints a vivid, indelible portrait of growing up in Boston from birth through his childhood in the '70s. He writes about dealing with racism, driving a taxi cab, and his love for the Celtics and Red Sox. We met at Pavement Coffeehouse's Fenway location, near where he'd attended a Sox game at Fenway two days earlier. In the book Thomas recalls going to Fenway with his father, also a Boston native, who would keep a scorecard and guide his sons skillfully through the crowded park; later, after his father left the family, Thomas writes, he would attend Red Sox games with white friends who looked the other way when he faced Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up At the coffeeshop, Thomas told me going to the past weekend's game was 'melancholic yet peaceful.' Against the cacophony of usual cafe noise, Thomas admitted that writing 'The Broken King' wasn't as peaceful. Advertisement 'This was different from anything I've written,' said Thomas, a Warren Wilson College MFA graduate and Hunter College English professor. When writing his first book, ' Advertisement In addition, he explained as we sipped our coffee, the book was easier to write in part because it was a novel. He felt comfortable in part because he could refer to the novels of his favorite authors, from Ralph Ellison to James Baldwin to Zora Neale Hurston, as models for his own work. And, he added, he could use the book's main character as a proxy to work out issues, leading the characters through a contained story that he mapped out. . With 'The Broken King,' he was older, the world was moving faster, and the memoir form required him to say goodbye to his fictional proxy. 'That's a habit I had to break,' Thomas said. '[I had to] say what I thought and felt directly without artifice, where the only artifice is the craft on the page or illusion.' He also had to change his writing process. In the past, Thomas said, he would handwrite four or five pages over and over before typing them on a computer. He'd then edit them two to three pages at a time while committing them to memory. But that didn't work with the memoir. 'I had a lot of drafts, let's just say that,' Thomas said. 'Writing the same thing over and over again, finding different currents, eliminating proxy, perhaps at times being more journalistic.' He said it was interesting to lay it all out and see different versions of the memoir and what needed to be added, and what had to be left out — even if he didn't want to leave anything out. Advertisement 'I think I've had a full and strangely absurd life,' he said. In six interlocking sections, 'The Broken King' chronicles the author's experiences with father, his estranged older brother, and his two sons. With each section Thomas traverses memory and the sometimes tricky line between 'empirical' fact and personal truth; a relationship that he said people often confuse. As he was writing the book he had to reckon with his own shifting perspective on his personal experiences because, he said, as you live you change, and so does your perspective. 'One perhaps searches oneself and returns changed, and so the perspective on the self is changed, someone has to search themself again,' he said. 'So, how do you make that be still?' He said it made him question how to talk about an experience when doubting his perspective of the memory. 'Can you capture what you believe is the truth, or when you believe you're being honest about what you think or feel — and let it go before you doubt yourself so much that you have to change it?" he asked. The deepest complexities surround his relationship with his father, a vexing figure in his life. 'I can think about it and I can tell stories about him and me,' he said. 'I can sympathize with him and be angry with him and feel compassion and practice it.' But perhaps the hardest compassion to find is for oneself. 'It's been a lot of time trying to convince myself that I'm not here,' Thomas said. 'And so having read some of this in public and having part of it be published, by having people read the advanced copies and they have real reactions — and they have real reactions— I have to admit that I'm here on the planet and I have an effect on people positive or negative.' Advertisement In the book's final section Thomas writes about struggling with not wanting to live. 'I want to die, but I'm always trying to stay,' he writes. 'In these mercury days, there are too many reasons to live and die. I stay because I don't know what's next. Sometimes all I can do is survive.' Thomas will read at Harvard Book Store at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 26.
