Man With “Men in Tights Syndrome” Receives The Nutcracker Protocol Therapy

I recently spoke with renowned psychiatrist Dr. Kainik Zlatco of Zagreb University currently heading an international consortium of behavioural psychiatrists preparing a major study of men suffering from “men in tights syndrome”.

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Illness “men in tights syndrome” (MITS) is defined as follows:

“An irrational fear of men ballet dancers (ballerinos) wearing skintight “dancing pants” accentuating male body parts. Secondary mental infections may be triggered by ballerinos constantly tiptoeing across the stage. “

Dr. Zlatco emphasized MITs should always be distinguished from tight pants syndrome meralgia paresthetica.

Dr. Zlatco remarked that the fear has prevented many men from attending ballet performances depriving them of an art form ultimately reducing cortisol levels and addressing the “flee or flight” at the heart of MITs. Dr. Zlatco stated,” We have tried many types of psychiatric medicines but without measurable success. Anti-depressants have had some limited successes but on the most part have caused severe digestive issues on patients in test settings”.

Dr. Zlatco explained the causes of MITs are not fully understood but at the root of many cases of MIT is an irrational fear of “emasculation”. For some reason many men are threatened by audience adulation of ballerinos who represent less than perceived manliness. “As usual” the ego of sufferers is “strangled” by mothers.

Dr. Zlatco took a MITS sufferer to the performance of “The Nutcracker” at Meridian Hall in Toronto last night presented by The Toronto International Ballet Theatre (TIBT) . The attendance of the MITs patient was preceded by many taped sessions of ballet performances accompanied by medicinal mushrooms not the kind you make omelets with said Dr. Zlatco.

Dr. Zlatco opined that the medical team had to persuade the MITs sufferer that he was in good hands as Artistic Director Tatiana Stepanova of TIBT trained at the Bolshoi and with the Odessa State Ballet Company as Prima Ballerina. Stepanova was honoured with the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Award in 2012. Stepanova a remarkable choreographer in her own right crafts performances that are a visual spectacle.

Dr. Zlatco mused that at the core of MITs is the pure trauma of confronting men in tights so the strategy has been “diversionary” as the more you focus on the spectacle, namely the music and the sets, the more you divert the trauma. Once the brain has been so diverted the next step is have the MITs sufferer focus on the athleticism of the dancers. As a coup de grace we conquer the fear of men in tights by emphasizing those big, rough and hulking brutes playing professional football wear tights!

As a reporter I attended The Nutcracker performance mounted by TIBT and I saw by the time Act II was presented the Arabian Dance danced by ballerina Teagan Hadcock the MITS sufferer had his restraints removed and had a smile on his face. I heard him remark these performances are spectacular! They are so lavish and well danced and combined with the remarkable sets it just lifted him out of his MITs into a world of bliss.

Dr. Zlatco turned to me after the crowd’s massive round of applause with a rather large smile on his face saying, “A remarkable performance by TIBT. Fluid and artistically beautiful costumes and choreography. The sets were outstanding. Now can our MITs sufferer be considered cured? This would be a premature conclusion. The real test may be further attendance at TIBT ballet performances where lavish costuming and sets may not be the norm. I may name this “cure” The Nutcracker Protocol.”

The MITs sufferer was last seen leaving Meridian Hall clutching a Nutcracker and heading to the Toronto Transit Commission subway stop on King Street with a very contented smile on his face.

Should you or anyone you know is suffering from MITs further TIBT performances may be required. Check them out at TORONTOBALLET.ca

Dr. Zlatco is looking for volunteers to participate is his study of “baritone blues” affecting certain audience members at operatic performances.

Photo courtesy of TIBT.

RKS Literature: Crafty Scoundrels and Heaven (Dickens)

“Some of the craftiest scoundrels that ever walked this earth, or rather – for walking implies, at least, an erect position and the bearing of a man – that ever crawled and crept through life by its dirtiest and narrow ways, will gravely jot down in diaries the events of the day, and keep a regular debtor and creditor account with Heaven, which shall always show a floating balance in their own favour. Whether this is gratuitous (the only gratuitous) part of the falsehood and trickery of such men’s lives, or whether they really hope to cheat Heaven itself, and lay up treasure in the next world by the same process which as enabled them to lay up treasure in this world – not to question how it is, so it is.”

Charles Dickens, “Nicholas Nickleby”, 1837

RKS 2024 Wine: The Great McLean Creek Road Vineyard Challenge at Meyer Family Vineyards

The 2022 Meyer Family Vineyards’ Pinot Noir from the McLean Creek Road Vineyard was exceptional, at least in my humble opinion, with a score of 94. So how does its Chardonnay counterpart fare. Do grapes challenge each other or are they simply unfeeling grape juice?

Only the finest, purest juice from the early stages of pressing was used for this wine. After the pressing the must was transferred to 100% French oak (22% new). The wine was left “sur lie” for 11 months without battonage.

Aroma: This light golden coloured wine has a very rich core of apple, pear, mango, honey and lemon meringue pie. Reading above you noted oak was “involved” with this wine but like the 2022 McLean Creek Road Vineyard Pinot Noir you’ll be hard pressed (no pun) to pick up oak. It has been so well integrated into the wine it has became part of the wine instead of standing “on the other side”. If you are an oaky from Panoche and like discernable oak serve cool as opposed to cold. As this Chardonnay warms the oak heats up a bit.

Palate: The 2022 Pinot Noir certainly was not a raging bull Pinot Noir nor is this a raging Chardonnay or a Travis Bickel if you prefer. Both the 22 Pinot Noir and Chardonnay are in their youth and initially the fruit in both seems shyly quivering off stage. You can just taste the fruits in the aromatic component described above but knowing what I know about the McLean Creek Road Vineyard the fruit does not swagger but lies in wait for you in year three.

Personality: I am a very deceptive wine as you may possibly think I am weak kneed and wobbly but do a Dr. Bones deep scan the fruit is there. Just be a bit patient please!

Food Match: Pan fried monkfish in butter, garlic, salt and pepper with wild rice or smashed potatoes.

Cellarbility: Best to wait until 2025 to start drinking and then challenge a snooty Burgundian Chardonnay and see it lose. I say this wine will evolve over the next few years peaking at 2028.

Price: $32.36 CDN. For shipping/availability in the EU and U.S.A. contact the winery.

RKS 2024 Wine Rating: 92/100. Therefore the 22 McLean Creek Road Vineyard Pinot Noir wins the challenge with its 94.

(Meyer Family Vineyards 2022 McLean Creek Road Vineyard Chardonnay Okanagan Valley, Okanagan Falls. BC VQA, Meyer Family Vineyards, Okanagan Falls, 750 mL, 13.5%).

RKS 2024 Wine: Riding the Meyer Family Vineyards Pinot Noir Merry Go Round: No Follies in its Youth!

For a few years I have been riding the Meyer Family Vineyards Pinot Noir merry go round. Like a child I don’t want to hop off because I am having so much fun. Quality consistency even in the face of challenging growing seasons.

The winery says, “The 2022 vintage was a classic Okanagan growing season….” That is promising news particularly as we are trying an MFV 2022 Okanagan Valley McLean Creek Road Vineyard Pinot Noir. The McLean Creek Road Vineyard was planted in 1994 and is within the Okanagan Falls sub-geographical indication. It has a predominately steep southerly aspect with the soil comprised of alluvial and glacial deposits making up a mix of gravel and sandy loams. The Pinot Noir blocks are planted with a 91 Pommard clone and 4 Dijon clones (114/115/667/777). The grapes were hand harvested from 14October-27October. The juice was transferred to 100% French oak barrels 25% of which was new and it rested for 11 months. 795 cases made. The winery says it has a cellaring potential for 10 plus years.

Aroma: Raspberry, strawberry and some milk chocolate. The oak is so well integrated into the wine it is hardly discernable as a separate component of the wine. Interesting that despite the 25% new oak there is more discernable oak on the 2022 “B’ Field Blend Pinot Noir where the oak was 100% neutral French oak.

Palate: Smooth with minimal tannins. The finish seems to have no end! The fruit and the potentiality for its brilliance is so well tucked into the wine it leads one to conclude this wine is in its infancy. There is blackberry, cherry and cranberry.

Personality: I may be a toddler but those with toddler experience can participate in the joy of toddlerdom right now if they wish.

Food Match: Smoked salmon pasta in a tomato cream sauce.

Cellarbility: The winery says 10 plus years cellaring potential. That may be pushing it just a bit but I remain silent on that. I would say wait 3 years (if you can) before opening it. Curiosity may have killed the cat but I never heard it killed a Pinot Noir drinker.

Price: $37.48 CDN. For possible delivery to Europe and the United States contact the winery for shipping information.

RKS 2024 Wine Rating: 94/100.

(Meyer Family Vineyards 2022 Pinot Noir Okanagan Valley, Okanagan Falls, McLean Creek Road Vineyard, Meyer Family Vineyards, Okanagan Falls, British Columbia, 750 ml, 13.5%)

RKS 2024 Film: “Oasis”: Quebec Filmmaker Justine Martin’s Film Shortlisted at Upcoming OSCARS

“Oasis”, a short documentary film, by 24-year-old Justine Martin is now shortlisted for the upcoming Academy Awards in the Best Documentary Short Film Category.

Shot in the Quebec Laurentians the 14-minute short documentary film tells the story of two twins at the dawn of their teenage years. Raphäel is suffering from a developmental handicap. Rémi spends time with Raphäel and when they are one on one it is quality time but when it is a matter of interaction with their peers Raphäel is on his own. A bit of two is company three is a crowd.

You can watch the trailer here https://vimeo.com/677888072

You can watch the entire film https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000009022484/oasis.html?searchResultPosition=1

RKS 2024 Film Rating 74/100.

RKS 2024 Entertainment:  Maoist Guerilla Opera!

I attended a Christmas Special presented by the Opera Revue at the Granite Tied House and Brewery in Toronto on 20December2023.Take away from this performance is that they are somewhat akin to Maoist rebels in the Peruvian jungle.

Can you imagine these upstarts attacking traditional opera? I can as I saw them. In fact can you comprehend that baritone Alexander Hajek said there are rules concerning an Opera Revue performance. Well at least there are rules so we can’t fully elevate these radicals to the ranks of anarchists. But imagine a performer singing in a gaudy Christmas sweater….. a thinly veiled attack on Christianity!

Oh yes these rules:

  • No shushing
  • Use your phone and record our performance and share it
  • Wear what you like. No need to dress up
  • The more alcohol you drink the better
  • Feel free to move around and stretch your legs or use the facilities

Oh petty hateful people. Part of the fun of opera is to revel in snobbery and hold it in! And that Danie Friesen opening the show saying expect a bit of everything. In opera we expect the usual and not a bunch of performers “jamming” and singing….oh my something about a Grinch who stole Christmas thinking it some obscure Wagnerian piece of opera. I am not sure I should go on but as an opera lover and as all opera lovers we must crush these operatic Misfits. Hajek as Clark Gable and Friesen as Marilyn Monroe?

There were excerpts from Handel, Wagner and Bach so that scruffy Hajek has baritone talent but his simmering disrespect for the greatest art form, opera, was hurtful to all opera lovers. And what was that filth Friesen was singing about. Mrs. Claus lamenting the absence of Mr. Claus and keeping “warm” with the elves. And a destructive number “Twelve Days After Christmas”. I hear Bing Crosby, Julie Andrews and the cast of “It’s a Wonderful Life” letting loose blood curdling screams of betrayal from their graves. And they even passed around a hat for donations to the Daily Food Bank. In the real opera we have tiers of wealthy donors and don’t embarrass ourselves groveling for charitable donations other from our donors.

How ridiculous trying to make the audience comfortable with opera. That is against the entire operatic concept. And all done is less than two hours. Admit it all of you pine for a four-hour opera with two 20 minute intermissions which is EVERYONE’s operatic dream that puts to shame the $10 performance staged by the Opera Revue.

As a last comment the audience, or most of them, were wearing jeans and eating and drinking DURING THE PERFORMANCE! Gadzooks!

It is time you all go an Opera Revue and verify my stern words. They don’t call me the Jim Baker of the true way to salvation for nothing……….

If you wish to see opera humiliated catch an Opera Revue performance. If you want further details about this sordid outfit check out their website in all of its flippancy at https://operarevue.com/ . Read and weep.

RKS Literature: Love and The Imagination: Charles Dickens

“Love, however, is very materially assisted by a warm and active imagination, which has a long memory, and will survive for a considerable amount of time on very slight and sparing food. Thus, it is, that it often attains its most luxuriant growth in separation and under circumstances of the utmost difficulty; and thus it was that Nicholas, thinking of nothing but the unknown young lady, from day to day and from hour to hour, began, at last, to think that he was very desperately in love with her.” 

Charles Dickens, “Nicholas Nickleby”, 1837

RKS 2024 Wine: Meyer Family Vineyards Pinot Noir “B” Field Blend Okanagan Valley 2022

The 2022” B” Field Blend Pinot Noir from Meyer Family Vineyards in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley is from three Dijon clones (115/667/777) and a cutting taken from Old Block on McLean Creek Road. The four clones were picked on the same day and co-fermented. As common with Meyer Family Vineyards the Pinot Noir was aged in neutral French oak for 11 months.

The 2022 vintage was a classic Okanagan growing season with a typical spring budburst in early May and beautiful weather into June. There was excellent flowering weather from late June into July resulting in good yields. The grapes were hand harvested and destemmed with the crop level being significantly higher compared to previous vintages and needed more time to ripen.

450 cases were made. The winemaker and viticulturalist was Chris Carson.

Aroma: Raspberry, strawberry, cherry with more concentrated aromas than in previous years. I am searching for the right word here. “Meaty” comes to mind. Wrong word. Better to say more concentrated than I expected. Just enough oak and new American oak would not have done the wine any justice.

Palate: Light bodied with minimal tannins that might be described as having a guarded and reticent nature. For an instant you might be scratching your head wondering where the fruit is but it accelerates and is well captured in a long finish. A very high-toned Okanagan cherry dominates in this secretive finish!

Personality: Robert K. Stephen has always maintained why purchase French Burgundian Pinot Noir. Well, he is nodding and smiling at me. Vive La Okanagan!

Cellarbility: Mid term ageing of up to 2027.

Food Match: As farmed salmon is an increasingly dirty word in British Columbia lets switch to Lake Shuswap Rainbow Trout with sweet potato fries.

Price: $31.39 CDN. For shipping costs and distributors in the EU and the United States check out their website https://mfvwines.com/ or give them a call.

RKS 2024 Wine Rating: 92/100.

(Meyer Family Vineyards Pinot Noir “B” Field Blend 2022 Okanagan Valley, Okanagan Falls, British Columbia VQA, Meyer Family Vineyards Inc, Okanagan Falls British Columbia. 750 mL,13.5%).

RKS 2024 Film: “Fallen Leaves”: Awkwardness, Alienation and Depression Perfected

Ansa (Alma Pöysti) and Holappa (Jussi Vatanen) are two lonely souls portrayed in a gloomy, stark and industrialized Helsinki. Ansa meets Holappa at a karaoke bar full of strange “out of the ordinary” people. In fact the film is full of distracted out of place people in equally stark and bizarre settings. The music throughout is about heartbreak and love.

Both characters are in their 40’s in the autumn of their lives. The leaves of Helsinki are rapidly falling dead to the ground. Ansa and Holappa are trapped in a swirl of negativity and as their lives go they may as well be fallen leaves. If the radio is not playing heartache music it is blaring out the incessant missile attacks against Ukraine a reminder the viewers that this quasi-fantasy film has connection to reality. Finland borders Russia and has repeatedly closed its borders due the flood of migrants transported to the Finnish border by Russia in a bid to disrupt Finnish society.

Holappa is caught in the throes of alcoholism as after all he labels himself depressed and drinking because of that condition. And he is terminated twice from his job for drinking on the job.

Holappa and Ansa have their first date at a retro theatre playing a retro zombie movie. Rather suiting for two characters that have a deadening zombielike existence. And Ansa dumps him after seeing his hip flask in action. Her father and brother died of drink and her mother of grief so she wants no drunk in her life.

Holappa and Ansa reunite after Holappa gives up drink and on his way to meet Ansa he is struck down by a tram. How much more depressing can a film get? The chances of a romance are mighty slim you think.

Winner of the Jury Prize at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.

Currently in theatrical release in Canada.

Directed and written by Aki Kaurismäki.

RKS 2024 Film Rating 92/100.

RKS 2024 Wine: Plenty of Red Bordeaux at Affordable Prices

One example of the plenty of moderately priced red Bordeaux’s is a $16.00 2020 Chateau Hyot. 70% Merlot, 20% Cabernet Franc and 10% Cabernet Sauvignon. No oak ageing or fermentation.

Aroma: One senses a young and fresh wine attempting to decide how it will mature. Lazy black cherry with no attitude. Blackberry, blueberry and some milk chocolate.

Palate: Some tannins but they are so embedded in the wine like the press in a Hummer in Iraq you can’t flesh the tannin out. It too seems to be contemplating how to develop. A tiny tweak of momentary sweetness that vanishes as quickly as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seeing how badly his Liberal Party is doing in the polls. Blueberry and pomegranate predominate in this easy drinking and immediately approachable Bordeaux.

Personality: Completely and utterly relaxed awaiting what maturity brings.

Food Match: One of the 300 or so versions of Portuguese Bachalau.

Cellarbility: Drink by 2025-year end.

Price: $16.00 CDN (Ontario).

RKS 2024 Wine Rating: 90/100. Roger Voss 92.

(Chateau Hyot 2020 Castillon AC Côtes de Bordeaux Contrôlée, Alain Aubert, Gironde, France, 750 mL, 13.5%).