RKS 2025 Wine: An $8.99 USD Pinot Noir in Palm Springs, California

At one end of Palm Springs at 350 South Palm Canyon Drive there lies a Grocery Outlet a discount grocery store with an interior about as warm as the minus 22 temperatures I left Toronto in.

This section of Palm Springs boasts a Palm Springs Art Museum Architecture and Design Centre and an Eisenhower Medical Centre but it is dotted with failed retail operations. To its right there is a large Mexican family style restaurant and an enormous Brazilian Steak House. Opposite a Bev-Mo high end liquor store, a haircutting salon and a Green Dragon cannabis outlet. Outside the Grocery Outlet invariably there are some raunchy characters but being in the desert the need for water calls. Aside from enormously cheap Cali pistachios there is a somewhat decent wall of inexpensive Cali red and white wines.

I picked up an $8.99 bottle of 2022 Lattitude Sonoma County Pinot Noir as after all with the Canadian dollar the way it is it just about drove me to a $4.99 Blush.

I couldn’t help notice the tyrannical rule of Cali Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Zinfandel and a smidge of Pinot Noir. I also noticed a few labels at about the third of the price you would pay at the Liquor Control Board of Ontario.

In for water out with pistachios (cheap!!), bottle of Pinot Noir, Kettle potato chips (delicious) and two bottles of still Italian water. What were Canadian chemicalized cinnamon buns doing in the bakery section? Trump tariffs will take care of that.

The sign above my Pinot Noir declared “regularly priced at $30”. A further search on the internet showed this Pinot Noir selling between $12-15 USD.

Aroma: Loaded with black fruit particularly blackberry, super rich black raspberry with a twist of mocha. An aggressive Pinot Noir.

Palate: Somewhat tannic for a Pinot Noir and chock full of black fruit with a medium long finish tinged by white pepper. Smooth.  

Personality: A Pinot Noir for the American mases and the Canadian middle class.

Cellarbility: Consume in 2025.

Food Match: Berkshire Pork.

Price: $8.99 USD.

RKS 2025 Wine Rating: 88/100.

(Lattitude 2022 Sonoma County Private Reserve Pinot Noir, California, 750 mL, 14.3%).

RKS 2025 Film: “Timestalker”: Disturbing Pyscho Horror Thriller

The film community apparently categorizes “Timestalker” as comedic. If there is humour, I would say it is an attempt at such that transforms itself to generate a powerfully disturbing film documenting a dangerous delusional stalker. Initially one might strain to identify humour but it is weak and it is the splendiferous acting of Alice Lowe as Agnes that prevents the power off button from being pressed. Be patient I say!

As the film wends toward its conclusion the apparent humour retrospectively transforms into horror and terror. The small clip in the film about the murder of John Lennon by Mark David Chapman was not random. It strikes at the essence of the film.

Agnes is a character in 1688, 1793, 1847,1940,1986 and 2117 and falls for Alex in each of these periods but is unlucky in love often losing her life before her love for Alex is “consummated”. Alex is an unworthy cad. As Agnes’ failures mount her determination, or is it an unhealthy obsession, grows in intensity where she is no longer “the killed” but the killer. Listen closely to her psychiatrist in the 1980 segment.

I won’t discount the comedy here and the subtle mockery of the 1980 Brit pop scene is a gem. The costuming is stellar.

Take it as a comedy the film largely fails. Take it as something much much darker I am almost tempted to say it is brilliant with a simulated French cinema crossed with a Rocky Horror Picture Show curtain closer conclusion.

Alice Lowe directs.

RKS 2025 Film Rating 88/100.

In United States theatres and On Demand 14February2025.

RKS Literature: France: Love, Slander and Nonsense

“Have you ever been to France Monsieur Martin?”  Candide asked.

“Yes”, Martin replied, “I have been through several provinces. In some, half the people are mad, in others the people are too cunning; there are some in which they are gentle and foolish, and others where everyone is witty. And in all these provinces the main occupation is love, the second slander and the third talking nonsense.”

“Candide or Optimism”, Voltaire, 1759

RKS Literature: The Rabble of Paris (Voltaire)

“Yes, I have seen Paris. It has all those types of people. What chaos! A swarm of people where everyone is seeking pleasure but hardly anyone finds it; at least that is how it seemed to me. I did not stay long. When I arrived, pick-pockets at the Saint Germain robbed me of everything I had. Then I was mistaken for a thief and spent a week in jail, after which I worked as a proofreader in order to return to Holland on foot. I came to know the writing rabble, the plotting rabble and the convulsionary rabble. They say there are some very refined people in that city, and I would like to believe it.”

“Candide or Optimism”, Voltaire, 1759.

RKS 2025 Film: “Paying For It”: Romantic Love vs. Paying For Sex: Friendship Somewhere in the Middle

Chester Brown (Dan Beirne) an introverted cartoonist lives with Max Network VJ Sonny Lee (Emily Lê) and cutie pie canine Moe in a ramshackle house in Toronto’s Kensington Market a former hangout of mine before vintage clothing and budget hipster eateries edged out the produce people and the skinheads with their nasty dog.

It is 1999 and in bed Chester is told by Sonny she thinks she is falling in love with someone else and asks Chester if she can continue their ambiguous relationship. Chester, initially portrayed as a nerd, agrees stating he loves Sonny more than ever. Under the covers it has been a sexless relationship for so long Sonny’s birth control pills have expired! Sonny embarks on a series of disastrous relationships.

Chester becomes intrigued by the idea of paying for sex and he scours the back pages of NOW for escorts and studies a guide how to interact with prostitutes. Appropriately educated he hops to and fro from sex worker to sex worker and being a nerd, so we think, has in bean counter fashion budgeted for 17 yearly sexual liaisons which will cost less than what he has spent on Sonny without any sex to show for it.

Is Chester a spineless worm as he moves downstairs to a dank basement sleeping on a soiled mattress while Sonny cavorts upstairs with Miles whom she met at Sneaky Dees a raunchy Toronto bar and music venue? Miles strolls into Sneaky Dees with a girl in his arms and Sonny storms out upset. Sonny can’t take from Miles what she dished out to Chester.

Chester tells Sonny he is seeing prostitutes and Sonny retorts this is fine with her but Chester must never bring them into the house. Meanwhile the two faced and selfish Sonny brings her latest flings into the house having forced Chester down to the basement. How much abuse can Chester take! Chester brings escort Denise into his basement lair and as she is leaving Sonny and her newest live in enter the house Sonny unhappy with Chester breaking his promise about not bringing prostitutes in the house. What is good for the goose is not so good for the gander.

Chester’s philosophy is that romantic love is slavery as relationships are too much work. As for revenge, Chester never sees or hears about, Sonny’s new soul mate lying next to her on a Costa Rican beach says to her, “I think I am falling in love with someone else!”

At the end of the day there is no Romcom conclusion between Chester and Sonny thank goodness. Instead the film is a friendcom, Chester has graduated to a romantic relationship he once criticized.

Beirne and Lê excel in their roles. The sex workers are played with respect and Andrea Werhun lights up the screen in her role as Denise.

As a great fan of the Mystic Muffin proximate to the Salvation Army hostel at 113 Jarvis I love Sonny’s Mystic Muffin T-shirt as after all Mystic Muffin’s sign states they have served two billion!

A bit of a comedy dusted up on the edges by the pros and cons of romantic and paying for it sex.

This Canadian movie is directed by Sook-Yin Lee.

RKS 2025 Film Rating 88/100.

RKS 2025 Film: “Dark Match”: Some Chilling Thrills and Comedy in a Quasi Farce

In “Dark Match” a struggling professional wrestling organization, SAW Wrestling, accepts a lucrative gig out in the isolated countryside. The tantalizing cash is difficult to resist. A small group of wrestlers and the managing promoter Rusty Beans (Jonathan Cherry) pack themselves off and head to the venue .They receive a warm welcome from a rather festive group of people and join the party. Some are drugged in a lair of endless temptations and one even branded with a bizarre Satanic symbol visible at several locations in the venue. 

It so transpires that something more sinister than a dark match has been planned for the wrestlers. In professional wrestling a dark match is either before the main card to “warm up” the audience or after the main card to send them home happy. A death match in wrestling is more sinister with dangerous objects such as metal studded props, shattered glass or barbed wire in a brutal and bloody spectacle.

The matches turn deadly for a variety of reasons and blood and guts spurt and fly to and fro.

The crowd wants more than a winner and loser. They want a match with “final consequences” egged on and inspired by their Leader (Chris Jericho) who speaks in Satanic like language to his cult-like congregation. The viewer may recognize the old Satanic twist webbed in the words of Leader such as “We can conquer the heavens” or “We are close to paradise”. But the film takes an interesting Bernardo-Homolka snuff twist where a love of terror is combined with profitability and the bloodlust of wrestling crowds.

No doubts the film mocks professional wrestling as manufactured entertainment but it probes deeper into a more troubling question of the lust for violence and death. Professional wrestling feigns violence and fan hatred of many wrestling characters but in “Dark Match” feigning is replaced with deadly intent.

Not all the “good guys” escape here and the few that do face the evilest opponent imaginable and if you are not rolling in the aisles in a mirthful state man you have missed an important facet of the film! If the film were a dark match it will send you in a happy direction!

“Dark Match” as written and directed by Lowell Dean.

RKS 2025 Film Rating 87/100.

Canadian theatrical release will commence 31January2025.

RKS Travel: Beauty and Death in the Desert: Palm Springs Air Museum

The Palm Springs Air Museum in Palm Springs, California has 70 vintage aircraft from WWII, Korea, Vietnam and a Stealth Bomber used in Iraq.

My visit sparked a resurgence of memories.

There is a certain beauty to most of the aircraft particularly the B-17 bomber where for a small fee you can enter the interior. It is an enormous aircraft with monstrous sized tires and four engines. It could reach altitudes of 35,000 feet and was not pressurized and frostbite was a possibility. And where did the crew poop? You’d be surprised!

Perhaps the Stealth Bomber will be your favourite. Sleek and very deadly with laser guided bombs. You might be interested in the 3 Soviet Migs. I recall in in the “old communist Yugoslavia” in Slovenia I was taking a morning walk at 7 a.m. when I heard an enormous sonic boom bang that scared the ** out of me. I was buzzed by a MIG the dirty capitalist bastard that I was. I was also delightfully buzzed twice by a Douglas F-4c Phantom in 1963 while a young lad fishing with my friends on Lake Champlain in Vermont. We waved like happy maniacs and I am sure the pilots broke all rules by buzzing us again giving a farewell wing wave and heading off to the USAF base in Plattsburg, New York. What a memory!

My father was a Royal Canadian Air Force radio operator in the Battle of Britain on aircraft flying submarine patrols over the English Channel. Fortunately for him and me he was quickly transferred to Summerside, Prince Edward Island to train radio operators. I have a binder with his war memories and there are many pictures of fighter pilots and as he remarked most of them died in combat.  So while there is an aspect of beauty (at least to me but certainly not to everybody) to fighter jets and bombers but lest one not forget they are instruments of death.

My father on the left with his best buddy

The goal of the Palm Springs Air Museum is to preserve, educate and honour and they certainly deliver and perhaps like me a visit may bring back memories so many I can’t recount all of them here.

There are six “Warbird Rides” on the weekends including one on a P-51 Mustang.

For further details www.PalmSpringsAirMuseum.org 

RKS Literature: The Regimented Assassins of Europe (Voltaire)

“I have hardly ever come across a town that does not desire the ruin of its neighbouring town, a family that does not destroy another family. Everywhere the weak despise the strong at whose feet they grovel, and the strong treat them like sheep whose wool and flesh can be sold. A million regimented assassins, marching from one end of Europe to the other, perform disciplined murder and robbery to earn their bread, because no profession is more honest. In cities where peace and the arts flourish, men are more consumed by jealousy, worry and anxiety than they are in cities under the blight of a besieging army. Private sorrows are more bitter than public suffering.”

“Candide or Optimism”, Voltaire, 1759.

RKS 2025 Wine: Beyond the Moon to Jupiter! An Animal Farm Red

Côtes du Rhône is known for its robust red wines occasionally exhibiting a tad too much acidity. We try a Halos de Jupiter and query will it take us beyond the moon to Jupiter?

75% Grenache, 15% Mourvèdre and 10% Syrah.

Aroma: Blackberry, cassis, black plum and black Vermont licorice.

Palate: Yep, noticeable acidity cuts through the fruit perhaps just a bit too much. Tannic. Cranberry, blueberry, root beer and cactus pear. Chalky lingering finish.

Personality: You might want to refer to me a “racy” or “zingy”. What is not a great sipper can be a wine designed for food. Tannins here will cut through red meat protein in a workhorse fashion. Boxer had his utility in “Animal Farm” as I may have with a fattier cut of beef like a rib steak.

Cellarbility: With acids like this drink in 2025. I don’t trust longevity of acidic reds.

Price: $17.40.

RKS 2025 Wine Rating: 87/100. Wine Spectator 89. Natalie MacLean 92.

(Halos de Jupiter 2022 Côtes du Rhône, AOP Côtes du Rhône, Famille Gassier, France, 750 mL, 14.5%).