Crime Blotter
Palm Desert Flagpole Killing
On Friday, September 4, at 9:47 AM, deputies from the Palm Desert Sheriff’s Station responded to a call for service in the 35000 block of Gateway Drive, a wealthy gated community, where they located a subject suffering from traumatic injuries consistent with a physical assault.
The suspect, 65-year-old Vicky Kim, a resident of Palm Desert, was taken into custody and was later booked into the John Benoit Detention Center. According to court documents, Kim used a flagpole to “inflict great bodily injury” on the victim, her husband, who was pronounced dead at the scene.
According to Riverside County District Attorney’s Office spokesperson Molly Smith, Kim had been charged with a prior felony attack on her husband in 2026 that was reduced to a misdemeanor, which led to her release …
Bouquets & Brickbats
Bouquet
To the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, which preserves the history of the legendary Memphis record label through a stunning collection of artifacts that includes a reconstructed Mississippi Delta wooden church from 1906, as well as Isaac Hayes’s peacock-blue, gold-trimmed and gold-plated superfly 1972 Cadillac Eldorado, complete with a white fur-lined interior, a television, and a refrigerator. Trust us, you don’t want to miss a visit to this place, or to the nearby Sun Studios, where rock ‘n’ roll music was born, and where Elvis, Howlin’ Wolf, BB King, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Roy Orbison all recorded.
Listen, Memphis gets a bad rap as a cesspool of crime, which it is. It is the place where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Rapper Young Dolph was killed in Memphis while standing in line at …
Critic's Corner
Fontaines D.C., Dopamine Chamber
Dopamine Chamber is the ultimate sonic doomscroll. The ethereal way it ebbs and flows makes every song unfold like a Matrix timelapse, with each song feeling double or triple its actual length. It’s a doomscroll, because listening makes you feel, well, doomed. The dopamine chamber is taking over your brain. Maybe it already has.
Much politically charged music feels boring or uninspired, like the ideas were more important than the sound. Fontaines does both, skillfully. The first song, “Six Shot Morning,” involves a mechanical beep which I thought was coming from somewhere inside my house. Halfway through the album, you’re in a universe you can’t seem to escape. Something is going wrong, something is falling apart. Clicking play feels like you're projecting the album onto your …
