''It's the most beautiful place on Earth,'' says the host of the Tonight Show

Billy Eff is the Content Director for Rolling Stone Canada. An award-winning journalist and columnist, he has previously contributed to outlets including VICE and Urbania. A passionate advocate for underground music and a musician himself, he has conducted several hundred interviews with artists and industry professionals across a wide range of styles and genres over the past 15 years. He is based in Montréal, Québec.

Sterling Point has quickly emerged as one of Prime Video’s breakout new shows, earning a strong response from viewers and critics since its August 5 debut. The series is also putting one of Ontario’s most recognizable summer destinations firmly in the spotlight: Muskoka.

That connection came up when star Ella Rubin stopped by The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon to promote the coming-of-age drama. Rubin, who plays Annie Jacobson, spoke about filming the series in Ontario, where production was split between Toronto and Muskoka.

“I like Muskoka. It’s gorgeous,” he told Rubin. When she asks whether he had visited, Fallon revealed that he had, and called it “the most beautiful place on earth,” he said. Rubin was equally complimentary about her time north of Toronto, telling Fallon that she felt fortunate to have filmed in Ontario. “I love Canada and I just feel so lucky that we got to be there,” she said.

“Right now I’m team Muskoka and team Annie,” Rubin said, speaking about the love triangle her character experiences in the show. “I’m team 'what’s best for Annie' and I think Muskoka is best for Annie.”

Sterling Point centres on a fictional island in the region, where Annie's life takes an unexpected turn after she inherits a cottage from her estranged grandfather. The discovery draws her into a new summer filled with friendships, romance and secrets surrounding her family. Although Sterling Point itself doesn't exist, the production filmed around several of Muskoka's best-known lakes, including Lake Muskoka, Lake Joseph and Lake Rosseau.

The setting also has a personal connection to creator Megan Park. The Canadian filmmaker spent her summers in Muskoka growing up, and the series draws on her memories of the area.

Australia's most legendary rock band has hit Canada and is pursuing their trek out east. AC/DC fans will have a new way to celebrate the band’s return up North, with an official PWR/UP pop-up experience set to accompany every Canadian stop on the group’s 2026 stadium tour.

The temporary spaces will open in Montréal, Toronto and Winnipeg, offering fans a chance to immerse themselves in the AC/DC world before heading to the stadium. The pop-ups will feature limited-edition merchandise, collectibles, themed food and drinks, photo opportunities and tour-inspired displays.

The experience will also give fans access to exclusive city merchandise ahead of its wider release. Limited quantities of official event shirts and posters will be available at each location one day before they go on sale online or at the concert venue.

There will be plenty of opportunities to win prizes, including concert tickets, merchandise packages and VIP items. A replica Angus Young guitar will also travel between the pop-up locations, where fans can enter for a chance to win it. The guitar will later be signed by Young in Philadelphia before being awarded to one eligible entrant. Each city will also host a PWR/UP preview event before opening to the public. One hundred fans will be selected at random in each market to attend alongside media and invited guests, with attendees receiving a special gift.

The band started their Canada tour in Edmonton before making their way to Vancouver last week. The PWR/UP tour continues in the next few weeks in the Bible belt, before making its way back to Montréal in September, with their pop-up taking place at mythical venue Foufounes Électriques on September 11-12. On September 15 and 16, they'll set up shop at the Steam Whistle brewery and Winnipeg, MB on September 19 and 20 and The Pyramid.

Courtney Love and Jennifer Finch were instant friends from the moment they met in the early Eighties, and remained close until Finch’s untimely death at age 59 in July. Before Finch joined the influential punk-metal band L7 and long before Love formed Hole, the women made music together in a band called Sugar Babydoll (or Sugar Babylon, depending on the year) alongside future Babes in Toyland frontwoman Kat Bjelland. They remained close as their careers took off, which is a difficult prospect for touring musicians.

The friends supported each other throughout the years. When Love’s husband, Kurt Cobain, died in 1994, Finch was her rock. And in June, when Love learned that Finch had been diagnosed with brain cancer, she traveled to be by her side and support her until the end.

Finch chronicled her friendship with Love in a memoir, “Shooting Up and Making Out: A Memoir of My Life in LA and L7,” which she co-wrote with Jeff Alulis and completed shortly before her death. It will be released via Da Capo on Jan. 19.

Here, Love pays tribute to her friend who shaped her life in her own words.

I hitchhiked to Hollywood from San Francisco in 1983. I wanted to go to Hollywood more than anything.

I met Jennifer at her father’s home. I’m a feral person. Growing up in foster care didn’t give me much likability or infrastructure for knowing how to relate to people. She had all that, and she covered for me. I’d only met three other people who liked me at that point in life. Jennifer was the most important.

Jennifer took to me immediately, and she never stopped protecting me from the summer of 1983 onwards. When you come to Hollywood and have no means, Jennifer’s house always had a couch. Her dad always had cheese and Cap’n Crunch. A safe couch. And she always had records. We spent thousands of hours listening to them and learning them.

That house is the closest thing to a home I’ll ever have.

I’d come from Dublin, England, Portland, and New Zealand. My musical taste ran from [the Birthday Party’s] Drunk on the Pope’s Blood to U2 and Echo and the Bunnymen. This new SST hardcore scared me, but she made me see the wit in it. The George Clinton in the Chili Peppers, which I still find funny, and the depth.

She dragged me to shows. There wasn’t a day she didn’t stand by the strange girl from up north. We had guitars and taught each other to play. The Runaways were our Sex Pistols.

She introduced me to Pat Smear. Without a doubt, Pat is who I told Kurt he should ask to be in Nirvana when he was depressed that his bandmates made him sad. He wanted a happy bandmate. I called Pat.

In 1988, when nobody in L.A. would have wagered on me, Jennifer cosigned me to Flea. Flea said yes, and we had the Chili Peppers’ rehearsal space, which is why there is Hole.

In my 62 years, I can think of nobody more loyal or honourable. A true friend, who also gave me the security of having one house where I was safe.

It’s worth noting that she was clean and sober for 37 years [at the time of her death]. She joined L7 in 1986 and helped make it the force it became, doing all that grunge without once getting high.

Jennifer was a teenage terror. She ran the tables on all the Dogtown Betties and all the Hollywood street girls. She was queen boss. She ruled the roost of the teenage gangs. Back then, the LAPD more than once tossed us into dumpsters or shoved us around. She was fearless with them.

When Kurt died, Jennifer was the general in Seattle. She guarded my door like an armed soldier. She confronted and stopped Kurt’s managers and a suit from trying to leave our house with a Flipper album and a Bunnymen album. The joke was on that guy. Clearly not a Kurt lover.

Kurt adored Jennifer, and she was one of the few people he spoke to a few times a week. She got me through that horrible month and didn’t leave my side.

On June 10, when I entered that house, I saw terror and entrapment drowning in her eyes. For five weeks, my only job was to help make sure she had the best possible end-of-life care, until July 18.

There are people here who stood up and showed real heroism.

There were no means, no money, and no access to the men I know with power, but my manager said, “Who cares if there’s no money? She was in one of the most important bands ever.” That gave my heart the dignity Jennifer deserved.

When it was finally undeniable that she was dying, my job was to make sure she was surrounded by love in a safe place, while her medical team kept her comfortable.

Jennifer Precious Finch was 10,000 levels of funny. She could not have written her chaotic ending better herself.

More than 100 people were fighting to get in, arguing that they were on the list as if it were a club, because she had more than 100 passionate friends who would hock their houses for her. There were bouncers rotating at the door, people arguing about playlists and almost fist-fighting, duvets from the Chateau Marmont, a Sikh saint with his crystal xylophone, robes and slippers, Apple Pan and Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles. The tired, the sick, the hungry, the famous and tons of ex-boyfriends, all regretting their wrongs. She loved it. Everyone remembering her with love and sobbing.

At 4 in the morning, when her body shut down and the medical staff said it was time, I heard someone say, “But we ordered breakfast for 8, and Flea’s coming at 9.”

I laughed.

It was an Andy Kaufman, Carrie Fisher exit. It was Steve Jobs saying, “Oh wow,” as he saw whatever was on the other side and left all of us guessing until it’s our turn.

It was funny as hell. Chaotic, like her. Going out in the world’s most glamorous hospital wing — the Billy Wilder wing where Elizabeth Taylor died — named after the director of Marilyn’s best movie [Some Like It Hot] and, consequently, the best movie about an all-girl band ever, with the greatest last line in cinema history: “Nobody’s perfect.”

Waiting for craft services, our favourite trumpet player and her medical team keeping her comfortable is the most Jennifer Finch thing ever.

And you can take that to the bank.

Becky drove up from San Diego without a ticket.

She parked near the Teragram Ballroom in downtown Los Angeles at 1:03 p.m. on Tuesday, ran to Target, and was back in front of the venue by 2:34 p.m. — nearly six hours before doors, in 90-degree heat, for a show she hadn’t managed to buy her way into. She’d spent weeks watching resale prices climb on this sellout.

“This is disgusting,” the 37-year-old scoffed.

She got scammed. She came anyway, and spent the afternoon handing out water and Nerds Gummy Clusters to the strangers baking from the heat beside her.

Frank, 52, paid $375 on StubHub for a ticket that was never delivered. He was in line too, hoping for a miracle at will call.

By late afternoon, the queue had wrapped from West 7th Street onto Hartford Avenue. Attendees wore polka dot outfits, a few hats with hot-dog noses, and their ages ranged from toddler to retiree. They were all waiting for Khn and Klek de Poitrine — better known as Angine de Poitrine, a two-piece of thirtysomethings from Saguenay, Quebec who perform as 333-year-old aliens and have become, perhaps, the most in-demand live music act on the planet.

According to StubHub, Los Angeles is the band’s single strongest market worldwide, accounting for roughly a fifth of all resale tickets sold across their 47-date global tour. That’s double the share of the next closest city. These two Teragram nights ranked first and second in demand on the entire run. Compared to the 137 other events the venue has hosted over the past 12 months, they moved about 1,100 percent more resale tickets per show.

For a room that holds 625 people. On a weeknight.

What everyone came to hear is microtonal math rock. Khn plays a custom double-neck guitar-bass with twice the usual number of frets on each side, looping the two halves together in real time with foot pedals. Klek plays drums in time signatures that would bedevil a seasoned rhythm section. Nothing is pre-recorded. Every layer is built live, in costume, with limited visibility.

The outfits get the attention. Khn’s golden braids spilling out from beneath an inverted pyramid, Klek looking like the medieval lovechild of Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and Beaker, both of them covered in black and white spots — on their clothes and their limbs — and adorned with golden triangles.

Their manager, Sébastien Collin, compares the experience to picking which Christmas present to open.

“The wrap made you choose the gift, but it’s not a gimmick,” he says. “There’s real music inside.”

Martin, a working musician standing third in line, described his own unwrapping. A friend had been badgering him for weeks to watch the band’s KEXP session. He finally pressed play on his phone.

“Within 10 seconds I’m like, ‘What is this garbage?’”

Two seconds later: “My life has just changed.”

He’s not alone. The KEXP video — one take, recorded at the Trans Musicales festival in Rennes, France, last December and posted on Feb. 5 — has surpassed 18 million views on YouTube. The comments section runs some 73,000 entries deep, with people talking themselves out of contempt in real time.

But the story doesn’t start there.

By the time they went viral, Angine de Poitrine had already taken French Canada. In the summer of 2025, they played 25 shows around Quebec, repeatedly drawing overflow crowds to festival side stages that proved too small for them. They sold more than 5,000 tickets to an April 2026 tour of the province before Christmas, including consecutive sellouts at Montreal’s Club Soda.

Meanwhile, record stores couldn’t keep their first album in stock. When Vol. II was available on vinyl worldwide in June, two months after its digital release, the band pulled it from their own website so only shops could sell it. Some stayed open until midnight to do so.

Their first American show came on July 31 at the Newport Jazz Festival. Since then, they’ve played back-to-back sellouts in Denver and had crowds at Field of Vision, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s Colorado festival, chanting “Ho-ly shit!” in unison.

Those chants surfaced again inside the Teragram, after a hectic “Yor Zarad” that opened the night’s first mosh pit like a vortex on the dancefloor. So did the inflatable dice that had been bouncing around the crowd at Field of Vision over the weekend.

Before the set, fans crowded the stage to watch the pair assemble their own gear, still masked but not yet in full costume. Whenever Khn and Klek raised their hands into triangles, everyone on the floor raised triangles back. When they squatted during “Tamebsz,” the floor squatted. When they waved their arms through “Fabienk” — the song whose near-intelligible vocal sounds like “See-bas-tieeeeen,” a nod to their manager — the crowd waved and chanted his name. Every sip they took through tubes rigged to their water bottles, engineered for drinking through their masks, drew pleas from fans in the front rows for a splash.

Becky and Frank were among them. They would both go home happy (Becky even got her money back), as would 600 or so of their newest and sweatiest friends.

Some were already chattering about hitting Angine de Poitrine’s two nights at the Wiltern in December.

Those shows? Sold out, too.

Rachel Reid is putting some of the success behind Heated Rivalry toward a cause that helped shape her career in the first place. The Nova Scotia author has announced a donation of $300,000 to the Annapolis Valley Regional Library after learning that five branches were facing permanent closure due to lack of funding.

Reid told CBC News that the decision was driven by a desire to give back to the community that supported her long before her romance novels became a global success. "I had to do it because I don't know what the point is of being a successful author in Nova Scotia if you're not going to use it for good," she said.

The donation comes after the library board turned to its reserves to keep the threatened branches operating through next month. The five locations, in Hantsport, Kentville, Lawrencetown, Port Williams and Middleton, had been facing closure as the library struggled to secure enough funding to maintain them through the end of this fiscal year.

Earlier this year, the board had asked the municipalities it serves for $351,000 in additional funding, but only received about a third of that amount.

Reid's contribution was warmly welcomed by local officials, with Kentville mayor Andrew Zebian sharing on Facebook that the donation "is an incredible gift, and it will make a real difference for libraries and the people who use them across our region". Library CEO Julia Merritt said the $300,000 gift will allow all five branches to remain open until the end of the current fiscal year, with most of the money going toward staffing costs.

"This is an incredibly generous gift, and we are profoundly grateful to Rachel for choosing to invest in libraries, the Annapolis Valley, and the people our libraries serve" Merritt said in a statement, adding that the donation will help the library continue providing opportunities for people across the region to read, learn and connect. The library, however, has stressed that the gift is not a substitute for reliable annual funding from governments.

What happens when Peter Pan’s shadow has a shadow?

Over the past two weeks, TikToker Toni Kulusich, better known as @babytoni99, has gone viral for videos of herself with Peter Pan at Disneyland. What might otherwise look like a routine character meet-and-greet has sparked a very different reaction online, with social media users questioning whether her decade-long fandom of a fictional character crosses a boundary.

According to an interview with Wired, Kulusich, 27, didn’t see her content really take off until a clip of her gifting Peter Pan a tiny crocheted duck started trending.

Suddenly, she’d gone from 10,000 views to a million, and the angry comments were flooding in. Critics took issue with some of the recordings, particularly those in which Kulusich appears to kiss Peter Pan on the cheek or get down on one knee to propose to him. Other videos, however, show Kulusich and Pan skipping arm in arm through Fantasyland, with the actor seemingly leaning into the friendly exchange.

But Kulusich insists there’s a distinction between her Disney obsession and her life outside the park. “It’s not like I’m going to the store or to my job and thinking about Peter Pan,” she said, referring to her job as a manager at a big-box retailer. “It’s just that when I’m inside Disney, I’m able to release my inner child and the kid who doesn’t want to grow up.”

Kulusich defended herself to Wired, saying that even her husband of four years, a Marine, is “really supportive” of her hobby. But her account has sparked a conversation about Disney adults, what’s appropriate when visiting a park, and what’s pushing things too far. Though Kulusich says that criticism of her is unfair, there are plenty of other instances of fans crossing the line. (Kulusich, who is using her middle name to protect her privacy, declined to be interviewed by Rolling Stone. Disney did not respond to a request for comment.)

Today, there are 12 Disney parks across the globe. Guests come for the attractions, shows, and, of course, the characters. Those range from princesses, known within the company as “face characters,” whose performers wear costumes and company-approved makeup while showing their own exterior, to Mickey Mouse and other “fur characters,” the Disney term for performers who portray animated stars in full-body suits.

It’s not an easy job. I worked at Disney World in 2016 as a character attendant, assisting princesses in their duties. I remember one shift when I interacted with guests alongside Rapunzel and Cinderella. There was a frequent visitor, a man in his 30s, who repeatedly came to the park and would go from princess to princess, presenting them with drawings, making requests for videos, and going in for long hugs. We put his photo backstage to warn other women.

According to former Disney cast members, the divide between fantasy and reality can get surprisingly blurry for some adults who do become deeply attached to park performers. “Adult stalkers are much more common than you would think,” Justin Sanger, a 34-year-old former cast member who portrayed everyone from Hercules’ Hades to Toy Story’s Woody for more than nine years at Disney World in Orlando, Florida, tells Rolling Stone. “Honestly, the female characters are on the receiving end of this far more frequently than I ever was, but there was always someone who took their love for a character very personally.”

He says the role has changed significantly in the past decade, thanks to the internet. “Our job was to bring these characters to life for the guests, and for the most part, people understood that and took it at face value,” he says. “But the addition of social media created a whole new level of access and made people feel more ‘connected’ to a character — or to the person portraying them.”

He recalls seeing situations in which solo guests at the park would spend a significant amount of their free time interacting with the same character, sometimes even seeking out the actor playing them. He said that while most interactions are harmless, some fans go overboard with their devotion.

“There was also something about The Incredibles that seemed to attract a particularly extreme level of attention, including a lot of sexualization. We wore spandex and had fake muscles, but that was the role where I personally experienced some of the most extreme behavior from guests,” Sanger says. “This included people finding us on social media and asking for special meet-and-greets for family and friends. But it also included very bold, face-to-face comments about how our bodies looked in the spandex and even comments about how ‘stretchy’ Mrs. Incredible really was.”

Sanger says the behavior became so frequent that the performers had to take action. “We actually had to ban certain guests — and even fellow cast members who were harassing us — from coming to interact with us at the themed dance party because it became an every-day, all-day type of occurrence.”

However, Sanger notes that he has a soft spot for people who see Disney as an escape from the real world. “I genuinely don’t think there is anything wrong with being a Disney adult,” he said. “But being a Disney adult is not an issue. Stalking and possessiveness are.”

Rob Millerick worked as a character performer at Walt Disney World in Orlando from 2014 to 2018. During his time playing Nick Wilde from Zootopia, he encountered obsessive young parkgoers, who would ultimately play a role in his decision to leave the park.

At the beginning, Millerick says, there was nothing particularly unusual about the attention. “It was very light-hearted. They were just excited to see us,” he tells Rolling Stone. The group, made up of older teenagers and people in their early 20s, began showing up regularly for the parade’s three daily performances, led by one attendee in particular.

But the appearances became increasingly common. “As time went on, it got more and more aggressive and more and more frequent until [he] was showing up every day I was there,” Millerick says, adding that his fellow performers would warn him when they saw the attendee around. “The dancers that were with me started telling each other, ‘Hey, if you see this person, Nick Wilde has to be up on the float because he’s going to try and attack him.’”

The situation continued for months, and Disney eventually became involved. But Millerick says there was a frustrating pattern: “Every single time a manager was there to observe, he did not come,” Millerick says. “And any time the manager wasn’t there, he was there.” A few months later, Millerick quit.

Disney didn’t respond to Rolling Stone’s request for comment on how it trains employees to navigate difficult guest interactions, but from my own experience in the Disney College Program, I know that Disney’s foundational training course, “Traditions,” teaches employees to prioritize four key principles: safety, courtesy, show, and efficiency.

Every role comes with its own additional instructions; what a princess learns is different from what someone working an attraction learns, but the overarching goal is the same: Keep people safe while keeping the magic alive as long as you can do it with a smile.

As for Kulusich, she told Wired that after taking a break, she decided to come back to the park. She wasn’t going to go looking for Peter, but when she saw him, she said he waved. So while there may be problematic Disney adults who let their obsessions spiral, Kulusich insists that what she’s doing is simply an innocent hobby that “makes her happy.”