IT'S BEGINNING TO LOOK NOT LIKE XMAS

It’s the festive season even though it feels more like spring than winter and we’re more likely to get a wet Christmas than a white one. An early gift was the screening of director/photographer Gail Harvey’s doc Rickie Lee Jones: The Other Side of Desire, at TIFF Lightbox last Thursday.

The doc is named for Jones's new album, her first of original music in a decade. It was a poignant, life-affirming, challenging, nostalgic, humorous and touched on issues like misogyny in the music business and the invisibility of women over 40 in general (which makes it easy to shoplift as an episode of Six Feet Under documented). Then there’s the kick-ass music -- the reaffirmation of the quirky talent who did not peek with “Chuck E’s in Love.” Who knew she was such a talented musician that she can play a range of instruments including an organ without instruction? We who labored torturous hours over piano lessons and stank at it are duly humbled.

Here’s the movie poster for Rickie Lee Jones: The Other Side of Desire. The album makes a great Christmas gift – hint, hint. The doc traces the recording of it. In some shots I found her reminiscent of Joni Mitchell.

Rickie Lee Jones with director Gail Harvey in Jones’s home in New Orleans. The two women bonded and became friends. I covet the distressed cabinet in her kitchen.

A call to arms as Gail Harvey takes a bow after the screening of her film at the TIFF Lightbox.

Rob (not David Crosby, who by the way is in the doc), singer Micah Barnes and I do a group hug after the screening. Clearly I should have stood on a box at the Lightbox.

There was no red carpet at TIFF Bell Lightbox for Gail’s film but surprisingly there was one in front of St. Louis Wings Bar and Grill on Queen St. in the Beach that night. Go figure.

Best Xmas dec on the block: Poor Santa is falling off the roof in the Beach. And no, it wasn’t on Fallingbrook Drive.

Two of the fashionable black brigade shopping in Yorkville over the weekend.

An exception to the black widows was this delightful shopper in bright blue with fabulous snakeskin boots from Italy.

After an absence of several weeks -- it is party season, folks -- I went back to Quad Spin on King St. West for penance. Ouch. It takes a couple of classes to tough it out and get your crotch callous back. Micheline Wedderburn, owner/founder of Quad Spin, is the best advert for spinning. She has a rockin’ bod, decked out here in animal-print pants and fake fur vest.