With half the season in the bag, I assume the Red Patch Boys are grudgingly content
with the performance of Toronto Independent Escorts
FC, the team with the hottest ticket in town, but still searching
for their first playoff berth.

Mad Men is back for a new season of holding up that cool, retro mirror.

Lilith Fair was a rallying point for women in the 1990s. Now the travelling music fest and its founder, Sarah McLachlan, are back, but in the age of Gaga, do we still need a feel-good, all-female festival?

Kensington snack shack offers great food at a ridiculously low price.

El G and co. fuse electronics-infused Latin rhythms with clubland audiences. Will the marriage last?

It’s possible that there are worse first-date movies than the films of
Catherine Breillat, but it seems unlikely. Unless the prospective
couple in question met at a bookstore while both reaching for the same
copy of Georges Bataille’s Histoire de l’Oeil, no newly minted relationship is hardy enough to withstand one of Breillat’s fearless and occasionally foolhardy expeditions into the most troubling corners of human sexuality.

Connections between disparate artists illuminate in one of the year’s best shows.

Peter Darbyshire’s second novel skims a world of illusion.

Today: Holt Renfrew hosts a special meet-and-greet with San Fran fashion icon Alexander Wang; sprawling collective Fool’s Gold add some Hebrew to their Afro-pop mix at the El Mocambo; and local alt-jazz ensemble The Rent pay tribute to the late, great Steve Lacy at the Tranzac.

After the truffle-fry controversy, M.I.A. reminds us that she’s still in the game.