Cantara’s (Social) Notebook

Let’s reassess and revalue what just happened. First of all, let’s not mince words. She lost first prize. There’s no “she really won because we all love her in the US (or France or wherever)”. She lost because not enough people voted for her in the UK, whether out of deliberateness (because they didn’t like her singing) or out of carelessnesss (because they thought she’d win anyway so their vote didn’t matter). She lost by a margin of four percent. [For all my postings on Susan Boyle, click here .] What’s going to happen immediately is that the spotlight is going to be off her. This is good. Media interest in Susan is going to die down, giving her time to regain her composure and “get her head back”, away from public scrutiny. I never believed for a moment in those two accounts of her losing her cool this past week but let that go. If Cowell makes good on his word, and it’s a sure bet he will if there’s still money to be made off her, Susan will be making a CD and public receptio...

This Memorial Day here’s honoring one man who kept his promise: General Douglas MacArthur. As the supreme commander of the American and Philippine forces in the Pacific in early 1942 when the Japanese advanced on the Philippines, he held out till the very last, until the Japanese were virtually on the doorstep of his headquarters on the strategic island of Corregidor. He left his command with great reluctance, and only when Roosevelt himself ordered him to evacuate to Australia in order to gather fresh troops. And even then , he still toyed with the notion to resign from the US Army and go up into the hills to fight alongside the guerillas. But duty was stronger. Evacuate to Australia he did, and there he vowed, “I shall return.” He did return , in 1944. My mother, a teenager then, was part of the crowd that welcomed the liberating Allied forces when they finally entered Manila. The city had been burnt to the ground by the fleeing Japanese, but after two and a half years of bombs...

The first time I ever saw Clifford Irving was on The Dick Cavett Show , when I was 17 and just starting my sophomore year in college. My girlish impression was that he was a handsome, cultured rogue, as indeed he was—he’d just been caught earlier that year perpetrating the biggest hoax the New York publishing world had ever been victim to, the Howard Hughes fake autobiography. I saw him again thirty-six later, last autumn in fact, when I was going through a serious Orson Welles phase, renting from Netflix the restored Magnificent Ambersons , Chimes at Midnight , and Othello , among other treasures. I also finally decided to sit down and finally watch Welles’s last film, an audacious experiment in editing and narration called F for Fake , which got scathing reviews when it first came out in 1974. No one knew what to make of it at the time, but film critics have favorably re-evaluated the film since then. Featured among Welles’s fun-loving cast of jetsetters, world-class actors and da...

We watched the pilot of Glee last night. Michael walked out of the room, but I loved it. My first boyfriend got me to love Bob Dylan. Michael taught me to love classic rock. I always loved show tunes on my own. Here’s the anthem of my generation , “Don’t Stop Believing”, which I’m proud to claim sprang from the great classic rock tradition of San Francisco, the City That Is No More. Oh baby, you don’t know what it was like here in the 70s. It was INCREDIBLE. I’ll tell you all about it later. I'm going to get damned elegaic about it.

The day after Heath Ledger died, of all the movies that could be on TV, that silly, sweet high school romance Ten Things I Hate About You was on, so I watched it, and burst into the most absurd weeping when he started singing this song. Otherwise it’s a very funny scene that starts at 1:03:03. [ Ten Things I Hate About You ]

I get new followers on Twitter every day but very few of them, I’m afraid, pique my interest enough to follow back. So when TV presenter and sometime journalist Piers Morgan —he whose greatest fear is that “Susan Boyle’s Judge” will be his single epitaph—popped up as one of my followers, I was intrigued and, yes , flattered. Had he read my blog? Did he see that mention of him on my most-accessed posting of April 2009, “Susan Boyle’s Next Song”? How else was he to know that I would know who he might be? [For all my postings on Susan Boyle, click here .] But here I must reveal to you the deep dark secret of why I mentioned him. It was because his reaction to Ms. Boyle, once she sang those first few notes and put them all to shame, touched me. His was a look of sheepishness, consternation, guilt and—dare I say it? Revelation. Inner joy. An almost religious reaction, in fact. I couldn’t put my finger on it, until I started to find out All About Susan, and learned that she was a ...

It's Okay, They're Swedish But They're Mormons Michael has nearly up and left me several times on account of my taste. Being a midwest girl, I like mayonnaise on everything. He’s allergic to mayonnaise. Being a son of the 60s, he’s steeped in classic rock. I prefer europop. In fact I’m a nut about the Eurovision song contest winners—but they have to be lively and upbeat. No syrupy schlager ballads allowed here. And banal lyrics help. The banaler, the better. So—in celebration of the 2009 winner of the Eurovision Song Contest, here’s my own list of favorite past winners, in no particular order: (Warning! DO NOT listen to these tunes while you’re tripping on acid, you will go insane.) For Norway, 2009: Alexander Rybak, “ Fairytale ” For Sweden, 1974: ABBA, “ Waterloo ” For Ukraine, 2004: Ruslana, “ Wild Dances ” For Denmark, 2000: The Olsen Brothers, “ Fly on the Wings of Love ” For Switzerland, 1988: Celine Dion, “ Ne Partez Pas Sans Moi ” For the Neth...

Consider this a companion photo to “ A Doisneau Moment ”.

Or: Stephen, can you hear me through those headphones? You don’t see this done this well too often, but at a blog called The Original Spy a couple of regular bloggers from the late lamented recap site, The Recapist, are attempting a sort of directed stream-of-consciousness team blogging—the direction being their immediate reactions to episodes of their favorite TV shows as they watch them . One of their favorite programs is Torchwood , another one is Numb3rs . (For a show I’m not particularly fond of, I do end up posting more than once about Numb3rs , don’t I? Not to mention I mentioned it in my interview with Dave Herrle. Three guesses why.) Confession. I broke my vow to never watch the show again after the “Oriental” episode—even for Stephen ’s sake—but TOS’s post on the fifth season’s penultimate episode intrigued me enough to catch it On Demand. Also, May is sweeps month, which hinted at more provocative (if not better) scripts. Now I understand their cryptic phrases,...

In commemoration of the Star Trek reboot opening today on screens across our nation, here’s William Shatner’s notorious rendition of Elton John’s hit from his 1968 album,  The Tranformed Man . Be nice. Some people think this album is a genuinely inspired piece of work, and I might just be one of them. [ Rocket Man, sung by William Shatner ]

Because I hung around with the wrong crowd high school, and because I used to date the editor-in-chief of the late lamented H.P. Lovecraft’s Magazine of Horror , I know a little something about the Cthulhuian Mythos. So trust me when I say that Lovecraft’s cosmic overlord is not so much your usual slimy tentacled monster, but rather a permeating apprehension of erosion, mutation, alienation, annihilation, violation, madness and existential dread . This is best to keep in mind when you add Dan Gildark and Grant Cogwell ’s 2007 award-winning film Cthulhu —loosely based on H.P. Lovecraft’s novella, The Shadow Over Innsmouth )—to your Netflix queue. Forget about popping some popcorn and settling back for a cheap fright. This is a personal vision film, one that requires some close watching. Fortunately it’s also visually striking, and directed with the seductive pace of Korean horror films. The story is simple: Urban man returns to his beautiful-yet-creepy island childhood home (he’s...

Over two years have passed since Stephen Gyllenhaal bought the film rights to Phil Campbell’s funny-poignant memoir of grassroots politics, Zioncheck for President , and there’s still no sign that it’s ever going to become a movie . Now, two years is not a long time in the project life of a major Hollywood film. But this is not a major Hollywood film. In fact, in the official press release , Stephen envisioned producing and directing a quick, no-budget indie, saying “[The book] Zioncheck for President is about doing things by the skin of your teeth. And I want to do things the same way.” What’s held it up? While my beloved manchild tarries yet again in Italy, taking a break from his financial worries and blogging at Huffington , let’s look at the possible setbacks. The problem is not the money. Once after re-reading the book (good book, by the way), I worked out on a paper napkin the kind of budget it would take to make this film, and saw that it could be done for five m...

My other blogs and feeds have been showing some brisk activity as well. Biggest surprise is the most visited photo . It’s not a celebrity, not a pin-up—it’s a dress: The Maria Clara Dress Second most visited is one of my personal favorites: A Doisneau Moment Stephen Gyllenhaal Wears a Tie for the Wedding Coming up fast from behind: My Beloved Manchild in the Film, Crashing Stephen Gyllenhaal Wears a Tie for the Wedding And last but not least: Susan Boyle’s New Look So far I’ve had only two pictures deleted by the thought police from public photo file sharing: Me at the age of 24 on the cover of the San Francisco sex tabloid, The Spectator Hokusai’s “Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife”, a hentai print that features prominently in Mad Men You can, however, find one of them at Dave Herrle’s online literary zine, Subtletea.com. SUBSCRIBE TO MY OCCASIONAL NEWSLETTER. CLICK HERE. _____