Cantara’s (Social) Notebook

Found some new lyrics to that great Phil Ochs song, written and sung by modern folk artist Evan Greer: I trade Internet jokes about Dubya, They sure are funny to me. But don’t even think about asking For me to give up my new SUV. I don’t know what you mean about oil, I just wish that gas could be free... So love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberal! Well I’ve signed about a thousand petitions, And my golf score is six under par. And I keep myself up on the issues By listening to N.P.R., And you know that I’m changing the world With these stickers all over my car! So love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberal! And you know that I’m not a racist, I've been on the side of the blacks all along. And I always give a few extra dollars To the young man who mows my lawn! And I’ve never read Emma Goldman, But I know that she must have been wrong! So love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberal! Yes I went to that pro-choice rally, I think women should get equal pay. But...

Excerpt Am I to become profligate as if I were a blonde? Or religious as if I were French? Each time my heart is broken it makes me feel more adventurous (and how the same names keep recurring on that interminable list!), but one of these days there’ll be nothing left with which to venture forth. Why should I share you? Why don’t you get rid of someone else for a change? I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love. Even trees understand me! Good heavens, I lie under them, too, don't I? I’m just like a pile of leaves. However, I have never clogged myself with the praises of pastoral life, nor with nostalgia for an innocent past of perverted acts in pastures. No. One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes—I can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless i know there’s a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life. It is more important to affirm the least sincere; t...

I remember reading the short story about twenty years ago when I was temping to bring some money into the house. It resonated like crazy. Then in 2002 it got made into a film with Maggie Gyllenhaal that had practically nothing to do with the story as written. More recently I mentioned Secretary and Maggie’s utterly gratuitous nude scene one day over lunch to newly-debuted actor Stephen , who of course laughed nervously. Still, I can’t help but admire Maggie for pulling something over her parents, especially the non-inclusive Naomi .

A year has passed since the strange double suicide of video game designer and would-be Hollywood player Theresa Duncan and her lover, Jeremy Blake. Facebook friend Kate Coe wrote a comprehensive article about her in LA Weekly ; Duncan’s real-life friend, the designer Raymond Doherty, refuted much of that article at his own blog. Here’s the thing. If you don’t have children, and you don’t leave behind an honorable body of work, isn’t dead—well, dead? She seemed to be a curious, promising girl. Never met her, but I used to read her blog from time to time. No role model certainly. Still, I can’t get her out of my mind. [Find another reference to Theresa Duncan here .] SUBSCRIBE TO MY OCCASIONAL NEWSLETTER. CLICK HERE. _____

Today marks the second anniversary of Stephen’s wildly successful public debut as a poet at Housing Works in Soho in Manhattan. A host of luminaries of the literary and film worlds were there, including Stephen’s daughter Maggie, five months pregnant at the time, and her guy, Peter. I have to say that of out the whole clan Peter was the friendliest to me and Michael. Afterward during a late-night clan dinner at Balthazar he came up, shook my hand and declared what a great thing we were doing. And then when Stephen, still high from the evening’s success, went off to phone Jake (who he’d claimed was back in California doing pickup shots for Zodiac, but was actually hiding behind a hoodie in the audience) I turned to Peter and asked him, half-jokingly, “Once you enter the Gyllenhaal circle, do you ever get your life back?” He smiled and said, “No.”

Barbary Coast Prostitutes Ah, San Francisco, the erotic playground of America. Home to proud, dynamic sex workers like Margo St James, Sally Stanford, Scarlet Harlot. And, in the last few decades, home to a host of sex-positive movements with a political bent. The latest, a drive to introduce a ballot measure in the city’s upcoming election, is being championed by the three year-old Erotic Service Providers Union (ESPU). Its success in November will mean millions of dollars in savings to the city—and the end of a cash cow for one local non-profit agency. If voters approve the measure, the SFPD would be prohibited—in the absence of any other crime they might be perpetrating, and regardless of whether they are indoors (in a club or massage parlor, for example) or outdoors (on the street, in a park)—from arresting people simply for asking for, or offering, sex in exchange for money. It's somewhat akin to the “blind eye” attitude city police have been directed to take, since the ...

01. Best chocolate high I ever had was in Paris, at Angelina’s on the rue du Rivoli. For six American bucks you get a two-cup pot of dark rich molten lava—they call it African—with a side dish of fresh whipped cream. The after-effect is as deeply warming and satisfying as a good bout of sex. 02. Worst chocolate in my experience, Israeli. Too sweet and grainy. Plus it just doesn't seem to fit the terrain when you’re walking with a church tour down the Valley of Kidron. 03. European TV commercials push Kinder Buenos to mothers as a good and healthful treat for their children. Kinder Buenos come in tiny bars, just right for small hands, and are a light wafer and creamy hazelnut on the inside with a sweet milk chocolate covering. A grown woman will need a bunch of these to achieve any mood alteration. 04. A chocolate fix you have to work for: Mexican hot chocolate. There was a store on West Fourteenth in Manhattan that sold huge dusty chunks of the stuff. The idea is that you gra...