Remember the Rolodex? I started cleaning mine out the other day, putting the pertinent addresses and phone numbers remaining on mine into my computer. It’s an odd sort of trip down memory lane: there were the names of old shrinks and girlfriends, sources and editors I haven’t spoken to in in years, and the odd dead person.

Both of my parents were there — Dad’s address in Barstow, Mom’s last in Petaluma — sandwiched in between my living (as of this writing) siblings, as well as a few famous folk I’d had contact with. I’ve written of Chris Whitley, the guitarist I came to know when we first moved to NY. I wrote a magazine piece about him for Vogue and then a bio of the artist for Columbia records, the kind of two-page thing the label sends out to journalists in a press package. (It was heavily edited by Columbia, as I recall, for the usual idiotic reasons: The woman in charge of publicity at the time hated Lou Reed and dropped a reference I made to him; Chris himself had talked at length about Johnny Winter, which the label thought appealed to the wrong demo, and so on. It’s still out there on the web somewhere…)

Then there was Wendy Wasserstein, who wrote a piece about the joys of the Upper West Side for a now defunkt city site called Total New York that I was in charge of for a brief period, back when they were calling the Flatiron District “Silicon Alley” and content was supposedly king. As I recall, Wendy had actually written the piece as a favor for my boss, Guy Garcia, who seemed to know everybody, though there was some nominal fee involved. Her reaction to my edit of her piece was: sure, whatever, just send me the money. I’m not sure she ever saw the site.

And then there was an ancient card for Frank Conroy, the author of Stop Time. I was working at Parenting magazine, then in SF, in the mid-eighties and had persuaded the author to write something about finding himself a new parent, with grown sons from a previous marriage, late in life. It was an elegaic little essay, as I recall, and the author was such a pro that he didn’t even object when the illustrator depicted him as balding, despite his head of Peter Graves like snowy hair. I was such an admirer of Conroy, Stop Time still being my model for a memoir, that I was amazed that he consented to write for me. I wasn’t aware that famous writers (especially “writer’s writers” as he was often labeled) needed money, too. Sometimes more than the rest of us.

There are other names on that Rolodex I’m afraid to ask about — Saul Zaentz? Elaine Steinbeck? Though I think I might have heard if they had died, providing I was paying attention.

Earlier this month I witnessed the aftermath of a motorcycle accident here in Brooklyn. It wasn’t fatal, or even that stupendous: the biker was sitting up on the pavement, his bike dumped in the street where he had swerved to avoid an oncoming truck, and a small crowd was gathering, people on cell phones dialing 911. As I hurried past with my dog (“Nothing to see here, folks, keep moving”) a homeless guy came running up to the scene of the accident, yelling: “It’s okay! He’s a trained athlete! Mick Jagger told me this would happen on 666!”

Oh, good, the biker was probably thinking. Crazy man to the rescue.

My friend Charlie Haas has suggested that the mumbling schizophrenics of New York are the best at what they do, just as the actors, con artists, waiters and brokers here are outstanding in their field. but having just spent a week in San Francisco, my old home town, I have to say that the loonies there give ours a run for their money. Maybe it’s because they are revered in a historical context (Emperor Norton still gets a lot of lip service) or because most people there are still eager to show tourists, yes, even folks from NY, that they are more tolerant than thou. The guy with the five o’clock shadow in the miniskirt waving at passersby at four pm may be amusing to the squares from elsewhere but people in SF smile at your concern or outrage, defending the right of people to go crazy in public.

Mayor Gavin Newsom’s once controversial care-not-cash program (which was instituted last year and provides shelter and health care for homeless men and women, instead of the cash outlay the city used to provide) seems to have reduced the actual number of street dwellers while leaving some of the most delusional to roam around town — and visitors from Boise and Brooklyn something to talk about back home.

Walking out of my Nob Hill hotel last week I saw a man in what I assumed to be his karate clothes standing at a crosswalk, giving the air a kick. I hadn’t had my coffee and was disinclined to look too closely but when I did I realized that he was actually wearing a hotel bathrobe and nothing else and that he was young and in good shape. Stepping out into moving traffic he shouted, “The first car that runs into me explodes!”

Need I mention that the traffic all parted for him?

That’s what my favorite bumper sticker on the Big Island of Hawaii said. Surfer culture is perhaps less prevalent there than on the islands with the better waves (Maui, Oahu) and one local even suggested the saying might actually be an advertising slogan for Long Board beer (locally brewed) but the same woman said that Hapuna Beach, where we had stopped to catch the sunset one night, was unapproachable on Christmas day. Kids all bring their new boards, short and long, down for a first spin.

This was my first visit to any part of Hawaii and what I don’t know about local culture would cover the back of a green sea turtle but I honestly couldn’t see much wrong with it. The breeze was balmy, there were no bugs or snakes (the latter were taken care of by the abundant mongoose), and the people were nice. Least ways the ones we met. Since we were staying at the rather plush Mauni Lani Resort, where my wife had spoken at a conference, we were in that tourist bubble most of the time, benignly indifferent to the problems of the people who work in the hotels.

Like ice. Methamphetamine has cut a swath through island culture in the past few years, spurned in part by the need to work several jobs. The parents get addicted, we learned, and pass it on to the kids. On the local HI music station (a rather cloying mix of reggae muzak, most with pro-island messages) the members of a native band told kids to stay off ice, while someone running for local office listed it as one of the Big Island’s biggest problems (after affordable real estate). Why, other than working three jobs, you would want to be wired in that environment is beyond me.

We had ice cream one afternoon in Hawi with science writer Susan Ince and her partner, Andy. They had moved there eight years ago from New Jersey and hadn’t looked back. The biggest challenge, Susan said, was keeping up your vocabulary. They were both in a book group, and seemed keen to talk about everything. The town they lived in reminded me of a few places near SF — Bolinas, Olema, Stinson Beach. Sixties spots that time forgot, a place where you could find a good used book store, excellent ice cream and maybe a vintage Hawaiian shirt but not much else.

Come to think of it, what else is there?

While the season’s final episode of The Sopranos left a lot of people disappointed, it thrilled me with dis-ease. I had all but given up on the series about halfway through the season — the writing seemed tired and obvious, the plot points flat out unbelievable — but the sense of expectations betrayed last night I thought was a perfect commentary on two of the show’s ongoing concerns: therapy and recovery.

By failing to do the kind of thing many fans and members of his extended family think him destined to do (whack rival boss Phil Leotardo for killing one of his capos, or take out his “nephew” Christopher for banging some broad he wanted for his own), Tony is letting them down — but he is delighting his therapist. The scene where he was complaining to Dr. Melfi that he had been a faithful husband and had in general tried to control his impulses only to be rewarded in this fashion was priceless. Anyone who has gone as far into the house of mirrors therapy offers as Tony has knows the feeling: Where is my big reward?

Christopher, meanwhile, met the perfect woman in AA. Except for the fact that he’s married. And his wife is expecting. And she is someone his boss has designs on. So not long after she is fucking him in his car after a meeting (I must be going to the wrong groups!) they are smoking heroin together and congratulating each other because they are not using needles. Like a lot of people in recovery they are frustrated that, after months or even years of good behavior, all they get is their sanity

The dis-ease comes from the sense of disappointment both Tony and Christopher feel in ordinary life. They’ve got to blow — maybe. One of the hints about next year’s short final season (eight episodes remain) may lie in the Christmas party at Tony’s at the end. Christmas is the ultimate disappointment for many adults; you never get what you want, someone else always has more. Bobby Baccala’s son is watching Casablanca on TV and it’s early in the story, before Rick comes out of his shell to fight for the woman he loves, and then for France. “I don’t stick my neck out for nobody,” Bogie says after letting the Nazis haul Peter Lorre away — but what would it mean for Tony to stick his neck out for someone? Would it mean to act or suffer those slings and arrows?

What he fears most is himself, I think, or the worst side of himself. Did you notice that when he left the hospital, offering a truce to Leotardo in the Christmas spirit, that the bodyguard he encountered at the door looked like a miniature version of Tony — same jacket, same hair? “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” said the doppelganger — in the hospital? At death’s door? Hard to tell if it was meant as a promise or a threat.