Brett

*

The piano has been drinking, my necktie is asleep
And the combo went back to New York, the jukebox has to take a leak
And the carpet needs a haircut, and the spotlight looks like a prison break
And the telephone's out of cigarettes, and the balcony is on the make
And the piano has been drinking, the piano has been drinking...

And the menus are all freezing, and the light man's blind in one eye
And he can't see out of the other
And the piano-tuner's got a hearing aid, and he showed up with his mother
And the piano has been drinking, the piano has been drinking
As the bouncer is a sumo wrestler cream-puff casper milktoast
And the owner is a mental midget with the IQ of a fence post
'cause the piano has been drinking, the piano has been drinking...

And you can't find your waitress with a Geiger counter
And she hates you and your friends and you just can't get served without
her
And the box-office is drooling, and the bar stools are on fire
And the newspapers were fooling, and the ash-trays have retired
because the piano has been drinking, the piano has been drinking
The piano has been drinking, not me, not me, not me, not me, not me...

Tom Waits

Brett Whitely was the most famous of us, that gang which hung around inner-Sydney in the 1980s and early 90s. His moppet hair, his acclaim as a painter, his smart little white BMW, his ample cash, above all his fame, set him apart, or above, so that he was always surrounded by acolytes, his gorgeous girlfriend Janus, the scandals that always attached. How many magazine features could be written about one man? How often could he publicly confess his predilection for heroin, his struggles with addiction, and not get busted? Twelve step programs were all the rage back then, AA, NA, Sex Addicts Anonymous, even Co-Dependence Anonymous for a while. At one time there was a 12-step program for people addicted to 12-step programs. It had all got completely out of control. The detoxes tipped dozens, hundreds of new victims into the meetings each week.

He could remember, he would always remember, their last conversation. There's gaps in your memory, I've just noticed, the naturopath said, staring at a diagram of his iris. There's some sort of encroaching loss, a vagueness. We need to fix that. But he would never forget that day, when they sat together at the Tropicana and chatted busily, the two most famous people there, albeit in their different fields, had naturally drifted together. Creative, driven, recognising in each other the same haunting talents which drove them to succeed. Brett had always been an entertaining talker, and by now he knew most of his life story, from his days at the Chelsea Hotel in New York to his early struggles to his extravagant successes; and the extravagant sweep of pen, or paintbrush. There was love in every curve, a desire to triumph from humble background, a confidence in their own abilities.

Brett never doubted he was gifted. And so they talked about how boring everybody was around them, stick in the mud talentless little gits who had nothing to do but be sycophants to the famous, sycophants to them. At last they had met a kindred soul, there amongst the durgs. "I go down to Thirroul sometimes, just to get away from everybody," Brett confessed. And they agreed, total abstinence was for morons, there was nothing wrong with a bit of a dabble. Just how good, how saintlike could they be, and still create, still be human? Surely God would understand, the greatest art was only produced in extremis, by people such as themselves. Surely they were different, the normal rules didn't apply. "I rent a hotel room and I don't tell anyone where I am." He tried to imagine the hotel room, the mysterious people that Brett knew down there, and he might have known, if he could straighten out the connections.

His car was in the garage and Brett offered to drop him to work at the Sydney Morning Herald, the famous, ugly old Fairfax building on Broadway, regularly ranked one of the ugliest buildings in the entire city. They flashed through the city in that cute, famous little white BMW sports car, the cool morning air whipping around them. Brett asked questions about journalism, and he told him it was a bit like working for the Manly Daily, it wasn't that exciting once you had done it for a few years. Long before the executions, long before the modern era. It was Sunday morning, and they pulled up outside the docks, littered with the leftovers of the previous nights frenzy, as tens thousands of papers were printed and then loaded on to trucks, distributed out through the feeder networks into the hands of suburbanites; leafing through the gossip and scandal over their lazy Sunday morning breakfasts.

The news that Brett Whitely, Australia's most famous painter, had died in a hotel room in Thirroul of a heroin overdose shocked the country. So many people were sad. So many people had been caught up in his madness, had admired the grandiose sweeps of his paintings, their adventurous beauty. He, too, amidst the turmoil of his schizophrenic life, was deeply saddened by the loss of someone who could easily have become such a great friend. Who he had admired for his gumption and his get up and go, the fact that he defined himself as an artist first and last, that his entire life was dedicated to creativity. Even the addictions, the heroin, surely that was meant to boost his creativity, to put him out there on the front line of beauty. And now he didn't have to imagine the hotel room and the seedy, ordinary red brick hotel Brett had told him about, where he used to escape so regularly, because pictures of it; and the hotel room in which he died, were all over the papers. The smoking dope, the heroin, the whisky, all of it was detailed in the newspaper reports. And while grander friends and artistic pundits alike publicly lamented Brett's death, all he could remember was their funny, intimate little conversation as they zipped through the empty city streets; each on the way to their own destinies.

Fifteen years after Brett's death in 1992 he covered the sale of his paintings at auction. These days they regularly fetched more than a million dollars each, looking so fabulous on the walls of Sydney's wealthy residents, a must have. A status symbol. And he wondered sometimes what Brett, who hated the mongrels crawling over each other for status, the dreadful conformity of Australia, would have made of it all, as the bidding soared in $50,000 increments. And wondered what he would have done with all that money he never got to see.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8122849.stm

Los Angeles police investigating the death of Michael Jackson say they have carried out an "extensive interview" with his doctor, Conrad Murray.

Dr Murray - who was with the singer when he collapsed last Thursday - had provided information that "will aid the investigation", the police said.

A spokeswoman for Dr Murray insisted he was not a suspect in the case.

Michael Jackson's family are said to be seeking a second autopsy because they still have questions about his death.

Coroners said there was no evidence of foul play after an autopsy on Friday, but gave no cause of death, saying the results of toxicology tests could take weeks to come back.

A spokesman for the coroners office said Michael Jackson had taken "some prescription medication" without specifying which.

Unconfirmed reports suggest the 50-year-old singer had been taking a daily dose of Demerol, a painkiller also widely known as pethidine.

Mr Jackson's body was released to the family on Friday night.

'No way a suspect'

A spokeswoman for Dr Conrad Murray said he was interviewed for three hours by police on Saturday.

Dr Murray is doing all he can to help the inquiry, his spokeswoman says

Miranda Sevcik said the doctor had "helped identify the circumstances around the death of the pop icon and clarified some inconsistencies".

"Investigators said the doctor is in no way a suspect and remains a witness to this tragedy," she said.

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25704547-661,00.html

MALCOLM Turnbull has suffered serious damage from Ute-gate with a majority of voters judging him dishonest over the hoax email scandal, a poll reveals.

The Opposition Leader's credibility has taken a severe hit in the latest Galaxy poll, conducted exclusively for the Herald Sun.

But Prime Minister Kevin Rudd looks to have escaped the Ute-gate furore comparatively unscathed.

Of those surveyed at the weekend, 34 per cent believed Mr Turnbull had been "somewhat deceitful" over the controversy, and 17 per cent rated him "dishonest" - a total of 51 per cent questioning his truthfulness.

As for Mr Rudd, only 14 per cent judged him "somewhat deceitful" and 8 per cent "dishonest".

The gap between the two leaders was just as telling among respondents with a more positive view.

Mr Rudd's account of himself in Ute-gate was seen as "open and honest" by 33 per cent and "economical with the truth" by 28 per cent.

Only 7 per cent regarded Mr Turnbull's statements as "open and honest" and 23 per cent as "economical with the truth".

Further concern for Mr Turnbull emerged when the results were broken down along voting lines.

Of ALP supporters, 81 per cent backed Mr Rudd's honesty.

But Coalition voters were not so certain about Mr Turnbull: 29 per cent judged him deceitful and 10 per cent dishonest, indicating that a significant proportion of the backlash is coming from his own supporters.

The harsh assessment of Mr Turnbull's performance coincides with a slump in the Coalition's primary vote of two points to 38 per cent.

http://www.examiner.com/x-13886-New-Haven-County-Environmental-Policy-Examiner~y2009m6d27-Lord-Monckton-has-agreed-to-debate-James-Hansen

In an article I released yesterday,"News flash!the great global warming debate with James Hansen is now off", I indicated I would inquire of Lord Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount of Brenchley, as to whether he would be interested in filling in for Don Blankenship in a debate on climate change with James Hansen of the Goddard Institute of Space S
tudies. In my experience with Lord Monckton he has always been willing to assist in the sceptic fight for good old fashioned science. He has also been willing to debate any of the advocates of anthropogenic global warming. Recently he was told he could debate Al Gore head to head in a Congressional committee hearing. It was not until he was getting off the plane that he was told the debate was off. Al Gore apparently wasn't up to the task.

But who is Lord Monckton? Back in the 80's he was a technical policy adviser on a number of topics for Margaret Thatcher. He was intimately involved in the early investigation of CO2 caused global warming and presented at the Royal Society on the subject. The difference between Monckton and many others is that he realized that it couldn't be true. Although I suspect his paycheck didn't depend on AGW alarmism, I believe it would not have affected his conclusion. As he once commented to me in an email "As the temperature continues to fail to rise as the doomsayers suggest it will, fewer and fewer will believe them, and those who have nailed their colours to the mast of this particular ship will go down with it, with few to mourn their passing." So eloquent. So true. He is currently the Chief Policy adviser for the Science & Public Policy Institute and some of his articles can be found here, here and here

About 3 years ago I wrote Lord Monckton concerning a paper he had written. Being early in my climate education, I had several elementary questions. He was very patient with me and I was able to follow the thought progression and math to the conclusions, mostly. Last year I had the occasion to see his presentation at the 2008 International Climate Conference in New York City. A couple of days later at the University of Hartford, in a program advanced by Physics Professor Larry Gould, I had the privilege of seeing a second, different presentation suitable for policymakers. It was just down the road from the Capital and do you think one of our state officials would trot down the road to see an international figure in the climate debate. No sir. Not even one, despite a personal invitation to our Governor.