The End Time

*



With its curious division of upper class and working class, its ethnic mix of Irish and Italian, and its coterie of some of the wealthiest families in the United States, Manhasset was forever struggling to define itself. It was a town where dirty-faced urchins gathered at Memorial Field—to play “bicycle polo;” where neighbors hid from one another behind their perfect hedgerows—yet still kept careful track of one another's stories and foibles; where everyone departed at sunrise on the trains to Manhattan—but no one ever really left for good, except in a pine box. Though Manhasset felt like a small farm community, and though real estate brokers tended to call it a bedroom community, we cleaved to the notion that we were a barroom community. Bars gave us identity and points of intersection. The Little League, softball league, bowling league, and Junior League not only held their meetings at Steve's bar, they often met on the same night.

Brass Pony, Gay Dome, Lamplight, Kilmeade's, Joan and Ed's, Popping Cork, 1680 House, Jaunting Car, The Scratch—the names of Manhasset's bars were more familiar to us than the names of its main streets and founding families. The life spans of bars were like dynasties: We measured time by them, and found some primal comfort in the knowledge that whenever one closed, the curtain would rise on another. My grandmother told me that Manhasset was one of those places where an old wives' tale was accepted as fact—namely, that drinking at home was the mark of an alcoholic. So long as you drank publicly, not secretly, you weren't a drunk. Thus, bars. Lots and lots of bars.

J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar.



Failure was written large, in the twisted wreckage of the burning helicopter hanging off the side of the building, having missed the landing pad, in the smoking buildings in the distance, in the chiselled faces of American cops. We were all inundated with images, many of them from the U.S. Years floated by within the tender wreckage, trails of stories born and dying, fragments as he changed channels, instant diversion. The ready availability of entertainment had destroyed their souls. He was shadowed by his own ghosts, for they, too, were there amongst the thought disorder, the half borne stories, the flickering slideshow, and if you asked him to tell you a single one of the hundreds of cops and robbers stories he had watched as a way to turn off, he couldn't. The things that loomed large were the old fashioned things, love, abuse, personal trickery, personal triumphs. They were the things that made him human.

He was no longer caught out in the open between skyscrapers, running for cover in a post-appocalyptic world, seeking safety, protection, but a new structure, as if by magic, began to appear on the pavements before him. Is this mere psycho-babble? a stern voice asked. For it was as if he was seeing these people for the first time, shocked by the level of decay, shaking his head in disbelief, for he could not grasp that he, too, had stooped this low, had been this dysfunctional. They were nothing but human wreckage. He introduced two legendary alcoholics and party animals to each other at the Glengarry, you're both legends he said. But now sober and with a head full of therapy, sipping lemon lime and bitters while they poured beers down their throats, he was shocked by their diminutive nature. These people had become legends to him, great friends, enormous characters. Gerschie was much loved, and as Brigette had confided only an hour before, she trying to get him back.

But he knew what Gerschie really thought of her, how deeply annoying he found her, brushing off her blandishments, telling stories of the day she bashed him, all because he wouldn't make love to her. And this is Ian, he said, just back from Vietnam, another legend. In his own lunchtime. They chatted furiously, full of ego, trying to impress each other that their lives were on track, that they might be hopeless drunks but that that didn't matter, because they were talents destined for greatness in their own lifetimes. But life was taking them straight to the Housing Commmission and the dole, straight to the damaged zoo which coated the estates, the feral children, the druggies hanging on the corners, the alkies gathering at the early opener, the old people sitting in the feeble son, trying to warm their old bones. Not one of them working. Not one of them a success. Not one of them part of the real world.

So he introduced them, as he had introduced people all his life, and thought back to those days spent in that magnificent apartment overlooking Darling Harbour, the days when they never slept and the furtive comings and goings inflamed their paranoia beyoind all reach. Those days when he really did know the biggest gangsters in town, before the Lebanese and the Vietnamese took over the underground trades and edged out the anglos. No one ever crossed the ethnics, and they were visible everywhere, in their smart cars parked outside the mosques, oh Allah the most merciful, the most kind, and the cruel edged brutality of the Asian gangs, more discrete, more ruthless than the Lebanese, silent killers who saw no purpose in austentatious display, who thought of the Middle Eastern gangs and their black bullet proof cars as nothing but amateurs bringing unnecessary attention to themselves by their wog boy displays.

Everyone knew, the police, the media, the public, the neighbours, who these people were. Their mansions were as ostentatious as their jewellery, their cars status symbols, their physical presence dripping unexplained wealth. This was the city now. The crusty old money that had once represented Sydney wealth was long gone, overlaid by layer after layer of immigration, the heart and soul of the place now nothing but historic relics in the eastern part of town. The Picollo bar remained, but had grown more eccentric. He still stopped there occasionally for a glass of hot milk or a bowl of soup, a chat to the irritable old queen who ran it, and gasped in a kind of awe at the ridiculous scenes he saw unfold there amongst the Housing Commission dross who frequented it; Asia the tranny with her fake thrills holding court outside, oh how good she had looked in her day, Collette, the old Les Girls girl who wasn't a pretty sight as a spreading old drag queen caught in daylight and declining health, the drug effed groups slurring their words as they set themselves up at one of the outside tables, scanning the street for opportunities, for gifts from God. He shuddered, he retreated, he fanned himself frantically; and he retreated to that secret place where dignity and grace were the sole ideals, where he was a humble observer who would never dare comment on the misfortunes of others. For they were all young once, this colourful crowd of flotsam and jetsam.



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/michael-jackson/5818413/Michael-Jackson-had-two-gay-lovers-new-book-claims.html

The star was allegedly “madly in love” with a half-Asian construction worker and had another fling with a Hollywood waiter.

Writer Ian Halperin claims in his unauthorised biography that “virtually everybody” around Jackson knew that the singer was gay.

Jackson’s affair with the builder, who was in his early 20s, began in Las Vegas in 2007, according to Halperin. “He rarely left his residence, but when he did, according to one of Jackson’s closest confidants, it was to meet a boyfriend at a run-down motel.

“Michael would leave the house in disguise, often dressed as a woman, and would go to meet his boyfriend at a motel that was one of Vegas’ grungiest dives. Michael was broke. He struggled to put food on the table for his children. It was all he could afford then.”

Halperin added: “A close aide of Jackson who confirmed the affair to me said that he had no knowledge of what went on behind closed doors at the motel. But the aide said Jackson would dress as a woman after midnight to meet a worker employed by the city of Las Vegas.”

The second man was an aspiring actor, working as a waiter, who visited Jackson’s Hollywood Hills home almost every night for three weeks during a short but passionate affair, Halperin said.

The author’s claims, in the book Unmasked: The Final Years of Michael Jackson, were reported by The Sun.

PETER CAVE: Family First Senator Steve Fielding met climate change campaigner Al Gore briefly this morning.

As Fielding begins his own campaign against the Government's emission trading scheme.

Senator Fielding hopes to sit down with the former US vice president to discuss climate change in the next day or two.

In the meantime, Steve Fielding is today writing to the nation's 75 other senators, asking them to look at the science closely before casting their vote in August.

Included in his letter is a chart which he says shows that while greenhouse emissions have gone up over the past 15 years, global temperatures have remained steady.

Steve Fielding spoke to Alexandra Kirk in Canberra.

STEVE FIELDING: Look, this is the first time I've written to all senators and because it is a very big issue. It's the number one issue as far as our economy and the environment. One that we're going to face for the next 10 to 20 years.

And so we've got to get the decision right and the question that I'm going to be putting forward to each of the senators is - can they also explain why global air temperatures haven't been going up over the last 15 years, while carbon dioxide concentrations have been.

ALEXANDRA KIRK: In other words you're asking them to vote against the Government's emissions trading scheme?

STEVE FIELDING: Look, underlying it is, is that I have trouble voting for a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme where there is a basic question about the science that needs to be answered.

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25778384-664,00.html

THE petrol war between Coles and Woolworths raises huge and very complicated issues. It's dangerous to see it in simplistic black and white terms.

Either that the war must be good for consumers - they get dramatically cheaper petrol. Albeit, if only temporarily.

Or proof that the supermarket duopoly are ripping off consumers - either in petrol or in the supermarket aisle or both.

Start with the fact that the 'war' is not actually between Coles and Woolies. It's between them jointly and 'everyone else'. Specifically against mostly Metcash/IGA in supermarkets and BP-Caltex in petrol.

In launching the extraordinary petrol discounts, Coles had to know that Woolies would respond immediately and match them exactly. It picked up a marketing advantage for yesterday morning and which probably lingered to some extent into the afternoon.

But after that it was back to the status quo. At least, that is, between Coles and Woolies which have over 70 per cent of supermarket sales. Albeit, and crucially, with a huge loss of margin for the three days.

But no status quo between the the duo and Metcash which has 20 per cent of the wholesale market, and IGA and Foodworks which are its biggest customers at the retail end.

If they don't match it, they'll suffer a dramatic loss of sales for a period which equates to 1 per cent of their year. And then likely more on the 'next attack'.

If they do, they'll suffer a dramatic loss of margin which they can't afford, relative to Coles and Woolies. Either way, that adds to eventual termination or marginalisation.