The world's most liveable city.
I know this is a bit old news as it's from Sunday's people's paper, but I do very much enjoy the huffy, holier-than-thou tone the Sun takes when their collective knickers are twisted and thus wanted to share.
If I may quote:
'The new Lonely Planet travellers' guide to Melbourne accuses its inhabitants of being racist and obsessed with money and sport.'
I added the underlines for my own dramatic and cunningly manipulative purposes, but it's quite the breathtaking beginning to an article nonetheless. Us? Racist and sporting? Well I never did etc.
''Melbourne' also has a dig at many city highlights and things Melburnians take for granted, including the Boxing Day test, CBD hook turns at tramlines, meat pies, Moomba and the Yarra River.
And in a fashion gibe, the guide describes Melbourne as 'a city of cardigan carriers'.
I know what you're thinking. Not the hook turns. ANYTHING BUT THE HOOK TURNS.
This is how the LP guide describes Moomba, by the way:
'Trucks clumsily transformed by papier-mache into floats...while there are now more fast food vans than floats, this daggy festival is worth a look, if only for the birdman rally'.
It's interesting to note that this is the particular passage the H-S uses in order to properly highlight what an outrageous slur the book has cast against a festival which not only hailed Molly Meldrum as 'king' but also had as its erstwhile mascot a child-molesting clown. It's fine for Melburnians themselves to slag off Moomba as a fucking lame excuse for a street party, another altogether for a guidebook to perhaps suggest that it's looking a little tired.
And get how they try to cut the writer down to size:
'Simone Egger, who worked in Melbourne bars and restaurants for a decade, is the main author of the $33.95 guide that will be available in more than 30 bookstores next month.'
note:
1. She's only a fucking waitress, people.
2. $33.95! People are going to pay good money for this lefty intellectual rubbish/I'm going to write to my local MP at once etc.
3. 30 bookstores...250 copies per store = FAR TOO MANY UNSUSPECTING CITIZENS BEING DRIP-FED A WEB OF LIES.
Naturally the Sun printed a suitably red-faced and outraged editorial in reply along the lines of 'Racist? Us? WE EMBRACE OUR COLOUREDS, PARTICULARLY THOSE WHO ARE PROFICIENT AT SINGING/TRACK AND FIELD'. Bless their hearts. No matter how much I think I'm accustomed to them, they never fail to tickle me with their moronicity.
p.s. They were also eight kinds of furious with Egger referring to the Yarra as 'brown'.
410 days til the next election.
Comments
I thought the Birdman Rally was banned because people were having too much fun.
Now excuse me, I've got to put on my footy jumper and take six hook turns on the way to my One Nation meeting.
But it is, and is naturally, brown.
And don't forget that "Moomba" actually means "kiss my arse" (verified by the Collins Dictionary 2nd ed).
A private message that might nonetheless amuse blog reading strangers:
I'll still need to hunt you down for your signature after I print it out. The sooner that happens the sooner I can make you a gift of the bizarre pornographic playing card I found on the footpath on St George's Road. GOOD GOD! WHAT IS THE KING OF SPADES DOING TO THAT KITCHEN CHAIR?!
i'm sitting in dubai airport reading this, on my way home from europe and i would give anything to see a shit moomba float. anything.
but that's me now. in about 14 hours, and after a very long shower, i will be back and ready to slag off that stupid festival.
And we are going to welcome you back, johnboy.
Unless, of course, you are of foreign background. In which case we will beat you.
sigh. i'm even homesick for a good old fashioned melbourne race riot. you know, the ones that happen all the time. like... ermmm...
man, this airport is like a United Colors of Beneton ad, only cast with very sleepy, grumpy people of all nations.
best be off to plunder this business class lounge a little more...
as a former LP author i can happily inform you that LP clutch their progressive, inclusive, touchy-feely ideologies to their chests as viciously and possessively as the HUN assert their insular, reactionary 'this is how things ARE in oztralia' close-mindedness. LP's whole branding is all about 'look how right-on we are!' – their raison d'etre is predicated on the idealised notion of a non-existent (or at best minority) 'global citizen', perpetually mobile and sampling cultures, comparing and contrasting critically as they go.
i doubt myopic Hun readers 'travel' much (ie. to grow and see the world); much more prone to 'tourism' and taking 'holidays' one senses. they should worry less about the 30 local bookstores (after all, how many melburnians will buy a melbourne guidebook?) and think of the hundreds of borders and waterstones etc across london that will point out to oz-bound europeans what more enlightened locals have always known.
What a stupid excuse for another parochial editorial.
Designed to stir up news and sell copies.
And you all fell for it!
LP is based in Melbourne, and their Melbourne guides have been published since 1993. I think they know what they're talking about.
I FELL FOR IT AND I FUCKING LOVED IT, ZZYMURGY.
Then again, I don't get out much.
I was looking at demographic research recently- I'm sure I blogged it but can't be arsed looking it up- by an unashamedly biased sociologist looking at where clusters of tolerant and educated people can be found. Inner north melbourne basically stuck out like a burqa at one of those aforementioned One Nation meets.
It's fun to lampoon the idiocy and OTT reaction of the Hun. At the same time, the LP taking such a line is stupid and misleading.
What sort of fuckwash talks about shite like Moomba when writing about Melbourne's culture?
Is he saying that fashion, culture, lefty tolerance, the quality of bars etc is better in Adelaide, Brisbane, or (takes in a huge breath) Sydney?
A scrote without a hairy sac to hang in, by the sound of it.
OK, I moved here from interstate so tend to defend it rather humourlessly!
I'm writing the Northcote edition for Real Guides as we speak...
Ruby, LOVED the LP slaggage - please keep it up on this blog, my blog, anybody's blog. Muzak to mine ears...minus the Hun-style editorial of course. Far too many people buy those things without actually thinking about what they're buying. Grr, foam etc.
Ms Fits I adore you! Say you'll be mine.
Sounds pretty apt to me, and the HS should know, they reported the Moomba joke after all. It is my absolute most favourite Australian story EVER.
It is rather ruder than 'kiss my arse'...when William Onus died his son Lin wrote to the HS and told them that the meaning of the word William suggested is kind of like 'to bugger', similar to the French enculé.
I do hope that's included in the LP guide.
I decided a few years back that the trick to understanding Melbourne was actually quite simple: it will *never* *ever* forgive itself for not being part of Europe. (The nice part, not anything too Eastern).
I came to this conclusion after I noticed people selling roast chestnuts on street corners.
Snack-based epiphany.
Confession time:
I do carry a cardie with me, especially during summer when the weather can turn sour in less time than the shake of a lamb's tail.
I always thought it was the sensible approach rather than something to be crucified for.
I have a range of cardies too. Will I go to LP hell over this?
This is just classic Fits and I enjoyed it immensely.
Have you noticed that, because our browser lists of favourite blogs are arranged alphabetically, our blogs are ever so close to each other's in this respect? Cool.
moronicity?
I would have described the Yarra's particular hue as "oatmeal biscuit". But what do I know from design?
'global citizen', perpetually mobile and sampling cultures = dreadlocked 21 year old trying to score weed
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