6 June 2007

Lonely Planet butchers Canberra on the altar of Ms Fits ego

| johnboy
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There has been much excitement in Canberra circles about the Lonely Planet Bluelist program which went to air tonight.

Sadly the whole thing is a painfully pretentious mess which underlines how far off the rails Lonely Planet has gone in the last decade or so.

But to make matters worse Canberra was singled out to be a vehicle for Marieke Hardy, aka Ms Fits of reasons you will hate me fame (re-visiting her blog, it is clear that she is the perfect woman for Samuel Gordon Stewart).

Particularly painful were her references to the “Gorman Street Markets”, constant demonstrations of how cool and funky and yet sexy in an oh-so-indy-way Marieke is, her admiration of Canberra’s “balance between the bush and the scholastic”, and a string of non-sentences going nowhere.

Bad luck to our friends The Cashews and the Rat Patrol exhausting their 15 minutes of fame on this crap.

Frankly I’m glad to be living somewhere else these days.

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Clown Killer said :

Agreed rosebud. I think it’s outrageous to mae fun of someone jus because they’re fat and ugly.

The voice of experience?

LOL.

Where the hell did Maelinar go, anyway?

Clown Killer7:17 pm 10 May 09

Agreed rosebud. I think it’s outrageous to mae fun of someone jus because they’re fat and ugly.

What a surprise – bagging a smart women by focusing on her big breasts. Like ‘big boobs’ equals dumb blonde (or brunette in pig tails in this case). I think her boobs are great and her mind is too.

Woody Mann-Caruso1:43 pm 10 May 09

Now that the video has actually loaded on tis dodgy Telstra wireless connection – I remember this, and retract my statement earlier in the thread that this was OK and she was OK. What was I drinking?

Woody Mann-Caruso1:41 pm 10 May 09

*does Google Images search for ‘ms fits’*

Oh, that stupid b.tch.

*returns to picking nose with rusty nail*

It’s weird to read these very old stories! Sometimes it takes a while to glance at the date and then all becomes clearer.

jemmy said :

How she ever got on the Tuesday Night Bookclub is beyond me. She doesn’t seem to review the book, instead it’s, “Look at me, look at me, I make clever smart-arse remarks in a nihilistic teenage-angsty way. Yet I am 31. Aren’t I just adorable. I wear pigtails.”

Well, jemmy, she’s still on the Tuesday Night Book Club two years later, so she must have something to offer them.

2 months to hit the Say It! button is pretty slack.

For my ten cents, I think anything that gets Canberra out there and puts it across in a positive light is great!! The piece gave the message that there is another side to Canberra, which, clearly, there is. Whether that’s your thing or not, and whether that attracts visitors on not is, I think, irrelevant. The fact that Canberra rated as Australia’s number one urban experience is HUGE. And for those who get out and enjoy the underlying nature of the place, it confirms why we love it!!

BTW Johnboy, I’m not sure many peeps who see this, would give much of a damn about whether you give a damn about anyone’s opinion… especially after being witness to what looks very much like a case of Embittered Old Man Syndrome. Nevertheless, I encourage your somewhat spiteful journey, and wish you well on your mission of love 🙂

Some pleasant visuals here and there, the whole thing ruined for me by an ugly woman’s interventions.

It’s just a shame that a number of very cool events they filmed, which didn’t give Marieke the chance to look cool and funky and sexy, somehow ended up on the cutting room floor.

The world is rightly divided between people who despise her and vapid oxygen thieves.

Oh and “loosebrown”?

When you’ve done seven years plugging away for all that is best in Canberra I might give a damn for your opinion.

Congratulations on your first and only comment here though.

Well JB, I’m in the “enjoyed it” camp.
She’s not my visual cup of tea, but the piece was well put together.

And I do not understand how you can watch that, then come to the conclusion that it presents Canberra in a bad light.

Take home message: “Canberra is a nicely put together town , with plenty interesting to do, and plenty of alternative culture if that’s your bag.” Pretty hard to fault that…

Maybe you were predisposed to see it in a bad light after reading her blog.

clearly shot on a tight budget, tight timeline.

while not entirely lame, surely canberra is more than secondhand bicycles and minstrels.

the presenter is clearly from the too cool for school school.

although her articles in the green guide are amusing she doesnt have a face/voice for in front of the camera.

I’m thinking of JB in pigtails…

WHO CROSSED THE STREAMS !!!

Very unfair johnboy. I thought it was a great piece which shows a different side of Canberra in a positive light. I like living here and this report shows why.

I didn’t think it was that bad, it certainly picked up on a lot of the things I like about this place. If I were a Canberran I’d be glad that the place is actually getting some recognition.

Yeah nice one johnboy – frankly I am glad you have buggered off too. You can stop posting now. Well done to everyone involved who managed to get Canberra named as the most exciting urban experience in the whole of Australia. That is surely an achievement. Congratulations! Good to see people proud of where they live and happy to take the time to promote it.

Geebers, most of you lot appear to be as negative, small-minded and un-constructive as the whining English (seeing as we all seem to be making narrow-minded, broad, off-the-cuff, negative and malicious comments about people we no little of…) — what’s the matter with you people??? Johnboy clearly isn’t a happy one, but that’s hardly Marieke’s fault.

OK, the look doesn’t exactly do it for me, and I hadn’t seen her before filming started, but she was working to a Producer… and Director… it’s TELEVISION. Why does Canbi have a rep for an@l people? Try living in Calcutta… or going somewhere else, perhaps moving away from your suburb one time? Am I now sounding a tad too cynical?

It’s mainstream media afterall… what did you expect? What I saw was close to the best I could have expected… except it would have been tres good to include the shots of raging people at the Dahahoo gig. That was a real shame.

Indeed, there is a whole lot more to Canbi that big fluffy balloons, stoopid bikes, gorilla gigs, dumb pig-tailed girls, trees and interesting buildings. I think you peeps who bag the chick should try doing something yourself on national television, and find out about Tall Poppy Syndrome in Australia — IT’S RIFE!!!!!! Why feel so threatened? For mine, it has the classic symptoms of Canberric in-breeding.

For the record (clearly, people are taking notes about what one says and how one looks, so I’ll have to really watch myself here…), I think the doco reflects the coming of age of Canberra… and none too soon.

So, how do ‘we’ move on from here? More doing stuff, less whinging. Yeah, do some good stuff. Stuff like a new contemporary arts and music festival I have heard about called Corinbank, planned for Feb 2008.

incredible, the whole segment with out a single pan, and, unless ther was a talking head- each shot felt like a slide show.
I dont think it was too bad at all. thanks for posting it, as I forgot to watch on the night

Absent Diane9:12 am 08 Jun 07

6 degrees was good.. but best travel doco is probably globe trekker.. (which I think also has some vague relationship to lonely plant)

goddamn those b*stards for showing canberra has a beating heart…..

barking toad8:09 am 08 Jun 07

Ms Fits on SGS face

Frightening!

Was it positive? Perhaps.
But the big question is would it make you want to visit? Would you come to Canberra for live music and recycled bicycles? Oh and Balloons.
While their intentions may have been positive, the finished product was far from it.

After about 30 years of every media piece bagging the S%$!T out of the place, I rekon anything that is remotely positive is a good thing. In footy terms it’s the equivelent of winning ugly,after losing 5 on the trot.

In defense of Lonely Planet, I thought that the series “Six Degrees” was awesome.

I guess this little advertisement goes to show just how little of Canberra I’m experiencing. 🙂

Woody Mann-Caruso9:28 pm 07 Jun 07

*shrug* Seemed OK to me.

Guess some chicks don’t grow out of it.

Pretty rich coming from somebody still going about their school days and talking about “bitches”.

I have lived in Canberra for a while now and I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of “Gorman Street Markets”. For a presumably travel oriented show, it didn’t give me any indication where I might find them, or what they sell.

Oh, and I would have thought that the island that the Carillon sits on was one of the most utilized public spaces in Canberra.

See what the spawn of Trotskyists, and then spoon fed on a diet of ABC, produces……………….

How she ever got on the Tuesday Night Bookclub is beyond me. She doesn’t seem to review the book, instead it’s, “Look at me, look at me, I make clever smart-arse remarks in a nihilistic teenage-angsty way. Yet I am 31. Aren’t I just adorable. I wear pigtails.”

On the other hand, Richard E Grant was great. Changed my mind about him, thought he was a tosser before.

Nah, I saw the ” ” ” at the end of the link and figured it out.

That site is complete arse anyway, only looked for about 40 seconds.

Blog link is broken (yes I clicked on it…)

NEVER TRUST LONELY PLANET!!!

Why?
Well, if a publication reccommends you try a “spectacular gourmet wood fired pizza restaurant” You’d expect it would be pretty good.
Not a chance. Instead I found a dilapidated shed with a few tables and chairs, a pizza oven and a pizza “chef” in a singlet, shorts and apron. His method of cooking pizza was to take out a frozen pizza base, massage it and the spread ingredients (without washing hands first), all the while scratching his head causing white powder to fall all over ones pizza. The finished pizza by the way smelt like a bin in Civic at 3am on a Sunday morning!

Ok, no bad pizza in their story on Canberra. But it was shallow, pretentious and certainly wouldn’t attract anyone. Might even drive them away.
This is certainly the antidote to the government’s Live in Canberra campaign.

Aha, OK. Fair point, and correct.

There was always one at school attempting to play that role….. Guess some chicks don’t grow out of it.

I’m not saying she *was* sexy

I’m saying that’s what she was devoting the whole segment to trying to make us think she was.

Argh…this bitch manages to still be employed in television HOW exactly? Truly painful to watch.

And ‘sexy in an oh-so-indy-way’? Has the coastal air cause you some eyesight troubles JB?

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