If I Ever Feel Better

Standing up the front at Phoenix’s Sydney show this month, Nikki turned to me during the opening bars of “If I Ever Feel Better” and said “I just realised where your blog gets it’s name.” This coming from a massive Phoenix fan.  So much for flaunting my hipster cred in my blog title.

It occurred to me that if you don’t know the song then I’m not sure how you’d interpret my title.  To be honest, it probably just sounds emo.  But the song is far from emo - it’s resigned, but hopeful.  It feels like better times are just around the corner.  I guess that’s where I was going two and a half years ago when I moved to Sydney and re-named my blog.

When I moved to Sydney, I couldn’t have expected what would happen within a year: that I’d meet my future wife, lose my job, go travelling, find another, get engaged.  But as it happens, I do feel better than in early 2007, thanks for asking.

A decade isn’t a long time, but it’s apparently enough to trigger some heavy nostalgia among movie critics.  Not only did Popmatters run a gushing feature earlier in the year about all the brilliant films of 1999, now the Guardian is declaring 1999 “a cinematic goldmine“.  I’m tempted to agree.  I contributed to the Popmatters series and it made me realise how well some late century movies are standing the test of time.  But it’s hard for me to assess how good it really was, when it was also the year that I turned 18, moved to the big city, and spent every moment not in class or the pub in a darkened movie theatre.  I lived and breathed movies that year and maybe - just maybe - I’m a bit nostalgic about it.

But what’s going on with the rest of the people writing these articles?  We can’t have all reached adulthood and embraced film-nerdery at the same time.  Have 28 year olds taken over the internet?

The internet makes everyone a critic - but fortunately it doesn’t make everyone a good critic.  Everyone knows the quality of your average Amazon customer review, especially the one-star reviews.

Thanks to the Guardian, I’ve now discovered Cynical-C’s “You Can’t Please Everyone”, which collects the brilliant, misspelled contrarian wisdom of Amazon reviewers.  You’ll need to devote a bit of time to reading these gems, but a few of my favourites are:

“The 80s produced some great artists like Rick Astley, Milli Vanilli, Culture Club, etc. Then this horrible Smiths abomination comes along and makes this cringe-inducing album.”

(Of “Moby Dick”) “Too nautical for me.”

Two thumbs up, guys.

My introduction to post-honeymoon married life was a little bit bumpy.  A stressful time at work, a pulled muscle and a bad head cold all left me a touch grouchy and irritable.  Luckily none of that outweighed the sheer joy I get out of coming home to find Nikki here, rather than thousands of miles away.

I always pictured marriage as being a synonym for “maturity”.  Married people had responsibilities and commitments and children and didn’t goof around.  My dozen or so young married friends have taught me otherwise, but I still saw them as being a little more serious.  Getting engaged to Nikki, I knew that there was no way a marriage certificate was going to make us anything close to “grown-up”.

I get reminded of this when I come home to find that Nikki has bought a decorative metal tree to hang all her earrings (and a metal elephant for her rings) and has spent the afternoon dancing to Passion Pit in a style I can’t possibly describe.  I’ll post a video one day, I promise. Anyway, it delights me and makes me do a little dance myself.

I’ve spent too much of the last ten years wanting to be old and now I’m savouring the feeling of being impossibly young.