A Heart That Hurts Is A Heart That Works

I was never a cool teenager. Occasionally on a Friday or Saturday night I would go over to a friend's house with some of those mini spirits bottles that I'd stolen from my Dad's liquor cabinet, but this was a rare occurrence. I didn't really like the taste of alcohol and so this whole "fun" thing just seemed like a bit too much hard work. I never got up to mischief, I never had any run-ins with the fuzz and I didn't speak to a girl until I was 19.

Friday and Saturday nights were spent doing one thing only. Watching hours upon hours of Rage. For anyone non-Australian reading this, Rage is a music video programme that runs all night on Friday/Saturday and Saturday/Sunday nights. It has no deadshit "hip with the kids" host, being on the ABC it has no adverts, and it is never interrupted by station promos either. Just back-to-back clips all night. On Friday nights they play new clips, and on Saturday nights they have a guest programmer (usually a band).

Nowadays I'm a not particularly cool twenty-something. I don't really drink, I have a low tolerance for excitement, I've still have never had any run-ins with the fuzz, and although I do now speak to girls, I don't really seem to be able to "speak to" girls. Friday and Saturday nights are still mostly spent indoors.
Although I am usually very anti-nostalgia, I do feel a certain fondness for those early to mid-90s years watching Rage. Being young and unaffected by any musical cynicism (apart from an undefined hatred of "commercial" music), it was a period of boyhood discovery. Whilst most teenagers were experimenting with drugs and sex, I was experimenting with the faux-angst stylings of the alternative music scene (which is what most teenagers do, but I did it both clean and virtuous). Who needs first-hand kicks when second-hand experience is a reasonable substitute?

Everyone yearns to relive their youth, don't they? But for most people this is a problem. Nowadays pot makes you dizzy, and trying to talk to 15-year-old girls gets you a prime spot on Neighbourhood Watch's Nonce List. However, for me, thanks to modern technology, my youth is just a few clicks away.

There may be something slightly pathetic about a man of my age spending his Friday nights indoors (in a foreign city) watching old Juliana Hatfield clips on YouTube, but when I'm rocking along to Babes In Toyland's "Sweet 69" I don't really care what the outside world thinks. I have a searchable memory bank. While you can vaguely remember vomiting on the carpet at Stuart McKenzie's 16th birthday party, I can google my good times whenever I feel like it.