Just who the hell am I? Am I an itinerant pervert? A post-modern anti-hero? A random demographic sampling? It's often easier to say what I'm not, but let's have a go at the affirmative.

Everyone was a lot younger in the '80s. Especially me.

More than just a collection of dates, the 1980s were a time of discovery, innovation, tragedy and creativity. It saw the end of the Cold War and the start of MTV, a rise in unemployment and the fall of the Berlin Wall; G.I. Joe and Reaganomics, political correctness, the Walkman, the Tienanmen Square massacre and 'Live Aid'. There were turned up collars, poofed-up hair and a band of breakdancers - then later skateboarders - in every neighborhood. Neon was all the rage and Coca Cola came in 2 different flavors.

In this decade I began my ascension to power. Born in the early 1970s, a few hours after midnight under a cold winter's waning moon, I grew up a child of pop culture - just barely remembering Vietnam, singing along to Travolta in the disco craze, changing jets into robots on Christmas morning, and swinging a plastic light-up sword at hoards of invisible Stormtroopers. Little has changed since that time.