Honestly, if I ever met a mad scientist who likes to send people back in time with his DeLorean and a non-toxic "youth drink" to relive their childhood with all that they know now, I probably wouldn't take him up on it... Unless I can be allowed to invest in Microsoft and titfuck.com just when they go public.

No, what I would rather do is become a kid in this day and age. Kids today have it so much cooler than my generation did! Plus they still get to do everything that I did back in the eighties!

Yeah, this sad sack of shit in the image above doesn't really have anything to do with me or any normal person's childhood. He's just waiting out his horrible existence till the time when he's old enough to buy booze and a shotgun in a bold attempt to steal some of his dignity back from his sadistic parents who mock him openly to his face for being the choad that he is. Harsh? Yes. Sad? Oh yeah. Sympathetic in the least? Not even slightly. I'm willing to bet that he deserves all the psychological torture he gets for being nerdy-smart and throwing off the curve on that last Math test he took. The bastard!

Take for example, cartoons. Today's youth has Batman, Samurai Jack, The Powerpuff Girls, Cowboy Bebop and Dragonball Z (hey, don't knock it, it's still better than most of the crap I had). PLUS they can still see Thundercats, the original Transformers, G.I. Joe and Inhumanoids (trust me, it's good) on either TV or on DVD. Plus plus they will soon have the option of seeing every last episode of the greatest cartoon ever made, Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse! How's that for a full circle?

On top of that, parents today are a lot more liberal when it comes to things they allow their children to watch. When I was a kid I wasn't even allowed to THINK about sneaking into an 'R' rated movie. Trust me, my mom would have known. She could smell the bubblegum from the Garbage Pail Kids cards that I spent my allowance on (instead of banking it for a half a slice of pizza in college). So I know that she could have picked up the "lying-scent" that I'm sure I would have produced by the gallon if ever questioned about movie hopping over to the Robocop theater instead of watching both Richard Pryor and Christopher Reeve flush their careers down the shitter with Superman III.

Anyway, my point is that parents today don't seem to give a crap what their kids see. Just this past weekend the Wolfman and I went to see the Hannibal Lecter movie Red Dragon, and I would say a good 1/4 of the packed theater was kids under 15. First of all, I must state that I hope that each of those little asswipes have hellish night-terrors for weeks to come. Secondly I must point out how much I wish I could have gotten away with that kind of chutzpah when I was their age! Dammit, I was a total pussy.

This "kids in 'R' rated movies" isn't a new thing. Far from it. I'm sure that hippy parents were sneaking their children into the first showing of the first 'X' rated movie in '69, Easy Rider, as a way of skimping out of having to tell them about the birds and the bees themselves only to be very confused at the end of that hour and a half. But even up to 5 years ago I would probably only see 2 to 4 under-eighteen year-olds popping up in each violent and sexually explicit movie I'd go see. I guess we can all thank/hate Clinton and George W. for that. With their confused ideas about what's really "sex" (i.e. making the country wonder if blow-jobs and anal are really sex, not to mention what the word 'is' means) and "violence" (i.e. blowing the shit out of already stone-aged peoples). God bless our fucked up leaders.

Toys today are also light-years ahead of the already great 80s playthings that I got to play with. Plus, with the retro kick thats currently kicking this nation in its already numb nads, today's youth can still partake in imaginary adventures with Optimus Prime, Cobra Commander, Skeletor, Darth Vader and any other plastic partner from the He-Man, GI Joe, Transformers, and Star Wars universes. Plus Hot Wheels never died and Nintendo only got flashier! Man, kids today can even play with real Gundam toys! I never had anything as cool as those cut-ass rugged robots when I was a wee lad.

Family vacations are one part of my childhood that I wouldn't mind leaving behind though. Here I am with my older brother when we went to visit the Amish country somewhere in Ecuador. That was a hellish week. Not only did we have to listen to them thumping those goddamn bibles all day and night while we bagged all that weed for distribution, but they would also piss us the fuck off with their hours-long spiels about the "evils of plastics" and "the sinfests of gasoline powered engines". Why we don't nuke them with monkey bombs I'll never know. Those Amish are ten times eviler than Hitler ever was, cause at least he never made me read scripture before all my meals!

Sure, the new line up of GI Joes kinda sucks (they're built kind of crappy now), and there's way too much seizure inducing Pokemon on the airwaves that could ever be considered a good and/or healthy thing, but the bonuses of the entertainment-for-children world nowadays far out weighs the shit factor.

You know what I mean. Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen represent all that is Satanic in the universe. But at least there isn't any Strawberry Shortcake, Care Bears, My Little Pony or Gummi Bears on the tube anymore!... No, wait, I actually liked the Gummi Bears. But you get my drift. Plus Nickelodeon has Invader Zim. I'd have given my right kidney to have that on the TV when I was first wondering about how I was going to take over the world (which would have been at the age of 5).

Talking toys; violent movies drenched in crappy CGI that overstimulate the already active imagination; hyper 3D video games that emulate real life; cartoons that don't talk down to children's levels; and uncaring parents that let their children overindulge in each and everyone of them in a sorry attempt to make it look like they love them when they don't. Man, I was born a decade or two too soon. I would so love to become a child again in the 2000s. To have my full imagination at my finger tips again would be the greatest thing that could ever happen to me! Even as my imagination was starting to dissipate with the coming of puberty, I still had enough to have the most vivid and incredible sexual fantasies that any sane (or quite possibly insane) boy could ever dream of whacking off to! I mean, I can still remember believing that if I found a genie's lamp, the first thing I would do is to wish that I could freeze time (just like Evie on Out of this World). The second thing that I would do is wish that I could make females in pictures come to life (and therefore become my slaves) so that I could get it on with Rogue, Catwoman and about 1/3 of the women in the Sears catalogue in the most insane positions and crowded time-stopped places, and even in zero-G aboard the X-Men's Blackbird in space... Thinking back, I never even had to imagine what I'd do with the third wish. Those first two kept me warm on plenty a cold Midwestern winter's night. Youth: Ya gotta love it!

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