Reminiscing on why I was born at the perfect time

                    

	Memories like Kirk Gibson's miraculous home run in Game 1 of the 1989 World Series are what make being born in '71 worthwhile. Heinz Kluetmeier/SI
	MAILBAG

I turned 35 last week, which was, for a while, traumatic, primarily because it means I'm no longer in the choice 18-34 demographic. Confessing that I love Deadwood and that I think it would be a sin if HBO canceled it is, in all honesty, more likely to bring about the show's demise, because some advertiser might read that comment and say, "Yeah, he loves it, but he's not exactly our target audience, now, is he?" My tastes are no longer stamped with the endorsement that comes with being young and at least theoretically hip. Unless we're talking about packaging for Werther's Originals or different varieties of prune juice, my opinions are largely moot.

So I got to thinking, would I be happier had I been born, say, 10 years later? Would I rather be celebrating my 25th birthday? After pondering it long and hard, I've decided I wouldn't, because 1971 might have been the best year ever in which one could hope to be born.

Let's start with politics. The first election I could vote in was '92. Say what you will about Clinton (and I love the ol' horndog), it was a very cool thing to see a candidate who actually cared what people my age thought instead of patronizing us or, worse yet, ignoring us. It meant a lot to us young voters, and it was a big reason he won.

Internationally, we -- we being my cohorts in the class of '71 -- missed out on the really scary threat of nuclear annihilation (the Cuban Missile Crisis), but we still had the Cold War to provide us with a healthy amount of angst, not to mention some great grist for the pop culture mill. Without the Russkies, there was no Red Dawn, no Rocky IV, no Top Gun. And then when we ran out of good commie villains, the Wall fortuitously came down and we all slept better at night.

Speaking of pop culture, being a '71er meant coming of age in a glorious time for TV -- both cable (MTV actually showed videos) and network (no reality, no American Idol). We caught Carson on the way out and Letterman in his prime. You had Thursday nights on NBC, with Cosby, Michael J. Fox, the whole Cheers crew, John Laroquette; no one was trying to pass Charlie Sheen off as "funny."

And then there's music. Oh, the music. I think the best time of a person's life musically is when you're 16. You've just started driving (and blaring tunes out the window of your bitchin' ride -- in my case, an '82 Sentra ... with a hatchback), you're old enough to start listening to the words and understanding that nothing really speaks to you like a well-written lyric. That said, here's what came out in 1987, when we turned 16:

The Joshua Tree (U2), Document (REM, who also released Dead Letter Office), Tunnel of Love (Springsteen), Pleased to Meet Me (The Replacements), Come on Pilgrim (Pixies), Sign o' the Times (Prince), Warehouse: Songs and Stories (Hüsker Dü), Diesel and Dust (Midnight Oil), Raising Hell (Run-DMC), Franks Wild Years (Tom Waits), Yo Bum Rush the Show (Public Enemy), Appetite for Destruction (G-n-R), Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me (The Cure), Paid in Full (Eric B. and Rakim), Bring the Family (John Hiatt), George Best (The Wedding Present), Bigger and Deffer (LL Cool J), By the Light of the Moon (Los Lobos), Strangeways, Here We Come (The Smiths), In My Tribe (10,000 Maniacs), How Ya Like Me Now (Kool Moe Dee) and the "Fairytale of New York" single (The Pogues). That is, hands down, the best year ever. (And we haven't even considered albums from both Tiffany and Debbie Gibson. At least they were well behaved. If they had a rivalry, you didn't read about it on Page Six, like this Lohan-Duff business.) Plus there were no boy bands, except for New Kids on the Block, and they had the decency to just disappear when teenyboppers soured on them, instead of cavorting with older actresses, appearing in bad reality shows or trying to buy their way into outer space.