Those of you (there's gotta be at least one) who know Assembly language!

I grew up in the era of Wargames, Warez and great minds like the people of Trident. Unfortunately, i've never gotten to know anyone who is fluent in Assembly who could 'show me the way'.

Here's my question:

Is anyone out there who could give some 'words of wisdom' regarding how to go about approaching this language, with regards to a modern GUI-based OS environment such as Windows, taking advantage of or even bypassing the application programming interface?

I have much interest, and i'm sure there are a lot of other people who do as well, about how I(we) should approach learning Assembly in that manner.

(i.e., i'd like to learn how to handle the system's memory areas by the byte; learn how to draw to the screen creating my own methods, all without heavy interpretation... etc.)

I don't want to see that sort of skill disappear as time goes on and I think i'm ready to start learning.

Thanks guys.

-Vin