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  I've been on a little "Stay-cation" for the last few days and through this week.  Normally this time of year I boldly pirate my way through the Caribbean with Becky, but this week, we're stayin' home for various reasons, and it's nice, actually.  We decided to instead go to interesting in-town restaurants and see one movie every day of whatever.

Dave Hartman?!

  First on the plate was Identity Thief staring Jason Bateman (younger brother of Justine Bateman of Family Ties fame for you '80s rascals out there [ruffling top of heads fatherly] aw, you know who you are!)  He's my age but looks like dog shit even with the tons of makeup, but that's what 10 years of drugs will do to ya (you listening, Lohan?)  Still, a good, good solid film (I thought so, anyway) with a bit of a Jack Lemon / Tony Randal vibe shtick / tempo with rapid-fire casual dialogue popular in rom-coms of the '60s.  Throw-in a little Planes Trains and Automobiles and you've got Identity Thief.  Rather unusual for a comedy to be rated R, but it works, especially with Melissa McCarthy (looking suspiciously like Grease and Grease II's Dolores Goodman, or perhaps who Principal Victoria from South Park -sounds- like the actress from the '80s [aw, heck I forget her name, and honestly, I thought Melissa was her, but she's not, please fill-me-in, guys]) did a rather decent job as a Minnesota chipmunky woman.  I recommend it.  It's not really that goofy, and a few minor improbable holes: cops nab criminal but main character asks if they can leave for a bit to talk for a while alone.  Unlikely, knowing Denver Police (takes place half in Denver, which is nice).

  Meal was at The Famous, also known as The Famous Steak House.  Lunch special was my favorite, a burger, which The Independent recommends, so we each had one.  Violently huge and cannot be eaten in a sitting, btw.  Seasoned well, needing no salt, etc., or any condiment.  Fries equally acceptable.  Beck started with the potato-soup which was superb.  Rosemary fresh baked bread as an a free starter was done acceptably well.  Ambiance is mid-'40s instrumentals with a northern Mediterranean fair, though they snuck-in a little Singin' in the Rain instrumental on accordion and clarinet in a different key and time signature to be cheeky as if I wouldn't notice it.  Saucy and risque.  I quizzed the waitress on scotch, and they had Macallan 18-year, which is the most perfect scotch in my opinion under infinity dollars and asked immediately if I wanted it "neat".  How would one have it any other way?  Well done, miss, to almost insist it prepared thusly, yes, in a glass... and that's it.  Good.  I quizzed her two more times, for a total of three, THREE questions!  (five is right out.)  If the cheesecake was made in-house or frozen and shipped-in (was made in-house and ordered promptly, then served with hand-whipped cream [stop with the jeers] requiring no sugar to sweeten, mint sprig and white-chocolate rectangle alongside it, vanilla bean riddled in the cake, brilliantly done.) and then if they had considered attempting to achieve a Michelin Star (she had no idea what that was, but they deserve one for excellence).

  After cooling down, I find The Famous to offer the second best burger in town next to Mackenzie's Chop House a little down Tejon where we were as they offered Koby Beef hamburgers.  The burger was ordered medium-well for safety-sake never being there before, but rare would have been very good too.  High quality meat, a little dry, and they loose-out on the garlic (not dill) pickle, though as big as a baby's arm and quite worrisome a bludgeoning weapon.  Portions are ridiculously too large but a bargain for the price, making Five Guys seem like a ripoff.

  The menu seemed underwhelming and rather snobby-sounding but it was actually quite impressive.

  When I went in, I was expecting a fight with my Polo shirt and jeans and tweed traveling cap with Kashmir scarf that I was underdressed, but business was dead and no one balked.  Indeed, Becky and I were the best-dressed for lunch anyway, so my fisticuffs were stayed.

  Despite still coping with a hangover from a maximum amount of Buffalo Trace bourbon a few days prior resulting in vomiting 5 times (32 shots was too much, but it tastes so light you don't know you're drinking anything but water at 80 proof and $19 a bottle?  What the heck?) I thoroughly enjoyed the Macallan 18, fruity and floral with a peat finish as usual ending in peaches flambe aftertaste.  I suspect 1994 vintage, or perhaps 1993 (I get those confused as they're similar, one tastes more like pear) and it went excellently with the homemade cheesecake and honey-graham-cracker crust.  Overall, it gets an A+. 

A litle WW-II cheesecake, "Boo-Boo"

  On my way out, I smelled a good cigar tempting from below and asked the waitress if there was a hidden cigar bar downstairs, like a speak-easy, but she said there was just offices down there.  I'm glad the owner doesn't give a fudge about Colorado laws of smoking in establishments.  Screw 'em!  Ace.

Stairway to Heaven

Master Bard

  A little distraction of what I've been up to.  Steve Vai plays a triple-neck Ibanez (taught by Joe Satriani).  It picks-up at 6:20, and at 8:30, as a Bard effectively summons a minion to assist.

  Good Bard work, Steve.  Win.

It was 20 years ago, today.

 
  Hello again.  I'm Mike Cronis, and I'm an expert.

  Sorry for the Beatles reference there.  It's Groundhog's Day (insert mediocre Bill Murray film) but it also marks the day, 20 years ago I entered the USAF.  I had left 5 years ago but by this time if I had stayed in, I likely would have been permitted to leave with a pension (meager as it is) and then at this time also been scrambling to find additional work to supplement said pension of a few hundred dollars a week.

  I know a guy who will retire soon who finished the last 5.  He looks weary, empty, drained and devoid of soul, with only a tiny, faint distant glimmer of hope in his eyes only very recently.  He should only have a few more months left, but he's been a paperwork monkey for the last 5 as was my fate if I myself had stayed, dealing with red-tape and corporate managerial dealings.  No fun in my book.  Working on enlisted performance reports and going to soul-sucking meetings divorced from the actual mission seems vacant, which is why I got out, or one of the reasons, anyway.

Soul being drained away by a wrath

  I was a good troop.  I got several medals for ingenious thinking and solution solving that was outside the generic "oh, you get a medal for moving to a new duty station" stuff.  Getting these is almost unheard of in Space Command.  In each place I performed magnificent deeds and kept the ball up, and knowing I did a good job makes me glad, even though I often "cowboy ops'ed" it, shooting from the hip more times than not. 

Snake left the USAF as well, after a while.

  So I'm not bitter or melancholy for this, becoming a space mercenary?  I got a great contractor job for Space Command pretty quickly after I left the service honorably, possibly because I was still fresh in-the-mind of operations and not paperwork jungle death, and partly due to cleverness despite an administration that abhors Defence budgetry.  I considered being down about it, "Oh, I should have finished my 20 years.." but I see too many guys in the last 5 left just trying not to rock-the-boat and become spineless supervisors, not taking charge but slinking around under-the-radar not representing their troops or helping them in ways they need, bittering the whole process like bad milk curdling coffee.  I was even told to do so by a soul-less bastard who was wraithed into believing this was the way to go. 

  He sneered at my out-of-the-box ingenuity often and cursed me for it every day before I left, perhaps jealously so that I was bold enough to buck the system and do what was right and not what was written in some alienated, officer-scripted checklist.  I got the job done, by my own right, and that ticked him off I bet (as well as a few officers who were perched, waiting to strike me down if I ever failed at my mission duties, which I never did to their chagrin, hate, jealously and fear). 

  So why did I get out?  I still love 'Mer'ca, of course, but I refused to lie down and be that empty soul, and I refused to become a paperwork junky, which I value as absolutely worthless.  No, I want to be in the thick of it.  I enjoy confounding America's enemies in any way I can, even though America is taking some rather radical turns as of late, some of which I don't approve, but it's still 'Mer'i'ca, so selflessly I love her for that, and I've often put that first over personal issues, willing to sacrifice to a higher level.  It wasn't about the brass ring at the end of it all, but the ride itself.  I can do better as a contractor with more freedoms than an enslaved and oppressed troop, as the crushing rules literally paralyzed me to continue my renegade path, being directly ordered to freeze and stand at attention and do no more.  Frack that.  I don't give a shite.  I do what I want!  I run with gangs!  What eva.  What eva!

  Fighting the good fight until I die.  For 'Merica.