Note the use of the ampersand as well as the oh so sweet mullet Kurt Russel sported back then. Back when this gem arrived, not to the silver screen but video, I was friends with this kid who worked at the video store…Video Plus on Dorset Street…and so had access to free movie posters and cardboard cut outs. There was a spare room in the back with a couple of the old school stand up arcade games and tons of posters and the cardboard stands from days of yore…My buddy Mike Parrot and I went in there one day to hang out and the dude who worked there, Matt, was chilling with this other dude we knew, Mike Coyer, who would end up being a bit of a ladies man. Coyer was the first guy in our class who rolled his pant legs up in a way where they would be super tight around his ankles. Anyway, we all went back there one day and Coyer suggested we all fight and do a round robin sort of thing. Whoever went against Matt would win handily, but Coyer was actually pretty tough. He jumped on my friend Mike and then Mike did a power squat and slammed Coyer’s back against the corner of the arcade game causing Mike to groan in pain and crumble to the floor but also harming the game…Shit I think it was the crappy Nintendo one where you paid a quarter for 2 minutes…What a sham…Whatever, not a great story. The game jostled, made a strange electronic noise and shut off and then Matt got pissed and kicked us all out. He was the only one at the store…It was owned by this weird mid thirties guy with a black goatee. The whole place had a bit of a body odor quality to it due to old carpet. Yeah, for whatever reason back in those days everyone thought carpeting was a good idea…Maybe the vacuum cleaner lobbyists had a grip on everyone back then…

I am 100% certain the Tango & Cash poster was on my wall at some point alongside Heather Thomas, Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, and the Lamborghini Countach. Yes, the HBO days when one movie would come on and you would watch it over and over….Sometimes tape it…So you could watch it over and over again some more. I do wonder if all the violent movies of my childhood ended up warping my brain. I mean, pyrotechnic technology hit some leaps and bounds in the 80s and 90s which produced some real blockbusters. It was the first time audiences had seen such explosions. The 70s had no oomph in this category. Nowadays, we’re all pretty bored of it, I mean, imagine some of those crappy ass movies being pitched today. A couple have slipped through the system, but mostly the action flick has died on the vine with the western. Sorry not sorry. Most of them do not hold up in the least. Good old Tango & Cash…Not so much. It has a few decent qualities and jokes but otherwise a trip down a nostalgic lane that most others could care less about. It received a whopping 31% on the Tomatometer and a 52% audience rating.

The genre? Action cop buddy. It existed before the 80s and probably always will but reached new heights with Lethal Weapon, a huge success where they turned the tropes around a bit. Take one crazy cop and one older stoic guy and put them together. There you go. And yes, they still do this and switch the combinations around. They were doing two dumb guys for awhile but it lacked any comedic quality save unpredictability.

For some reference, the Countach went 0-60 in a little over 5 seconds. Most supercars today do it in under 2, but nothing today looks so sweet…

At any rate, I always wonder in the wee hours of the morning where some of these people go. The two Mikes and Matt? Lost touch with them long long ago. The two Mikes moved away before high school and the last time I saw Matt he was a bouncer at this place in Burlington called Rasputin’s, a shitty 18+ “club” if you want to call it that. I used to see him all the time when I worked at The Five Spice Cafe a million years ago. The dumpster for the restaurant was up the block in the alleyway and required a key. After a busy Friday or Saturday night, myself and the other cooks would be lugging the trash up the sidewalk past all the people waiting in line…Everyone all dressed up nice and us in our shitty polyester snap button cook’s shirts hauling smelly bags, ourselves quite stinky for sure due to sweating for five hours straight during service and all the weird Asian sauces we used at the place. I would always see Matt at the door and we would nod to each other. Shit man, his family took me to Six Flags once. We were pals. We had some good laughs back in the day.

This one has a lot of scrap items. With most scrap we make a liqueur. Pretty easy infusion with high proof grain spirit and then add some simple syrup. Most notable is the OGC, Old Grand Cheese. It is a wash of OGD and the leftover cheese scrap from making punch. Thought it might be worth a try. I do not know how these things happen. I do know the leftover green mango powder is wonderful and delicious. Anyway, it tastes mostly like a mango creamsicle gone down the wrong path in life. Popular due to the hwip and a massive anxiety inducer during service due to always thinking the hwip will run out in the middle of a rush…

…Mango cocktails are actually difficult to pull off. What you say? Yeah. They suffer from the mango fresh is better than anything else syndrome. Great peaches have the same problem but with mango when they go into a drink it also can come off as a bit chalky at times due to the sheer density of the fruit. Whatever. They are out of season now anyway. I have a whole year to think about it…Adding some sort of cream whether dairy or not seems to be a solution…Think mango lassi and go from there young grasshopper…Green mango is also just better as it tastes better with booze and is something less appetizing anyway…

Mango & Cash

1 oz. Mango Guajillo Punch

1 oz. Fresh Lemon Juice

.5 oz. Mango Liqueur

.5 oz. Cashew Amazake Orgeat

.5 oz. OGC

.25 oz. Green Mango Syrup

Shake, strain onto BFR, add green mango coco hwey hwip and a sprinkle of dehydrated green mango dust.

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