Severe Jam Damage

Given the recent entries I’m beginning to think I should rename this blog to ‘I Do This Shit So You Don’t Have To.’

Anyway, on Saturday night, after the fun and excitement of my BIG FRIDAY NIGHT OUT I decided I couldn’t take much more sociability and stayed in. Lucky me, in my lazy wandering round the telly channels I managed to catch the last hour and 10 minutes of ‘The Hunted’. I missed the first 20 minutes which, given the crapness of the other 70 minutes was really probably for the best.
When I tuned in Tommy Lee Jones was living in the mountains and had just saved a wolf from a trap. He stomps into a cabin in the middle of nowhere and asked who had been laying wolf traps. Grizzled oul fella raises his hands and Tommy Lee storms across and wraps the snare around the hunters neck who falls over dead. Thus proving Tommy Lee is hardcore.

Cut to:
Similar looking forest but without the snow. Two hunters are mown down by Brad Pitt, oh wait a minute no, it’s Benicio Del Toro looking like Brad Pitt. The American accent put me off. Also the fact that I could just about understand what he was saying.

Cut to:
Tommy Lee back in the winter zone. He is stomping back up to the cabin where he recently killed a man. Outside Tommy Lee is observing some footprints that go RIGHT INTO THE HUT! This is presumably to let us know that Tommy Lee is a MASTER TRACKER.
Inside the owner of the tracks asks him to come back to civilisation to help solve a murder. Tommy says no, but we know he’s going to go, otherwise there wouldn’t be a movie.

Cut to:
The Forest, where Not Ashley Judd FBI agent is leading the investigation. There are hundreds nay THOUSANDS of people tromping all over the crime scene. Tommy Lee wearing a pristine green shirt takes off into the woods to track down Benicio Pitt, but not before Not Ashley Judd hands him a mobile phone asking him to ring if he needs a lift home.

Cut to:
10 minutes later, Tommy Lee’s shirt is filthy, his hair is mucky and there’s mud on his face. Tommy Lee finds a hole in a tree, in which Benicio Pitt has placed a bible. Behind Tommy Lee a shadow looms, it’s Benny Pitt. The two of them roll around for a bit trying not to kill each other as that would mean the movie would end an hour early.
Just as we think Tommy Lee is done for someone shoots a dart into Benicio Pitt and he collapses in a comical Tom and Jerry stylee. Not Ashley Judd and a hundred FBI agents come streaming out of the woods. Which is a little worrying as I began to wonder why did they need Tommy Lee if they were able to follow without him noticing.

Cut to:
The city. Benny Pitt has been cleaned up and is dragged from a police car and as happens with all psychopathic hosebeasts who have just completed a bloody rampage he is walked up the main steps of the FBI headquarters, through the main foyer and into an elevator to his cell.

Cut to:
Tommy Lee in the FBI office covered in forest muck. So apparently the criminal was given time to shower and change his clothes but Tommy Lee didn’t have time to go home and get a fresh shirt. A short conversation with Not Ashley Judd reveals that Tommy Lee was contracted to the armed forces and in fact TRAINED Benicio Pitt to be a cold blooded killer. However Tommy Lee admits he has never killed anyone himself, so I guess the guy he garrotted with a wolf snare doesn’t count.

Cut to:
Four guys in rain macs and dark sunglasses who don’t look suspicious AT ALL sitting in the FBI Boss’ office. They demand to get Benicio Pitt back as a public trial would endanger national security. After the usual beaurocratic bullshit, they eventually take off in an ice cream van with Benny Pitt in the back. After a very brief struggle BP manages to kill the driver and the ice cream van falls over dead. Benny crawls out of the wreckage and into the forest.

Cut to:
Tommy Lee in the airport, he is watching some kids play hide and seek. Now I don’t know about you but if I was in the airport with my kids and they were being watched by some freak in a filthy shirt with mud all over his face I think I’d be a bit worried. This scene is only there so that Tommy Lee can stop and notice the SPECIAL BREAKING NEWS REPORT that an ice cream truck fell over dead in the middle of the road. The reporter is standing right beside the dead truck and behind him the FBI are crawling all over the van. Obviously the writers have never heard of a security cordon.

Cut to:
Flashback. I should mention there are a number of flashbacks in this movie I just haven’t bothered to document them. Anyway the jist of the flashbacks is that Tommy Lee trained Benny Pitt to become a killer and Benny was Tommy Lee’s star pupil. Tommy Lee showed Benny Pitt how to forge a knife from steel and rock. Note THIS WILL BE IMPORTANT LATER. But then poor old Benny started having nightmares and wrote numerous letters to Tommy Lee which TL never bothered to answer.

Cut to:
Benicio Pitt has been tracked down to an ex- girlfriends house. We can tell they used to have a relationship becuase her photo was in the bible that Tommy Lee found back in the woods and also she is not happy to see Benny Pitt back on her doorstep.
Tommy Lee and Not Ashley Judd track Benny to his girlfriends house and once inside Tommy Lee notices MUCKY BIG MANPRINTS on the kitchen lino. He decides to wander round the house while Not Ashley Judd asks the girlfriend some inane questions.
Tommy Lee finds Benny Pitt sitting on the jacks and after some more inane conversation and much unintelligible mumbling (even with an American accent it’s hard to understand the del Toro.) Benny dives through the second story window and takes off in a car.

Cut to:
A car chase

Cut to:
A foot chase through the city.

Cut to:
Tommy Lee chases Benny Pitt through a power plant which just happens to be in the city centre. (?? Remind me never to go to Portland.) Tommy is wearing a black shirt now, so sometime between the car chase and ending up in a power plant he had time to change his shirt.

Cut to:
Tommy Lee chases Benny Pitt through a park, however Benny has borrowed Samwise Gamgee’s magic cloak and Tommy Lee mistakes him for a rock.

Cut to:
Benny Pitt has jumped on a train, Tommy Lee crowbars open a vent in the ceiling and gets onto the train. This is pretty handy for Benny as he uses the same vent to get OUT of the train.

Cut to:
Benny Pitt climbs a bridge tower and Tommy Lee is the only one who bothers to follow him. The cops stand below and shoot at BP who decides not to jump until he gets to the very top of the bridge. Why he didn’t just jump into the river at the beginning baffles me, I guess the writers needed another couple of minutes of action to fill out the script.

Cut to:
Benny Pitt is in the wilderness again and has found a piece of metal. He builds a campfire and from the searing heat of the gorse and moss he has used to start his fire, forges a knife from a piece of rusty steel. At the same time Tommy Lee is forging a knife from a er, piece of rock. Now since Tommy Lee is surrounded by FBI people you wonder why he didn’t just ask for a gun or a knife from stores.

Cut to:
Tommy Lee tracks Benny Pitt to his campfire and a massive fight ensues. Now when I say ‘track’ I mean that Tommy Lee has wandered downriver a bit and Benny Pitt is ‘hiding’ behind a tree. Apparently when you are a murdering psychopath on the run from the FBI and the CIA the last thing you need to do is actually er, run. After some hysterically inflicted flesh wounds Benny Pitt decides to punch Tommy Lee in the face, that knife isn’t as good as it looks I guess. Not Ashley Judd appears with her hundred men just in time to see Benny fall on Tommy Lee’s stone knife. Tommy Lee goes back to live in the snow.
End.

Oh god.

I’m so embarrassed. So embarrassed in fact that the best thing to do is just admit it.
I went to see Take That on Friday night.
Nigel had a spare ticket y’see. I met her for something to eat earlier and she was still looking for someone to whom she could offload the extra ticket.
‘Sure if you can’t find anyone, I’ll go with you’ I said.
I blame the wine and lack of food. I was supposed to be meeting friends in a pub and to be fair I went down, had a pint and said hello and then we had to feck off back down to the other side of town.

The Point was full of women. Women in pink glittery cowboy hats, women in pink glittery boas, women in glittery bunny ears, women in tiny strappy tops and high heels. Just inside the doors Louis Walsh was getting his photo taken with some drunken English girls. Note, this is the second time in three years I have been within punching distance of Louis Walsh and done nothing about it. Of course we happened to be standing behind one of those three men for about half an hour of the concert. Nigel isn’t much taller than I am so the two of us grumbled for a bit. Eventually the Jolly Gay Giant trundled off to some other part of the arena and our view was a little better.

Now, I missed out on the whole Take That phenomenon during the ’90’s. I arrived back in Ireland midway through their popchart domination so was unaware of who they were or what they did. Even if I had known I wouldn’t have been interested in buying their albums. I have seen Robbie Williams in concert since (it was at Slane ok?) and thought he was a great showman, he knows how to manipulate a crowd alright. But I never had any inclination to buy, see or listen to any sort of boy pop band. The show on Friday was like being at the biggest hen night in the world. Myself and Nige fell out of the place deaf and stunned. 9000 women (and three men) have amazing lung capacity.

The show itself was, dare I say it, quite impressive. A huge stage which extended out to the back of the Point allowed the band to come out into the audience. And some impressive special effects including a rain storm on stage during ‘Back for Good’ and a hologram of Robbie Williams during the finale ‘Never Forget’. Also on stage were fire eaters, flamenco dancers and a man wearing a corset and spangly thong. Perhaps the less said about that the better though.

At one stage the band performed a Beatlemania medley which went down a storm. I doubt they could have pulled it off 10 years ago. There were a couple of plugs for the new album and a number entitled ‘How to create a boy band’ which was a pure dig at the music industry and appealed to my cynical attitude. Overall it wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. A bit of a laugh for a Friday night and although I wasn’t au fait with all of the songs (unlike the screeching banshee beside me, and I don’t mean Nige) it was a good evening.

We even managed to get into Mulligans for last orders.