{"id":1486,"date":"2006-02-19T17:48:53","date_gmt":"2006-02-19T17:48:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.t-e-g.co.uk:\/blog\/?p=1486"},"modified":"2006-02-19T17:48:53","modified_gmt":"2006-02-19T17:48:53","slug":"sunday-19th-february-2006","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.t-e-g.co.uk\/blog\/sunday-19th-february-2006\/","title":{"rendered":"Sunday 19th February 2006"},"content":{"rendered":"The weekend is nearly over, but I have so much to  report. Let me start with the Saturday night movie.  History was one of my favourite subjects at school and I relish learning about the past and the events  from all around the world. Yet, I will confess I am  quite ignorant when it comes to the conflict in the  Middle East. I know very little and perhaps because  of this have little opinion on the complex issues of a struggle of people to have their own state. While  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0408306\/\" target=\"_blank\">Munich<\/a> focuses on the revenge for the assassination of the  Israeli athletes, it does offer an insight into the  struggle for a Jewish state for the people. Spielberg  directs perfectly what some would consider a very  difficult story, consider the blood and destruction  that litters the plot. Sure the violence is graphic,  but without trying to sound morbid, the movie is shot  so well, you consider the emotional journey of the  characters rather than all the killing (which at times  is completely mindless). The Wrath Of God, as the  operation was known, is intriguing, in the sense that  someone funded the operation from somewhere to make  sure the eleven names operatives were &#8216;taken care  of&#8217;. Eric Bana puts in a stern and noteworthy performance  as the team leader. You watch his decline from a son  of a national hero to a soulless man, unable to sleep,  unable to feel, isolated from his homeland. Without  wanting to give too much away, the pace of the movie  is just right and many scenes are shown in flashback.  At the end, when the mission is complete, you feel  it is not the end but the start of further bloodshed  and reprisals. The final frame is breathtaking and  ingenious, linking us back to present day realities.  If you want to go watch a film that will engage your  for a couple of hours, rather than sitting brain dead  through a forgettable film, go see this.\n\nBefore heading over to the cinema, my friend and  I hoped to grab a quick bite to eat at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.frankieandbennys.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Frankie &amp; Benny&#8217;s<\/a>, which is right beside the multiplex.  However the queue was coming out the door and we soon  discovered there was a forty five minute wait for  a table. This was shame, because I&#8217;ve never been to  the New York Italian style restaurant, even though  there is one on my doorstep. We headed back towards  the town centre, cautious of the time and that we  had about an hour to spare. We went to the Longwall,  on the Garsington Road, opposite the old Rover (now  BMW Group) factory. We were seated the moment we were  walked through the door, even though it seemed extremely  busy with a birthday party taking place. We were told  by the hostess that Beth would be looking after us  this evening. Little did we know that what type of  customer service we were in for. Sure enough she arrived  a few minutes later, a tall brunette with a great  bubbly character. We tried for to work out if this  was genuine enthusiasm for her role as waitress and  in the end decided she was just one of those people  you bump into once in a while. The icing on the cake,  was when the bill came, I tried hard to control myself  from laughing in amazement. If I had told you this  without any supporting evidence you would not have  believed me.\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a title=\"Longwall Receipt by T3G, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/teg\/2814673255\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3042\/2814673255_c20efa75ef_m.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Longwall Receipt\" width=\"240\" height=\"214\" \/><\/a><\/p>\nPlease note that the above image only has a passing resemblance to our waitress,  yesterday evening. She was extremely friendly and  polite and asked where we off to (hence our reason  for ordering our food so quickly). The flicks to see  Munich, which she had not got around to seeing yet.  As we left, she gave us an over eager waving, hoping  we had a good time watching the movie.\n\nI saw this over on Sharelle&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/adjust.blogspot.com\/2006\/02\/ledelicious.html\" target=\"_blank\">blog<\/a> and could not resist. For this and her ability to  pick up some amazing links on the web, she is now  officially blog rolled with the biggest name for a  blog ever. A word of warning though, once you go over  to the <a href=\"http:\/\/crcw.mb.ca\/ledsign\/\" target=\"_blank\">The  LED Sign<\/a> site, you might end up there for hours,  watching the web cam images refresh live. Consider  it a very slow version of an IM client, but instead  of just with one person or a group of your friends,  anyone with an internet connection around the world  can join in the conversation.\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.t-e-g.co.uk\/jpg\/led.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.t-e-g.co.uk\/jpg\/led2.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\nWhile I am (unofficially) the biggest fan of Hollyoaks  (well strictly speaking the current series) I know  only of perhaps two other people that are as hooked  on it as me. Last week, being half-term, saw the Mersyside  production company put on four late night editions,  entitled &#8220;Back from the Dead&#8221; which saw the return  and final demise of Andy. It was typical action packed  fodder and if you missed the actual thirty minute  episodes, you could not have missed the trailers,  shown excessively on both Channel 4 and E4. The final  scenes were harrowing, even compared to teen soap  opera standards. I was great to watch in the sense  I had seen the past two late night edition from last  year, which built up to the events which unravelled  to Thursday night. I never really liked Andy in the  beginning, he seemed like a nice guy, but too much  of a free spirit and there was always something underneath,  you could tell. The plot was evenly mixed, to balance  between the gritty, life and death kidnap of Nicole to the carefree girly holiday with Mandy, Louise and Claire.\n\nMy final two thoughts pose some questions. Is Unconditional  by The Bravery the best piece of music that is let  down by lyrics? I was listening to it as I hit the  M40 on my way back from Oxford. The introduction is  extremely compelling, almost new wave in style. Last  night, I can recall that in my dream, I opened the  door (there was a house party taking place) to find  Christina <a href=\"http:\/\/www.christinamilian.org\" target=\"_blank\">Milian<\/a> on the doorstep. To put it all into perspective, this  morning, I woke up and watched music television as  I do most weekends and aptly switched over to Flaunt  to see Dip It Low. It must be a sign. Her third album is released next month. Enough said.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The weekend is nearly over, but I have so much to report. Let me start with the Saturday night movie. History was one of my favourite subjects at school and I relish learning about the past and the events from all around the world. Yet, I will confess I am quite ignorant when it comes [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1205],"class_list":["post-1486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-munich"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.t-e-g.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.t-e-g.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.t-e-g.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.t-e-g.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.t-e-g.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.t-e-g.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1486\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.t-e-g.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.t-e-g.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.t-e-g.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}