More Random Quotes!

No context or attribution (except for the last one). Just good, clean, quotey fun.

"We're like bi-polar opposites"

"You don't wanna be a wannabe"

"I'm getting kind of new-agey in my old age"

"I'm not an alpha male...I'm in beta."

"All cats smell like freakin' broccoli!"

Heard while kids played video games...
"David, get that guy that's on my tail."
"You have a tail?"

In the Heat of the Dark Knight

Okay, I admit it…I love Batman. No, not in a, “I’m going to send him a dozen roses and slow dance with him under a silvery moon” kind of a way. Batman is simply my favorite superhero, in that he’s more or less a regular person...he’s not an alien, he doesn’t have any gamma ray induced powers…he’s a hero because he’s used personal tragedy as well as his vast reservoirs of courage and discipline to transform himself into the self-styled savior of Gotham City.
I would rank “Batman Begins” as one of my very favorite movies. It’s one of those rare films that works on every level…as an action-packed, visceral entertainment, as an epic human drama, as a tale of one man’s redemption and transformation. Consequently, I have been anticipating the sequel since the original came out in 2005.
I’ve done some reading on the internet about “The Dark Knight” the past few weeks. Much has been made about the blistering, hysterical, full-on performance of the late, lamented Heath Ledger as the Joker. There has been, in fact, a great deal of posthumous Oscar talk for him…I would daresay deservedly so. What’s interested me the most about all of the pre-release buzz are some of the early reviews that have trickled in. They are uniformly raves, of course, but a surprisingly high percentage of them reference Michael Mann’s 1995 crime thriller, “Heat”. Many reviewers are seeing “The Dark Knight” as less a superhero movie than an epic crime drama. Interesting.
I happen to have a copy of “Heat” on DVD so I pulled it out and watched it last night. For the uninitiated, “Heat” is the story of a professional thief, played by Robert DeNiro, at odds with a win-at-all-costs police detective, played by Al Pacino. There are surface similarities between the two films. DeNiro and Pacino’s characters are very much two sides of the same coin. Both are intelligent, driven, professional and passionate about what they do…so much so that each has sacrificed their personal life in order to be at the top of their respective games. For both men, their identities are wrapped up in their professions…sound like a billionaire playboy anyone knows? Also, both films are epic in scope and length (both clock in at well over two and a half hours).
Everything about “Heat” is first-rate, and I mean everything. The acting, the script and even the cinematography and music score are likely about as good as they could possibly be. “Heat” also has one of the best action scenes in recent cinema, a mid-day shootout in downtown Los Angeles that will (pun intended) blow you away.

Now, as for “The Dark Knight” itself…
I thought it was good. In fact, very good. I didn’t however, think it was a masterpiece, and I still favor “Batman Begins”. Don’t get me wrong, I thought it was head and shoulders over most movies I’ve seen of late. There’s much to recommend it…
Yes, Heath Ledger is amazing as the Joker. He somehow manages to be both frightening and hilarious, sometimes all at once. He truly disappears into the role. When you watch “The Dark Knight”, there is no Heath Ledger. There is simply the Joker.
Christian Bale is still the best incarnation of Batman. He has the acting ability to deal with some of the weighty themes the movie deals with, plus he absolutely nails the whole Bruce Wayne/ Batman duality.
The cast as a whole was excellent…Aaron Eckhart, Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman are some of the better actors out there, and they proved it once again.
There were some amazing action sequences (which I won’t detail, as I’m trying to keep this review spoiler-free) and even a few moments that had the audience clapping and cheering.

Now for the not-so-good…
I felt the movie as a whole was a bit overblown and loses its momentum not long after the two-hour mark. As much as the audience I saw it with enjoyed the film as a whole, I could detect some restlessness near the end. There was one sequence (the one in the harbor, for those that have seen it) that I thought was extraneous and brought the movie to screeching halt for awhile.
So all in all, I felt “The Dark Knight” was an excellent film…just not a great one.

A CAUTIONARY NOTE
Think long and hard about taking kids to see this film. It’s not unlikely “The Dark Knight”’s length and breadth would tax the attention spans of many youngsters. More to the point, some of the content might be kind of rough for kids. The appearance of the Two-Face character is pretty disturbing and really pushes the upper limits of the PG-13 rating.

A Good Recruiter

Just so you people don’t think I’m some kind of curmudgeon, allow me to tell you about my encounter with a true, professional recruiter.
I wrote recently about an interview I had wherein I was treated in an unprofessional, discourteous fashion by both a company’s in-house recruiter and a manager. The two of them were rather rude, unpleasant and left me wondering exactly why they wasted my time (as well as theirs) in bringing me in for an interview.
Not long after I interviewed for a recruiter position at a healthcare company. I was greeted warmly and the woman who interviewed me was upbeat, fully engaged in our conversation and interested in what I had to say. I left the interview feeling like the organization in question was a good one and that I had been treated with respect.
My philosophy as a recruiter is that even if the person being interviewed is not right for the opening at hand, they may be perfect for something down the line, so make the experience as positive as you can.
That, my friends, is what we call professional recruiting!

Something I wrote

What follows is something I wrote a few months ago. I never put the full text of it on this blog because it was very much about the candidates at the staffing firm I was working at and I didn't want to cause any problems. I no longer work there, so here it is...

Everyday I see the drawn, distraught faces of those who have given up...the furrowed brows, the sad eyes, the slump in the chair as they sit across from me. Once in awhile I see a glimmer of hope or determination or maybe even a little ambition.
But just once in awhile. Just every so often.
That alone weighs heavily on me. But then I sometimes have the burden of laying these people off, taking away what little $9.00 an hour hope I have managed to give them. I see the regrets etched on worn faces. Time lost to jail, lives drowned in alcohol, families broken by a needle or a pipe or a violent act. We all have regrets to be sure, but these are people who have let themselves and the course of their lives be dictated by the indiscretions of the past. Some are people who have no dreams beyond a paycheck for the next week or an evening at the tavern down the street.
Please don't make the mistake that I look down on any of them. Sometimes I see something almost heroic in their collective struggle to scrape by. I also think that this myopia as far as a vision of the future is very much a function of their origins. Simply, how can you have a bright outlook when you've never been taught to see one? How can you believe in yourself when you've never seen anyone who does? I think everyone has a rich vein of hope they can tap, but for so many it's buried under thick layers of despair and regret and fear and ignorance.
So what's the point of this depressive little dirge I've written? Lessons. I'm so full of life lessons right now, I think I'm going to burst. Here they are...

• Hope. Hope is paramount. Even when you can't see it, it's alwaysthere. Just because you can't see or feel the sun behind those gray clouds, it doesn't mean it's extinguished. It's always there.
• The future. The future is yours to conquer and you are not your past.
• Your life. It's your life to control and make the best of. Your life does not belong to your parents or your ex-husband or your mindless friends. It's yours. Take responsibility for it. Run with it until you're out of breath and can't run anymore.

A Bad Recruiter

Last week I had a job interview. It was a complete and utter waste of time.
I first met with the company’s in-house recruiter. I can’t say I was overly impressed with her…she struck me as being of the very anal-retentive, process-oriented branch of the staffing tree. She brought in the manager that I would be working under were I to get the position.
The two of them proceeded to spend the next 20 minutes more-or-less telling me why I wasn’t qualified for the position.
Hmmm…that’s fine. I left their offices with a very sour taste in my mouth, so I certainly wasn’t upset I wasn’t going to be working there. But neither should that recruiter.
I was certainly qualified for the position based on the standards set forth in their job posting. So if I truly wasn’t qualified, someone surely didn’t write a very good ad. Also, if I truly wasn’t qualified, why did they interview me in the first place? This was a waste of my time, her time and that manager’s time.
One of the fundamental things a recruiter does is separate the wheat from the chaff…sort the qualified candidates from the unqualified. This should be done at every opportunity. Write an effective job post or ad, so prospective candidates know whether they're qualified or not. When resumes come in, only shepherd the strongest prospects through the process.
Etc.
The other side of that coin is this…if they did have some interest in bringing me onboard, the recruiter and the manager both did a world-class bad job of selling me on their company as a good place to work. Both came off in an unpleasant, unprofessional fashion. Having left one, shall we say, less-than-positive work environment I certainly don’t want to get into another.

Whatever the case may be, that recruiter did a lousy job.