--While I was driving the younger Secret to school this morning,
we were blasting Dream Police
by Cheap Trick.Or as a guy I
used work with in Greensboro called them, The Cheap Trick.
This got me to thinking...
Dream Police was released in
1979, which was 28 years ago.The
Secret is nine years old.So,
when I was nine, in 1972, if my parents had rocked the popular music
from 28 years earlier, it would’ve been from 1944.And according to this, Bing Crosby was the big deal that year.
Needless to say, this would’ve turned me into the laughing stock
of Dunbar Elementary.I can
just see me opening the door of the Monte Carlo and Bing’s deep-ass boo boo
boo rolling out, right in front of Timi Johnson and his
“crew.”We probably
would’ve had to leave the state.
Is the Cheap Trick of 2007 the Bing Crosby of 1972?Somehow I doubt it.But
what do you think?Am I doing
irreparable harm to my kids by playing antique music from a different
era?
Does Dream Police sound like
freakin’ harpsichord music straight out of Queen Elizabeth’s
drawing room to the kids of today?Or
is most everything that came after the Beatles acceptable for all
ages?
And on a related note… when is Bun E. Carlos getting his own
Christmas special?Man, I’m
ready!
--I attended a “career
fair” yesterday afternoon.Not
a job fair, mind you, a career fair.A
Large Insurance Company We All Know threw this shindig, and it’s a
place I’d like to work.So I
went.
I had some concerns about the pay, though. The ad was fairly cryptic,
but it sounded like they might’ve
been targeting folks looking for an entry-level position.But if I could just get in there and sit down face-to-face with
a human resources person, something exciting might happen...That was my half-baked plan.
The building is what’s commonly known as fancy-pants, and when I
passed through the elaborate front doors I saw forty or fifty people
sitting and standing around, with bored expressions on their faces.What in the tap-dancin’ heck?
A woman behind a desk called me over, and took my resume.After a few perfunctory questions, she told me to have a seat
if I could find one, and they’d call my name when they were ready
for me.
I considered leaving at this point (what am I, a complete douche?), but the crowd was surprisingly
professional-looking.There
were only a couple of men wearing wife-beaters and/or Subway Jared’s
“before” pants.I saw but
one pink baseball cap turned sideways, and only a handful of
scraggly-haired fat women with neck tattoos and a powerful right hook.
Yes, it was an impressive-looking group, and that gave me hope.Perhaps the jobs available are worth waiting for?So I sat down next to the poor man’s Justin Timberlake, and
prepared to hold my pee for at least another hour.
Justin gave me a cool little “sup?” lift of his chin, and I
answered with a silent, “blow it out your ass.”
They called us in groups of ten.Every
half-hour or so, the woman behind the desk cranked off ten names, and
those people were loaded onto an elevator, and transported into the
bowels of the building.I was
included in the third group, which was created at least ninety minutes
after I arrived.
As we piled into the confined space, I started worrying it might be a
trick.Had I seen any of the
previous people leave?I
didn’t think I had...
They’re killing ‘em!This
so-called career fair is nothing but a ruse to harvest fresh meat and
satisfy the freakish cannibalistic needs of the CEO and his support
staff!They’re probably up
there right now stripped to the waist, covered in blood, gnawing
detached forearms and laughing like maniacs!
It’s a Bentley Little novel come to life!!
But, surprisingly enough, that wasn’t the case.I was interviewed by an HR person, and it went well, I guess.I noticed that many were sent packing after this stage of the
game, but I was assigned a “hiring specialist,” or something along
those lines.
This specialist eventually called me into her inner-sanctum, and began
reading my resume.And she
said, “You know how much these positions pay, don’t you?”“Um, no,” I answered.How
in the hell would I know that?
She said, “You were an operations manager?”I said yeah, and that was the end of the road.They weren’t interviewing for positions “at that level”
tonight.“Are there any
positions at that level
open?” I asked.“Check the
website,” she said.Clearly
they were too busy to sit around and shoot the shit.
So, that was that.Several
hours invested, and all I got out of it was a plastic pen and some
post-it notes emblazoned with the company logo.
Perhaps I am a complete
douche?That’s what I was
contemplating as I found sweet (and fiery hot) relief inside a marble
bathroom way down at the end of the hall…
--I’ll leave you now with
one of the more obscure and unusual Smoking Fish sightings to date.Check it out, right here. Very, very cool.Thanks, Bill!
And that’ll just about do it for today, boys and girls. I’m going
to have homemade taco salad for lunch.What did you have... or what are you planning to have?We need to know, dammit.
File this one under “not one of his finest efforts,” and I’ll
see you guys tomorrow.
If you can't stand the heat, I'm
right there with ya
--