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The Citizen, 2016-03-31, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, MARCH 31, 2016. PAGE 5. Other Views To speak to a human, press zero G 4 our call is important to us." That is the biggest lie since Richard Nixon's "I am not a crook". Bigger than Bill Clinton's "I did not have sex with that woman". (I'm excluding anything said by Donald Trump. He is in a liar category occupied solely by himself.) "Your call is important to us" is a lullaby that is cooed by thousands of anonymous phonebots millions of times a day. It's what we hear when we call up banks, airlines, rental agencies or government offices. It means precisely the opposite of what it claims. Our calls are not important to them. If our calls mattered they would have a human being answering the phone instead of a recording. But that's what I heard when I called up my phone company: "Your call is important to us". Then the voice (So warm! So...chatty!) said: "For service in English, press One." From there I entered a wonderland of choices offered by the mellifluous voice on the phone. Was I inquiring about a business account? Press one. My balance? Press two. Repairs? Press three. All I wanted was to talk to a damn human but there is no button for that. At least not until I enter my "eight -digit phone number" followed by my "four or six - Arthur Black digit personal pin". I have about two dozen `personal pins' each created on the spot for whatever service I was trying to access at the time. I have no idea which one applies to my phone company. "The estimated wait time for the next operator is... five to seven minutes," the phonebot chirrups. "If you'd like us to call back, enter your eight -digit phone number and press one." No, I've slogged on this far. Besides my index finger is numb from pressing One. I'll hang on. Five minutes go by. Seven minutes. Suddenly my phone chirps: "You're awesome for waiting!" Oh please. I am already in a foul mood. I do not need to hear a robot telling me that I'm awesome. Bad language commences. Just when I'm at the point of exhausting my expletives something clicks in my ear and a voice comes on the line. A strongly accented voice says, "Hello, my name is Carla. Can I help you?" "Are you a human?" I ask, suspicious. The voice laughs. Laughs! "How can I help you?" Carla is a lifeboat for a man drowning in heavy seas. She lets me vent. She apologizes for my inconvenience. She empathizes for my misery. She assures me we can solve my phone problem. She will send me a new phone. It will take five to seven business days to arrive. She will — get this — phone me after seven business days to walk me through the installation process. I want to marry her. Carla is so good, so helpful and so genuinely human that I ask if I can speak to her boss. Another heavily accented voice comes on the line — this one male. I tell him Carla is a credit to the company, a beacon of civility and he should give her a raise. He is delighted to hear it. I ask him where the office is — I'd like to put my compliments in writing. Are you in Vancouver, I ask. Then it occurs to me — dummy — it's probably an American corporation. "I guess you're in the States, eh?" There is a pause at the other end. "Uh, no." the voice says. "We're in Indonesia." Only in the Third World you say. Pity. I guess the people have spoken 0 ne of the hardest things that I have to do for my job is reviewing the work of other people. Nowadays, it's typically plays that I review but, when I was younger and looking for my niche with The Sputnik, my school paper (I went to a satellite campus, get it?) didn't want to let me fill four pages with sports, and wanted to split the space. So I spent half my time generating content for the paper taking pictures and writing about hockey and the rest reviewing restaurants. Reviewing anything is difficult, but when it comes to things that can't necessarily be measured, or things that are purely a matter of taste, it gets that much harder. Reviewing a restaurant isn't easy but reviewing a play is infinitely harder in my opinion. For starters, there is no anonymity behind it. When I was a student working for a student publication, both the paper and myself existed in this kind of void where the only people who read it were students and faculty at the school. There was never any real fear of reprisal. With a play, however, there isn't just a chance you might have to deal with what you've written, it's a certainty. You have to book your tickets ahead of time and the theatre is going to know when you will be in the audience. Because of that lack of anonymity, running into someone who worked on the play and having to explain why you loved or hated it is a certainty. You will also run into someone who disagrees with what you've written and have to deal with that inevitability as well. Honestly, it's not an enjoyable part of my job and that's only made more difficult by the fact that, over the past six years, I've gotten to know many of the people involved in the plays I'm reviewing. That said, it's not something I shy away from. If something is great, mediocre, bad or somewhere in between, I'll say it and hope that the relationships I've built over the years will withstand that. As I've said, reviewers have to deal with meeting people who disagree with them and Denny Scott Denny's Den no bigger proof of that can be found than the box office smash that is Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. The movie was pretty much universally panned by critics who said it was horrible, though they usually said that in a few more words. It was disappointing for me to see the reviews because I do plan on seeing it, though likely in the comfort of my living room when it's released digitally. It had everything going for it: big names, a great story line to draw from, the same kind of "superhero team" mentality that The Avengers was able to benefit from and Zack Snyder at the helm as director. Snyder alone would be enough for me to want to see the film. He's produced some great comic book adaptations over the year including 300 and Watchmen, both films I feel set a bar for visual distinction. So with all these things going for it, it was disappointing to hear that Snyder had missed the mark as he is currently listed as producer or executive producer for several comic book film -adaptations set to follow it including Suicide Squad which will come out later this year, Wonder Woman in 2017 and Aquaman and The Flash in 2018 . He's also been named director of the spiritual successors to Batman v Superman, the Justice League films which focus on most of the heroes featured in the movies listed above. One of the biggest reliefs when reviewing anything is finding a review that agrees with your own evaluation, so all the reviewers who panned Batman v Superman must have felt somewhat relieved when their peers also came out and said the film was a miss. That said, it seems that much of that relief may have gone right out the window over the weekend. Not only did the reviews not seem to deter people from going to the movie, the movie has become one of the biggest openings of all time and the second-biggest for Warner Bros. While the film didn't exactly hit the $170.1 million the studio thought it would in its first weekend, it did bring in $166.1 million, which puts it seventh in terms of debut weekends behind Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. It set records for both a March debut and Easter weekend and for any DC Comics film including the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy which are lauded as the best DC Comics movies ever. While the critics panned the film, audiences didn't think it was that bad with most review aggregate sites (websites that take the critical and film -goer reviews of the film and average them out) seeing the film scoring as low as three out of 10 (or lower) with critics and seven or eight out of 10 for audiences. From the standpoint of a reviewer, I would think this is a nightmare. Not only does it mean you might have been wrong or got swept up in a tidal wave of negative reviews, but it could mean you have become something you shouldn't be as a reviewer: a snob. A reviewer, in my mind, has to let people know what something is going to be like and not let their preconceived notions taint the review. People like the movie and critics don't, showing the divide between those who are supposed to know what the general populace is going to enjoy and what they actually enjoy. It's happened before. Films have been panned and then loved by audiences. Films like The Boondock Saints brought in ratings of 20 per cent scores with critics and 91 per cent scores with audiences. The difference, however, for Batman v Superman is that so much is riding on this film being a success. With recurring roles to consider, the reviews must have been a harsh blow for the actors. Here's hoping that I find myself on the audience side and not the critic side when I do finally find time to catch the movie. 411. Shawn torniali" Loughlin Shawn's Sense One and done As I sat here late on deadline day, seconds and minutes ticking away with no idea what to write, two Letters to the Editor came along and got the wood stove in my brain cooking. There are two Letters to the Editor in this week's issue of The Citizen, both of which from residents I know well, concerned about the state of recreation in Huron East. I have to admit this issue has concerned me for a long time. This situation hasn't happened overnight and recreation centres in Huron East have carried deficits for a long time. It's hard running a recreation centre and they are most certainly not cheap. Admittedly, I don't necessarily have a solution to the problem of declining usage and increased costs (in a debate they always tell you not to complain unless you can offer a solution) but, like the writers of these two letters, I most definitely have concerns. If I had to boil my concerns down to one issue, it would be the talk of having one recreation centre to serve Huron East. Huron East is a huge, sprawling municipality that runs from the northern tip of the county nearly to the south, and simply put, residents deserve better. I understand that costs are on the rise and solutions seem few and far between, but in such a scenario, there are destined to be winners and losers. I know The Citizen has readers in both Seaforth and Brussels (and in areas in between), so how you'll feel about my theory — which is exactly that, so let's not get too excited — will differ depending on location. Under such a proposal — while nothing has been decided, or even discussed with any seriousness — it's my belief Seaforth residents will see no change, while those in Brussels better be ready to do a whole lot more driving. Every circle, as they say, has a centre, and for Huron East, that centre is commonly regarded as Seaforth. That may not be official, but it's certainly how many people around here feel. So under the one -recreation -centre approach, the smart money says Seaforth will be the location of that one recreation centre. This is not only a Huron East problem: in North Huron, residents of Blyth think Wingham gets all the provisions, while no doubt Wingham residents feel the same way about Blyth. In turn, East Wawanosh residents feel the same way about both. Central Huron has Clinton, South Huron has Exeter and all of Huron County has Goderich. There will be haves, have-nots and finger -pointing. I believe in the community centre as the heart of a community. It's not just a place where kids play hockey or where events are held. And if one recreation centre is built to serve all of Huron East, more residents than not are going to be alienated. It's also not a smart business model — revenue is down, so perhaps making it less convenient for the majority of residents is likely to turn even more people away — but I also understand that the bottom line is the bottom line and it is most definitely a factor. So, similar to my point last week about voting with your wallet, you need to be the brush with which you paint your masterpiece. So, use the Brussels, Morris and Grey Community Centre and communicate to your councillors how important it is to you, because if we don't use it, as they say, we'll lose it. One recreation centre for Huron East isn't a model that serves the community. It may serve the bottom line and look good on paper (although even then I'm not so sure), but it doesn't serve the families of Huron East.