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"Samba Skindim" by Gerardo Frisina 
Summer is finally here and what better way to celebrate than a little latin jazz? I love the breezy bossa nova feel of this tune from Italian DJ and music producer, Gerardo Frisina. It's like a long lost song from Brasil '66.
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Spent last Saturday in LA proper and between eating great food and seeing great friends, managed to find time to visit the Michael Kohn Gallery in West Hollywood.
Fifty of David Lynch's photos inspired by the recent Dangermouse/Sparklehorse music collaboration entitled Dark Night of the Soul are on exhibit there. Some of the photos are creepy and abstract; some are strange retro slices of 1950s life as only David Lynch could imagine them.
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I was just included in a US News & World Report article!
Here's the article:
It is, no doubt, some job seekers' worst interview nightmare: an hour on the phone answering questions posed not by a hiring manager but by a psychologist. Or, even more frightening, several hours in an office with a psychologist, quietly filling out multiple-choice tests, or even performing workplace simulations with paid actors.Marketing executive So Young Park started scouting for a new job in November, the middle of the worst recession in two-and-a-half decades. Park's search took about four months, and she was asked—by three different companies—to have a talk with a psychologist. "I had never had to do one before," Park says. Indeed, experts suggest that this economy may have created a perfect storm of reasons for companies to embrace psychologists in the hiring process: Employers are struggling to filter the right hire from truckloads of candidates, and the ugly marketplace means good hires are even more critical to a company's success.
Stuart Sidle, director of the industrial-organizational psychology program at the University of New Haven and a consultant on hiring, says use of psychologists has become more mainstream in recent years, and employers have become more upfront about it. In the recession, while overall business has dipped because hiring has taken a dive, companies have insisted on more comprehensive—and time-consuming—hiring processes when filling positions. A bad hire can create enormous havoc—and financial distress—for an organization, and today's companies are trying to improve their batting averages, says Scott Erker, a senior vice president at Development Dimensions International.
The goal of psychologists in hiring is really to discover the knowledge and skills that would be associated with success in the position they are helping fill—and then to follow a fairly structured format for the assessment. Some executive interview assessments can be costly events involving job simulations that attempt to mimic a tough (even stressful) scenario or meeting that might be encountered on the job. Often, the psychologist will play a role in the simulation, but it's also common to pay trained actors to play the parts of frustrated consumers or aggravated employees. Most of the time, however, the assessments should not be stressful to the candidate. "If stress is not an attribute of the job...you want people to feel calm and to understand what's going on," Sidle says. Whether a psychologist spends a few hours in testing with a possible manager or spends all day assessing a prospective executive, the bottom line is fit. For example, a prudent supervisor who runs a tight ship may be a great manager, but if the client company is looking for an innovator, it won't be the right match.
Personality evaluations are not new to corporate America. William Whyte wrote of personality tests in his 1956 bestseller The Organization Man that "many social scientists have assured me that this bowdlerization of psychology is a contemporary aberration soon to be laughed out of court." (Whyte then offered workers tips on beating the tests, insisting that it's best to offer the most "conventional, run of the mill, pedestrian answer possible" when prompted to offer an individual perspective.) Psychologists may have even been somewhat common interview participants from the 1950s through the 1970s, but they had almost completely disappeared by the 1980s, says Peter Cappelli, a management professor and director of the Center for Human Resources at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business. Today, Cappelli's students are being interviewed by psychologists again. "It is making something of a comeback," he says. "I'd say the reason that there's more attention paid to this now . . . is not only is it hard to figure out who's a good person to hire, but it's hard to figure out who will actually fit into the organization."
The psychological examinations of the 1950s are quite different from those being used to filter candidates now. In earlier days, questions could run to the slightly absurd by probing an individual's sexual habits, religious dogmatism, or struggles with depression. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 changed the way companies performed psychological analysis, and severely limited the use of questions that would reveal a medical impairment, like depression. In fact, organizational psychologists today might be the interviewers least likely to form biases. Traditional interviewers tend to make their calls on a candidate within the first three minutes of meeting, Sidle says, often basing their judgment on superficial criteria, such as the college the candidate attended, physical appearance, or interests and activities. The interviewer then spends the rest of the interview trying to confirm that immediate bias, in favor or against the job seeker, Sidle says. Psychologists aren't immune to similar judgments—they are human, after all—but they tend to be able to evaluate their own biases.
http://www.usnews.com/articles/business/careers/2009/06/17/why-a-psychologist-might-be-at-your-next-interview.html
Check out more job tips.
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Brea, CA in Orange County is surrounded by great restaurants--from awesome ethnic restaurants in La Habra, Rowland Heights, and Garden Grove to college haunts in Fullerton and Pomona to family fare in Anaheim to more upscale and seaside eats up and down the South Coast only 20 mins away in Newport and Laguna Beach.
Brea itself though has so much shopping (and the chains that go with it) that good eats can be hard to find amidst the malls, cars & palm trees. And especially when you just want to go for a work lunch, you really don't want to drive more than 5 or 10 mins. Brea proper is not exactly a food mecca, but you can still eat pretty well and avoid fast food.
Here's a short list of places I like to go to grab a bite and you won't find a mega-chain name in the bunch.
If you have a tad bit more time, grab a real Italian sub or the best chicken salad sandwich ever to go from Claro's Italian Market in north La Habra, or drive down to Fullerton and stand in line for homemade Mexican at El Camino Real or pretend you're in the West Village at the cute & chic Rialto Cafe (also super for brunch).
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Recently, I put a note on LinkedIn.com saying that if you were a friend of mine, I'd be happy to post your resume on my blog. I was pleased to hear from Artie who I know from when we were both at A&E and The History Channel. I ran the direct marketing business and he was the head of marketing for The History Channel and then later A&E.
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Several months ago, I decided I wanted to move back to civilization (i.e. leave rural Southern Oregon). This meant I had to leave my job and find a new one. I had the luxury (especially in this economy) of being able to look while I was still working.
Hope this helps. :) Good luck, be patient, and stay positive!
N.B. My Top 10 Job Tips made it into U.S. News & World Report in the article The Hard Truth About Getting Hired.
Want more job tips? Check out my advice on What to Consider When Making a Job Switch.
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"Take It Easy San Francisco" by Emily Wells
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