The Vanishes: August 2009

Disneys new pop princess

Move over, Miley, there’s a new teen queen in town: Not only did Selena Gomez rule the airwaves on Friday night when her Wizards of Waverly Place: The Movie scored the highest rating of any cable TV show this year, but she also premiered the video for her first single, “Falling Down,” in front of an already-captive audience.

Directed by Chris Dooley (he’s worked with Jewel and the Scissor Sisters), the stylized vid mimics a concert with the Disney star rocking out with her band, The Scene, on a circular stage while a projection of patterns swirl around in the background. According to the 17-year-old, the catchy pop song is “basically about Hollywood and what people think about it; and essentially how plastic it is sometimes.”

It’s a brutal world that the petite Texan-Mexicana seems to be dealing with just fine. Her upcoming album, Kiss and Tell, drops on September 29 and she can’t wait. “The fact that I can say I have a record is a dream come true,” she recently wrote on her MySpace page.

Ahhh, it seems like just yesterday that a seven-year-old Selena was running around with Demi Lovato on Barney & Friends. Here she is now

RIP

TMZ and The New York Post are both reporting that DJ AM, real name Adam Goldstein, was found dead this afternoon in his NYC apartment. He was only 36.

The cops say his friends had not heard from him for a few days. When his friends went to check on him, they didn't get any response after knocking on his door. The police were called and they knocked down the door to his apartment. Sources tell the NY Post that drug paraphernalia was found in his apartment.

It was almost a year ago when DJ AM and Travis Barker both survived a fatal plane crash in South Carolina.

This is absolutely crazy and tragic. Everyone on Twitter is saying this is like Final Destination
(and the fourth movie opens today, gulp). I don't know about that, but I do know this is all sorts of sad. The Summer of Death needs to end. Can it be Autumn already?

Rest in peace, DJ AM.

XTINA RUNWAY

What do you get when you combine 16 designer wannabes, a supermodel hostess, and tons of drama? The sixth season of Project Runway of course! This season takes place in LA and soulful singer Christina Aguilera is one of the celebrities to make a guest appearance on the show. The Ecuadoriana will appear during challenges set for the new contestants. And who better to help judge then a woman who’s donned numerous fashion trends. From her "Genie in a Bottle" debut as an innocent blonde princess, to a "Dirrty" diva in leather chaps, and now a glamorous mami with platinum blonde curls and bright red lips reminiscent of old Hollywood, she’s seen it all.

Host Heidi Klum will again be on the judging panel, along with mentor Tim Gunn and judges Nina Garcia and Michael Kors. “We all had a lot of fun. We laughed a lot and we saw some great fashion,” Klum said of the new season. The new series finished filming in February but won’t air until August 20.

Don’t worry, though, while it was fun it wasn’t always rainbows and butterflies on set. “The girls are very strong on season six. There's a lot of crying, there's fighting going on, there's a lot of drama going on, but especially with the girls,” Klum said. You’ll definitely get a dose of some good old-fashioned commotion and chaos. Let the sew-off begin!

WTF

Despite having breast implants, both Kendra Wilkinson and Kourtney Kardashian still want to breastfeed, the moms-to-be tell the new issue of Us Weekly (on newsstands now).

"I was so scared that I wasn't going to be able to nurse that when I saw stuff come out of my nipples the other day, I was like, I can breast-feed?" Wilkinson, 24, tells Us Weekly in an exclusive joint interview with Kardashian, 30. "And I asked my doctor, who said, 'That's fine, but it's not milk yet!'"

See intimate photos from Kendra's wedding to Hank Baskett

Adds Kardashian (who, like Wilkinson, is also due in December), "They say usually you can [breast-feed with implants]. I want to."

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BRACE YOURSELF

Straight To The Point

NY Mets Fans send me your name and
address and you'll get what's promised.

Todd Haley And Josh McDaniels need to
stop smoking the pipe !

Latest sad state of affairs for the
modern day ball player.

This lady has got more than just junk
in her trunk. Maybe water on the brain.

HOTT JOINT

Nicole Scherzinger reportedly has been shot down by Kaya Jones after the ex-member of The Pussycat Dolls includes a Nicole lookalike in a music video for her debut single "Hollywood Doll". In the newly-outed video, the girl who resembles Nicole is seen narrated as a person who is busy with herself, posing under the flashing lights and gracing the covers of her platinum selling albums.

Kaya Jones left The Pussycat Dolls around 2004 after she recorded a cover version of Pablo Beltran Ruiz's song "Sway" with the other Dolls and appeared with them in a music video for the single. After departing from the girl group, Kaya pursued a solo career and is currently working on her debut album.

Simply Montag

Heidi Montag is getting lots of kudos from her sister-in-law and fellow "Hills" star, Stephanie Pratt, who loved seeing Heidi shake and shimmy to her new single, "Body Language," on live TV on Sunday night at the Miss Universe pageant.

"Heidi looks bangin' [in Playboy], but even better was her Miss Universe [performance] last night," she told MTV News. "Freaked out. ... I was on a stool, just, like, 'I cannot wait for this!' I love 'Body Language.' Blown away. She's never looked better. I thought she did absolutely amazing. I think she really could have blown it, and I really think this is a career possibility." Pratt revealed that when she initially heard about Heidi's appearance, she didn't have high expectations. She thought Montag's show would consist of "doing, like, arm signals and just singing," but she was surprised to see the fully choreographed performance with backup dancers.

"Whoever that makeup artist was deserves an award," she said. "The hair, amazing. The body suit that Britney Spears kind of wore, but sexier. ... I mean, it's not like she's a young Britney Spears, because Britney is just, like, God love her. Love her."

Pratt was happy to see that Heidi is finally getting to live out the dream that she's been sharing with her friends and family for years. "When I first met her, she said she wanted to be a pop star, and this was like three years ago," she said, though she still seemed surprised that Montag was actually able to pull it off. "Who really can be a pop star unless you've been singing and dancing forever? We've never seen Heidi take a dance class or anything like that."

MTV Shows

Selena Y los The Scene

Disney princess Selena Gomez released the cover art for her forthcoming debut album, Kiss & Tell. The album, which features her band The Scene, hits stores on September 29.

The cover art features a close-up shot of "The Wizards of Waverly Place" star's face with a sparkly, pink heart on her lips. The singer Tweeted the photo and told her fans, "Here it is!!! I can't wait for you guys to hear it!"

She also Tweeted a photo of her and her band on the set of her music video for her first single, "Falling Down." She said that they all were "rockin it at the video shoot!"

Aceshowbiz.com reports that the song, which debuts on radio Disney on August 21, is "about Hollywood and what people think about it; and essentially how plastic it is sometimes." The video is set to be released later on before the album's release.

Selena recently took to her MySpace page to talk about the album, noting that releasing it is "a dream come true." "The whole process is so much fun and very therapeutic," she said. "Most of my friends are amazing musically so to step into that for a while has been an incredible experience for me."

She thanked her fans for being supportive of her music career in the post and added that the music is "fun, energetic, empowering." "I'm still new and still figuring out where I want to be musically," she said. "But I think this is a good start ... hopefully."

So, are you going to be buying Selena's album?

Octo trah talk!

OMG this is too funny OctoMom is ripping Reality TV mom Kate Gosselin.
there bothe fame whores if you ask me!

Get Connected To The Sports Roundtable !

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Learned Along the Way #2

Jason-

Good stuff. Looking forward to the webinar on Wednesday. My young professional card was taken away from me a couple of years ago, but I absolutely learned some valuable lessons during that period of my life. I will start with this one...

#2: Clarity of Purpose

I think that when you come up with an idea and decide that you are going to "do something" it is very important to be clear on what you want to accomplish and also why you want to accomplish it. When you take something out to the world (an idea, a product, a service, a message) you may not get the response you were hoping for. You may not get any response at all...and that indifference may lead you to believe that your idea, product or message is not of value...especially if you are a young professional / emerging leader and have not taken anything out to the world before. This is why clarity of purpose is important.

Truth be told, people are much better at finding and recognizing what is popular than they are at finding and recognizing what is valuable. In my experience this is regardless of level of education or professional status. If you take something out to the world (an idea, a product, a service, a message) that is new and of real value it is likely that 99.9% of people will not know how to respond initially or they will be confused or resistant to what you are proposing. Staying connected to why you are carrying your particular message or idea can be valuable in fighting through this.

I think that having real clarity on the what and why has proven to be a valuable lesson for me and I think it overlaps nicely with what you said about Making Big Plans.

-joe

The August 15th Sports Roundtable Replay

And catch us every Saturday Morning from
8AM - 10AM on 1170AM WDIS and WDISAM.COM

Learned Along the Way #1

Joe,

As we've been preparing for our Get Connected Webcast next week with Rebecca Ryan and Next Generation Consulting, it's gotten me thinking about our experience as young professionals. Since between us, we've started or helped start four young professionals organizations over the past 10 years and we both had some early success in our careers, I'm hoping that we learned something along the way.

In the spirit of trying to help others learn from our mistakes and experience so that they might be far more successful than we ever were, I propose this question for the two of us:

What are the most significant things we have learned through our experience as young professionals?

This is a particularly interesting question for me as an HR leader who has the responsibility to develop our next generation of leaders within my organization. I call on my own experiences frequently when coaching others on how to excel and be effective as a YP.

Here is my first offering of lessons learned.

#1: Make Big Plans

I think that this learning was a fairly easy one for us because we were both naturally inclined towards dreaming and defining compelling visions of the future. As young professionals, we had the advantage of both optimism and naivety. It turns out that people love talking about big dreams and plans. As we were founding organizations like Next Generation Omaha, we never talked about starting a networking group but rather we talked about creating an organization that would be "a catalyst to make Omaha a cooler place to live." It wasn't about forming a group, it was about transforming a city. And we had some specific ideas on how we could make it happen.

In my opinion, too many YP groups are being formed today for the sake of having a YP group. The really successful groups have a compelling vision that drives them. The magic of big plans and big dreams is that it compels people around you to think bigger thoughts. Most people want to be a part of something big, they want to make a difference. Engaging them in your vision for the future is important. This lesson has served me well through out my career as a leader because people want to follow a leader who has a clear vision of the future.

Jason

Sonny & Cher or McNabb & Vick ?

Marbury's Career??? Up in Smoke !

Tiger and Tigger Too !

Hey Francouer, HEADS UP !

Whoa Jessica Whoa !
Simpson rides that Colt (Brennan)

Badwater??? More like a
Terrible decision !

Nurse Practitioner Schools names top 50 PPD blogs, including this one!

The Nurse Practitioner Schools web site has a listing of the top 50 postpartum depression support blogs, sites and online communities that are out there on the web. It's a very comprehensive listing, including not only this blog, but also some really stellar blogs by women who have become women's health advocates after experiencing their own bout of PPD.

Of course, some of my absolute favorites are on the list, such as Dr. Shoshana Bennett's Postpartum Depression Recovery blog, Susan Dowd Stone's PerinatalPro blog and my friend Ivy's PPD blog.

It's well worth it to check out the list in its entirety. It's organized by type, so whether you're looking for a PPD blog written by a mom or one written by a professional or a blog that's geared solely for dads, you can find whatever you need here. There are some truly amazing stories of hope within these sites, as well as fantastic resources.

Idol or not?

Get them dazy dukes ready cuz New York Post is reporting that pop singer actress Jessica Simpson might indeed be a judge for TV reality show American Idol, but not for just one episode.

They are also reporting that Jessica might indeed be not only a judge, but a permanent judge for the show! Reports also say that Jessica's father/manager Joe Simpson is pushing her towards taking the role. He claims that would be the perfect replacement for Paula Abdul.

And there are other rumors saying that Paula wanted to come back on Idol as a judge, but since they are trying to figure out the whole situation with Jessica, who knows what might happen next.

Should Jessica be a permanent judge on American Idol?

More on "stick-to-it-ness" and What Really Matters

Really good topic Jason, and I think that this is a really good example of what makes the concept of “talent” far more complex and contextual than we often think. Gladwell is one of the thinkers that has done a good job of reminding us of this. I think that resilience, work-ethic and the other characteristics you mention are all really important to long term success, though they are probably difficult to evaluate for, identify and measure...though we all probably know them when we see them.

One of the things that this post brought to mind for me was the importance of knowing what really matters as an organization. I think that we tend to over-estimate our ability to measure and even define "talent", but we probably do even worse on these other characteristics that you mention.

I am a fan of Bob Sutton. I read his blog regularly and have read a few books authored or co-authored by him. My favorite is The No Asshole Rule, which does a nice job showing that when we do find someone that is talented (a high performer) we often overlook all the other really important stuff (respect, integrity, etc.) which can do a lot of damage to organizational culture over time.

I think that the idea of “cultural fit” is dicey at best and horribly flawed at worst, but I do think it is critically important to:
-know your organizational culture and what behaviors and characteristics support it
-integrate that information into your employment branding, recruiting, hiring, on-boarding and development practices
This helps you as an organization be who you claim to be, rather than having a mission statement that says something very happy and shiny and having employees and leaders behaving in a very different manner.

The second thing that this brings to mind for me is that we are desperately in need of a new way of leadership. Leadership that delivers results is one thing and is valuable in the short term. Leadership that identifies, supports and rewards integrity, respect, work-ethic, etc. is a very different thing and one that is in short supply today.

-joe

The Mad Stork Takes A Look

The only reason to believe the
Yankees SHINE

No Regrets for Bronson Arroyo, at least he's being honest.

No Schumi comeback for Ferrari

The (Pitino) truth comes out !

Landon Donovan, The Swine !

Andrian Beltre plays Balls Out !

UFL Names it

USFL 2010 ? ? ?

Go Here for the Sports Roundtable 8-10AM
Saturdays on WDIS 1170AM !

The Show You May Have Missed

A rebroadcast of the August 8th Edition
of the Sports Roundtable. Enjoy !

Stick-to-it-ness

Joe,

How much does sheer determination and persistence play in success?

This is apparently a topic that I was supposed to think about because it's shown up in a lot of places for me recently. Just this week, I was having a conversation with one of my new friends, Fran Melmed, about the potential impact this economy will have on Generation Y. For me, one of the questions that has not yet been answered is whether or not Gen Y has the resilience and work ethic to really make a game-changing difference in our workplace. I suspect that this idea got in my head via Kris Dunn in his post about selecting for Grit and probably was reinforced by the fact that I finally finished reading Outliers by Malcolm Glawell.

I've always felt that sheer work ethic and resilience makes up for a lack of talent in a lot of situations (just watch all the classic underdog to champion sports movies based on real-life stories). We have become infatuated with Talent in HR over the past several years, but there's nothing more useless as a leader than an individual with loads of talent but no desire to use it.

So, this led me to think about where this work-ethic comes from. I concluded that in large part it's formed pretty early on as you develop as a child into an adult. I fancy myself a pretty resilient guy with a solid work ethic and I think my track record has proven that out. I give my parents all the credit for that. This made me wonder what else we develop (or don't develop) as children under our parents or guardian's supervision that becomes critical to success later in life? Here's my list of a few from my own experience:

Confidence. Some people are blessed with parents who brainwash them into thinking that anything is possible. Others aren't so fortunate. Just knowing that someone else believes in you can shape how you view taking chances and seizing opportunity.

Integrity. In my house growing up, it was made very clear that there was a zero tolerance policy for lying-we always told the truth. More than that, it was also made clear that if you made a mistake or did something stupid, the best course of action was to come clean immediately and deal with the consequences. If you tried to lie your way out of a problem, it was going to be bad for you, REALLY BAD.

Respect. I knew growing up that calling people names, making fun of others, or generally doing anything that makes someone else feel bad about themselves was a bad thing and was not acceptable. I most certainly didn't take to this lesson immediately, but I got it eventually. This caused me to be very aware of how I interacted with others and the impact my words could have on others.

Turns out, these are all important traits that I look for in a great employee these days. And, they are each things that are really tough to teach to someone as an adult if they don't already have some sort of foundation built.

So, what do you think about the importance of resilience and work-ethic to success?

Jason

New Age Networking, part 2

Jason-

I surely do not qualify as a social networking expert, guru or thought-leader as the world clearly has plenty of those, but I will respond to the best of my ability. I think that despite all the chatter, and noise and expertise, there is still substantial confusion and misunderstanding about networking...what it really is, how it really works, why it is really valuable. And whether you are networking in real life or on Facebook, this confusion and misunderstanding is what negatively impacts peoples ability to build and use real social capital.

I do not think that there is any such thing as "new age networking", networking is networking. We do however have a growing array of new tools to use in our networking efforts and I think that many of them are quite powerful...if used appropriately.

Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook (a few of my favorites) do not replace phone calls or face to face meetings, but they do allow me to really tap into some of the characteristics of networks that phone calls, hand shakes and lunch meetings do not.

Twitter allows me to find a lot of new people and very easily develop a basic connection to them that may or may not evolve. I can bring a great deal of diversity into my network (professional diversity, geographic diversity and other types of diversity) that I would have a really hard time connecting to in other ways. As you know, diversity is one of the things that can make a network really powerful. And it is easy for me to experiment with Twitter...I can easily follow and un-follow people.

LinkedIn allows me to really tap into the exponential nature of my network, as I can not only tap into the ideas, experiences and perspectives of the people that I am directly connected to, but I can also tap into the people that they are connected to...and the people that they are connected to. The numbers get pretty big, pretty fast. The exponential nature of a network often remains hidden and under-utilized in the world of phone calls and handshakes.

So, the more things change, the more they stay the same. I think that there is nothing really new about social capital, going back to How To Win Friends and Influence People...maybe going back further than that. We do however have a lot more research on how networks form and function, and we certainly have new tools to apply to our efforts to build social capital. Regardless of what we are using it is the quality of the those interactions that makes them matter...and yes, I agree there are people that think they are doing more networking than ever before, but they are only collecting numbers.

-joe

Sox Get Socked, Manning Gets PAID

Reggie Miller gets more than PUNK'D

Josy Altidore Goes Premiere (League)

New Age Networking

Joe,

Do you think that the creation of social networks online might actually be having a negative impact on the how "networked" people are in their personal and professional lives? I'm beginning to think that while social networks are fantastic for information sharing and gathering, that they don't do much to form real relationships between two people. This struck me the other day as I realized that any time I make a meaningful potential connection on Twitter, the conversation quickly moves to a phone call or a face to face meeting of some sort.

Perhaps the more important question is what role face to face communication plays in the formation of relationships. I remember that in my early days as an executive recruiter, I always worked hard to get an in-person meeting with my clients because the relationship with the clients I had met were always more solid than those who I'd only talked to over the phone. I'm not sure why this happens, but there definitely seems to be a bond that forms from having met a person and spent a little time with them.

When you and I were first trained in what it means to network, the concept of networking online didn't exist. It was about shaking hands and having lunch, it wasn't about how many followers you had. This reminds me of the impact that online job boards like Monster.com have had on job seekers. Prior to those boards existing, people had to network to find jobs. Sure, they could send off cover letters and resumes to employers, but it seemed that most people understood that to find that good job you had to reach out to people and do some networking. Today, many job seekers spend a majority of their time online, searching job postings and emailing resumes because it feels like they are searching for a job. Yet, the truth is that picking up the phone and networking is the most effective way to find a job. The job boards aren't bad, but they certainly help employers out far more than job seekers and worse, the existence of the job boards has actually caused job seekers to do less of the activity that would actually have the biggest impact on finding a job--networking.

So, I worry that while social networks might be giving people the feeling that they are doing more networking than ever before, it's actually have the opposite effect. Rather than setting up a breakfast meeting or even scheduling a phone call to start creating a real relationship, we spend our time following another 200 people on twitter who may never know or care about who we really are.

Jason

A bit of mejia

British Singer and Former Member of the 80's pop group Bros, Matt Goss has just released a brand new music video titled "Evil", the first cut off his upcoming album Gossy out on September 15th. The song was released via iTunes on August 4th, 2009. It features the lovely and talented Natalie Mejia from the R&B/Dance Trio Girlicious. Enjoy!

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Kelly hooks up!

VH1 Diva Kelly Clarkson graces the cover of next month’s Self magazine, and the singer wows in a silky purple top and white denim. The Idol winner is known for embracing her shape and snubbing society’s obsession with the stick-thin skinny look, and she totally owns it in this picture.

Clarkson told an Australian radio station in June that she is super comfortable in her own skin. “I love my body,” said Kelly. “I’m very much OK with it. I don’t think artists are ever the ones who have the problem with their weight, it is other people.”

Spoken like a true down-to-earth diva!

Stay the hell away from Brit Brit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan at the Grand Star Jazz Club in L.A. (8/2)

So I guess Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan are friends now or something. The two were spotted hanging out together at the Grand Star Jazz Club in LA late Sunday night. An insider told Life & Style:

Dont do it britney the girl is TOXIC.

Dwan Richards graces the cover of Honey Magazine.Her inspired rihana look is a step up from her Danity Kane days.We love her sound she sounds like a bit of Toni Braxton the single FALLS AWAY is some things she been working on.Cant wait til the album comes out.You Go Dawn

WHY WHY?

Some please tell me why this bitch missed up this song?im sure she could have came up with her own shit.What du u think?

Disney Skank

Some pepole never learn.Risky photos of Vanessa Hudegen surface the net again.How dumb can u be?Why do these Disney whores act crazy in front of any camera other than Disneys lololol.And just when everyone started to like her again.waiting for the sex tape anytime.THE SAD THING IS SHE NOT EVEN 21 YET

Sports Round Table 8-1-09

Dog Days Of Summer

In case your over in Shanghai pick
me up one of these. Sooner or later
it will probably ring true.

Phelps answers back, but he's an
awkard looking dude isn't he? lol

Michelle Kwan wins a different kind of award.
One that tells us that education counts too

Personal Responsibility #5

Jason-

I have been struggling with the idea of whether some or all or none of this comes to us naturally. Still not sure where I am at on that, but I would add a different perspective to what you have already outlined. I like the three components you have pointed to and I think that those are all things that can be intentionally baked into an organizational culture and especially into professional and leadership development programs.

In addition to the individual work, which is probably the most important, I think we also have to get out of the way of people. I think that we have to let people fail.

I believe we do a poor job of preparing, supporting and developing leaders in most organizations and there is far too much micro-managing...too much stepping in and interfering, both when things are going well and when they are going poorly. People are not often enough allowed to truly succeed and truly fail from their own efforts.

I think that it gets hard to have a sense of personal responsibility if you start to expect someone else is always going to get involved before long anyway. We need to remove space and buffers (within the organizational setting) between people and the consequences of their actions.

I hate to take the issue of "personal responsibility" and turn into another rant against the man, but I do think this is part of the issue. I have a two year old daughter at home and if I do not let her bust her chin or her knee up from time to time, she is probably just going to keep doing more daredevil stuff.

I think that people need to brush directly up against those consequences from time to time.

-joe

The Vanishes