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Unless you were born rich, you’ll know just how much of a necessary evil job interviews are. I say evil because, for many of us, it’s a draining experience—like a leech, it feeds on our life essence, inevitably leading us into a lifetime of servitude to corporate Utopian dictatorship. Or something.But work is hard, and getting work is sometimes even harder because there are too many things that can go wrong during a job interview. And it’s not just you—it’s the interviewer who can also pull a doozy.Whatever the case, folks were recently talking about it, and so below are...

Norma Jones cooks at the Close to Home St. Mary’s Center transitional housing in West Oakland on Jan. 12, 2023. (Photo by Martin do Nascimento, CalMatters) Norma Johnson cracks a faint smile as she adjusts her stylish cat-eye glasses. She’s at St. Mary’s Center’s cafeteria in West Oakland, where older adults in interim housing or living on the streets can drop by for a free meal. But Johnson’s mind is elsewhere.  Her treasured red leather rocking chair, along with most of her belongings, sits in a storage unit. She’s afraid if she doesn’t pay her $500 balance soon, the storage...

Eight-year-old Quinn has been selling Girl Scout cookies in her hometown of Telluride since joining her local troop four years ago. Because the cookie and ski seasons overlap, she and her mom, Cathleen Sowinski, like to set up a table in the plaza at Mountain Village and sell the famous sweets to out-of-town visitors as they come off the slopes. It’s a successful strategy and perhaps a necessary one. Telluride boasts just a few thousand permanent residents to whom local Girl Scouts can sell door-to-door and there aren’t the big grocery stores where scouts in the city often set up...

Comparing the Mechanics, Manufacturing, and Value, of the Retired Savage Fox A Grade and the Original A.H. Fox A Grade Grouse hunters are oddballs. I know, because I am one. While a lot of people think it’s strange to spend your free time walking through the woods with a dog, a gun, and no place to go, there’s nothing I’d rather do in October and November. The Savage Fox A Grade is also an oddball. Even though it says “Fox” all over it, this side-by-side shotgun has little in common with the original A.H. Fox shotgun. And that’s what I...

(Welcome to Scariest Scene Ever, a column dedicated to the most pulse-pounding moments in horror with your tour guides, horror experts Chris Evangelista and Matt Donato. In this edition, Matt gets back to the basics of fear in "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.")Since I picked "The Bear" last time and got cheeky with "Scariest Scene Ever," this week I return to more traditional roots. A finger-lickin' American horror classic. Tobe Hooper's "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" introduced Leatherface to the masses, and kickstarted one of the genre's most erratic slasher franchises. There are a few sequences that horror fans might choose as the...