Thursday, April 30, 2009

Crazy family of eight travel from A to B on just TWO wheels





The Guild BTS Specials

There are two new Guild specials up on MSN Video.

First one is Meet the Characters where the cast talks about their character and how they interact with the other characters. http://bit.ly/xEiGZ

Second one is Meet the Extras and that's the one I shot, produced and edited. I talk with several of the extras during the four day shoot for episodes 9, 10, 11 and 12. http://bit.ly/PdBSR

A little taste as to what will be on the DVD in May.

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Getting No Sleep

Well last night I went to bed around 1am, well that is when I actually got into bed, but our neighbor dog was barking and for some reason he loves to bark right outside our bedroom window. He/she is some sort of pitbull mix so the bark is loud. The barking started about Midnight and continued non-stop until 4:30am when I finally was able to fall asleep.

As those of you who know me I am a huge animal lover but around 2:30am I was ready to kill that dog, or at least turn the hose on it. This dog barked constantly, I'm not kidding.. non-stop for hours by the time 4am came around the dog was losing it's bark.

We have a fan in our bedroom and I turned it on full blast to drown out the bark but that kind of worked and I was finally about to dose off.. I don't know when he stopped but when I got up at 7:30am he wasn't barking.

I don't blame the dog, these neighbors are horrible to it. They use to have two dogs and then they had puppies. But now they seem to have just this one dog now. They never take it out for walks or give it any kind of attention and when it's raining you can hear it whimpering in the backyard and it breaks your heart. This dog barks all the time and had a barking spree a few months back but only lasted a few hours.. this time it over over 3 1/2 hours. Though I know it's not the dogs fault all my rage last night was toward this poor puppy.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

10,000 Downloads

Knights of the Guild podcast which I started three months ago has just hit 10,000 downloads. It's amazing on how many people listen and continue to listen to our podcast. We actually have fans which is so weird and what is even weirder is they can't wait to meet us down in San Diego for Comic Con this year.

I just want to thank all those who listen and enjoy Knights of the Guild.. Jenni (my co-host) and I are just fans who happen to work on the second season of The Guild and want to share our experience with other fans.

The Guild fan community is so wonderful.. ::cheers:: here's to many more podcasts and downloads.

Sunday, April 26, 2009

The Next Day

Today Harry and I planned on driving around and looking about over 20 homes in the Van Nuys and Pasadena area. It's funny how one street can be beautiful and quiet and then the next street over is run down and old looking. We found about seven homes to look at in Van Nuys/Lake Balboa. We even found another really nice neighborhood over my the Van Nuys airport.. very excited about that because the houses were nice looking and it seems there were several in our price range.

Our trip to Pasadena wasn't so great. We had five homes to look at there and the first one was okay on an okay street. The part of Pasadena we were looking at is very old and the houses are very old. Most of the streets and houses were very "lived" in and I felt comfortable driving down some of them. So needless to say our experience in Pasadena, at least the area that we could afford was not a good one. We did find one home actually on Kenneth Way that was nice looking and the area looked okay but it was right next to the freeway.

So we emailed our Realtor Mary our finding and hopefully will be able to look at some of those house that we liked from the outside. And that ends day two of our house hunting. We were excited to find the two nice areas of Van Nuys and that gives up hope that we might be able to actually find a home that is nice looking and in a nice area.. keep your fingers crossed.

A collection interesting ideas










Saturday, April 25, 2009

House Hunting : It Begins...

Well today we officially started our house hunting. We saw three houses with our Realtor Mary.

The first one was in Glendale, though the neighborhood was quiet, the area was a bit "lived" in and the house needed quite a bit of work, which would have been fine if the neighborhood was a bit nicer.

House number two was in Burbank and the neighborhood was much better, we actually really liked the place. The outside of the house needed a little work but the houses on both sides were so nice and you could tell their owners really took care of it. Well we went inside and I couldn't believe it. The layout was nice.. but you walk into the kitchen and there was so much water damage that the hardwood floor was bulking and breaking.. Mary warned me not to fall through the floor. We continued to walk through the house and though the set up was nice and the rooms were big there were holes in the ceiling, walls and floors. It was banked owned and they were asking $390,000 for it.. $390 for this place.. it was a total tear down and rebuild.

House number three was in Valley Glen/North Hollywood. This was our first house with actual
people living in it. It's very strange walking around a persons house while they are watching you. The house was nice on the outside and looked great on the inside. The neighborhood was okay to good but the only issue with this house it was a short sale. A short sale is a very complicated process where the bank has to agree upon the offer and price of the house. It can take months and the price can vary from what the realtor started it at... since this house was already at our maximum amount we decided to not even try.

So we didn't find our dream house, but we learned alot about what we want and what we absolutely don't want. I was a little discouraged as the market may be a bit soft now and a buyers market and we are willing to spend $400,000 but it's still not enough to get a decent house in a decent area.

After we did the three houses with Mary we decided to expand our number of cities that we were going to look in. We expanded our listing to include Van Nuys as there are some nice areas in Van Nuys.. we found about eight homes and printed out directions to each one and headed back out to look at the outside and neighborhood of these houses, if we found one that we liked we would let our Realtor know and she could schedule a viewing of the inside. So we drove around for about two hours and viewed many houses... one surprise was an area of Van Nuys called Lake Balboa. Many of the streets were tree lined and in really nice shape. There were a few houses in this area and it seemed the price was more in our range. So we sent three of these listings to our Realtor and hopefully will be able to take a look at the inside of this place next week.

All in all it was a very eye opening experience. Buying a house is suppose to be a fun and rewarding experience but so far it's frustrating, stressful and exhausting... and this is only the beginning. But in the end Harry and I will own our very own house.. and that is exciting.

Up Early

Well I got up at 6am this morning, I couldn't really sleep. I'm really excited to go out house hunting today. The past week I have been looking online for houses as well as having our Realtor send us listings and it's been some what discouraging. We really wanted to live in Burbank above Glen Oaks as we really liked the neighborhood. And even though home prices have come down they are still way over priced in SoCal. We can find plenty of listings in Van Nuys and North Hollywood but most of the areas we find houses in our price range are in a more "lived in" area. Some of the houses are gorgeous but because of the area we won't consider them.

Pasadena seems to have more houses in our price range and the lots of alot larger but the houses our 80 to 100+ years old. I know this being our first house, we will not get our "Dream" house but I would like something half way decent. I just have to keep telling myself that we need to find a great neighborhood and an okay house because we can always fix up the house.. fixing the neighborhood is a bit harder...

Well we are heading out in a few hours.. I'll let you all know how that goes.

2006 Nissan Note

2006 Nissan Note




2006 Nissan Note interior

Friday, April 24, 2009

House Hunting

Today we got our final line up of the houses we are going to see tomorrow. This will be our first outing with our Realtor. She plans on showing us three houses tomorrow. The three that we are seeing were in our possibility list. Even if we don't like any of them it will be nice to actually see what's out there in our price range and get a better idea of what we can expect. I'll post more once we have gone out with Mary.

Quiet Day At Work

Today was a quiet day at work, the EP went up north and several of the editors worked until the wee hours the previous night so they came in later in the day. I thought this was going to be the calm before the storm but he storm never came.

One highlights of the day was having lunch with my buddies/co-workers Will and Ben. We went out to Islands and had a really nice lunch. It's always great to hang out with co-worker outside of work. Both of these guys are friends who I happen to work with. We consistently joke with each other which is great because you don't always have that kind of connection with co-workers, but with these two it was instantly there.

Later in the day Will got some great news.. he got a call back for a viral web commercial that he had audition for the previous day. He said he felt good about it and did his best. They obviously agreed with him and asked him to come back on Monday.. Congrats and Good Luck Will.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Gillette Razor Zamboni Ad Campaign





KOTG Microcast #4

For Microcast #4 Jenni and I discuss Amazon officially announcing the release of Season One and Season Two of The Guild on DVD. We also discuss what Extras will be on the Second Season DVD.

Thanks,

Kenny & Jenni


Pre-Order The Guild Season One at Amazon.com

Pre-Order The Guild Season Two at Amazon.com

Monday, April 20, 2009

Paperwork

Today we got the pre-approval paperwork for our home loan.. it's amazing because this is only the paperwork for the pre-approval and there is a ton of it and it's very complicated.. I can't wait to see the actually paperwork when we buy a house...

New Podcast Business Cards

Check out my new Knights of the Guild podcast business card.. it turned out pretty good.. I also made one for Jenni, my co-host.

Tea Cup Stool by Holly Palmer

Inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Holly Palmer has designed this unique stool that looks like a giant tea cup.