Still in full rebellion mode towards unpacking those last few boxes, I've occupied myself tonight by taking some pics of the new home.... Check out my Flickr pool...

Looked at the most amazing two-bedroom home that I hope to rent out, starting as early as this weekend. It's a one-of-a-kind place in Atwater, right beside Griffith Park off of Glen Feliz, that is being offered 100% furnished. It's got this crazy Moroccan design style to it, two living rooms, tons of storage space, hidden rooms (!!!), an admitably small but cool kitchen none the less... I could go on and on... 

But, I mean... This is an actual picture of the place's Hookah Den...

I'm not sure exactly how to begin this as this beautiful angel is laying right beside me, but the amazing Aspen is about to pass on.

You know she's 17 now? I can't believe I got her back in June or so of 1992 while living with Anthony, Jason, Derrick and Charity. It was before I started at KROQ, before I started ZENtertainment, hell, before I'd ever had sex. Her and I spent a lot of time going on crazy walks through the wash and pasios near the home I'd once grown up in before moving back with friends.

So many other monsters have come and gone... Stormy, Bacon, Avi... So many houses, like Valencia, Tarzana, Culver City, West Hollywood...

I don't know the exact type, but Aspen has some really bad skin cancer. It's been around for a while and she responded really well to a surgery this past August, but a few months later it returned and it got pretty bad pretty quick. But that's nothing to the past couple of weeks. I'll spare you the lengthy details, but the short of it is that it is hemorrhaging and necrotic and worse by the day. It was very bad when I got home tonight from work.

Bad to the point that the plans I'd made over the last 24 hours to try and keep her in my life until the end of the month have vanished. The compassionate thing, the right thing to do is to let her go out peacefully and with dignity this weekend.

I was really hoping to take her up to see snow for her first time ever this weekend. I may still try to do this Saturday.

I'd also been planning a Wake/Celebration of Life/Going Away Party for my lady on the last Saturday of the month, but that's unfortunately not going to happen now.

I do want to thank the many of you that have touched her life and mine over these years. She's always been a loving dog and I believe she lived this long thanks to the love we've all given her over the years. Well, I think the diet of chili burgers and red licorice helped, too.

I do want to offer any of you an opportunity to say good-bye, but I understand if you're not able to do this or find it difficult for any reason. Let me know, and we can figure something out for this weekend. I arrived home to the severity of the situation an hour or so ago, so this is even more sudden then it was earlier today, but I believe I'll be saying my final good-bye this Sunday afternoon in Culver City.

"The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago.
The second best time to plant a tree is right now."
- Chinese Proverb

I hit a major milestone today.

I've known it's been coming for a few weeks now, but as of payday today, I've managed to pick up momentum on that debt snowball a bit more so that I could finally get completely out of credit card debt. Hell, as of today, I even have a good Emergency Fund to fall back on should Murphy rear his ugly head.

Sure, I have two more debt hurdles to clear with a 7-year-old IRS bill and a trivial student loan I'm paying about 2.6% interest on, but I'm well on track to leave them both in the dust within the next 6-8 months, and that's with making contributions to my 401k, Roth-IRA and future living expenses.

Whether or not I've realized it before, I've been on this path for a while, but without going into details as to why, I've given myself such a financial awakening these past 6 weeks or so. I wish I'd done so long ago, but doing so at all has been a huge deal for me. I honestly can't advise enough that anyone who doesn't feel financially secure immediately pick up Suze Orman's book YOUNG, FABULOUS AND BROKE and Dave Ramsey's TOTAL MONEY MAKEOVER, as they've really taught me that I can get a handle on this... Now, I have to say the views of each definitely difer a bit (Orman goes the rational route of building your FICO score, where as Ramsey is more of the mind that you should never take on any debt at all so who cares about building your FICO), but between what I've been able to take from them, and what I've gleamed off the many terrific financial websites that I've turned on to in the last few weeks (I use Consumerist.com as a jump-off point, but also like the MoneyBlogNetwork.com family and many others), I feel I'm well on my way to taking care of myself not just in the future, but in the here and now.

And I wish my debt hadn't weighed so heavily on me in the past, but it did hold that power over me, and I'm thrilled that I can now approach each day with not just a different financial perspective but a whole different outlook on life.

Anyway, just had to share the good news. Here's a few other things going on at the moment as well...

... I'm leaving for New York on Monday afternoon, for a brief 36 hours or so. I love that city and look forward to getting away for even a short amount of time.

... I posted a bit of a production reel on my website last week, so if you're still curious what types of things I do each day, feel free to check out the following URL:
http://www.zentertainment.com/blog/?page_id=6443

... And speaking of my site, I must admit I'm probably more amazed than anyone that I'm still managing daily updates, but I've found a nice formula that works with what I already do each day, so I really think I'll be able to keep it up. It's always nice to see you're getting traffic though, so please, stop by http://www.ZENtertainment.com/blog from time to time and see what I'm up to. I've got a couple new features I'm hoping to add soon, including an interesting new business venture...

... Oh, and one last thing... One more thing I'm excited about... I write things for ATTACK OF THE SHOW all the time, sure, but I've never actually written out a scripted sketch. Well, hopefully setting a trend for the future, I had an idea Friday morning which I wrote up into at least the bare bones of what I think could be a pretty funny skit on the show. Our head writer (we're like the one variety show that isn't union, so we'll still be live once the Writer's Guild strike hits on Monday) seemed to really like it and sent it around to try to get it on the show on Monday, so if all goes well, I'll post it up here once i return from NYC.

THE HERALD
G4 offers odd look at pop culture
Bob Taylor
8/24/07

Here's something that caught me off guard while flipping channels this summer: I found myself watching a lot of G4, the one-time video-game channel that tried, with disastrous results, to remake itself as a destination for twenty-something guys a few years back.

Artifacts from that failure remain. For some reason, G4 continues to rerun episodes of "The Man Show" at night. Immature, syndicated garbage like "Cheaters" and "COPS" also remain inexplicably on the schedule. And just so you know, I will never forgive Comcast, which owns G4, for buying up the similarly themed but far superior TechTV and then canceling 95 percent of the programming that came with it. That wasn't a merger; it was an execution.

Despite all that, G4 has recently become a channel I instinctively flip to during the evening if I'm in the mood for some casual viewing. Airing at 6 p.m. is "Ninja Warrior," this crazy Japanese import where people run through three stages of super-intensive obstacle courses. If you ever watched Spike TV's "Most Extreme Elimination Challenge," it's quite similar to that. But "MXC," as it was abbreviated, was played for laughs and included jokey English overdubs that turned it into a parody of the Japanese-obstacle-course genre. (You didn't know that was a genre, did you? It is.)

"Warrior," however, is serious business with ridiculously tough challenges that are too taxing for all but the most gifted athletes to conquer. It's not even really a race, since only a few contestants are able to complete all three stages.

And you will occasionally see a recognizable American face braving the "Warrior" course. The other day, I watched Olympic gymnast Paul Hamm give it a shot. "Ninja Warrior" is great fun, so much so that some lucky American "Ninja" wannabe recently won a trip to ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Japan to compete as part of a contest thrown by the other good reason to watch G4 these days - "Attack of the Show."

"Show" is the channel's 7 p.m. news magazine that focuses on all things tech and pop culture. Hosts Kevin Pereira and Olivia Munn, along with a group of regular contributors, spend an hour each day discussing the hottest cell phones, MP3 players, DVDs, video games and all the other stuff we geeks spend our hard-earned money on. Pereira is good natured and self-deprecating; Munn is cute and a little goofy. Together, they can somehow make a conversation about the new iPhone supremely entertaining.

Even better, G4 recently started expanding "Attack of the Show" for select events, offering live coverage of such pop-culture hotbeds as the San Diego ComicCon, the comic-book convention where movie studios hype their future blockbusters, and E3, the year's most important video-game expo. These special live broadcasts still need some work. Did the network really need to cut to commercial smack dab in the middle of E3 presentations from Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony? 

 But for those of us who have only been able to follow these events in years past via Internet blogs, the G4 coverage was like being awarded an all-access pass to something you've only read about and never gotten to see before. 

 So maybe, just maybe, G4 is a network worth considering again. Two shows alone don't make a success story, and "Ninja Warrior" is a gimmicky series that might have a short life span in this country. (I have a feeling I'm going to be sick of it before too long.) 

 But if the network can create more shows like "Attack," which dive right into the parts of pop culture that the mainstream media usually ignores, G4 might be known as something other than the channel that killed TechTV.

I'll be producing the IN YOUR PANTS segment on ATTACK OF THE SHOW for the month of June and desperatly need sex/relationship questions submitted via webcam. If you have a webcam, please please please record a question and send it along via our STICKAM page at:
http://www.../profile/aots

If you can't figure out how to send things via STICKAM, feel free to email it to me at SJordan@comcastnets.com

Thanks ~ !

Next Saturday is my last day at my place in Culver City, and I'm hoping to clear out as much as I can. Those of you who know me know I have a million things pack-ratted away, and I'm looking to clear out a ton of great stuff. Come by, visit me, and buy something!!!

-------

GEEK GARAGE SALE

SATURDAY MARCH 31

8am – 3pm

3657 DUNN DRIVE

CULVER CITY 90034

35" TV FOR $100.

KING-SIZE BED FOR $50!

THOUSANDS OF COMICS - $1 EACH!

THOUSANDS OF BOOKS –

SCI FI, FANTASY, HORROR AND MORE!

TOYS!

BOTH IN BOX AND OUT!

THOUSANDS OF CDs

$2 FULL LENGTH/$1 SINGLE

GADGETS! MP3 PLAYERS, 100-DISC CD CHANGER, TVS, DVD PLAYERS, CPU EQUIPMENT, RECORD PLAYER, TAPE DECK

MOVIE AND TV MEMORABILIA! DVDS! FURNITURE!  VIDEO GAMES! CAPES AND SWORDS!

It's been ages since I've written anything here; I've actually been so busy that I've maybe spent a combined 5 minutes on MySpace in the past few weeks... It's on my To Do List to get some updates going here (my handy index cards, which a few of you know I swear by...), but November is going to be a crazy month for reasons I'll share with you later...

That said, I did finally get around to checking out the iLike website that recently launched --- It's a MySpace-type site, or even a companion, that lets you find people by shared music tastes. Adds a sidebar to your iTunes to recommend tracks and help you create playlists, and also puts a widget in your MySpace profile that lets people know what you are listening to and such... It's all still in Beta, so I'm sure it'll improve, but it's pretty cool if you're an audiophile like myself...

It's been far too long, my friends.

I've been good. Really good. Starting a new job at G4's Attack of the Show was exactly the change I needed in life, in so so many ways, and it's something I've really embraced.

I tend to be working a good 11-hours each day... Showing up at 7:30 to work on the daily news feed and then leaving anywhere form 6-8. I can't believe I'm a part of a show that airs live 4 days a week, and that I've helped put together a good 30+ hours of live TV.

And when I finally get a day off, it tends to be taken up, either with my "Little," Dorian, or just catching up with things around the home.

Home. Which the puppy is slowly trying to destroy. He's a little monster and I love him so, but he is growing increasingly insane.

For one thing, I've taken to drugging him so as to get a bit of sleep. A co-worker told me that I could safely give a dog benadryl, and it's become my secret solution for those nights when he just wont stop jumping all over the place.

But yesterday he started to eat his first DVDs. He's already eaten every toy or memory possible within his reach. And lately, I keep catching him tea-bagging Aspen.

Anyway, I'll return to semi-regular blogging sometime soon I hope, though it might not be here... I've got a lot of work to do on the site, but I'm trying to actively start updating the brand-new ZENtertainment site...
http://www.zentertainment.com/blog/

There'll be a bunch of changes here and there in the coming weeks, but I'll likely announce it to the 50,000 or so people who still reside on the ZEN list as early as this coming weekend, or whenever I can find the time to give the site a good thorough news update.

With the sites I 'm having to search every day for news for AOTS, I've got a good idea of what is out there, and I think I can rival that without too much effort. Just you wait and see...

Check me out there, why dont'cha?

PS - Free Thursday night? Go see Natalie Walker at the Temple Bar in Santa Monica! And dont miss Massive Attack on Sunday at the Hollywood Bowl!!!