Wow

I saw this a while ago, but felt I wanted to share it with the world.



I rest my case

One of my filmers

Jake "Spring Break Jake" is a star. This cable cam attemt is one of the best things I´ve witnessed:




Got a place by the way, until the july 31. On the 1st I´m moving to Cardiff.

Going to see Juliana Hatfield in LA tomorrow, pretty stoked on that.

Other then that me and Jake (Price) are working looong days.

Peas.

Organizing footage and hopefully not homeless much longer

Did a solid 10 hours of computing on the bed yesterday, need a massage.

Here´s some art I had on my computer:

On the floor

I´ve been editing on the floor for the past week. Yesterday I had to move to the couch, but that almost killed my back too. Anyway, should move into a house this weekend.

I did get my new computer though, very happy about that.

So I didn´t go to opening day in Del Mar (horse race) nor have I been to a bar since I got here. I can only think of one weekend in the past 3 months when I got drunk... I could be wrong but it´s still been the driest summer in the past 10 years.

David Beckham is playing today in Orange County, was considering going, but he´s not starting and I have work to do. Could be fun to see Chelsea kill the LA Galaxy team though.

There´s a pretty funny bike contest going on here today. The Neptue 500. I doubt this would work in Sweden.. I´ll tell you why.
You have to wear a costume and ride a tandem bike, or tie 2 bikes together with a 1 meter rope. Then you hit up like six bars where you have to take a drink at each one and the team who makes is back first wins. I´m guessing the route is about 6 km.

So basically you´re getting drunk at three in the afternoon and riding your bike on the 101 highway. Hmm, don´t think IOGT in Sweden would like that.

I´m not doing it, but a lot of my friends are. And when they´re done I bet 90% of them will throw their bikes on their pick ups and drive back, drunk. Nobody here cares really. Not even the cops.

What else: I eat a lot of fruit and try to not gain weight, which is kind of hard here when you can´t go outside or exercise. The one thing that helps is that I only eat maybe twice a day because my scar is still leaking when I eat.

Bye / Pierre

Still homeless

Been denied at a couple of places again.. nobody want to do 6 month rentals. I do have this one though that should go through any second. It wasn´t cheap, but I don´t have too much of a choice now. Paying as much a night in rent as a hotel seems kinda lame, but that´s California living for you.

Been eating a lot of fish these last two days. Hjalle and Jake went fishing and came back with maybe 5 lbs of albacore and yellowtail. So we´ve had sushi here the last two nights. I ate so much yesterday I passed out, or as we say in Sweden "paltschwimmen".

Snowboard Revolution did an interviewe with me a few weeks ago that´s on their site now. Check it out:

http://www.snowboard-revolution.com/artist/Pierre-Wikberg.html

Other than that I´m trying to figure out how to back up a computer in Utah before shipping it here. It´s rocket science.

House hunting

I started looking for a place to rent here in north county Sam Diego about 6 weeks ago. And to this day I still haven´t moved into a place.

We had this sweet house that we applied for, but the dude said he found a person with a higher credit score than Jake´s (rommate and co-editor/filmer for the next DC movie).
For people outside the US who doesn´t know what a credit score is:
It´s a number that the credit bureau gives you. The number depends on your ability to loan money and pay it back (being late to pay your phone, gas, elctric bills etc can matter too). So the more credit cards and loans you have and if you paid them on time the higher the credit score.
Pretty strange system when you´re born and raised to never borrow money unless you really need too.. so now you know what that is.

I don´t have a credit score yet so I have DC Shoes credit application, but that wasn´t enough either... He basically didn´t like me, that´s what I think anyway. And I don´t handle rejection very well... I just can´t accept to come in second place, expecially over a matter of being able to rent a house!

So this has really been bothering me for the last 36 hours.

Two days ago me and Jake went to LA to transfer some more film. It was a long day, drive there 2.5 hours, transfer 5 hours and then drive back 2.5 hours. Got to bed at 2.30 am maybe, and then up at 7.30 to drive around and look for houses...



Me and Jake went to Kwik E Mart in LA the other day. It was pretty interesting. To hype the Simpsons movie they have dressed up a few 7-11´s so it looks like Apu´s store. They sell Krusty O´s, Buzz cola and Squishies. At www.simpsonsmovie.com/main.html you can make your own Simpson character.









So yesterday I drove probably close to 200 miles/300 km looking for "For Rent" signs. I found a cool place, but then got denied later in the afternoon... someone else wanted to rent it for 12 months.. I was only commited to 6... when is my bad luck going to end? It´s hard to stay positive.

You see a lot of nice houses when you drive around here, these were pretty cool.



So another 11 hours in the car yesterday, not good for my back.6$ bacon, avacado, cheese burger at Carl´s Jr. It was gross, so big. It was also my breakfast, lunch and dinner.

My scar is still leaking when I eat.. not awesome. So I have to have napkins on my neck when I eat. It´s been a month of this now!







Here are some older pics from my cell phone:

Here´s a pic of the line for the plane to Chicago... at the gate! Not awesome. The guy in the orange/red is Robert Wells, Sweden´s best piano player. He was on his way to do this:
http://hd.se/noje/2007/07/06/robert-wells-goer-laat-med-celine

Sister´s cat at home.


TWO! SE Racing PK Ripper´s! They were in Damon´s (co-founder of DC) office. I want one.

Seriously

I saw this dude on youtube the other day. Pretty awesome:



Paul Potts ladies and gentlemen.

Arrived in California

Last week in Sweden was pretty bad, health wise. I have saliva and some other crap running down my neck. It´s leaking out of a tiny whole in my scar. I guess it could stay like that for a month. It´s been 18 days so far, not happy about that.
Every time I eat it starts running down.. so I have to use a napkin to absorb it every time.

I did get to go to the festival in Skelleftea. It´s been years since I went. Everyone in town are drinking for 3 days straight so it´s a fun time. I just wished I was healty enough to enjoy it to the fullest.

June 2007 was the most sober june I´ve had in.., hmm 10 years I think.


Playing "kubb" on midsummer.

Good bbq at midsummer. I´ll miss all the good flavored sparkling waters from Sweden, and Brämhults juice





The aftermath. My face has been pretty swollen... Had to drain in twice and now it´s still pretty swollen


If you look close, you can see Stina, on her phone, as always.

Stina and Hekla. Beautiful swedish evening, and yes, still on her phone






I made it over the pond in time for 4th of july. Americans likes to get wasted on 4th of july, and I mean wasted, like finnish lapplanders on midsummer wasted. I´m sure over 50% of the cars on the roads have drunk drivers. The police doesn´t really care about that though, as long as you don´t drink in public they are cool.

Here´s a rat I found in my storage unit, not awesome


Pacific beach is party central in San Diego. The beach is maybe 4 kilometers long, and there are tens of thousands of drunk people here. I was the only sober one there I think. It´s pretty fun to see all there college kids act like idiots. If only their parents knew










This last weekend I was in LA to see some skate event that DC was having. It was ok, lots of am´s throwing their bodies down a 10 stair handrail... and it was hot. Maybe 30 celcius.
I can´t expose my scar to the sun, and I can´t use sunscreen either because then that stuff gets inside of my cheek and that can´t be good. So everytime I´ve been in the sun I´m wearing a hooded sweashirt. Kind of a pain, but better than using an umbrella.

Stairs to skateboard on

LA / Hollywood DC party. This is with www.reneerenee.com

Filming Hollywood itself

An airplane wrote "underdog" in the sky when I was passing downtown LA. Kind of weird. He started to write a phone number or something too, but I didn´t see it



Living at my friend´s the Engelsmans and Sorensen for now. Hopefully we´ll (me and filmer, Jake Price) be approved for this sweet house we´ve applied for. Should know tomorrow.

I also bought a new Apple Mac Book Pro today, pretty happy about that. Not to happy about the fact that they will come out with an awesome upgrade in september... but I couldn´t wait any longer.
And I also bought my FIRST ipod today. Which I think is pretty amazing. I almost bought on the first day it came out, in 2001 0r someting, but for some reason I didn´t... I have used an ipod shuffle since last year, but that doesn´t count.
Actually I lied about it being my first ipod purchase. It´s more like my 15th (no lie) but those were gifts or ordered by friends in Sweden, or ones I gave away and never got reimbursed for. But now I have my own, not that I needed one... I just felt like adding one to my cart. The computer was so expensive so it seemed like a drop in the ocean.

Took out the tumor.

So three weeks ago I took the trian down to Gothenburg to take out the tumor I had just found a few months prior.

The train took 20 hours or something, but it was kind of mellow.

The surgery was succesful. But I´ve had pretty inconvenient complications afterwards. On doctors orders I stayed in Gothenburg for a few days afterwards. Me and Stina stayed at her sisters place and I was pretty useless. I was kind of on drugs, tired and stuff. I did manage to go outside for a few hours but I wasn´t the best company. My face hurt too much to be in a good mood.

I asked the doctor if I could keep the tumor after the surgery but he said I couldn´t. He said he´d take a picture of it though. But he forgot too. It was 3x3.5 cm and it sat right under/inside of my ear. I´m happy that it´s out of there, for sure. Good thing I went to a private clinic for a second opinion. Otherwise the government healthcare wouldn´t have removed it for a year, maybe two. Oh yeah, and the surgery took three hours.

After I made it up north again I had to drive to a hospital a few hours away to check up on some swelling. They cut me open and drained some crap out of my cheek. I was pretty pale after that and stayed overnight since I had to go back there the day after regardless.

And when they later took the stiches, almost 2 weeks ago now I´ve been leaking saliva and stuff out of my scar, not rad. My ear is pretty numb and it´s very inconvenient to have that stuff coming out all the time. Can´t wait to get on a plane to San Diego on tuesday morning...

Besides that I guess I´ve been logging footage for the DC snowboard video. But that´s been going real slow too, mostly due to the aftermath of my surgery.

On midsummer there´s was a huge horse race in town, so I went to that, but didn´t win any money.., nor did I spend any...
A lady in Bygdeå, about 100km south of Skellefteå did win 43.000.000 sek (over 6.000.000 $) on horses this week, good for her.



The weather has been good, except the last few days. But I have to hide in the shade with my scar. I will miss Sweden, but I´m really amped to put this snowboard movie together too.





Hekla. I throw her a lot of sticks. She never get´s tired of it. Her mom does tough.






My filmer friend Jake Price has been looking for my future office/home in north San Diego as well. I guess we have something, so hopefully that will work out when I get there.

I´m trying my hardest to get a VERY limited edition PK Ripper BMX bike form DC too, hopefully I can get my hands on one! The iphone on the other hand... that´s a completly different story.

/ Pierre