The Swellers on - upandgo! Allrighty Cowboys and Girls, hope you all are getting prepared to see your boy again! Time runs, I can't tell, apparently I even forgot to blog last week, just too much going during my last days. Not even two weeks and I will freeze my butt off in New York City baby, meeting my dodo and mummy. And then another week and I'm back home, with bruce, the wingmans and all my other guys over there.

Oh well I should start with the week before this week, even I can't really remember that much though....I guess last weekends parties did its best and deleted a lot on my harddrive :-) No, honestly, I can hardly remember what was going on the last week. I guess it was the week we went to Hollywood again, to see one of the best shows ever. This time next year were really awesome, followed by the all time mind blowing Strike anywhere, but the winner of the eve was Four Year Strong, man I can tell, this band kicked ass, BIG TIME! Probably the best live band ever seen. So there is one show left here in the states. I'm gonna see Set your goals once more, joined by Motion City Soundtrack and my new favourite Band out there The Sweller, dude, this sound is pretty rad! Awesome, love it!

After a emberassing long drink-drank-drunk-break in the last time we wanted to get it hard last saturday. I and Claudio were in the mood to get shitfaced and show the american party people how WE party, well....he did, I didn't...I had to deal with the effects of fast and much drinking pretty early that night, so it turned out not to be that much fun for me, but anyways...the night started awesome, Cynthia, a friend of Stella and Claudio took us to a huge loft appartement and three bands happened to play in the living room, dude this was sick! Imagine your flat is big enough that you easily can fit in 200 people and 3 bands...definitely awesome....the rest of the night, you know...not worth writing too much about:-)


On Sunday we went for a coffee with Matt, a very very nice swiss guy I got to know the last weeks and his gf Lilly, a mexican girl, also pretty nice and funny. But my stomach and my tired eyes killed me, so the best thing I could do was sleeping! My workweek started pretty cool, I finished my internship report and started to finalize all my projects, which actually can be pretty anyoing, cause you want it all perfect and bugfree and this costs plenty of time...but lets not talk about work, lets talk about AVATAR!!!!

Okay here's the story, as I mentioned in an earlier blog entry and all over twitter and facebook, my coworker Brian invited me to join him on his writerclub screening series for the movie AVATAR. And here's the best thing, including a QNA with director (also of Titanic) James Cameron. (by the way I might mix weeks and dates now, never mind) So yeah, what should I say, AVATAR is probably one of the best movies I've ever seen, I only watched it in 2D though, but anyways, good reflection of the human race, lets see how this all will end. But really astonishing was the appearance of director James Cameron, he made tons of money with his two most famous movies Titanic and Avatar and still is one of the coolest and laid back guys out there. The interview was pretty awesome, lots of humor and cool ideas! The intellectual writers didn't have any chance, he teased em constantly, I just loved him.

From one highlight to the other (thats my motto right now :-) ). Waking up on wednesday in the bright californian sun, ready to head to the California Speedway. My boss, which is one hell of a cool guy, took me and Claudio kart racing. So we headed east, through whole LA till we arrived at the California Speedway. We got off the car and couldn't believe our eyes, these karts weren't the ones we were used to from Germany or Italy.

My boss told us he wants us to have fun, not to get bored, so he rented us a kart with 30PS and 70miles, which are about 120kmh maximum speed. And that was SICK!!! I had sooo much fun, you wont believe it! The first rounds were a bit scary cause I just couldn't believe how much power they had and how fast you could accelerate. The boss drove a kart which was even faster and also had a shiftgear....oh man haha, he's out of his mind, but in a really really good way! We raced for almost and hour in sum and were exhausted like hell afterwards, but I tell you, that was one of the best experiences I made here.
 


After finishing some work at the office afterwards we headed to Silverlake, a part of LA I have barely been before. We met a couple of Stellas friends, some sweedish and american dudes, and we had a lot of fun going to this german restaurant. All styled like an old bavarian restaurant, a really lovely place, the food sucks though, but the beer rules and thats what counts isnt it?!?! :-) Afterwards we went to a pretty crazy mexican bars and alternated between beer and tiredness. That was the motto of thursday and friday, I was just soo tired, fell asleep a lot to early everyday but who cares (wow this hasn't been here in a while :-) Yesterday was cool, we went to a bar in Venice, partied with Matt and the other swiss guys, talked, drank and had fun.

But today was the day! I decided to buy tickets for the NHL game between the Kings and the Redwings last week, what a good decision! After making some errands in Santa Monica I  headed down town to the staples center. My seat was in the uppest level, but as it should turn out it was pretty rad up there, saw everything and had a bunch of funny guys around me. The Kings happened to do pretty good the last games, 8 wins in a row and counting. So I was pretty excited, it also was the first live sports event I had here in the states. It was awesome, I mean the crowd wasn't as excited as they were supposed to be and the game looks a lot slower live but anyways, I ruled man, awesome!


The Redwings (or like the kings fans around me called them "Chickenwings - the only good wings") led three to nothing after the first period, the kings sucked big time. But this should change with the second period, the Kings scored 2 or 3 goals, man the crowd turned crazy after the third goal. With 4 minutes to go the Kings made the deal with the four to three and everybody counted down the time to the ninth win in a row! And it happened, man it was sooo great, still stoked, still in the GO KINGS GO mood haha!






Since I was in the hockey mood all day I went ice skating in Santa Monica tonight. Stella, Claudio, Michaela, John and a bunch of others were allready there at the open air ice rink. It felt really cool to stand on skates again, especially a couple of hours after having seen the Kings live and in color. After a nice dinner at a thai place I'm ready to sit back, watch a movie and get prepared for the SUPER BOWL tomorrow!!! Yeahha, I don't know what to expect but I guess it is a reason to drink anyways! ;-)

Allrighty here is one last video for you, the national anthem of the game today, sang by a I don't know, 8 to 10 year old girl, absolutely great. I love the theme of the anthem, and the americans love it tooo!






GOD BLESS AMERICA ;-)

Have a good one guys, oh wait, one last thing haha, I came home and noticed that our huge garden was gone. Instead of a nice view outside the window everything was covered with a tree. Margaret came back and told me the story haha that is sooo sick. We have a huuge tree in our garden, apparently all the rain in the last days washed out the ground and the tree was getting too haevy and just fell down. And believe me that tree is huge, could have distroyed our whole garage or the neighbours pool, but no, it fell straight into the garden but cut all the powerlines hahaha! So the entire street, included the Vons supermarket were out off power, wow felt like back in the days of jesus christ or something haha just kiddin. Yeah, man, wow, haha what a day.

But now, after 1500 words its time to end this misery!Gotta go, take care guys and leave comments if you want to:-)
Yours sincerly Donovan

Good evening snow-covered Germany and rain-soaked LA, what's up?
This is your boy from LA who started blogging every day and probably ends in a monthly update soon:-) Seriousely, it's so amazing how this blog probably reflects my stay here in the US. The firts couple of days or weeks, nearly everything was so special and new to me and it should turn out that after 4 months nearly everything becomes usual, maybe sometimes to usual. I got 3 more weeks left and I will enjoy them as much as I can but I tell you - time flies!

Lets start this post with the weather, what a conversation-starter ah?! The girls love it!:-) Lets say, last week was wet. ;-) No seriousely, last week was also pretty rainy, from time to time bit of a sunshine but in general it seems to be "winter" right now, which means 10 to 15 degs every day with lots of windy and rainy times. And not to forget a lot of snow in the mountains, I just saw the news yesterday and Big Bear and the surounding mountains just seem to sink in the snow.

I've spent most of the last week with working and healing out my feet, which was pretty hard in the beginning. The second foot hurted like hell, a lot more than the left one, but probably my body still tried to get the first one fixed and was just not ready for this shit:-) After a couple of days the hurt turned into itching and finally I transformed into a snake, loosing all of my upper skinlayers. So when I woke up in the morning, my lower end of the bed was covered with a bunch of coloured skin. But hey, I can wear shoes again haha! Isn't that great? No hippie stuff anymore, the alternative-organic-week is over! ;-)

Claudio, a buddy from Ulm and former intern of the T-Sign studios is here with his gf to spend 3 weeks of chillin and travelling. That's pretty cool, so we went to venice on thursday to hang out at a bar, enjoying some lousy Oettinger Woiza, well no, but something similar to that. Claudio is a great kid, and his Stella lived in LA for over 2 years, so she knows em all:-) Which I should experience at her grill party on saturday night. It was pretty cool, lots of different people and appearently more europeans than americans haha, sucks though! We ate, we talked, we drank and stuff like that, it was awesome, lots of great talks and funny people. Sadly I couldn't couldnt give me the total shot cause I had no place to crash, so my bro Sho picked me up and I went to bed too early for that night:-)

Sunday was pretty cool, I went to the shopping mall to buy a basketball and threw some baskets at the backside of the house, just like in the movies. But I'm really in a bad shape, hell man, I should go running and stuff again, cause after my arrival in rat-country Germany I gotta play two Icehockey turnaments and I don't wanna suck there. But anyways, sunday was really the day of being a 10 year old boy again, first basketball and then skateboarding, haha, I can't remember when I skated the last time in my life, so I grabbed Kenjis skateboard and cruised down the streets of westchester, awesome time, felt like surfing:-) To end the day I went down to the beach to get some beautful sunset scenes. Really, California has one of the most beautiful sunsets I've ever seen, but convince yourself, sick stuff:



Brian, my projectmanager, took me to a movie screening yesterday. He's in a writers club or stuff like that, whatever;-) and he got an invitation for some screenings this week and so he asked my join him. The movie called "The Hurt Locker" is definitely one of the best movies I've ever seen. It's so strong with his audiovisual storytelling, sick! And afterwards the director was on stage for a discussion. Pretty pretty cool, she was a great artist, lots of good ideas and methods, loved it. Check out the movie, it's definitely worth watching it!

And now here I am, tired like hell and a lot work today for tonight, but screw it, some pump-ups for the bloodpressure, some cereals for my tiny brain and there we go!
See you soon guys, get prepared, I want a sweet welcome over there.

Appearently, or at least what they keep telling me, we have the year of El Nino right now, what means that there is a huge storm system goin crazy over the pacific and bring us some rainy and windy days and some pretty gnarly waves all over the place. I headed to Arcadia today and went through the streets of LA and I tell you, haha, you need a boat right now! Of course my Toyota-Baby can handle this easly but I've seen some Jeeps out there which were covered up with water higher than the bumper! Boy! Los Angeles is finally sinking, and there are 3 more rainy days to come! Yeeeha, seems like a lot of chaos and anarchy - I love it! I really missed the rain the last couple of weeks, so after waking up today and seeing the rain I felt like: "Oooohhjaaa boy, here we go!"

Actually my last week was really great, not that much to do at work, and the things I had to do turned out to get really really cool! I had to work at a clients office, editing some video footage, nothing special, BUT, the great thing about this client - he develops race car simulators! And of course he has one at his office, absolutely crazy stuff, 3 40" Monitors, real pedals, steering wheel and racing seat - everything attached to a hydraulic system wich shakes your balls like crazy if you sit in there. Pros, like Lewis Hamilton allready have been driving this monster and he sells them to all the sheiks. Chris, the owner, was like: "Ey don, to really understand what the simulator and the videos are all about you better drive your ass off at this thing"...and so I did!

Like today, I've already headed to Arcadia last thursday to meet the dudes of the Nice Guy Tattoo out there, Tom and his gang. A bunch of really lovely and talented guys I commited my feeds to. After a short introduction, Tom got started to hurt me for about two hours, same today, but since we are boys with balls like bulls, we somehow can handle it hahaha! But it was really fun out there, watched some movies beside it and told stories of our lives. But now I have a problem, I always gotta head to LA if I get my next tattoos in the future, cause I'm so happy with these guys and the result, but I guess it's a good excuse to HAVE to spend a couple of days in LA :-)

My weekend was pretty nice too, lots of laying in bed taking care of my foot but also some fun things to do. Friends of Karen came over on Friday, we had a few beers, good food, some booze and a lot of fun games. In the bitter end I started to show em Mäxle, which should turn out to be really fun, seems like everybody enjoyed lying to each other big time:-) So in the end all of the soberness had left the bodies and stumbled out of the house or in bed and I slept like a baby.

The famous NAMM show took place these days in LA. It's one of the biggest, might be even the biggest, Music Exhibition in the world. My buddy Ned, whos buddy is the owner of Kramer Guitars, arranged some VIP tickets for me and him. But after all the chaos, my lost phone and a bunch of misscommunications we didnt make it there together on saturday, which really pissed me off, was really looking forward to that, but yeah, I screwed it uppa, my fault. So I went there on Sunday, Leo, met me there, gave me my pass and showed me around at his booth (with one of the HOTTTEST girls on the entire show:-) and then I made my way through all of the halls, pretty amazing stuff out there, tons of new drums and cymbals, absolutely great! Had a blast back there! Thanks again to Ned and Leo for setting this up for me. Heres a coustom built drumset for the NHL Hall of fame, mindblowing!!! And for all of you fans of Yellowcard you can try to identify the drummer of em here.


Yeah, thats probably it for my weekely update! 5 more weeks left, dang! Really don't wanna go back, but lets enjoy the next couple of weeks like crazy, once my feet are healed I'm gonna rock'n'roll the bones outa me! Can't wait for Wednesday when my buddy Claudio, former inter, from Ulm shows up, gonna be nice nice nice!

Hang in there guys, take care, take it easy!