A blog about Arts & Entertainment and News.
Real Name: N.L. Belardes Gender: male Member Since: January 12, 2006 Last Signed In: September 04, 2008 Profile Views: 19843 Blog Views: 10801 Describing Farm Workers And The Valley The Ancient Story Of The Samurai Rat West Coast 9/11 Story Inspires Smithsonian Worker To Tell Tale Is It Time To Share Your 9/11 Story? West Coast 9/11 Story Chapter 2 Interview With Writer Of Igor? EXCLUSIVE: Nick Belardes Running For Prez?? If 1980s Geeks Were Still Doing The Same Thing... Lulu And The Tree Meet Me Today At Russos?? Pimp'd! September 06 October 06 November 06 December 06 January 07 February 07 March 07 April 07 May 07 June 07 July 07 August 07 September 07 October 07 November 07 December 07 January 08 February 08 March 08 April 08 May 08 June 08 July 08 August 08 September 08 Paperback Writer 
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I had a lot of fun re-writing the chapter "non-migrants" for the novel, Thick White Crust. It was so unclear before. Reading through it, I found my words just weren't making any sense. Clarifying it was part of the fun. I rearranged some of it too so that there's now dialogue at the beginning of the chapter. Anyway, please have a read of the latest chapter over on Best-Selling Author Brad Listi's TheNervousBreakdown.com. If you like comedy, you'll love this piece. It's the best comedy I've written. And in a way, it's terrifying too... I once lived in a little white house near downtown Bakersfield in the Oleander area. A rental, it wasn’t a fancy house. Probably built in the 1950s, it was still comfortable, had three rooms, and was just down the street from quaint homes built in the 1920s. Yet like some forgotten pagoda on a no-name Osaka hill, its cobwebs held secret voices and its cracks harbored spirit warriors. If you've been reading along with my non-fiction magic realism book Thick White Crust, then you'll want to read the fourth installment, "Legacy." Anyway, stop by "Legacy," leave a comment or question and I would be happy to write back. I've been sharing my 9/11 story on thenervousbreakdown.com in a serialized novel titled "Thick White Crust." I just posted chapter three, "September." What's more important is the idea that many people have personal 9/11 stories that they haven't felt comfortable to share. Just maybe you were having your own crisis that day. If you want to share on this site or on www.thenervousbreakdown.com, cool. If not, well that's a day kept personal and closed off for many people. Though I would be interested in reading yours. - n.l. The magic realism had already started. Sugar skull ghosts and sparks of firework lightning bolts. It was September 10, 2001, Las Vegas. I just had a summer of dreams: airplanes, white tunics, exploding casinos. I left my girlfriend that day. I was going to hitchhike to California across the Mojave Desert the next morning, September 11th. Somehow, as the story will say, I got to California. Over the next several months I scribbled “Thick White Crust.” I could barely stay ahead of it as it chased me. I ran down flights of stairs into a university to let it out and then ran back out into the daylight, enveloped once again in drowning literary moments. The story is magic realism non-fiction. It’s a bite of a sugar skull. It’s the moment fireworks burst. It’s whatever you need it to be as you dream while asleep or awake. B O N I F A C I O The weather was a little windy and the sun was beating its fists onto the desert floor. It was the day before dia de los rascacielos, the name I later heard a man on a bus give for the attacks on the World Trade Center. Read more » I used to work for an animation company so either I'm a big kid or I just love animation. The new animated film, Igor The Movie, coming this September starring the voices of John Cuzack and Steve Buscemi have added my myspace profile to their top friends. Check them out and add them as a friend at www.myspace.com/igor_movie. Watch the film trailer and see the cool movie artwork. News Flash. I'm hitting the ground running and taking campaign funds from where I can... Watch the Video. A must! - n.l. Only a guy would understand this video of 1980s geeks stuck in the past. I think. Must see though. - n.l. It was a really huge tree. I mean huge! Watch the video. Jonathan Evison stood against the giant. Ancient, massive, untouchable to many, the General Sherman tree was suddenly a towering symbol of the publishing world. Yet there was Evison—a Lilliputan caught in a world of giants—having hopped a little fence surrounding the tree to touch the beast. Evison, author of “All About Lulu” and the forthcoming novel, “West Of Here” had just finished a book signing in Bakersfield. “All About Lulu” is honest, controversial, healing: a bodybuilding book of familial discontent. It’s America’s nuclear family under a broken microscope. The main character is a geek, hopeless, hopeful, All-American and tougher and more sarcastic than any stereotypical high school jock from the 1970s. I will be at Russos at the Marketplace pimping out emerging writer Jonathan Evison and his new book "All About Lulu." Read my review of his book. When? 1 pm today (SATURDAY). Please stop by, pick up a book. Please help support writers like Jonathan who have traveled to Bakersfield to meet people like you. - n.l. I don't know why I love this stupid dancing skeleton video. It's stupid. You can hum carnival music along with it or play the Star Wars Imperial Death March or Hanna Montana and it's going to still be stupid. Kind of like the Star Wars kid. It's just dumb, but funny. I think it's because it was me and my kid goofing off. I have one of him in the same costume playing a Johnny Cash song. We're idiots. So, anyway, do you have a stupid video or story? My old girlfriend just called me and said she tripped and fell in front of 10,000 people at a concert at Blossom (Outdoor Theater) in Ohio where Radiohead was playing. "I wish I had that video!" I said... The magic realism had already started. Sugar skull ghosts and sparks of firework lightning bolts. It was September 10, 2001, Las Vegas. I just had a summer of dreams: airplanes, white tunics, exploding casinos. I left my girlfriend that day. I was going to hitchhike to California across the Mojave Desert the next morning, September 11th. Somehow, as the story will say, I got to California. Over the next several months I scribbled “Thick White Crust.” I could barely stay ahead of it as it chased me. I ran down flights of stairs into a university to let it out and then ran back out into the daylight, enveloped once again in drowning literary moments. The story is magic realism non-fiction. It’s a bite of a sugar skull. It’s the moment fireworks burst. It’s whatever you need it to be as you dream while asleep or awake. - n.l. belardes H A U N T “There will be strong memories, my brother,” smiled Bonifacio. He held his arm around me and hovered there in the room like an archangel. Still dressed as he was while waiting tables at the local bistro, his white waiter’s uniform had big round buttons that dotted a double-breasted waistcoat. His arm was a seraphim wing that held me securely, while his wide, downturned face, as kind as it ever was, hung close to mine. Thick shiny black hair, normally bushy and unkempt, had been trimmed short and wavy against his head. His full lips parted a little but he said nothing more. And then his image faded. Yet, he was there. Dark and olive-skinned, Bonifacio stood next to me, a strangely Arabian-looking Chicano with brown small-set eyes and strong square features. He smiled handsomely even though he had added a few pounds since I last saw him wandering drunk on downtown Bakersfield’s bar alley streets. It was late April, 2001. We had both seen my mother lying in her funeral casket just the day before. Her eyes had sunk as if two black coals had been placed over them, then lit and burned away to reveal the deep pit of death that hangs above the face of the dead. Her skeleton no longer danced beneath her skin with movement and life. It was held still by an unseen hand, hung silent and no longer brooded over the passing of things. She had begun death’s dance in the spirit underworld, perhaps even smiled again. Spirit-skeletons smile, move beneath fiery sparks of the living. Ghosts dance among them. Devils and angels too. They sanctify the under-realm of mankind. They flood the spirit darkness. They wave their hands and suddenly there are bright glistening waterfalls of red-lit Roman candle rain falling into infinity. Later in Bonifacio’s house on Elm Street we ate jalapeños with beef smothered in cabbage, green onions, and green salsa all wrapped in hot flour tortillas. “Those memories,” I said. “They will haunt me.” “Your father, I understand. But your mother—she will be no ghost.” “No? You can’t be sure of that. Like all writers’ dreams, they will haunt like a curse. I am surrounded by visions, Bonifacio.” Bonifacio was as good of a cook as he was at waiting tables of wealthy businesswomen, politicians, salesmen and ag-brokers. His delightful method of cooking—as he explained his every move in the kitchen, politely, with fondness for those he served—made him very much like his migrant mother who had recently fallen ill. Her polite smile and command over a kitchen was more than the enduring love of a migrant over pinto beans properly taken from sorrowful fields and cooked to perfection. It was pure Mexican culture driven into the heart of the Southern San Joaquin Valley. The slow transformation of a people, to see, through a meal, through a mountain of refried beans, cooked and mashed from a long night’s soaking, to become washed clean through the love of a migrant mother. I could tell Bonifacio saw himself, like other sons of migrants, transformed into an educated generation of cultural wanderers. Honorable Mention: Bakersfield City. Let’s face it, there are a lot of boring city jobs out there folks. Just imagine them before you go to sleep at night. ***Post your honorable mention in the comments... It's really annoying when BLT posts three blogs in a row when he could have just consolidated them into one here on Bakotopia. But anyway. I promised my kid I would mention his show last night at the Gate. "Dad, will you pimp us out," I think were his words. I wrote a blog on thenervousbreakdown.com today about the memorial service of the multimillionaire Bakersfield pilot who died in an Oregon plane crash. I attended the funeral and saw a very strange occurrence afterwards... There’s that one line from the new Dark Knight Batman movie that I keep stumbling on. It sticks in all the commercials. I hear it from my family. I read it in grafitti. It squeaks from comic book action figures: “Why so serious?” Maybe it’s because Comicon 2008 in San Diego is a place of spandex god worshippers who want their asses signed with celebrity lightning bolts. I mean, that’s gotta seriously hurt.
Take a gander through your imagination. Then step back because you’re standing in the way of legions of obsessed fans. The masses of comic book people at the San Diego Comicon 2008 event are serious… They’re serious about collecting photos of freaks, dressing up, buying merchandise, getting free swag, having celebrity sightings and finding new and old comic book heroes. They come in all shapes, sizes and ages and they’re not all dressed normal. I saw steam punks posing like 19th Century industrial garb-wearing rock stars, Jokers with over-painted crazy grandma smiles, fat hairy Chewbaccas, a couple on their honeymoon dressed as a rebel fighter and Death Star employee, pot-bellied Ghost Busters, pirate pranksters, Batmen pieced from black-stained straight jackets… I was at Comicon over the weekend pimping out a friend's publishing company: Insight Editions. Believe it ot not, they're working with George Lucas on a limited edition book that will cost $5,000 per copy! Look for a future article on that... Looks like Buck Owens is getting another tribute, this courtesy of Uncle Sam. Read More...
Location:
6801 Hollywood Blvd # 105,
Los Angeles, CA 90028
Bako Bands, Author, Walk Streets Of Hollywood For MTV Books? I meet a lot of authors on MySpace. A few months ago it was MTV Books author of “I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone,” Stephanie Kuehnert. Her book just came out July 8th. I offered to write a book review for ABC23, then saw she was organizing the “Rock N Read” event at Hollywood’s Virgin Megastore. That’s right across from the El Capitan where “WALL-E” was still blasting off, and nestled between The Kodak Theatre and Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. I wanted Bakersfield to be a part of her event. She invited me and Bakersfield bands Dirty Spanglish and Norfolk. James Ratliff of Norfolk was the sound guy for the event. Dirty Spanglish and Norfolk unloaded their equipment from the truck while I stared at all the freaks on the street. The fake Mickey Mouse with his big wobbly head, the Captain Jack who stopped and said to Dirty Spanglish, “You guys playing a gig?” The body builders, monsters, hip-hoppers, tourists, wild-eyed drugged up lost youth, tap-dancing bums and beady-eyed scientologists. You name it. All were passing by our Hollywood-or-bust literary bandwagon. After they unloaded, a tourist bus pulled up and started laying on the horn. I took in the sights for another long second before pulling out and parking. Soon I thought of my spoken word crazy rap piece. The beginning of it suddenly came to mind… On July 4th—true news story out of Bakersfield, California—Skipper the Chihuahua came up missing. I knew he’d shut the door behind him, spent the day drinking Jose Cuervo. He was slipping into tequila dreams with a margarita sheen. He was upset. Other dogs said he was small, that he had no bite, that he was uptight, a sprite. “Go fly a kite” was on his mind. He could float on one. He was that small. Could fit in the palm of your hand... “RockNRead” was billed by Stephanie Kuehnert as a literary Lollapalooza. It was three hours long and meant to blast the ears off everyone in the Virgin Megastore. While Norfolk performed, I filmed some kids with their hands over their ears. While the bands were hot throughout, Norfolk was the only band where people were wild for an encore. Didn’t matter how loud they were. They played four songs to match the four Dirty Spanglish performed. The youthful Bakersfield quartet Dirty Spanglish debuted an incredible new song called “Tuesday.” Yes, my kid Landen Belardes is in DS, and while Norfolk was my favorite band of the day, my favorite song was “Tuesday.” It represents the new indie sound that they’re just beginning to churn out. They’re playing an all-youth show Aug. 1 at the Gate and bringing up Wild Youth, a bunch of 14 year olds who they played with at the Pasadena Harry Potter gig. It’s going to be a great event. I thought all of the authors gave polite readings from a list of hot books. They were all hot authors too (I was the only guy). Stephanie Kuehnert headlined. Alexa Young talked “Frenemies.” But there was also Cherry Cheva, Kim Culbertson, Rebecca Woolf, Alyson Noel and Megan Crane. But I wanted to stir the crowd’s soul. I wanted people to wonder whether what I was rapping was the truth, made up stories or some form of both. I started off just by talking about struggling artists, that even published authors are struggling authors in today’s publishing world. Deeper into my piece I got into the idea of where I came from to be in Hollywood: The stories of disillusionment. You’ve read them, you’ve said them, lived them, bereaved them. Sweltered under the hot sun, them. You sweat it, you get it. These media news stories. And so, there I was this morning, leaving the Central valley, all glorious 300 miles of it. I left behind the oil wells dirt smells, buck owens fancy ovens, crystal palace country lovin, hardcore nu-metal dreadlock lore, jonathan davis, rick davis board of trade Hollywood’s backyard movie-making, the pollutions the convolutions ... the people wandering with gas masks, protest shacks, small town no civil ceremonies for gay marriage, straight marriage, horse and carriage…and so there’s all these people and dreams and I crawl into the mountains, far from the Piute smoke—the worst air in the nation—no lie again—because the valley’s under a constant choke. I was excited to see that JFK and Isik, both formerly of L.A. band World Wide Spies had arrived to watch the fun. One of the writers of “Heroes” was in the crowd as was L.A. spoken word poet Rich Ferguson who let out a few hollers while I jazzed the crowd with thoughts of media monstrosities. Before I got off the stage I thought to myself, It’s great to be a part of a literary spectacle… And it was. But before I was done I wanted people to question the sort of zombie-like tactics of the media, which often covers stories of what they think is fresh meat for the hungry masses: I was driving. It was late. It was a week ago. A media man left town. I wasn’t happy to see him leave. But we all move on. And as I’m driving I see a dog. It’s not Skipper but I think of that worthless small-as-a-thimble mutt with his big sombrero and tiny guns and how news stories don’t make sense and many stories don’t even get made and are left by the side of the road. No, this is a boxer. It’s been hit and it’s just pouring out its soul, legs kicking in headlight shadows. A few moments in struggling and death and these headlights like eyes, not even blinking, but bright dusty eyes staring while this dog soul wretches and pukes and kicks and it fights the simple idea of death. And I’m thinking, what are its last thoughts, never to get touched again, rubbed again, chased again… it’s so close to a lake, a river, a sandy playbed where it could have run for miles and miles and miles without a car in sight. Just a hobo river with roadrunners and cottontails and a lone polluted inner city beaver dam.
Location:
6801 Hollywood Blvd # 105,
Los Angeles, CA 90028
I'll be appearing at the Virgin Megastore at Hollywood and Highland Sunday July 13 for the "Rock N Read." I'm bringing two Bakersfield Bands: Norfolk and Dirty Spanglish. I'll be reading some kind of essay piece... Stephanie Kuehnert’s MTV Books novel, “I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone” reflects on female misadventures and coming of age in the male-dominated music underground of the 1980s and 1990s. It’s an ode to music scenes, anti-mainstream culture and girl rock bands. Livestream of deputy James Throne funeral 10 a.m. Friday: www.turnto23.com I was at the Indy 4 premiere geeking it up with other Indiana Jones fans. Check out my Nick 2.0 blog post and mini-review. Then watch my YouTube video of one of the strangest Indiana Jones fans you'll ever love to meet. Don't forget to go watch the movie... - Nick, ABC23 I'm pleased to announce an article on Bakersfield.com, discussing my ABC/N.L. Belardes documentary, "The Last Band," which is on YouTube, and an article in Social Media World on my Twitter novel, "Small Places." |
