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Real Name: N.L. Belardes Gender: male Member Since: January 12, 2006 Last Signed In: November 13, 2008 Profile Views: 20075 Blog Views: 11184 Calling Dr. Meth Head. Calling Dr. Meth Head... Report Please... Stat! VIDEO: CSUB Economist Talks Stock Crash SOUND OFF: Roadside Memorials A Hassle? Oildale Woman Gunslinger, Red Chalk Penises, Car Bombs And More... Just How Deep Does The Alleged Doctor Drug Dealer Scandal Go? Dead Cat At The Old Folks Home Shock Jock Steals Signs, Matt Munoz Of Bakotopia Quoted What's The Toughest Job You Ever Had? EXCLUSIVE: Too Hot For Bakotopia Magazine? Police Shootout Autopsy Photos Discussed Black Widow Spiders 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 October 08 November 08 Paperback Writer 
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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. |
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