Bakersfield freaks fill The Freak Show at the Empty Space Theatre - By N.L. Belardes

Local artist Jen Raven got her mug shot in the paper recently. I’m telling you, badaboom bada bing, being me is like being in a combat zone. Suddenly all these artists around me are exploding into print media. The KooKooNots protester, Jen Raven, local writers… who knows who’s next? It’s almost as if the local arts are growing…

Who can say?

Well, it’s not happening in my direction. But that’s OK. I make my own waves as an attitude-filled local writer asshole and thumb my nose at the big brick news goliath that once spawned yours and my favorite local novel character: Ted Fritts A.K.A. Simon Sundale. Me, the little David with my blogger slingshot. Plink! There goes Bakersfield Bob’s big-haired ego! Plink! Plink! There went getting mentioned in Howard’s big biosphere bak-o-matic blog clog for my defiance against conversation journalism and writing free in print. Plink Plink Snap! I get kicked out of the local rag blog community. Kaboom! As I toss a big Lords book toward the fires of local family-owned journalism, who in their strange behavior will only write about newsworthy books… (even though for some reason I thought Lords of Bakersfield was newsworthy. I mean, shit, it was mentioned in the global news). Maybe if I wrote a children’s story about the Lords of Bakersfield. Now there’s an idea!

Far be it from the local candy-coated Bakersfield Bob toilet paper rag to throw some decent newsprint my direction. If they did I’d have a coronary anyways. “What? Me? My golden hour in the Bakersfield news? The front page of the local section?? A red-carpeted write-up? A big Jonny Harte/Felix Adamo photo spread with me in a suit and tie looking like I just walked off the Hollywood hit parade with a movie deal as big as Oildale? Oh to be Buck’s greedy ghost. Did I write that? Luckily Matt Munoz hasn’t blacklisted me yet from the underground sounds of Bakotunes Radio. That could happen any day. You never know. Some killer journalist could put a gun to Mateo’s head and say, “You let that sum beeyitch N.L. Belarduss outta dat Buck City chuck wagon and we’ll hogtie ya with a saddle and spurs hangin’ out of both yer ears.”

Oh the love. What? Fritts was a bad guy. His sister owns the paper. Badaboom Badabing. Fuggedaboudit.

The only write-ups I get as of late are whiny pieces (almost as whiny as this one) on Heath Dobbler’s drunken angry blog. I have to admit Heath seems pre-occupied with my blog rants. Some people just can’t get enough of nlbelardes.com. Even Black Dog was going to write a fun piece on me but backed off.

Let’s face it. I write the entertainment. No one promotes me but me. (OK, I should repeat that the ska king alone promotes me in a media sort of manner. I’ll see what happens if I upload this one to Bakotopia.com. heh.).

“Hey, I’m getting press somewhere, OK?” I tell that directly to my freakish novelist conscience.

Ah, I digress from The Freak Show at the Empty Space Theatre. That’s why I’m writing, or was I going to make a point after all?

I’m getting there.

I actually did head out yesterday to dig into the Bakersfield art scene where poets, theatre folk, and representatives of fine arts folk put together a Freak Show for the community to share.

Only I was disappointed. Maybe that’s why this piece seems so, so, so blogger aggressive.

Yes, I have to admit that I wanted to see some Chewbacca-looking bearded woman who hadn’t shaved in ten years taking tickets at the door. This was a Freak Show, right? And where were the midgets? I expected a big stack of them like cord wood, and in speedos, in some kind of living art exhibit: fire wood midget freaks, and every once of them about to go swimming into your consciousness. The tall man: where is that big 7-foot tall pro ball player from Bakersfield named Swift? He may be third string, but he should have made a guest appearance. Or the strong man? You know who I’m taking about, right? Yes, Mayor Harvey Hall, who lifts Bakersfield onto his shoulders every day, only to never look any younger or older. Just thinner. You seen the guy lately? Pretty soon he’s going to look just like a hybrid of Burt Reynolds and Kenny Rogers. I can’t tell the difference anymore. They’re both so plastic with skin pulled so tight around their eyeballs I expect them to come rolling out of their head.

Do they have boobs too?

And strange animals? Where was the parade of all the Chihuahuas in town spray painted pink and hidden behind a mysterious curtain? The curator could have been charging 25 cents a peep show for PINK RAT DOGS! SEE THEM LIVING IN ARTISTIC UNITY! I mean, what the fuck? There could have been a two-headed Paper Mache lizard or something…

What about some hidden Bakersfield albino in a glowing dark room, or, better yet, in the Empty Space side room they could have had: COME AND SEE THE GLOWING MAN FROM OILDALE! And then have some guy in a business suit sitting with his briefcase open, and inside of it (which represents his business conscience) a lone KUZZ bumper sticker to symbolize that the Okie migration only ended with pop culture fruition through a man called ‘Buck RADIO’.

And carnival music? Where in God’s green Earth was the damn carnival music???

And I mean the freaky shit. Not that happy little pony-going-around-in-a-circle ice cream truck music. I saw folk music dudes in a jam session. That’s not Freak Show tunes. Those guys should have been performing demented carnival sounds. A Freak Show is freaky with freaks… like some guy walking around with needles poking out of his eyeballs while holding hands with ‘the really fucking fat lady’ who should have been sitting naked in the middle of the theatre in a big fucking glass case in a sea of bon bons and Cheetohs. Now that’s a Freak Show, baby!

But really, do we have to be so freaky… does there have to be a mighty flea circus… does Chewbacca’s grandmother have to mingle with the patrons of the arts? Or the fire sword eater shoving skewers with multi-colored marshmallows down his too-large esophagus?

You see, the local paper plugged the poet Jen Raven. But did they dare to dive further? Don’t they know that this girl is a freaky artist?

Ahh… now we are getting somewhere. Maybe the Freak Show wasn’t in the tame art that I saw. Maybe the Freak Show was in meeting the artists who a conservative-minded town might see as… dare I say it? Different? Take Jen Raven for example. She made eyeball plants for the Freak Show. Not too out there. She’s quite the maker of monstrous Harry Potteresque book covers and book bags. Not too freaky. There’s a market for that. Have you realized how many Potter books have been sold? That’s mainstream even if my sister won’t let her kids read those books cause they’re “of the Devil” (No offense, sis. Just trying to make a point). Hell, Jen Raven’s sock monkeys look like they could live on planet Candyland. They’re so tame you could feed them generic crayola colors.

But she’s different; Jen Raven is different. To some, that means attending any art show would mean attending a Freak Show. Little does the conservative world realize that they are often in the glass zoo themselves. I mean, conservatives do have constraining cages idealistically built around their worlds. Artists peer into them for giggles. Ask Jen Raven. She was even quoted that such monkeys throw rocks.

In the end, there was some good art to check out at the local free theatre. A Freak Show? No. Not in the least according to the old carnival theme we might be thinking. Yet, there was a group of freak artists not afraid to share their works, who might be called The Freak Show collectively by the Bakersfield majority, where in a conservative town, I’m likely one of the biggest freaks for speaking my mind.

Oh yeah, you get it.

Here’s some pics from the event:


Dr. Funkenstein gets priestly cartoony.


Susan was the biggest freak and revealed her very Freakish ceramics




CSUB art student, NANO painted this freakish Gollum.




The monstrous eyes of Jen Raven's Freak plants.


Jen Raven. Did she just walk out of there?


Talk to me Jen Raven...

Thanks ahead of time to A.S. Ashley for understanding this piece of freak writing.

This entry was posted by N.L. Belardes, on Sunday, April 09, 2006. You can leave your response.