Zowietown Episode Three talks film festival potty humor as N.L. talks to the heart of art - By N.L. Belardes

Nestled into the bowl of the Southern Central Valley lies our little village of Bakersfield. Within our purple-flowered ivy walls exists a tiny group of buildings and a handful of citizens, all pleasantly smiling, building white picket fences (when not planting gardens), and working for corporations that politely puff clean wisps of air from spotless factory pipes into our fresh air. And it circulates too!

The city motto? Ahh, images of a fresh bakery with little French baguettes steaming hot and laid upon a grassy meadow—truly a Baker’s Field—no need for historic truths of colonels and water wars or Western Equine Encephalitis carrying mosquitoes in this version of delightful Bakersfield.

There is no need for angst-filled art in such a town. Everyone here is happy and thinks only thoughts of goodness and crunchy breakfast cereals. Why, even the city janitor has little to clean as he talks to artists who have no need to create, but a strong desire to decorate the town with the candy goodness of Thomas Kinkade paintings:

“Oh goodness, toodle pip and great hopping toads how are you today Mr. Bumblemaker? That is a fine Kinkade mural for our city center!”

“Oh you like it? It’s the latest and all the rage of every all-American city. It’s titled ‘Mountain Paradise’, and although we don’t live on a mountain, I think we’re close enough to bring such hilly goodness and sparkly brook dreams into our loving southern valley.”

“Perfectly chosen. Now I must go clean the town’s wastebaskets. I’m so glad I ran into you. Now I know to add a fresh mountain breeze scent to our beloved Bakersfield bins.”

“The city leaders are precious. They will adore you.”

SLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAP!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now wake up!

This is Bakersfield.

And this is a town where people create not just populate. I hate to be the one to tell you, but our peculiar culture is a little more trashy, with air and water that has caused asthma in children and adults, and cancer clusters with immune system breakdowns that would terrify most horror film directors.

I think it’s fair to say after the last film festival with embalming fluid-filled music videos and the recent ‘Life as it’s crapped up to be’ art show that folks in Bakersfield in part create as a direct result of the environment in which we live: an environment filled with big water contracts, big agricultural pesticide bought landscapes, and Lakeview gusher oil fields, all of which contribute to a Lords of Bakersfield run town that lifts the mat and sweeps all the dead cockroaches beneath.

What cockroaches?

Reminds me of the attitude of Parisians during World War Two. In order to deal with their own sanity, they would sit in cafes in plain site and earshot of the Nazi SS and say, “Germans? What Germans?”

Forget the big pillbox wall for a moment, the same wall that if you put it in the middle of the freeway a thousand cars couldn’t smash through to the hidden truths of Bakersfield.

Let’s replace such a monstrosity for a moment:

Can you see the bedraggled corpse on the billboard just outside of town that looks like Norman Bates mother at a dark window? “Come and visit me,” she says. Oh you didn’t notice? Upon first glance you saw the Coppertone tan girl didn’t you? Trickery. That’s all lights and angles. We are in Hollywood’s backyard you know. And you also didn’t notice the big fresh scent of candy apples being blown into the air as folks enter the valley. Too bad that also kicks up the dust spores of coccidioidomycosis.

Gotta weed out the weak ones, right?

People in Bakersfield create a peculiar blend of Central Valley art, or like A.S. Ashley, an art that mimics the big Hollywood city just over the hill, or even the Venus God on the hill—where is Golgotha—Panorama Drive?

Plant your cross there, Ashley. I hear the sewers often stink up the view overlooking the oil wells and body-filled river. Remember, two bodies were found just last week, and our city leaders have practically given the OK to cannibalism.

A few human particles are OK.

So are pesticides, right? That’s why the agricultural industry has an entire organic segment nowadays, because people are happy with their cancer clusters and poisoned environments.

Sure, let your kids play in the river, downstream from all the bodies stuck under rocks, chunks peeling away to float into your kid’s mouth as he takes a big gulp of clean river water at Yokuts Park… yum! Nah I doubt if the wolf spirits haunt such banks. The natives and their witch doctors died happy people.

Ah, episode three of Zowietown was just released. It’s fitting for this little tirade to mention how Zowietown interviews and talks about the lovely episode of Fresh Fish by Rod Lester. He does incredible stop motion. But there is an irony to his little animated piece—perhaps unintended. I can’t but help to think his short was filmed at Truxton Lake, an offshoot reservoir just off the Kern River, in plain sight of oil wells and refineries, and where in the film a boot is dragged up from the muck.


"Fresh Fish" by Rod Lester
On Google videos

Where’s the rest of the body, Rod?

Stuck in the mighty Kern under a rock, maybe?

Maybe it’s being cooked up in the refinery.

And then there’s an interview with the band, The Filthies. Now these guys are on the verge of something big. No, there’s no big record labels in our village, Jen Raven, so these guys who get ignored by much of their city went down South, where they’re being wined and dined with sushi and Thai food by unnamed folks from record labels who think their sound is refreshing. Though I see your point, Jen Raven. Bakersfield artists do have something to say. They’re going to speak their collective minds through art, theatre, literature, film and music. The leaders just aren’t listening. They want bunny rabbit Kinkadesque art reflecting how life should be when the truest artists to the soul of Bakersfield express how life is: with cheers of goodness and inglorious badness.


Photographer: Pretty Ophelia

I’m not afraid to illuminate the darker side. Ask the people who have read my book. Get ready for the comedy of it all and the serious side to smack listeners through the podcasts of the Red Eye Radio Show. If you didn’t listen live, you’re not going to want to miss this Hollywood-Bakersfield show. Yes, once again, we’re in Hollywood’s backyard. There is a connection.


Zowietown Episode Three:
Bakersfield Independent Film Festival
On youtube.com (I think I like Google better)

Back to music:

Damn Bakersfield people practically ignore the talents of the Filthies.

Because they’re so filthy!?


Photographer: Pretty Ophelia

Not really, they’re just mimicking the trash-strewn parks and streets of Bakersfield with the band name. Give me and Baketown the magic broom cleaning wands of the future and you would see clean parks just like in the Midwest. CLEAN PARKS. Let the tumbleweeds rule the streets again. Do you remember the 70s, when Bakersfield wasn’t as big and there were more empty lots harboring the growth of tumbleweeds in our city center? Whatever.


"Ol' Tumbleweed"
Image made for N.L. by David Wulfekuehler, a real honest-to-goodness
Buck Owens buckaroo.

Instead of cops giving speeding tickets. Why don’t they serve our city better and go give tickets to the people trashing up Bakersfield. Might even prevent a few drug deals that way. Ahh fuggetaboudit.


Unknown Photographer

Let’s enjoy that our mighty Filthies—who you can see in Zowietown Episode Three—are recording a big album down south, have literally self-made a big Hollywood buzz because of their punky popmaking ability to make tunes as catchy as the latest summer cold. You can’t shake ‘em. You listen and songs like Condorstown scream “Skate! Fight! Skate! Fight! Skate! Fight! Tonight!” and get stuck in your head.

Will they make it big?

Who’s to say?

But you gotta die trying. Even in this candy-coated town with more necrotic worms inside than Snow White’s poisoned apple.

And I do have to say, Kenny Mount is the main creative force behind the Filthies. And he’s a product of Bakersfield through and through—dirty streets and all, and from the heart of Oleander, only straying to forge a destiny wandering across America in a beat car, and to return a punk rock fighter. That’s the Filthies. They’re a Bakersfield band.

Enjoy the potty humor of Noveltown’s Zowietown video. It’s no different than the potty humor you see on prime time television. Minus the fear factor.


Kenny Mount of The Filthies and friends on pirate day.
Yes, Bakersfield has a pirate day. Unknown photographer.

Don't be afraid. Go out and fight for yourselves whatever your art may be. Arrrggg!

This entry was posted by N.L. Belardes, on Monday, July 03, 2006. You can leave your response.