Is Americanization the Mamao of Delano's Philippine Weekend? - By N.L. Belardes

Youngsters in Delano, California's Philippine Weekend Parade

Philippine Weekend in Delano, California is supposed to be all about Filipino society in America. Or is it? At Cecil Avenue Park I saw very little in the event structure that made me think of Filipino culture. The parade harbored cultural glimpses of beauty pageants, floats, and more…


People gather on the shady side of the parade route


Get the best Halo Halo and slushies in Delano



I grabbled a hot dog and a vanilla Coke and wandered downtown and people-watched. I snapped a few photos including of the parade itself: the beauty pageant floats, the children in cultural dress and the walking martial arts team…




What is the Filipino-American dream?







Yet at the park I saw a big inflatable tunnel and slide, a rock climbing tower, booths that represented businesses such as real estate and banking, and merchandise such as sunglasses and silk-screened clothing. Food barely represented any Filipino culture with only one booth designated for cultural food.


The taming of the new Filipino-American dream?


The lone Filipino food booth

At least one maker of Filipino foods was refused a booth at the event.

Other food booths at the event represented Kettle Corn, Thai food and Chinese food. Tell me if I’m wrong, but I thought this was a Filipino cultural event, not an Asian cultural event. Instead, the event mimicked the Americanization of the culture of business with glimpses of Filipino culture sprinkled throughout dances and a festive Saturday morning parade.


Headed to the Filipino-American food both

The line at the Filipino food booth was the longest, and so the event could have benefited from more Filipino food booths. I peeked in the back of the tent just to see how hard folks were working… and yes, they were.




Prepping ingredients for Halo Halo

I was also refused a booth where I planned on promoting literary arts about Filipino culture. I had hoped to talk to youth to find out just who some of the Central Valley Filipino Central Valley poets might be. Instead, I did see some rather empty slots, a booth jammed with politicians: the Parras, who are not Filipino, nor represent Filipino culture other than possibly through common-shared American interests. They were there for votes. Can’t blame them for being politicians. Yet you have to ask if a Latino-politicized event is a Filipino cultural event.


Pete Parra helps politicize Philippine Weekend


Is someone in this car responsible for the lack of culture
at Philippine Weekend? Did someone not return a phone call?


Political motivation behind not filling all booth space?

Missing was the Filipino historian from last year who was on a mission to create awareness of Filipino farmworkers in American history, and also missing was the booth promoting Filipino-American novels and history books from last year. I heard the historian didn’t even show up on the second day last year. Was no one at this Filipino cultural event interested in history and the arts other than through traditional dance?

I would have stayed for both days had I got a table OK’d.


A political octopus disguised as a cultural event?

And it’s not that I mind not having a table, although I would have loved to promote the literary arts through my short story, Pinay printed in Metamorphoses, and through the novel I’m working on with a working title of Mamao. What I minded was the politics involved that prevented me from having a table where cultural interaction could have taken place, where I could have learned and helped guide poets and literary-minded Filipino-Americans with my expertise, knowledge and love for cultural literary arts.

Through a contact I couldn’t even get a return call; so, no table at the event was allocated to help promote Filipino cultural literary arts; a sad day because of unspoken politics, no doubt.

I attended the festivities, and though I saw thousands of Filipinos, and mixed Filipinos, I’m not so sure the event was cultural as many hoped. The reality is the Americanization of Philippine culture and a dislocated youth from their own past. It happens in any transplanted culture to the Americas.


QYORK represents the Americanization of Fili-youth. Their music is an often politicized
Hip-Hop journey through the American and Filipino-American landscape

Americanized? We’re all Americanized. But we do want to learn culture through more than the few traditional dances. People want to read, to discuss, to capture through other artforms: film, literary, theatre, fine arts.



In the end I drove around Delano, to historic sites and down Glenwood Street to see remnants of the old Delano Chinatown/Filipino section. I snapped photos and asked about old bars, restaurants and pool halls where a certain old manong and his old friends hung out…


Possible site of Agbayani Village
*Agbayani Village may be on the west side of town...


Old building from labor camp now at historical center?


Boarded up remnants of gambling hall, pool hall, restaurant?


Americanization boarded up for post-modern fast food culture


Old Delano transformed into new youth culture?


Some people call this area Chinatown because there were several Chinese restaurants

We drove past farmland where workers ate Table Grapes off vines, not thoroughly washing them, and bearing children who entered a world of cancer clusters and racism, a world where education meant escaping small town Delano—not a bad town, but a farming town where Filipino generations fell into conflict about old traditions versus new…



Here’s a few paragraphs from an early draft of the novel I’m working on. It's the story of a young girl and how her generation conflicts with two other generations of Filipino-Americans:


Mamao

By N.L. Belardes


Dust filled the air on the drive home along County Line Road. As the van rocked and bounced I imagined a boat sailing through Delano, California, skimming upon a lonely river, spitting up particles of itself, even letting out an occasional cough as we moved along vine covered shores toward the coming darkness. I strained to look to the north, for the silhouetted wings of a monster flying low over the grape vineyards. As we headed away from the sun I could see the fields stood empty of workers. Leaves glistened under a dying day; the sun sunk its glowing eye in a far western Central Valley rim of coastal mountains; heat waves rippled along the sun’s curvature like golden welling tears. Even so, the falling sun didn’t keep me from looking over my shoulder. If there was another glowing eye, I was convinced it was that of the mamao.

“You’re my princess, Neneng,” Papa smiled. I called grandpa, Papa, and my daddy, Tatay. Don’t let that confuse you. I called mother, mother and grandma, grandma, though I am still often called Neneng, which means baby girl to my Filipino family. We often traveled together as a close family unit and were on our way home from picking table grapes off the six-foot tall grape trellis lining the fields just off County Line Road.

Papa seemed especially happy as he sat and wiped his hands with a handkerchief. He smiled to me and out the window as if he were in defiance of the very mamao herself. I leaned my chin into my hand, my fingers touching my lips as I stared. In a low voice Papa whispered, “Don’t put your fingers in your mouth, Neneng.” He was leaning close and I could feel his breath on my ear. I pulled my fingers away but continued my search.

I thought I could hear her flying low, swooping her wings in a frightening beat that made a distinct clacking noise; wak wak wak her great wings went as she searched with drooling jaws for the taste of me, and more appropriately for her, the taste of my liver. That’s the mamao’s feast. It’s what mother said she would take, what legends say: the aswang, the manananggal, or our tagalog slang version, the mamao who tears into liver flesh with vampyric intentions. She would scrape it right out of my body with her long talons. But only if I wasn’t inside the house before dark. That’s what both mother and grandmother said. In the meantime what did she do in the day? Hide in the vineyards and poison the fruits with her long mosquito-like appendage? Like a skunk maybe she sprayed the fields… Or would she just sip the juice from each orb like water-blood as she hid in a hole in the earth, her wings folded around her like a suit of snake scales? No, unlike my liver that she would like to feast on I was certain she was a contaminator. She would spread her sickness across the entire valley, each grape her victim; only if she weren’t so bent on finding me.

For a moment I thought I saw her. I opened my mouth to scream, thinking her black wings had stretched above distant fields, naked as they flapped and searched for me, perhaps even waiting for me to leave the steely safety of Tatay’s car. Papa sat next to me. He looked wizened in his little black glasses with his eyes staring from beneath a head of grey hair. He held one arm around me while I nuzzled into his plaid shirt, right into his armpit and against his steely blue and silver pen that he always carried in his front shirt pocket. “Look at that plane, Neneng,” he said. “There is no mamao above the vineyards today. Don’t act so afraid.” And so the shadow transformed. What I thought could be a mamao was just a bi-plane possibly headed to Porterville or some farm property hangar.

The only refreshing thought other than the monster being a plane was that I could play in the fields and not get caught in the next day’s early morning light by any mean field workers. Only if my cousins wanted to go. They always loved to go.

But the day darkened as we drove along and for now I was consumed with thoughts of the mamao and what she might take from my insides. I was maybe five years old. Car lights drifted past as if boats jumping from island to island. And soon sleepiness fell on me too.

That’s how early childhood was for me: being afraid of the approaching dark, afraid of the mamao that my mother and grandmother put in my head when I was so filled with energy. And so I threatened to run into to the vineyards.

“You can’t go there,” mother said one day after my cousins and I wanted to play in the fields. It had grown late in the afternoon; there was barely any more light left to sneak across the street into the vineyards; yet it was still too early for me to believe a monster would come and gorge on my insides.

“No,” grandmother agreed. “The mamao will eat you up! And what it doesn’t eat, it will leave on a hill of bugs!”

That afternoon I went and sat in the backyard. There we had a pool where no one swam. What good is a swimming pool if you can’t use it? Didn’t matter, none of us in the house knew how to swim. Not even Tatay. I thought maybe Papa knew from when he was a little boy in the Philippines, or as a young man harvesting sugar cane on Oahu. Weren’t those tranquil lands of jungle rivers and lakes? And in the San Joaquin water once flowed in a giant system of lakes fed by many rivers. In hydrants and deadly canals crisscrossing the Central Valley with a deadly force as rivers fed their hungry arteries. Few dared go there. And Papa was now so old it didn’t matter. I couldn’t imagine a pair of swim trunks on his skinny old body. He in his khaki pants, with his notebook and scratched glasses; and me wondering as I always did about what Papa’s life had been like.

I picked up a rock and threw it into the swimming pool, wondering if there were fish inside and watching the water change into a greenish-brown color from the tainting of rocks and dirt. My cousin, Johnny stood nearby. Barely older than me, he threw rocks into the water too. He was like a brother to me. For the first few years of my life we lived in the same house as many Filipino families have had to do when trying to make ends meet. My three younger brothers were nowhere nearby. They were far too afraid of the water and its creepy unknown depths to even stand near the edge.

“I wonder if there are fish in there,” I said.

“That’s dumb. There’s no fish in there. Just a mamao. It’s going to eat your head!”

“Stop it!” I yelled, wanting to push him into the water. Usually I punched kids who made me mad. And that went for my cousin too. Just because he was older than me and a little taller didn’t mean I couldn’t sock him in the stomach and watch him cry. I almost did but for once I held back my anger. I knew I could get in trouble, especially if he were eaten by the pool’s hidden mamao.

Ghostman thomasjacksonwalker reviews SAM SLEUTH and the FALL of the COFFEE BARON - By N.L. Belardes

SAM SLEUTH and the FALL of the COFFEE BARON?

At first I cursed A.S. Ashley. Hell, he could be that Pynchon of pinash, that thomasjacksonwalker in a straight man cape and painted on moustache. He still might be. Yet, the ghost himself has resurfaced in blog comments, and, has written his second favor for the artists of Bakersfield.

The cape flutters in the wind...

God knows what sights the poor man may have witnessed driving from the land of tinsel to the land of joey minstrel. If he actually drove up from the lusty southland, that is.

Ah, but I digress. My friend A.S., I take credit for dropping off the final S., which he knows depicts his true nature; anyway, we discussed this particular piece... and I rebelled against thomasjacksonwalker's ghostly prose, but alas, I recognize that there is value in consensus rather than conflict. And besides, thomasjacksonwalker is funnier than city council shit running out of their plugged toilet meetings...

You should have heard my diatribe. A.S. didn't say a word as I came full circle in logic, talking to myself more than to him, sounding reminiscent of Cameron on Ferris Bueller, and in the end stuttering, "I'll go. I'll go. I'll go. I'll go..."

Now read on and look forward to MORE articles from thomasjacksonwalker about whatever he wants to talk about on this site...

~the little red barn that could.
by THOMASJACKSONWALKER

You know how these places work: They’re stupid little dinner theaters that appeal to the silver haired crowd. The theater owners buy a tired old script, plug in a bunch of young amateurs to perform it, and pray the “nostalgia” factor keeps the doors open. Pathetic.



I don’t know what A.S. ASHLEY was thinking when he asked me to come up from L. A., see a play at the local Melodrama, and write a review.

I loathe local theatre. I’m spoiled: I’ve seen “first run” Broadway plays since THE SOUND OF MUSIC; my mother used to torture me by breaking out in song every time I said a word that reminded me of her unrelenting musical library; and my father, a brilliant, frustrated, armchair director. Don’t get me wrong. I support local theater, but I understand it to be only the “teething ring” from which all greatness is born. I still can’t help from being a harsh critic of its obvious flaws.

As I made my way across the grapevine and entered into the boiling bowels of the “Golden Empire”, thunderstorms, God's thermostat set on nuclear reactor, and wind blowing dirt and dust in every direction, didn’t make the prospects for an entertaining evening any better. Bakersfield’s proposed slogan “life as it should be” mocks this metropolis “wanna be”, as I crawled down the traffic choked Rosedale Hwy toward my final destination off of Allen Rd..



There it was. A clean, cute, super tidy, little barn of a theatre (yes, it looks EXACTLY like a barn!). The parking lot was full. People moved hastily to the ticket booth in hopes of a quick exit for the brutal heat. Inside the concession area you saw the bustle of patrons gathering the necessary refreshments and goodies needed to sustain them through the first act. All the servers are actors in the production. Nice touch. Here you could see them made-up, up close and personal, as they sang for their tips like pirates for your pleasure. I took my seat at a back table to watch the play unfold.



The first bit of business was to look over the program for SAM SLEUTH and the FALL OF THE COFFEE BARON, which reads like an EVENING NEWS EXTRA (called, the MELODRAMA MUSE) with the headline: COFFEE TYCOON MISSING!

The Tycoon is a mannequin( ah, real mannequin). And according to the playbill.. .is played by Manny Quinn. The playbill also lists another actor, Harold, “the Owl”, who plays the part of Stu, the “seeing-eye hawk”, for “Fats"(James Mongold), the blind, jazz Trianglist... what a “HOOT”!



Here’s how Harold, the Owl’s Bio goes, “Harold is making his debut here at the Gaslight Melodrama after living most of his life in various wooded regions. ‘Playing the part of a seeing-eye hawk was a real challenge for me,’ Harold says. ‘Mainly because... I’m actually an owl.’ Harold doesn’t expect to audition for any other plays, but is planning on starting a film career. Currently, he’s co-writing a series of cop/buddy films with a woodpecker friend of his...”

Have I lost you yet? Then don’t come see the show. You’re too dense to appreciate it. This show is fast, sharp, and furiously funny.

This work is the virgin brain-child of James Mongold,
co-authored and directed by Michael Prince. The brothers “grin” wanted to do a film noir, black and white “who-done-it” detective story so tongue-in-cheek, you have to wonder how many cans of “chew” they packed in there. Answer: plenty. They manage to satirize everything within reach: the story line, the cast, neighboring towns... even the intermission: after holding stage position from the first Act into the second…

~ACT 2 Scene 1
In the House house, Sam and Maxwell are still squaring off. Chazworth and Winthrop are still on the ground.
MAXWELL: You see you see what happens? I’ve been standing here for fifteen minutes waiting for the intermission to end, and my roast has gone and burned to a crisp! You smell it?
SAM: But you’re not standing.
MAXWELL: How dare you, sir! You like to pick on the handicapped, do you?
SAM: No, I’m just saying,.........
MAXWELL: Shut up! Look, while we’ve been up here waiting for that mousy little girl to finish selling ice cream to all those people, my supper has been ruined! And on top of that, my two man-servants have died! You’re in a lot of trouble, Mister!
SAM: Uh, I don’t think they’re dead.
Suddenly, Chazworth sits up.
CHAZWORTH: No, not dead at all, really. A bit groggy, perhaps. I mean, a dart in the neck is no swim in the park.
Winthrop sits up.
WINTHROP: And getting punched in the mouth hurts too.
CHAZWORTH: Does it, old boy?
WINTHROP: Oh yes, in fact!
MAXWELL: Shut up, you two!
Chazworth and Winthrop fall back to the floor, unconscious.

Ok, that’s all I’m giving you. I’m no “Spoiler”!

There are no “stars” in this production. It is truly an ensemble effort whose loyalties are to the jokes and gags. Michael Prince weaves the characters beautifully and at break-neck speed (don’t blink).



If this comedy doesn't slay you, stick around for the VAUDEVILLE REVIEW! (This is normally where I make my exit; there’s a REAL drink waiting for me somewhere!) Vaudeville Reviews usually bore me to tears, with their stupid comic routines and stale list of classic musical numbers. But not here folks! How about starting off with an ETHEL MERMAN IDOL Competition!? That's right! Male contestants in drag doing their worst impressions of the Broadway diva. Scream! The sardonic humor shifts into high gear for this show’s finale.

That’s it. I came, I saw, I laughed my ass off! Kudos to all at the Melodrama for bringing “Something Completely Different” (Monty Python), and making my visit to this cowtown well worth the ugly ride up here.



SAM SLEUTH and the FALL of the COFFEE BARON (July 21st-August 26th)
THE GASLIGHT MELODRAMA ~Call (661) 587-3377 for reservations
12748 JOMANI DR., BAKERSFIELD, CA 93312

CARNAGE ASADA III and DIRTY SPANGLISH BIRTHDAY at N.L.'s tonight - By N.L. Belardes

CARNAGE ASADA: It's a BBQ. Bring meat. You have to know where I live to attend and it's 2$ at the door. Why? Because you get to be entertained by Dirty Spanglish (And it's his birthday).

This is late notice, but if people find out I had a BBQ, made homemade salsa and cooked lots of meat and didn't invite... well, there would be hell to pay.

Yes Shantell, I will cook veggies for you if you show up.

You never know who shows up. Could be no one, could be lots of artists to mingle... but remember, it's about the BDAY HEAT MEISER OF SPANGLISHLAND.... so show up and pay your respects to his old age of some freaky teenage number(16?, 18?, 13?)!!


Birthday war hero rocker Dirty Spanglish

6pm at N.L.'s in the ghetto grotto. 2 DOLLARS.


Kenny Mount says two dollahhs is one dumbs up!

P.S. BRING MEAT and DRINKS
P.S.S NO UNDERAGE DRINKERS ALLOWED OR I WILL CALL THE COPS MYSELF YA HOODLUMS!

The World's first Blog and Roll Artist sings about Bakersfield life as it should be - By N.L. Belardes

Dr. Bruce L. Thiessen, aka Dr. BLT is not going to be left out of the Bakersfield artists' quest to educate city leaders. Yes, The World's First Blog n Roll Artist has recognized the use of poor marketing slogans and city sign ideas that are better left as seals for crusty parchment paper...

I asked Bruce about his inspiration.

He wrote:

I was inspired to write this song after reading the disparate opinions
of readers of the local paper concerning the proposed new
logo for Bakersfield, and after writing my own letter to the editor
concerning my feelings on the leafy symbol and the motto: Bakersfield:
Life as it Should Be. As a psychologist, I am often in the business of
contrasting the delusional fantasies of patients with reality. While
I'm sure the person who came up with "Bakersfield: Life as it Should
Be" was not delusional or psychotic in the clinical sense, I thought
they may be able to use a "musical prescription" to align themselves
with the reality in Bakersfield. In the song I tried to transport the
listener beyond the despair that often accompanies stark, cold reality
to a place of hope and optimism about what Bakersfield could be.

Check out his song, "Bakersfield: (This Ain't) Life As it Should Be"

download: http://www.drblt.net/music/ThisAintLife.mp3

More inspiration?
The city meeting
The art show fights back
Bakersfield Life as it should be park
Bakersfield water park time bombs


Zowietown captures rebellious art folk lampoon

Bakersfield Backstage rocks with post-hardcore from farm country and the desert - By N.L. Belardes

Raul and Weenie of The Young Death rocking at Bakersfield's Backstage

You never know what’s being produced in a farming community. Could be tomatoes or potatoes; could be melons or citrus, grapes or lettuce… or even a rock and roll band. Just check out Arvin, California. A few dozen miles southeast of Bakersfield there’s one high school, lots of good Mexican food, and lots of youth energy, all grown on the vine...


Matildakay was in the house

A little bird once told me that kids who want to ditch class at Arvin High literally step out of class and walk right through agricultural fields to who knows where. Maybe they go practice in a rock and roll band, maybe they run off to smoke some cigarettes or pot. Who knows? Everyone has their reason for sneaking from academia or rebelling against the MAN, or just seeking feelings of independence.


Music from the desert... Eyes Set To Kill

But don’t get me wrong. Lots of good students are involved in the rock and roll scene. I’m just sayin’… kids in farming communities get bored, and you don’t have to be hiding behind a trash bin from your health teacher to pick up a guitar and scream about broken society.

I was at Backstage last night. It was Sarah’s birthday. You probably don’t know Sarah. She gets crap from some people for supporting the music she likes. I don’t give her hell. I went to high school with her pop—a long-haired boy back in the day… and I just support her and Bakersfield music in general.


Sarah on myspace...


Daniel from Studio 99 gets junked on Net

So I showed up and there she was working the cash box, addicted to myspace right there at the Backstage Studio. And she wasn’t the only one. I slightly drooled as Daniel from Bakersfield’s Studio 99 also jumped online.

We can’t get enough. But I was there to cover a show.


KRAB DJ Hammer is faced toward the camera (without hat)


The Young Death from Arvin, CA....

DJ, Hammer from Hell was in the house kickin’ it, while I meandered to the front of the crowd to photograph a bunch of Arvin kids from The Young Death rocking the stage. The music, post-hardcore screamo, was, to put mildly, ear-wrenching angst-filled music squeezed from Central Valley farmland. My ears burned, rung, and I desperately wanted to jam silly putty into my brain to stop it from vibrating—these kids rocked. I waded my way through the darkness and sound, got some good shots of these youth, these 16-year-old rockers who have been rocking in their band The Young Death for three years.


Look at Jorge screaming while Raul rips bass
(Tyler and Weenie are shredding in middle of photo)

“How many times you guys play Jerry’s?” I said after the show to the most youthful kid in the band. He’s sixteen, but a youthful sixteen, and will thank me for saying such when he’s my age.

“Maybe seven times.”

“And your favorite venue in Bakersfield?”

“Studio 99.” That’s over by Buck Owens Crystal Palace.

“What about in Arvin? Where do you perform there? Do you play at the high school?”

“We’re allowed to play there at lunch. We do house gigs a lot. Wherever we can play.”

I asked what their parents did for a living and was told various jobs with at least two working in the fields. This is rock from farm labor country we’re talking about.

These kids piled all their gear and ducked down dusty roads in the severe heat just to perform and sweat in Bakersfield. For what?

Because they choose to?


Subliminal message in the posters of Backstage?

Hell yeah, why not? Backstage is an all ages venue, with posters on the wall, a few tables and a big fluffy couch—plenty of room from any potential mosh pit shenanigans…

I dig it.



I also saw Eyes Set To Kill from Chandler, Arizona. Chandler lies in the greater Phoenix area, in case you’re wondering… This mostly chick band destroyed what was left of my hearing, with one vocalist screaming at decibels I thought only jet aircraft could roar. Yes, Brandon was that loud.


Brandon from Eyes Set To Kill screams



I couldn’t understand a word he was saying; and just like the previous band, one vocalist screamed, while the other, in this case, the beautiful young Lyndsay, sung in a poppy tone that wowed all the strapping rockers in the crowd. It was a strange mixture of lovely and terrifying… but that’s just today’s post hardcore flavor.

Purple glove and tiara comments get out of control - By N.L. Belardes

OK, the comments aren't out of control, but my article, "Novelist Bonnie Hearn Hill talks latest thriller and Yosemite Writers Conference" has just taken over as the most commented blog ever on nlbelardes.com's Paperback Writer...

Read the comments and contribute... should I wear the tiara?

More adventures at the Thai restaurant - By N.L. Belardes

Chingpea stood rather haggardly from the city’s latest and most fashionable chest cold infestation. She wheezed, smiled and we soon sat with steaming bowls of soup placed before us—flakes of ginger swirled in the bowls and steam wafted gently into our noses.

Such delight!

Just moments before I thought, It’s funny how I can write a little blog entry and it circulates around town, and makes its way to one of the cast members who I never would have known would read the article—though I’m not surprised.

We had walked into Bakersfield’s Thai Garden restaurant on Brundage Lane between A Street and Oleander, only to politely be confronted by the restaurant owner who had read the recent piece, “At the Thai food restaurant”. In fact, the piece had been printed and handed to him. By whom? I don’t know. A mystery reader I’m guessing; another thomasjacksonwalker (read comments) lurking the site from afar. He thanked me for writing the article while I was just happy to know that another blog made enough rounds to touch a few people’s lives in and outside of Bakersfield.



I learned something new about the restaurant owner. While Chingpea sat and ate the soup I munched on spicy chicken and listened to some entrepreneurs talk with the restaurant owner about textiles: fabrics, shirts and imports from overseas. Chingpea knows a lot about such topics as well—she’s always doing work to help organize tradeshows. She practically puts the clothes on sales teams and organizes shows from booth placement to travel arrangements. She even works with big display companies. She helps negotiate prices and so forth for very expensive booth operations at global tradeshows. She’s a steal for any company to have on their team as she also knows the ins and outs of ordering various types of clothing and promotional items.

Many people don’t know Chingpea and I work with each other during the day. Where she does a lot of the planning, I do a lot of the creative work to help build company image through design and creative direction, blogs, writing, online strategies, etc. It’s a team effort.



I even put my resume online recently to see what kind of feedback I might get from companies in Bakersfield, Fresno and beyond interested in such exciting image-building…

And so we sat and listened to the restaurant owner talk about his specialties other than Thai food. He clearly knew of the textiles he spoke of. He even explained the 5-stitch process of the shirt he was wearing, while I simply got stuffed on my spring roll.

Fresno's Pottymouth Podcast 'Dorktown' talks Belllllaaarrrrdessss - By N.L. Belardes

Straight from the page of Fresno's Dorktown:



Thanks Mikie and Bells!

Episode 28: episode28belardes.mp3(45:04) (click the mp3 file to download)

*I WARN YOU, FOUL LANGUAGE!

The in the face language starts us off.

Bells Try's to decipher some KFSR Armenian.

Nobody's having sex in Fresno's heat.

New Dorktown game: SOUNDS OF FRESNO
Beat Bells at identifying Fresno "sounds."

Fresno karaoke with gunshots in the Quigley District.

Finally, Mr. NL Belardes gets an interview with Dorktown. We rundown stuff like: Nick vs. Bako media, Bakersfield: Life as it Should Be, independent journalists vs. paid journalists, grass fires on Highway 99, Fresno Famous is mimicked by the Fresno Bee, Fresno Falcon blog off, Fresno and Bakersfield both get ripped by Los Angeles, N.L. has a Film Festival going on about his book and Fresno is invited.

Podcasting sucks without Bells.

Fresno podcasting report: Mike Oz Podcast, news on Flowing With Famous and Libation.

C gets on his HIGH HORSE: Hear the final minutes of the Dale Julin Show (A DORKTOWN EXCLUSIVE!!)

Giving out them Fonzy Eeeeeeeh's: Fresno Famous bloggers, Piper, Clerks II, Borat, Dorktown My Space, The Same Shape

episode28belardes.mp3

Novelist Bonnie Hearn Hill talks latest thriller and Yosemite Writers Conference - By N.L. Belardes

There’s a Fresno, California writer who I bond with because we both wrote novels about Central Valley newspapers that include murder, deception, and an often unscrupulous style of presenting the news. Of course there's a reflection on reality: if a big story bleeds, that just might make for good front-page glory, I mean, novel fodder. Does such news still run rampant into the consciousness of our lovely cities and farmland of the San Joaquin? Sure, just go flip the pages of your local newspaper, and keep in mind, such dastardly media morsels do sometimes get tucked away into the pages of manuscripts.


Bonnie Hearn Hill, 'The Swami' and mysterious Queen Cat photo
(*rumor: Diva cat wears unknown Drag Queen crown)

In some of my recent emails to Bonnie Hearn Hill there was talk of me wanting to float in a giant bottle of frozen water to escape heat and power outages. Bonnie herself grumbled to me through an email about needing a power generator. Ahh, life in the Central Valley; a summer heat wave of humidity, sun and dust—I grumble too and pray my computer will continue to run.

You don’t know about the heat? Go sit in a Fresno or Bakersfield area grape vineyard. Even the rattlesnakes won’t bite if they can sit in the shade of your quickly evaporating body.

Meanwhile I imagine Bonnie Hearn Hill strangely empowered about power, storming into a store filled with generators of all kinds, and demanding, “My novels are not writing themselves. I need power!” And then with a simple gesture, not unlike a sophisticated California cowgirl, and with a twirl of a gun in and out of her holster, she gets what she wants—even a glass of cold water.


Pampered and well-read on Hearn Hill Thrillas...

But then, Bonnie is a woman all about empowerment—and that doesn’t mean just being in a strong literary position in her own life. She believes in empowerment for the writers around her. She believes in the strength and energy of the written word and the power of encouraging others to take their literary voice and perhaps become well-versed, meaningful, structured, and to contribute to society with such words.

Maybe all of the world to writers is an intimidating endless sea of books. So what? Those empowered can swim amongst such words and even contribute to the most popular seas of knowledge with storytelling of their own. Yes, you can. You just have to have good ideas, be able to write and strategize, and in the end, learn a good ‘elevator speech’ you can pitch to a potential literary agent.


A mysterious group of Fresno writers congregate...


Bonnie Hearn Hill, freaky Donny Osmond gloves and 'The Swami'

You know the type. You’ve seen them in the movies. So-and-so is stuck on an elevator with the big cheese kahuna president of the yo-yo company and has twelve seconds to sell the president toymaker on an idea for the coolest radio-controlled hairpiece for bald men ever invented.

Believe me. This is real world stuff, folks. It takes months or years to write books, and seconds to sell them.

Bonnie Hearn Hill spent 22 years paying bills as a newspaper editor. And she has credibility as a teacher and storyteller. Why? Because while editing news stories is a nice skill for a writer to have, Bonnie Hearn Hill also pursued the art of novel writing. She followed the hunt of the thriller like an exasperated journalist on three cups of coffee hunting for clues that could get the big story on page one.


Bonnie Hearn Hill and the mysterious Muscle Man of Fresno


Book one in Bonnie Hearn Hill's trilogy
has a mysterious taste of Central Valley news
Signing at Fresno Barnes & Noble: Sept 2, 2006

I’m tearing my way through her latest thriller to be released this September, If it Bleeds (Check out her website for other releases). Her writing is smack on the money, with a witty in-your-face style filled with engaging characters often reminiscent of Central Valley folks; some of them, media people…

Media people? Sound familiar?

If it Bleeds makes Central Valley news-making the top story; and brings real scandal into the picture that most people might simply gloss over as today’s entertaining news of corruption and scandal. She brings another dimension to Central Valley news and politics, one that is literary, but real. “Fiction is the lie that tells a truth,” Hill Hearn recently said in a phone conversation. “I can be more honest in fiction,” she added, meaning that sometimes we read the news and need our own resolution to the day’s top stories. Her works often do that for her.



If it Bleeds takes Central Valley scandal and fictionalizes by twisting in a plot of ‘white rights’ groups. That’s because, well, bigotry exists in the Central Valley. And don’t tell me it doesn’t or never did. Go read your history books and you’ll find the KKK actually did tar and feather people just outside of Bakersfield.

And more than that, If it Bleeds once reeked of even more Central Valley scandal. Originally, Bonnie Hill Hearn's novel was about Fresno’s scandalous ‘Operation Rezone’, where a millions-dollar building development industry survived off corruption and bribes with city officials and developers. It’s a scandal that journalists have written causing Fresno, like Bakersfield, to be perceived as a sad town that somehow has the power to draw people back into their midst. As a result of ‘Operation Rezone’, such scandal has caused the Central Valley to have a stigma. For Fresno itself as a Central Valley metropolis, one San Francisco newspaper wrote in 1999 that the city is “a cautionary tale of planning gone wrong and development gone wild”.



On Tuesday nights Bonnie Hearn Hill teaches a private writing class. Perhaps you think one would have to be in a rather stylish club, or one of the Lords of Fresno to be invited to such a literary soiree. No, her class is different; it's uplifting and for the select few who are just plain serious about their craft.

I imagine Bonnie on a Tuesday night—a ragtag group of writers in tow—and sometimes towing her; and she kicks off her shoes and stares into a crowd of onlookers—some close friends for years on end, and her having a say in how writers should shape their craft for success and not for some local content-sucking entity that wants readers and traffic—who won’t pay a dime.

Ahh to be on that peak with yaks and sherpa holding our pens along with a dictionary of great literary colloquialisms. After all, we all want to be so popular that we’re walking clichés, right?

Wrong. I think most writers just want to support themselves by writing. It's a dream after all.

In the Bonnie Hearn Hill classroom I imagine adventurers of the mind, of Central Valley thoughts, of newspapers gone mad, of lovers of life and grand travelers wearing big hats and lengthy winter coats—even in the 110 degree Central Valley summers—yes, the writers: the dreamers of society bold enough to put words to paper and explore social consciousness to the point that emboldens; because a writer can shape film, influence ads, influence popular consciousness, and bring tears just through stringing together words…



Oh yes, writers are such adventurers, and are bold—even the shitty ones who can’t string together sentences without greater-than-sliced-bread clichés. And I imagine Bonnie, even without her shoes on, does steer a Fresno ship. That ship rubs up against the Bakersfield skyline.

And she helps bring us the Yosemite Writers Conference, a minimal investment for potential success.

I said in our phone conversation, "Let’s talk about the Yosemite Writers Conference… what’s the big deal? Is this just a bunch of pretentious literary whiners getting together to have tea and crumpets? What’s really in it for the little guy like me—the writer who has been too afraid of his own shadow to send manuscripts out into the big kahuna literary game?"

Bonnie assured me that, believe it or not, down-to-earth-I’ve-been-there-too literary agent attitudes will be ready to meet writers and to help shape them. They want writers to pitch book ideas to them. And Bonnie, a successful thriller writer, wants to help true writers. She helps empower by assisting in bringing a conference that doesn’t just turn its back on creative folk.

If we are bad writers, we want to be told politely to slip into the sea of books and learn to swim. Then we can learn the doggy pen paddle if we have to. That’s always better than being told to walk the plank into a stormy sea without our Mickey Mouse floaties.

After all, who wants to be snubbed?

Buy Bonnie Hearn Hill Thrillers
Get in touch with 'The Swami'
Read my media-blaster novel

Cinema of the Lords video by Meatydish Productions promotes Bakersfield short film contest - By N.L. Belardes

Hot off the presses comes the promotional short film by Jarad Mann of KRAB Radio. You know him as Meathead on his morning Meathead, Desi and Rocky Nash Show...



You also recently got to know him as Meathead the actor in my own near death experience blog, "Jarad 'Meathead' Mann, Rusty Rhodes and Yoda's Big Theory" (And yes, this big boy is obsessed with Superman)

And now for your viewing pleasure...



More information:

Noveltown Cinema of the Lords Contest
Meatydish Productions

Fear of Hezbollah attacks in America loom for some - By N.L. Belardes

The FBI doesn't think Hezbollah attacks in America is a far-fetched idea. (more, even more)

Neither do I.

But that's only if the war widens, which the Saudis and others fear will happen.

Who thought 9-11 was going to be a reality, that more than 200 people would jump from the Twin Towers that fateful morning?

Should you be terrified? I don't think so... but you should be aware...

More thoughts?

At the Thai food restaurant - By N.L. Belardes

I sat with chingpea at a favorite Thai food restaurant. I don’t know how the owner survived because for months we seemed like the only two people in the restaurant. Today the seats were packed.



The owner knows chingpea likes the soup. Among the rice noodles, baby corn and cabbage there’s a strong flavor of ginger. Her throat hurt. She sipped the soup, but it wasn’t quite as hot as usual. “I wanted it to burn my sore throat,” she said froggily.

“Let me know if you want more soup,” the owner smiled.



I kept chowing down and she still finished her soup before mine. She didn’t ask for more as her chicken fried rice appeared before she took a final last swallow.

At the table next to us sat two grubby men in their late 50s. They looked like truck drivers: disheveled with greased down hair and bushy grey beards, and torn jeans with hints of oil stains. I can usually spot them in a crowd as my dad was a truck driver. Not to mention, truck drivers often have a certain mentality toward life: that the world revolves around them, that roads and freeways are laid out before their golden rod trucks like big red carpets.

And all the little cars on the road don’t mean a thing.

Is that the cowboy spirit? My dad was a mean little Mexican truck driver who carried a gun. Machismo shot out through his mouth as easy as it would the barrel of his side-shooter. But it wasn’t just a Mexican-American cultural machismo. It was the cowboy mentality, the John Wayne on wheels, the “I got a horse and you don’t” swagger and constant readiness to swing a fist as if the entire world were a saloon brawl waiting to happen.

These cultured cowboys at the next table weren’t Mexican-American. Doesn’t matter what their ethnicity was. Cowboys know no color. It’s the movies that make Americans think 'white'. I suddenly heard one of them speak to the waitress, “This isn’t a spring roll.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I ordered a spring roll. Spring rolls aren’t fried. This is fried.”

I had a spring roll sitting on my plate. It’s fried. So are the spring rolls at half the Asian food restaurants I go to.

The waitress opened the menu and pointed, “Sorry sir. You would have to order a fresh spring roll. I can take your spring roll back.”

“I don’t want fried spring rolls. I just thought you people knew what a spring roll was. If I thought you people didn’t know what a spring roll was, I wouldn’t have ordered it.” And so on went the old cowboy talking about spring rolls needing to be boiled.

He needed his head boiled.

While I fumed, chingpea politely looked over to me, “I just let it go. It just shows the ignorance of some people who lump all Asian foods together, thinking because they had one style of Asian food, that the rest are all the same.”


Add chingpea on myspace

Hezbollah in Bakersfield? - By N.L. Belardes

A young Israeli soldier gets captured. The kid isn’t even old enough to drink alcohol in America. The situation turns even more sour as Israel soldiers are killed and more captured. Eventually the Bush administration gives the go ahead for Israel to give a less than gentle response by pounding Lebanon’s infrastructure.

Why? Was this a situation the American government was waiting to happen? Finally, a situation that could potentially embarrass Iran? Forget about Israel and Lebanon for half a second. Iran had just been threatening Israel at the U.N. And Americans at home have been bitching about the price of gasoline. Could this all be orchestrated to make Iran look like a Hitler about ready to strike, or a new war for oil and supremacy?

Hezbollah: Iranian-funded.

Iran: seeking nuclear energy and calling Israelis, Nazis.

An Iranian drone hits an Israeli ship. An Iranian-made missile is shot down over Israel. Embarrassment for Iran and the manufacturers of a rocket that didn’t reach its destination? Sure. Orchestrated in an Iranian hate campaign because they are the new world threat?

Possibly. Doesn’t America want to skewer the heart of terrorism? Or at least make it appear so? Remember, weapons of mass destruction?

It’s coming to a skewering of more-than-Saddam proportions. In the meantime, and if that happens, be prepared for war on your street. And don’t expect the hero of Smallville to come and help you if Hezbollah are in Bakersfield.

Bakersfield? Why not? The Washington Times in 2005 published an article titled, “Hezbollah in America.” That would be ‘in America’ not outside of our borders. And we now have Hezbollah threatening American interests with 1,700 fighters—who could be anywhere on the planet, and have been daring America to ignite World War Three. They say they’re ready.

Yes, now is the time to make sure your neighbors are who they say they are.

One more spark in the conflict in the Middle East and the Hezbollah are coming. Yes. Be ready. Iran spends at least $100 million a year to shine the bombs that Hezbollah has targeted for innocent Americans for years. They’ve been waiting. Those would be called sleeper cells. And yes, though I cried recently that illegal immigrants need rights, I was never talking about the terrorist organizations that lurk American streets, that creep and plot and make the Lords of Bakersfield look like little monkeys scavenging on war-torn streets.

Not afraid yet?

When I lived in Las Vegas I used to take students to look at some of the cool artwork in the local Clark County Library System. Where do you think Al Qaeda was seen studying when they weren’t in girly bars, living up their last few days of hedonistic life on Earth?

Oh, and I lived right around the corner from those girly bars.

And I also worked right around the corner from those girly bars… I guess they didn’t want to blow up symbols of their own decadence and weakness. Besides, Hezbollah might be on the Strip right now—up in their hotel rooms with hookers and whiskey—or down in the girly bars just to watch… kind of what they always do—just watching and lurking until their moment comes. Is their moment almost here?

Still don’t believe me? Here’s an excerpt from the article from the Washington Times I mentioned:

Although the organization has yet to launch an attack on U.S. soil, its U.S. activities are far from benign. Its work in this country has two major purposes: One is to raise money and smuggle arms to Hezbollah fighters, often by criminal activities ranging from credit-card fraud to cigarette smuggling; and the other is to conduct surveillance behind enemy lines, with a possible eye toward launching attacks on U.S. targets in the event of an armed conflict between the United States and Tehran. Like his backers in Iran, Hezbollah boss Hassan Nasrallah routinely denounces the United States and Israel as his organization's main enemies. Given the events of September 11, and given Hezbollah's own record of kidnapping, torturing and killing Americans when it has had the opportunity, we ignore the group's operations in this country at our peril.

Outside of metropolitan Detroit, last month's arrest of Nemr Ali Rahal, a 41-year-old businessman, at his Dearborn home on charges of smuggling funds to Hezbollah, went largely unreported by the news media around the United States. But the story deserves our attention. In Mr. Rahal's house, agents found a videotape of a Hezbollah rally he attended in Lebanon three years ago. The FBI said it found $600 worth of change in buckets in the Rahal home, and that he said the money was meant to go to "orphans" -- the children of suicide bombers. Mr. Rahal has been charged with stealing more than $400,000 by means of credit-card fraud. When Mr. Rahal returned Feb. 9 from a trip to Canada, Customs agents found traces of explosives on his passport.

In March, Mahmoud Kourani of Dearborn pleaded guilty to providing material support for Hezbollah. He will be sentenced next month. Kourani (whose brother is Hezbollah's chief of military security in southern Lebanon) is an illegal alien who sneaked into the United States from Mexico in February 2001. Federal authorities have repeatedly arrested suspected Hezbollah operatives for attempting to smuggle night-vision goggles and other military equipment to the organization. One suspect, arrested in 1998, skipped bail and fled to Lebanon before returning to the United States last year to face federal charges. In 2003, a federal court convicted a Hezbollah cell based in Charlotte, N.C., on charges of aiding Hezbollah by operating a cigarette-smuggling ring. The leader of that group, Mohammed Hammoud, received 155 years in prison.

Do you think these people haven’t been replaced with new red-eyed terrorists? And do you think for a moment that Bakersfield wouldn’t be a target, or that this conflict regardless of how America is making Iran look to an international audience, can’t affect you in your comfy computer chair? Think again.

-thoughts?

EMI-signed band, Lostocean claims Bakersfield music scene real estate - By N.L. Belardes

Meet the boys of Lostocean...



EMI-signed Bakersfield band Lostocean is literally building its music empire block by block. They started performing live at Fresno City College some time around January of 2005. It was a freezing gig in a quad area with the audience sitting by small fires—except for the band, who got wet and cold in a typical misty Tule day in the Central Valley. “It was freezing. My drum kit was soaked. There were all these people watching by their little fires and we just got wet,” said Christopher Short.

Yet the building blocks continued.

A few shows later Lostocean was in downtown Bakersfield performing at Gigantic Vintage. It was one of my first shows in the Bakersfield scene. I watched the band from among clothing and belt racks and snapped a few pictures. Paperback Writer has evolved since then, with thousands of readers a day, instead of fifty. Lost Ocean has evolved too. This fab four, with Beatle-esque hairdos to match, have grown into a much tighter band than ever before. “I had to learn to perform and record with a click track,” said Short. He made a few grimaces, reminiscing that although he quickly realized he could adjust to a click track, he had still never done it before. “We realize we’re just babies at this,” he said. Sure, Lostocean are new to the world of being a signed band who has to work hard to promote, to book shows, and how to sell merchandise; but their music has grown too. Although they still play a rocky blend of emotional sounds ala Coldplay’s keyboard heavy atmospheric tones, their music is less experimental and ambient than the effect-laden album, Douse the Choir. Their new sound is tighter, smarter, more rounded, more youthful, and now radio friendly—a big step for a signed band who wants to be successful in today’s big label market.







And they’re making waves too. On myspace they average more than 150 song plays a day. That means people aren’t just clicking to add. They want to listen.

I’ve written about Lostocean’s virtuoso keyboardist, Skyler Johnson—he may look a little disheveled in his torn jeans and floppy hair, as if he just stepped from Humboldt State study room. But he’s a musical genius with his dual keyboard strokes and techno ambient sounds that he brings to many of Lostocean’s guitar and keyboard-driven songs. He brings rich musical talent to a band that has the appeal for today’s trendy young listener of music with a heartthrob. And I don’t mean Radio Disney necessarily. I mean music that can reach a segment of youth not looking for hard metal or punk edges to their music…





Recently I found out more about Lostocean. Sure, these four wonderboys have a tough road ahead, and they’re not buying houses anytime soon. What they do have is an E.P. on the way titled “Night to Life” (coming August 15): recorded in Nashville. You can hear two freshly mastered songs from the E.P. on the Lostocean myspace site: “Just Glide” and “You Are”.

I talked to drummer Christopher Short and vocalist Jeff Gray about their new untitled album that’s coming out in January. They said they’re getting national distribution in Best Buys across America and possible in Barnes and Noble. Who knows, maybe a few more distribution deals will come along soon.











And Lostocean are touring too. These four Bakersfield rockers are no slouches. They’ve gone from recording and releasing the full length album, Douse the Choir, then got their recording contract with EMI, have finished up their E.P. and album (not sure if they’re done recording). “We’re also hitting some music festivals and are really excited about that,” said Christopher Short.

I was at downtown’s new Christian rock venue, 180 to see Lostocean perform with Until April and another local Christian rock band. Talk about a nice venue. The soda prices were steep, but made up the difference with crushed ice, my favorite. The venue was really hip and cool. Those of you who have braved the decadence of the Pizza-a-go-go will understand the difference in quality and attendees. I don’t need to explain the difference in scene crowds.


Dirty Spanglish and matildakay were on-hand to see Lostocean



I liked the new look and sounds for Lostocean. So did the youth at the 180… youth are always hungry for new sounds and musicians they can connect to without getting sucked into the darker and angrier emotions of rock and roll. And that’s not a bad thing; just some folks preference.

(Read my first piece on Lost Ocean Feb 2005)
(the dream of Lostocean)
(Douse the choir poem)
(Skyler speaks out)
(support this site: buy my book)
(add Paperback Writer on Myspace)

Meet Nick Baldass in Chapter Two of Lards - By N.L. Belardes

While the New York Times downsizes and the Bakersfield Californian spreads its tentacles thinly across the reaches of cyberspace, nlbelardes.com continues to grow at a rapid pace. In fact, we’re adding to the staff here by taking on a few new members who can help capture the blogosphere real estate that local niche markets covet.

No longer will the Paperback Writer blog just be the naughty voice of an author on the prowl for happenings on the Streets of Bakersfield. Paperback Writer is going to be a new beast…

OK, what I fed you was a load of crap. What I really want your attention for is to share with you part two of the mystery MoonPie spoof of my novel, Lords: Part One.

Yes, I have been accused of writing the spoof, Lards Part One. No, I don’t know who is writing Lards. I tried my darnedest to weed the wiley spoofer from hidden corners of the blogosphere with kind letters, but I failed. No response. The writer's identity is firmly hidden, tucked away like a dastardly Lord of Bakersfield. I have to idly sit by and wait in line for the next installment of Lards Part One.

Read on as you get to meet a very interesting and decrepit character, Nick Baldass…


LARDS PART 1
CHAPTER 2 (Getting to Bakersfield, known as the MoonPie® Mecca).


“Hey fat boy, want some chow?” came a voice from an ice cream snack truck that had just pulled up. Fatty stood in the burger parking lot, his hands in his left pocket, belly hunched, and with the hungry look on his face that Chubsy told him to always have. “Be the damn Porky Pig ®” Chubsy had told him.

“Who?”

“I dunno. Some dead cartoon pig with a star on the WB ® toons walk of fame.”

“What kind of snacks you got?” Fatty said hoggishly to the driver/vendor.

“I got the sweet, carbo stuff. I got Twinkies-soft and sweet. Whatever. You look like an obese kid, kinda hungry though.”

“Oh I ain’t hungry. I am full! That last 24-pack of Ding-Dongs hit the spot.”

“Maybe you’re hungry for something moon shaped?”

At that point the snack truck driver made his move. “Okay fat boy, no more messin’ around. Get in the back of the truck. The Mayor of Bakersfield is holding a MoonPie ® eating contest at the Bakersfield bell tower tomorrow and I need you to win it for me!”

Fatty looked astounded. “Why didn’t you just say so!” And into the rear of the snack truck: it listed to the left. It was a converted old Helms Bakery ® jobber. The truck sped off like a bat out off hell, nicely packed, to hold in freshness and goodness; food snacks were flying everywhere. At one time, not long ago, a fleet of 300 Helms Bakery ® vans cruised the neighborhoods of the Los Angeles area summoning people with their distinctive whistles to purchase bread and pastries. The center of this operation was the Helms Bakery ® building on Venice Boulevard in Culver City (still located there with original Helms logo ®). The company, founded by Paul Helms in 1931, eventually succumbed to competition from emerging supermarkets and closed in 1969. Still today, an independently operated former Helms Bakery ® truck, perhaps the last, cruises the neighborhoods of Montebello, tooting its whistle and offering bread and pastries.

The old truck was jamming, I think it might have hit 45 mph on one decline near Lake Castaic. Was it the truck or the extra ballast? No one will ever know for sure. It was getting late and the odd couple had just reached the summit of the 5 Interstate on the Grapevine. It was the darkest night they had ever seen. A huge fart rattled the thin van walls. The driver, whom had by now introduced himself as Nick Baldass (Baldy for short), was horrified by the flatulency and asked, “Do you have to pinch a loaf boy?”

“Oh yeah” said Fatty, and I can’t wait!”

Baldy quickly swerved off the nearest off-ramp with brakes and tires screeching and smoking. Hey, there is this old fort, Fort Tejon ®, over there that has a one-holer, but we got to get on the road again if we want to get a room at the Padre. Fatty had to pinch so bad and the fart gas was so thick in the back of the truck that he started to hallucinate. “Hey Mr. Baldy! I think there is an old Indian, with painted feet; a ghost back here with me and he’s eaten all the Ding Dongs and, and, and.... the last box of Quisp ® cereal!”

Read the rest of Chapter Two
Read Chapter One
Buy the Lords: Part One so you can understand the spoof

Explore Farmers' Market society in Mike Madison’s, Blithe Tomato - By N.L. Belardes

A farm girl and her country singer sidekick read Mike Madison's
new book, Blithe Tomato...

I admit I have read more travel narratives than most. Such writings take you on long journeys over land, in planes, trains, beat cars, on footpaths through history, across rain-strewn oceans and happy isles, exploring cities and countryside on every corner of the planet. Writers include historians, literary folk, military writers, seafarers, bloggers, journalists, Nobel Prize winners, and more. Don’t even get me started naming writers.

The travel narrative is a reader’s eyepiece to the world, far more detailed than an advertising-laden show on the Travel Channel. You know the episodes with a bubbling host reading astonishingly from a watered down script. And then there are the steamy tourist brochures down at your local AAA, and books by Lonely Planet telling you about the best restaurants in Suva, Fiji.

Yawn. Give me the adventure, not the marketing.

In good travel narratives readers submerse themselves into more detail than they could ever imagine. And sometimes the imagination far outweighs an often blurry, or myopic focus on a colorful TV show, or even from their own travels—yes, some people are not as adventurous as the books they read.

A book like Blithe Tomato is not a travel narrative in the sense that the author is an outsider recording his take on a foreign country. There are no Yugoslavian travels, or dips into war-torn Iraq’s out-of-balanced cityscapes. Yet Blithe Tomato is a journey that travels to foreign lands. Mike Madison’s storytelling interconnects California’s small farms with farmers’ markets and the diverse people who make up a peculiar American culture of food.

Madison takes you out of the city to the war-torn farmlands of California, where farmers often fight equally between natural landscapes of blights, weeds and gophers as well as against the machinery needed to toil large plots of land—all for a miniscule profit.


Gophers? What Gophers?

You’d be surprised. The small farms of America are not all lands of elitists with enough money to buy politics and Mercedes SUVs. Small farmers and the markets they cater to make up an American character of determination, humor, strife and poverty amid agricultural markets that seem to teeter on the verge of ‘farms going under’: out-of-control hybrids, reduced product diversity, pesticides, profit losses, questions of organics, and the constant swallowing of the little farmer by a vastly changing and progressing urban mindset that creeps into agricultural landscapes.

And Madison brings a human side as well by describing people: people who hang in the balance of despair and success, who all traverse farmlands and farmers' markets in a shared existence that Madison politely observes.

Readers will get a sense of the adventure and satisfaction of farming; in how even in repetition comes the savory flavors of fresh agriculture, free of toxins, and prepared in simple dishes that reflect simple ideals in complex agricultural environments. Madison’s Blithe Tomato is a humorous journey, a wise journey, and is just as filled with uncertainty as it is with the assuredness that there are more people like him, who just plain care about the land.

*NOTE: I tried to contact Mike Madison, but I think he was having a war with gophers that must have taken part of his crop, and gnawed through his Ethernet cables…

Buy Blithe Tomato from Heyday Books
More reviews by Paperback Writer:
Bicoastal Babe (Cynthia Langston)
Resurrection (Steve Alten)
Buy my book: Lords Part One
Buy my book: Thick White Crust

Bakersfield life as it should be gets worse - By N.L. Belardes

I heard there was a meeting today... KRAB radio talked about it... so why not pop in and see what all the city slogan talk was about...

I wasn't one of the speakers and there is really no point in indicating who said what, but the dialogue went something like this:

"It's so beautiful."

It is?

"Ooh..."

"Ahhh..."

"We don't need the hole in the sign anymore. I'd like to see a mock-up without the hole in it."





"I thought we weren't going to emphasize the sun."

What, it doesn't get hot in the Central Valley? Heat and sunlight isn't life as it should be? Why not just get an artist to blot out the actual sun?

Or did these city folk forget that anyone with a brain understands photosynthesis, that plants need sun, that to depict progress and civilization and no nature whatsoever, except for man-made, a sun is still a perfectly decent symbol... oh wait, it's a natural symbol, and those are left out.





So the leaf in the new logo represents the progress of agriculture. I'm guessing we can assume such. So maybe there should be two leaves: one dripping with cancerous toxins and bulky like the Incredible Hulk and the other organic and flavorful... just kidding. Or am I?

Forget that the mock-up just fell apart as they were trying to put it on the table. One of the members comically was going to slip yellow tab lined paper into the hole. A cost-effective mock-up for sure.

"It's not the right color. I want to see a new mock-up."

Whatever.

"Let the artist speak."

He wasn't the actual artist.

"The touch of yellow around the sun gives a splash of warm color and contrasts with the cool of the green."

A.S. Ashley sat and laughed.

I mean, it's not an ugly sign. It's a mosaic to cover up the pillbox grey that was covered with paint left over from the U.S.S. something or other.

Yet, the sign is missing something.

Ashley held up the local section, "We have a self-esteem problem..."



And the rest is history...


What, no oil wells? Well, at least there's one thing I
can say about the new sign: there's nothing natural about it.

Comments?

Armageddon, or World War Three? Letters and notes on post-terrorized societies and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict - By N.L. Belardes

I have been avoiding writing a socio-political blog/opinion column, because writing about politics on a national and global level just wasn’t necessarily going to put me in touch with a grassroots campaign to get to know people in my own town. I wanted to get in touch with people who might support me as an artist (nlbelardes.com was launched as an artistic endeavor to get in touch with people without focusing on politics).

Yet today I find it necessary to give my readers a glimpse of my political side, the side but a few close friends ever see. And I should throw out a caveat: in a heartbeat, this blog could go the way of the political. It just depends on what’s going on in the world. And I don’t like what I see happening in the Middle East. I believe it’s worth taking a breath from local arts and discussing, don’t you think?

Or don’t you read the news?

Because I do. I’m a news junky. And I want to know: Are we on the brink of Armageddon, or is it just World War Three per the words of Newt Gingrich?

****

In fall of 2000, the Second Intifada began and I found myself taking a sympathetic approach toward the Palestinians. After all, here was a people without a country, living under an occupation that often viewed them as second class citizens. I even subscribed to the electronicintifada.net and became an avid reader, wondering about a possible Jewish conspiracy under the totem of the Israeli media war machine… after all, Adam Sandler is a leading actor, right? OK, that’s far fetched…

Now before you get all weird, I wasn’t supporting a Palestinian takeover of Israel. I never support such violence, and I still don’t. Yet I was under the firm belief that Palestinians included not just Muslim, but Christians and Jews—people of multiple religions who are self-determined, yet without a country, and yet promised in the Oslo Peace Accords, a better, stable way of life.

My views would have been similar to this definition of The Second Intifada as written on Aljazeera.net:

On 28 September 2000, the then opposition leader (Ariel Sharon), heavily guarded by Israeli soldiers and policemen, walked in to al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.

It was a move certain to provoke an angry reaction from the Muslim population, who hold the mosque to be the third holiest site in Islam.

Fighting broke out between the Palestinians defending al-Aqsa and security forces guarding Sharon. Seven Palestinians were killed in the fighting and thus the second Intifada - Intifadat al-Aqsa - was started.

But the unarmed struggle came amid a backdrop of discontent. Palestinians in the self-rule territories had become increasingly resentful over their lack of economic development as promised by the Oslo peace accords. They found that the superpowers, which hosted the peace process, did little to back them.

The Intifada was – and still is - an expression of a deep disappointment and frustration over the ongoing disrespect and denial of basic rights for Palestinians caused by the occupation - including the right to free access to Jerusalem, security and development, and the refugees' right to return. (more...)

Prior to the Second Intifada I had written an unpublished work regarding letters written to people surviving in the Hot Zone when America attacked the Serbs for beginning a so-called cleansing of ethnic-Albanians. I began writing to an English professor (and others) in Novi Sad. She hid in her basement and came out to write on her computer to send a handful of people emails regarding what she was experiencing: the horrors of an American air campaign (Not that the Serbs were doing nice things to ethnic Albanians. After all, who wanted another inhumane Bosnia?)

I found, like a lot of online folks, the gift for getting into the Hot Zones during world crises. I did the same in Fiji during a coup. I could do the same now in any Hot Zone.

Bloggers in any war zone are less than a blink away.

Gaining trust is the hard part, especially when you’re an American wanting information. Don’t tell me that many in Arab countries don’t think America isn’t the head of the snake that they think is out to get them.

During the Second Intifada I discovered that a friend of mine—a Navy veteran with more than 38 years of service—had a Palestinian student. That student was my direct link into the Hot Zone—right into the heart of places like Nablus.

Soon enough I began hearing from Palestinians whose letters, I believed, represented the common accounts of men and women who lived in occupied territories. I wrote:

They are not scholars, nor affiliated with political groups. They are not necessarily on the streets themselves throwing rocks or pulling triggers. They are but citizens of an ideological country—that of Palestine, and through letters, they have expressed not only their voices, but the voices of their countrymen, and together—though they do not know each other—tell a small portion of the current tale of Palestine rising.

And so the letters began to pour in, letters from a young girl who saw tanks driving down her street, or a young man in a car being shot at, or a man visiting a wounded friend, or a man who viewed a funeral from a shop window and was compelled to march, or kids who snuck out after curfew just to see where they could go.

Here’s a sample:

Excerpt from email of 30-year-old cosmetic distributor, Feras Bakry. Received by N.L. Belardes on Sunday, November 12, 2000 (As translated by Samer Masri).

One can rarely have the freedom to go outside of the occupied areas to other Arab countries. This contributes to the cause of internal oppression. When I tried to go to Jerusalem for praying, I found that such a thing was not allowed. For there to be such a siege from Israel, in Jerusalem, I found myself not allowed to visit my Holy Land; and yet Sharon entered freely the mosque with the soldiers and other governmental protection. This was a challenge to mutual respect for religious feelings. I went in peaceful demonstration against Sharon, but Israel did not think we had the right to protest, so the occupation (Israel) responded severely in a letter discussing that we had no right to express ourselves. They then started violence against our society by shooting children in the head. This has caused pain and sorrow for many mamas and fathers. We have seen how the Israel army used the airplanes to oppress the people, shooting in all attitudes to houses, gardens, using Apachi helicopters which killed Tabnjeh Samer. Killing children by using weapons specialized for wars makes me feel that they are considered ‘objects of death’. I have seen Apachi helicopters shoot a man. I saw Adnan Edweekat when they shot him inside the city, having launched 500 mm artillery which impacted directly on his head, separating it to pieces. I saw Amjad Abu Isa who was killed while he was driving a car…

Once I received enough letters, I assembled a book and began to shop it around. I didn’t have much luck mainly because these were ‘common man’ views and not those of scholars. Maybe it was just because I was a non-Arab American…

I had also begun a novel about an American terrorist. I pondered the idea of the next breed of Timothy McVeigh. What if he wasn’t some militia ex-soldier, but an illegal immigrant from Tijuana who imagined reigning bombs on the rich shores of San Diego, and then decided that Las Vegas—the symbol of American materialism run rampant—to be the optimum target. And so I wrote and wrote and even strangely jotted down an Osama Bin Laden that wore a white tunic on which read, “the martyr who never died”.

Then before I knew it 9-11 descended on America.

(Read about my adventures in Thick White Crust as I had decided to move back to Bakersfield from Las Vegas on 9-11)

Quickly all my Palestinian relations unraveled into nothingness.

I re-thought my position. I didn’t want to get pegged as a sympathizer, and I was really feeling less sympathetic; I was pissed that America was attacked as I knew someone whose family member survived walking down 74 flights with a broken hip and saw unimaginable blood and gore. Not that I became hateful toward Palestinians. I began to see mistakes on both sides, mistakes in negotiations and dialogue that could not resolve the conflict with Palestinians and Israelis.

I got nervous. I destroyed all copies of my book of letters, except for what I had sent a political friend. Safe hands there, right? I mean who knew what was going to happen after 9-11? What would you have done with such a book of sympathetic letters?

Eventually I got caught up in the politics of 9-11, and pondered greatly the idea of pre-emptive strikes and what it meant to be a ‘post-terrorized’ society. I wrote a document on the idea that circulated in certain political circles.

Here is an excerpt:


Meta-historical views: Notes from a ‘Post-Terrorized’ Society:
3-07-2003
by
N.L. Belardes

A view on global war: It is no surprise to tell anyone that many societies of the world are exasperated, fearing a global resonance regarding the aspect of America further entrenching itself into Middle Eastern conflict with Iraq. A friend from Haarlem, Holland recently asked about the thought of an American-Iraqi war, replied: “Until the war starts, the troubles Americans face are something far away from here. But when it does begin, then people fear it will somehow come close to home. There could be a world war.” Another friend, this an Arabic medical worker in Dubai, U.A.E., fearing a global course for war simply claimed, “God help us, it will be the end of the world.” If there is a world war, when will it begin? Or, has a global war already begun?

‘Post-terrorized’ America is already in a state of not just global conflict, but global war. Such a war was declared by the Bush Administration as a ‘War on Terrorism’ shortly after the fall of the World Trade Center. The American government at that time proclaimed that Americans, protecting self-interest, property, and the pursuit of happiness—bent on destroying terror—would reach out globally, and root out from those places of the world where terrorism against America and her interests might originate and flourish.

American history, looking backward from future years will likely ‘periodize’ this warring period that includes historical events between the mid-1990s possibly up through the 20-teens with some kind of fused historical catch-phrase like, the Dreadaissance. For many people and historians today who try and grasp all of these loose historical threads, this era might seem only an often chaotic time where flowering technological progress in vast biological and computerized know-how is coupled with events related to national technological and economic failures; as well as a time of various destructive episodes in American society and American involvement catapulted from recent years: the Oklahoma bombing, Columbine slaughter, sniper attacks, Kenyan Embassy bombing, Kosovo War, Cole attack, Columbia disaster, the failure of dotcoms, further economic woes in the NASDAQ and stock market, mega-terrorism of September 11th, anthrax scares, etc.

Such nation-making events are difficult for historians to manage in defining a period in American and world history today; unless we forget, there is a difficulty to reel together, to digest and form a vision of the historical significance of “what it all means” regarding so many terrible events which soon enough will cause scholars to ask: how does it all link together to form American history?

This makes for a difficult reflection on the cultural and economic developmental periods of the American society of the early New Millennium. Americans one day will have a clearer historical vision of these times, one which will be told by history and historians who will write theories and historiographies regarding ‘post-terrorized’ societies; and yet, it is important to remember that even hindsight is not 20-20 vision in categorically stringing together events to explain today’s present and immediate past.

Meta-history transcends current events and looks as to how the discipline of history in the future may look at the past, periodize history, etc. Little more than an educated guess really, meta-historical explanations are still thought-provoking in their own right. Even without hindsight, society consistently looks for explanations. Just like the need to explain the past, society has a need to explain the present, or at least to visualize one or more explanations for how societal events unfold today. When thinking in terms of: ‘if’ this War on Terror really is a world war, then, in meta-historical terms, the current global war of that previously mentioned historical period ‘the Dreadaissance’ likely began on September 11th, 2001. It is a matter of perspective in viewing how the world will unravel in the next few years as to whether such a notion holds true or otherwise.

That devastating day, those “echoes heard ‘round the world” of expanded McVeighian proportions, an attempt at a global revolution against capitalist-democracy, by terrorizing America toward an economic ruin through destroying the World Trade Center, put into effect retaliatory measures inherent to what may be known as: reactionary measures taken by a ‘post-terrorized’ society, in order to pre-emptively, and in the name of sovereign security, prevent further terrorist acts…

*****

And so on goes the piece. I won’t bore you with the entire document. Yet there is a resonance from it, a flavor catapulted from those early days of the Second Intifada, and Al Qaeda, whose morals are so tied to the Palestinian cause; and to today, where all I can wonder is what some of you may be wondering still: Are we on the brink of Armageddon, or is it just World War Three?

A note appeared on the drudgereport.com today, indicating that, “news becomes old on Internet in 36 hours.”

With the looming deadline Israel has given to Syria and the comment by Newt Gingrich—not to mention my own personal political-historical views—that just might be the case…

Yet, there is always the possibility of a permanent cease-fire, right? Let's hope.

Stay tuned… and give your comments…

Let the spoofing begin! Lards: Part One entrances in the spirit of dastardly Lords of Bakersfield and Moon Pies - By N.L. Belardes

Just when I wondered if anyone even read my book, here comes the first ever spoof of Lords: Part One. It's written in painstaking obese-driven MOON PIE chompin' prose by someone with a band profile on bakotopia.com called The Regulators. I love the symbolism for what the spoofer believes the original work to be about... but I'll let you try to decipher for yourself.


Buy the non-spoof

Lards Part One is damn good hilarious reading. I don't know about you, but I'm glued to this spoof like a fat lady on a couch watching Oprah with bon bons between her teeth:

LARDS PART 1 (CHAPTER 1) West Hollywood, 1977, California,
USA (1)

As the movie, War of the Gauguin II®., twinkled towards its hairy end, Chubsy Wubsy giggled. A mass of empty candy wrappers and popcorn fragments hovered beneath his blubbery set of chins -his ravenous mouth dropping crumbs with each chew cycle - and the copious M & M debris, his booming fart cast echos across the theater; the smell of the flatulence caused Fatty Theirbuckle to announce: “smells like Scooter Pies®.” ! All chewing stopped on a dime. If it were not for the War of the Gauguin II®, you could have heard the proverbial pin drop. At the time Scooter Pies®. and Moon Pies® were not available in West Hollywood and the two chubby teens had no car. Chubsy was the first to make the daring proposal, but fatty was thinking it. "Bakersfield!®" exclaimed Chubsy. Fatty repeated the name under his breath several times with a honey glazed® stare.

Chubsy knew Fatty was just learning the ropes. There was a lot more Chubsy wanted to teach the young Moon-pie® hunter. Chubsy still had some popcorn, candy and half a hot dog left. It was a bag shoved is his left pocket. He took the bag out and poured the remains, the equivalent of about one fat shovel-full, into his mouth. Fatty wanted to learn to be a master but he didn’t know how to talk to Chubsy, he felt almost insignificant near him - after all, this was the grand master.

F