Words: Disheveled Daily Prose:

nlbelardes.com

Welcome to the home of N.L. Belardes and his world of novels, blogs and podcasts. Get in touch with literary writing from California's Great Central Valley, Bakersfield music and art news in N.L.'s Paperback Writer blog, and audio fun in the Buck City Podcast. You'll learn all about Bakersfield and its thriving scene that has the eye of a novelist upon its very soul...

Check out the new buzz in town over at the new Bakersfield blog community at thebuzzblogs.com. It's a one-stop site to go read the Bakersfield/Bakersfield-related blog headlines...

There's a whole lotta bloggers over there. Please link to thebuzzblogs.com:

Music:
Illpressed.com
Bakersfield Music Gossip and the Arts
Dobbler's Drunk Corner
Miss Light: The Dirty, Sexy Secrets of a Rock N' Roll Lifestyle

Humor:
Danielle Belton Online
One Bakersfield Woman's Blog to Mankind
Rob Shock
Enrique Fuentes: Queen of the Downtown Fur
Skinnygirlfatgirl: Chicago Blog of a Skinny Girl in a Fat Girl's Body

Arts and Literary:
Bakersfield and Central Valley Book Blog
Artspeak: Julia Heatherwick
Coming Soon: Ruined By Books

Technology:
Gamers Anonymous
Coming Soon: PC-based tech blogs

Podcasts:
Arthur Chilling Presents
Oildale Reverend
Buck City Podcast
Coming Soon: Central Valley Authorspeak

I started a new comedy yesterday. It's sort of a love story gone haywire piece that I think is funnier than Cubicles. Ok, so I know no one has read Cubicles yet but maybe a handful of folks. But one day everyone will. This latest work has all the makings of an experimental comedy sensation. I can't say anymore at the moment, but sometimes I burst with energy and have to at least say something... It's where I have the most energy. I get so excited about writing that it just bubbles forth, pours out in all its frothy prose wonder...

People have been asking for another teaser from the novel since that Rolling Stone article. There's 37 chapters in my book--how much could I be giving away? To hell with my lawyer. Let's see what he has to say to this... I'm posting:

2. “Hey boy, want some sauce?” came the voice from the caddie that had just pulled up. Minstrel stood in the burger parking lot, his hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched, and with the lost look on his face that Karvac told him to always have. “Be goddam James Dean,” Karvac had told him while grimacing into the concerned face of a now dead star.

“Who?”

“I dunno. Some dead star on the Boulevard some fucker who got me mixed up in this shit told me about. He had the look about him.”

“What kind you got?” Minstrel said sheepishly to the driver.

“I got the hard stuff. I got liquor—hard and sweet. Whatever. You look like a nice kid, kinda lost though.”

“Oh I ain’t lost. I know right where I am.”

“Maybe you’re lost for a reason.”

Minstrel stared into a face much older than his own. It looked ancient, wrinkled, pulled and dripping with skin that gravity had tugged harshly toward the earth. A big pair of thick black-rimmed glasses seemed to blink like a Bugs Bunny cartoon head and yet gave Minstrel a pseudo-intellectual stare that hung in frames nearly as wide as the man’s brow. Minstrel could see that the man hadn’t slept in a while, or had been in a recent scuffle because he had a head of messy gray hair.

“It’s the middle of the night, kid. Don’t look at me too close,” the man said as Minstrel hopped in. He spoke softly; it was a kind voice, one that Minstrel thought he could get used to.

“It’s not that late yet. You been fighting with yourself mister?” Minstrel noticed a bit of blood on the man’s left cheek. “Looks like you lost.”

“Someone tried to purify me. Hey, I haven’t seen you around before, kid, but I know you know Karvac. Where is he? Maybe he’d want to come too.”

Minstrel looked out the window into the clear Hollywood night. Not a cloud in sight. Neon lights brushed against palm fronts and old rust-colored tiled hotels lighting the punk streets in a rainbow of colors. A police cruiser passed just before they left the parking lot and the officer inside shot a glance toward them. But he quickly disappeared into the majestic Hollywood darkness that swung around them like a crazy Orson Welles picture of the Mexican-American border. Everywhere there was a Charlton Heston Mexican look-a-like cop looking for someone to throw in the slammer. Minstrel could spot them. But he felt safe in this big car. “Karvac’s in Koreatown. He’s gonna learn a few words and get a punk mohawk haircut like those British who set up instruments in the Hollywood dives with their fucked up hair that looks like yours right now.”

“Now you’re starting to talk, kid. Tell me a little more,” he said, handing Minstrel a long red pill.

Minstrel felt strangely comfortable as he popped the capsule. His tongue loosened. He felt like this man wanted to listen: “His older brother brings back photos all the time of these Brits, punks, losers, anarchists, whatever he calls them. He’s got the spikes and leather and spiked hair too and says, ‘Every mother fucker in Hollywood and LA needs to show them cops what it’s like to throw faggots and streetbums in jail.’ ‘The kids are gonna fight back’, he says. Those British will sing about it right in your face, anyone’s face. You know that? I stood outside one shithole and saw Karvac’s brother go in to listen to music and get thrown right out along with the band and all their equipment. There was a big fight right there; blood and shit, and then everybody took off running every which way; a lot of them with cuts and some with glass sticking out of their faces. The Brits lost all their equipment except one guitar in a shitty guitar case cause they had to take off in their van right after the fight. Karvac’s brother and everyone else met up a while later and they all smoked, and even let us too, because we had been there and Karvac had busted a bottle upside someone’s head with a nice shot. Layed him out fuckin’ flat.” Minstrel looked at a long line of palms all bent over the Hollywood streets as far as he could see. He couldn’t imagine how they could grow and bend and never fall down. He wanted them all to fall just then. “Those Brits fucking talk funny. You ever hear them? They’re way fucked up in the head. I can’t understand a word. But they took care of me that night. We all slept outside—didn’t even have a lookout. We were in the dark places—you know, on the industrial streets where nobody goes but us fucked-up kids, cause you have to hop about ten fences just to get there. But what do I know? Koreatown ain’t got shit but noodles. Karvac’s probably gonna go to the Melrose stores and take shit. He always does that. Then he gives his brother cool patches from all those music stores, surplus and T-shirt shops. He says he was going to Koreatown to eat sea cucumbers. But I don’t even know what those are. I don’t think he does either. I don’t fucking believe him. I told him it was shark dick.” Just then Minstrel noticed the car push its way onto the Hollywood freeway. He’d been talking a while. In just a few moments, the last of the Hollywood hills streamed past the window. “So where we going? I saw the car tags—you’re taking me over the hill. You’re from Bakersfield.”

“Is that all right? You have time don’t you? Kids like you have nothing but time. You’re a runaway, right? Not even from Hollywood or Bakersfield. You’re from someplace only shit knows, because it’s someplace that stinks of rotten living.”

“Maybe I am from Bakersfield. Well Karvac, he’s from Modesto. I met him on the bus going from Fresno to Bakersfield. I was coming down from Frisco not long ago, actually. He was doing something on the bus I didn’t think was possible then. But that was a long time ago.”

“A long time ago? Really? Why you can’t be much more than 15.”

“A couple years younger than that.”

“Well how old exactly? Come out with it now.”

“You just watch the road, Gramps. We’re climbing some steep hills.”

Flung from Hollywood they had entered the transverse range: those mountains curled strangely at the Southern bowl of the San Joaquin Valley that hides Joshua trees and little mountain towns, lakes, and the little Frazier Park mountain folk community where condors once flew into the LA Basin and San Joaquin Valley, only to hurl themselves like gods; the towering phoenix over the Tules and Indian lands that once ran hundreds of miles in a lost age through countless Yokut tribelets northward, past lakes and the San Joaquin river drainage, and further north, into the Sacramento run-off that along with other rivers, wet the valley floor with an intoxicating god-breath. They were still far from the valley yet, and though Hollywood had cast a neon shadow like a veil over the stars of the universe, Minstrel could now see and count stars in a brief moment of longing for them; he saw their milky wet path that seemed to strangely pull the car up and over the mountains toward a bank of fog that would penetrate Minstrel down into the very ticking of his heart the nearer they got to it.

It wasn’t long and they made their descent down the steep Grapevine Freeway that took them like those condors above that fog where they could see an endless sea, so different from the clear Hollywood days and nights, but here, just like they were flying, just above a bank of endless grey, and yet here they both were, hurtling and ready to sink into the very cloud banks that filled and muddled and confused all the weary inhabitants far in the valley below.

“That’s a fucking lot of clouds,” Minstrel said.

“That’s fog. It’s up in the sky and spreads all the way over the valley and sinks onto and into the ground. And that means slow going once we get ourselves in it. Entire towns are clogged with the stuff down below. It goes for hundreds of miles. Those people, they don’t know what they’re doin’ in it.”

“I took a bus through the valley a few times, but it was always a hundred degrees. I feel like this is somewhere I haven’t been. Just never really seen it from up here.”

“Oh this is somewhere else. But then, it’s just what it is. A city close to everything, but with small-mindedness that keeps people and kids like you in each other’s business. As long as you can hide it a little, I don’t mind. Know what I mean, kid?”

Minstrel didn’t talk but stared at the last bit of clear sky that washed milk and stars above the mountains. It was so clear that he remembered the mothership in the movie, and half expected her to come tearing out of the sky, or get ripped from the fog of the valley below and come straight up onto this path that he felt he alone were cutting into the mountainsides. To Hollywood that spaceship would go and zoom right over his head. It would suck palm trees up like Koreatown noodles, and drop off alien children to work the streets. Hollywood would make a fortune off alien-whores and spaceship rides, and real documentaries on aliens who wouldn’t talk at all, but point to their wallets all sewn into their skin; their money would go straight into their veins.

It made Minstrel a bit nervous and cold to think of such a sight. He shivered and stared, and soon, with the fog surrounding the windows where he could only see the cold grey underbelly of the Central Valley leviathan, he fell asleep.

I had just seen Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy yesterday when I had an interesting sci-fi discussion. Many of you don't know, but i can write some killer sci-fi. I have a book I wrote titled, Diva that I plan on re-working the entire piece because a healthy dose of sarcasm needs to be embedded more firmly throughout. I have written two sci-fi books as I have a fondness for the genre. I find literary writing more challenging so tend to focus thereabouts. The movie yesterday was inspiring, made me once again respect the genre for its philosophic nature... H.G. Wells and Orwellian otherworldliness, and even Star Wars, well, especially Star Wars is a legitimate means to create the future today... Forward-thinking must always escape those stuffy literary closets so full of theory... I find that the more whimsical and sarcastic, the more 'out there' in the cosmic underbelly of thinking (that includes whimsical children's fanciful thinking), then certainly, one must do it...

So I get this email today from some whacked out New Yorker who refers back to a months-old blog about him supposedly teasing that he's mad because his own fishy name is the same as the town of Fishberg in The Freaky Fish Show.

I'd forgotten about the whole fishy affair when I get this uptight email today from this moron in the Bronx:

Hey Belardes....this is Fishberg, and I didn't like my name used in your blog or whatever it is, without you clearing it with me, or at least telling me it was there.

I'm a writer too, and I know if I started gumming your name all around 8th avenue, that it would stick in your craw also.

I still don't like the name "Fishberg" being used in some flounder-tale, but the next time you mention me, tell me, okay, so at least I have time to tell no one about it.

Your best is my best, but only just because....
Fishberg

Will someone tell me what the hell is up this guy's...?? Those of you who know me as one who will stand up to Lords, the Jerry's Pizzeria empire et. al, my angry response should be no surprise:

you new yorkers sure are pussies. you'd think you
would be worrying more about terrorists blowing up
downtown structures than some novelist writing a
children's story that has nothing to do with you and
your smelly last name... oh by the way, any time you
write me, I will print your complaints... feel free to
dirty my name on 8th avenue and random toilet
stalls...

I can't post his next response. It made less sense than his first, except he used the word, 'anal' a lot. I'm thinking, Who is so anal that they surf the Net to find distant uses and spellings that reflect their namesake? and then get pissed off about it? I guess since my last name is Belardes, I own all renditions and spellings. So all you freaks out their using my name in vain, to hell with you! hahahaha... fishberg, get real... I can't name an underwater town in a flounder-tale, St. Petersberg.... so go jump through a rolling donut.

In an email titled, Death to the Alaska Asses, from my good friend Art who calls the Condors the Condoms (and whose Wranglers I call the Wriggles) he wrote this in support of the Bakersfield Condors:

Since I have to root for the underdog, I will support your Condors....

Great game on Saturday - Gomez sat out - but we won 2-0. After the
game they had a team signing - long line!

After the game, we used up all the leftover ticket stubs that also give
you a free drink at the bar. Ohhh - still recovering!


Later....

Don't forget, the playoffs start tonight in Bakersfield...
Art

I hate to admit this whole dreaded Harry Potter episode all over again, but I have to come clean. I am almost done with book four. I'm actually dying to know what happens to Hagrid and the Blast-ended skrewts, not to mention this whole mermaid spin. I already know Harry will survive... Rowling isn't about to kill off her beloved hero. I have to say that although these books are cheesy, what I enjoy is the creativity that is on parallel with my own wacky writing... those of you who have read my kids pieces know how zany my tales can be... and once this whole Lords promotion is over, I will have to publish The Freaky Fish Show. One book at a time though...

Oh, I forgot to mention that I received an email from a gentleman in New York who was rather unhappy that I named an undersea town, Fishberg. His name was Lawrence Fishberg. I just said that it was a happy little fish town, full of fanciful sea snails and the most educated fisheries there ever were...

In a final note: I wonder if I somehow put any of my loathing for Harry Potter into the most despicable Simon Sundale character of Lords...

I was recently asked what it’s like being an author, as if writing is some kind of magical art form, as if such a skill itself is illusionary, untouchable, mysteriously created, having flowed from a mind on a distant mountain onto a computer, a piece of paper... I hate to burst such notions, but writing is a learned trait, like any job, like whatever you do. My father drove a truck for a living. He had to learn to do that. Writing takes study, repetition, the old axiom from Billy Crystal’s character in Throw Mama from the Train, “A writer writes, always.” Writing isn’t quite as simple as that. But it is the root of all such skill. One has to have the desire and ambition to write, and the creative impulse to constantly do so; but then it must be honed. To even begin to explain how to hone your mind for creative energy, for writing, in one blog, well that’s just too complex. But here are some basic hints: One has to read for sure; the masters, the mentors you might have, your main influences, and especially the necessary reading: the literary greats, the books by writers about writing, the fiction upon fiction, endless philosophy and writing, history, and then my weakest area of study: rhetoric and linguistics. Writing suddenly becomes more complex, less mysterious, more an academic discipline of study… a complex solution to the simple energy of ‘wanting to write’. It becomes a daunting mountain that when smoky vistas are viewed past the humor of a Billy Crystal movie, one can easily lose the writing impulse, the ability to be what a writer does: a writer who writes always. Forget the humor of such obsessive characters in a movie about creative obstacles; writing is a serious business that hovers in the realm of the consciousness, within perceptions, on top of philosophy, inside of an arena where battles of the mind take place, where only ideas win out, and in the end hopefully transform into lucrative intellectual properties. Writing is not something you touch, unless you count fingers on a keyboard as the physical aspect of writing. I don’t. Sitting in a chair is the hardest part. Feeling the anxiety of wanting to finish a paragraph when completion is 30 minutes away, well that’s the physical nature of it, not to mention the pain of editing—it’s a process that winds you, and can take 17 hours in a day if writing a novel... no, not magical at all, and a lot like driving a truck. If you don't do it, you won't get anywhere. And if you don't have direction and ignore maps, then you're lost for sure...

I have been haunting the local music scene, wandering the dark street dives and bars, looking for a counterculture moment or two: starry-eyed youth, gliding into the night, lost in music and rainy streets, in heaven... do you see them? They in their bohemian clothes, starstruck, hand in hand, even in Bakersfield where the city glows into the night, but whose people only sneak in the midnight hours. Such literary moments. They're here in Bakersfield. They're wherever a writer choses them to be, really. One could write about an ant, its journey with a grain of bread. But to lift up the Southern Valley I simply can't ignore what I love: music and wandering. So, I'm helping to give it a voice, narrating stories of music and downtown adventure. That is the fodder for literary topic of late. But such literary topics have to be woven into story form to have deeper meaning to the author. I will be coming back to such philosophical delving in the near future by writing a major work of art, reflecting the music scene, its energy, its dark haunts, its lively moments, its tragic despair... the characters are punks, the reflection of which are the people I meet, loosely based, but there, hidden in the storyline, and wandering just as they do in real life...

I haven't posted here in a while. I have been doing most of my writing on the music review pages. But it's time I get back in touch with you as the author you all know I am. After all, I am about to release the most controversial book to ever come out of the Southern San Joaquin Valley. And more than that. This isn't just a book. This is literature, horror, media macabre, an isolated story about people who isolated themselves while in their secret lives. Of course I could have focused my story on the open, mainstream lives led by the Lords, but then, that isn't what you want to read about is it? Stay tuned. I am going to show you some things that are going to make you want to lock your doors, close your curtains, and keep a rosary by your bed at night... it's just that scary. In the meantime, take another look at chapter one.

Tonight I have a meeting with this totally angry dude here in Las Vegas down at the Peppermill, across from the Stardust. I can't say his name but I can show you his blog titled Pig Entrails. He knows the Hollywood Bakersfield Blogger just as I do, but I have yet to meet this guy. He's a techy dude, don't let either of them fool you. They just both lead opposite and crazy lives. They're just as comfortable at reading what's up in blogs along with the rest of us.

I should also add that I am going to be posting more details about Lords research. It's not for the faint of heart and is downright creepy. There's pictures, audio stuff, transcripts, strange ghostly photos and more. I wasn't going to post a lot of this kind of material until after Part One was released, but with that strange note from the other day, what else can I do but let the good people know what really went on behind the scenes.

Although copies of all this research are locked away in vaults in two different states, I think it's time just to let you all in on some of the most creepiest stuff to ever happen to me in my entire life. ALl I can say is, stay tuned. I'll let you know more as the weeks go on...

We arrived at the mortuary just after the sun dipped past the coastal range. The mortuary itself looked clean, strangely inviting, and though dark, there was an unusually jovial aire about walking up to its front doors. We were here to talk music; not wish a fond farewell, or arrange bagpipe funeral tunes. There would be no harps playing to last angelic moments of remembrance, but talk of punk rock and brit pop, the Bakersfield music scene, and more.

Kenny Mount gave us a quick tour: “Here’s your standard chapel and over here’s a bathroom. This is an overflow visitor room. This is where Mr. Mish keeps his retro chairs that I want to sell on ebay…do you want something to drink? A Pepsi?” Mount, dressed in a white shirt and tie still showed hints of his punk rocker roots: his disheveled hair, his rebellious and laughing personality that was in full Descartian swing: skeptical of all around him. Don’t’ get me wrong; Kenny is one sharp dressed mortician, with gleeful eyes and a sense of humor like no other. His jokes were right on, and though I won’t repeat them here, his charisma made for a strange business type of meeting, one for the Southern San Joaquin ages; one for the Bakersfield arts.

Gerhard Enns of the Dalloways was on hand too. He had his hip daddy-o Elvis Costello swagger, though more timid, and jumped right into the fun. And he had a lot to offer. We were all there to talk music, how could life get any better? There was even talk of the old band, Brian Jones was Murdered. Gerhard and Kenny realized old connections and talked about them. “You’re the dude who drove from out of town to sing with them…” and so on.

Before we sat, the tour had ended with a glimpse of a viewing. The deceased rested in peaceful slumber in a dim-lit room; eyes forever closed and unthinking. Flowers adorned nearby tables, and the solitude of such a moment was a glum reminder that we should do everything we can to better ourselves with the short amount of time allotted to us. Artists tend to burn out quick. Yet everyone in the room was around 30ish—already beating the odds I’m thinking.

Without spending time on the meeting agenda, I should say that what came out of it was as refreshing as that put in: that everyone at the table wanted to see success for bands from this little town in Hollywood’s Backyard. Hope is never lost for artists like the Filthies and the Dalloways. There’s always a refreshing strategy, a new-found energy in taking on self-promotion and the path to a record contract. And there’s community spirit.

As a writer I can only hope to help keep such a community spirit alive. Tonight’s Thursday Night War will be an attest to that. It isn’t really a war. It’s more like a gentleman’s competition, or even a good old fashion hockey fight. You give it your all. After the game you shake hands outside the rink, or in this case, have a beer and play a gig the following week. Just ask Tempred and American Standard. Though they weren’t really competing against each other last week, they’re soon to pair up. As for the War? A popularity contest; you bet. But only a contest for a brief time. Each and every band has the same goal: to get noticed by the music industry; to somehow break through the firewall set up by talent scouts; to set themselves apart from the rest.

Kenny walked us out of the mortuary into the dark Bakersfield night still telling jokes, still the youthful punker laughing at the human condition: life is out of your control even when you think you have it all solved. With that said I’m sure Kenny was also thinking just like me, that though life is sometimes out of our control, we can still do everything we can to push it in certain directions…

I spend a lot of time writing, working on music reviews, tending to the family, talking to friends and nurturing relationships in the community that it is difficult to breathe sometimes. You know. In the end I just want to sell books. For the here and now, it's about working for the community, so the community will have someone to believe in. I chose the arts. And I am starting with the local music scene and a small blogging community. I've only been doing this a month and have had a little success. That's no guarantee to sell 3000 books when the time comes, but it's a start. Hell, I don't even know if more than 2 or 3 people read this blog.

Well today was one of those days where you work on all of this stuff for your career, and then you suffer an unexpected setback. The first major setback I suffered was a few months ago when my agent and mentor died in a tragic car wreck. I lost a year's time with that one. Today it was something else--and that's besides the creepy letter I got on my doorstep from who knows... Anyway, just whatever you do, always back your work up on your computer... for someone like me and who has an entire life on a computer, you can lose a lot. So I went out to have a nice drink with my friend Flower in the Dale. She was good company and provided just enough pity that I was able to come home and show my optimistic side... which is, there's always a new beginning to find in everything.