ST. AUGUSTINE, FL-

Sometimes you think you know everything there is to know about your family, and then one day you get the rug pulled out from under you. You find out that you’re adopted. Or your grandfather had a few felony convictions he kept on the down-low. Or that incredibly hot nerdy girl with the vintage glasses who works at the used bookstore downtown just might be your second cousin. For me, it was something less earth-shattering but no less dramatic.

As it turns out, I’m not nearly as German as I thought I was..

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LOS ANGELES, CA-

A lot of strange things have gone down, from a psychological perspective.  Strange, inexplicable things.

Knowledge of psychological principles comes in handy daily, but there are some things that simply can’t be adequately explained, and all the studies in the world couldn’t come close to offering elucidations of bizarre happenings.

By a significant margin, obstetricians drop male babies more frequently than they drop female babies.

This is clearly noted in the statistics, yet possible rationalizations for why this may occur are weak.  Is it because males are seen as stronger physically, and thus they are handled with less grace?  Do male babies struggle more straight out of mommy’s womb?  No one really knows. (more…)

WEIRTON, WV -

This morning, I was amazed to see an entire edition of The Today Show devoted entirely to Michael Jackson. It was a veritable love-fest for the same man, whom,  just five years before, they happily vilified in response to the repeated molestation charges and Berlin baby-dangling scene. So, this about-face following his death reveals a great deal about our culture. Was it Heath Ledger who told an aspiring actor to approach fame with caution because ’they build you up in order to break you down’?

In 2004, after watching the subject-relevant news stories and attendant parade of less-than-laudatory Jackson images in the media, I wrote the following story, which was posted at Hobart. If I were to write the story now, it would be entirely different because the stories that inform my perceptions have a decidedly upward swing. Anyway, here it is, a literary version of the Michael Jackson we were served on a silver platter by the media in 2004.

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PORTLAND, OR-

Seriously, that’s my title and I’m sticking to it.

Welcome to the contemporary novelist in the age of the new media. Your booktour is quickwork of a few major markets and your audience is considered global with access to all just a mouseclick away.

The landscape of writing has been changing vastly in the digital era. It is a multi-media endeavor and another experience in branding. This is the reality of it now, and the pace is getting quicker.

If you don’t think you have the stomach for that reality I’d suggest that you look away and not even bother with clicking further. (more…)

WILMINGTON, DE-

She had my thing in her hand when the monkey swung in.

Like the monkey, I wish to make a dramatic entrance.

But what constitutes a great dramatic entrance?  Is it some thing or some act that rises above ordinary by its very existence or action?  Or is it an invitation for one’s imagination to go someplace it hasn’t been lately — or someplace it has never been?

The great dramatic entrance — whether it’s an opening sentence, an architectural feature or a theatrical introduction — has a come-hither quality, I think.   It startles one pleasurably with certain unspoken possibilities.

Some people’s flair for the dramatic goes way back.  Take the du Pont family, for instance.  They fled the French Revolution, it is said, and landed on these shores on New Year’s Day 1800 — kissing the still-new world on the first day of a new century.

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SOUTH COAST, ENGLAND-

I’ve fallen off the bull.

And gone deaf from listening to my stereo through earphones.

When I listen through earphones too loudly my ears flood with wax.

This happens frequently, being as rock and roll as I am.

I think there is a prostitute outside my window.

My bedroom faces the main road through Hampden Park, which is the suburb of Eastbourne in which I have the misfortune to live.

Hampden Park has the busiest level crossing in Europe, which I guess puts it in at least the world’s top ten.

That’s pretty much all we have; a busy level crossing, two small grocery stores, three hairdressers, a DIY place, two kebab shops, a bookmakers, a fish and chip shop and someone who may or may not be a prostitute.

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LAFAYETTE, LA-

Today, the events of a Certain Novel were dramatized on the streets of Dublin celebrating the day on which they purportedly took place in 1904, and a certain Frederik Colting (née J. D. California) formally defended his novel, 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye, against a certain Mr. Salinger’s lawsuit. According to Poets and Writers, Colting states 60 Years Later is a “complex and undeniably transformative exposition about one of our nation’s most famous authors, J. D. Salinger, and his best known creation, Holden Caulfield.” Salinger states the novel is a “rip-off, pure and simple.” (more…)

BOULDER, CO-

I’ve studied martial arts most of my life, but I don’t enjoy watching fistfights. Sure, I sometimes watch MMA bouts, mostly as an exercise in making sense of techniques I learned in my Jujutsu days. But I am a salacious voyeur of one class of fights, one that weighs more in murderous intent than in mere blood. When it comes to fights over language, I’m part Don King, part corner, part cut man, part ringside rat, but never referee nor pugilist. This is the first of a few pieces about linguistic rage. First up, the real powder-keg: words of social distinction.

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BEND, OR-

“Now the fun begins!” one of my publishers, Dan Wickett of Dzanc Books, told me on the phone this afternoon. My debut collection of short stories, Misfits and Other Heroes, is on its way to me, priority mail from Michigan to Oregon. Tonight we went out to celebrate, half high-end with a dinner of farmer’s market vegetable risotto, half low-end (My favorite half. To steal from Nabokov, “my sin, my soul.”) with a heartburn-inducing, gut-busting Shari’s Turtle Sundae.

I have to admit I am in a minor state of shock. Expecting this surreal feeling to turn to bliss, I am experiencing the sort of an…tici…pation I haven’t felt since my teens, being patted down by the burly security guard before my first Cure concert in Seattle or in my twenties on the eve of my first Dead show.  There is something musical in the air around me.

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WASHINGTON, NJ -

For the last two weeks, I had intended to write up a little review of the new Star Trek film, but then I got thinking about what this franchise has meant to me. Don’t worry — I’m not some loon who knows the stardate of when Kirk took his first swig of Romulan Ale, and I certainly can’t translate Shakespeare into Klingon. However, I’m not a casual fan, either. I’ve seen enough Star Trek to know what the prime directive means or that Uhura’s name comes from the Swahili word for freedom.

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GALICIA, SPAIN-

I awake at 7 am, mostly from unwieldy nervousness. Before I have time to pause and consider what is to come, I strap on my 20 pound backpack, leave the pilgrim’s shelter in Sarría and ascend a firm incline for about 45 minutes into a Tolkien dream sequence.

Once inside, the misty mountain top has no visible exit; white pulpy air hangs still upon all scenery within a 100-foot diameter.

The path levels out, my head soaking in frosty sweat; I feel like am in the heart of a chilly other world, alone.

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BAKERSFIELD, CA-

Get your iPod. What if you could take a collection of memories, weird and otherwise, and put them on your device? Then people could scroll through and play them back at their leisure. Would some play in loop mode?

Nick Belardes iPod Memory List:

Child screams for a purple balloon. As mom drives at 45 mph a purple balloon flies into car.

Driving through parking lot a bird flies in a car window and gets tangled in woman’s hair.

Downtown Las Vegas midget Charlie Chaplain twirls his cane while an Elvis impersonator slams on his brakes, nearly running over a hapless pedestrian. (more…)

SEATTLE, WA -

In Barcelona there are only a few things that really concern the local citizen. The first and probably most important concern is whether or not their beloved “Barça”, or FC Barcelona, will prevail in the next match. In Barcelona, fútbol (football/soccer) is king. The entire city, minus the tourist trap centers, shut down so that loyal Catalans can gather together to enjoy the beautiful game. It’s a weekly event in Barcelona and a wonderful tradition for an outsider to witness.

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BOULDER, CO-

Grandma wanted a red bikini.

She said it was because she wanted to take up swimming again, but I suspect it had a bit more to do with a “sunset-of-life” crisis. And anyway, just because when the rest of us looked at her we saw a wrinkly old woman who looked like she might blow over if you forgot to cover your sneeze…Grandma was a sexy bird.

At some point.

Possibly circa the climax of the women’s suffrage movement.

I’ve seen pictures, anyway.

Before the gray. Before the Depends.

Before “the girls” made a permanent move south.

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NEW PALTZ, N.Y.-

This week, Justice David Souter announced his retirement, a surprise that will give President Obama the first of what we hope are many picks on the Supreme Court.

In honor of this event, I’ve dredged up a blog I wrote in November, 2000, on my now-defunct LARGEREGO cyberweekly, about George W. Bush and his then-potential appointments.  Since then, Bush placed two newcomers to the Court, shifting the bias ever-so-slightly to the right (and making mincemeat of my prediction, although I have hopes for Chief Justice Roberts, who is if nothing else brilliant).

The same logic still applies, however, so I’m running the original without edits.  I’m cheating, in other words.  Here goes: (more…)

SARASOTA, FL-

In a new book reviewed by Salon here, Terry Eagleton readies the religious backlash as if the tiny minority of American atheists somehow threatens his lukewarm beliefs. His favorite tactic is to lump Christopher Hitchens together with Richard Dawkins and refer to them as “Ditchkins.” The first is a neoconservative whose book only tried to raise profits, while the second is one of the most elegant proponents of evolution who happens to feel we arrived here without the help of God just fine…though we may exit unless we rid ourselves of ill-informed beliefs.  But that, according to Eagleton, is absurd, for Eagleton himself doesn’t believe in such fundamentalist hokum as creation “science.” Why, he’s not even sure God created man.  With religions like that, who needs atheism? (more…)

BOULDER, CO-

There is a crack underneath my fireplace, where the intake vent meets the hardwood floor. It is too small for most things, but perhaps large enough for a mouse to squeeze through if it is very determined. Tonight, however, something about this crack gets to me. Makes me dizzy. Above, the glow from the fireplace hot on my face; below the crack leading to the depths within my house. Leading perhaps down to the foundation. Maybe beyond.

I wonder what could be down there. Large rodents, maybe. Nick Belardes’ Mothman, probably. I stare at the crack half expecting long, dark fingers to flit through and make a quick probe. Nudge a dust bunny or two on their way to my soul. On their way to finger other thin places in my life.

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BEND, OR.-

Boxers don’t walk. Boxers don’t strut. Boxers glide, eyes forward, their profiles reminiscent of Dick Tracy, strong and dashing, with a hint of vulnerability that belies the ballet of brutality to come.

Noted author Joyce Carol Oates refers to boxing as, “the lost religion of masculinity,” and the horde that gathered on Friday night in the Middle Sister Building of the Deschutes County Fairgrounds in our neighboring town of Redmond for the preliminary bouts of the Oregon State Golden Gloves championship came to re-christen this loss. (more…)

COLUMBUS, OH-

I kicked my last dope habit in federal prison and I can tell you, there’s nothing romantic about it. Whatever you might imagine the experience to be will probably not be far off the mark. Picture hellish monotony, cramps that never vanish, months of sleeplessness and of course, that special craving. Making art out of this experience is difficult. My own recollection of the episode is dank and foul. As Dante said of his Inferno, death is hardly more bitter. (more…)

CHESTERTOWN, MD-

Not writing when you should is stupid.

Really. Really. Really.

I’ve found myself doing to writing what I normally do to my workouts.

Brain:  Maybe you should write.

Me:  Maybe you should shut the hell up.

Brain:  Hey don’t take that tone with me mister!

Me:  Here, huff this glue. A-hole.

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