Table of Contents
by Caroline Leavitt
by Brad Listi
Boyhood Maps, Modern-Day Trivia
Praise for A People's History of the Peculiar
A People's History of the Peculiar is the perfect desk reference for ordinary insane people. Nick Belardes is a force of nature.
Brad Listi, author of Attention. Deficit. Disorder.
And I thought my friends were weird. Reading A People's History of the Peculiar is like wandering around the Epcot Center onhallucinogenscolorful, crazy, occasionally terrifying, and alwaysexciting. If youre a trivia buff with a penchant for the madcap, doyourself a favor and buy this book.
Matthew Shaer, Christian Science Monitor
Nick Belardes is an imaginative writer with a truly new and unique voicehe will both startle and thrill you with his stories that pop out from the dark, like the teasing dangers in Mr. Toads Wild Ride.
Jessica Anya Blau, author of The Summer of Naked Swim Parties
For the reader who needs to know why the characters in Dilbert dont have mouths, your oracle has arrived. A People's History of the Peculiar is every bit as silly as it is informative. Belardes has ransacked the useless information files and uncovered some gems.
Jonathan Evison, author of All About Lulu
A People's History of the Peculiar is space age journalistic cut-up, as Burroughs might have hallucinated, that is, if he were stoned on California Central Valley methane sky, with a cheap tequila hangover, and big plow cojones that makes Belardess writing so damn outlandish, and yet, so Bakersfield!
Tim Z. Hernandez, author of Skin Tax
Nick Belardes is definitely from the dark side of the zodiacluckyfor us who love to read about real-life freaks, weird rituals, andew-w-w-w eliciting strangeness. A Peoples History of the Peculiaris packed with What the hell? moments, hair-raising tales, and justplain spooky fun.
Hazel Dixon-Cooper,author of the Rotten Day astrology booksand Cosmopolitans Bedside Astrologer
For fans of trivia and bathroom reading, A People's History of the Peculiar is 258 pages of facts and funky frolic. Each section isfilled with brief blasts of information everyone with an appreciationfor the odd can enjoy.
Bakotopia.com
In A Peoples History of the Peculiar, Nick writes about thewacky, the wild, and the random. Everything you ever wanted toknow about fried spiders as a delicacy, jobs as an odor tester, whatexactly is in Anasazi poo, and much much more, youll find in thishandy-dandy reference to all things weird. Its like a self-help guidefor folks without imaginations. Or literature for those of us thatlike to know things that others dont.
Amy Wallen, author of MoonPies and Movie Starsand DimeStories reading series host
RANDOM THOUGHTS
Imagine: Youre walking through an open green field in springtime. Beautiful day. Perfect weather: slight breeze.
But all is not right. Something dreadful is weighing on you. It is a time of flux and crisis. You move through the tall grasses oblivious to the surrounding beauty. And for a while, you forget that youre even walking. For a while, you forget that youre even alive.
And yet you have come to these pasturelands seeking relief. You have come to these fertile grasses in search of perspective and levity.
And eventuallyafter, say, 30 minutes or soyou wake up. You remember your original purpose. You catch yourself and separate yourself from the incessant stream of thought. You stop, take a deep breath, and gaze upward, to the sky. And I mean you really look at it. You really take a moment to ponder it.
And you feel better.
There is something very primal about this simple actsomething deeply profound and totally ordinary. Human beings have been doing it since the beginning of time. It might be the easiest and most effective way to forget ourselves, to remember how utterly small we are, and how utterly connected we are to the greater cosmic machinery.
We are utterly connected to the greater cosmic machinery.
This is very natural. It is also very weird.
Right now, for better or worse, we are situated on a giant sphere of whirling matter in an ocean of infinite blackness.
It is important to remember this fact.
Another good thing to remember: Dinosaurs lived here once. Reptiles. Millions of them. They dominated this place. Millions of years ago. Some of them were as small as hens.
Nick Belardes is a writer who remembers these kinds of things. He is a man with a deep appreciation for the epic, fundamental strangeness of our existence. And now he has written a book that is, in its own unique way, a heartfelt testimony to our timeless cosmic plight.
A People's History of the Peculiar is designed to keep you rooted in an appropriate sense of disbelief. It might function well as a desk reference or as night reading on a bedside table. It could also be useful in a bathroom, or on an airplane, or in a hospital bed, or in a prison cell. Take it to the desert and read it around the campfire. It will serve as a pleasant reminder that no one really knows what the hell is going on around here.
Brad Listi
Los Angeles
January 2009
Foreword
When I was 10, I read a story in an old, pulpy Weird Talesmagazine of my fathers about how there were invisibleholes in the atmosphere, portals that would lead to anotherdimension, and you could slip through them without warning.No one who ever went through has ever come back, the textwarned, but I took this as a fabulous invitation. Who knew ifthose people even wanted to come back? What if what thosepeople discovered in their new environment was a thousand timesbetter than in their old? I immediately went outside to try tofind that hole, and it wasnt until I disrupted a party my parentswere having by repeatedly walking with my arms outstretchedthrough the rooms that my father got to the bottom of my obsessionand told me you couldnt believe a story that crazy, that themagazine had made it up. That, of course, escalated my love formake-believe. I saw its power! I began writing novels, makingthings up that seemed so real I believed in them the same way Idid in those portals. But that didnt stop me from still looking for those holes, and it certainly didnt stop my love for the weird, theunusual, the outrageous. The world, I knew, was stunningly fullof real-life marvels if we could just stop to look for them.Which brings us to Nick Belardes.
Which brings us to Nick Belardes.
Like all wonderful things, Nick came as a surprise to me.He was a voice on Facebook who was funny, smart, deep withfeeling, and surprising. We were both writers drawn to thebizarre. We quickly became friends. But Nick has many layers,and that includes thinking about life and people and planets andeverything else with or without mass in a brand new way. I mean,truly, whats more crucial than a sense of wonder? This book isa compendium of blisteringly funny facts, outrageous anecdotes,and all kinds of zany information you really need to know.
Come on, dont you really want to know that when viewedfrom above, the Capitol dome actually resembles the Egyptiansymbol for eternal life? Dont you want to be the life of the partyby telling Nicks story of how Jeffersons grandson was an axmurderer? If you hate your job and wish you could do anythingelse, Nick gives you oddball choices of how your working lifecould be weirder, wilderor perhaps worse. Want to be a dogtreat taster? What about a fortune cookie writer? (I want thisjob, and so did Lisa Yang, who wrote 20 fortunes a week.)
