Ratso's Pad

Ciao, amici! Thanks for dropping by the pad. While I would prefer to hang with you in person, fear of disease and record collection rip-off prevents actual physical contact with all but a few trusted individuals. These things take time...

The Ratso Russo Show has ended its weekly radio run. Select sonic perverts may want to know that I'll be broadcasting frequently on KUSF 90.3 FM, San Francisco, mixing music and commentary wholly inappropriate for today’s sensibilities. Theoretically, you could tune in from anywhere in the world via the web by clicking here.

Get the Ratline Update to keep abreast of upcoming shows. Just type "subscribe" in the subject box.

Rat sez Cheeze! Wanna see me in action? Click here for a shot of me in KUSF's Studio A. The photo is of low resolution, so I only look like I'm loaded. Never on the air!

While we're on the subject of, um, me, please don't mistake me for this guy, and especially not this guy!

Don't call me on the air, just check my Radio Playlists. (Thanks to all the bands who’ve written after finding themselves on the lists. Those vanity web searches really work, don't they?)

To receive super special exclusive updates for upcoming radio shows via e-mail, subscribe to the RatLine Update here.

Is your band bizarre enough? Can’t get your twisted vision out to an unappreciative world? Send me your music in any format for probable airplay! Mailing address at the bottom of this page.

For years I ran a half-hour radio feature called The Pointless Theme Set consisting of songs about a particular subject. It nearly killed me--tracking down obscure tunes in godforsaken record stores and throwing down cash on the whole album just to play a two-minute cut. Now, with your help, I’ve expanded those playlists into huge archives. A truly pointless exercise.

This month's DJ Cheat Sheet: Hundreds of songs about Frogs and Worms! (Adults only.) Or go to the Cheat Sheet Index to access the whole archive.

Just as law enforcement agencies and comic book conventions attract peculiar types of personalities, so, too, social misfits are drawn to the unique world of college radio. Read my field guide to college radio types, an ethnographic treatise entitled Ratso's Safari. Only slightly dated.

I spent the late summer of 1999 digging up my roots like a famished truffle pig. How far did I get with the most common name in southern Italy? Find out by visiting Europhile. Includes new photo essays about other fine lands!

For some nutty reason people think I'm a film expert. Hardly. I'm just a movie addict, forever jonesing for the latest really good films, which tend to be independent and/or foreign. Basically anything real, beautiful, intellectual, weird, edgy, transgressive, depraved. So for all of you who ask, "Hey Ratso, seen any good flicks lately?" I these offer notes, updated once or twice a week.

Below are some of my past articles ("clips" as they say in the scribe biz) covering Bay Area film festivals for indieWIRE:

ARTICLES
2003 San Francisco Int'l Film Festival
2002 San Francisco Int'l Film Festival
2001 San Francisco Int'l Lesbian & Gay Film Festival
2001 San Francisco Int’l Film Festival
2000 Film Arts Festival of Independent Cinema
2000 San Francisco Int'l Film Festival
2000 Int'l Film Financing Convention
1999 San Francisco Int'l Film Festival
1999 San Francisco Int'l Lesbian & Gay Film Festival
1999 Mill Valley Film Festival
1998 San Francisco Intl Film Festival

BRIEFS
2001 San Francisco Int'l Film Festival
2000 San Francisco Int’l Lesbian & Gay Film Festival
2000 San Francisco Int’l Film Festival
2000 San Francisco Indie Fest
1999 Film Arts Festival of Independent Cinema
1999 New Italian Cinema Events
1999 Rafael Film Center
1999 San Francisco Jewish Film Festival
1998 San Francisco Intl Film Festival (1)
1998 San Francisco Intl Film Festival (2)
1998 San Francisco Intl Lesbian & Gay Film Festival

Again with the movies. As much as we think we live in an instant-access information age, there are still plenty of films that have never been committed to commercial home video. Here’s a plea you can’t resist: Help save my life by dropping into my Video Wish List. It’s a two-way street if you have a wish list of your own.

Many thanks to my generous friends in cyberspace who have fulfilled some of my requests!

Here it is: My uncut, hour-long interview with with legendary filmmaker/author/satanic party boy Kenneth Anger! What he wouldn't tell the author of his unauthorized biography he told me, though I don't know why... When you're done with that, you can read the related item below.

I currently live two blocks from the basement where Charles Manson lived during the Summer o’ Love in San Francisco. Naturally this makes me an expert on all things Manson. While I’m not a disciple, I wonder about Due Process as applied to his case (he didn't kill nobody).

Regardless, I felt it necessary to refute the Charlie Manson legend published in the local Western Edition newspaper.

Don’t get me started about the desecration of San Francisco! The real estate crisis created by the dot-com boom has allowed for the cultural strip-mining of our city by blood-sucking, profiteering landlords and developers. All with the blessing of Mayor Willie Brown, who gets often gets a cut.

Things have gotten worse since one Pseudonymous Rat got past the SF Weekly letter screeners in 1998. Check out Gentrification Rock!

How can one manage a real life without working for the man? How can one resist the corporate state and not starve? How does one keep one’s soul intact in a sea of philistines and artless fucks? Read about the Ratboy's secret Day Job. Shhh! Don't tell anybody!

I'm not delusional enough to believe that real communities form out of "cyberspace," but it's always nice to hear from a kindred soul. Here is a sampling of letters from listeners, bands and other maladjusted types. Real psychotics get an instant posting on the page!

...and smell reality! Five books to set you straight, Mister:

The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan (Random House)
Why People Believe Weird Things:Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time by Michael Shermer and Stephen Jay Gould (W.H. Freeman & Co.)
One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy by Thomas Frank (Doubleday)
A People's History of the United States: 1492 - Present by Howard Zinn (Harper Perennial Library)
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich (Metropolitan Books)

If you still have time on your hands, you can always go to the rather dated Rat Links: a resource for soundtracks, composers, record labels, film, TV, video, radio, music, media, culture, politics and mondo--at least the ones that don't show up as dead links.

Carl "Ratso" Russo, P.O. Box 170645, San Francisco, CA 94117, or e-mail me.

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