Adventures in Pet Sitting

In a neighborhood not-so far away

Greetings from Paradise Hills! 

Yes, Paradise Hills, is the community that I call home, but this week I’m pet sitting for some friends about a mile away on the other side of Parkside Park, the dumbest name in Southeast San Diego. 

(The park is on Parkside Avenue, a street that takes its name from the park, which is apparently named after the street? WTF San Diego? Get your shit together!)

As many of you know, I used to be a semi-professional pet sitter. When I quit my job at Thunderclap Casino, I went back to work for the ad agency in L.A. that had employed me for a decade. My plan was to spend the week in L.A. and go back to San Diego on weekends. Incredibly, I was able to string together pet, plant, and house sitting gigs for the entire two years I worked in L.A. and never had to get a place of my own. (Caveat: I couldn’t have done it without the futon at Razorcake HQ.) 

Long story short, I’m back on my shit, using someone else’s home as a writing retreat while taking care of a big lovable Rottweiler named Maxx who howls at fire trucks and can chew his way through beskar steel. 

Yes, that was a reference to The Mandalorian. After the day’s work on the book is done I’ve been tuning in to the Disney channel and watching The Mandalorian and Grogu a.k.a. Baby Yoda tear shit up on the outer rim of a galaxy far, far away. 

Each episode of The Mandalorian is basically a condensed spaghetti western. You’ve got your outlaws, your marshals, and your evil colonizers mistreating the locals and it’s up to the lone stranger from out of town to make it right. The storytelling isn’t complex, but it has its moments. The Mandalorian has a code that he was indoctrinated into as “The Way” and it’s only later that we learn that he was brought up by zealots. The Mandalorian can either wield his worldview like a cudgel or he can adapt to the morally ambiguous zone he occupies between the Empire and the New Republic, which is not something The Man with No Name was ever asked to do. 

Every few episodes a woman turns up to eyefuck the heavily armored Mandalorian even though he never takes off his helmet. The dude basically looks like a robot, and kind of talks like one too, which makes me wonder how many people are using droids for sex in the Star Wars universe but whatever. 

I was a Star Wars kid who loved the movies, played with the toys, collected the cards, etc. I love the intersection of 21sttechnology and ’70s nostalgia. I hope I never become so cynical that the sound of a light saber powering on or a TIE fighter screaming through space doesn’t make me feel something.

But I’ll be honest. My favorite thing about the show was watching Baby Yoda eat things he’s not supposed to eat. He’s like Maxx in that respect who recently tried to chew through a 75-pound box of roofing material before I stopped him. 

Now that I’ve watched all sixteen episodes of Seasons 1 and 2, I’ll keep my eyes peeled for another pet sitting gig when the spin-offs series, including Ahsoka, Rangers of the New Republic, and The Book of Boba Fett, which is already in production, are released. 

PssSST! 

I had some fascinating interviews over the last few days, including some multi-person interviews that are always a challenge. I interviewed an entire band that put out a record with SST in the late 90s, a record I consider the last great album the label released. I interviewed some people who worked at a distributor that had close ties with SST, getting some good insight into how the record industry adapted to changes that SST was instrumental in bringing about. I also interviewed a gentleman that worked with Gregg Ginn on many of his side projects. And when you read this message there’s a good chance I’ll be interviewing a legendary guitar player that had one of the shortest tenures as an SST artist. 

It feels like all I do these days is transcribe interviews, which is much easier now than it was a few years ago thanks to artificial intelligence (seriously). Meanwhile records, CDs, and tapes continue to roll in from literally all over the world. SST had relationships with distributors and labels overseas but sometimes it boggles the imagination how a little independent record label from Southern California managed to ship its strange and obscure releases to places all the way to France, Russia, and Japan. 

The last few weeks I’ve been exploring Screw Radio, which was an SST-run radio station hosted by “Poindexter Stewart” that was broadcast over the airwaves in the ’90s for a short while before moving to the Internet. Screw Radio was also the name of a Greg Ginn side project where he played guitar over snippets of talk radio he collected while out on tour and then sampled and sequenced in his studio. And if that’s not confusing enough, Poindexter Stewart is also the name of another Greg Ginn side project that released one album called College Rock. 

The Greg Ginn side project universe is a hall of mirrors, but the Best of Screw Radio CD just arrived from a record store in Dublin, Ireland, and its full of clips from the show along with bumpers, ads, and SST promos. I’m looking forward to giving it a listen. Now if I can just find someone with a 1999 Ford Taurus so I can pop it into the CD player…

Books I’m Looking Forward to Reading

While I’m excited to be in the home stretch of the SST book project, it’s taking up all of my spare reading time and there all kinds of exciting books that have arrived at Casa Ruland in recent weeks that I look forward to checking out this summer…

Tomboyland by Melissa Favileno. I ordered this book immediately after reading Favileno’s exquisite essay in March Plaidness about the song “Santa Monica” by Everclear, which you should read right this very instant. 

The Mayor of Leipzig by Rachel Kushner. It’s always exciting when one of your favorite writers puts out a new book, but even more so when they’re in full-on DGAF mode. You can read the title story here.  

Folk Songs and Trauma Surgeons by Keith Rosson. Keith is part of the Razorcake familia and a member of the Legion of Vermin, but I’m a huge admirer of his work.

Hashtag Good Guy with Gun by Jeff Chon. The publishing industry is not ready for the Great American Novel about gun violence. Thankfully, indie presses have been picking up the slack by publishing edgy books about the problem like How to Be Safe by Tom McAllister. Chon’s debut has a dark, Loom of Ruin feel to it and a sneakily sinister plot. 

The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen. Nina Renata Aron gushed about this trilogy and that was enough for me. Aron’s memoir, Good Morning, Destroyer of Men’s Souls, comes out in paperback next month and you can pre-order it now. 

Walking with Ghosts by Gabriel Byrne. Remember when I talked about all the books by Irish writers I was going to read this year? Me either, but I’m looking forward to this one. However, if Byrne doesn’t wax eloquently about his role in Miller’s Crossing I’m going to be very disappointed.  

Tomorrow They Won’t Dare to Murder Us by Joseph Andras. Very intriguing translation of a novel by a French writer who was awarded one of its most prestigious awards and no one knows who he is. 

The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington. I adore Leonora’s work and seeing her artwork in Mexico City was an astonishing experience I won’t soon forget. Reading The Hearing Trumpet liberates us from the miserable reality of our days,” said Luis Buñuel, whom you may have heard of on Tik-Tok or something. 

Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to a Tribe Called Quest by Hanif Abdurraqib. This has been on my shelf a while and since Abdurraqib’s got a new book out this week, I better get to it… 

What are you reading this spring?