(How come they never show the reporters dashing to Google Maps to look up where the intersection of Chimney Rock and Bissonet is?)

It looks like standard fare, but there is one thing unusual in the ads. Those camera operators? They're not really camera operators.

It's an event featuring experts who will give advice on how to deal with current tough economic conditions.

Among the participants: the FDIC, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, the Small Business Association, Comerica Bank...and Underground Kingz.

UGK? What's the schedule look like: "10 am, Room 314A -- Ridin' Dirty Through A Foreclosure, with UGK."

We asked event spokesperson Hope Montgomery just what financial advice UGK would be offering.

“Monday through Friday they’re going to get school breakfasts and lunches and that’s gonna help them through the day, but over the weekend they’re kind of screwed. They don’t have food in the house in a lot of cases,” Ballard tells Hair Balls. The Backpack Buddy program pairs with area schools to make sure these kids have food to take home for the weekend. Ballard says Continental’s donation helped them expand into more schools.

“We’re harvesting about 3,000 pounds of food every week,” says Ballard. “It’s prepackaged cereal, raisins … muffins. It’s anything that we can take that would follow our usually heath department regulations.”

And hopefully your good-taste regulations, right?

But what about past storms? Are there any historical tropical systems that can best be associated with the paved swamp we all call home?

Thought you'd never ask.

5. Vince (2005) - In any other year, the formation of an October tropical system out in the cold waters near the Azores might have been deemed newsworthy. But this was 2005, and four Category 5 systems had already made landfall, killing thousands and devastating large portions of the Gulf Coast and the Caribbean, so nobody really cared about poor Vince, even though he made the only recorded landfall by a cyclone on the Iberian Peninsula and in so doing, eased a year-long drought.

Huzzah.

Similarly Named Houstonian - Why, Vince Young of course. Like his tropical namesake, the former Madison High QB made his mark in 2005, leading UT to their first national championship since the Nixon Administration. And also, like the storm, he was overshadowed by Houston and New Orleans. This time, instead of Rita and Katrina it was Mario Williams and Reggie Bush, who were both drafted ahead of Young in 2006.

Whatever. 4th and 5:

Yeah, Dokken. I said it, and you heard me. I’m also saying Bret Michaels, Twisted Sister, RATT, L.A. Guns, Alice Cooper, and Skid Row.

It’s Rock the Bayou time, yes indeedy.

As a child of the late 80s, I was into my hair metal like I was into my Bonne Bell and Wet n’ Wild and Aqua Net. My gal pals and I staged dance contests in our basements set to the music of Poison, Guns n’ Roses, and Def Leppard. Although the discerning critic already blooming inside me was a little disturbed by the idea of grown men with prettier hair than me, I couldn’t deny the fact that “Pour Some Sugar on Me” had a rockin’ beat.

Being indicted "on charges of abusive sexual contact and aggravated sexual abuse" just doesn't sound good on the ol' resume.

Kent, a hot-tempered judge who ruled the Galveston courthouse like a private fiefdom, has been the focus of a long investigation into charges he had (perhaps drunkenly) manhandled a former case manager.

He becomes the first federal judge ever indicted on federal sex charges, the paper reported.

Kent was reprimanded a year ago by the judicial council of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

For attorneys who've had to grovel before Kent, or endure yet another tongue-lashing, it's got to be a day of schadenfreude. Not to mention it may make one day closer the time when Galveston gets a replacement judge to handle their docket.

-- Richard Connelly

Recently the Old Sixth Ward Neighborhood Association filed for residential parking permits on streets – such as Decatur Street and Kane Street– near popular bars and restaurants. This would ensure residents could park in front of their houses instead of fighting for spaces with patrons of Pandora, The Drake, Beaver’s Ice House and other nearby hot spots.

“[At Beaver’s], customers are parking along Decatur in the neighborhood at, you know, dinner time and so when someone comes home from work … the street is completely congested,” OSWNA President Phil Neisel tells Hair Balls. “When the street is taken, you kind of have to drive around and look for a [parking] place somewhere else.”

!n some cases, he adds, homeowners are parking blocks away from their houses.

We know what you’re thinking: Ever hear of a driveway? Neisel says that many of the properties in the area weren’t built with cars in mind.

“Either the lots are too narrow for a driveway or the house is too wide for a driveway or there was a driveway at one time and it’s not being used a driveway anymore,” he says.

Hays was arrested after cops nabbed a Missouri man who was trying to have sex with kids and was involved in computer chats with Hays.

In the complaint filed with the court, Pasadena ISD police detective Matt Gray said Hays admitted to cops she'd been the person chatting with the Missouri guy and offering up three kids for sex.

We've just loaded up the latest installment of Month in Photos, so now you can see what you missed in August when your day job got in the way of that valuable Internet time. Have a look. You deserve it. -- KP

Lawrence Shipley III, who took the helm of his family’s Houston-based company in 2005, pled guilty to a misdemeanor charge of continuing to employ undocumented immigrants. He was sentenced to 6 months of probation and was ordered to pay a $6,000 fine, U.S. Attorney Donald DeGabrielle announced today.

The company, DeGabrielle said, has agreed to plead guilty to a felony conspiracy charge, serve one year of probation and revise its immigration compliance program.

“I would hope that other businesses that are currently employing people here illegally,” DeGabrielle said, “they would look to this and say that we are serious about not only enforcing our efforts at the border … [but] that those who are serving as a magnet to draw people here realize that they are literally risking their liberty as well.”

So do they have something to worry about? Does the county plan to once again open up the Astrodome to house evacuees?

In a word, no.

And not in many more words, either. Joe Stinebaker, spokesman for Harris County Judge Ed Emmett, is concise when asked by Hair Balls if the Dome might once again open as a demonstration of all the love and care that Houstonians can bestow:

"It will not," he says.

Nothing new was offered for her oldest son, but the school will allow Martinez's youngest son to attend its Spanish-language-only pre-kindergarten class. According to Suzanne Mercado, the school's principal, a few parents have opted to place their kids in that class, even if their kids don't speak Spanish.

Otherwise, her youngest son has to attend an off-campus pre-kindergarten center for $500 a month. "I can’t afford to do that," Martinez says. "If I could afford to do that, I would put them in a private school and say, 'To hell with it.'"

As they've written the company:

[The woman] is profoundly physically, mentally and emotionally handicapped. She is not capable of making financial or legal decisions … Quite frankly, [she] will agree to anything on the phone, and have no memory of it a few minutes later. This is why the bulk of the charges on her Penny's card are for insurance policies that she has no need for and a "discount travel" plan sold to a mentally retarded woman who never travels more than a few blocks from home by an unscrupulous phone rep.

Penney’s credit reps reportedly insist on talking with the woman, and no one else. Several letters and phone calls to the company haven’t helped.

We got in touch with JCPenney’s customer service and were directed to GE Credit Corporation, the company that handles all of JCPenney’s credit cards. We sent off an e-mail to GE and got a quick response from Retail Consumer Finance Communications representative Dori Abel.

Ms. Abel offered to intervene in the situation and put the family together with customer service representative that would resolve the issue.

So what’s GE’s policy about issuing credit cards to the mentally challenged?

Yesterday, the United States Department of Labor released stats showing that the Houston area is second only to Dallas in job growth over the past year. According to the report, which looked at data from 310 metropolitan areas, Dallas clocked in with 68,000 new jobs and Houston added 57,100. By contrast, Los Angeles lost 45,000 jobs.

The reason for Houston’s job growth is a combination of factors, including that the city has for the most part avoided the kind of housing-price crisis facing the rest of the country, Ali Anari, research economist with the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M, tells Hair Balls.

Next up -- Hollywood takes a whack.

Opening this fall is a movie called Towelhead, based on what we're told is a best-selling book. Directed by Six Feet Under's Alan Ball and starring Toni Collette and Aaron Eckhart, the story follows a 13-year-old Lebanese girl who moves to Houston and -- well, and encounters what Hollywood thinks are typical Houstonians.

(See the couple in the opening seconds of the trailer.)