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Rocks Off is starting the month-long (or nearly month-long) countdown to the Houston Press Music Awards today, and our dear readers get to reap the benefits.

Starting today at high noon sharp, we'll post a HPMA trivia question on both the Houston Press and Rocks Off Twitter pages every day. The first person to direct-message the correct answer will win a brand-spanking-new 2009 HPMA T-shirt.

Anyone who tweets us the correct answer will also be automatically entered in a weekly drawing for four passes to the HPMA showcase held in several downtown venues July 26.

So that means if you're not following us at @houstonpress or @hprocksoff -- preferably both, of course -- you better hurry up and do it. Good luck!

Photo by Margaret Downing

Well, there he was at a table in an H-E-B in Fort Bend County and he was peddling books, which is either the most naive or desperate or optimistic of things someone can do in a grocery store on a weekend.

Actually, it was his book. Eighteen years old and an author -- not of a children's book -- but of a book that promises to give its readers the "steps to become a successful young entrepreneur."

Keith J. Davis, Jr., AKA Jer'Rod,  graduated from Cy-Springs High School two weeks ago. Last year he wrote his first book Young? So What! He's a teen with big plans and a polished way of presenting himself, which he comes by naturally being the son of veteran marketer Keith J. Davis, Sr. AKA Mr. D-MARS.

Within five minutes at the stores he'd sold his book to two different people, carefully signing each one, asking how the inscription should read. Cost: about $11.

We've been seeing pregnant bellies all over H-Town. From The Woodlands down to Lake Jackson, it seems every other woman we see is either in the family way or accompanied by a doting father lugging around a car seat right not too far behind. What gives?

One conspiracy theory is that these are all "Ike" babies, borne of the power outages and curfews that were the norm in these parts back in September and October. Another is that babies are awesome and cute and smell good. And another more likely theory is that we all need in-house lawn services from someone who will call us "asshole" under their breath and steal beer from the fridge somewhere down the line.

We scoured the Interweb for the best, well...okay, really the creepiest babies we could get our cursors on for your enjoyment. Think of this as the Houston Press' own free advertisement for safe-sex.

The Great Digital TV Revolution occurs tomorrow, and Hair Balls is worried for those of you still clinging to your rabbit ears and MacGyvered-aluminum-foil towers. While we applaud those who have drawn a line in the sand and refused to feed the cable and satellite beasts, we urge you to get a government coupon for a digital converter box.

Why is that, Hair Balls, you ask. Well, how else will you continue to enjoy the exquisite mainstream network and syndicated fare your non-cable-owning ass has been glued to all these years? You know exactly what we're talking about: The CW, Chuck Norris Total Gym infomercials, Joel Osteen's joke of the day, and Telemundo's caliente bikini-clad women on rollerskates. Regular network TV is simply a goldmine -- and this is just a tiny sample of what you'll be missing out on if you don't get a converter box.

The People's Court

Our favorite real-life courtroom show by far, this latest version of the One That Started it All features a jurist who is decidedly more attractive than Joseph Wapner. Judge Marian Millian brings a real dramatic flair to the courtroom, as evidenced by this clip, where she brings the wrath of God down on this smarmy law student/plaintiff. But Millian's freakouts are only one of the attractions; we also like the cut-aways to Times Square, where a microphone-wielding Harvey Levin takes a break from his TMZ star-fucking to see how sidewalk sophists render fender-bender verdicts. Then there's the post-game breakdown, with the dude who stands in the hall outside the courtroom, asking each party how they felt about the judge's decision. Spoiler alert: The winner is always "pleased with the judge's decision." The loser is always "disappointed."

Photos by Blake Whitaker

Preparation is key

Imagine a catastrophic hurricane has severed communication with the outside world. You're thirsty, but the water coming out of the tap is contaminated. Society has devolved into lawlessness, and your neighbors have stolen your bottled water by torchlight. The bars are probably closed.

But you're not worried -- you've got the LifePack Emergency Water Filter! The device uses a two-bag osmosis system and a shot of something lemon-lime-flavored to turn dirty water into "drink." The box claims you can use it to make anything except seawater and antifreeze potable. Sewage and industrial waste are "not recommended." Really -- you can fill the bag with Port Arthur's finest ditch water, then pee in it, and, after filtration, the resulting concoction merits only the sort of warning you'd give someone who's about to pair a steak with white wine.

But we weren't about to endorse the Emergency Water Filter without confirming that it's capable of satisfying your post-disaster hydration needs. After all, the kit isn't cheap -- about $35 at most camping places. (LifePack sent it to us for free, unsolicited.) To determine its effectiveness, the Houston Press Filtration Testing Committee -- or four staff members who enjoy putting off real work to drink out of something that looks like a colostomy bag -- settled on first filtering duck pond water from Hermann Park.

Mark Fields, the flashy young head of Ford's Americas division, ran through the many woes of the auto industry before a group of mostly white-haired local car dealers who gathered for a luncheon yesterday at the Galleria Westin Hotel. There were the massive stock dips and job losses, the government takeover of his two biggest domestic rivals. National car sales, he said, have sunk to 1982 levels -- and there was an economic downturn even then.
 
"Just makes you want to jump out of bed every morning," Fields joked, adding that "volatility is the new norm."
 
In a blast to the happier recent past, Ford has re-released the Taurus, which was discontinued in 2007. (One audience member requested that the Thunderbird be next.)
 
In a nod to the future -- one of 35.5 miles per gallon fuel standards for all vehicles, including SUVs, as decreed by the Obama administration last week -- the new Taurus will have a fuel-efficient "EcoBoost" engine that purports to deliver V-8 performance at V-6 mileage. Fields also boasted about the company's 41 mpg Fusion Hybrid.
 
In response to a question from one worried Houstonian about the future of SUVs -- "Do you want one?" Fields asked -- Fields said Ford will remain committed to manly, Texas-sized vehicles. (The new F-150 SFE "superior fuel economy" edition gets 21 mpg--leaving a lot of ground to cover by 2016.) But he acknowledged that these are becoming harder to sell. Three to four years ago, he said, pick-ups and SUVs accounted for 70 percent of the company's sales. Now it's close to 50-50.
 

Here's one from our unofficial Irony Department: We occasionally get e-mails from folks who have been contacted by a company called TCMI, which charges around $5,000 to help find folks find lucrative jobs through the help of a sort of super-secret-double-probation database. These folks usually Google TCMI and find this Press story, which describes TCMI's hilarious modus operandi.

But what really got us from the latest e-mail was that this would-be victim sent us a link to TCMI's December press release on "How to Avoid a Career Scam."

Key points:

-- "TCMI recommends that the jobseeker fully investigate the company prior to accepting any offer." Really? Would that include investigating TCMI, which changes its name every five minutes and for some reason claims to have offices in Scotland and the Middle East, when they don't?

Photo by Katharine Shilcutt

What is Memorial Day without bikini pictures to scroll through and rate in your typical hot/not-hot way? (Rating performed, usually, by a guy who would never, ever himself land in the "hot" category.)

The weekend's weather was iffy, but that didn't stop people from heading to Galveston; thankfully, some of them were skimpily clad. Oh, and there's a sandcastle picture in the slideshow too.

We know the poolside cookout is a permanent fixture of the Memorial Day weekend, so to celebrate, here are some attractive ladies in swim gear eating, playing with, preparing, or otherwise enjoying food. We hope it enhances your holiday.

Michelle and Her Popsicle
In this clip from Showtime's Californication, Michelle Lombardo rocks a rainbow bikini while going to town on a popsicle in front of a deadpan David Duchovny and a flabbergasted Brian Posehn. No context needed.

Yeah, we know tomorrow is the Friday before a three-day weekend. You'll hardly have finished your granola bar and first coffee before you begin making plans on an early cubicle exit.

If you make it until noon without coming up with some decent excuse for "needing to work outside the office," you're either a stronger or less imaginative person than most.

But don't completely ditch the routine. Hair Balls will begin marking the Memorial Day weekend with such things as the five best war-movie deaths and the touching story of a local woman heading to Pearl Harbor to spread her dad's ashes there.

We won't be all somber, of course. To start things off we'll be offering a sample of babes in bikinis eating food, to get you ready for any barbecues on your schedule.

So don't leave without checking it all out.

Then leave.

Quietly, so no one will notice.