Photo by Marc Brubaker

The author watching Free Energy at Fitz in 2011.

I had a hernia operation in the early summer of 2006, and had nothing to do all day but hobble around with cool cane a borrowed from Grandpa Hlavaty and play on the Internets for two months or so.

I had developed the injury while working at Domino's, but it was cool because their insurance helped pay for it, and the cool pills that came with the painful surgery.

That summer while trolling around on Craigslist for stray local writing gigs, I saw that then Houston Press music editor John Nova Lomax had put out a call for freelance music writers.

A-ha.

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Photo by Marc Brubaker.

Not a gang.

Juggalos have always had an image problem. Back in the day it wasn't so bad; sure, you might get called a drug-addicted hillbilly with bad taste in music, but that's the kind of casual hatred an Insane Clown Posse fan learns to live with. Those days were annoying, but at least you had your Juggalo family to stand with.

Then the FBI released the National Gang Intelligence Center's 2011 National Gang Threat Assessment, and things got ugly. At first it was funny to think about; "Juggalos Considered Gang By FBI" is something that sounds like it came from The Onion.

It's been no laughing matter for those Juggalos who've had their world turned upside down because the cops have been told anyone rocking a hatchet man shirt is a public menace. Psychopathic Records is trying to turn public opinion around, most recently in the form of a Juggalos Fight Back newsletter.

They're going to have to try a lot harder if they ever want to be taken seriously.

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If you take Jorge Perez's word for it, four bouncy asses and a lone cymbal are proof that music can be found anywhere (as long as you have four willing women to bare their bums in the name of art, of course).

Solidifying his status as the envy of dudes everywhere, Jorge convinced four women to bare their bums for his drumming pleasure and recorded it for all the world to see. Drummers really do get all the chicks.

As a jazz-fusion percussionist with the band Patax, Jorge is known for playing percussion on peculiar instruments, so this booty-bongo video may be of little surprise to anyone familiar with his work.

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I have to admit, I'm not the biggest My Bloody Valentine fan in the world. I thoroughly enjoy Loveless and their newest record, mbv, but they're not my favorite band.

I guess that's why I wasn't aware until the band released a statement about it that people are selling that new record for assloads of money on eBay.

The funny thing is, out of all those people selling those ridiculously priced copies of it, none of them actually has the record. Yes, before you get your hopes up, as the band said in that statement, all those auctions are fake.

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There's no way to say this in a ladylike fashion, so fuck it.

Because someone, somewhere wants me to make middle-school boner jokes today, Chubby Checker of "Twist" fame is suing Hewlett-Packard and Palm for releasing the "Chubby Checker," an app used to estimate a dude's potential boner size by measuring his foot. (Apparently the whole "judge a man by his shoe size" old wives' tale is true. Who knew?)

Marketed by its ability to support different units of measurement depending on your region, the app promises to help eliminate that whole "awkward disappointment with his mini-me" thing that we ladies so often face.

But don't issue that collective sigh just yet, ladies. The boner app has been off the market since September 2012, essentially ruining the lives of millions of women who weren't even aware the damn thing even existed.

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parttimemusic via Wikipedia

It seems that Russian president Vladimir Putin has finally figured out what every middle-school boy has known since the '90's: if you play Boyz II Men for your date, it all but guarantees that her clothes are comin' off.

In a bid to astronomically increase the Russian birth rate, president Putin has hired the '90s ballad-crooning trio known for "End of the Road" and "I'll Make Love to You" to entice his citizens into gettin' it on. It's the right choice if you ask me, considering I believe their music is directly responsible for one in three American births during the early 1990s.

As silly as it sounds, I really feel like Putin may have hit the nail on the head with this one. I'm glad he's stopped the whole "trying to pay the citizens of Russia to have babies" thing; it was a little desperate. Women like it when you drive a hard bargain, offering nothing more than a little vodka and some ambiance. I mean, why pay for it, when all it takes is a little mood music to seal the deal?

In a slow-clap to his creativity, I'd like to offer a few song suggestions to Mr. Putin to help increase the odds of this weird, nationwide naughty-bits marathon succeeding. I'm helpful like that.

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Photo by Groovehouse

According to "science," listening to Justin Bieber makes you a better person.

We've been hearing for years that rock music makes us bad people. We've heard it from our parents, from teachers, from those goody-goody kids at school. AC/DC has probably written at least 100 songs about the subject. But what if I told you that scientists in the Netherlands have proved definitively that rock music makes you a delinquent?

According to these scientists, "unconventional music" like rock, hip-hop, and metal not only makes you more likely to end up a bad person, but it also leads to you infecting those around you with your diseased musical taste. The study goes on to conclude that people who listen to Justin Bieber, One Direction, and other "highbrow" music become better students and better people.

Far be it from me to question the validity of these claims. I mean, I did grow up on "unconventional music" and now look at me: writing about it for a Web site and drinking beer while I do it! But it got me thinking, what bands made me the delinquent, criminal, beer-swilling, drug-taking piece of garbage that, according to this study, I am today? Where did we all go wrong in life? Here's a few of my guesses.

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wineomusic.com

Wine-O and Iggy Azalea

If you want to have a squabble with a rapper, you're going to need just cause. And Houston's own Wine-O believes he has all the right in the world to set his sights on T.I.

Known mostly for being a feared presence on a microphone and in stature, Wine-O has come out of his own "retirement" to take aim at T.I. -- and, to an extent, Iggy Azalea -- on new single, "Happy Birthday T.I." a stabbing record ironically titled around the Atlanta rapper's recently celebrated 32nd birthday.

According to Wine-O, it all starts with Iggy, the Australian-born bombshell who's come into national prominence with the mixtape Ignorant Art and her signing to Interscope/Grand Hustle. Back then, she was an 18-year-old when she met Wine-O and the two began dating.

"I taught her how to rap, how to finish a 16-bar verse and got her exposure initially," Wine-O explains. "I took her to New York, L.A. and all these places and introduced her to people."

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Nevermind the bushes, the parking garage, the vacant tollbooth, the Wendy's bathroom, the Walmart gardening center. I guess we've all been there, when the urge and vapors and blood flow gets to be so troublesome that we just gotta have sex in the car. It has to happen in the car. No exceptions.

That's where sex expert Rachel Khona comes in. She is a contributing editor for Vaga Magazine and has written for Cosmopolitan, Inked and Penthouse, among others. She is a noted sex expert -- check out her blog -- who has appeared on terrestrial and satellite radio, and made numerous other pop-culture cameos.

This past week she sent us a list of songs that she thinks would soundtrack the perfect sexual/vehicular encounter. (With another person, preferably. Not yourself or the car itself. Although...)

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Photos by Jay Lee

See even more pinup queens in our Rock Baby Rock It slideshow.

As William Michael Smith put it in his review, hot the operative word at Saturday's Rock Baby Rock It hot-rod show/musical extravaganza. Ladies were dolled up pin-up style all over the Island off Main, with tall hair, heavy make-up, and slathered on sass. Parasols and "Bettie" bangs were the accessories of choice for the weekend.

Rocks Off had the hellacious and enviable task of poring over Jay Lee's pictures of Saturday's festivities to pick out ten beauties from the event. Of course there were more, and maybe Mr. Lee is holding back on us, the jerk.

Anyhow here are the hottest of the hotties from Rock Baby Rock It, Houston's annual rockin' weekend off the Island.

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