The poster child for cross-dressing boxers all over the world.

Rocks Off is waiting for the day that our 52-year-old mother sits us down for a serious talk and says that she's ready to pursue her dream of becoming a rapper.

She'll say, "Mi hijo, you know Lil Casper's mom, Brenda, on 4th Street? Her boyfriend set up a home studio for her. She's spitting that real shit and I want to make an album about your bastard father and how he left us 21 years ago."

Why not? Everyone else thinks it's fine to take the mike. A few weeks ago, we helped judge an upstart open-mike contest called Sounds of the Underground and eight of the 12 "rappers" or rap groups should have been arrested, charged and sentenced for their crimes against humanity that evening.

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Every rapper dreams of being a baller and every baller dreams of being a rapper. It rings true today and former Houston Rocket Steve Francis renews the saying with his recently discovered hip-hop label Mazerati Music.

Rocks Off cringed when we saw Dan Devine's Ball Don't Lie sports blog on Francis's rap video, "Finer Things." We were catching up with "Finer Things" video director Akil Ak Kurji, a young, smart and driven entrepreneur who has his hands in all kinds of businesses, at his home just a week ago.

Kurji showed us the video in passing as he talked about his aspirations to build multiple businesses. We had the scoop, but dropped it. Life goes on.

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Tom Petty got a real kick in the balls late last week when he discovered that his vintage blond 1967 12-string Rickenbacker and his Gibson SGTV Junior had been stolen from a California soundstage where the Heartbreakers had been rehearsing for an upcoming tour. Three other vintage guitars owned by band members were taken, too.

It's an age-old story in rock and roll: Any guitar worth a damn seems to get run off with sooner or later. It's just too easy to turn quality instruments over for fast cash, and junkies, bums and other broke-asses can't seem to help themselves.

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Note: This post was written by Rocks Off's friend and LA Weekly music editor Ben Westhoff, who obviously had a more interesting weekend than we did.

See also:
*"What My Spirit Hood Means To Me": Coachella-Goers Explain

*Coachella: The Black Lips' Cole Alexander Goes Full Monty, Plays Guitar With His Ding-Dong

At Coachella, folks come from all over the world to lose themselves in the music. They'll employ almost anything in this quest -- but mostly drugs. Some of the folks below have taken too many, some are badly in need of a buzz, but all are our favorite awkward Coachella dancers.

We're not trying to diss; people like them make the experience so much fun. Three cheers to Nanette Gonzales and Taylor Hamby, who helped put this post together, and the dubstep at the Do LaB stage, without which most of these moves would not be possible.

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Rocks Off was only 13 years old in October 1992 when singer Sinéad O'Connor sang an a cappella version of Bob Marley's "War" on Saturday Night Live and, on cue, tore an image of Pope John Paul II into pieces while singing the word "evil."

"Fight the real enemy," she exclaimed at the end of one of live TV's most shocking moments. The gesture was labeled as sacrilegious, and what got lost was O'Conner's intent to bring attention to the overwhelming number of sexual-abuse claims inside the Catholic church and all over the world. And that's probably because her gesture was so over the top and bold that the message got vaporized in the firebolts of controversy.

That was our first real introduction to music's sometimes contentious crossing with religion.

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Photo by Chris Gray

Shades of Cheech & Chong. Rocks Off saw this sign posted outside the Dirty Dog bar Friday afternoon and knew we had to post it.

We have no idea who "Shitty" is, but he was definitely not in the building.

But why?

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Photo by Ben Westhoff

Abnormally attractive pedicab driver

Ed. Note: This article was written by L.A. Weekly music editor Ben Westhoff.

Paying homeless people $70 a day to serve as human wifi hotspots is a bizarre way to make a buck, but it's indicative of the hustler's spirit at South By Southwest this year.

Folks are grinding hard and employing increasingly gimmicky measures to make money.

But there's more to it than that. Like the bands parachuting in from optimistic heartland outposts hoping to catch the ear of that one pretty-widely-read blogger, on 6th Street the entertainers/buskers/scantily-clad swag dispensers are clearly seeking a bit of fame themselves.

So start your stopwatches, energetic exhibitionists, because your 15 minutes are about to begin.

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Photos by James Bricker

Yo Gabba Gabba Live!
Verizon Wireless Theater
December 2, 2011

Check out our picks of DJ Lance Rock and friends at Yo Gabba Gabba Live!.

As a parent, Rocks Off can tell you firsthand about the sacrifices involved in child rearing. Most of us know going in that there are trade-offs for raising your own personal organ donors, from simple things like no longer getting to sleep in on Saturdays to losing command of your own television.

Parents (those who admit to it, anyway) who let their kids watch television realized long ago that there was little to be gained from bitching about the quality of children's programming. We got beyond that years ago, sagely realizing such fare was not created for us, and should therefore be outside the realm of adult critique.

Some TV shows, however, are beyond the pale. Some offer so little nourishment to the child's mind they should be rallied against like big box stores in our affluent neighborhoods or Mark Twain in our school libraries. We speak, of course, of Yo Gabba Gabba.

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At 4:30 p.m. on Rocks Off's Facebook page, we will be throwing out five pairs of tickets to the much-anticipated Guns N' Roses show tomorrow night at the Toyota Center. That means you must "like" the page to have a chance to win. In order to win, be one of the first five people to correctly answer the one GNR trivia question we will load up.

If we were you, we would start looking back at Rocks Off's past GNR coverage, because this year there have been more than a few blogs about the boys. They are on the ballot for the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame this year after all.

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The Texans are in first place (for now), the Texas Rangers may become the Lone Star State's first-ever World Series champions tomorrow (ouch), and early voting for the November 8 mayoral/City Council election started Monday. The Houston Press Music Awards showcase is less than three weeks away - we'll reveal the schedule tomorrow - and this morning our friends at Free Press Houston requested everyone save next June 2 and 3 for Summer Fest 2012.

So naturally, all anyone in Houston wants to talk about is... mosquitoes.

Our city, built on a swamp with one of the most humid climates in North America, was somehow caught off-guard by this past weekend's invasion of the pint-sized bloodsuckers, just because the recent drought had dried up their breeding grounds until it rained about 10 days ago. There has been so much shock, awe and alarm in the air that "mosquitoes" even became a locally trending topic on Twitter for a while. And we wonder why people in Austin laugh at us.

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