Photos by Autumn de Wilde

If you would have heard the names Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone or Akiva Schaffer six years ago, you probably wouldn't have known who they were. Now the trio has become famous through a combination of their work on Saturday Night Live, their 2007 full-length film Hot Rod, and their mock-rap group The Lonely Island.

It's that same rap group that's finally gone a step too far with their new single, "I Fucked My Aunt," featuring T-Pain.

The song, off the Island's upcoming third album, The Wack Album, starts off with Taccone musing, "Damn, I fucked my aunt.../ I can't believe I fucked my aunt.../ I fucked my aunt, y'all," before jumping straight into the first verse. There, he talks about growing up in the country, summers with fireworks and baseball before saying, "five years later, I fucked my aunt."

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This past week Downtown Abbey fans got a hell of a shock when Diddy announced via Twitter that he was going to be starring on the show, his purported favorite. Producers were quick to deny it, but no doubt fans of the PBS period drama were a little hesitant to even imagine Diddy, a rapper with exactly one acting credit on his resume, appearing on their favorite show.

Admittedly, Diddy was hilarious in the movie Get Him to the Greek, but his mixing in with Downtown Abbey would probably go over as well as his mixing with Led Zeppelin did in 1998.

Luckily for everyone involved, it turned out that the whole thing was a publicity stunt for a Funny or Die parody of Downtown Abbey starring Diddy. Nevertheless, it caught Rocks Off's attention and got me wishing that more musicians would get into period dramas and historical fiction.

Why on earth would it make me want that? Because I love things that are ridiculous. So to any TV producers reading right now, here are five ridiculous (and awesome ideas) to exploit this burgeoning genre of television which Diddy has now pioneered.

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Kreepin Deth via Wikimedia Commons

Spitting. It's a symbolic form of communication that means nothing good in any language or culture -- a sign of disrespect that garners admiration or adoration from no one. Well, except for fans. Stars and celebrities themselves get mighty pissed off if you spit on them, but if they spit on you, you better just grin and take it. It's all just a part of their attitude and such.

That's why we decided to look at the Top 10 spitters in music history -- there's almost no other context where spitting is so ubiquitous and so widely accepted and well-received. Somehow fans see it as a form of communication between themselves and a star, or a bond between them. It seems pretty gross to me, but who am I to question such a beloved practice?

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Photo by Marco Torres

Tyler, the Creator

Tyler, the Creator has never been known for being a sensitive man. Quite the opposite, he's known for unambiguous lyrics about controversial and disturbing subjects such as rape, murder, homophobia, and infanticide. One of his most infamous lyrics is from the song "Tron Cat," where he promises to "rape a pregnant bitch and tell my friends I had a threesome."

Yeah, that's the kind of rapper we're dealing with here. Nevertheless, he's amassed a fanbase that seems completely willing to take lyrics like that in stride, and has become one of the most popular artists among the younger crowd in recent memory. He even beat Wiz Khalifa, Foster the People, Kreayshawn, and Big Sean for a VMA for Best New Artist.

But some are saying that Tyler has finally gone too far with his recent Mountain Dew ad, which has been accused of being racist, among other things. Well, has he?

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Since the first thing that comes to mind about New York during the roaring 1920's is dubstep, Autotune, and, of course, Andre 3000 and Beyonce, the producers of the new The Great Gatsby movie have forced this little ditty upon us from the upcoming soundtrack.

Bey and Andre's collaboration on Amy Winehouse's throwback tune may very well have produced the worst song that's ever been released, cover or otherwise. I have nothing nice to say about it. Oh, yes, I mean that. I mean that very much. It's just a mess. A huge, sandpaper-to-the-Eustachian-tubes mess.

If you'd like to hear two extremely famous and otherwise generally talented artists rip "Back to Black" to shreds, please see below.

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Earlier this week, as I was working/editing/writing/procrastinating after a long weekend on the road, I came across the new video for "Play Hard" by David Guetta. Now, I'm not much of a Guetta fan, but I don't dislike him either.

He makes radio-friendly pop songs disguised as house music (or is it house music disguised as pop songs?), and his formula -- dance beat + guest vocalists/rappers = profit!! -- is both adored and despised by music fans and critics across the globe. I'd lump him into the same category as The Black Eyed Peas and Pitbull: talented musicians who have "sold out," making crap music in order to make non-crappy millions of dollars.

In any case, after watching "Play Hard" for the first time, I was baffled and confused. Was this "one of the best videos of all time!" (sorry Beyonce & Taylor), or, as a Mexican-American, should I be offended by what I just saw? There are so many "What the Fuck" moments in this video, I had to play it five times in order to count them all.

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It seems that there's something in the musician water lately, and it's causing an epidemic of WTF-inducing choices that are just begging to be written about. Headlines are popping up daily about abandoned pet monkeys, pixelated photos, and Skrillex hair, and this shit's getting weird.

But rather than bombard you with multiple rants about this series of unfortunate (musical) events, I'm going to round them all up and side-eye them all in one post.

So here ya go. Musicians, you've all lost your damn minds.

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Disclosure: The author of this piece volunteers for KTRU.

On Wednesday afternoon, Rice University president David Leebron pulled up a chair inside of the KTRU Rice Radio studio and played some of those rooty-tooty, groovin' oldies.

In other words, music that KTRU has made a point not to play since its 1967 inception.

Leebron remains a scapegoat in the controversial gutting of Rice's radio station that sent Rice's broadcast tower, 91.7 FM 50,000-watt frequency and Federal Communication Commission license to the University of Houston.

After Leebron spearheaded the $9.5 million sale of (in Leebron's words) the "vastly underutilized resource," folks wanting to hear KTRU's free-form programming must do so via a high-definition radio or an Internet connection.

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What would Roy Rogers think?

The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo doesn't stay so successful by not keeping up with the times. So before each of this year's evening concerts, you can watch a bunch of people who work at the rodeo gyrating to the latest real-life Internet meme, the "Harlem Shake."

Last week a 30-second clip of various rodeo folk -- "bullfighters," cowpokes, a couple of older gentlemen in Stetsons, the rodeo's bowlegged-H mascot "Howdy" -- debuted on the big screens above the revolving stage. Pretty fancy footwork, but then the bullfighters at least are used to being light on their feet.

You can't help wondering what the black horse in the middle thinks of all this. The Shake was posted on the rodeo's YouTube channel last Tuesday. As of early Sunday afternoon, it had accrued more than 160,000 views.

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Get 'em, Billy!

I've previously been critical of Billy Corgan for a lot of the ridiculousness he has engaged in. But folks, I'm here to tell you, all of that changed for me last week when I saw this video of good old Billy and his wrassling federation shilling furniture. Now I get it.

Billy Corgan is not Generation X's greatest embarrassment or their greatest fallen idol, as I've described him before. No, Billy has made it abundantly clear that he's the opposite. He's maybe Gen X's one, greatest success story.

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