Green Day rocker Billie Joe Armstrong has complained that he was booted from a Southwest Airlines flight in Oakland, California, because of the way he wore his pants.
Armstrong, 39, said on the Web site Twitter on Thursday, “Just got kicked off a Southwest flight because my pants sagged too low!”
The flight was going from Oakland, California, to the Los Angeles suburb of Burbank, said Brad Hawkins, a spokesman for Southwest Airlines.
Photo: Taipei Times
Cindy Qiu, an associate producer at Bay Area television station ABC7/KGO-TV, was on the flight and described the incident on her company’s Web site.
She said that Armstrong, when he was initially approached by a flight attendant and told to hike up his pants, said “Don’t you have better things to do than worry about that?”
He then tried to take his seat but was asked to leave the plane, Qiu said on the ABC7 Web site. The situation appears to have been soon resolved.
“As soon as we became aware of what had happened, we reached out to apologize for this customer’s experience,” Hawkins said. “He elected to take the next flight.”
In other news about musicians who have problems keeping their pants on, rocker Gene Simmons and his longtime girlfriend, actress Shannon Tweed, are engaged.
Publicist Dawn Miller said in an e-mail on Friday that she is “happy to confirm that Gene and Shannon will be getting married in the near future.”
They aren’t the only couple with good news. Singer Melanie Brown and her husband, Stephen Belafonte, have a brand spanking-new baby girl.
An e-mail from a representative for the former Spice Girl says the couple “welcomed their new baby girl in Los Angeles” on Thursday night.
The 36-year-old formerly known as “Scary Spice” has two older daughters.
Rapper T.I.’s not doing as well. On Friday his lawyer said that he’s working to have the Grammy winner returned to a halfway house after a transportation flap left him locked up again in a federal penitentiary.
On Friday, the Federal Bureau of Prisons Web site showed that the rapper was at the Atlanta penitentiary with a release date of Sept. 29. He had checked into a halfway house in Atlanta this week after serving months in an Arkansas prison.
The 30-year-old rapper, whose real name is Clifford Harris, made the 600km trip to Atlanta in a gleaming motor coach on Wednesday. The transportation arrangements appear to be the reason he’s back behind bars, his lawyer said.
“The Federal Bureau of Prisons [BOP] appears to have an issue with the circumstances surrounding TI’s transportation from Arkansas to Atlanta,” T.I.’s attorney, Steve Sadow, said on Friday. Sadow said they haven’t received formal notice from prison officials explaining what he’s accused of doing wrong.
Sadow said on Friday there was never any intent to mislead or misstate T.I.’s method of transportation, and he hopes the issue can be cleared up quickly so T.I. can return to the halfway house.
“T.I. got on a private bus in the prison’s parking area in full view of BOP employees. Indeed, he was actually escorted to the bus by a prison guard,” Sadow said.
T.I. had initially served about seven months at the prison in 2009 after he was arrested for trying to buy unregistered guns and silencers from undercover federal agents. He was on probation after he was released and ordered not to commit another crime or to illegally possess any controlled substances.
He was arrested again last September in Los Angeles on drug charges after authorities said he was found with four ecstasy pills. He was sentenced last October to 11 months in prison for that violation, and had been set for release at the end of this month but was let go early.
Mel Gibson’s having a hard time too. He will have to pay US$750,000 to his ex-girlfriend and continue to provide housing and financial support for their young daughter to resolve a bitter legal fight that followed sexist, racist rants attributed to the actor. The settlement disclosed on Wednesday is intended to end the bickering and accusations that have permeated the case handled in mostly secret proceedings for more than a year, Superior Court Judge Peter Lichtman said.
Gibson’s payments to Russian musician Oksana Grigorieva are dependent on a lasting truce.
Their daughter will receive support equal to what the actor-director provides for his other seven children. The former couple will split custody of the girl, who turns 2 late next month. In addition, Gibson will keep paying for a multimillion house he purchased for Grigorieva and their daughter. The house will be sold when the girl turns 18 and she will receive the proceeds.
As a result of the settlement, Grigorieva cannot pursue a civil case against the Oscar winner, and both sides were ordered not to speak or write about their relationship or allegations of domestic abuse. Lichtman specifically said neither side could release any audio recordings, an apparent reference to a series of rants that were leaked to the celebrity Web site RadarOnline.com.
“You look like a fucking bitch in heat, and if you get raped by a pack of niggers, it will be your fault,” the voice is heard telling Grigorieva in one tape.
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