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Jailbirds, Blog Battles & Visa Rejections.

Quite a bit of news going on in the world of Celebrities this week. Joe Francis continues to piss off the law even while in jail. Snoop Dogg is barred from yet another country for being Snoop Dogg. Kissing is worth an arrest warrant in India for some strange & fascinating reason. Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and Miss USA battle it out online blog style.  A very powerful man dies & another very powerful fictional character might be leaving the airwaves much to my own disappointment.  
 

Jailbirds, Misfit Blog Battles & Visa Rejections—Oh My! 
 
 
 

Girls Gone Wild Mastermind is caught with drugs & bribing while in Jail 

It seems that GGW Joe Francis just can’t catch a break…due to his own misjudgments. 

While in jail for contempt of court, guards searching the man’s solitary jail cell found medication drugs and Francis himself tried to bribe a guard for some water. This isn’t helping his situation at all. 

Francis was indicted on federal tax evasion charges the day before he ended up behind bars by being captured by US Marshals in Florida. The day after his arrival to his small cell, he was caught trying to bribe a guard $500 in exchange for a bottle of water and then a search of his cell turned up prescription sleeping pills and anti-anxiety meds.  This is not a good move for the mastermind of Soft Porn.

Francis was charged with six counts of possessing a controlled substance, introducing contraband into a jail cell and trying to bribe a public official. 

His attorney tried to get his client's contempt sentence reduced to 30 days because the extra five days could lead to an automatic year in prison if Francis is convicted of tax fraud but Judge Smoak didn’t budge. Francis is accused of reporting a bogus $20 million in expenses on his last two corporate tax returns and funneling more than $15 million in revenue from his breast-based empire into offshore bank accounts.    

The Panama City News Herald reported that Francis, who suffers from an anxiety disorder, was teary-eyed throughout Monday's hearing.    

Francis to the Judge on Monday as to why he didn’t show up to court which caused the “contempt” charge: "I'm sorry for my behavior. That's not an excuse. I should have just been there on time. I'm sorry. I really am. I've had a lot of time to think about it."   

The guy is in a solitary cell so it really shouldn’t be hard to endure another 30 days in jail. If he knows what’s best for him, it would be best to stop offering bribes and bringing in drugs under their noses.  

Also have the feeling that he’s ready to go Nuclear, i.e. does something even more naïve which compounds everything or he’s preparing for a new home overseas if this Tax Fraud case really means he’s landing a year in jail. 

Update You Maniacs: It seems as if I’m right even before this column gets published. I wrote out the above information on Monday. Now, here on Wednesday, Joe Francis is now facing a sexual battery charge by the LA District Attorney.  

The Los Angeles City Attorney's Office filed the single count Wednesday. The charge stems from an incident that took place at a Hollywood party on Jan. 10 in which Francis allegedly helped himself to a handful of an unwitting partygoer.

According to his 18-year-old female accuser, Francis approached her at the swanky party and touched her breasts, buttocks and inner thighs, despite her repeated protests for him to stop. 

The city attorney says at least one other witness from the bash has stepped forward to back the woman's claims and is willing to testify to not only witnessing the inappropriate grope fest, but to hearing the victim plead with Francis to stop touching her. If convicted, Francis could spend another six months behind bars and hit with a $2,000 fine. 

The soft-core porn purveyor is set to be arraigned on May 22, but he is not required to attend the hearing—which is fortunate, because he appears to be otherwise engaged. A separate hearing has been scheduled for the same day in Reno for Francis' tax evasion case. According to the IRS, Francis allegedly deducted more than $20 million in false business expenses and stashed more than $15 million in offshore accounts in 2002-03. 

He faces up to 10 years in prison and $500,000 in fines if convicted on those charges. 

Yep, I bet if he gets out of jail after this contempt of court, he’s flying to another country rather quickly. His law troubles are building too quickly here in the states. 
 
 

Battle of the Celebrity Queen Blogs: Personal Information style 

Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan & Shanna Moakler are battling it out on their blogs. It seems that Shanna Moakler is trading personal information on the world wide web as a means of getting back at the two celeb misfits (Hilton and Lohan). 

This has been going on for a while now when Moakler was informed of her boyfriend Travis Barker and Hilton spotted getting hot and heavy at parties in New York and Los Angeles. The Meet the Barkers couple has since reconciled, and no charges were ever filed stemming from the blonde-on-blonde catfight.   

Moakler also-ran made the tabloids with Hilton last October following a run-in at Hollywood hot spot Hyde, after which Hilton said she was punched in the face by Moakler and Moakler accused Hilton's onetime boy-toy Stavros Niarchos of pushing her down some stairs. 

Over the weekend, Moakler posted what she claimed were Paris Hilton & Lindsay Lohan’s phone numbers and/or email addresses on her MySpace blog, after a perceived slight by the tabloid queens. 

The erstwhile Miss USA claimed to be acting in response to a posting on Lohan ex-beau Harry Morton's page that included Moakler's contact information. In a blog entry titled "Put This in Your Pipe and Smoke It," Moakler wrote that she suspected either Hilton or Lohan was overseeing Morton's page for him:  

"I posted this blog back in January to let you all know that my accounts were hacked. ... and since there are 2 little girls with to much time on their hands and no one to love them....id like to share my 'hacked' info as well. Ive tried to disassociate myself from both these parties for some time now and like a fungus they won’t go away."   

Meanwhile, the perspective camps are battling it out over their reps. 

"It appears to me that this woman is simply desperate for press and attention," Hilton’s rep said in a statement Monday. "The facts are simple. Shanna deliberately posted Paris' phone number and email address on her MySpace site. It was an unprovoked invasion upon Paris' privacy which caused her to immediately change her contact information."  

At the same time, Moakler explained why it was done. 

Having fun at the expense of others is in poor taste and I just had enough of it," Moakler wrote. "I have known Harry Morton for over 10 years and I highly respect him. I know for a fact he does NOT have a Myspace account and nor did he write a blog about me. HE actually has a life and a reputation and I wish him much success in his ventures." 
 

……….. 

What needs to be said? This is what happens when you’re famous for doing nothing worth being famous for?  
 
 

Stallone explains the Growth Hormones bust from Australia 

While promoting his last Rocky Balboa movie in February, he was caught by customs officials in Australia with 48 vials of the hormone. This is against Australia law so he was busted at the time and now apparently, it’s been explained though it’s still illegal in Australia’s standards. 

His lawyer says the aging action star has turned over his medical records to Aussie customs officials. At the time of the bust, the 60-year-old actor told reporters that it was all a big misunderstanding and that the hormones were "something that I've taken for years" and "not dangerous." 

Australian authorities eventually determined the substance recovered from the luggage was Jintropin, the brand name for a drug whose active ingredient is somatropin, a hormone known to help bodybuilders bulk up. Aussie law prohibits the importation of natural and manufactured growth hormones without a permit, which resulted in a charge of importing a prohibited import. If convicted, Stallone could face a fine of almost $92,000. The case has been adjourned until May 15 to allow officials to examine the medical records. 

Meanwhile, Rocky’s “Coach” is rolling in his grave. 
 

Chevy Chase says he was abused in his childhood. 

Ironically, it seems like a lot of comedians had dark pasts. It seems to be no different for comedic legend Chevy Chase. In his upcoming biography (this will help it sell for sure); the veteran funny man says his mother and stepfather physically abused him when he was a kid growing up in New York. 

Chevy’s mom Cathalene, a concert pianist who suffered from depression and panic attacks, would brutally beat Chase seemingly at the drop of a hat and mete out punishments that ranged from locking him in a closet to waking him up in the middle of the night to slap him "continually and hard, across the face," the actor said. 

"I lived in fear all the time—deathly fear…I don't remember what it was for, or what I had done," Chase recalled. His mother and real father divorced when he was four. Cathalene also married a third time after splitting up with Cederquist. She died in 2005 and is buried at the Artists' Cemetery in Woodstock, New York. 

"She would say to me, 'Ten lashes on the backs of your legs every day for a week at 5 p.m.,' " Chase said.”How can you hold on to that kind of anger against your kid? I knew I was a 'bad boy,' but I didn't know that everybody wasn't punished the same way I was." 

"My mother, at her worst, was like an unleashed animal," Chase's half-brother, John, says. "It was at her hands, in her feral states, that Chevy suffered the darkest of his secret torments." 

Over letting the past die at his mom’s funeral, Chase had this to say. 

“I always turn to it in my mind…and I'll never forgive them," he said. "At their graves I didn't. It was too hard for me. You would think a grown man could shake it off, as the coffin was being lowered, to say, 'I forgive you.' I don't forgive." 

As I said earlier, this isn’t really surprising because a lot of great comedians have dark past histories. They use comedy as an outlet to focus on and usually excel at it from such intensity of forgetting their dark inner selves. This pretty much guarantees that the biography he’s releasing next month sells big time… 
 

Rosie O’Donnell leaving “The View” 

After one season, four public feuds & countless headlines, the loud mouthed Rosie will be leaving the show for what amounts to be “money” issues. A lot of people sigh a breath of relief that they won’t have to listen to her “as often” over this recent development but she will still guest star on future View episodes. She just won’t be on the panel alongside the other ladies.  

"I will be coming back," she said. "I've loved it here, and I love you guys, and I'm still going to be here—just not every day." 

The network was trying to lock up O'Donnell with a three-year deal, something she was apparently unwilling to commit to. She earned a reported $3 million-plus under her current contract, a far cry from the $30 million she pocketed as solo host of The Rosie O'Donnell Show, which ended its run in 2002. 

Barbara Walters had this to say. 

"This is not my doing or my choice," she said, adding that the announcement would likely "bring up things I did or didn't do"—or more likely, say or didn't say about her star host. "I induced Rosie to come back to television on The View even for just one year. She has given the program new vigor, new excitement and wonderful hours of television. I can only be grateful to her for this year.” 

"We will all miss Rosie on The View and hope she will be back with us often next season. She remains for me a cherished friend and colleague." 

I’m pretty sure Rosie will still make headlines and more enemies one way or another for the next few years. She knows how to piss people off continually, Donald Trump, Bill O’Reilly, Kelly Ripa, and the Chinese-American population aside. 
 

Alec Baldwin fires his agent & wants off “30 Rock”  

Damn it. I love his character on that show.  

This is another “View” induced story. Baldwin told Rosie O’Donnell and co-host  Walters that he is looking to leave 30 Rock, despite the fact that it’s critically adored and has been picked up for another season by NBC. 

Baldwin won a Golden Globe and SAG Award this year for his role as microwave oven exec turned programming VP Jack Donaghy, said in a pretaped interview scheduled to air Friday that he doesn't want to do television anymore and he has asked NBC to let him out of his contract so that his recent actions don't reflect negatively on the struggling series.    

NBC insists that he’s not going anywhere if they can help it. Network officials said last week that what had happened between Baldwin and his family was a personal matter and would not affect his future on 30 Rock.    

  "Alec Baldwin remains an important part of 30 Rock," a network spokesperson responded in a statement. "We look forward to having him continue his role in the show."   

But Baldwin, who was on The View to further apologize for the angry voicemail he left for daughter Ireland that ended up posted on TMZ.com, said repairing his image in the eyes of his child is all that matters to him right now.   

"If I never acted again I couldn't care less," the 46-year-old performer said, according to a transcript released by ABC. "I would like to devote myself to the cause of parental alienation," a subject he says he's writing a book about, based on his experiences as a divorced dad who has struggled with his ex-wife over custody issues.  

"Obviously, calling your child a pig or anything else is improper and inappropriate, and I apologize to my daughter for that," Baldwin said, referring to the harsh words he had for the 11-year-old when she missed his scheduled phone call. "There's nothing wrong with being frustrated or angry about the situation. It's the way you do it, and as people often do in this world, I took it out on the wrong person because I'm unable, under the current dynamic, to address the other person." 

"In my own case, with this message, I had never done this before in my life," said Baldwin, whose apparent temper made headlines when he punched out a photographer who was trailing him and Basinger home from the hospital after Ireland was born. 

Baldwin's brother Billy would agreed with it as far as temperament is concerned. 

"What people don't understand is that when a man goes through a divorce, there is a fear that your ex-wife is poisoning the well and pitting your own child against you. Alec's attitude and tone reflects that concern," the younger Baldwin bro told People. Baldwin is "a fantastic human being" who "can get hotheaded, but only about really, really important things like family."   
 

I hope things work out for Alec on the personal front but damn if I’m going to miss that character on 30 Rock. Perhaps, it can agreed that he does more guest spots and less screen time. Who knows?  
 

Australia bars Snoop Dogg from entering their country. 

Man, he’s had rotten luck lately. This just happened recently when Snoop Dogg was barred from the UK. Apparently, Australia agrees with that sentiment even though Australia was once the dumping ground for the world’s worst criminals. Snoop was supposed to attend the MTV Australia Video Music Awards. That’s not happening now. 

The rapper has been barred from showing up Down Under after failing a so-called "character test" from the Australian government, which refused the artist entry into the nation Thursday because of his extensive criminal record. 

"He doesn't seem the sort of bloke we want in this country," Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews told Sydney's Macquarie Radio. 

"This man has been a member of a Los Angeles gang, and is still associated with it apparently, that's been involved in murder, robberies and drug dealing in the L.A. area." 

Andrews said that Snoop was informed earlier this week of the ban via a notice of intention to cancel his visa—a resolution Andrews said came about only after repeated warnings to the rapper. 

"The reality is in relation to this man, that he was given a warning the last time, he has a whole string of convictions." 

Unlike a regular tourist who would only need a U.S. passport, Snoop would need a visa because he'd be working in the country. 

Immigration authorities first alerted Snoop to his tenuous status back in February, when he overstayed his visa by two days and was given an official warning. At the time, the entertainer was informed that he could face a ban if he got into any more legal altercations, because the character test the country carries out on prospective visitors takes into account criminal activity. 
 

Last time I checked, Snoop was out of the gang life unless one is to consider “rap music” as a whole an aspect of it. If so, taking Snoop out of pot and rap is like taking Willie Nelson out of pot and country. It’s not happening! 
 

Richard Gere has an arrest warrant issued for a kiss? 

Last week, I told you folks how the very hot Elizabeth Hurley was wanted by the law for being in an Indian wedding ceremony and not following Indian customs (taking off shoes, drinking wine, etc). 

Apparently, longtime Buddhist Richard Gere, is now having an arrest warrant issued for kissing a woman in public.  

An Indian court has issued a warrant for Gere's arrest in response to a complaint that the actor committed an "obscene act" by daring to smooch Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty at a public event earlier this month.

The problematic PDA went down at an HIV/AIDS awareness summit in New Delhi, where Gere swooped Shetty into his arms, dipped her, and planted kisses on her cheeks. Shetty has defended the actor, saying he was simply reenacting a scene from his film Shall We Dance in an attempt to connect with the crowd, as he did not speak Hindi.  

"I understand this is his culture, not ours. But this was not such a big thing or so obscene for people to overreact in such manner," she told the Press Trust of India news agency last week.

Devout Hindu groups were outraged by the act, which they saw as an insult to Indian culture and an affront to Shetty's modesty. Posters of both Gere and Shetty were burned in effigy in several major cities.  

At least three citizens took it one step further (Jarrod: overreacted is a better word) by filing legal complaints against the pair. After viewing video footage of the incident, Judge Dinesh Gupta agreed that the "highly sexually erotic" behavior exhibited by the twosome "transgressed all limits of vulgarity." 

In addition to issuing the warrant for Gere's arrest, the judge ordered Shetty to appear in his Jaipur court on May 5 to explain why she did not resist the actor's advances.  
 

WTF? “Highly Sexually Erotic” is described from a kiss? What’s full out dirty sex in this judge’s mind? Some of these people need to seriously lighten up.  
 

Former MPAA Chief Jack Valenti dies. 

This guy is the reason why kids under the age of 17 can’t see a Rated R movie. He created it along with a lot of industry related things (for better or worse). The MPAA is one of the most powerful elite clubs in America and it’s hardly even mentioned by a lot of people. Jack Valenti was the chief of this elite group of people whom order directors and studios around like slaves. 

Valenti, 85, died today from complications relating to his stroke last month. 

He assumed the role of president of the Motion Picture Association of America in 1966 and didn't relinquish the position until 2004 to Dan Glickman.  

Shortly after joining the MPAA, Valenti did major studios a good turn by doing away with the Hays Code—the 1930s-era set of rules that let studios know what was "morally acceptable" and affected how filmmakers approached onscreen sex and violence for years—and installed a set ratings guide, otherwise known as G, M (which later became PG), R and X. 

While Valenti was an ardent supporter of artistic freedoms, he wanted to keep a tight rein on what was done with those films after they were made. An outspoken foe of intellectual-property theft, Valenti was an early critic of VCRs, a device that he warned would bring about the end of the film industry, with its seeming capacity for rampant copying. 

"I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone," he told Congress in 1982. 

Right….VCR’s are equivalent to the Boston Strangler? Yeah, okay. 

A former Army pilot who flew more than 50 combat missions during World War II, Valenti was known as a charismatic and personable leader. (Jarrod: in some people’s minds) 

The Houston native authored five books about politics and the movie biz, including the recently completed memoir This Time, This Place: My Life in War, the White House, and Hollywood, which is due out in June. Valenti is survived by his wife of 45 years, Mary, daughters Courtenay Lynda and Alexandra Alice, son John Lyndon, and two grandchildren.  
 

………. 

I’ll try to keep my MPAA thoughts to myself for now since this is about his death… 
 

That’s going to do it for Superficial Slobber. See you next time, Maniacs.