According to reports, Willie Nelson could be facing some serious jail time over his recent arrest for possession of six ounces of marijuana.

TMZ reports that pro-marijuana group, NORML, might have a way of getting Willie out of trouble:

Nelson was busted over the weekend in Texas for possession of six ounces of marijuana. A criminal defense attorney in Austin tells us 6 ounces could get Willie 6 months minimum and 2 years max.

But Bruce Margolin, director of the L.A. chapter of NORML, tells TMZ Willie has an ace in the hole — convincing a jury he just forgot that the California-grown pot was on the bus — and California is ok with medical marijuana.

I hope they can come to a resolution without throwing him in jail…that would just be sad. He’s not harming anyone and his offense isn’t heinous. What do you think?

Source, Fame Pictures

Kathy Ireland is firing back at critics who are slamming her appearance on ABC’s pre-Oscar special.

At times, the swimsuit model, 46, appeared stiff and awkward as she interviewed celebs like Zac Efron and Precious’ Gabourey Sidibe.

“No One Reads a Teleprompter Like Kathy,” screamed a TMZ headline. A Gawker editor called her a “travesty.”

But viewers on Twitter were much harsher.

One person called Ireland the best “hot mess” ever and made fun of her “stiff arm” and weird questions. “Best use of medication,” the person added.

Said another: “Kathy Ireland is freakin me out!” She’s a “great model,” one person also Twittered, but a “brutal pre-Oscar interview.”

Via Twitter, Ireland took time out to reply to all of her haters individually. (She even justified to one fan why her right hand looked so stiff: “Child care and gardening can make hands a little rough,” she explained.)

Ireland Twittered that she “cannot please everyone…and frankly I wouldn’t ever want to.”

“Don’t feel embarrassed for me,” she Twittered to another fan. “Had a blast and it was so much FUN!”

She said she thought it was “great for people 2B honest” because it helps her “learn & grow.”

But the mother-of-three was careful to stress that she wasn’t under the influence, as many people on Twitter suggested.

“No meds or alcohol Angel===just J.O.Y.!” she wrote to one fan, telling another: “Never use drugs and that as a Mom is not a cool or funny suggestion.”

She later added: “Some say I looked pregnant.LOL! Not true…others say I was drinking…would LOL if it were not so sad. Just excited 2 be involved. Grateful.”

But don’t expect her to take on regular hosting gigs.

Said Ireland (the CEO of Kathy Ireland World Wide, a $1.4 billion design empire): “I won’t give up my day job of design.”

Source, Fame Pictures

Just because he’s so cute and adorable!

Pacific Coast News

The epic battle between OctoMom Nadya Suleman and Gloria Allred rages on — and this time it’s Octo that scored the victory.

The Fourth District Court of Appeal just overturned a prior ruling which appointed an independent guardian to watch over the OctoKids’ estate — a move Allred and a guy named Paul Peterson helped engineer.

The appeals court ruled Peterson — a former child actor who filed the petition to protect the scratch the OctoKids are going to make for their reality show — had no legal standing.

Your move, Allred.

Source

Why is Robin Williams planning to return to the stand-up circuit just seven months after having heart surgery?

“I realized I was running out of merchandising money from Bicentennial Man,” he joked at the Television Critics’ Association panel in Pasadena, Calif. Thursday.

Williams, 58, says his 20-date tour, Weapons of Mass Destruction, which kicks off in September and which will air on HBO, uses material drawing from “a relapse, three years of heavy drinking, going to rehab in wine country to keep my options open, coming out of that, divorce, and open heart surgery.”

The characteristically light-hearted comic admitted that he worried about touring. “After having open heart surgery, it’s going to be interesting,” he says. “I haven’t done the long program [yet]. I started a little bit; I went on stage two months ago and I was on a couple minutes and then I said, ‘I’m not ready yet, thank you.’ ”

Despite the career setbacks, Williams says surviving surgery has had positive effects in his personal life. “You literally are opened up, and you really do appreciate the simplest things like breath, and friends,” he says. “I’ve been calling up all of my friends and saying, ‘Thanks for being there.’ You say, take it a little slower. That’s been amazing.”

Source, Bauer-Griffin

Didja hear the one about the elderly car enthusiast who took it on the chin from Jay Leno?

The family of Macy’s heir John Straus is suing the “Tonight Show” host and the owners of an East Side garage who allegedly duped the octogenarian out of his beloved – and one-of-a-kind – 1931 Duesenberg Model J.

The car’s estimated value is $1.2 million, but Leno bought it from the garage after a “sham” auction for a mere $180,000, Straus’ family charges in a Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit.

The garage had also “auctioned” off another of Straus’ cars – a 1930 Rolls Royce Phantom convertible – to a corporate alter-ego for a whopping $0. The car, which is actually worth $500,000, now belongs to an executive of the Windsor Garage, Dennis Ricca.

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“The whole thing was a sham,” said one of the Straus family’s lawyers, Nathan Goldberg.

Reps for Leno and the garage didn’t immediately return calls for comment.

The suit says Straus had rebuffed car-collecting comic Leno’s offers to buy the car for years, but it ended it up in Leno’s lap after the garage pulled some funny business in 2005.

That’s when, the suit says, the garage warned Straus it would auction off his cars unless he paid his parking bill, which he’d been paying in periodic installments at the E. 76th St. garage for decades.

Straus, who was in his 80s and beginning to suffer from dementia, sent in a check for the $22,000 bill, but the garage sent it back to him, saying he now owed $36,000 and gave him a different account number, the suit says.

Straus did so, thinking that secured his cars – but the different account number on the check was actually for spaces for two significantly less valuable cars he had at another garage owned by the same owners.

The garage then auctioned off both cars to its alter-ego for no money, and sold the Deusenberg to Leno for $180,000.

Straus, who was the grandson of Macy’s co-founders and Titanic victims Isador and Ida Straus, died this past may at age 88, and his adult daughters found out what had happened soon after.

“These were precious family heirlooms, and the family wants them back,” said another Straus lawyer, Andrew Solomon.

The suit falls short of accusing Leno of conspiring with the garage, but the lawyers said the comedian and his lawyers should have known something was funny after seeing the car’s auction price.

“Leno was far less concerned with the bona fides of the underlying purported auction and sale, then with achieving his long awaited purchase of this one of a kind Model J,” the suit says.

Leno has reportedly admitted going to great lengths to get the car. In a 2007 book, he said he made up a story about the car to keep other collectors away.

Goldberg said in addition to using trickery to auction off the cars, the garage – which collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees from Straus over the decades – didn’t follow the legal steps it was supposed to in carrying out.

Had the cars been auctioned off legally, he said, the garage could have kept up to the amount of money Straus owed, and anything over the amount would then have to go to Straus.

Source, WENN

Drew Lachey will play host to some 50,000 fans expected flock into Times Square on Sept. 14 to kick off the new Broadway season that will find Katie Holmes, Daniel Radcliffe and Haley Joel Osment coming to the Great White Way.

The second-season Dancing with the Stars champ, currently appearing in the Tony-winning musical spoof Monty Python’s Spamalot, will be joined by other stars for the free Broadway on Broadway 2008 concert, according to the event’s organizers, the Broadway League and the Times Square Alliance, and its presenter, Continental Airlines.

“I am delighted to be a part of the Broadway community and I love this great city,” Lachey, who previously costarred in the New York production of Rent, said in a statement. “I look forward to showing the Broadway fans from New York and around the world just what we have to offer.”

Besides numbers from his own show, Lachey will introduce performances from the upcoming productions A Tale of Two Cities, Elton John’s Billy Elliott and 13, about a New York teen forced to move to Indiana when his parents divorce.

Cast members from such established shows as Avenue Q, Grease, Gypsy, Hairspray, Jersey Boys, Legally Blonde, Mamma Mia! and Wicked will also strut their stuff – all in anticipation of the gala’s grand finale: a “shower” of confetti, stretching from 43rd to 47th Streets, which will be closed to traffic.

“It is an honor to be hosting this year’s “Broadway on Broadway”],” says Lachey.

Source

WENN