Sounds Like A Lot Of Black And Blue To Us

Rock can be hazardous to your health, Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong told Rolling Stone:

“(Bassist) Mike (Dirnt) developed a heart problem. His mitral valve is too big and sometimes it feels like someone is stabbing him in the chest. It’s mostly from stress. The fact that he was born on heroin probably has something to do with it, too.

“Then Mike broke his teeth at Woodstock and had to have emergency oral surgery. I tore ligaments in my ankle, so I’m in a brace right now. (Drummer) Tre (Cool) was drunk and got in a motorcycle accident in Spain.

“I walked into a pole and sliced open my face. Mike got in a pillow fight with his girlfriend and broke both his arms and had whiplash and six stitches in his head. Tre was drunk and fell out of a van in San Diego. Mike broke his finger …”

Loose talk

Melissa Etheridge, on what Janis Joplin would be doing if she were alive today: “She probably would have cleaned up, done (MTV’s) `Unplugged,’ maybe a beer commercial. She would have been very cool.”

Ginger loses some spiciness after that long

Tina Louise turns 61 today.

He wasn’t the type to go out and get smashed

Rock star confessions, take one: Offspring singer Dexter Holland, who almost has his doctorate degree in molecular biology, was valedictorian of his high school class. “It’s a pretty geeky thing to be in the math club,” he says in Spin magazine. “And what’s worse, I was the president.”

We’re still wondering about the frequency

Rock star confessions, take two: as rumored, R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe has had sexual partners of both genders. “I’m an equal opportunity letch,” he tells Details magazine. “And I’m perfectly comfortable with it. I’ve dealt with it for over 20 years. It’s other people’s perceptions that throw it off.”

Her career is headed down a one-way street

La Toya Jackson is asking $1.5 million to make an X-rated movie for the people who produced John Wayne Bobbitt’s porn flick. Among her conditions: she’ll appear in scenes with other women, but she wants a body double to do the men.

Do you suppose that was really the naked truth?

Screw magazine publisher Al Goldstein was arrested in New York after trying to pass through the state Supreme Court metal detector with a loaded .22-caliber automatic. Explained Goldstein: “Oh, my God, I forgot I had it. How could I be so stupid?”

Even so, the tips aren’t as big as she remembers

And now that we’ve said the B-word for the first time in 1995, you may as well know that Lorena Bobbitt is back at work as a manicurist at a small hair salon in northern Virginia. Customers have been pleasant, she told the Arlington Journal: “They know who I am, and I know they know who I am.”

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Compiled by staff writer Rick Bonino