We always find it hard to take when, after a long, arduous gig in front of thousands of our fans, the local waffle house we visit doesn’t have enough cream, strawberries or maple syrup to coat our tasty treats. So much so that we sometimes raise issue with it, politely make our points, then leave in something of a huff.

Thankfully, hecklerspray isn’t Kid Rock, or these waffle houses we’ve visited would have to worry about more than just their topping stocks – they’d have to worry about us punching and kicking people in them because we’re a bit miffed about something and presumably have some serious issues with the waffle-maestros out there.

Yes, everyone’s favourite rock… star? Well, whatever he is, young Robert J Ritchie has been found guilty on one charge of battery by those that make these kind of decisions. ‘Courts’, apparently. Pamela Anderson‘s ex-hubby has been sentenced to 12 months probation, 80 hours community service, six hours of anger management classes and presumably has been banned from eating waffles, as they seem to make him go crazy. Kid was also handed a whopping $1,000 (about £500, as fans of stronger currencies are sure to know) fine to make his misery complete, and this final blow is sure to cripple the 37-year-old financially, leaving him destitute and alone.

Maybe.

Regardless, nothing can take away from the fact that Kid Rock was charged, after pleading a no contest, with the crime of battery. In an eatery that specialises in batter-based consumables. Hecklerspray is sure that the irony was not only intentional, but also a subtle viral marketing technique to get word of Rock’s new album out to the masses, as well as secretly encouraging us all to go out and eat some fried batter. Those marketing whores – we see through you. We know all.

The incident occurred last October and involved members of Rock’s crew, two of whom received similar charges to Captain Kid, who had originally pleaded not guilty. Though his crew probably didn’t get handed the incredible six hours of anger management, which is sure to have absolutely no effect whatsoever. Because it’s six hours of anger management. At least it isn’t six hours of the film Anger Management, as that would likely have completely the opposite effect to that originally intended.

The one-time American bad ass, whatever that may imply, has been on the receiving end of some rare positive press in recent months, with the success and popularity of his new album both surprising and confusing the opinion-makers out there. We at hecklerspray are not confused, however, as it is clear to see that directly ripping off ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ in the most brazen way possible, not trying to hide it, going so far as to sampling the original in said rip off, then having a bit of a ruckus in a Waffle House is the way to a million-selling record.

Right, where’s that copy of Dance e-Jay? The hecklerspray version of ‘Freebird’ needs to be made. Though we don’t seem to have any Waffle Houses nearby… will a fracas in a Dixie Chicken work as well, or does it have to be battery in a batter-based business? Damn.

Yesterday Shia LaBeouf was a fugitive on the run from the law, like Harrison Ford in that film Working Girl.

Not today, though – today Shia LaBeouf has faced his crimes like a man, like Harrison Ford in that film The Fugitive. Well, not 'faced his crimes' exactly – Shia LaBeouf has pleaded not guilty to the awful accusation that he smoked on a pavement once.

But at least Shia LaBeouf actually got around to entering a plea this time – up until that point he had an arrest warrant on his head for not tuning up to court at all. It's a stern lesson to all that you can't run from the law, no matter how adorably boyish your iddle widdle puppy dumpling cheeks are.

Nature isn't the only thing that abhors a vacuum – celebrity justice hates them equally as much. As soon as a celebrity – say, Phil Spector – finishes his court case, Paul McCartney and Heather Mills decide to get divorced. And if you were worried that you'd be strapped of celebrity court appearances until the OJ Simpson trial gets started, don't be – Shia LaBeouf has manfully stepped in to plug the void.

You see, although Shia LaBeouf might look like the sort of dungaree-wearing mischievous six-year-old who keeps a worm in a matchbox as a pet and has his own treehouse, in actual fact he's a court-hardened bastard. Shia LaBeouf got to being that way from living on the seedy underside of life where people don't think twice about politely refusing to leave a drugstore even though a security guard asked them nicely.

That's not the extent of Shia LaBeouf's badassery, though – earlier this week he failed to show up in court on an unlawful smoking charge and was hit with a full-blown arrest warrant as a result. But Shia LaBeouf scoffs in the face of arrest warrants. Shia LaBeouf cares not for puny arrest warrants, he tosses them aide like… oh, in actual fact Shia LaBeouf doesn't scoff at arrest warrants at all. Instead he quickly sends a lawyer to court to make everything all better. People reports:

A court commissioner in Burbank, Calif., recalled a $1,000 bench warrant Shia LaBeouf for on Wednesday after the actor's attorney arrived a day late to plead not guilty on LaBeouf's behalf to illegally smoking. LaBeouf, 21, was not in the courtroom when attorney Michael Norris entered the plea for the misdemeanor offense before Commissioner Kirkland Nyby. A pretrial hearing was set for April 24, says Superior Court rep Allan Parachini. 

Do you see that? Shia LaBeouf might have apologetically instructed a lawyer to get his arrest warrant ditched but he still pleaded not guilty to his unlawful smoking charge. Shia's so determined to fight the system that he's prepared to turn a routine five-second court appearance into an epic battle of multiple drawn-out court appearances and expensive legal fees. That's right Shia! Beat the man!

Sometimes we really wish we were American taxpayers, you know.

Read more:

Court Snuffs Out Bench Warrant for Shia LaBeouf – People 

There's an old saying that goes 'Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, but give a redneck a waffle and he'll smack you on the head with a chair'.

Unless he didn't smack anyone over the head with a chair. And yesterday, Kid Rock pleaded not guilty to that exact thing.

Kid Rock appeared before an Atlanta court yesterday to plead not guilty to five counts of battery and one count of simple battery following his alleged involvement in a Waffle House in October. If found guilty, not only will Kid Rock face a year in jail, but it'll also give Waffle House the chance to roll out its 'Waffle House: Fuelling Shit-Thick Redneck Dust-Ups Since 2007' ad campaign it's been so excited about lately.

Kid Rock likes to call himself many things. He's a cowboy, he's the rock n roll Jesus, he's Pamela Anderson's angriest husband and he's the star of the sex tape that we're most thankful never to have seen. But if there's one thing that Kid Rock isn't, he says, it's an aggressive Waffle House patron. 

There are, however, people who argue to the contrary. Like the police. Last October, Kid Rock was arrested for beating up a man in a Waffle House because a man was looking at his woman or he was looking at a man's woman or he was looking at a woman's man or everybody was looking at each other's waffles or something.

Whatever happened, a Waffle House window ended up getting smashed and a man was kicked, punched and hit with a chair. But Kid Rock says it wasn't anything to do with him, as Reuters reports:

Rock, born Robert Ritchie, pleaded not guilty to five counts of battery and one count of simple battery stemming from the late-night incident at a DeKalb County Waffle House in October, according to DeKalb Solicitor-General Robert James… If convicted of the misdemeanors, Rock could face up to one year in jail plus a $1,000 fine for each charge, public information officer Artealia Gilliard said.

A year in jail seems like an awfully harsh sentence just for attacking a man in a Waffle House. After all, what's the point of even opening an all-night chain of diner-style fast food restaurants if you don't want to see gangs of toothless straggle-haired jumped-up fairground workers attacking each other with chairs? What else do they expect them to do? Eat the food?

Either way, we're not sure if Kid Rock really is not guilty of his charges or if he's just trying to force the prosecutors into offering him a plea deal that'll see him escape with community service. Hopefully it's the latter, because Kid Rock has so much to offer the community at large. Plus if there's even a sliver of a chance that the punishment would force Kid Rock into calling his next album Rock N Roll Menial Roadsweep, then it's clear that's what should be done.

Read more:

Kid Rock pleads not guilty over fight – Reuters 

Everyone's got their own hilarious crossed-wires story about a male prostitute, and Boy George is certainly no exception.

You see, it's been claimed that Boy George fell prey to that age-old male prostitute mix-up where one person thinks you both just want some cursory, meaningless, soul-destroying sex and the other one just wants to chain everyone to a wall against their will and threaten them for a bit. We've all been there.

Except that Boy George says didn't do any of that – at Snaresbrook Crown Court yesterday, Boy George pleaded not guilty to false imprisonment. Lucky his charge wasn't Looking More And More Like Phil Collins With An Underactive Thyroid, because then they would have thrown away the keys.

Professionally, nobody's heard that much from Boy George in recent years, and that's mainly down to his poor CV-writing skills. Yes, we'll admit that his Past Achievements section is pretty good – between 1982 and 1987 he's put 'Global Iconic Megastar' – but it's his Interests profile that's stopped him from getting work. 'Painting the underside of my chin black to make me look thinner' and 'chaining male prostitutes to walls against their will'? What the hell? Why can't Boy George just write 'socialising' like everyone else?

Only, actually, Boy George says he doesn't chain male prostitutes to walls, against their will or otherwise. Even though in November he was arrested for chaining a male prostitute to a wall, Boy George is adamant that he's not guilty of chaining Norwegian male prostitute Auden Carlsen to a wall and teasing him by probably pointing out that he's a Norwegian male prostitute chained to Boy George's wall. The Telegraph reports:

Boy George has pleaded not guilty to a charge of false imprisonment… Dressed in black and wearing dark glasses, the singer was listed in court under his real name George O'Dowd. During the 20-minute hearing, O'Dowd spoke only to confirm his name, state his not guilty plea and say he understood the terms of his bail. The singer spent time talking with lawyers before leaving the court building, thanking fans who turned up to offer support. He said only "no comment" to waiting press before leaving in a black Volkswagen people carrier.

Although this might have seemed like a low-key appearance, Boy George is actually setting up a full trial quite nicely. The Boy George prostitute-chaining trial looks set to be our OJ murder trial, our Salem witch trials, our Nuremberg – albeit with slightly more focus on a fat bald bloke who might have chained a male prostitute to a wall for a laugh.

Of course, it's far too early to predict how the full trial will swing – but surely we can't be the only ones hoping that Boy George is convicted but only sentenced to an extended period of community service. Because we could all learn a lot from the grace and poise that Boy George shows when he's forced into menial work as a punishment for his crimes.

Oh, who are we kidding? We just like watching fat bald men throw temper tantrums in front of the world's media.

Read more:

Boy George pleads not guilty to chaining charge – Telegraph 

You know that video of Akon angrily picking up a teenage boy and throwing him into a screaming crowd of people during a show? Yeah, Akon says he didn't do it.

Yesterday Akon appeared at a courtroom in Fishkill, New York to enter a not guilty plea to charges of endangering a minor and second-degree harassment stemming from the summer's fan-chucking incident. Pleading not guilty is a brave move for Akon because a) he was filmed doing the thing he's pleaded not guilty to and b) if he's convicted, Akon could end up spending over a year in jail. A year without Akon's blend of slightly derivative squeaky-voiced R&B music? Why, surely that's a punishment for us all.

Akon, then – genius or dickhead?

It's a tricky question, actually, because Akon is the man who invented the "woo-hoo, yee-hoo" hook for that Gwen Stefani song that you weren't able to shift from your mind for four months this year. So for that reason Akon is a genius. However, it's slightly outweighed by the 'dickhead' argument, since that includes everything else that Akon has ever done in all of his life.

Let's not forget that Akon isn't just the man who frenziedly dry-humped a 14-year-old girl in the middle of a concert once – or even the man who picked up a boy during a concert in upstate New York and threw him on top of a screaming girl's head – but he's the man who then goes and pleads not guilty to doing it. 

After he was charged with endangering a minor and second-degree harassment last week, Akon yesterday appeared in a Fishkill courtroom to enter a not guilty plea even though there's a freely-available video of Akon's fan-fling on the internet for everyone to see.

As a result of the not guilty plea, Akon was released with no bail and ordered to return to court on January 16, where he faces a maximum sentence one one year and 15 days in jail if he's convicted. Not that we're making suggestions or anything, but Akon and his legal team should probably use that time to get his story in order.

That's because Akon claims that the boy-throwing was a staged introduction to his next song – something that doesn't explain why the parents of the boy who Akon threw contacted the police, or why the girl whose head the boy landed on is suing Akon – while Akon's lawyers Benjamin Brafman and Andrea Zellan say it was all just a big misunderstanding:

"It was never Akon's intent to violate the law. This unfortunate incident was a spontaneous reaction during a live concert that Akon deeply regrets. We are confident that this matter will ultimately be resolved in a manner that does not in any way interfere with Akon's successful career."

That's probably a statement that'll come back to haunt Akon and his lawyers in the future, because we'd argue that spending a year in jail wouldn't interfere with Akon's career at all, since to our knowledge he's borderline obsessed with basing all of his music videos in jails anyway.

In fact, if Akon manages to write and record a new album by January, he'll just be able to mouth the words to his new songs into a jail CCTV camera and nobody will notice any difference. Except that Akon will be crying and covered in all sorts of cigarette burns across his face when he does it. Plus the jittery arsonist staring at him while urinating down himself and playing with a razorblade might put him off slightly, but that can probably be edited away.

Read more:

Akon Not Copping To Fan Tossing – E! Online 

There are many things OJ Simpson is guilty of – being a bit of a douchebag, maybe, and having an unnatural obsession with his own faecal matter – but when it comes to armed robbery, OJ Simpson is absolutely not guilty.

That's according to OJ Simpson, at least – faced with a stack of felony charges that will see him spend the rest of his life in jail, OJ Simpson decided yesterday at a Las Vegas arraignment that he didn't actually have anything to do with any of it. OJ Simpson has pleaded not guilty to all 12 felony charges against him, on the basis that he only burst in on some unsuspecting sports memorabilia dealers with a gang of men in some sort of amateurish raid operation because they stole his shit and he only wanted his shit back. This argument means that the OJ Simpson trial – set for April – could set all manner of legal precedents for any other future angry shit-based misunderstandings that American citizens may wander into.

April 7 is a significant day for all sorts of reasons – it's the anniversary of the invention of the internet, the invention of LSD, the invention of the World Health Organisation and the French adoption of the metre as a basic measurement of length. Plus it's Jackie Chan's birthday.

But April 7 2008 will be one of the most momentous April 7s in all of history. Not just because all of the above will be combined when Jackie Chan drops acid one metre away from the World Health Organisation headquarters and puts a video of it on YouTube, but because that's when OJ Simpson will start his armed robbery trial.

Yesterday at an arraignment in Las Vegas, OJ Simpson was asked to enter a plea for all the massive list of felony charges that he earnt by apparently raiding a hotel room with gun-wielding men back in September. Those charges against OJ Simpson run through everything from armed robbery to assault to kidnapping and back again, and Simpson is likely to spend the rest of his life in jail if he's found guilty.

Which he won't, by the way, because OJ Simpson told the court that he's completely not guilty. Following the arraignment – where a trial date of April 7 was set – OJ Simpson's lawyer Yale Galanter told reporters:

"Mr. Simpson is glad that the arraignment is over with. He is glad that he doesn't have to come back to Vegas until April."

Not that the intervening time will be spent lazing around writing other hypothetical books about how he did all sorts of immoral and illegal things that he definitely didn't do, though – putting a solid defence together against what seems like an open and shut case is going to take a lot of graft.

Because, as OJ Simpson's preliminary hearing established, most of OJ's goon-gang have decided to testify against him in court in return for lighter sentencing. According to them, OJ Simpson wanted lots of guns for the raid, even though he denied their existence as soon as it was all over. 

Not that all's completely lost for OJ Simpson, though – several of those testifying against him are either furtive pimps, known liars, criminals or oddballs with inexplicable ulterior motives like getting Jack Nicholson to star in the movie of their life. So that'll provide OJ Simpson's defence with at least something to attack.

But that's all for April. And until then, we're all just going to have to wait patiently for the blazing, televised, two-month OJ Simpson trial to begin. Oh, we can't bear going that long without hearing about anyone stealing anyone else's shit. April better come soon or we'll start stealing our own shit. And that's going to be even less pretty than it sounds.

Read more:

OJ Pleads Not Guilty – E! Online