Billie Joe Armstrong ejected from Southwest Airlines flight for least interesting reason imaginable

​Like the rest of us, celebrities and rock stars make stupid mistakes. But when mistakes are made on a high-profile, TMZ level, stupid isn't quite enough; they should also be avoidable, catastrophic, nonsensical, unusual, and hilarious, or some combination thereof. And so it is with no small amount of disappointment and disinterest that Gimme Noise rolls its eyes at the latest non-scandal scandal news-let involving one Billie Joe Armstrong, Green Day singer/songwriter and inadvertent guy-liner model.

While the twentieth anniversary of Armstrong's international fame swiftly approaches, he's clearly got a good deal to learn about managing and massaging the gift of popular notoriety. Case in point: getting kicked off a Southwest Airlines flight over sagging pants.

Maybe we can anticipate a punk-pop cover of "Pants on the Ground."

Or, you know, maybe not.
First of all, news media? Shame on you. This is not a story. This is not anything of note. This probably doesn't even really rate a mention in Armstrong's memoirs. This is a non-story about a famous punk-rock icon who has always worn his pants saggy refusing to pull up his sagging pants, and justifiably so.

I mean, it's not like Armstrong was cracking 9/11 jokes or putting the finishing touches on a dirty bomb or slamming back martinis or belligerently insisting on flying the plane with the ghost of Darby Crash as his co-pilot or anything that psychotically asinine.

Which makes Gimme Noise wonder: do other sagging-pant luminaries receive similar harassment from flight attendants? I can't quite imagine some would-be Steven Slater dressing down and kicking off Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Travis Barker, or any of the other roughly 2,371 celebrities whose personal sense of depeche mode doesn't include a fully-functioning belt - to say nothing of the millions of everyday folks similarly and juvenilely attired.

In the grand scheme of things, what's the big deal? A Southwest Airlines flight attendant made a mountain out of a molehill. Billie Joe Armstrong wasted an opportunity to sock it to Southwest Airlines in any kind of interesting, self-promoting fashion. A bored media - including Gimme Noise, of course - latched onto a non-story. Everybody kinda wound up with egg on their faces here.

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