Puddle of Mudd’s Wes Scantlin is Headed to Jail
At long last, Wes Scantlin has made music history. The Puddle of Mudd frontman, who is roughly about as reliable as a ’66 Chevy held together with construction tape, got bitch-slapped in two separate court cases this week… a mere seventy-two hours apart. That’s a feat even the most notorious rock n’ roll outlaws haven’t achieved. Congrats, Wes!
First, on Monday, Wessy-Poo had to deal with vandalizing his former home, which he once accused a concertgoer of having stolen from him (he actually lost it in a foreclosure). TMZ reports that Scantlin copped a plea on that case; he’ll be on probation for three years, and he “has to pay more than $40k in fees and restitution.” That might seem like a relatively light punishment, but i) $40,000 is no small amount of money (remember, he lost the house in a foreclosure), and ii) there is almost no chance whatsoever that Scantlin will be able to keep his shit together for the probation period. This dude is at the center of a major incident every few months, without fail. The only way I can imagine him not violating his probation is if he’s frozen in carbonite, Han Solo-style. And even then, I feel like he’d figure out a way to do something fucked-up. He’d wriggle his casing off the wall and smush an infant or something.
So that was shitty enough for poor ol’ Wes, and then on Thursday, things got even worse for the guitarist/vocalist: he pled no contest to charges of trying to bring a BB gun on a plane at LAX earlier this year, and will spend twenty days in jail as a result (he’s also barred from using LAX again, unless he’s boarding an international flight for work purposes). Granted, a twenty day sentence doesn’t exactly make the guy Andy Dufresne, but still, no one wants to spend three hours in jail, let alone three weeks. And if Scantlin has an alcohol or substance abuse problem — which, sweet Christ, he must, right? — jail is probably not the most fun place to try and kick that habit. I dunno, maybe it will be, in a fucked-up way, good for him in the long run… but I’m sure he’d just as soon not find out.
So, should we start taking bets on how quickly he’ll violate his probation? I say he makes it no later than February, and only that long because he’s gonna be in jail for almost a month. Y’all can get your own pool going in the comments section below.
