Rapper T.I. arrested hours before awards show

Atlanta – Grammy-winning rapper T.I. was arrested Saturday – just hours before he was to take the stage at the BET Hip-Hop Awards – in a shopping center parking lot where federal officials said he planned to pick up machine guns and silencers he had his bodyguard buy for him.

The arrest resulted from an investigation that began this month when a federal firearms dealer contacted the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives about a man inquiring about buying a machine gun without registering the weapon as required, according to a criminal complaint filed Saturday in U.S. District Court in Atlanta.

T.I., born Clifford Harris, is charged with possession of unregistered machine guns and silencers, as well as possession of firearms by a convicted felon. Harris is in federal custody, said U.S. attorney’s office spokesman Patrick Crosby, who would not disclose his location.

Jimmy Kimmel to host shows on both coasts

Los Angeles – Jimmy Kimmel is going bicoastal.

The host of ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” will fill in for a vacationing Regis Philbin on “Live with Regis and Kelly” in New York while still hosting his namesake show from Los Angeles.

During the week of Oct. 22, Kimmel will fly back and forth across the country daily, co-hosting with Kelly Ripa in New York each morning and taping his own show in Los Angeles each night. That’s two cross-country flights a day for five days.

Kimmel plans to prepare for his nightly show while flying west and hopes to catch some sleep during his overnight flights east.

Kimmel said he agreed to the bicoastal gig because “you can easily get in a rut when you’re doing a show every night and this is definitely not rut territory,” he said, adding, “if you give me enough advance notice, I will agree to almost anything.”

Affleck says new role as director suits him

New York – Fresh off his directorial debut, Ben Affleck says he’s found his calling.

“In the beginning part of wanting to be a director was just a natural extension of acting,” said Affleck, whose movie “Gone Baby Gone” opens Friday. “But now this feels like what I am, or what I want to be; it’s so satisfying and exhilarating.

“In fact, the central preoccupation of my life right now is trying to find another movie to direct,” he told The New York Times for a story in Sunday’s editions.

Affleck co-wrote the script and directed “Gone Baby Gone,” a crime thriller set and filmed in Boston about the search for an abducted 4-year-old girl.

He told the newspaper he included as many locals as he could in the film, people plucked off the street or discovered in bars, even for speaking roles. One woman was cast as a beer-drinking smart-mouth after approaching him and saying, “I should be in your movie.”