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Tribune News Service
Entertainment
Richard Johnson

Richard Johnson: Taylor Swift would have been a good lawyer

NEW YORK — Taylor Swift has a new group of fans with her new hit song, “Anti-Hero” — lawyers who deal with trusts and wills.

Swift sings, “I have this dream my daughter-in-law kills me for the money; She thinks I left them in the will. The family gathers ‘round and reads it. And then someone screams out, ‘She’s laughing up at us from hell!’”

In the clever music video, Swift’s descendants are distraught to learn she left them just 13 cents in her will.

“Legally, she’s correct,” Mitch Mitchell, associate counsel at Trust & Will, told me.

“If someone were to kill another person, they are not allowed to profit from it.” It’s called the Slayer Statute.

“They forfeit the right to inherit,” said Mitchell, who is thrilled Swift is bringing attention to a sensitive subject.

Some 60% of Americans don’t have wills. Many stars such as Prince died without a will.

“Sometimes celebrities are just like us,” Mitchell said. “They don’t want to think about their own demise.”

Swift is so smart she re-recorded her early songs she didn’t own the rights to, so the new versions replaced the old, and she wouldn’t have to share the royalties.

“Taylor Swift would have been a good lawyer,” Mitchell said.

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Sebastian Copeland, who use to live in New York photographing fashion models, spent his last 25 years exploring the North and South Poles.

He’s been stalked by polar bears, lost 36 pounds on one trip, and spent 42 days without changing his underwear.

Promoting his new book, “Polar Exploration,” at the Norrøna flagship store on Greene St., Copeland told of spending seven days in Greenland hunkered down in his tent during a howling blizzard.

“It was like sleeping inside a jet engine,” he said.

Next year he plans to go to Antarctica to find the coldest spot on earth.

“Climate change is real,” he said. “Tragedy is unfolding.”

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Cigar-chomping actor Arnold Schwarzenegger left a box of rare cigars in a Krakow, Poland synagogue.

The former California governor was touring Holocaust sites in Eastern Europe.

The expensive stogies were given to him by Manhattan real estate maven Suzanne Miller, the child of Holocaust survivors.

After an extensive search of the temple’s building and grounds, the pricey cigars were found and flown to Arnold’s office in LA with the seal on the box unbroken.

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Legal eagle Arthur Aidala — who represents Harvey Weinstein, 50 Cent and Lawrence Taylor — will be honored by the Brooklyn Bar Association at their 150th anniversary at El Caribe on Dec. 5.

On the lighter side, Aidala, the dean of the Friars Club, will revive his ‘80s rock band, Rapid Pulse, at his firm’s upcoming holiday party.

The lawyer will sing covers of Bruce Springsteen and the Rolling Stones for a room full of judges and pals, including Mayor Eric Adams, Geraldo Rivera, Rudy Giuliani and Shepard Smith.

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Cardi B and Mark Cuban are just a few of the fans of private jet company M2Jets, which has just launched The Meta Fly Club.

The Meta Fly Club — created by nightlife legend Richie Romero and real estate entrepreneur Hassan Chowdhury — will sell 7,500 NFTs to members who will gain priority access to private jet charters and hospitality perks around the world including Romero’s Nebula on W. 41st St. and Hassan’s Bouge Villas in Miami, Tulum, and Colombia.

Reservations for the opening Miami Art Basel on Dec. 1 have the club adding more jets to their roster.

Leonardo DiCaprio, Puff Daddy, Tom Brady and a bevy of billionaires and the models who follow them are all heading to the art fair.

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D’yan Forest, who has shared the stage with Jerry Seinfeld, Amy Schumer and Joan Rivers, has just been awarded the Guinness World Records title for being the oldest working female comedian in the world.

Forest, who is 88 and has recently performed at Joe’s Pub, Caroline’s, and Gotham, is taking her one woman show, “Swinging on the Seine” to Paris.

She will perform a series of shows at the Parisian hot spot the New York Comedy Club during the month of December.

In her new book “I Did It My Ways,” she talks about marrying a nun and how she went from being born Diana Shulman in Massachusetts to becoming a French chanteuse named D’yan Forest.

She also writes about how she got her start playing in the the city of lights’ popular clubs just like the TV character, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.”

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Sean Penn needs an editor. His son Hopper (by ex-wife Robin Wright) says, “When he texts, they’re like novels. He has to send them in increments. So I rarely read them!”

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