There is a new White House petition to change the national anthem to R. Kelly’s Ignition (remix). The song about going to the club, drinkin’, ridin’ in a stretch Navigator, and gettin’ yo freak on has already garnered 4300 signatures. The current anthem was written by Francis Scott Key after watching a flag in Baltimore harbor survive Limey bombardment during the war of 1812. You have to admit it’s a little dated. It uses words like “O’er” and “Thou” and is about a war no one even remembers. If it was about killing Nazis with a pen knife during WWII, now that would be the shit. Still, R. Kelly is probably the closest thing we have today to a national poet. I mean, he did write a concept album in which a dwarf shits his pants and R. is doing a guy in the poop shoot while dating another man’s wife. If that doesn’t give him the chops to write the anthem for the greatest country to ever exist, then I don’t know what does.
afternoon headlines
KARL MALDEN – died today at the age of 97. He won the Academy Award in 1951 for “A Streetcar Named Desire”. How did he die? What am I, a scientist? (source = yahoo)
R KELLY – might have had his home raided by Chicago police today searching for evidence of statutory rape. Reports say his current girlfriend is 17, the age of consent in Illinois. Police want to know how old she was when they started “dating”. This is bullshit. A guy marries a 15-year-old, makes a sex tape with a 14-year-old and forces another 15-year-old to get an abortion and all of a sudden he gets labeled as some kind of pervert. (media take out)
AUBREY O’DAY – is the likely replacement for Mel B when Mel ends her run in “Peep Show”, the topless show at the Planet Hollywood casino in Vegas. And my fist is a likely replacement for his teeth if this guy next to me at Starbucks doesn’t stop talking so loud. (source = fox news)
GEMMA ATKINSON – The UK model is in Australia this week, doing whatever the hell all this is. (hq jump = here)
R. KELLY IS … NOT GUILTY
Yahoo says the jury in the R. Kelly child pornography case has reached a verdict after less than one day of deliberation. Judge Vincent Gaughan is scheduled to read the verdict today at 3:30 eastern time.
UPDATE – CBS in Chicago says he has been found Not Guilty on all 14 counts. Apparently the jury felt there was not enough evidence to convict him. If only there had been some record of the event. Maybe a photograph linking him to the crime. Or better yet, a reel of multiple images. A video, captured on tape. A “video tape”, if you will.
R KELLY IS SO SCREWED
After just two days and 12 witnesses, the defense rested yesterday in the R. Kelly child pornography case. Neither Kelly nor the woman who is said to have been 13 when she had sex with Kelly ever testified. This is not to say the trial is over, as today the prosecution will bring back a video expert to contradict claims by the defense about a mole on Kellys back. The Chicago Sun Times says…
Prosecutors said Monday they planned to recall to the witness stand Grant Fredericks, who previously testified that the videotape showed a dark spot on the lower back of the man in the video. The spot "corresponds" with a mole on Kelly's back, Fredericks told jurors.
Last week, Kelly's team presented its own video expert, Charles Palm, who showed a copy of the tape in which dark spots seemed to appear and then disappear from the man's back. He dismissed the spots as "video noise."
I think it's safe to say the defense is fucked when their big plan is based around a mole that even they admit you can see most of the time. It seems unlikely that "video noise" would make a black spot appear exactly where Kelly has a mole. Couldn’t it just as easily be "video noise" that made the mole not visible some of the time. At this point the defense might as well just throw a bunch of money in the air and then run away while everyone scrambles to catch it.
THE PROSECUTION RESTS
The prosecution rested yesterday in the R. Kelly child pornography trial in Chicago. Their final witness was a 27-year-old woman named Lisa Van Allen, who testified that she had a three-way with Kelly and the alleged victim, who was around 13 at the time. It turns out that’s illegal. EW says:
Van Allen testified that Kelly taped their trysts and alleged that last year he offered her $250,000 to recover one of the tapes. She told the court that Kelly seemed obsessed with taping his exploits and claims he carried around a bag full of the homemade videos. ''He carried it everywhere with him,'' she said. ''Wherever he was at, the bag would follow him.''
The defense beings tomorrow, although let's face it they’re screwed. You're not gonna find very many people in favor of fucking little kids. And the ones who are will probably not defend it while on a jury in a courtroom surrounded by cops and jail cells. Trust me on this. Don’t worry about how I know. Mind your own business. No, you're a pervert. No you are.
R KELLY IS SO SCREWED
TMZ said this morning that the R Kelly child pornography / statutory rape trial is about to get immensely more interesting.
The bombshell witness in the R. Kelly trial -– a woman who claims she had a three-way with R. and the alleged victim – is due to testify today. The defense is clearly rattled – they tried to force her removal from the witness list completely, but the judge nixed that. The woman, who lives in Georgia, is expected to ID the girl on the pee-pee tape and to verify that she was a minor at the time. Yesterday, a woman who worked for Kelly reluctantly ID'd the singer as the guy in the tape.
I guess this could maybe somehow be worse for Kelly, but only if the girls were white, and the trial was somehow moved to Alabama in the 1950’s.
