At first glance you'd think that this utterly hilarious compilation, featuring the music of a black man renowned for on-camera golden showers and statutory rape, was a parody made by Keith Olbermann or Bill Maher's staffs, but it was actually put together and posted to the web this morning by the delusional wingnuts who run the Conservatives4Palin website. Prepare to be mesmerized.

• Lindsay Lohan ditched Samantha Ronson to spend an evening with Sean Penn in West Hollywood. Dinner and a club. Maybe she's broken up with Samantha Ronson, forever, or maybe she's just another one of Penn's unlikely Oscar-season companions.
• That a Greenwich Village Block Association president can trade her influence for a photo in Vanity Fair and a prime table at the Waverly Inn is either a travesty for the democratic process or an example of its amazing power, depending on where you sit. Graydon Carter appears to be top from either vantage point. [P6]
• The Huffington Post inauguration ball will feature Leonardo DiCaprio. Ten bucks says that's the biggest celebrity the Newseum will ever draw. [ET]
• You're Britney Spears. Dressing for your brother's wedding. Just how far down your chest does the neckline go? This far. [Sun]
• Ashley Olsen doesn't wash her hands after peeing in movie theaters. Or maybe it's Mary-Kate Olsen who doesn't wash her hands in cinema bathrooms. It's the perfect crime. [P6]
• R. Kelly is officially divorced. [People]

In closing arguments, Kelly's attorney banged on the jury box with his fist, yelled and whispered, laughed and pleaded for more than in hour in his emotion-filled closing.

At one point, Sam Adam Jr. referred to a defense argument made repeatedly during the trial that a mole on the singer's back proved he simply can't be the man in the video.

After displaying a freeze frame of the man's back in the video — with no apparent mole — Adam walked over to the defense table and placed his hand on Kelly's shoulder.

"The truth be told, there is no mole ... that means one thing," Adam told jurors, then paused and lowered his voice. "It ain't him. And if it ain't him, you can't convict."

Prosecutors wrapped up their arguments the same way they began them a month ago: by playing the entire graphic sex tape in open court.

[CNN.com]

Chicago Sun-Times music critic Jim DeRogatis, who first received the infamous R. Kelly kinky child sex tape in the mail, was ordered to testify at the trial. But he refused to show! He's claiming some sort of journalistic privilege to protect his sources, which may or may not actually exist in the eyes of the law. Now the judge is deciding whether to issue a warrant for the reporter's arrest. He could be the Judy Miller of the sex tape circuit!

The whole reason DeRogatis was called in the first place is that the defense team is "interested in what DeRogatis may have done with the tape between the time he received it in early 2002 and when he gave it to police."

As long as he didn't spend that time digitally inserting images of R. Kelly having sex with a minor into it, I don't see how it really matters.

[Tribune]

• I would change the age of consent.

  Two who were kicked off offered this philosophy, one going so far as to suggest that "nature already had an age of [sexual] consent: puberty."

• I (heart) R. Kelly.

  Nothing gets prospective jurors booted faster than telling the prosecution they are a fan of Kelly's. Just ask the woman who called him a "musical genius." When prodded to say something negative about Kelly, the best she could come up with was: "He and [rapper] Jay-Z don't get along?" Prosecutors bounced her soon after.

• I'll change my vacation plans.

  Overeagerness to serve on the jury is a definite red flag to attorneys. When one man offered to rearrange a trip to see his parents, the prosecution bounced him for being star-struck.

• Please call my mom.

  When one juror failed to show up for service, deputies called his house and his mother answered. She told the court that she didn't know where her son was and that he hadn't been "right" since he was shot in the head a while back. The judge and attorneys agreed to let him off the hook.

• I blame R. Kelly for Sept. 11.

  When the judge asked one prospective juror about his feelings regarding Kelly, he cryptically answered: "R. Kelly may have led the Taliban in attacking us on 9-11, but you can't prove it." You're right, we can't. In fact, we're fairly certain that no one has ever tried.

"Before jury selection began Friday, [Circuit Judge Vincent] Gaughan denied a defense motion to again postpone the trial because of intense publicity surrounding the case, appearing to accept arguments from the prosecution that jury selection could weed out any tainted jurors.

"But defense attorney Marc Martin said the jury pool had been 'irrevocably poisoned' by a front-page story in Friday's Chicago Sun-Times that cited unnamed sources talking about a potential witness.

"Many of the potential jurors would have read the article on the way to the courthouse, Martin said. 'There is no escaping the fact that the Sun-Times will be in every news box in Cook County,' said Martin, adding that the contents of the story were also broadcast on TV and radio stations. 'I heard it when I was putting on my tie this morning.'

"'Somebody out there is trying to sabotage Mr. Kelly's right to a fair trial,' Martin said. As he arrived at the courthouse Friday morning, Kelly didn't acknowledge the crowd outside as he walked through a special entrance. One raucous onlooker shouted 'I love you'; another shouted 'R. Kelly's a pedophile.'" [AP]

"Troubled R+B star R.Kelly has been hit with another setback in his underage sex case - a new witness is set to testify she had sex with the star and an underage girl. The 'I Believe I Can Fly' hitmaker is currently awaiting trial on 14 counts of child pornography, with proceedings due to start in May (08).

"Kelly is accused of filming himself having sex with an underage girl, who is believed to have been 13 or 14 at the time of the assault.

"But reports now claim a new witness has come forward to testify against the star, claiming she enjoyed a threesome with the singer and the teenager at the centre of the case.

"It is expected the woman will confirm the girl was underage at the time of the act." [ShowbizSpy]

Radio D.J.'s were shouting themselves hoarse in the parking lot crowing about one of the biggest concerts this town has ever seen. Cars were crawling down Veterans Parkway, trunk speakers abuzz. The local clergy were not amused... Some concerts might seem anticlimactic after a buildup like that, but an R. Kelly concert consists of almost nothing but climax, one way and another.

Oh, yes; its freakier than anyone could have imagined. A traipse through the Times archives (finally accessible to Western researchers with the fall of the Select wall) reveals an ever-deepening obsession, Kelefa's gooey globs of textual ejaculate finding increasingly baroque ways to praise the man who puts all the ladies in their place—that is, on the counter, by the buttered rolls. In a way, it's the purest of romances, like Tom and Huck or Gore and Clinton: the effete but effective critic pining for the cervine musk of the all-man genius. Let's turn to the evidence:

It's eerie and funny, a reminder that Mr. Kelly can make great music more or less whenever he feels like it. .. Surely Chapter 23, whenever it comes, will bring — well, it would be foolish to guess. But here's hoping Mr. Kelly's dramatic phase isn't over yet.

''Let me remind you that I am the king of R&B.'' So singeth R. Kelly, near the end of his thumping, piano-driven hit, ''I'm a Flirt (Remix),'' which just might be the most pleasurable song on the radio. It's an unnecessary boast: Who could possibly argue, or forget?

And who else could deliver it as a song that sounded so good? "They said to me, 'No feeling yourself around this area,' " he crooned, tracing the boundary with his palm. Even his jokey announcements sounded like hit singles. Mr. Kelly, the legendarily freaky R&B star, long ago established himself as one of the greatest singer-songwriters of his generation.

This year, this brilliant singer-songwriter-producer has given us a new album, a new remix collection and - best of all - the flabbergasting 12-part operetta "Trapped in the Closet." A few weeks ago Mr. Kelly's body of work expanded yet again, when he sang the national anthem before the Bernard Hopkins-Jermain Taylor boxing match.... Boxing fans seemed upset about Mr. Kelly's extreme anthem makeover; surprisingly few seemed grateful that he had turned Francis Scott Key's composition into something you might listen to for fun.

Green Day performed, too, as well as Coldplay and Kanye West, who enlisted Jamie Foxx for an unusually flat run through "Gold Digger." But no one could compete with R. Kelly, who stole the show without singing a note.

R&B's current king, R. Kelly, thrills fans by reminding them of his body and what it wants; you invite him into your bedroom at your peril (which is part of the fun).

Few performers have done more to promote this trend than R. Kelly, 35, the R & B virtuoso whose swaggering ballads win over listeners old enough to be his parents along with those young enough to be his, um, friends. His last two albums were nearly perfect: after 2000's dazzling thug-love epic, "Tp-2.com," came last year's seductive apologia, "Chocolate Factory".... [H]ere's hoping his next album is filled with smut, frustration and bad faith - you know, kid stuff.

And if you keep listening almost to the end, you will be rewarded by ''Baby I'm Yours (Remix),'' in which R. Kelly sings circles around Jennifer Lopez.

It often seems that Mr. Kelly's enormous appetite for adulation is matched only by his remarkable power to generate it... Mr. Kelly has found a way to reconcile the restless cadences of hip-hop with the smooth delivery of soul music, thereby inventing his own subgenre. He has a knack for great tunes, too...

Ever since the scandal began, almost a year ago, Mr. Kelly has been denounced as a sexual predator — and, by some stand-up comedians, as an incompetent cinematographer. But his appearance on Thursday inspired the night's most passionate applause, and Mr. Kelly planned his performance brilliantly.

This sorry situation hasn't gone unnoticed by the artists themselves. And no one has addressed it more deftly than R. Kelly, who has emerged as the most compelling singer and songwriter in contemporary R & B.

Cook County Judge Vincent Gaughan said jury selection would begin September 17.

[...]

Kelly, 40, whose real name is Robert Kelly, faces up to 15 years in jail if convicted of videotaping himself having sex with an underage girl.

If R. (who, incidentally, has pled not guilty to raining his divine bladder juice all over that girl in the video) goes to the pokey, the dreams he once professed of Trapped In The Closet: The Talk Show tragically may not materialize, although Trapped In The Prison Yard and all the sexy shenanigans that could entail might make an able substitute.

Indeed, one wonders if the freshly sweaty palms of R.'s defense attorney prompted him to hurry up and finish the next installments of his resplendent musical soap opera in time for an August release; it already seems to have influenced his series recap/preview of Chapter 13, in which a white-suited R. — occasionally, several of them — pops up and sings, "OH SHIT!" at every big plot twist. America, welcome to R.'s subconscious. Bring some Lysol. And perhaps a spatula of mistrust.

• Singer R Kelly To Be Tried For Child Pornography [Reuters vis Yahoo! News]
• R. Kelly — Trapped In The Closet, Chapter 13 Preview [Stereogum]
• Trapped In The Closet, chapter 7 [YouTube]

• Remember a time when you would have been excited to see a picture of Britney Spears' naked boob? Us neither, really. [Egotastic]
  
• Evil monster Ralph Fiennes and Ellen Barkin: canoodling! [Page Six]
  
• Regarding Paris Hilton: "The celebucon has complained bitterly to the press while in jail that she's not allowed to have facial moisturizer and her skin is dry." Worst "celebu-" construction yet. The English language will not stand for this. [Page Six]
  
• Michael Jackson and R. Kelly, among others, are suing Jay-Z's club for allegedly shorting them on royalties. [NYP]