what in the hell?

now, r. kelly's "trapped in the closet" is not necessarily news, since it's been out for quite some time. everyone heard, or at least heard about, the 17 minutes of it that made the radio edit, and of course i assume we are all familiar with the general craziness that is r. kels (peeing on teenagers, etc)

last night, i came home to find that IFC was playing all 22 episodes of the "trapped in the closet" opus back to back(which takes about two hours, mind you). i had never watched the whole thing, and i must say, even with my existing knowledge of r. kelly's leanings toward bizarre shit, i was taken aback at the sheer lunacy of it all.

let's get a few things established. with "trapped in the closet," r. kelly has composed something along the lines of an opera(in that everything is sung. everything.) which appears to warn against the dangers of homosexuality(and being, of course, on the down-low- trapped in the closet, if you will). In doing so, it goes way beyond homophobia, arriving at the brink of hysteria, in that just about the entire cast winds up contracting "the package" (um, A.I.D.S) except for the old chick myrna, and her huband randolph(or something). even the midget male stripper gets it, from omar from the wire's wife, no less. and all because "the pastor" was bonin' chuck, the homosexual character who, of course, winds up giving them all A.I.D.S. duh. that's what homosexuals do!

Now, mind you, there is no real attention drawn to the fact that these characters all sleep with each other on the reg, thus spreading around "the package" which chuck has unwittingly given to "the pastor" or that they seem to be extremely shitty people in general. the entirety of the storyline is in place, it seems, to advance the "moral of the story" which is that a dude shouldn't engage in bonin' another dude on the "down low", or at all, since this practice will only ensure that he and everyone in his entire congregation will contract the A.I.D.S virus.

wow.

did i mention there is a midget male stripper? or what about "pimp luceious"? tron? tina and her lesbian lover? (r. kelly almost shoots them, but claims that they are lucky "he likes that shit" and thus, we can all breathe a sigh of relief that lesbianism is given a free pass).

now, all thematic homophobia aside, you have to remember that the real mind-blower here is that r. kelly spends two hours singing all of this to you, and i mean ALL of it.

as in, "that when tron said 'i have to use the bathroom' and i was like 'what the fuck you gotta use the bathroom for?' and he was like 'i gotta go!' and i was like 'go then, but hurry your ass up, cause i gotta go see this bitch cathy.' and he was like 'fine, i'll hurry' and i was like 'you better, cause your ass is lazy, and you be trippin' if you think i'm gonna wait on your lazy ass." and on and on and on, each scene a seeming endless bog of r. kelly stream of conciousness (and we surely do NOT need to know every stream in r. kelly's conciousness.)

of course, the triumph of the whole mess, i suppose, is the fact that r. kelly interweaves the hilarious irony of the characters literally getting stuck in the closet while they are slogging through uncovering the mystery of "the pastor" and "the package", with the drama of the fact that the pastor is figuratively "trapped in the closet". however, it seems to me, from watching the whole sordid affair last night, that our friend the pastor is not trapped in the closet at all. he seems fine with the whole thing, it's really his wife and boyfriend who are having the hard time, and of course, all those people with a brand new case of A.I.D.S.

these are just my thoughts, on what turned out to be quite more than i bargained for... you can peep the madness yourself here... its quite useful if you want to feel a little less disfunctional.