"Oh my God it's a ruuuubber!" OR: Simultaneously the best and worst thing I have ever seen, ever.

[Currently Listening To: Elbow - Leaders Of The Free World]


I've been meaning to post about this for quite some time now, and I wish I had the time to properly explore the subject. Something of this magnitude deserves more than a brief glazing-over. It deserves - nay, demands - to be carefully studied - to be exhaustively analyzed and thoroughly mined for all its many wisdoms. Unfortunately, all I can do at the moment is share it with you, and hope you step away from it as amazed, dumbfounded, and horrified as I did.

Some of you may have seen this already. If you have, I encourage you to watch it again, for no single viewing is enough to take in the full breadth of its genius. If you haven't seen it, or if you've only seen a small part of it... prepare to be blown away. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you with a brilliant, hilarious, ludicrously awful masterpiece. The best and worst thing I have ever seen in my entire life. An epic tale - an urban fable, if you will - told by a master storyteller and gifted songwriter. Ladies and gentlemen, behold: R. Kelly's 5-part R&B opera: "Trapped In The Closet."

That link should take you to a list where you can find all five chapters (also look here). Start with chapter one. You won't be able to stop. You'll be quoting it for weeks. This thing is so amazing, so unbelievably absurd, I don't even know what to say about it. Best of all, it's presented without even the slightest shred of irony. R. Kelly whole-heartedly believes in this. He believes he has crafted something truly epic. An absolute work of art. This single loop of music with him talk-singing "and then she said, and then he said," the way a rambling five year old tells you a story that he's making up as he goes along. Keep in mind this entire 5-part "song" appears at the end of R. Kelly's latest album. Can you imagine just listening to it without the visuals?

A friend turned me on to this whole thing a few weeks ago, after building it up for days with "you have to see this, you have to see this, it's amazing." I thought he was exaggerating. There was no way it could be that good. And then... I became a true believer. After my virgin viewing, I became so obsessed with "Trapped In The Closet" that I tracked down a download of a full DVD version, which ends with the tantalizing line: "Chapters 6-10 Coming Soon." I am excited beyond words.

If you really want to punish yourself, I suggest watching R. Kelly embarrass himself on national television with a live one-man performance of "Trapped In The Closet" on the VMA's last week. I would rather scrape the skin off my nutsack with a rusty garden rake than suffer through even one second of the disastrous, morally reprehensible cesspool of steaming diarrhea that is MTV, so I didn't catch this amazing performance when it originally aired. Thank God for the internet though, because the VMA spectacle marked the world premiere of "Trapped In The Closet" Chapter 6, which is so fucking insanely idiotic, it suggests R. Kelly has begun a fantastic swan dive into the deep end of Michael Jackson's kiddie pool of lunacy.

Does anyone know when 6-10 will be released? I can't fucking wait any longer.