R Kelly hears the sound of the world's media descending. Photograph: AP
After six years of waiting and several false starts, R Kelly's trial on child pornography charges got off to a smelly start this week.
According to the Chicago Sun Times, whose devotion to the singer's long-awaited trial has led them to set up a specialist blog called the Kelly Chronicles, there was a distinct smell of wee in the Cook County courtroom when events got under way this week.
With urine playing a prominent role in the allegations against Kelly, the stench has been interpreted in some parts as ironic. Or simply degrading to all. Chicagoist seems to have conformed to the latter belief, their response to events a bewildered "Blink. Blink" (which we think means - this is too much to take in at once).
Elsewhere, Idolator- "The R Kelly trial is slowly trickling into being..."- chooses to focus on the trial's laborious jury selection process. 'High' lights of which include a woman whose only negative opinion on the Pied Piper of RnB is that it's a shame he and Jay-Z didn't get along, a gentleman who believes the age of consent law to be too rigid, ("My son says nature already provided an age of consent--puberty. It made sense to me.") and another who admitted to being arrested for public indecency.
For some reason, none of the three made the final twelve. Them's the breaks.
