R. Kelly Trial: Week in Review (even though you lost interest 5 years ago)

This week, the child-porn trial of R&B auteur R. Kelly caught an unpleasant case of blue balls. Key witness Lisa Van Allen was never actually called to the stand as expected, so everyone speculated about what she was supposed to say: She had an ongoing love affair with Kelly and at one point participated in a ménage a trois with the girl said to be in the video. Swear! The woman plans to come forward and say that she, too, had sex with a minor. (Juries and judges love this shit!) Also, they videotaped it, though the tape is nowhere to be found and not to be discussed. Hearsay all, of course. Other than the fact that R. Kelly's life is potentially stranger than his videos, what did we learn, if anything?

• R. Kelly's "mole defense" is getting hairy. Upon further review, experts now claim to see a mole on the man in the video, a "maybe-cancerous" mark Kelly sports on this lower back. If you stare long enough, you also see a 3-D unicorn.

• The sex tape is probably real, probably not doctored.

• Never show the hired help your inner freak. Lindsey Perryman, a former personal assistant to Kelly, testified that she is "110 percent sure" that the man in the video is Kelly, and that the girl in the video is his goddaughter—who was between the ages of 12 and 13 at the time. She cites as evidence the girl's comely cheekbones.

• Music journalists: stick to writing reviews if you want to avoid taking the stand. The Sun-Times writer who first broke the Kelly story, Jim DeRogatis, may have to testify as to the provenance of the tape in question and whether he made kinky copies for home viewing. Our guess for the latter: Yes, yes he did (and good for him!).

• And this Lisa Van Allen chick? Heavy drama with her ex and her fiancée. To start, her betrothed can't shut the hell up, dishing to the Chicago Tribune on each and every intimate detail of the woman's life. Her ex, on the other hand, he's the silent gangster type, and was asked by the defense to testify as to what kind of woman Van Allen really is. Namely, a slutty liar who's also the mother of his baby. (Interesting side note: Van Allen once starred in a Kelly video as a hair-braider, a role that just so happens to be the title of Kelly's most recent single. Actually, that's not very interesting.)