Throwing cheese at baby rapers

R. Kelly first appeared on my radar in the early 2000s as the world was first finding out about his proclivity for videotaping himself having sex with--and peeing on--young girls. I belonged to Crunch Gym in the basement of my Chicago office building at Grand and State (coincidentally across the street from the back entrance to Nordstrom). The Crunch chain of gyms was relatively new and extremely trendy and often populated with celebrities, and R. Kelly and his posse worked out at my Crunch location every day at the same time I did: noon. And by "worked out" I mean "showed up, sat around doing nothing on all the benches in the locker room, sat around doing nothing on all the equipment in the gym, mumbled things to each other that constantly ended with 'You know what I'm sayin'?' and generally pissed (ahem) off everyone at the gym."

But there's more!

The gym was in the basement of the building, spread out below a tiny lobby facing the sidewalk. The neighborhood was the newly booming River North, just (as you might imagine) north of the river and just west of the Mag Mile, which is the high-end-retail section of North Michigan Avenue. Street parking was restricted and very rare. But R. Kelly was above the laws of street parking, and he parked his massive Hummer on the street right in front of the lobby door ... and he parked one poor schmuck from his posse in the lonely little lobby presumably to keep an eye on the Hummer and fend off anyone who might stop to ticket or tow it as R. and the rest of his posse "worked out" in the basement below.

So let's review all the reasons from this story alone that R. Kelly is an entitled piece of shit: Having sex with little girls. Peeing on little girls. Videotaping it. Spreading out all over the gym and preventing people from working out on their lunch hours. Parking his Hummer on a street with no parking. Owning a Hummer. Making one of his posse sit and watch the Hummer to potentially bribe any authorities who might ticket or tow it.

Oh yeah: And everyone who witnessed all of this universally agreed that his Hummer was literally the color of ... wait for it ... pee.