You know, the trial about how OJ Simpson allegedly stormed into a sports memorabilia collector’s hotel room with a bunch of gun-brandishing heavies and demanded that they give him everything with his face on it, or thereabout. Well guess what – OJ Simpson’s trial started yesterday, or at least the jury selection process part of it.

It’s an extremely tricky part of the trial procedure, too. Not just because OJ Simpson faces the rest of his life spent in jail if he’s found guilty of his charges, but because the judge doesn’t want to pick jurors who’ll punish OJ for his murder trial acquittal. Jurors who’ll punish OJ Simpson for his creepy book about the murder or his role in the underwhelming Naked Gun 33/3, sure. Just not the murder thing.

There’s been a dearth of decent celebrity trials lately, hasn’t there? Phil Spector’s murder trial ended up all muddled and crap, and R Kelly’s child pornography trial wasn’t as hilarious as everyone thought it’d be. Honestly, if it wasn’t for Uma Thurman’s berserko stalker, we’d have given up hope long ago.

But maybe our celebrity trial ennui was down to the fact that we were waiting for the daddy of them all to resurface: OJ Simpson. Acquitted of murdering his wife in 1995, but later found responsible for her death in a civil trial, OJ Simpson had been keeping himself to himself in recent years, only pottering around with hobbies like writing the stupidest book in the entire history of humanity. But then the unthinkable happened – OJ Simpson got arrested again.

For those with short memories, here’s a quick recap of the crime OJ Simpson was alleged to have committed. Almost exactly a year ago, OJ Simpson and a gang of gun-toting hired goons stormed the Las Vegas hotel room of a sports memorabilia collector in an attempt to recover items that OJ says were stolen from him. He did this by yelling “You think you can steal my shit?” a million times in a row and calling people a “motherfucker” and so forth.

Unfortunately, one of the men OJ Simpson was allegedly robbing was recording the incident and most of OJ Simpson’s hired goons were only too quick to blab about what a violent criminal mastermind OJ was to get themselves shorter sentences – proving once and for all that you should never trust goons recruited at a wedding reception. And now, despite OJ Simpson’s claims of innocence, it’s gone to trial and Simpson faces life in jail if he’s convicted.

But before any of that can happen, a jury has to be picked. And that might prove to be quite tricky, given that half the population thinks that OJ Simpson is a murderer who narrowly avoid his well-deserved time in jail 13 years ago, and those who think that OJ Simpson was innocent of the murder and therefore innocent of all other crimes as well.

And the Judge presiding over the OJ Simpson trial has decided that she’s not even letting one bitter, drooling, revenge-obsessed lunatoid in the jury. Not one. We know. Weird. Clark County District Judge Jackie Glass told the jurors:

“If you are here thinking you are going to punish Mr. Simpson for what happened in Los Angeles in 1995, this is not the case for you. If you’re looking to become famous because of your service in this case, write a book, then this is not the case for you.”

Several potential jurors have already been dismissed from the trial because they say they can’t put aside feelings about OJ Simpson’s murder trial. How odd – it’s almost as if they knew that by saying they hated OJ Simpson and wanted him to go to jail for stabbing his wife to death over a decade ago they’d be spared a role in a tortuously long, often quite tedious trial. Funny, that.

The testimony in the OJ Simpson trial is set to begin next week, but before then the court has to whittle 500 prospective jurors down to a pool of 40, and then pick the final 12 from that. So don’t hold your breath.

But know one thing – the OJ Simpson trial will start soon, and it’s going to be one exciting ride. Wait, did we say ‘exciting’? We meant ‘really incredibly lose-the-will-to-live long’. Sorry.

The process involves weeding out those who really like R Kelly, those who really hate R Kelly, anyone who’s formed an opinion about R Kelly based on the mountain of press he’s received over his alleged underage sex tape, those who like the idea of watching child porn a little too much and those who did all of the above on purpose to get them out of jury service.

But, despite all that, three jurors have been chosen for the R Kelly child porn trial. The big news, however, is that yesterday R Kelly sat next to a toilet and the poo-stink went up his nose and he got all sad. No, really.

Although being a juror in R Kelly’s upcoming child porn trial means subjecting yourself to weeks and weeks of probably quite harrowing evidence and then wrestling with your conscience about whether or not to send a man to jail until the year 2023 because of that evidence, chances are you’ll get to write a book about it afterwards and that sounds fun. We want in, frankly.

Sadly, because we own over 38 copies of the Space Jam soundtrack on multiple formats and actually do believe we can fly, that’s not likely to happen. But yesterday three lucky kids were chosen to be part of the jury on the long-delayed R Kelly child pornography trial.

As you probably know, after six years of dreaming up new excuses why he shouldn’t stand trial, R Kelly is about to go to court over the video that surfaced in 2002 of him apparently having sex with a girl possibly as young as 13. The jury selection process has begun – an arduous task involving 150 people who must all be interviewed and whittled down to 16 – and according to the Associated Press the three picked yesterday included:

The wife of a Baptist preacher from R. Kelly’s hometown, a business executive and a telecommunications company employee… The executive, a middle-aged man, called child pornography “the lowest of the low” during questioning by the judge and attorneys. But he said he felt he could give a fair trial to the 41-year-old Kelly, who is accused of videotaping himself having sex with a girl as young as 13.

In addition to this, the telecommunications employee stated that he didn’t even like walking past pornography magazines in convenience stores, while the wife of a Baptist preacher is, well, the wife of a Baptist preacher. It’s not looking great for R Kelly – who denies the charges – although there’s still plenty of time to balance this out by picking a bunch of jaundiced-looking perverts in the coming days.

But, of course, the most fun in jury selection processes involve the jurors who didn’t make it. These apparently included a man who seemed to indirectly threaten R Kelly with violence if he was found guilty. God knows we wish he was picked.

The selection process is likely to take up the rest of the week, after which the meat of the trial can begin in earnest. That is unless R Kelly doesn’t pass out from all the shit-fumes billowing up his nose all the time. It’s a possibility – it’s been reported that yesterday R Kelly was made to sit so close to the men’s toilet that he had to keep a tissue clamped against his nose for most of the proceedings.

Hopefully this won’t change during the actual trial, because we’d quite like R Kelly’s poo-sensitive nose to be the new Phil Spector’s lesbian wig. And hopefully that will be enough to keep us going throughout the entire trial, because we can’t find a trace of humour in a video of a grown man weeing all over a girl’s face.

Oh, OK, yes we can, but the poo-nose thing would be an extra special treat on top. Make it happen, court people! Neglect all basic toilet hygiene for us! We’d do the same for you

Read more:

3 jurors chosen for R&B superstar R. Kelly’s trial – AP

And that’s delaying the start of his child pornography trial. For the last six years, R Kelly has kept inventing clever new tricks to put off the trial again and again – but it looks as though his luck might have run out.

At last, tomorrow will see the commencement of the jury selection process for R Kelly’s child pornography trial, effectively locking a start date down for good. And, oh boy, is that going to be one lucky jury – the judge has ruled that R Kelly’s apparently incriminating underage sex tape can be shown in open court. High fives to agreeing to watch a 14-year-old girl get urinated on by R Kelly! Anyone? No?

The Phil Spector murder trial was such a golden time, wasn’t it? In fact, it’s probably hard to think of anything better than watching a tiny old man in a lesbian wig get accused of shooting a depressed woman in the face for months at a time. Except for, at a push, watching a singer who compares himself to Martin Luther King get accused of pissing on a 14-year-old girl’s face during a sex tape for months at a time.

Which is a relief, because that’s what we’ll finally get to see soon enough. After spending six years trying to wriggle out of it, thanks to mountains of pretrial motions and badly-timed births and ladder-based accidents and appendicitis and tired-looking bus drivers, the R Kelly child pornography trial is all set to get underway in Chicago tomorrow.

Or at least the boring jury selection process that precedes the R Kelly child pornography trial, anyway. The New York Daily News reports:

After six years of delays, jury selection is to begin Thursday in the Grammy-winning R&B singer’s trial on child pornography charges – although defense attorneys did throw in a last-minute motion Wednesday seeking another postponement. The case was prompted by a videotape allegedly showing Kelly having sex with a girl as young as 13.

Since R Kelly faces 15 years in jail if he’s found guilty of these charges, his lawyers will want to find the most sympathetic jury possible – a group of people who’ll understand that a man has needs, and that sometimes those needs involve apparently filming himself pissing all over an obviously underage girl’s face. But that tactic might be scuppered by Chicago’s famous lack of stereotypical cartoon Frenchmen.

However, the jury selection process is firmly weighted in the defence’s favour. Since this alleged R Kelly sex tape is the crux of the entire trial, it’s bound to be shown in court at least once – so there’s a chance that the jurors who’ll fight hardest to get on the trial will be the ones who basically enjoy watching child pornography the most. We think that’s how it works, anyway. Urgh.

But still, R Kelly’s jury selection process doesn’t start until tomorrow, so that leaves R Kelly with about 15 or 16 different chances to get the trial postponed again before then. All we’re saying is that we shouldn’t be too surprised if R Kelly suddenly gets his arm bitten off by a shark before teatime. That’s all.

Read more:

R. Kelly kid-porn trial creeps forward - NYDN