Monday, June 2, 2008
Lisa Van Allen's testimony lived up to its explosive billing this lunchtime. She's still being questioned, but she's already dropped several bombshells, saying she had three-way sex with Kelly and the alleged victim in this case at least three times.
Van Allen said she had met R. Kelly at the video shoot for "Home Alone," in which she appeared, in late 1997 or early 1998. Kelly's cousin, "Blacky" invited her to join Kelly in Kelly's trailer, she said. She talked with Kelly and ended up having "intercourse" with him in the trailer, she said. She was 17 at the time, she said.
The pair exchanged numbers and Van Allen soon visited Kelly in Chicago, eventually giving up her job in Atlanta to be with him full time. Kelly paid for her to stay in hotels and she spent most of her time with him at the studio, she said.
Van Allen said she went on tour with Kelly and was picked out of the crowd at the end of each show to perform simulated sex with him on stage at each show's finale.
In late 1998, she testified, Kelly took her to his former home on the North Side of Chicago, where she met the alleged victim in this case for the first time. Kelly taped them while they had three-way sex in his "log-cabin" room, she said. That's the same room he's alleged to have filmed the tape in this case. Kelly told her the alleged victim was 16, she said.
On another occasion, following an awards ceremony in Chicago at which Kelly had been honored, Van Allen, Kelly and the alleged victim in this case again had videotaped three-way sex. But this time they did it on Kelly's basketball court.
"He took up his camera and we took off our clothes and we all had sex again," she said. Van Allen said Kelly stopped the sex session after she broke down crying. "I didn't want to do it," she said.
On a third occasion, sometime in 2000, Kelly, Van Allen and the alleged victim romped again, this time in his trailer at the video shoot for "Woman's Threat," Van Allen said. Kelly and the alleged victim ran naked to hide after somebody knocked on the door and disturbed them, she said.
Van Allen said Kelly carried a "duffel bag" with his home-made porn it wherever he went.
"He carried it everywhere," she said. "If we was at the studio, it was in the studio with him; if he was at Hoops (his gym) it would be at Hoops with him...the bag would follow him."
Van Allen confessed she had stolen R. Kelly's Rolex watch from a Georgia hotel in 2001. She said she had been granted state and federal immunity from prosecution for child porn in return for her testimony.
Asked why she had come forward to testify, she said, "It's the right thing to do."
She said she was not there when the tape at the center of this case was made, but identified the alleged victim and Kelly as being on that tape.
On cross-examination, R. Kelly's attorney Sam Adam Sr. is attempting to paint Lisa Van Allen as a liar and a thief.
Adam got Van Allen to admit that she had relationships with two men convicted for fraud in the federal courts. One - Damon Pryor - is the so-called "mystery witness" who flew into town at the last minute last week. He's the father of Van Allen's child. The other man - Yul Brown - is Van Allen's current partner.
Under questioning from Adam, Van Allen said that she knew Pryor had served time for fraud before they met in 2001. She also knew Brown was a fraudster, she said.
She laughed when Adam asked her if she only dated men with federal fraud convictions.
While they were together, Pryor told her "how you interject yourself into a case - that you go at the last minute" with important testimony, she said. Van Allen agreed with Adam that Pryor was a "conman," describing their relationship as "a mistake."
Adam pointed out that Van Allen had not come forward for nearly five-and-a-half years as a witness against Kelly, suggesting a link between Pryor's advice and her late emergence as a witness.
But Van Allen denied telling Pryor that the tape at the center of the case was a fake, or that she had told him she planned to extort cash from Kelly. She denied telling a Minnesota woman the same thing, also denying that she knew two men called "Chuck and Keith" had staged the tape at the center of the case to get money from Kelly.
The Minnesota woman, Lena Prado, has not been mentioned in court before, but Van Allen said she had known her since 1999. Van Allen denied having a sexual relationship with Prado.
Van Allen did admit to stealing Kelly's $20,000 Rolex from his hotel room. Asked why she had never admitted stealing the watch until today, she said, "That's not what (R. Kelly's) on trial for."
[Editors Note: 'Lena Prado' is really Adalina "Birdie" Prado, a 27 year old woman from the Chicago suburbs. IF it becomes relevant, we'll talk more about this.]
Sun-Times
Van Allen said she had met R. Kelly at the video shoot for "Home Alone," in which she appeared, in late 1997 or early 1998. Kelly's cousin, "Blacky" invited her to join Kelly in Kelly's trailer, she said. She talked with Kelly and ended up having "intercourse" with him in the trailer, she said. She was 17 at the time, she said.
The pair exchanged numbers and Van Allen soon visited Kelly in Chicago, eventually giving up her job in Atlanta to be with him full time. Kelly paid for her to stay in hotels and she spent most of her time with him at the studio, she said.
Van Allen said she went on tour with Kelly and was picked out of the crowd at the end of each show to perform simulated sex with him on stage at each show's finale.
In late 1998, she testified, Kelly took her to his former home on the North Side of Chicago, where she met the alleged victim in this case for the first time. Kelly taped them while they had three-way sex in his "log-cabin" room, she said. That's the same room he's alleged to have filmed the tape in this case. Kelly told her the alleged victim was 16, she said.
On another occasion, following an awards ceremony in Chicago at which Kelly had been honored, Van Allen, Kelly and the alleged victim in this case again had videotaped three-way sex. But this time they did it on Kelly's basketball court.
"He took up his camera and we took off our clothes and we all had sex again," she said. Van Allen said Kelly stopped the sex session after she broke down crying. "I didn't want to do it," she said.
On a third occasion, sometime in 2000, Kelly, Van Allen and the alleged victim romped again, this time in his trailer at the video shoot for "Woman's Threat," Van Allen said. Kelly and the alleged victim ran naked to hide after somebody knocked on the door and disturbed them, she said.
Van Allen said Kelly carried a "duffel bag" with his home-made porn it wherever he went.
"He carried it everywhere," she said. "If we was at the studio, it was in the studio with him; if he was at Hoops (his gym) it would be at Hoops with him...the bag would follow him."
Van Allen confessed she had stolen R. Kelly's Rolex watch from a Georgia hotel in 2001. She said she had been granted state and federal immunity from prosecution for child porn in return for her testimony.
Asked why she had come forward to testify, she said, "It's the right thing to do."
She said she was not there when the tape at the center of this case was made, but identified the alleged victim and Kelly as being on that tape.
On cross-examination, R. Kelly's attorney Sam Adam Sr. is attempting to paint Lisa Van Allen as a liar and a thief.
Adam got Van Allen to admit that she had relationships with two men convicted for fraud in the federal courts. One - Damon Pryor - is the so-called "mystery witness" who flew into town at the last minute last week. He's the father of Van Allen's child. The other man - Yul Brown - is Van Allen's current partner.
Under questioning from Adam, Van Allen said that she knew Pryor had served time for fraud before they met in 2001. She also knew Brown was a fraudster, she said.
She laughed when Adam asked her if she only dated men with federal fraud convictions.
While they were together, Pryor told her "how you interject yourself into a case - that you go at the last minute" with important testimony, she said. Van Allen agreed with Adam that Pryor was a "conman," describing their relationship as "a mistake."
Adam pointed out that Van Allen had not come forward for nearly five-and-a-half years as a witness against Kelly, suggesting a link between Pryor's advice and her late emergence as a witness.
But Van Allen denied telling Pryor that the tape at the center of the case was a fake, or that she had told him she planned to extort cash from Kelly. She denied telling a Minnesota woman the same thing, also denying that she knew two men called "Chuck and Keith" had staged the tape at the center of the case to get money from Kelly.
The Minnesota woman, Lena Prado, has not been mentioned in court before, but Van Allen said she had known her since 1999. Van Allen denied having a sexual relationship with Prado.
Van Allen did admit to stealing Kelly's $20,000 Rolex from his hotel room. Asked why she had never admitted stealing the watch until today, she said, "That's not what (R. Kelly's) on trial for."
[Editors Note: 'Lena Prado' is really Adalina "Birdie" Prado, a 27 year old woman from the Chicago suburbs. IF it becomes relevant, we'll talk more about this.]
Sun-Times
There are some moments in your life that as they happen, you know years later, you’ll be able to recount every last detail. And then there are moments where try as you might, you’ll never remember more than the broadstrokes. And then, there are the rarest of moments where, years later, the individual pieces will mean nothing because all you’ll ever need to remember about that place in time was the way you felt.
From the very first chime of the familiar tune, burned so pointedly in our minds, a genuine applause erupted in the theater filled with women, young, old, single, married and everything in between. We had all purchased our tickets days in advance, we’d all stood in the 40 minute line outside the theater to get choice seats. And we’d all donned our best heels and purses, kissed our men and kids goodbye and settled in to welcome back our four friends.
Charlotte, Miranda, Samantha and of course Carrie proved to us that they were worth the wait.
It was everything I expected it to be, both good and bad. And there were a few surprises along the way. The biggest came with the 2:20 minute running time. The second was, they’d found a way to take a forty minutes show, triple it and still make me want to stay and watch the credits.
Sex & The City: The Movie, picks up three years after the shows conclusion, with Carrie, the consummate heroin, blissfully in love with a man we now know as John James Preston but whom will forever be Mr. Big. Miranda is still in Brooklyn, but we find her simply coasting along in a ghastly sinking marriage to bar owner Steve. Charlotte, whom admittedly, has always gotten the short end of the character development stick, has settled nicely into motherhood with her adopted Chinese daughter and is very much in love with her Jewish, divorce attorney husband Harry. And then there’s Samantha…Whom much to my surprise is living in LA with her now TV star boyfriend, Smith.
I’m not going to lie to you, perfect it ain’t. There are plot issues galore (Samantha’s journey is never set up well enough to make her payoff mean anything to us), and the pacing of the too long first act just reminds us that Michael Patrick King (the shows EP and the movie’s writer/director) should stick to half-hours and 60 minute dramas. But problems aside, it was in short, the movie we’d all come to see.
An emotional roller coaster from the very first scene, I laughed at all the right moments, like Charlottes Mexican mishap. I tinged when careless statements like Miranda’s regrettable, “Let’s just get it over with?” were thrown out there. And when Big does the (predictable, yet) unthinkable, I along with every other woman, and gay man, in the theater, held my breath, both equally as angry as I was hurt.
Still I’d have to say the biggest surprise for me wasn’t the inclusion of Louise, Carrie’s new assistant and SATC’s only major Black female character; but rather that Jennifer Hudson played her so comfortably that she felt as though she’d been there all along.
And then of course there were the clothes.
If there was ever a sixth woman in the group (I’ll get to the fifth in a second), it was and still very much is the incomparable Patricia Fields. This movie was so flawlessly styled that even in Carrie’s darkest moments, with greasy hair and not a stitch of make-up in sight, even her old tattered pj’s looked fierce. I’m still a little shaky on what exactly took place while she and Miranda shopped for Halloween costumes due to the breathtakingly fabulous black leather and fur coat hugging Carrie’s body.
But about that fifth lady…My biggest problem with this movie was that with the exception of a few street scenes, one on New Years eve, I felt we didn’t get enough time with the city that has nurtured these girls into the women we loved. Where were the bars, clubs and restaurants that had made our show the consummate name dropper? And where oh where was Carrie’s moment with the place she once defended to an out of town sailor, warning, “Nobody messes with my boyfriend.”
As I watched this movie I’d waited so long for, I looked around the theater and saw familiar expressions on the faces of the women around me. Cards up: I missed Sex & the City because while everyone speculated openly about which woman represented her, the truth is, there are pieces of each of these ladies in everyone of us. And this show, this silly little show with such a catchy title allowed us to see ourselves in third person, frankly, flawed and fabulously.
The truth is Charlotte, Miranda, Samantha and Carrie allowed us to feel ok about some of the things we as women deal with everyday. From the mundane like getting a Brazilian for the first time, to the devastating, like our mothers dying, to that which is so vulnerable that we dare not speak it aloud, like some of us are still madly in love with men who broke our hearts: with each dilemma, each pep talk and each breakfast, they made us feel like we weren’t the only ones. And tonight, four years later, these seven women (including J. Hud, the fabulous Pat and of course the beautiful Big Apple) proved to us, they still got it. And that was the sex we really needed.
Dior's new phone -- which will work world-wide, except in Japan and Korea, where it isn't compatible with local wireless networks -- is priced higher than rival fashion phones, closer to the price range of Nokia Corp.'s premium line Vertu, which also starts in the $5,000 range. Dolce & Gabbana, Prada and Giorgio Armani SpA all have phones out that cost around $600.
In addition to all the regular features of a cellphone -- a touchscreen, a camera, ringtones -- the Dior phone offers a new gimmick: a miniature phone barely bigger than a USB key. Dior says the mini "My Dior," as it is called, is handy for women who don't want to rummage through their bags to find their phones. Instead, the mini version of the phone clips to the outside of a bag for easier access. It communicates with the main phone, so people can pick up or make calls with My Dior and use the main phone for more complicated functions.
With mobile phones, fashion brands have insisted on taking part in both design and marketing. Last year, when Italian fashion house Prada launched a phone with South Korea's LG Electronics Inc., Prada tinkered with the touch screen and preloaded content in addition to working on the phone's basic design.
Mr. Toledano said the idea of creating a Dior phone was driven by demand in new luxury markets such as China and Russia.
Washington Post
The 2008 MTV Movie Awards went down this weekend in SoCal. And of course the universal ambassador WILL SMITH came through with his youngest son/co-star, Jaden. the two picked up and award for The Pursuit of Happyness...
JENNIFER HUDSON continued a winning weekend with this FLY pink & white number. And you know what, I'm not even gonna complain about the lack of a third color, I'm just gonna be happy that it's not an A-line party dress. 
And her hair & make-up is off the chain. Good look J. Hud.
But be careful sweatheart. As a busty lady myself, I can confirm first hand that when wearing low cleavage, you gotta be careful of accidential prison breaks.
MEAGAN GOODE rolled through, looking particularly sexed up.
T.I. was there promoting his latest community service event perhaps? Just kidding. The legally challenged mini rapper just announced a new reality show last week with MTV.
CHRIS BREEZY took tot he stage to challenge and lose a dance-off to host Mike Meyers.
I STILL lovin' the faux hawk, I don't care what anybody says.
And of course his "lady-friend" was in the building. But RIHANNA's choice of this bizarrly cut grey number is a bit questionable.
CUTE.
Ummmmph. The newly single DWAYNE JOHNSON came through to promote his new movie, Get Smart. Damn damn damn.
Damn damn damn damn...
And what is it about the California sun that makes even DIDDY look sexy?
And here he is posing with his lesbian friend.
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