R. Kelly Party

Look, I'm not advocating turning 30… but if you HAVE to do it for whatever reason, do it with an R. Kelly party, 'cause the other night was a lot of fun.

I basically forgot it was my birthday. It was all about Kells, and that's how I wanted it. We projected his music videos on the walls: Trapped in the Closet, the religious tunes, sex jams, the radio hits, more sex jams, sing-alongs, his step dancing tracks, and still more sex jams, obviously.

Everyone should get laid off just before their birthday, because that gave me a lot of free time to prepare for the bash. For example, I homemade made a 6-foot tall R. Kelly cutout. I emptied a color ink cartridge on my home printer and butchered a piece of foam insulation in the process, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. People thought I had it professionally done, which is too kind of a compliment for how it looked, but I will accept the compliment considering how many hours I put into the damn thing.

With my sudden free time, I also made a bunch of "lyric hats" for everyone to wear. It was construction paper headwear that included some of the most absurd and raunchiest R. Kelly song lines, and I think it helped set the tone.

Then again, the tone was probably mostly set by everyone "sippin' on coke and rum". Thankfully, it got wild without turning into a shit-show… I'm going to chalk that up to the maturity that comes with 30!

There were water guns - some filled with water, some with rum - so that people could squirt on each other freely. Yellow streamers accentuated the doorways. And just when you thought all the urination jokes were complete, a sign on the restroom door restricted where (read: who) you could pee on.

My highlight of the night was when people brought out the cake and 40 people sang "Ignition" instead of "Happy Birthday." That transitioned into "Echo" "Real Talk" "Bump n Grind" "I Believe I Can Fly" and some step dancing. I barely dance at this stage of my life, but many of us were going for it. For as ridiculous as the man is, R. Kelly also makes some great music.


Fuck losing my job, I think I found my next career: party planning. I mean, I'd prefer it if people just hired me to do R. Kelly parties for them because I've got that one down and it's better than any other theme you'd dream up, but I suppose I could learn to make life-size cutouts of other things, too. THINK ABOUT IT.