Now We're Trapped In The Coolidge (Coolidge, Coolidge)

R. Kelly's Trapped In The Closet is the story of Sylvester, a hapless philanderer whose simple one-night stand with a preacher's wife leads him into a tangled and ever more preposterous web of lies, betrayal, asthmatic midgets, and telenovela-quality cliffhangers. Lauded by some (notably R. Kelly himself) as a work of genius and enjoyed by many as "the Plan 9 of music videos," this shamelessly operatic R&B melodrama has spawned its own Wikipedia entry, an Upright Citizens Brigade symposium, and a great many parodies: one of them a South Park episode involving a certain totally not gay Scientologist, but none of them funnier than the thing itself.

Why is Bostonist telling you all this? Because on the evening of April 28th, the Coolidge Corner Theatre is giving you, and us, and everyone we know a chance to experience R. Kelly's dadaist masterpiece on a huge screen, with bouncing-ball sing-along lyrics and unspecified props (we're hoping to pull out some berettas). Why are we telling you this two weeks in advance? So your crew has ample time to purchase tickets, reserve a Zipcar (or else find something to do in Brookline past 3 am), read the Cliffs Notes, and maybe rehearse with the DVD. Or just show up at the Coolidge and experience Chapters 1-12 for the very first time under the most surreal circumstances you could hope for: surrounded by your friends and neighbors singing, in unison, "Oh my god, a rubber."

Midnight on Friday, April 28th at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, Brookline. Tickets are $7.50, available online.