plaintiff: debra from madison, wisconsin. ooh, i love when people come to fake television court dressed like it’s real. debra walks down the courtroom catwalk dressed in a pinstripe black suit paired with a periwinkle shirt, gold hoop earrings, gold chains, and a bunch of gold rings on her fingers. i fucking love it, she looks incredible. debra is a short, stocky middle-aged white woman with dyed auburn hair and a thick layer of gorgeous red blush and periwinkle eye shadow, details i find important to mention because i accidentally jumped ahead and saw what her boyfriend looks like.

breaking news! i have been mentioned in the press a couple of times recently, always a cause for deep mortification i mean joyful celebration, so please allow me to choke on my own fat cock for one minute: first, i got a shout out in variety for getting fucking fired from the television show shrill eight years ago; truly a hilarious and absurd situation that i had mostly forgotten about, and now i am irritated anew! second, emma sarappo from the atlantic (v smart, v journalistic, extremely legit magazine) is literally in love with me, therefore earning my undying love in return. not my silly piss-and-shit books gracing the same esteemed publication as ta-nehisi coates once did???

defendant: edward from milwaukee, wisconsin. THIS IS MY SON. this is the man that i gave birth to twenty-seven years ago after forest whitaker made tender, romantic love to me after hours on the set of ghost dog: the way of the samurai. no for real, this tall, husky bespectacled brother is an exact facsimile of the child that would spring forth fully formed from my brow after i swallowed his father if i was an ancient greek myth instead of a clown born in the 80s and raised on redd foxx. anyway, samantha irby jr is dressed in a black zip up sweater coupled with a black t-shirt and black slacks, an outfit samantha irby sr would wear every single day if she ever had to leave her home. like father, like son.

the complaint: debra says she met edward online and believed they were in an exclusive relationship, but claims she later learned he was also dating another woman. debra is suing edward for unpaid loans and half the cost of a vacation!

what does she want: $3021 (that is too specific to not be a real amount)

how it went down: debra says she met ed in june on BLACK PEOPLE MEET DOT COM. i just busted out laughing, not because i’m making fun of her, but guess who also fucked some fat black dudes off that website? i’m not gonna doxx anyone because i’m too broke to get sued but let’s just say every black person i know (of a certain age) including myself has hooked up with someone off that bpm. idk what it’s like now but back in the early 00s it was the place to find a sensitive, head-wrapped, chunky accessory-wearing vegetarian incense dude to kick it with for the night. everybody on there looked like fucking raheem devaughn and wore egyptian musk oil, it was an incredible time to be having casual sex!

i’ll tell you what, though: in my day there weren’t any white people on it? maybe a couple of jon b types with high fades and sculpted goatees snuck in, but i don’t remember seeing my local chase bank branch manager trolling for cock on there!!! the judge says, “i’m sorry, you met on what?” and debra says, louder this time and with more enunciation, “Black. People. Meet. Dot. Com.” greg is like, “that’s where you go to meet black people?” and debra says, “and also caucasian people!” not to gatekeep (yes, to gatekeep) but we had to go on there because white dudes on eharmony or wherever were never clicking on our black ass profiles. no one was logging on with the intention of running into their eleventh grade physics teacher! that’s fine girl, who fucking cares sleep with whoever you want, but i need miss debra to be honest about what color meat she was trying to introduce herself to.

greg says that even though it sounds prejudiced everyone is entitled to their preference, then asks debra if she wanted to meet white people, too. she replies, “my preference is black” and okay great i’m glad we got that out of the way! debra says that she and ed got serious as soon as they started dating, and that when they were intimate ed would start talking (the judge, interrupting: “what kind of talking? dirty talking?? what was he saying, is it safe for TV???”) about how she was the only one he wanted to be with. y’all know not to give any weight to the words coming out of the mouth of a person who has an appendage inside of you at the time, right? even if it sounds like real human words, that shit is gibberish and you should ignore it, especially if it sounds like some kind of offer or promise!

AND GREG AGREES. he stops debra and says, “ma’am, let me slow you down. you should know this, but anything said in the heat of intimacy isn’t necessarily true.” he asks edward if it meant any of the things he told her and edward says, “it was just something to say.” for real? why not just say something easy and noncommittal like, “damn, i love that thing you’re doing to my balls” or “hey, use this flashlight and show me where your clitoris is?” shiiiiiiit, i gotta come back next lifetime as a man. anyway debra says she’s not so naive that she’d believe anything he’d said during pillow talk, but isn’t that the foundation of her argument?

debra says that she and ed had talked about moving in together, and that ed was considering leaving the milwaukee police department (where he was a detective) and moving to madison to work in the justice department. they lived eighty miles apart, and debra says ed would often joke around asking her whether or not she’d found him a job yet; to me that just sounds like the kind of joke you make after spending an hour and a half on the highway with a hard dick, not a realistic indication of a potential career change. debra says that one day her ex-sister in law called her for a ride but she told her couldn’t pick her up because she was at her boyfriend’s house in milwaukee. the ex-SIL called a few weeks later just to chitchat, trying to catch up on the new boyfriend goss. debra told her that she was dating a milwaukee cop-turned-detective named ed. the ex-SIL asked for more details, then asked, “is his screen name ‘not into games?’” UH OH. debra told her it indeed had been her man’s online handle, and the ex-SIL said, “wow, i’m dating him, too.”

ed’s tactic is to paint the relationship as unserious by saying that he and debra slept together the same night they met, and that’s fucking cheap. we’re not still doing “she’s a slut, she fucked me on the first date” as an excuse for our shitty behavior, are we? ed says that after they started dating they both left their profiles active on the site, and every time he logged on debra would be on there, too. he makes it sound like she was only online to monitor when he was online and calls her a “stalker,” but that feels harsh? i’m never going to write a dissertation but if i did?? it would absolutely 100% be about the kind of borderline insane shit you do when you are fucking someone who doesn’t really like you that much. on second thought, maybe i’ve already done it.

edward says that debra found out he was on another site from her ex-SIL (doyle the bailiff: “was it meet white people dot com?”) and the next day debra made an account on that site and started sending him chat requests there asking what he was doing and why, if he had time to be online, he wasn’t talking to her. are any murders getting solved in milwaukee? is every fentanyl dealer locked up?? have all the missing children been found??? how does detective nomoregames have all this fucking screen time???? ed says he told debra that he needed space because she was “being a nuisance.” a human male? daring to brand me a nuisance??? i would take my own life!

the ruling: debra says she had planned a vacation to florida with an ex-boyfriend and when she mentioned it to ed he enthusiastically said, “i’d like to go!” she starts talking about how much the trip cost and how after they got back to wisconsin ed told her he didn’t have any money, then greg rudely and lowkey aggressively interrupts her to demand, “why would he have to pay if he was just a stand in for another man?”

okay i got confused, let’s run it back: debra told edward about her upcoming trip, ed said he wanted to go, nobody went. the way she originally worded it, both judge mathis and i thought she’d taken ed on the trip and when they got back he’d refused to give her any money. what actually happened was that ed called debra a week before the trip and said he couldn’t afford to go, and she wants her money back because that didn’t give her enough time to find someone else to take with her on vacation.

now, the loans:
$646 for his half of the trip (it’s unclear to me if he’s really on the hook for that?)
$677 for his energy bill (is this dude running 37 AC units at all times, or)
$298 for his cell phone
$896 for his plasma TV
$500 for his pockets
i’m sorry but this lady is too old to be getting worked like this. i’m not saying this from the top of my soapbox, i absolutely bought a fucking bonehead a playstation for christmas one year; the difference is that i was like nineteen at the time and my brain was made of room temperature unsalted butter. debra appears to be my current age, at minimum. if i buy a man a $900 television that will live in a house where i don’t, i will do so knowing full well that i am tricking. that man is going to try to pay for that TV with his dick, which i cannot apply to the best buy credit card i hastily opened to get 15% off this ill-advised purchase.

edward tries to say that these were all gifts debra insisted on giving him (oh yeah? she was just dying for you to watch the bucks game in 4K???) and greg calls bullshit on that pretty quickly. he does, however, hear ed out on the vacation of it all, because according to the judge a week is plenty of time to (black people) meet someone else to take with you on an all-inclusive vacation. judge mathis tells debra he won’t make ed pay for the aborted vacation but says if she’s that vexed about the other half of the money she should try to find and sue the guy who originally bailed on her, which is hilarious and cold as hell. judgment for debra despite that sick burn, and ACAB!!!!!!!!!!! (all cops are behindontheirphonebills)

did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: “ma’am, i guess it’s okay as long as you aren’t prejudiced against white people, we’re trying to get away from that in this society…………………….i bet you’re one of them obama voters, aren’t ya?”

bangs gavel

"girlies, rub on your titties"

plaintiff: shaun from lemay, georgia. shaun glides into the courtroom smooth as silk, wearing a black mandarin-collar dress shirt under a fitted black blazer, accented by sparkling diamond studs in each ear, a shiny gold watch, the glint of a gold bracelet peeking out from under his left cuff, and a beard so sharp you could use it to slice deli meat. he’s fancy!

defendant: royce from atlanta, georgia. royce is tall and lean, caramel-complected, with skinny auburn locs and a skinny auburn goatee. if these two were in a sexual relationship, i fully understand why. he’s gorgeous!

the complaint: shaun says he moved in with royce three months after they met (mm hmm) but claims he caught him dancing with another man at the club soon after. shaun says royce then vandalized his home, so he’s suing him for damaged property and a phone bill!

what does he want: $2413!! countersuit is in the building: royce would like $1102 for the cost of a TV!

how it went down: before we dive in, a little treat: my friend tim just released a podcast (stay with me, i promise it’s fucking cool even though he is a man) called judge travis, a scripted audio series about a fake TV judge who maybe kind of sort of a little bit bears a resemblance to a real fake TV judge with whom everyone reading this is intimately familiar. it’s comedy (we live in hell, trust i will never suggest anything serious ever) and stars two of the most hilarious and perfect dudes on this planet, langston kerman and my alternate universe husband bashir salahuddin. he’s incredible. i mean, watch this one, too. and this!! bashir’s not in this one, but it’s one of my favorite sequences in the entire series so you should watch it anyway. wait, why not just go watch every season of south side if you haven’t already? i’ll be here when you get back. back to our regularly scheduled programming!

shaun says that he met royce in january and they got close very quickly, so quickly that royce moved in with him in march. (that’s too quickly.) shaun says their relationship started to go downhill immediately after royce moved in; royce like to drink and party and stay out until five in the morning. greg says, “what was he doing until five in the morning?” and royce answers, “at the after hours spot,” which reminded me that i went to bed at midnight and was wide awake at three-thirty and i couldn’t even summon the strength to get up and use the bathroom, how in the world was dude partying until five??? i know the answer is “youth,” BUT: were we ever that young? royce should be in the olympics.

shaun says he popped up on royce at the after hours spot and caught him dancing with another man. greg, gay mess aficionado, eagerly asks, “like a lap dance?” shaun says no and he continues, “oh, were they dancing close all up on each other?” and diva??? please relax?????? shaun says that royce was dancing with his mouth near the man’s ear and his hands in his pants, and i just finished reading all six of the heated rivalry books so my brain immediately thought “stroking his rigid member as it strained against his tight jeans.” i gotta keep reading gay smut i guess, because now that i’m versed in the lexicon i no longer understand any other english words. if you’re not talking to me about a hot release splashing up your chiseled abs and coating your nipples, you are not talking to me.

shaun says he didn’t want to cause a scene, so he took royce outside and calmly told him to come remove his belongings (including his two dogs) from his apartment when he was done dancing. he did and they broke up. royce says that they weren’t together when he was dancing on the man at the club, because shaun had texted him while he was at work saying he no longer wanted to be with him. shaun cuts his eyes and warns, “be truthful!” in the same tone my mom used to hiss, “don’t touch a goddamn thing in here!” while digging her nails into my upper arm as we crossed the threshold of literally any store. that kind of shit is why i have mommy issues! i liked it :(

royce says that he knew shaun was talking to another man and disapproved of it, and greg puts his cape on and says, “how do you know he wasn’t talking to him about you? maybe he was bragging!” and yeah, okay, that is a thing that absolutely happens between young, attractive people! royce says that he went through their text messages and it seemed like the two of them were trying to rekindle a past romantic relationship so he assumed he was going to get dumped soon. superjudge once again dons his cape to defend shaun and i’m like, “does he know him?” innocent until proven guilty, for sure, but if you’re regularly talking to your ex about revisiting the good times you had together and i met you a scant twelve weeks ago, i don’t think it’s totally out of line to go spelunking in another man’s cave on the dance floor!

it’s february, did you know?, so lately i’ve been lulling myself to a fitful, inconsistent, overheated menopause night nap with the help of some dusties. it’s real night moods with mel devonne on v103 hours every night over here (in my headphones only, my lady goes to sleep at seven-thirty and i am not allowed to make noise). my birthday is on friday the 13th (it’s giving CURSED) and babyyyy i’m inching close to fifty, which is insane. first of all, why am i not dead? second, i still have the instincts and humor of a geriatric twelve-year-old boy, is that ever going to change? anyway, here’s some tunes if you’re trying to channel auntie late at night. THIS IS GROWN FOLKS’ MUSIC:
love won’t let me wait major harris
been so long anita baker (her best???)
you sure love to ball marvin gaye (this is a mother! fucking! jam!)
lady of magic maze and frankie beverly
love bankrupt patti labelle
ebony eyes rick james
you are my starship norman connors (remember when you could be a famous singer even though your name was fucking norman?!)
let me down easy the isley brothers
i try angela bofill
why have i lost you? cameo
tell me if you still care the s.o.s. band

judge mathis definitely has a quiet storm playlist on his ipod, right????? okay, royce says that in addition to the texting, he also saw shaun’s snapchat in which another man (presumably the ex?) was in the background in his bed. i know none of this matters because we’re here to talk about broken television sets and unpaid phone bills, but if i had to date right now i would pass away instead. first of all, i thought snapchat was over. second, the energy to chase someone from app to app to monitor their activity in an effort to ensure they aren’t cheating on you: where does one find the energy? i would give myself an aneurysm trying to analyze instagram stories and scan linkedin connections and read other people’s idiotic texts trying to discern their subliminal meanings. how do you find that many hours in a day? how do you protect yourself from getting scammed?? do you ever get to fucking relax??? imagine how trash my hinge profile would look, my stupid fucking jokes. i couldn’t do it, no way. if my lady leaves me one of you will have to mercy kill me with a hammer.

shaun is suing royce because royce disputed a cell phone payment he’d made with his bank (that is a clunky sentence but you’re smart, you get it) then broke his phone when he threw it at him. this was during the “pick your shit up” phase of the breakup, and shaun told royce that since he’d stopped payment on the phone he couldn’t also take the TV they’d gotten together. a few days later shaun went to st louis to visit his mother and royce broke into his house, destroyed the carpet and the television (jail!) and a bunch of clothing, then he stole his passport. three months in and they’re on a shared phone plan and already know where each other’s important documents are? i’ve been with my lady for thirteen years and she couldn’t tell you where my passport is with a gun to her head! she doesn’t know what my blood type is!! we have never shared a bank account!!! BRING BACK BEING A MYSTERY TO YOUR PARTNER.

the ruling: royce admitted to shaun that he’d reversed the payment on the phone bill out of spite and he admits as much to the judge today in court. he also copped to breaking into shaun’s house and tearing it up, and that’s really honorable but he’s gonna have to pay for that. i hope it at least felt good in the moment? as far as his counterclaim is concerned, royce has proof that his mother was the one who purchased the television set (boring receipts!) and text messages in which he and shaun were arguing back and forth and shaun told him that he would give royce the TV in exchange for the phone (fun receipts!) he threw at him and broke. everyone gets everything, but shaun gets a little more.

standing in the hallway with doyle the bailiff after the case, the tension between these two is so thick i can actually see it on my computer screen. they both wish each other the best (they don’t mean it!!!) and shaun gives royce the runner-up coldest “good luck” of all time.

did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: to shaun “ooh, he’s so jealous! you must’ve really put it on him, huh?”

speaking of putting it on somebody, a few more bangers to get you right:
key to love (is understanding) the majestics
you’re still a young man tower of power
feel the fire peabo bryson
games people play the spinners
irons in the fire teena marie

*bangs gavel*

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plaintiff: ramaar from calumet city, illinois. WHO IS THIS DIVA? ramaar sashays down the courtroom catwalk™ in a brown argyle sweater vest layered over a crisp white dress shirt paired with grey slacks. ramaar is wearing chic metal frames, his hair is in neat rows of perfect little tiny twists, and he has what can only be described as a “thick goatee.” you know how some gentleman have a beard that’s so fine it looks like it was sketched on with a marker? ramaar has the complete opposite of that: a lush and full chinchilla pelt keeping his upper lip warm, the kind you can imagine gently brushing the skin on the insides of your [REDACTED]. i bet he uses beard oil!!

defendant: carson from chicago, illinois. i love when there are gay people on here, because no one loves gay people and mess more than gregory ellis mathis. carson strides into the room (he is switching so hard i’m surprised he hasn’t dislocated a hip???) wearing a black dress shirt and jeans with an embroidered design on them, like the pair i wore to my eighth grade graduation. he’s very tall, and very bald, and he’s bringing his documents to court in a manila file folder???? i thought they handed out accordions of truth™ to every contestant before they walked onto the set, like a consolation prize in advance. this is shocking to me! how is he expecting to keep everything together without that elastic string?

the complaint: ramaar started dating carson after they met online, and he says their relationship was volatile from the start. ramaar says he eventually kicked carson out of his home and, in retaliation, carson assaulted him and broke his glasses and then stole his gorgeous fur coat!!! outrageous.

what does he want: $5000! the maximum!! countersuit filed: carson would also like $5000, for unspecified “bills” and emotional distress!!!

how it went down: ramaar says he originally met carson online (please god i need to know what site) and they lost touch but reconnected four years later. gotta pause here and tell you two things: 1 my A key is acting weird and not always typing and i’m not irritated yet, but as soon as i am i will not be going back to fix all the missing As i apologize in advance, and 2 he talked to a guy he’d met on adult friend finder (let’s pretend) four years after making his initial acquaintance? in what world! my sister was meeting men to fuck on there years and years ago, and i had no freaking idea what that site even was when she casually asked if i wanted to look at her “dating profile.” of course i said i did, i would love to make fun of whatever movies she lied and said she was into or how she described her bad personality, but when she handed me her phone my eyeballs fell out of my fucking head after they were immediately assaulted by the profile picture of her dinner plate areolae and her frank declaration that she was “looking for a man to pound [her] throat hard and raw.” let me fucking tell you something: i wanted to die. first of all………………we have the same mom??!!?!?! second, what do those words mean when all put together like that??? is your throat hard and raw? is his penis both hard and raw?? or when you say “pound” do you actually mean you want someone to punch you in your neck??? up to that point i’d only been on okcupid and the other one that’s secretly religious propaganda, and even though i am depraved i was scandalized!

ramaar says that once they reconnected he and carson jumped headfirst into a relationship, and everything was going smoothly until carson’s mother moved in with them. HOLD UP. they got together in the first week of february, moved in together on the 15th of february, then his mama moved in a couple weeks after that? what are they, lesbians?!??! greg is also concerned, and says that the number one piece of dating advice he gives is “know people before you move them in.” i’ve known my lady for 13+ years and at least once a week i still fantasize about renting a side apartment for myself, carson moved in after two scant weeks? nothing good can come of that!

carson interjects, saying ramaar asked him to move in because he was scared to be in the house alone, and ramaar interjects back (?) that he invited carson to move in because he was over at his house every night anyway. carson says ramaar had an itty bitty dog that was supposed to protect him but she didn’t (someone knocked on the door a couple days ago and our stinky little dog abraham made a big show of unburying himself from under the duvet only to investigate nothing and sit hysterically barking from his spot in the bed, so i can relate to owning a small, useless dog) so ramaar asked carson to move in so he could bite any would be trespassers.

commercial break: would you maybe want to talk to me for charity? my best pal emmy kastner is helping to organize a publishing community auction whose proceeds will go to immigrant communities in minnesota, and i agreed to zoom with whoever bids the most money to gossip with me about dumb shit for thirty minutes. the starting bid is a hundred bucks, and i need you to know that i did not set that price, but i will try my best to make it worth it!! other industry people are offering manuscript critiques or behind the scenes publishing info but come on now, i am not doing any of that! bid on those people if you want to know how to write a riveting query!! i’m down to talk about pretty much anything; you can ask me questions, tell me your deepest secrets, take your shirt off, whatever you want. the auction will be live january 28 at midnight, and pretty please someone bid on this so i don’t look like a stupid fucking asshole in front of my friend. now back to our regularly scheduled programming!

ramaar says that he and carson had a volatile relationship and says carson was never really violent, he was just detrimental and emotionally abusive. carson yells from across the courtroom, “LIES and DECEIT! you were emotionally abusive to YOURSELF!” and he might be proving ramaar’s point. carson says he lost contact with ramaar after their first encounter on purpose, because there was zero attraction to him at all. (emphasis his!) carson says that ramaar would call him every now and again to check in and eventually he just gave in and decided “to do some charity work.” that’s some cold shit, and the judge absolutely loves it. he can’t stop laughing.

carson continues, saying that his mother moved in for a short time while she was waiting for her apartment to get ready. carson says that shortly after she moved in he started to notice that ramaar was getting “nasty text messages” and naked pictures. when i first heard nasty texts my mind went to fighting, but of course carson is talking about seXXXts. ramaar exclaims, “he was going through my personal stuff!” and carson says that he saw how many messages ramaar was getting and made a joke about it, and when ramaar was angry and defensive in response he knew that something was up and went snooping through his phone. what, no passwords? the only spicy things in my phone are approximately one hundred hours of heated rivalry edits, and even i have a passcode on my shit! if my phone was dinging with spread labial folds every five minutes i would keep it in a safe!!!

judge mathis says, “let me give you some advice i give to all mates: if you go looking for something and violate your person’s privacy, you are going to end up hurting your own feelings.” amen, brother. ramaar snaps, “if you go looking for something, you’re gonna find it” then greg adds, “and probably misinterpret it!” that is very generous? i’m not sure how you’d misinterpret another man’s balls in your boyfriend’s inbox, but what the hell do i know. the judge asks carson if he saw texts about ramaar hooking up with other men, and when he says yes ramaar interrupts to tell us that those texts were old as hell, also how did he get into his phone anyway? i, too, would love to know this! espionage seems so fun!!

carson says he didn’t misinterpret a damn thing because the messages were explicit, including one that said, “this [redacted] is wet and ready for you.” well, okay! greg cannot contain his glee and busts out laughing, as does the entire audience, and now i have unlocked a new fear: having something i wrote when i was attempting to sound sexy referenced aloud in front of a group of bored chicagoans who had nothing better to do on a weekday afternoon than go to the nbc building downtown and watch people fight each other over $45.

this argument about the text messages devolved into a physical altercation when carson’s mother chiquita got between them and ramaar looked like he was about to strike her, causing carson to preemptively punch him in the face and break his glasses. ramaar told carson and his mother to move out of his house, which carson says they did that same evening but ramaar claims it took them three days. that’s a not insignificant difference! ramaar claims that once carson finally got all of his stuff moved it, he took inventory and discovered his fur coat was missing. ramaar enters a picture of himself wearing the fur coat into evidence, and it’s the greatest thing i have ever seen; i didn’t go to my prom, but you know those prom pictures that have the blue sears portrait backdrop with two moody teens posing in front of it? ramaar’s photo looks exactly like that, except he is a full grown adult and he’s making fuck me eyes at the camera. exquisite!

carson says if he’d have stolen ramaar’s coat he would’ve waltzed into the courtroom wearing it today, and goddamn i wish we were friends. he’s so fucking funny. also, i just noticed that he is wearing a leather belt with a bejeweled cheetah as the buckle?? i am obsessed with him, what a perfect person! okay carson explains that he’d brought a cedar chest to ramaar’s house and stored all their coats together inside it, and when ramaar told him to move out he boxed up his coats and threw ramaar’s on the floor. ramaar isn’t offering any proof of theft; he has a bunch of police reports, but they’re all for domestic disputes, not robbery. they were together for a total of seventeen minutes and accrued six separate police reports?? that is absurd??? sounds like somebody needs to reactivate their grindr profiles!!!

the ruling: the judge tells ramaar he hasn’t brought anything concrete that shows him carson stole his coat, and ramaar says “either he has it, or his mother has it,” prompting chiquita to gasp and whip around in her witness chair to glare at him. greg says, “if that’s true then you just blew your case” and come on man, you have to be savvier than this! either sue them both or pretend his mom isn’t there, otherwise you’ll lose both your floor-length possum fur coat and this court case.

ramaar pivots and tells the judge that carson destroyed things in his house but unfortunately for him he’s not suing for those things today, but then his homegirl that’s with him jumps up and starts yelling at carson about all the bad shit he did to him, then carson starts yelling (louder) that ramaar’s house was in foreclosure and he paid all the bills when they were living together. ramaar’s homegirl keeps yelling (even louder) at carson about what a terrible person he is, and carson continues to yell back (loudest of all) “HE’S POOR. HE’S POOR. HE’S POOR. HE’S POOR.” judge mathis is happier than a pig in shit, giggling and kicking his feet like this is the best day of his life. marie-kondo-i-love-mess dot gif!!

carson and homegirl escalate and start roasting each other’s looks, and greg is straight up delighted but come on man we’re going off the rails here, let’s wrap this UP. homegirl starts calling carson tacky and then, under her breath, she calls him a “sissy.” LGBTQIA+ advocate gregory mathis is not going to tolerate homophobia of any sort, and he shouts “i heard you use that slur!” and boots her out of the courtroom, which is exhilarating. judge mathis said GAY RIGHTS, bitch!!!!!! carson tries to tell the judge about the bills he paid (apparently he couldn’t live without cable TV and ramaar couldn’t afford it) and was never compensated for but we’re done here. carson gets a $500 bone for his emotional distress (blah blah police report blah) and ramaar gets nothing but the rest of the dog to go make a replacement coat with.

did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: “and he said the little dog wasn’t working, so he had to bring in the big dog!!!!”

*bangs gavel*

plaintiff: trennette from houston, texas. trennette glides into the courtroom in a pair of tight white cigarette pants and one of those v-neck sweaters with the fake camisole built in, and when the hell are we bringing those back? i hate wearing two shirts, but every now and then i wouldn’t mind serving two-shirt illusion! her sweater is black with a piece of white fabric (what is that called?) sticking out of the v with another piece of white fabric sewn under the bottom hem. she looks so chic, especially since she got a fresh silk press on her way to the studio. her hair is fucking laid, her glasses make her look extremely smart, and her undershirt isn’t bunching up or twisting around or statically sticking to her sweater because it doesn’t exist. she’s already a winner.

defendant: joseph from chicago, illinois. joseph stunts his way into the courtroom with a fresh fade/goatee trim, wearing a dark slate suit coupled with a dove grey shirt and deep grey tie. is this maybe the fanciest suit that has ever been modeled on daytime television? he looks like he’s going to church on easter! haha what if an angel had rolled the stone away from the tomb and found a $200 double-breasted wool blend suit inside? i love this, peacocking onto a fake courtroom set in your best man suit from your brother’s wedding three years ago. joseph clearly likes the way he looks, i guarantee it.

the complaint: trennette and joseph used to be in a relationship, but she broke up with him because he cheated on her and now she is suing him for an unpaid loan!

what does she want: $2000

how it went down: trennette says that she and joseph reconnected a few years ago when she was looking for an apartment and joseph happened to be the leasing agent. this is a terrible idea, even before i find out how badly he wronged her. you can’t date the dude who runs your credit check and calls all your old landlords to confirm you paid on time +/- didn’t destroy the radiator and knows both where you work and might eventually live, depending on what that slumlord with the roach problem says about your history. that’s too much of a power imbalance!! no good can come from romantically entertaining a man who already knows your credit score!!!!!

turns out trennette didn’t lease the place, but she did get a dinner invitation from the lessor. she says everything was great with joseph at first, they had fun hanging out and discovered they had a bunch of mutual friends from high school. she describes him as “a good guy, a real charmer” who would often cook dinner for her and run bubble baths. the dinners sound nice but fuck that bath business. doesn’t everybody have, like, bathroom stuff they need to do before getting in the tub? i’m not even talking about pooping and peeing although of course you need to do those things too, i mean i don’t want to brush my teeth while scrolling on my phone in the moist, swampy air created by fifty gallons of boiling water that smells like eucalyptus!

trennette says she and joseph dated for a relatively short time, and when the judge asks why they broke up she says, “probably for the same reason we shouldn’t have gotten together in the first place.” why, because he didn’t warn you about the lack of water pressure in the shower? afraid not, it seems that joseph started this new relationship with trennette without being fully disentangled from his previous one. tsk tsk! trennette says one night they were eating the dinner he’d made when his phone started blowing up, one call after another after another. he ignored the ringing phone (why! the jig is up!!) until eventually the doorbell started frantically ringing.

why is everyone dumb? here’s how i would’ve played it: okay so trennette is at my crib, relaxing on my plush couch with her feet up, gorgeous and sexy smooth jazz playing softly from a shitty bluetooth speaker. i’m in the kitchen, wearing a tuxedo, cooking this crispy chicken and brussels sprouts meal i make so often i could do it in my sleep, but she doesn’t have to know that!! i’m making a fancy salad with herbs, i’m opening whatever wine the man at the fancy liquor store told me to buy, i’m serving it on my fanciest plates at the dining table i never use with a couple taper candles i keep around for if the power goes out. we’re eating, we’re eating and we’re laughing, we’re eating and we’re laughing and we’re sipping our wine and then my phone rings, but neither of us knows it because that shit is silently on do not disturb face down on the kitchen counter. as far as trennette knows, i don’t even own a fucking cell phone! we’re having a great meal that i cooked, the conversation is off the charts because i’m so funny and charming, and i’ve retrieved my phone to switch the playlist from dinner accompanying smooth jazz to sexual relations accompanying smooth jazz, when all of a sudden our foreplay is interrupted by an impatient knock on the door. i glance at my missed calls: shit, my old bitch was blowing my shit up, and now she’s about to act a fool on my fucking porch. i tell trennette to relax, pour her a digestif, and tell her i have to run out and get one of the components i need for our dessert. i’m not making dessert, but she doesn’t fucking know that!!! bye, bitch!!!!!!! i slip outside, and the first thing i do is tell that other woman to stop banging on my fucking door has she lost her fucking mind??? i tell her that my homies are over watching the game (it doesn’t matter which one) and that she’s embarrassing me in front of my friends. “you expect me to believe that? i can hear you playing lewis taylor’s under-appreciated 2002 smash from the day we met part 2! you’re playing that for a friend you don’t wanna have sex with?” this is where i laugh like “girl you so crazy” and take her hand before gently leading her to her car, mumbling something about needing to restock the bar before halftime is over. she still doesn’t quite believe me, but what’s she gonna do, break the door down? i tuck her into her car and watch as she drives away, before getting in my car and driving around the block because of course i forgot my wallet and can’t go to the store. i return home where trennette has been sneakily looking through my stuff trying to figure out whether or not i’m a piece of shit, pretend not to notice that my dresser drawers are a little askew and my phone is locked down after too many password attempts, then we start ripping each other’s clothes off. oh, you thought she wasn’t gonna fuck me? you underestimate the power of anita baker’s been so long!!

the ruling: hold up, i wrote that fanfiction while the episode was paused and as soon as i clicked play again trennette was in the middle of saying “i looked at his phone and jotted the number down because i knew i would need it for future reference.” am i psychic? the look on joseph’s face is like she just admitted to being an alien, lolllll i guess he didn’t know. trennette says that they continued to date for four or five months until one day she was in his apartment alone and went to throw out a kleenex and saw a used condom in the wastebasket in his bedroom. that kind of arrogance is soooooo crazy to me, brother you didn’t have a mcdonald’s bag you could ball up to conceal it? was walking a few yards to the gross kitchen trash that no one would ever go through too hard??? if i have something to hide in the trash i’m cleaning out the cat box on top of it, i’m dumping out the rotted leftovers, i’m puking in there—whatever i gotta do. trennette used the number she had saved and called it, and joseph’s ex-girlfriend answered and admitted everything to her. trennette says she ended the relationship, but if she really had we wouldn’t be here seeing about this money.

joseph says the real reason they broke up is because her family “attacked him after the accident.” EXCUSE ME, WHAT ACCIDENT? joseph says that the two of them were in the car, he was driving, and they were broadsided. trennette interjects to say that joseph was driving with a goddamn attitude (my words) because she wouldn’t stay the night, and he ran a light while attempting a left turn and they were t-boned on trennette’s side. joseph starts double-talking the way people do when they’re lying, saying that the relationship wasn’t over at the time of the crash and then trennette got married behind his back (JUICY!!!!!!!!), but trennette says that she didn’t get married until much later because SHE WAS IN A GODDAMN COMA.

my brother in christ, my daddy would’ve jumped on you in the hospital, too! a coma??? shit, every generation past and present would rain fire on that hospital!!! trennette says that joseph only visited her once during the months she was in a coma and her family thought that maybe he’d caused the accident on purpose. that seems like a stretch? but i get it, your kid is comatose and the man she was with at the time she was hurt isn’t pulling any shifts at her bedside, of course your imagination cooks up the most diabolical explanations.

trennette says that she was in the hospital for five months (omg) and is permanently disfigured and disabled on her right side. and she still loaned him money after this? god bless, it couldn’t be me. trennette says she prayed on it and decided to talk to joseph again because she had empathy for how he must be feeling after having caused another person permanent damage. i’d be in a psych ward somewhere if i put somebody in a coma, but does joseph actually feel guilty? it doesn’t seem like he does!

they were in the process of repairing a friends-only relationship when joseph fell on some hard times. trennette was doing pretty good, so she offered to loan him money, with the caveat that he had to provide her with a promissory note. joseph says they spent the day together and went out for a lovely dinner, after which they went to his house and “one thing led to another.” he says that when he woke up the next morning trennette had left two thousand dollars on his nightstand, like he was a gigolo. OKAY SIR i, too, have seen the movie boomerang. get outta here!!!!! joseph says that he felt great, like she was saying “job well done!” trennette asks him if that were the case, why did he then sign a promissory note? (do you guys think he signed it with his penis)

joseph says he has no recollection of signing a promissory note but come on man, this is a lady who wrote down a random number calling your phone, you think she doesn’t have a copy of that note in every room of her house??? trennette gives greg the note, he gives it to joseph, asking if that is indeed his signature, then joseph stares intently at the sheet of paper for a few seconds before sighing heavily. yeah, just like we thought. judgment for the plaintiff!!!!!!!!!

did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: “so what you’re saying is, he was fixing up bubble baths for more women than just you?”

*bangs gavel*

stuff some stockings!

plaintiff: rachaundra from springfield, illinois. springfield is the state capitol, as every eighth grader who was forced into a fieldtrip to rub abraham lincoln’s golden nose is well aware. rachaundra glides into the courtroom in a black cowl shirts, the kind where the cowl is so loose from a distance it looks like a v-neck? jail. put them in the same cell as boatnecks and cold shoulders! rachaundra has a fresh white manicure, glittering diamonds in her ears, and hair that can only be described as: bayangg.

defendant: ebonie from springfield, illinois. ebonie is serving director of the children’s choir at mount zion ame church realness in a soft 80s pantsuit (remember those? like, an electric teal, super floppy, too-big feminine suit? god, take me back) over a gorgeous silk shell covered in an eyewateringly-bright auntie print.

the complaint: rachaundra says she and ebonie got into a fight, and ebonie tried hitting rachaundra with her car, so now she is suing!

what does she want: $4491 countersuit filed! ebonie would like $2864 for car damages, which is the funniest thing i’ve ever heard in my life. imagine the tememrity to drive your car at someone and then sue them for the damage to your car? what did rachaundra do, get too much blood and brain on it???

how it went down: rachaundra says that she met ebonie back in 2010, when she started dating [ebonie’s] child’s father. okay, the human bumper cars of it all is beginning to make more sense knowing that. rachaundra said there were no issues between them until ebonie tried to get back with dude a few years later. at the same time he got incarcerated (they haven’t said his name!), ebonie started “going around town telling people” and posting on social media that she and the young man in question were sleeping together.

who are you guys friends with on instagram? i follow too many people but thankfully my algorithm mostly shows me the meme pages i like, but i don’t know that i’d need to follow my man’s ex? everyone should be cool, because kids don’t deserve to live in uncool circumstances of their parents’ creation, but does that extend to what bitch’s tweets you look at?? how did they even get to that point???

ebonie says that not only has she never posted about messing around with her child’s father online, but clarifies that she in fact does not want him back, thank you very much. ebonie says that their conflict stems from rachaundra’s jealousy of her easygoing relationship with (let’s name him something fun that is absolutely not his name) bob, and that they haven’t been romantic with each other in ages, they’re just good coparents. greg asks rachaundra if she has any proof of bob’s cheating and, if so, what happened when she asked him about it. that’s right, gregory devonte mathis says WOMEN’S RIGHTS. rachaundra says the proof she found was text messages from ebonie to bob, and that when rachaundra confronted him about them, he went and confronted ebonie. okay then!

ebonie contends that not of this is true, that rachaundra is the one who is harassing her. ebonie says that at one point rachaundra would wake up every morning and immediately tag her in multiple nasty posts on facebook or instagram. that dedication to her wrath is admirable, especially for an amateur hater such as myself. i don’t think i even brush my teeth with that kind of frequency. rachaundra denies it, but luckily ebonie has several printed out status update sheets™ tucked into her accordion of truth™. the judge reads them out loud but they’re heavily bleeped and the camera isn’t on his face, but in one of them rachaundra warns the men of springfield to be careful what kind of bitches they have kids with and tagged ebonie. she also tagged her in another in which she called her children ugly (do they not? share half their dna?? with your man???) and another where she just typed a bunch of fist emojis, also with her tagged. that last one is fucking funny. like a virtual “put up your dukes.” ol’ i’m gonna give you a knuckle sandwich ass.

rachaundra says that on halloween her boyfriend threw a get together at his father’s house, to which ebonie and her witness in court showed up uninvited. the boyfriend and his father asked them to leave, but they refused to do so quietly. ebonie says she had no idea that bob was even having a party, she was just there so that the witness (her cousin) could talk to her boyfriend, who was inside. when ebonie refused to leave the premises rachaundra stepped between ebonie and bob to confront her, and their ensuing argument “got physical for a couple of minutes.” a couple minutes is really a long fucking time if you count the seconds in punches. the built-in two-minute timer on my electric toothbrush feels interminable and all i’m doing is sitting there daydreaming, i cannot imagine spending that same amount of time repeatedly getting duffed over and over in my fucking face????

after someone broke the two of them apart ebonie pulled out a can of mace and maced rachaundra’s friend which, i’m sorry, makes me a little skeptical about her claim that she wasn’t interested in having a fight. rachaundra says that after she maced her friend, ebonie jumped into her car and attempted to hit rachaundra, and as she ducked behind her nearby parked car for safety, ebonie laid her foot on the gas and drove straight into it. this is the kind of person i am in my fantasies, zoned out in the middle of the night with my robot toothbrush: a woman who would see a bitch she hates on the other side of a 2500-pound car and try to run her over through that sonofabitch. how exciting must that have been to watch! that’s movie of the week type shit!! rachaundra says that ebonie backed up and then re-smashed into her car several more times—reverse-ram! reverse-ram! reverse-ram!—until she tuckered herself out. again, while i could never actually be ebonie for real, how great would it be to have the balls on this lady for maybe like forty-five minutes or so? a couple hours at most?? i wouldn’t want to live like this forever (frankly, it’s unsustainable!) but i’d take an afternoon of reckless abandon armed with a full mace can and zero consideration for consequences. i mean who among us could resist???

ebonie drove off and rachaundra called the police, and she’s brought the report with her to court today. the judge asks ebonie if this is true and she laughs (what a gangster) before essentially saying “kind of.” ebonie contends that rachaundra was actually the one going after her, and the only reason she hit her car was because she was trying to escape. ebonie says that as soon as she and her cousin arrived, rachaundra and her friends started coming after them with weapons (a knife, a hennessey bottle) and seemed like they’d been spoiling for a fight before they even got there. when greg asks ebonie why she didn’t just leave she says that she didn’t want to leave her cousin behind.

judge mathis isn’t really buying ebonie’s innocent act, and he asks cousin charlene (finally, a secondary character gets a goddamn name!) if she really needed to talk to her baby daddy during the halloween party of ebonie’s sworn enemy, or if she suggested it so they could go over there and set some shit off. charlene says that she did actually, she needed to go to the house to get some money from her dude. greg hates this lady instantly and i’m not quite sure why, but it’s clear that he has decided in the fourteen seconds he’s known her that this is all her fault because she really didn’t have an urgent need to talk to him, she just wanted to go over and get in homeboy’s business and be messy.

okay charlene is dismissed (what if these girls are lowkey the good wife and ebonie just brought charlene as a misdirect because she knew the judge would offload the blame onto her) and ebonie says that she did mace rachaundra’s friend, and when she did she accidentally maced herself. apparently rachaudra seized the opportunity and jumped on ebonie, then she and the friend tag-teamed emily until bob came over and broke up the fight. ebonie gets in her car to leave but rachaundra is wound up and dives into her open car door to keep fighting. ebonie, who was still blinded by secondhand mace, tried to flee and ended up hitting rachaundra’s car a couple times in the process.

i thought ebonie’s countersuit was going to be for car damages incurred during this little incident but thank the god of all hallow’s eve it’s somehow even better: one day ebonie was driving around with bob and they happened to see rachaundra while they were in the car. rachaundra immediately started tailing them. bob asked ebonie to drop him off at his dad’s house, but when they arrived he wouldn’t get out of the car because rachaundra had pulled up right behind them. eventually bob told ebonie to just keep driving and when she did rachaundra crashed her car into theirs. is this a real thing we are doing now, throwing cars around like nerf balls? i wouldn’t even gently toss my phone at someone and risk damaging it (my apple care expired years ago), how are they so cavalier about playing bumper cars with real ones???

the ruling: the judge asks rachaundra for her side and she says, “yep, my boyfriend lied to me about where he was and who he was with so i followed her to confront him.” okay, my sister in christ, wow. most people would at least send a foreboding “we gotta talk” text to make them sweat a little before they resorted to direct surveillance, but these girls are too tuff for that, i guess! she says that when ebonie eventually noticed her behind them she slammed on her brakes, forcing rachaundra to crash into the back of her car. these stories are so wildly different, i can’t stop fucking laughing.

ebonie gives the judge a witness statement from a person who lives on the street where the accident took place, and he basically says that rachaundra’s black suv hit the back of ebonie’s beige sedan, twice. but if ebonie brake-checked her is it actually rachaundra’s fault? never gonna find out the answer to that question, because rachaundra ended up in jail over this and greg wants to talk about that. he asks if ebonie went to jail for the damage she caused, and rachaundra says, “no because she was on the run for child endangerment, she had a warrant and they couldn’t find her because she was on the run.” what is this, one of my beloved $7000-budget tubi classics?

ebonie tries to gloss over the police report of it all, but it turns out that she was also charged and booked? rachaundra says their dueling court cases got continuance after continuance until finally the judge told the two parties he would dismiss them if they promised to fuck off and leave each other alone. greg calls bullshit and says the legal system doesn’t work like that, and he presses until rachaundra mumbles the words “suspended sentence” and the judge yells, “SO YOU ADMITTED YOU DID IT.” he turns to ebonie and asks if she too received a suspended sentence, and she hems and haws before finally saying, “i admitted to them that i did it” and greg snaps, “SO YOU DID.” in a kind of dad rage, judge mathis yells that they’ve wasted their time arguing in his courtroom over a man who couldn’t even be bothered to show up and he is now suspending this case, judgment for no one. that was a mean trick, but don’t worry here’s your treat: you can watch the tuca and bertie halloween episode i wrote in bed on your computer!!

did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: “‘girl please?’ it ain’t no girl please, it’s girl bye. go sit down!”

*bangs gavel*

ps, 300 of these??? i should get a life!

plaintiff: laura from palatine, illinois. laura slides into the courtroom wearing one of my least favorite articles of clothing: the dreaded popover blouse. i have never, ever seen one that looks good. and that’s not a knock on gorgeous laura, it is a failure of design. for those who are unfamiliar and unwilling to google (i get it), what i’m talking about is basically a feminine button down shirt but without most of the buttons. on purpose. you get a collar and a v-neck and weird darts in the best and usually some kind of curved hem that looks weird when you tuck it in? and, if you’re lucky, you get some stretch built in somewhere so it doesn’t explode off your body like the hulk when you turn your torso. conceptually i understand the idea of a dress shirt that solves the breasts-straining-against-the-material-bra-revealing-button-gap dilemma, but sadly this is not it. laura’s is neon raspberry and is equipped with bracelet-length sleeves, another useless invention, unless you really love showing off your wrist cleavage.

defendant: antonio from palatine, illinois. antonio is my kind of fella, a burly teddy bear type with a mustache and glasses and a nice smile. he’s wearing a white dress shirt and blue tie under a deep navy sweater vest, the same outfit as your elementary school principal!

the complaint: laura says she was impressed with antonio when they met and they subsequently got engaged, but she claims he became controlling and isolated her and now she’s suing for the down payment on a car!

what does she want: $3000.

how it went down: laura says she and antonio were introduced by a mutual friend and antonio macked to her by telling her he’d tried out multiple times for american idol. first of all, she should be suing katy perry. laura says antonio used to sing to her all time, like “on [her] birthdays and stuff.” listen if we’re dating and you can sing, i should be hearing you singing while washing the dishes or taking the dog out, not waiting for your annual jazzed-up rendition of the birthday song??? you know how absolutely humiliating it is to be sitting there waiting for people to stop singing “happy birthday” to you, imagine what it must be like to sit through his version. like this but way worse, and probably without the benefit of a guitar. what are you supposed to do while the person you intend to marry ~performs~ the birthday song in their best fantasia barrino impersonation (“happy BIRTH-daaAaaAAaay, ooOoOOooOOoh happy biIIIiiiIiIIIiiiiirth-dayyyyyyyyyyy” i dare you to tell me you can’t hear this in your head) but BAD? do you just………….smile politely and pray for it to be over?? how is one expected to comport herself under such mortifying circumstances? i’d throw myself out the fucking window. but maybe don’t listen to my ass, this is the only happy birthday song i recognize.

the judge asks her, “can he sing?” and, with a sly smile, antonio interjects, “YES I CAN” and what is the medical term for that feeling of anticipatory secondhand embarrassment that just wrapped its slimy tentacles around my throat? i’ve never hit pause on a video faster, because if he sings in this courtroom today i cannot hear it. if this man CROONS in front of judge GREG MATHIS i will have to go lie down in the street. phew, he doesn’t sing (thank you god), and when the judge asks him how far he got in the show antonio says, “only the second round, because they loved my voice but hated my appearance.” okay well, i still don’t want him to burst into song but fuck them he’s cute!

greg asks laura “would you have dated him if he wasn’t on american idol or were you banking on his future success?” as she is sweetly answering “of course,” antonio is on the other side of the room loudly saying “i wouldn’t have dated her if i’d known she was a stripper” and i’m sorry, WHAT. this woman looks like a preschool teacher, i never would’ve guessed that dumb blouse was hiding an open-cup bra and pierced nipples, and boy do i love this unexpected plot twist. also, is my man sure “getting paid to look hot in skimpy underwear” is that much more shameful than “didn’t even make it to the televised portion of a singing show people stopped caring about ten years ago?” imagine bragging about being on american idol when you didn’t even get to meet ryan seacreast in the lobby. laura tries valiantly to carry on (she liked him for his personality, which is kind of her to say) but judge mathis lives for mess, so he stops her to ask about her pole dancing career. she refuses to take the bait, saying, “that was a long time ago, before i went to the military” and there’s no faster way to shut shit down than invoking the united states army, sir yes sir!

blazing right ahead, laura says that antonio proposed to her and the way he did it was “incredibly corny.” the judge loves that, so he asks her to explain. her explanation is a little confusing to me but the gist of it is that antonio asked her to download an app and when she put her finger on it “will you marry me” popped up on the screen. i don’t think that sounds so bad (remember when people were into flash mobs?) until i hear antonio’s response, which is basically “i didn’t want to do it in a restaurant.” yeah i get it, and nothing is worse than being publicly serenaded by a man full of steak while he wobbles on his knees, but i feel like those aren’t the only two options? on the spectrum of popping the question there has to be something between on a phone or choking on the ring hidden in your dessert that could satisfy them both. laura says she would’ve preferred that antonio use his words rather than his iphone, but then says that she said yes anyway. i wonder did she text him her answer? swipe right in the app?? send him a thumbs up emoji???

laura says that after they got engaged antonio let his jekyll out and became controlling, forbidding her from hanging out with her girlfriends (who would obviously encourage her to cheat on him), having guyfriends (with whom she would definitely cheat on him), and even her family (gotta keep her away from them sexy cousins, i guess). the judge looks at antonio like MAN WHAT THE HELL and antonio says, “well, considering her former profession…” and fuck him all the way to hell with that. for one thing, dancers don’t have sex for money (“yes, they do”) and even if they choose to who cares? also this dude is so fucking stupid because, like…………………..if i could get paid to fuck strangers whyyyyy would i fuck my homeboys for free? as a matter of fact, the last thing i wanna do after fucking at my job is go home and fuck off the clock??? you don’t see people receptioning at home, antonio!

antonio says that from the beginning he was a victim of a “classic crime”: baby daddy doesn’t want to be there, prince charming comes along (to be clear, he is calling himself that), baby daddy comes crawling back saying he loves her and wants the kid back, and then boom antonio is out on his ass. antonio corroborates most of what laura said in regard to their relationship, but he adds that they broke up once before really breaking up for real this time, and after they got back together he was “looking for scissors” in laura’s bathroom drawer and happened upon PRINTED OUT DIRECTIONS TO DUDE’S HOUSE.

i don’t give a shit about her going to see her ex (i mean, they have a kid, they are bound from here til as long as everyone is still alive) what made me shout at the top of my lungs is that laura printed? a map and directions?? TO DRIVE SOMEPLACE??? tell me that doesn’t tug on your old nostalgic heartstrings! remember mapquest? remember almost wrecking your toyota tercel on the highway while trying to shuffle through seven sheets of wrinkled printer paper to figure out which exit you should be taking?? yes, it’s the one you drove past four exits ago but who cares, just keep reading while driving and you’ll get there eventually. damn, those were the days.

shortly after his discovery, antonio went on a work trip and says he returned to a dear john letter taped to the window of his car. antonio pulls the letter from his accordion of truth™ and please god let him read some of it. he summarizes (boo, tomato) in a smarmy, manipulative tone that laura basically told him that they were in different places in their lives and should go their separate ways. the judge isn’t moved to tears by this because, frankly, it’s an absolutely normal and boring reason, so antonio tries again, trying to wring some emotion out of greg by telling him that laura even admits to being “with [him] for the wrong reasons,” e.g. his ability to purchase a house with his excellent FICO score.

greg doesn’t really care, but he does ask laura why she chose to end the relationship that way. “because he stalked me and scared my family after we broke up the first time” is the reason she gives, and if that’s true antonio’s lucky he didn’t get some kind of restraining order to go with it. she says that he would sit outside her house all night and when she would leave he would run up on her and no wonder he’s been on here acting slicker than an oil can, he’s nuts!

finally, the car! laura says that she and anthony bought a mitsubishi lancer together with her money. antonio interrupts, saying that it was actually his money, then greg shushes him and laura says she has the bank statement in her accordion of truth™ to prove it. as the judge looks that over, laura explains that their arrangement was going to be that antonio would make the monthly car payments while she would cover the insurance. when they split laura offered to take over the payments so she could keep the vehicle, but said if he didn’t want to let her keep it and pay it off herself antonio would need to return her down payment. you wanna know where this proposal was sorted out? at the bottom of the break up letter, of course! now that is efficiency.

the ruling: antonio explains that what laura failed to mention about that letter was that at the very end she’d added “…but i can’t start paying the note for a few months.” laura! girl!! i was rooting for you!!! you can’t break up in a letter taped on his windshield and tell him you’re keeping your shared car to drive around your new life and assume dude is gonna just keep paying for it until you get your shit together? vomit would explode out of every single hole in my face if someone who broke up with me on a post-it was driving around a car that used to be mine, that’s in my name, that i’m still paying for, with some new bitch in the passenger seat. i can’t take antonio’s side, but that is an outlandish suggestion. turns out the dealership thought so, too, because they repossessed the car. neither of these two paid for it so mitsubishi got their car back, laura’s $3000 down payment got canceled out by her failure to pay, and antonio tanked his credit in the process of all this but maybe this verdict is a bit of sweet revenge: it’s a no for greg, dawg.

did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: antonio: “can you believe she didn’t look me in the eye while breaking up with me?” greg: “aren’t you the one who proposed marriage to her with an app????”

*bangs gavel*

a little treat

plaintiff: devonn from bellflower, california. devonn looks slick as hell, striding purposefully into the courtroom dressed head to toe in black (fitted dress shirt, shiny tie, leather belt, pressed slacks) with an anemic-looking accordion of truth™ tucked under one arm. he’s cute, which probably means he’s trouble.

defendant: michaelia from paramount, california. boy do i love a person in glasses. glasses are so sexy! also they make you look like an absolute genius. people will believe anything you say as long as you slide a pair of spectacles up the bridge of your nose before you say it. should we just go ahead and declare michaelia the winner of the case based on zero testimony or evidence because how could she possibly be wrong? verdict for the glasses!

the complaint: devonn and michaelia started dating, and he admits he was never fully faithful. devonn loaned michaelia money for her breast augmentation, but he says she hasn’t paid him back so he’s suing for the balance on the loan, plus restitution. restitution, according to law dot com (a real website i just found), is a noun that means: 1 returning to the proper owner property or the monetary value of loss. or 2 in criminal cases, one of the penalties imposed is requiring return of stolen goods to the victim or payment to the victim for harm caused. if she loses are they gonna………………..wheel in an operating table and restitute those titties???

what does he want: $3618

how it went down: devonn says he met michaelia at the car wash which reminded me of the time this past summer i was at the car wash vacuuming popcorn out of my passenger side wheel well when the older man at the next auto vacuum interrupted me to ask, “baby, why isn’t your man doing that for you?” first of all he’s correct, a man should always be the one to vacuum popcorn out of my car, but did you guys know people cruise at the fucking car wash? my head is shoved too firmly up my ass to ever notice what anyone else is doing, but as i turned to this gentleman to say “i killed him and made his bones into soup” i witnessed two or three other dudes bothering vacuuming women at the same damn time. is the self-service car wash the new match dot com?

devonn says he “was not being honest at the beginning and again at the end of the relationship” which means, you guessed it, he was dating someone else at the same time he was dating michaelia. this is a great time to mention that the dude who offered to organize my glove box at the car was absolutely undoubtedly unquestionably driving some other woman’s car. i saw her flowered nursing scrubs folded on the back seat! anyway, this tracks.

devonn says they eventually got pretty serious but there were a few things he took an issue with: 1 the arguing 2 “the cleanliness of the home” and 3 he doesn’t get to because he and the judge get into a debate about what constitutes cleanliness. those two things plus the mysterious third thing are the reasons devonn says he had to end his relationship with michaela. omg it just fucking dawned on me that this dude looks exactly like gary payton in 1996. i was squinting at my laptop like “wait, where do i know him from?” and thank god i finally figured out that i’ve never met this person, he just happens to be an exact replica of nine-time nba all star and nba champion point guard for the miami heat, gary dwayne payton, senior!

devonn says that after he dumped her, michaelia kept popping by his house asking if they could reconcile. he says some of these drop-ins occurred at five am, which sounds totally normal and real. michaelia says that devonn was right, he is a liar and she was bamboozled by him. she says that after a couple months of dating, she told him that they should probably part ways because of their “different views.” she says a few days after that, devonn showed up on her doorstep and pleaded that he couldn’t see a future without her. michaelia says she was skeptical about getting back together with devonn because she has four boys and was recently divorced at the time, but devonn assured her that he wanted to be a committed role model.

michaelia says that early on in their rekindled romance devonn told her he was surprised to be so drawn to her because he “doesn’t typically date black women.” as devonn protests from across the room, michaelia says that he told her black women are loud, full of drama, and “investigative,” which tells you everything you need to know about him. the judge says, “did you remind him that you’re black?” and michaelia says, “i did!” i’m not about to call in a relationship expert (i should), but to me this just sounds like the kind of negging a person does that’s supposed to make you feel lucky to be with them, which is a crime actually. wheel in the guillotine!

michaelia says that devonn was also obsessed with her breast size, telling her that he also typically dates “women with much larger breasts.” michaelia appears to be a very serious, no nonsense type of lady, she has not cracked even a hint of a smile this entire time, she’s just stood behind her podium staring holes into the judge. she says she agreed to get a plastic surgery consultation, and when they scheduled the surgery devonn said he would pay for the left breast only, i mean half.

michaelia says that in the weeks leading up to the surgery devonn called her and told her that because his dog had to have an emergency c-section he wouldn’t be able to “help [michaelia] out.” i do not particularly enjoy that phrasing, BUT: we move. michaela says that the dog’s surgery cost $1200, and i do not understand this math but she says that she told devonn that she would help with the vet bills if that would help him keep up his half of the bargain and he said yes.

michaelia had the surgery and says that two months later devonn was struck with a sudden-onset case of terminal breakup-itis. he told her that he thought he wanted to be in a relationship but he actually didn’t and also he just needed time to get himself together, and then she stopped hearing from him. judge mathis asks devonn for his side of the story, and he says, “with regard to me paying for half of the surgery, that was never a conversation between the defendant and myself.” WHAT.

the judge asks devonn how the breast augmentation came up in general, and he says that one day michaelia came to him out of the blue and asked what he thought about her getting her breasts done, and devonn says that he told her “if that’s something you feel like you need in order to be happy, i support whatever you want to do.” ooh, he thinks he’s slick! devonn continues, saying that michaelia told him she was going to get the money from a loan shark to pay for the procedure and he never offered to pay any portion of the cost. i know i shouldn’t judge a book by its cover but i’m sorry michaelia is simply not giving “gets her money from a dude who would cut off an appendage for every day she was overdue paying him back.”

greg asks michaelia if that’s true and she rolls her eyes like it’s the dumbest question she’s ever been asked in her entire life. devonn says that michaelia was going to get the money “from a guy” and that since there would be interest he told her that, as her boyfriend, he would assist her financially. i’m getting kind of mad! devonn says he has proof that michaelia made payments to him, one for $273 and one for $270 lol, and when he hands doyle the proof to give the judge michaelia says, “those were payments i made for dolly’s surgery, on carecredit” and now this is starting to make some goddamn sense.

carecredit is a special credit card that i learned about because every veterinary practice in america keeps a stack of their brochures handy for people who needed a surprise five thousand dollar loan real quick that they can get approval for while sitting in the lobby of a vet emergency clinic at two in the morning. i’ve been out the game for too long, because what i didn’t know is that you can now finance a boob job and lumineers and an oxygen tank and even to pay the minister who presides over your funeral service, and i think that’s great. why save up for months to get some injectables when you could just put it on your plastic surgery card?

it sounds like michaelia and devonn share a card/account and when devonn used it for the dog michaelia offered to put money on the balance as long as devonn agreed to do the same when the bill for her augmentation came due. devonn is trying to argue that the two payments for which he has proof are michaela’s payments toward her surgery. it doesn’t make sense to me that she would give him money at all on an account they share, because the money is owed to synchrony bank unless i missed the announcer saying devonn’s last name was carecredit? because if it’s in his name only then how could she rack up charges on the card without his permission? also, if they’ve only been dating for a handful of months, why are they financially entangled in the first place???

the judge asks devonn about the restitution and he says that michaelia vandalized his home and he wants her to pay for what she ruined. devonn says that michaela came over in a rage because he had another girl inside at the time, and she kicked the door in then poured water on his laptop and broke a pair of sunglasses. michaela says, “did you see me do it?” and the judge is like “well did you?” and devonn admits he was outside on the phone with the police at the time. damn, is michaelia a lawyer? according to what i think i’ve learned from law & order, i think she just pointed out some hearsay!

the cops get there and devonn says that michaelia ran off with his watch and his car keys, but he very generously decided not to press charges because she’s a mother of four. the state was like “lol fuck that, see your ass in court” and, after she pleaded guilty, ordered michaelia to pay devonn $600. michaelia’s version of this story is a little different, which is hilarious because devonn has actual court records in his hand on the other side of the room. greg mathis is never going to take the word of a television litigant over a sheet of paper signed by his brother judge! anyway michaelia says she stopped by devon’s house after a day at the water park with her kids and happened upon devonn and this other woman in bed. devonn jumps up and starts carrying on while michaelia and the mystery woman have a civil conversation on the other side of the bedroom. neither one knew about the other; michaelia tells mystery woman she’s been seeing devonn for six months, mystery woman tells michaelia that she and devonn have been together for two years!

at this point devonn goes outside to call the police and michaelia starts going around the apartment packing her things into a plastic grocery bag. she says she has no idea what the other woman scorned was doing at the time, she could’ve been popping every lens out of every pair of glasses in the building, but the most damage michaelia caused was taking some flowers out of a vase and dropping them on the floor because the vase belonged to her. greg asks her if that’s true then why would she plead guilty and paid the money if she was innocent, and michaelia says at that point she just wanted the whole thing to go away. and so do i, i thought a case about repossessing a big ol’ pair of ginormous honking boobs would be a lot more electrifying than this!!!!!!!!!

the ruling: i must have missed the declaration of a countersuit earlier, because apparently michaelia wants $3000 for court costs and lawyer fees. i already know she’s not gonna see a dime of that, she 1 pleaded guilty! and 2 paid the judgment! and guess what, i’m right. judge mathis is like FUCK OUTTA HERE, actually he says something like, “ma’am, you already pleaded guilty” but his *tone* is extremely FUCK OUTTA HERE and i love that.

michaelia really had my dumb ass fooled, because she also had to attend court-mandated anger management classes as a result of this event. damn, it really is always the quiet ones, huh? michaelia tries to argue that she pleaded no contest which doesn’t mean she’s guilty and greg says, “ma’am, you can’t order an innocent person to go to anger management.” OH SNAP. the judge says well now he can’t believe anything michaelia says, and though that may be warranted i don’t think it renders everything devonn said automatically proven fact? but greg does, and his opinion is the only one that matters, so judgment for the plaintiff and for those bouncing bazongas we never got to hear a richly-detailed description of.

did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: devonn: “your honor, this is my current girlfriend seated behind me. as you can see, she doesn’t have a boob job.”
greg, after a beat, “yeah, because you can’t afford it! that’s why you’re here for the money!”

*bangs gavel*

ps, it’s officially time.

plaintiff: valerie from new haven, connecticut. gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous, a real dreamboat, think anita baker on the cover of christmas fantasy but dipped in dark and lovely red hot rhythm. sharp beige pantsuit, a chocolate brown cami that is an exact match to her skin tone beneath, layered and sculpted auburn fingerwave pixie, gold hoops: a goddess among us. i love this look, it’s giving style, it’s giving glamour, it’s giving 1993 boardroom, it’s giving late for my c-suite perfume meeting with strangé at lady eloise. sublime!

defendant: denny from new haven, connecticut. denny strides confidently into the courtroom looking like an exact replica of derrick white post-haircut except with chic reading glasses. denny has accented his smooth bald head and freshly-groomed beard with a charcoal grey suit over a pale blue shirt and matching shiny tie. i love when litigants show up to court like they’re going to church.

the complaint: valerie claims denny lost a bunch of money gambling, so she gave him a loan that he hasn’t yet paid back and of course she is suing!

what does she want: $1560!!

how it went down: greg begins, “alright ma’am, so you’re suing your former mate for $1560?” and before he can fully get the sentence out denny has his hand raised in objection. he says, “we were never mates” and the judge replies, “well what were you?” and denny says, “JUST FRIENDS” and i’m sorry your honor but he is perjuring himself in your courtroom today. greg scornfully asks if they were ever “associated at all, romantically or intimately” and here comes that bullshit. “uhh, like a gift…….erm like a give…*uncomfortable chuckle* like a give and receive type of relationship.” oh, okay! give what! “well, uhh, she gives me gifts………and i give her sex.” that’s what friendship is now? shit, can i get a friend like that?

“oh, so you’re a male prostitute” greg says with unbridled loathing, and i love it when he and i are on the same page. denny balks at that description but the judge points out to him that fucking someone in exchange for a gift probably qualifies. finally, it’s valerie’s turn. she says that when she met denny it was “lust at first sight” and again denny starts waving his arms like an air traffic controller in an attempt to refute what valerie is saying, and hey brother if it vexes you this much for people to know you were in a relationship with this person maybe you shouldn’t have been in one!

and yes, it’s a relationship, because valerie says that denny drives her kids to school and hangs out at her house and they take their children shopping together and brb i gotta go call 1-800-M-I-S-A-N-D-R-I-S-T because come on, man. the gentleman doth protest too much. denny says he was just being “friendly” and jesus i hope her kids jump him after this.

i wish i didn’t have to harp on this but denny will not let this go! valerie says that he’d bring his son over to her house and leave him, they spent time together as a family, and sure he can call that friends with benefits but she considered him her man. again denny is waving his hands like an inflatable tube man while shouting “i object” and this is where i unfortunately have to talk about the attractiveness gap and fucking around with someone who thinks they’re hotter than you. denny is 1992 fine: good-looking enough to play a second-tier gangster in new jack city or a janet jackson music video love interest, but if he walked past you right now you might not even notice. i think valerie looks great but she’s older than he is and less cool so now dude is trying to clown her on TV? sir, keep the same energy you had while you were inside her!

valerie says she and denny had been seeing each other for a month when one of her coworkers approached her claiming that she was his girlfriend. the woman asked her to describe his body parts (okay!) but valerie refused, saying, “it’s not what his body looks like, it’s how he performs.” I KNOW THAT’S RIGHT, BABE. use the merchandise you paid for! get the most out of your investment! she says that she stopped seeing him after that because ugh who wants that kind of static with a bitch they have to see on the job every day? valerie says that (bless her heart) she is the kind of person who sends all the contacts in her phone a happy new year text, and when she did so a couple months after they ended things denny responded by coming over for sex. (i tried to think of an “auld lang syne” joke here but, alas, none of those words rhymes with dick or vagina.)

it’s denny’s turn to talk again (unfortunately) and he says that the only reason his son was at valerie’s apartment is because he goes to the school where she works? he says he had no idea his teenage son was going to valerie’s, even though he is the custodial parent and the son is only fourteen. it is okay that you had a relationship with this woman, man! you do not have to go to these embarrassing lengths (accusing her of luring him? from school?? to her crib???) the deny your quasi-ladyfriend!

denny gives the bailiff some evidence we don’t need: printed kodak photos from walgreens documenting all the gifts he says valerie has given him (sweatsuits, jordans, nothing major) saying, “why stop at fifteen hundred dollars? why doesn’t she sue me for all this stuff, too?” if there were any justice in the world judge mathis would be like, “okay! she’s now suing you for $5000 and i’m giving it to her!” but i won’t hold my breath. valerie says she’s not suing for those things because duh they were gifts, and greg tells her she’s a good woman for buying nice things for her man even though he is pretending in court today to not be that.

valerie says that two years into their not-relationship she and denny went to the casino. she doesn’t gamble but he apparently has a problem and went back and forth to the ATM all night to get cash. they’re driving home and he casually says to her “boy i sure do hope i get paid this week” (dry begging) and she offered to loan him a thousand dollars. the rest of the money was for tickets to see the knickerbockers at the garden, and was that before they got good because it sounds awfully cheap for knicks tickets? anyway denny broke up with her before they could go and valerie didn’t have anyone else to take, which is a travesty because i would’ve said fuck him and gone by myself then ridden karl anthony towns’ new york dickerbocker (there she is) home, who cares?

the ruling: turns out valerie can’t sue for the tickets because they’d never agreed that denny would pay her back for them, which is another reason she should’ve just gone and shot her shot at mikal bridges or mitchell robinson or somebody. so the $560 is off the table, and denny says he would never have accepted a loan because he was getting his porch redone and was “low on cash.” he says that like it’s the answer, roll credits, the end. the judge asks denny to explain exactly how the transaction went down (you’re on TV, brother) and he says, “so i was getting my roof done—” and greg interrupts and makes him start over again.

this time, we’re back to the porch. denny says that valerie was complaining to him that he never takes her out so he decided to take her out for some food (hang on, i thought he was tricking? tricks don’t take you to dinner!) even though he still owed two grand to the porch guy. denny says valerie asked him how much he needed (her face says otherwise) and he was adamant that she should not give him money because he would not be able to pay her back. he says that valerie then said, “well i can loan you some money” and, realizing his error, denny switches it up and says she said, “i can give you some money” and if greg doesn’t put a stop to this soon i am going to have an aneurysm. maybe i’m bitter from boning too many dudes who acted like their penises were doing me a favor but this man is BOTHERING ME.

greg asks him to clarify and denny again says “loan” before he catches himself and says “give” and then he says, “she said loan or give” and this is almost funny. the judge tells denny he’s an unreliable narrator (we been knew that) before turning to valerie, who has some printed out text sheets™ to bolster her case. greg reads aloud the texts, which make it clear that it was indeed alone and this young man has wasted our time on this day. the judge flips to the second printed out text sheet™ and asks what that’s for, and valerie says it’s proof of the intimate things denny was saying to her.

“i need you bad,” greg reads. denny feigns shock, so greg circles it and sends doyle over so he can look at his words with his own eyes. all that sturm und drang about how they were just friends, meanwhile valerie is sitting atop a ream of kinko’s paper with him talking about how he can’t get enough of her. OF COURSE. before the judge bangs his gavel denny says, “sir, can you tell her not to call me?” as if valerie is the problem, and greg says, “but what if she pulls out a couple dollars?” cooked his ass. judgment for the plaintiff, and for homely women everywhere.

did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: “sir, do you…………….drive her children around? what part of the game is that? unless you’re cab driver, too?”

*bangs gavel*

a little treat

plaintiff: channon from youngstown, ohio. channon!!!!!! my buxom beauty, my portly primadonna, my voluptuous vixen, my zaftig (c)zarina!!!!!!!!!!!! nothing on this wretched planet can rival the beefy beauty of a very large woman (ASK YOUR DAD) and this curvaceous cutie has it all: a long and shiny brown wig, loads of gold jewelry, and positively enormous breasts. like, real awooga hours over here. i might start drooling! i have, at least at this point in my waning existence, what i would maybe call a “bosom.” like what your grandma has, but possibly worse. channon, on the other hand, has titties. glorious bouncing titties that are barely contained by the bright coral polyester-blend camisole-and-¾ sleeve-bolero combo whose resplendence has left me breathless. whatever she wants, give it to her!

defendants: jerod and tracy from youngstown, ohio. i already know these two young men are hardly worthy of the grace and gorgeousness bestowed upon them by channon. i can tell by their shirts!

the complaint: channon says the two defendants were arguing with each other near her car when one took a swing at the other with a baseball bat and instead of landing on the intended target, the bat ended up damaging her car.

what does she want: $5000, the max! a maximum award for a maximum lady!!!!! jerod would like $2000, for “harassment.”

how it went down: channon says that she met jerod because she used to “go with his cousin,” the co-defendant, tracy. first of all, we love a gentleman named tracy. second, maybe i was way harsh earlier, because it appears that jerod is wearing a textured velour tracksuit in a deep burgundy, and wow what a look. i’m deeply into it. one day we gotta sit down and have a serious conversation about how essential to my happiness matching sets have become, maybe equally as important as my daily cocktail of brain medicines and unlimited access to inside the nba clips online.

never mind, we’re talking about it now. a matching set makes getting dressed a completely brainless activity, and we all could use more of those since we are getting stupider by the day. what’s easier than whipping out two pieces of the same fabric cut into different shapes and putting them on your body? literally nothing. here are my top places to buy matching bottoms:
1 thief and bandit! if you’ve seen me on tour or at an event, you have undoubtedly seen one of my many t&b fits, because they are the best. they look cool, even after they’ve been balled up in a suitcase; the designs are painted on by hand, and they’re made by cutie canadians. i literally just ordered a pair of these spellbound pants (with a matching cropped tee, duh) which means i should probably write another book so i can go somewhere and show them off.
2 nooworks! all my clown clothes (complimentary) are from nooworks. their prints are colorful (i love roll out) and fun as hell (party mix is so good, too) and you look like a giant, happy toddler when you wear clothes from them, which is great for those of us flirting with fifty and unable to wrap our brains around that fact. if you came to the poop party last year, i was wearing a micotti cat set and i know people liked it because they kept asking me where i got it then acting grouchy when i tried to get them to accurately write down the name of a weirdly spelled website in the middle of a loud ass disco.
3 universal standard! all of my grownup clothes (derogatory) are from universal standard. like, when we go to ~the symphony~ i wear these glamorous pajamas that look flowy and expensive and not like i just got out of bed. also here is how i wear pajamas as real clothes without looking like absolute shit: true-to-size on the bottom (or size down if they’re roomy), size up the top. i don’t know the science behind it, but i do know that it works and i’m right!

channon says, “to make a long story short: i went to the projects, and i never go to the projects, because they be tripping in the projects.” channon says she was in the middle of getting her hair done when she and the stylist suddenly heard a commotion outside and ran out to discover “those two jerks over there fighting.” jerod had a metal bat in his hand and was trying to hit tracy with it when he missed and busted the window out of channon’s car instead.

WHAT. men are so mysterious to me??? i mean, how is tracy in court today………….on the side of the man……………….who swung a metal bat so hard at him that he shattered a car window?????? if you swing any kind of bat at me i might see you in jail but i most certainly would not be seeing you behind the same podium in a courtroom! this is what bro code actually is, i think: less covering for your boy’s infidelities or whatever and more “i beat the shit out of him but lol we’re cool now.”

channon went outside to confront him about it and jerod “started talking smack to [her],” saying that tracy had stolen his rims and he was trying to get them back. what that has to do with a 2005 nissan altima with 320,000 miles on it (this is a wild guess, but i know in my bones it’s correct) is beyond me, and channon agrees. the judge jokingly chastises channon for going to the projects (rude) and she’s basically like, “what’s the problem, it was the afternoon!” i maybe could understand his point of she’d, say, driven her car onto a baseball diamond? but who could predict a broad daylight aluminum bat fight outside their weave-ologist’s house???

channon says jerod accused tracy of stealing some car rims that he’d actually misplaced one day while drunk. she says jerod took the rims off his own car and hid them under a tarp in his own garage but was too drunk to remember he’d done that and started fighting tracy instead. i cannot stress enough how hilarious it is that as channon is describing this altercation, tracy is standing next to jerod looking at him like “man, what the fuck,” like he still can’t believe his homie accused him in the first place. which begs this question: how on earth did jerod convince tracy to come with him to court today? what exact words did he say?? i would kill to have been a portrait of black jesus on that project wall!!!!!

channon says when she confronted jerod and told him she was going to call the police he jumped in his car and peeled off, knocking her bumper clean off in the process. as she hands doyle the bailiff a stack of kodak prints fresh from walgreens, channon says, “it’s like this: i’m a diva, i’m big mama, i’m not riding around in no hoopty with a bungee cord holding my bumper up while he’s out drinking and doing what he do. he owes me the money, he admitted he did it, and he needs to pay for it, PERIOD.” i just stood up and saluted my computer screen so forcefully i dislocated my fucking shoulder, BITCH I KNOW THAT’S FUCKIN RIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

greg loves a loud, fat black woman and he can’t stop blushing and giggling because channon is hilarious and perfect. i bet he’s kicking his little feet under the bench and everything. she continues, “i seen him going to the weave store, buying girls weaves! i said ‘if you can buy a woman a weave, you can weave me some money for my car!’ i seen him in the drive-thru buying beer and wine and we got into it. ‘you buying beer and wine, where’s the money at for my car? break me off some!’ then i see him cutting a yard. he charges FORTY DOLLARS to do a yard, he couldn’t do nothing to get me my money?????” channon is my new president.

it’s jerod’s turn, and he says “first of all, your honor, as you can see, she is loud and obnoxious,” and channon says, “SO?” and i’m sorry but put her on the twenty dollar bill immediately. then judge mathis says, “she’s not loud or obnoxious to me” and i fucking told y’all!!!!!!!!!! big girls are this man’s kryptonite, “she’s emphatic about her case and her car!”

jerod tries a different tactic: “your honor, we aren’t even here about the car. we’re here because she wants me.” OH BROTHER, here we go with this. channon could mount greg reverse cowgirl style right now and he’d be with it, she doesn’t need to drag the man who tore up her car to afternoon television court to try to get at him sexually??? surely there are less complicated ways to coax the neighborhood handyman into one’s bed? i feel like she could walk around dripping a trail of crown royal behind her and he’d follow her off a cliff. channon says, “honey, you can’t handle big mama! you couldn’t handle big mama for real, honey! your cousin couldn’t, and you couldn’t, either!!” that’s right, don’t act like channon can’t get laid when she’s………………..already banged you both??? ew shut up, that’s so stupid! she continues, “i’m a welder and i got a good job, what the hell do i need a 1st of tha month man for?????”

judge mathis says, “meaning he gets his checks from either social security or unemployment or welfare on the first of every month?” channon offers a resounding YES and greg clarifies that he wasn’t making fun, he just wanted people “who might not know what that phrase means” to understand what she’s talking about, as if everyone at home watching this show at three in the afternoon isn’t intimately familiar with the government’s many failing social systems! (including me, a food stamp section eight free hot lunch social security kid til i die!!!!!)

jerod says, “anyway, i was in the projects and i was intoxicated and i ran into tracy and asked him if he had seen my wheels, i’d heard that he took them and sold them.” he says he then picked up a bat and swung, tracy ducked, and he smashed in channon’s car window. not to take literally anything seriously, BUT: can you imagine if he’d actually connected with tracy’s human head? how do you escalate from “seen my rims around?” to “i’m gonna brain you” in a matter of seconds????? he says channon came out “shouting and carrying on” and threatened to call the police, so he jumped in his car and hit hers while he was driving off. basically the same exact thing channon said.

jerod says that after he left he called channon on the phone to ask her how they could “settle things” and i assume she responded, “with money.” greg yells “SETTLE IT HOW” and jerod starts mumbling about estimates and mechanics, then channon says, “oh, i got an estimate” while brandishing a stack of papers. she says she went to a body shop the day after the incident, got an estimate on the spot, and immediately dropped that estimate off at jerod’s house. as the judge looks it over, i cannot help but wonder: did jerod just want a quick sightseeing trip to chicago? a bite of freshly dipped beef while floating down the river or perhaps the snap of a properly-dressed hot dog while straddling the bean??? because whyyyy did he willingly come here today when he is absolutely going to lose??????

the ruling: greg asks if jerod’s witness wants to say anything and, seeing how this ship is already sinking, tracy puts his hands up in surrender and politely declines. channon says, “well, my witness might want to say something” and then jasmine, a gorgeous young lady in a ravishing purple tunic over a pair of dress-up leggings, approaches the stand and says, “your honor, i laid the estimate on jerod’s dresser, so i know he saw it.” the judge scrunches his face up and says, “wait, you and the defendant live in the same household?” and channon crows, “yeah! that’s her daddy!!!!!!!”

not his daughter??? testifying against him?????? come on now, let’s wrap this shit up already. if your own child got on a greyhound bus just to get on TV and make sure you look like an asshole, you have lost! jerod tries to say he didn’t see the estimate jasmine left for him because he’s “never home” and we know dude, you’re out mowing lawns and buying E&J at the drive thru liquor store all day, but you expect this man to believe that you didn’t see a multi-page document nestled between the dusty bottles of drakkar noir and skin bracer atop the place you keep your underpants??? yeah right!

jerod’s defense is “that’s not like putting it in my hand”and i hope he already went to garrett’s and navy pier because he’s about to be the fuck outta here. greg angrily asks what his countersuit is for and jerod says, “everywhere i went, she was there! every time i came out of my house she was parked outside! i’d be out with a girl and she’d be hollering out her window about money!” greg says “that’s not harassment, that’s collections” and channon says, “if you wanna be a mack daddy, why not mack some money for my car?” and i can hardly see for all the stars in my eyes. channon, i love you. and so does judge mathis. judgment for big mama the diva!!!!

did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anybody: “you said you don’t go down to the projects because there’s too much crime, yet you went down there anyway and the first thing that happened to you was you became the victim of a crime!”

*bangs gavel*

more fat bitch supremacy

plaintiff: elmore from chicago, illinois. elmore looks exactly how you think a dude named elmore looks: approximately 53 to 127 years of age, sad basset hound face, shiny milk dud head, dressed like a funeral director. exquisite, for sure, but we don’t usually get a lot of sharply-creased pocket squares up in here so consider me taken aback. i like it!

defendant: cleopatra from chicago, illinois. i’m sorry, ELMORE AND CLEOPATRA??? wtf is this, a fucking walter mosley novel????? miss cleo (i promise i won’t say that ever again) swans into the courtroom in a billowy black tunic with voluminous ruffled bell sleeves paired with chic black polyester-blend slacks (you can hear they have a lil zip-zop-zip to ‘em as she walks) and comfy white gym shoes with a tightly-wound accordion of truth™ tucked under her arm, the perfect accessory!

the complaint: elmore claims cleopatra told him she was pregnant (pregnant with WHAT??? a bean burrito??????) then asked for money to terminate the pregnancy. elmore argues his ex-girlfriend threatened him with a butcher’s knife and tased him, so he’s suing her for an assault and the loan. (LOAN???????????????)

what does he want: 1900 big ones!! countersuit filed: cleopatra would like $2500 for the cost of a wedding ring and two assaults!

how it went down: elmore says that he first met cleopatra fifteen years ago, but they didn’t start seeing each other until recently. he says that during their two-year relationship he didn’t know that she was married and she also claimed to be pregnant. my jaw is on the floor. these two are old enough that even if she’d claimed to be pregnant right after they met fifteen fucking years ago she would’ve been too old then. did she have a large tumor? or was it, like, one of these kinds of situations?????

the judge, scraping his bottom jaw against the bench, turns to cleopatra in disbelief. “ma’am, you were pregnant?!??!!?!!??!!!?!” rather than act insulted cleopatra instead rolls her eyes to the back of her skull in disgust and replies, “judge, if a baby crawls up outta here, you better name him hercules.” is that a real thing people say? i gotta brush up on my greek mythology, because i don’t remember zeus having an affair with a lady in an auburn party city shake n’ go bob, but maybe i just didn’t pay close enough attention in school. my go-to line to make shit extremely weird when the doctor demands a pregnancy test as a person who hasn’t had penetrative sex with a man since circa 2011 is “if you find anything in there, we should both go buy a fucking lottery ticket,” but i’ll have to try the hercules thing next time i get a scope and see how that plays. what if i found out i was pregnant a fourteen year old fetus! lolllll the kid’s in there trying to teach himself to spell while i fuck his brain up with microwave popcorn and sugar-free barqs!!! they’d have to pull him out with the jaws of life.

okay so elmore is having a little bit of trouble stringing together a cohesive story, but here’s what i can gather from his initial ramblings: he is 67, cleopatra is 57, and she told him she needed $400 to terminate a pregnancy and he gave it to her. he goes on a long tangent about how he’s too old to be a father because he likes to be out kicking it in the street and the doctor gave cleopatra pills which is why he didn’t accompany her to the procedure and then cleopatra tased him but also never paid the money back and everybody in the courtroom (plus me) is looking at him like HUH?

judge mathis turns to cleopatra for some clarification. she says that she started dating elmore during a separation from her husband. when they decided to reconcile she says that elmore begged her not to go back to the husband, and when begging didn’t work he tried to push her down a flight of stairs, but she caught herself on the railing with one hand and ripped his shirt with the other. wait, excuse me? before we get to the trading back and forth of assaults (bleak!!), greg wants to get this whole pregnancy business put to rest. cleopatra says she found out elmore was telling people she was pregnant when she ran into a friend one day who said, “oh hey! congratulations!!” and cleo was like “WHAT” and the friend said “elmore told me you’re having a baby” and i assume she was like “WHAT” again because………………….WHAT.

cleopatra claims that elmore was spreading the rumor to everyone in their wider circle of friends (what senior centers do we think he took this lie to, levy? renaissance court?? auburn gresham??? copernicus????) because he lost the money gambling and wanted to hide his degeneracy behind this fake abortion he made up. the judge says he does not believe her and okay i guess i can understand that but you seriously expect me to believe him instead? he hasn’t proffered any proof that the four hundred bucks even exists and also it sounds like he is actively trying to swallow his tongue every time he opens his mouth to speak!!!!!

elmore says (I THINK) that one day cleopatra came over to his house, tried to steal some papers (??) from the totes (???) in his bedroom, and when he told her to get her “crazy ass” out of his house she turned around and tased him. okay, i should be fucking nice, maybe that’s why he talks like that. so my tiktok algorithm is ~extremely~ cursed, because i only go on there when someone young sends me something to look at, or when i want to indulge in one of my weird passions like complicated otoscopies or skin diseases, and it makes me feel like a psychopath. anyway i was on there whenever, scrolling through a bunch of bullshit in the middle of the night, and i started getting served videos of people being tased.

so! many! videos! of people running away, getting hit with the taser, and shaking uncontrollably as they fall helplessly to the ground. i didn’t even know regular people could get their paws on one, and now a new fear has been unlocked, can’t wait to stay locked inside for the next five months terrified that anyone who comes near me in trader joe’s might have a taser on them. elmore is an old man, and the thought of him just falling on his face like a dead tree is distressing!!!!!! if someone did that to me, first of all i would probably die due to my weak constitution but let’s play like i am not made of the same meat as hotdogs, i would not rest until i figured out a way to kill them. i’m sorry but they have to die. the indignity alone!!!!! i probably shouldn’t even put this in writing, BUT: know that if i live through it (doubtful, but let’s pretend), the singular focus of the rest of my miserable life would be trying to arrange the murder of the person who tased me.

yes, i am losing it a little bit, but imagining standing across a three-walled courtroom outfitted with spotlights in lieu of a ceiling from the person who sent 2500 searing volts of electricity through my tender flesh??? i’d be frothing at the fucking mouth. elmore says that after cleopatra tased him, she went downstairs to his kitchen and started threatening him with a butcher knife. well you do have to cook your meat before you cut it up, i suppose. cleopatra says that none of this is true, but elmore claims to have proof, which is apparently a picture “of where she left the knife.” the judge asks, “how do we know she left it there?” and elmore replies, “because i know she did.” alright then!

as elmore flips through the ninety-five printed out evidence photos he’s brought with him to court today, greg asks cleopatra about the assaults she’s suing for. before she can get into that though, she wants to talk about the issue of her missing wedding ring. she says that one night she was over at elmore’s and took her rings off to wash his dishes and help him clean up. when she left she realized that she’d left her ring on top of his microwave and immediately called him. he told her he didn’t see a ring and said she must’ve lost it somewhere else. now cleo’s pissed, and she decides to set up a sting operation: she buys a new (cheap) ring, goes over to elmore’s place, “accidentally” leaves the cheap ring on the table, then calls him to ask about it and he claims to not have seen it so she yells at him for being a thief, which he denies. this is probably a good time to remind you that, collectively, these two people are one hundred and twenty-four years old.

the ruling: luckily for us, cleopatra brought a printed-out voicemail for the judge to read, which i will transcribe exactly as he reads it. “i got your message. you can pick your s— up, and you ain’t gonna like what it looks like, neither. you should’ve already come and get your s—. you all out in the neighborhood with n—s and s—, i already know about all that s—. all the things you been going through? everybody been telling me about your lyin’ a—. now gimme my money that i got a loan for for your punk a—.”

uh oh! another situation in which i would have to be put down like a rabid animal!!!! imagine being somebody’s fucking grandmother and a man missing his side teeth leaves you a message like this??? you already know where the fuck we’re going, straight to MURDER COURT. roll in the stocks and pillory, bailiff!!!!!! i mean, i’d call her a punk too if she’d tased me but we never got any proof that actually happened. the girls gave us nothing, so the case goes to no one. they were both telling wildly different stories and lacked believable proof (judge mathis did not buy that “come get your s—” was an admission that elmore had stolen cleopatra’s ring), plus they didn’t even get into half the s— they’re suing each other for, so the verdict goes to no one. actually, the verdict goes to youtube premium, to whom i pay $13 every month for the pleasure of watching these clips without fucking mounjaro ads peppered throughout.

did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: the judge was straight up mystified at the prospect of cleopatra having been pregnant at her advanced age, and he asked doyle to fetch his wife linda from the green room so he could tell her about it, as if it’s real, to try to convince her it might be possible for them to have another child. she doesn’t fall for it, and i am (still) too traumatized by having been born to a fifty year old dad to find this prank funny!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*bangs gavel*

buy a book i'm almost out of weed

one more thing: i’m doing one event this summer. july 10 jen pastiloff is bringing her man who has been in a bunch of mission impossibles to kalamazoo and my condition for moderating this thing was that i get to spend the entire time gossiping with him about tom cruise and she said okay, so that’s what i’m gonna do. i am getting a busted wisdom tooth yanked outta my head july 8, so if you come you can enjoy the aftermath of all that.

plaintiff: laura from ypsilanti, michigan. goddamn it’s about time we had another hardcore butch on here!!! laura strides into the courtroom wearing her brother’s outfit from winter formal: a shiny black waistcoat over a deep wine button down from structure, black dress slacks from the jc penney husky section, and a shimmering wine/silver/black perfectly-knotted necktie. a bitch dressed like this could talk me out of my very last dollar!!!!! you know the kind i mean, the woman with a well-defined billfold imprint on her back jeans pocket who unironically drives a brand new ford super duty. our snow plow guy is this grizzled lesbian whose sole interest is her fantasy football draft and who only communicates using monosyllabic grunts, and if she needed a kidney i would offer her mine without hesitation. anyway laura looks like she has a riding lawnmower and that is sexy to me!!!!!!!!!!

defendant: jackie from garden city, michigan. jackie has a different stereotypically gay look: pierced bottom lip, chokers, little rectangle glasses, heavy eyeliner, many bracelets. i cannot wait to hear what the hell happened between these two.

the complaint: laura claims that after she and jackie broke up they continued living together until one night, after laura came home from a date with another woman, jackie attacked her. now she’s suing for property and harassment.

what does she want: $3000!! countersuit filed: jackie would like $2219 for overdue rent!!!

how it went down: west michigan has had 19 tornadoes so far this year and the storm that blew through a couple weeks ago really fucked our shit UP. massive falling trees wiped out house and power lines and our house was dark for a week and everything in it rotted, including me. i’m from the midwest and don’t typically get freaked out by weather, but i was up watching basketball during the scariest part of the storm and the shit was no joke. then the power went out and i used what precious little phone battery i had left to watch the nuggets beat the thunder, blissfully unaware that for the next few days i would have to sit in my car to make a freaking phone call.

laura says that a year into her relationship with jackie, jackie became abusive and controlling. the judge says “how so?” and laura says jackie always needed to know where she was and who she was with and that brings me to a quandary in my own life: do you guys always have your phone location turned on? cara was here last weekend and she asked me why i wasn’t sharing my location with her and i said, “because i don’t share my location with anyone.” and she’s like, “not even your wife?” and i was like, “NO????????” and cara almost fell over in disbelief. she could not fucking believe that the woman who has keys and/or access to just about everything on the planet that is mine isn’t also allowed to track my whereabouts at any given second. straight up dumbfounded!!!!!

it came up because cara was looking at her phone and saying “right now teddy’s at navy pier, and neri’s still at work—” and i yelled, “HOW COULD YOU POSSIBLY KNOW THAT” and she said that all of her close friends/fam share their locations with her, then she turned pointedly to where i was shaking in the driver’s seat and asked, “so why don’t you?” am i just a paranoid creep or is everyone else fucking nuts? you guys all do that shit? i don’t want any normal people to see how much time i spend in parking lots! i can’t lie about what i did (read: didn’t do) all day if you can easily pull up my tracking device and bust me!!! it causes me actual anxiety to imagine someone looking at their phone like “damn, sam sure has been at big lots a long fucking time.” they wouldn’t even have to say it to me, the thought of someone’s judgmental thoughts is enough to make me physically ill. i take 80mg of fluoxetine every morning and still i’m paralyzed with fear that someone might clock how many drive thru iced coffees i get every week!!!!! when i say “mentally ill?” this is the shit i’m talking about!

anyway my location is on so now i refuse to leave the house. i’m team laura: what’s romance without a little mystery??? if you know everywhere i go and everything i do and everyone i’m with every day, what is left to talk about while we eat dinner? you don’t have to ask how my fucking day was if you already know i spent it at the YMCA and the library and mennonite grocery store. what is there to talk about between bites of spaghetti, my thoughts???????? i don’t have any of those!

two years into the relationship laura had had enough and broke up with jackie to start dating someone else. she says that after a weekend away with her new girlfriend, laura came home and jackie knocked her down in a rage, which i didn’t fully understand until laura clarified that she and jackie still lived together (!!!!!) after the breakup. what’s the fucking problem, lesbians? i swear to god all gay drama is some shit like this, “we got divorced but share joint custody of a goldfish and also work at the same place and also she lives in the garage but can come in to use the kitchen if i’m not home.” i get it in new york, i guess? the rent there is $9000 for a 300 square foot efficiency but i could get a studio apartment in ypsilanti for $560 RIGHT NOW. bitch, move out!!!!!!!!!!!

jackie says she’s a nice person who loved laura, which is why she let her stay despite her ending their romantic relationship. she says, “i was upset, but what could i do?” and they judge says, “well, she said you jumped on her” and yeah i guess that’s a thing you could do. jackie says she didn’t jump on laura, that it was laura who came home in a foul mood and started breaking her stuff. wasn’t laura fully in another relationship at this point? what, were there no available uhauls in that part of michigan???

laura says that the new girlfriend eventually broke up with her “due to the harassment of jackie.” greg asks her what that entailed and she says jackie kept calling the girlfriend, telling her over and over that she and laura were still together. the judge says, “that doesn’t sound like harassment, that sounds like an FYI” and yeah homie i just don’t know how you pull off living with a heartbroken woman who isn’t over you while making a new relationship work with someone else!

jackie says that laura isn’t fully telling the truth, that yeah they had a brief interruption in their relationship for that lady but they got back together until laura cheated on jackie with her boss at the halloween store, the woman who is sitting in the witness chair behind her in court today. THIS IS SO JUICY!!!!!!!!!! jackie says that she’s known laura since high school and she was her first girlfriend, then tugs the front of her top down a little to show off her tattoo of laura’s initials. you might think i’m about to clown that, BUT: i can’t because i’ve done it, too. just one initial, and it’s covered with something scary-looking now because lmao i’m fucking stupid, but i deeply relate to the very specific type of brainrot one has to possess in order to make a decision such as this. jackie was obviously out of her damn mind.

jackie says she and laura moved into a house in august, laura started working at the halloween store in september, and on november 7th jackie went to work and came home to find all of laura’s belongings moved out of their shared home. goddamn, working at spirit halloween clearly made an impression on laura. she moved out quicker than she moved in, leaving a trail of rubber freddy krueger masks in her wake.

laura says she’s suing jackie because, while she did jump ship on both their relationship and their FOUR HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIVE DOLLAR A MONTH RENT (i fucking told y’all), she says jackie changed the locks and didn’t allow her to come back and get the rest of her stuff. laura claims that jackie changed the locks but then changed them back after laura called the management company to try to get in so she wouldn’t get fined. jackie says that she did allow laura to come get her things, and that laura and the new girlfriend were in the house several times while she was at work with plenty of time to sort through her shit and take what they wanted.

greg asks laura if she has an itemized list of what she’s suing for and she hands one over. after studying it for a few seconds with his face all scrunched up, the judge says, incredulously, “five pictures of marilyn monroe totaling $100?” EXCUSE ME, PLEASE? okay, i own a lot of weird ass shit too, shit that i would rather literally die rather than attempt to valuate before a semi-retired judge and his rapt studio audience, and i’m sorry babe but there’s some shit you just gotta charge to the fucking game. unless those are polaroids from john fitzgerald kennedy’s personal camera, i need you to let that bullshit go!!!!!!!!!

the ruling: jackie says that anything she might still have of laura’s is because laura abandoned it at the crib, not because she’s withholding it. now, if that was me it would’ve been in the garbage the minute that bitch ran out the house with her tattered mummy costume rags trailing in the breeze behind her, but i guess jackie is not a total piece of shit. in my defense, i feel like there is a deep, disgusting untapped pit of despair within me that would sleep in my ex’s forgotten tshirt or walk around sucking on the toothbrush they left behind. that has not happened, because i’m deathly afraid of unearthing the darkness within me, and therefore have immediately tossed any shred of relationship evidence the minute the bell tolled. can’t be drying my tears with the birthday card they got from the gas station!! that’s sick!!!!!!

the other things i cannot be trusted with post-dissolution are 1 anything you’ve left behind and 2 a working telephone, because at the exact moment the wound begins to heal i will take a rusty blade and rip it open with a casual “hey brother, you left your [worthless item you probably don’t care about] at my place! is there a good way to get it back to you?” text, while my underarms grow slick with the possibility that the response might be “HEY, WANNA FUCK IT TO ME?”

judge mathis razzes jackie a little bit for trying to use laura’s old skateboard and craft supplies (wtf else could a lesbian possibly leave behind?????) to reestablish contact but jackie claims to have moved on. then laura’s spirit halloween manager takes the stand and drops this bomb: jackie used to work for her at the costume store as well, but got her ass fired because she spent every shift following laura around to make sure she wasn’t flirting with anyone?????? see, this is the kind of shit that can happen when your rent costs less than a netflix subscription, taking a job you don’t care about being good at just to make sure your woman doesn’t trick with anybody else’s treats!!!!

becky says that jackie and her friends would call the store every day to harass laura and has witness statements from other people at the job to corroborate her story. again, these are the kind of shenanigans you have time for when your rent is the same price as a latte. the judge believes the witness statements, probably because the minute becky stood up jackie’s attitude turned to shit and she started acting like the kind of person who would sit on the phone all day bothering a bitch who’s just trying to sell an inflatable chicken costume to my dad.

laura gets some cash for the marilyn monroe pictures and a little more for being harassed, and jackie only gets three months’ rent because it’s not laura’s fault that she spent nearly a year not finding a replacement housemate. in the hallway after the verdict becky and jackie and laura start having a loud, gay argument about who did what at somebody’s nephew’s funeral two years ago and jackie’s witness, who heretofore has been sitting and/or standing in stone silence, raises her hand and asks the cameraperson, “can please i go home?????” JUDGMENT FOR HER.

did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: “you broke up but you didn’t think to…………….break away from that apartment???”

*bangs gavel*

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plaintiff: mattie from harvey, illinois. you know with a name like mattie exactly what this church lady looks like: old, black, bespectacled, awkward shin-length hemline, definitely carrying a worn king james bible in her handbag, wearing the kind of old black lady bra that is so stiff and angular you could make out its exact silhouette beneath nine layers of winter clothing. those pendulous breasts are TRUSSED and they will NOT be moving, praise the lord.

defendant: elaine from harvey, illinois. elaine strides into the courtroom in astonishingly accurate jackée henry cosplay: elegant red businesslady blazer, fitted black skirt, clickety high heels, tons of gold jewelry, fancy mullet. i mean, this is what the fuck people are supposed to LOOK LIKE. i want everyone i see to look like they just stepped off the roller rink in an extremely 1986 anita baker music video. i hate the future, it’s scary here. gimme a time machine so elaine and i can take our fingerless gloves back to the era when halle berry had this haircut.

the complaint: mattie has lived in her house since 1979 and says that elaine, her neighbor, damaged her fence so she is suing her for that!

what does she want: $3134

how it went down: just so we’re clear from the outset that i’m not hating, my mother was these women. i, too, would be exactly this kind of calcified witch if computers and grunge music had not been invented. i have their swollen ankles and shuffling gait, but i also know every cranberries song and can work an ipad. mattie says that she moved to illinois in 1975; she worked hard, bought her dream home in which she lives alone, and her life was going along swell until she put a fence between her and elaine’s houses. the judge asks her why she felt the need to put up a fence and she says because she got a dog and wants to limit him to her property, and i’m sorry but how in the fuck could the neighbor possibly have a problem with any of this???

mattie says, “that’s my joy in life: my dog, my eight cats, my money, my house.” goddamn, i love that and i love her. also what a dream of a neighbor. i couldn’t pick any of my neighbors out of a lineup and you know why? because i don’t talk to them! you know what most neighbors do? notice shit about you that irritates them. a couple weeks ago i was home when the woman across the street knocked on my front door. ordinarily, i would keep it moving as if i hadn’t heard anything but i thought she might’ve seen me in the kitchen and i opened the door. “cindy” introduced herself (we have lived here for 2+ years, that is information i never needed to know) and said she’d gotten a package delivery notification that had included a picture of my house. no problem, happy to help! her package was sitting on the shoe rack right next to the door where i’d placed it after realizing it wasn’t a present for me, and as i bent down to retrieve it for her she said, both unprompted and in a disapproving tone, “i know you get a lot of packages over here.”

why does she know this? how does she know this?? it’s not like she has a porch or some rickety rocking chairs posted up on the front lawn, is she just sitting in her house looking disgustedly out her front window every time the UPS truck idles too long at the curb??? i am cripplingly paranoid about the idea that someone might be paying attention to anything i’m doing as i move about the planet (especially if i can’t see/feel them paying attention to me) and the way i usually talk myself out of an impending spiral is to tell myself “no one’s watching you, you loser,” BUT: now i have proof that i am not nuts, there is at least one person paying rapt attention to how much bougie incense i’m trying to fill the yawning gap inside myself with.

not only would it be a dream for either of my neighbors to erect a fence between our homes, i could go for something like a cover that’s just dropped over the house so i can do my scuttling around without any human eyes on me. like how you put a blanket over a bird cage so it’ll shut the fuck up and go to sleep. mattie says that elaine has said she “smells like [her] animals” and that is rude. the judge asks elaine if she indeed said that and elaine says her “friend at the senior center” said it. first of all, if there’s a senior center near me i obviously need to start hanging out there. second, i 100% believe this to be true, as all old black ladies talk about are other old black ladies. i had to call my sister (aged 65) the other day and here’s how that conversation went:
-samantha “hi, i’m returning your call about [some dumb thing].”
-sister “hi girl, [dumb thing details]! hey, by any chance do you remember that woman tracy i worked with in 1987? the one who dated charles’s cousin’s best friend and her mom lived two houses down from where we lived with gram on elmwood?”

do i “remember” this woman my sister worked with when i was in the second fucking grade? this woman who maybe had a relationship with a man’s cousin’s man and whose mom possibly knew our grandmother??? no, i’m sorry babe, i absolutely do not! why would she even fucking ask me that? here’s why: because it sounds better than “wanna hear some milquetoast gossip about boring people you’ve never met before and will never meet, no matter how long you live?” it doesn’t matter whether or not i know who they are, if i don’t cut my sister off before she starts deconstructing her entire family tree i will undoubtedly be subjected to the last thirty years of this woman’s life history and speculation on her future, solely because my sister just happened to run into her down at food 4 less. long story long: if you know an old black lady, right now she is either 1 animatedly talking shit about your ass or 2 casually recounting intimate details of your life to a person you have never met who is looking at the most unflattering picture she has of you on her phone.

elaine says, in her defense?, that she also heard from the bus driver (please!) that mattie is not allowed to sit near him when she rides because he is allergic to cats. this feels like cat person slander and i will not be having it. the judge instructs bailiff doyle to go sniff (!!!!!) mattie, and in turn she sniffs him back??? this show is absurd, and i love it. (they both smell good, thank goodness.) the judge asks mattie how long she and elaine have been neighbors and she says, “i don’t know, i have business of my own.” EXCUSE ME? this might be my new mother! wait, no, this is my actual mother but mattie could most certainly be an estranged aunt!!!!

after some light pressure from judge mathis mattie says that she became aware of elaine in “the late 70s” because her house kept getting burglarized and elaine was always sniffing around. “and you say that to say what, that she had something to do with it?” greg asks and mattie shouts, “BINGO!” she then says that one of the burglaries happened in the winter of 1998 and she found a pair of footprints leading to elaine’s house, but the police chose not to investigate, and they have been subtly antagonizing each other since. this is an actual nightmare. years and years of arguing back and forth with the lady next door about absolutely nothing??? i’m sorry but you have to kill me.

elaine says mattie’s real problem is that she just doesn’t like her. “she don’t like nobody. she don’t associate with nobody, and nobody associates with her. nobody goes on her porch except the postman. she’s got a son, you never see him. something is wrong!” are people just addicted to being pieces of shit? because this is the ideal neighbor!!! everybody in the courtroom is laughing but i would love to see how each of them reacts to an unexpected knock on their front door from a neighbor who doesn’t like their unsightly garden gnomes and wants to yell at them about it.

mattie says that her problem is that she put up a nice fence between their houses and elaine has defaced her side of it. now, i’m waiting for her to reveal i don’t even know what, tags? no, mattie says that elaine disrespected her fence by putting up a decoration of “somebody spreading their booty cheeks.” wait…………….that’s hilarious. should we all move to their block?? the judge (flummoxed, of course, i mean how could he not be) asks her to clarify and she pulls out a thick stack of kodak prints fresh from walgreens. instead of what i wanted to see (A-S-S) the photo mattie produces is of a fence with a yard sign that is kind of like this but not sexy. it’s a cartoon man butt in sensible khakis posed as if he’s peeping through the fence, which you can only see from elaine’s side of it. up to now the cat lady in me was seeing the cat lady in mattie, but even i’m not this fucking grumpy. greg, choking back laughter, asks mattie how much she would like for this so-called damage to her property and, with a straight face, she calmly replies, “three thousand dollars.”

the ruling: I JUST FELL OFF MY CHAIR. that’s the damage? a yard sign you can’t even see unless you walk by her house??? shit, if i knew you could take your neighbors to court over the stupid signs they put in their shitty, overgrown country-ass yards i would’ve spent the entire fall in litigation but let’s not talk about that, let’s talk instead about how mattie is also offended that elaine keeps her garbage can near the fence as well. at first i thought she might be the kind of kindred spirit who also closes the garage door really fast when she sees a child with a clipboard approaching her property, but this woman is deranged. if i ever get like this one of you has to put me down like a dog.

speaking of, mattie produces a couple more pictures: first, what looks like a row of bricks under the fence and second, an aluminum (????) cylinder (?????) in place of the bricks under the fence. i’m not a landscape architect but it looks like the kind of thing you would put up to deter an animal from creeping under, and elaine says that, in fact, she put those things there, on her side of mattie’s fence, because every time she’s working in the garden mattie’s bad little dog starts digging at her from the other side. as the owner of a bad little dog who must be leashed to a basketball hoop in the driveway if he’s outside for more than thirty seconds because he is a menace, i get it.

so mattie wants three grand for “property damage” and the rest of the money is for “pain and suffering” and come on gals, let’s wrap this up and head to church for tuesday night bible study. mattie is absolutely not getting a single dollar to dry her tears over those cartoon haunches, as she shouldn’t, and i hope elaine uses the money she’s saving to upgrade her hideous yard decor to this.

did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: “your friend likes to sniff up behind her behind??? eww!”

*bangs gavel*

plaintiff: kimberly from richton park, illinois. ALRIGHT MY ZAFTIG, VOLUPTUOUS, FULL-BOSOMED, RUBENESQUE QUEEN. that noise you hear? that’s me, barking at my fucking computer screen. it’s big girl supremacy over here, you already know THAT.

defendant: jonathan from park forest, illinois. if a fat bitch isn’t gonna do shit else, she’s gonna bag herself a hot giant man. jonathan is approximately 8'37" of lightly seared steak with dimples, a goatee, a smooth n’ shiny milk dud head, and face tattoos. as jonathan swaggers into the courtroom the voiceover man announces that jonathan “admits he likes older women, which is why he was attracted to kimberly” and i had to rewind the tape because homegirl didn’t look old??? i know you can never tell with black people, but maybe this means he’s nineteen.

the complaint: kimberly only knew jonathan for two weeks before they got married, but they later broke up. kimberly says she bailed him out of jail but has yet to be repaid, so now she’s suing!!!!!

what does she want: $3825!!!! countersuit filed: jonathan would like $3845 from his ex-wife for “unpaid labor” (sex) and “property damage” (also sex).

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how it went down: kimberly says “well first, i should’ve followed your advice, your honor.” greg immediately starts chuckling, because not only does he take immense pleasure in flattery, it’s also been well-established that he fucking loves big girls. “what’s that?” he asks, coyly, envisioning himself on a treasure hunt beneath her voluminous blue tunic. “when you said don’t marry someone that might be a crackhead? well, mr howard is not that, but i still should have listened.” the judge asks how long she’d known him before they got married and kimberly says, “TWO WEEKS.” the crowd gasps so hard you can see kimberly’s wig move in the breeze and i know what they’re thinking: this woman must have the best pussy on the planet.

two weeks??? man, she’s gotta be into butt stuff because what kind of sorcery compelled a young suge knight lookalike (if you squint) to jump right from an introduction to the altar?????? greg is like “HOW DID Y’ALL MEET” because that’s what we all want to know. kimberly says she was in new york on a trip, hanging at a friend’s house, and toward the end of the night she said she was going to leave and get a hotel and jonathan said, “don’t waste your money, i have an apartment. you can stay there and i’ll stay somewhere else.” i cannot press play again until i express my extreme dismay at the idea that a grown adult lady traveled to new york city for an overnight trip without first securing her lodging. i refuse to go to a movie without first memorizing the floorplan of the entire cineplex and selecting my seat plus one extra, for my mental illness, in advance; leaving “where am i going to stay in new york tonight?” up to chance is terrifying to me. although i will say that this behavior explains a lot about how she married a dude before she’d even learned his favorite color or astrological sign!

jonathan says that he met kimberly in new york and they “kicked it for two weeks,” and when they came back to chicago they went to walgreens and he bought her a ring pop (“ooh, ring pop!”) and told her it was a promise ring that one day he would marry her. i guess kimberly wanted to speed up that process because she ate that shit then demanded a real one, which she is wearing in court today??? this………………..is a modern fairytale.

jonathan says, “there’s a fourteen year age difference, but i like older females.” (female whats? don’t talk like this!) “any particular reason?” greg asks, and jonathan gazes over at kimberly with longing, his eyes coming to rest lustfully on her ample behind. “she got a booty! and i was on it!!” jonathan says she played him, though, which is a shame because he thought he was playing her. he invited her to his apartment to “put the game on her,” but she ended up putting the game on him. “she screwed me up,” he says, shaking his head. “she screwed something,” says the judge. “two weeks later you were ready to marry her? she must’ve done something special.”

kimberly says that after they got divorced (she doesn’t give a specific amount of time their marriage lasted) jonathan went back to new york and seemed to be doing okay. she says one day she got a call and it’s him: “i’m locked up.” he’d been picked up for cocaine distribution and they were holding him on a $100,000 bond. if i heard that sum of money being attached to my freedom, i would simply pass away. i feel like i know a few people who both have the money and also love me enough to give the state ten grand for my freedom but one hundred thousand dollars???? i would just laugh and tell them to lock my dumb ass up!

kimberly ended up getting jonathan a lawyer, and the lawyer worked it out so jonathan got probation. kimberly says she put up $3500 for bail and the lawyer was $700, and i really and truly wish i knew how $100,000 becomes $3500 but i am literally never going to research that. “bail math” is just gonna be a thing i’m fine not understanding. i will learn the algebraic equations of incarceration when and if it ever becomes a direct threat to my free will!!!!!

the ruling: jonathan says, “and that’s why i don’t think i should pay her back, because i had to do probation because she got me a cheap lawyer! i should’ve kept the pd!” kimberly replies, “well, if you hadn’t gotten locked up you wouldn’t have needed a lawyer at all!” and that’s right, girl. don’t make me your phone call and then get mad at how i helped you???? is he crazy??????

kimberly says jonathan was looking at 6-to-30 and, “you know how they are when they’re in jail, ‘baby, please get me out, i’m sorry…’” and jonathan interjects, “i only felt like that because i was worried someone was tapping the booty. i wanted to get back out and get back to my booty.” AND THEY SAY ROMANCE IS DEAD!!!!!!!!! greg clocks jonathan for gazing over at kimberly’s backside and says, “damn, it’s like that?!” and jonathan nods. it is indeed, as a matter of fact, like that.

if i was kimberly i would make this entire fourteen-minute video my dating profile. who gives a fuck what i like to watch on TV or my ideal first date, here is a man on nationally syndicated daytime television admitting to a (retired) judge that the one reason he wanted to get out of jail was to have sex with me!!! what else would one even need to SAY? jonathan reiterates that this is why he likes older women and kimberly demurely says, “well, that’s why you need to know how to handle an older woman,” and greg starts banging his gavel because he has had ENOUGH, what is this, sex court???

judge mathis asks jonathan why he thinks he shouldn’t have to pay and he says because he never asked kimberly to bond him out, “she chose to bond [him] out,” proving why older women shouldn’t fuck young dudes. sir, she didn’t see your jailfundme and donate a few bucks to your worthy cause, you called her!!!!!!!! greg asks if jonathan agreed to pay her back and after an uncomfortably long pause he says he didn’t, but of course kimberly has a copy of a promissory note he signed with her in court. if an old bitch doesn’t do anything else, she is going to have her paperwork!!!

the judge asks about jonathan’s counter claim and he says kimberly owes her for “some work [he] did around the house” and the entire courtroom busts out laughing. “you mean real work? like, with a hammer and nails?” greg asks, because he knows what the rest of us are thinking: this young man would like some arrears on kimberly’s, ahem, ar-rear. jonathan says he fixed things around the house that a contractor would otherwise be hired to do, and i would like to see the quality of this work he thinks he can charge kimberly for. for instance, i do the same work a chef might otherwise be hired to do, but no one is giving me money or a michelin star for my no-boil noodle lasagna with jarred sauce that came from the store??? go away from me with this, apollo!!

jonathan says, “i built a porch in front of her house!” and greg counters, “what was your agreement?” and yeah……………….there wasn’t one. turns out he did some painting and twisted a few screws and hey if the work was that big of a deal? brother, type up a fucking invoice. a monkey with google sheets on its phone could throw together something official-looking enough to be enforced in a matter of minutes, please either send her to collections or shut the fuck up!

kimberly says that to date jonathan has paid her six hundred dollars toward this debt he says he doesn’t owe, but he immediately negated that payment by getting arrested and having to be bonded out again. maybe i’ve seen jackie brown one too many times, but at this point should kimberly just become a bail bondsman? she’s gotta be an expert at this point, right??? she’s been to jail more times than the warden, fucking with this dude! anyhoo, i’m gonna go to bed, i knew kimberly had won this case as soon as i made out the full sized bootleg yankees logo tatted beneath jonathan’s eye. judgment for the plaintiff, who hopefully will never bone this dude again jk we know they’re gonna fuck right after this, probably in a holding cell.

did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: “what kind of lawyer can you get for $700? on a dope case?? man, if your $700 lawyer got you probation a real lawyer would’ve gotten you off scot free!”

*bangs gavel*

plaintiff: shavonne from forestville, maryland. A VISION OF LOVE-LINESS. shavonne stuns in sleek black pants and a fitted black cropped blazer replete with not one not two but three identical shiny patent leather fashion belts tightly secured on top. she is wearing a gold arm cuff and enormous bib necklace and let me be the first to say, “welcome back, 1998, i’ve missed you!”

defendant: corey from oxon hill, maryland. corey strides confidently into the courtroom dressed like an extra from this video, i mean the sheen on his suit can be seen from outer space!!!!!, with a thick accordion of truth™ tucked under his muscular arm. he’s got glasses, a goatee, a bald head, and neck tattoos and is the kind of hot you know at first sight is gonna be a problem.

the complaint: shavonne says she and her husband went to corey for a deal of “two free tattoos with the purchase of one” (nooooooooo) but, after she paid for it, she never got the free tattoos advertised, so now she’s suing for the money spent.

what does she want: $313

how it went down: shavonne begins her testimony saying that she doesn’t know the defendant, she first heard of him through craigslist when she saw his ad “buy one tattoo, get two free” while searching for a tattoo artist. shavonne says, “who wouldn’t take that deal?” and the judge snootily replies, “i wouldn’t” and now i am going to say something stunning and brave: i would much rather get a tattoo from a dude with a craigslist listing (a craigslisting?) than from one of those snobs who make you prepay for a conversation then take six months crafting the perfect image before scheduling several multi-hour sessions to tattoo the damn thing. it’s great if that’s how you like it but i want a cool tattoo of big bird getting his dick sucked by grimace in a trash can and i want that shit immediately!!!!!!!!

shavonne said corey told her that in order to get the two free tattoos her paid one had to be worth at least $250, and man that is a fucking steal. is he still in business? somebody point my compass in the direction of oxon hill, maryland!!! after corey finished the paid tattoo on shavonne, her husband jumped in the chair rolling his sleeves up to receive the two free ones, but corey told them they’d have to schedule those for a later time because he had another client scheduled right after them. greg says, “and why are you suing him?” and shavonne says that she never got the two tattoos.

before i click play again and find out for real, are you allowed to sue someone for a free thing they promised to give you? i mean, in this case shavonne is only out the money she paid for the tattoo she actually received, so is the “get two free” a thing you can actually litigate? is it breach of contract if you never got into a formal contract? can i sue the speedway for the car wash being broken when i was supposed to get a free one with my full tank of gas??? can i sue the clinique lady at kohl’s for the mini mascara and travel-sized bottle of happy (the odor of my youth) i thought i was gonna take home with my minimum-27-dollar-purchase that she claims they “literally just ran out of????” anyway, shavonne says she did call corey, several times, to schedule a follow-up appointment but every time she got ahold of him he told her he’d have to call her back and never did.

corey begins his boisterous testimony saying that he has been a professional tattoo artist for over six years and has been featured in many magazines and he loves what he does. he says it’s a priority of his that everyone leaves is chair HAPPY (emphasis his) and he’s never had a disgruntled client. well, okay! greg says, no offense to anyone who has tattoos of course, but “what are they gonna look like when they’re wrinkly and old?” that’s so funny to me, because what does anything look like when it’s wrinkly and old??? wrinkled, and also old! who the fuck cares!! corey says “i guess not too cute” (i guess they mean women???) and this is probably a conversation for another day but people hate older women no matter what the fuck they fucking look like so why not just get whatever you want on your own damn skin because people are gonna trash you anyway. just do whatever you want!!!!!!!!

i’ll tell you one thing i’ve learned hearing the early reactions to AJLT a couple years ago, other than the fact that chucky might not have the cultural significance and impact i wrongly assumed he did: nobody wants to see a bitch over fifty doing shit! maybe knitting a wool sock with a blanket on her lap but other than that? america is so! fucking! weird! about ladies in middle age. for the record, corey has VISIBLE NECK TATTOOS and greg’s not asking him how a brittle old man is gonna shuffle through life with those!!!!!!!!!

then greg asks corey how much tattoo removals cost and corey says “probably a thousand dollars an inch” and guess what, large tombstone inked on the back of my hand? it’s you and me for life. the judge asks corey if he has a good reputation as a tattoo artist and he says he does, and in addition to his promotional tattoo offers he does back drives and backpack donations and all kinds of stuff for the community, and we love to see it. corey says that he never reneged on giving shavonne her “two small tattoos”; she said he had waiting clients, but the real story is that shavonne didn’t have the pain threshold to withstand two more tattoos after the first one.

shavonne says “that is a lie!” and says that she has five tattoos, two of which were done on the same day. none of her tattoos are visible to me at this time so idk if we’re talking two initials or two full-color face portraits. she says that although she didn’t see one corey told her he had another client waiting, so he’d have to do the free tattoos another time. corey starts doing a lot of fast talking that sounds like lies, saying something about only having seven needles for his seven clients that day, which doesn’t explain why he couldn’t just continue with the needle he was already using on shavonne??? maybe she wanted a bunch of colors but this still sounds sus, something in the ink ain’t clean.

the judge asks corey why he didn’t just tell shavonne another day he could fit her into his schedule at the time at was telling her she needed to come back another day. corey says he did, that she should come back on monday when he got his shipment of needles. he says he didn’t give her an appointment time because corey didn’t think he needed to, he just told shavonne to stop by whenever was convenient and she didn’t. uhhh i’m just gonna editorialize a little bit here and say that if you kick me out your studio, while telling me you don’t have adequate equipment, as i am bleeding all over your fucking chair, i don’t know that i’d feel comfortable just “dropping by” at my leisure because if you aren’t prepared today, the day we made an appointment, the day i put CRAIGSLIST TATTOO on the digital calendar i share with my witness slash husband, why would i believe that you’d have your shit together enough not to make me waste an entire future day??????

who wants to play russian roulette with the hours of their day like that? i’m trying to imagine just stopping by the barber shop and waiting for my man dre to fit me in; it could be five minutes (he’s finishing up a beard trim and doesn’t have anyone else on the schedule that day) or five hours (three dudes getting full haircuts, hot towel facial massage, shampoo, eyebrow sculpting, whatever else men care about) and i’m not taking that kind of gamble!!!!!! if shavonne rolls up and dude is half an hour into a full back guadalupe she could be there all fucking night!!!!!!!!!!!!!

the ruling: greg says pretty much the same thing and i loOOoOoove when our opinions match. shavonne says that corey is getting his excuses mixed up. she says that first he told her he was going to be in philadelphia, then he lied to her over the phone as she was standing in front of his shop saying that he couldn’t make it in because his car had broken down and been towed, then he told her he had to “save his needles for paying customers.” is shavonne not……..a paying customer?

corey says something like “i wouldn’t make an appointment because i could never stick to an appointment” and i’m sorry, WHAT. if that’s the case, why not just work at a shop with other artists and take walk ins? all my old tattoos were impulse purchases drilled into my body by whomever happened to be free at the time i walked into whatever shop i happened to be at. i got my evil ursula hand tattoo in austin from this mexican dude who was visibly drunk in the afternoon because my sweet kati (another dingdong with stupid tattoos) and i happened to walk in this one shop to get out of the heat and use their bathroom. i don’t need to be precious about it; what am i gonna do, research???

shavonne’s husband takes the stand and says his wife forgot one other time corey lied to them, when he told her that he’d run out of ink??? isn’t that, you know, one of the main things you need to have when you do tattoos???? my only expertise is animal medicine, and i would rather eat glass than tell someone we’d run out of distemper vaccines. this is extremely bad business and i’m ready for greg to put me out of my misery. shavonne has many sheets of printed out facebook correspondence™ that, frankly, she doesn’t fucking need i mean this guy is a disaster, proving that he lied and strung her along for weeks. greg barely glances at it before ruling in her favor, and i hope she takes that money and gets the dumbest, most ill-advised tattoo she can think of.

did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: “that’s your only form of transportation? they don’t have cabs for big star tattoo artists like you who are so swamped and have amazing reputations?????”

*bangs gavel*

plaintiff: christian from springfield, missouri. christian strides into the courtroom wearing obama’s brown suit, a red tie, and carrying an accordion of truth™ the size of a honda accord. i hope there’s something juicy stashed in there!

defendant: jalesia from springfield, missouri. jalesia stomps down the courtroom catwalk looking like the jet beauty of the week, with a black cardigan buttoned over a red top, a fashion belt, long dangly earrings, and the most elaborate brown wig i have seen in a minute balanced precariously atop her head. gorgeous gorgeous!

the complaint: christian claims jalesia kicked and damaged his car when she was wasted, so he’s suing her drunk ass!

what does he want: $1787

how it went down: christian begins by saying he’s a criminology student at the university of missouri and if it was me on the other side of the courtroom? i would pack my shit up and go get him a money order before he could embarrass me in front of all of america. i remember being absolutely gobsmacked when csi the show first came out; i had no idea someone could lock you up for robbing the apple store because, say, one of your eyelashes fell out while you were shoving a bunch of ipads in a laundry bag??!!?!? i learned in one episode that i am too careless for a life of crime, i would do some stupid shit like kill a guy and then lick every glass in the room, just flood the whole space with bits and pieces of my DNA. i would do every dumb ass thing short of writing my name and address on the wall in the victim’s blood, which is why i don’t do shit but sit in my house and watch basketball. anyway, if a criminologist wanted to sue me i would just pay him because there’s no way i could outsmart his ass.

christian says he met jalesia through his ex-girlfriend and they dated for two years. wait, he and the ex dated for two years or he also dated jalesia and that lasted for two years??? also, why isn’t the ex here???? imagine how much fun that would be. christian says that he and jalesia (i think? it’s hard to discern) broke up because he caught her cheating on him. greg asks him how he found out and christian says he went through jalesia’s phone and found some texts. “what did the texts say?” messy-ass greg asks him, and christian blushes and sheepishly says, “baby, did you like that?” which is hilarious to me because unless homeboy texted that from the pillow next to hers it’s kind of too fucking late, right??????? i haven’t had sex with a man in a very long time and it’s depressing to find out they’re still up to the same shit. ask a woman while you’re fucking her if she likes how you’re fucking her! what’s she gonna say three days later, “umm not really actually, i wish you would’ve drilled the left side a little more forcefully and also closed your eyes the way you look at me without blinking creeps me out” lmaoo this is insane.

the judge asks jalesia if she wants to give him any background before they get into the thorny details of the case and, to my absolute delight, she starts to run down her entire fucking cv: double major in health communications and dance, founder of a dance troupe at missouri state, “very active throughout the campus community,” 4.0 GPA, exceptional student, volunteers at every charitable organization she can, takes in stray animals, feeds the sick and shut in, solved homelessness, working on a cure for cancer, etc etc. i love that she didn’t fall into the incredibly obvious trap of talking about who cheated on what and where and with whom!

okay wait, i might’ve misunderstood what’s going on here. the judge says something like “tell me what happened, it’s wild that your ex-girlfriend’s friend messed up your car” but a few minutes ago it really did seem like the cheating texts christian was referring to belonged to jalesia (in my defense, the camera panned to her for a reaction and also my brain is as smooth as an egg) but i guess not? i watched the beginning again and yes, as unclear as the interpersonal dynamics between christian and jalesia seemed to be at timestamp 1:02, by timestamp 2:53 the judge establishes that it wasn’t the two of them who dated, the uncoupled couple in question was christian + jalesia’s friend.

greg thinks it’s weird that homegirl fucked up her friend’s man’s car??? i think it would be weird if he’d done something to her and she hadn’t. i remember one saturday afternoon in my youth when a friend called me and the first words out of her mouth were, “do you still use bricks to prop up your air conditioner?” i knew immediately what she wanted them for. we hung up and i dragged my window unit into my bedroom and collected the bricks from the ledge and put them in a walgreens bag for her without hesitation. godspeed to his windshield, i guess! anyway that’s literally what friendship is. what is being a sexually frustrated woman in your mid-to-late 20s if not wanton vandalism plus a little willful and malicious destruction of property???

christian says that he had no idea his girlfriend’s friends hated him until the night in question, when jalesia got “violently drunk” and assaulted his car. listen up, brother: if you are dating or married to a woman, guaranteed at least one of her friends hates your fucking guts. it’s just a rule of being alive. don’t sweat it, it’s probably not even personal, that’s just how things have to be to keep the earth tilting on its axis. christian says that he was unknowingly walking out of the club behind jalesia and his ex (he didn’t know it was them because “the hair, the makeup, and the nails girls do when they go out” which is so funny considering that jalesia’s wig is WIGGING in court today) and the girls turned around to look for someone else but were disappointed when all they saw was him.

the two parties exchanged some “sarcastic words” in the parking lot before christian got into his ride and the girls walked to their car. christian does a loop around the parking lot (why) and when he circles back jalesia stands in front of his car with her hands up, telling him she wants to fight. i know looks can be deceiving but this young woman is five feet tall and a dead ringer for brittany chippette. my man was scared of her??? he says jalesia was blocking his way so he just sat there (in a nightclub parking lot??) until she stepped aside. my incredulity, of course, is not because i think christian should’ve mowed her down (although she is small enough to be a speed bump) but because i refuse to believe that a disco in freaking missouri doesn’t have a costco-sized parking lot attached to it. that is one of the major benefits of living in a not-big city in flyover country: lots of stupidly big, wide open spaces where you can just, you know, leave your big stupid car. there’s no way he couldn’t just drive off!

christian says that when jalesia slid over half an inch and he somehow managed to circumvent her (imagine that) and as he did he saw her punch his car with her fist. christian says he “let it go” and while he was still driving around the parking lot one of his passengers asked “to be dropped off at [christian]’s ex’s car” (see what i mean? you could probably land a plane in that lot) so the friend could ride with the girls to the dorm (or maybe the after party, jalesia is trying to interject but the judge keeps shutting her down) and as christian pulled over jalesia punched his car and started kicking it, too.

absolutely showing my age here, BUT: this is how i’m picturing this all going down. the judge asks, in his gotcha tone™ natch, if christian called the police and obtained an estimate from a mechanic and, quel surprise, he did both!! that’s that criminology certificate proving its worth!!! greg asks what the police investigation concluded and he says he “chose not to prosecute” because they are college students and he didn’t want to ruin her future. so in the interest of not tarnishing jalesia’s legacy, christian instead chose to drag her on national tv and call her a violent drunk. very thoughtful!!!!

the ruling: jalesia’s version of the story is that she and her friends were leaving the club when christian came swerving through the parking lot acting like he was going to hit them so yeah, she tried to kick his car, but only because he was trying to break her legs with it! the judge asks, “why do you think he would do that?” and jalesia’s earnest answer is, “BECAUSE HE’S RUDE.” bahahahahaahahhahha

for some reason judge mathis hates this girl, and he mocks jalesia as she tries to explain the distances and angles of the various cars that she was supposed to have memorized? in the middle of the night?? after she’d been drinking??? “hold up, sister, before we go to the after hours spot let me just pull out my protractor and draw a to-scale diagram of where everyone was located in this airplane hangar-sized parking lot when dude was playing like he was gonna run me over.” i don’t have a dog in this fight but that’s crazy to me? just make her pay for the damages, no need to drag her for not being a civil engineer, goddamn!

okay, he hates her because she’s lying. jalesia continues to claim that she never even touched christian’s car, but the judge reads directly from the police report that she told them she “repeatedly struck [his] nissan with her hands.” not to underestimate her strength but unless jalesia turns into the hulk when she’s angry is it even possible for her to do two grand worth of damage to an altima with her bare hands??? that doesn’t matter (she should be studied, right?) because greg is over it. judgment for the plaintiff, and probably for the folks over at sallie mae.

did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: “that’s a little more than rude, ma’am. why do you allege he was attempting to murder you?”

*bangs gavel*

plaintiff: jessica from oak lawn, illinois. jessica is approximately twelve and a half years old and tiptoes timidly into the courtroom clutching her accordion of truth™ to her chest like it’s a trapper keeper with her social studies homework in it. she is small and has bright red hair with heavily-lined terrified eyes peeking out from beneath a glossy curtain of bangs. she truly looks like she just got out of middle school, like she just got a pass to leave in the middle of eighth period, right down to the black ouchless hair tie (a status symbol for girls with long hair) encircling her little wrist.

defendant: joshua from aurora, illinois. a million years ago i went to a wedding at a megachurch in aurora, and let’s just say that joshua looks like he plays passionate nondenominational acoustic guitar there.

the complaint: jessica purchased a truck from joshua and the truck exploded (???) so now she is suing to get her money back!!

what does she want: $900 (okay………..now the *explosion* of it all kinda makes sense)

how it went down: jessica comes in guns blazing: “because of the defendant, my friend had to jump out of a moving vehicle because it exploded on the highway.” she holds up a picture which frankly doesn’t look like shit from this distance, but the audience gasps dramatically in response. as the friend gets up from the witness chair to describe what happened, the camera zooms in on the photo of what appears to be a great ball of fire in the middle of the highway. goodness gracious!

austin went with jessica to buy the truck and after they paid joshua she drove his truck home and austin drove the truck they just bought in case there where any unforeseen problems, because it was new to them. he says that as soon as they got on the highway he heard a loud ticking coming from under the hood, but he wasn’t alarmed because it quieted once he’d been driving for a few minutes. soon after the ticking died down, austin says smoke started billowing from under the hood, smoke so thick that he couldn’t make out jessica driving in front of him. he’s blasting full speed on the highway and feels the brakes give as he tries to slow down so he can get off the road and assess the smoke, then all the power in the fucking truck shuts off!!!! and he can see reflected in the metal guardrails that the undercarriage is on fucking fire!!!!!!! he can’t stop because, remember, he has no fucking brakes, so he COASTS ALONG THE SHOULDER IN A FLAMING FUCKING CAR UNTIL IT SLOWED DOWN ENOUGH FOR HIM TO JUMP OUT OF IT INTO TRAFFIC WHILE IT WAS STILL ROLLING BECAUSE HE DIDN’T WANT TO BE BURNED ALIVE WHEN THE GAS TANK EXPLODED. $900?! how about $900,000,000?!!?!!!?!! this case shouldn’t be on daytime TV, this gentleman should be on trial at the hague!!!

jessica is in the other truck a mile up the highway crying her eyes out while watching her truck burn itself up, and austin ran to join her while they waited for the police and the fire department. he says that they watched the fire travel from where it started under the hood to engulfing the entire vehicle in flames. jessica gives the judge even more pictures of the wreckage, and i’m so glad austin jumped out rather than end up fused to all this melted steel. what a fucking nightmare.

at this point, sounds like dude across the way needs his ass beat. but that’s not how court works! greg asks jessica how she came to purchase the truck from joshua and she says that she’d met him a week prior when she went to his place with a friend who was buying a different truck from him. she says her friend was happy with their truck so when she heard that joshua had a few more to sell she was excited to buy one. i’m sorry, do people just, you know, have multiple trucks??? one of the pictures jessica submits to the judge is of several trucks sitting in the middle of regular-person-yard-grass, not in a used car lot or a junkyard; does homeboy live in a real life version of grand theft auto?????

so jessica goes to get the truck and joshua told her there was “a tick under the engine” but not to worry about it because it could be fixed. her friend austin is a diesel mechanic and he concurred so she felt comfortable buying it. the judge turns to joshua to get his side of things and he says, “do you mind if i play a little recording? so you can see what i had to deal with?” oh hell yeah brother, go ahead and press play. it’s jessica, shrieking into his voicemail. “your fucking truck is on fire right now! on the fucking highway! hi, it’s me again, your truck is still on fucking fire!” what, and i ask this with all the love and respect in my heart, the fuck does joshua think he is accomplishing here?

greg leans back in his throne (i assume that’s what he sits on) and says, “you wanted me to hear what you had to deal with?” and this dude is about to get cooked. joshua chuckles and says “yeah” like the beleaguered dad character on some misogynist sitcom about to call his wife a shrill harpy. greg says, “i didn’t hear the part where you were jumping out of a truck that has caught fire. i didn’t hear that part.” and yeah man maybe don’t be all “get a load of this broad” about a hysterical woman you sold a gasoline bomb to???

joshua, realizing the judge is an extreme feminist and vice president of his local NOW chapter, decides to change tack and pretend that recording was a shared delusion. he says, “so i had this truck and i put it on craigslist, i started getting texts about it and i assumed i was talking to a guy, then she showed up at my house with that guy to pick it up.” joshua says that he told them everything that was wrong with the truck (maybe he just forgot to say “also doubles as an explosive device”) and that he’d driven the the truck for “two or three hours earlier that day.” he maintains that nothing was wrong when he drove it (after he just said he went over everything that was wrong with it in detail with jessica) and says that his girlfriend had driven it back and forth to work for the past two years. (where, at the fucking looney tunes factory?!!?!?)

joshua says that austin and jessica examined the truck inside and out before she bought it, and joshua says he was surprised “that such a little girl wanted to buy such a big truck.” what does that have to do with the fact that you sold her a literal matchbox car??? he says austin advised jessica to buy the truck, telling her that since he’s a mechanic he would fix whatever might be wrong with it. joshua says that in hindsight that’s funny, because he later found out that austin is “a 17-year-old who hasn’t finished high school, not a mechanic at a ford dealer like he told me.” okay i was just fucking around when i said jessica looked like she just got out of detention, are these actually kids????? but also, even if they can’t legally buy a cigarette or vote, it’s on joshua for not checking their IDs. i don’t know shit about laws, and duh i’m not looking, but if i was going to sell someone something as large and dangerous and easily traced back to me as a car i feel like even i would at least do a cursory investigation to make sure they had a license to operate it? it would be just my fucking luck to get tricked by a bearded nine-year-old who buys my old car with monopoly money and immediately starts committing crimes!!

austin assures the judge that he is twenty years old and offers to show him his ford mechanic ID. greg believes him, and joshua interrupts to ask “then why didn’t he see all these things wrong with the truck? because there was nothing wrong with the truck.” not me clocking in for a shift of tone policing, BUT: this feels like an insane energy to be projecting in a courtroom (set) when you sold some teens an accidental tank??? this kind of confidence should come in pill form. greg says, “there was nothing wrong with the truck?” and joshua says, “no! i believe he got on the highway and floored it, despite there being a tick,” and greg says, “well there’s no problem flooring it if there’s nothing wrong with the car.”

joshua is undeterred! he says he thinks austin “beat up on it” (for a few miles??!?!) and reiterates that he’d driven the truck for two hours earlier that day and it wasn’t leaking fluid or anything. greg, supremely annoyed, says “we don’t have proof of that, what we do have proof of is that truck on fire in the middle of the highway.” joshua pivots yet again, this time trying to see if “well……………….they didn’t call me until an hour after they left” will do him any favors but since both jessica and austin scream “WE WERE CALLING THE POLICE!!!!!!!!!!!!” in unison i’m guessing it won’t.

the ruling: greg says to jessica, “he didn’t give you a warranty at all—” and joshua proudly butts in, smugly yelling, “no, i did not! no, i did not!” the judge continues, “—and typically if you don’t have a warranty, you don’t get your money back—” joshua cuts in again, shouting, “i offered them a bill of sale! they didn’t want one!” and greg scornfully says, “may i finish now? you interrupted me while i was about to tell them…………………………..why you owe them.” yay, i love this song!

judge mathis explains that under the law, when you purchase any merchandise it must be “usable.” he says, “in contract law, that’s called an implied warranty of merchantability.” you know, sometimes i forget this dude is an actual lawyer who went to actual law school. that’s on me, damn. joshua looks like he might piss himself as greg says, “if i sell you a watch, it’s ~implied~ that you’ll be able to look at it and tell the time!” the judge says that if two weeks had passed that would be one thing, but if the car couldn’t even go ten miles he sold them a truck that was inoperable, which wasn’t the condition they’d agreed to. not me playing matlock (who would i be in the reboot of the reboot, SHATLOCK?) but maybe a better strategy for young joshua would’ve been to lie and say that he sold them an intentionally nonworking truck that the mechanic friend was gonna get up and running? that’s at least somewhat more believable than “the melted car in that photo went on a road trip two hours before they bought it” or whatever that shit was he tried. judgment for the plaintiff, i hope she gets to go to recess after this!

did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: “are you an ambulance? are you a doctor? there’s no reason to call you, other than to get their money back!”

*bangs gavel*

plaintiff: kirth from indianapolis, indiana. well we love a big teddy bear of a man, and kirth is the biggest and teddy bear-iest. he’s wearing a navy sport coat (his shoulders are so broad, like the length of a dining room table broad, like “can he actually ride in the front seat of a car?” broad) over a grey dress shirt and slacks. his delicious milk dud head is gleaming beneath the courtroom lights, and i would like to bite it.

defendant: karen from indianapolis, indiana. karen’s chic black skirt suit, fingers full of blingy rings, crispy hair show-hair, and long silver talons make me think of gwen guthrie, a reference not enough people will relate to!

the complaint: kirth and karen (CUTE) briefly dated and during the relationship kirth loaned karen money that she hasn’t paid him back, so he’s suing!

what does he want: $2214 (that! is! so! specific!) countersuit filed!!!!! karen would like $350 in recompense from kirth, which he could probably find in his winter coat pockets or maybe under the seats of his car, he looks paid.

how it went down: kirth starts off by telling the judge that he’s honored to be in his courtroom and that his mother and sister will kill him if he doesn’t relay the message that they love his show and watch it religiously. i believe him, because every single time i went to a live taping of judge mathis there were at least a dozen 50+ year old sisters in church shoes and splashed copiously with elizabeth taylor’s white diamonds, fluttering their thickly-mascaraed lashes playfully at the judge. greg is hot shit!!!!

kirth says he met karen in september and when he bumped into her a week later they had a nice conversation and she gave him her phone number. karen immediately interjects, saying, “stop lying. you met me at my house.” well, i love a lady who wastes no time. who needs to bother with exchanging pleasantries when you can skip straight to the bodily fluids??? okay so karen then tells the real story, which is that kirth was at her house in some kind of work capacity, liked what he saw, then called her an hour after he’d left (not a week!) to holler at her.

hold up, now kirth has some clarifications he’d like to make, which is that he did a home visit because karen had been injured at work (not sure if he worked for her employer or the workers’ comp people or what) and she asked if she could call him and he said yes because she was so “jazzy.” she called and kirth says he took her to lunch two weeks later and they had a great time. one of the conversational topics they covered was “how do you have sex if you have a back injury” and yeah sir if you ask me that i’m gonna go ahead and push back from the table because you’re not about to have me on the ten o’clock news for insurance fraud!!! can he not take his claim adjuster’s hat off during some unlimited salad and breadsticks??? karen told him “there’s ways we can get around that” and boy oh boy dating is the woooooorst. where are those sex robots we were promised?! kirth says (with an exaggeratedly sexy wink) that not only did they figure it out, but karen “could write a book about that.” don’t do it, karen. i don’t need any more competition.

karen says she met kirth in early september and within one week he gave her one hundred dollars and a white cadillac. on second thought, maybe she should write that book??? vaginally speaking, what did she do to this man????? kirth tries to say this isn’t true but not only did karen bring printed out cell phone pics™ she also brought her twin sister sharen (karen and sharen, PLEASE i would die for them) who stands up and corroborates her story. sharen was skeptical at the time and says she asked kirth why he was doing all this for her sister after having just met her and he said, “she looks nice and i want to be nice.” is this what my pissed-in gene pool has stolen from me???

sharen says that she drove karen over to kirth’s house to pick the car up, and not only did he not ask for money for it, he gave her $100 to fill up the gas tank! greg asks if the title is in her name and karen says no because the car kept cutting off every time she tried to drive it (“i thought he put a kill switch in it!!!!!!” - karen) so kirth eventually collected the car (and $350 for repairs) and never gave her either of them back.

okay kirth has put his reading glasses on and it’s serious time, time to get into the details of the loan. he says that karen was about to be evicted because she hadn’t worked in four or five months (“it was three months!” - karen), then he doubles back to say he sold her the car for $2000 but wouldn’t give her the title because she hadn’t given him any money. welp…………….um, i guess it ain’t trickin if you got it??? that’s not something to brag about, sir! all that means is any crimes she commits in that car (i’m being dramatic, i mean tickets and such) get traced right back to YOU. nothing says “girl, fuck that parking meter” like driving around in a car the state doesn’t know you own!!!!!!!

kirth says that in october he gave karen $900 toward her rent that she was supposed to repay once she’d gotten a new job, which she never did. “like a fool,” he gave her $660 more dollars in november, which karen promised to pay once she got her disability check. will someone please get this man a cassingle of suga free’s don’t no suckaz live here???? this is embarrassing!!! in december (please, baby jesus) kirth coughed up $654, which karen said she would return to him as soon as she got her tax return after the first of the year, which she did not, so he brought her to court. okay!

karen is suing kirth for breach of contract for $350 she says she gave to kirth to have the car fixed. kirth says he paid over $1100 to have the car fixed and towed, and greg interrupts to say that doesn’t matter since he kept it. kirth tries to argue that karen still owed him the initial amount he was selling the car for ($2000, in case you’ve forgotten) but since they never set a specific date she was supposed to pay him back by it wasn’t cool for him to repossess the car and charge her for fixing it while also holding it hostage.

greg roasts kirth for getting played and i would feel bad for dude it wasn’t clear that he was tearing through all the red flags with his teeth??? no shade to karen but when you give someone without a job “a loan” you are actually making “a donation.” why not just have a generous fucking spirit and also throw in a new carburetor or whatever because she hoisted herself up onto you and bounced on it with a broken back? sucking your dick could’ve fucked up her medicaid!!!!!!!!!

the ruling: karen says she never asked kirth for anything, he just kept giving her shit and who was she to refuse? “he’s a giver, and i’m a taker. he gave, so i took.” i know that’s fucking right. kirth interrupts to say that he was forced to tow the car because she never put gas in it and i get what he’s trying to do here but if that is indeed her car then that’s her problem. judge mathis agrees, telling kirth “sir, you can’t get the money and keep the car” and kirth keeps trying to argue with him, talking about “the car was just sitting in her driveway minding it’s own business” and 1 how the hell do you know that and 2 it feels like kirth thought he was paying for a little more than rent with that $2214 he gave karen.

and listen, i’m a fool, too! in 1998 i bought a playstation for another girl’s boyfriend (i thought he was mine) and i was working at judy’s making $7.25 an hour, somebody please do the math and tell me how many donuts i boxed and boiling hot coffees i dropped on myself to earn whatever that stupid bullshit cost. love had my mind trippin’. the difference between us, though, is that i know when to charge it to the game. not me pulling the ford escort up to some lady’s crib to hide in the bushes and spy on them killing each other in tekken!!! and i mean literally not me, because i know how to take a fucking L. kirth needs to learn when to tuck tail and consider those thousands of dollars a tax write-off.

early in the case kirth said something like “i bought two chapters of her book” as what he clearly thinks is a clever euphemism for sex (it’s only funny if she’s a writer, though? mannnn, let the clowns make the jokes) and greg spins the block to use it against him now: “one of the first things you said was ‘i bought two chapters of her book.’ bought! purchased!!” and, well, we can guess where this is headed from here. greg asks kirth if he’s talked to karen to try to resolve their issue and kirth says she won’t talk to him, but then karen says they texted last night?? in the printed out text sheet™ she offers him, the judge reads aloud that kirth listed a number of naughty things he wanted to “do to [her].” he then asks karen if the number in the text is her hotel room or the amount she wanted in order to fuck him and BAHAHAHAHA.

kirth’s case is dismissed because he’s a simp (jk, the official reason is something about not having a written contract blah blah repossessing the vehicle blah) and judgment for the hot girl, who now gets three hundred and fifty more dollars from this idiot man.

did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: “you say your sister and mother watch me frequently? sir, you need to watch more frequently, because if you did you would know that whenever someone says they’re going to give you money when their income tax comes? you’re never going to see it, sir.”

*bangs gavel*

plaintiff: rhonda from chicago, illinois. heyyy, auntie! rhonda stomps down the courtroom catwalk™ looking fierce in a sheer turtleneck dress (pause and picture that) over a lacy black slip (???) topped with a bolero embroidered with sparkly silver piping around the lapels and wrists. her silk press is laid, her pearl earrings look sophisticated and expensive, and her blazing orangey-red lips can be seen from space. a true glamazon!!!!!!!

defendant: kelvin from chicago, illinois. kelvin is looking casket sharp in a fitted royal blue suit, the busiest blue and purple splatter-effect dress shirt (?) i have ever seen, and a skinny dark blue fashion tie. he’s wearing hip rectangular glasses and, possibly, tinted moisturizer?? where the fuck did these two meet, on project runway?????

the complaint: rhonda and kelvin got engaged within two months of dating (oh no!) and planned a wedding for the next month (oh no! oh no!) now rhonda is suing kelvin for wedding costs because he called off the nuptials (oh no! oh no! oh no!) just hours before the ceremony.

what does she want: $3514 (WHAT KIND OF DAMN WEDDING WAS THIS SUPPOSED TO BE)

how it went down: rhonda begins, “your honor, i haven’t seen mister lee since the day he called off our wedding.” hot damn, what an opener! “i thought that this was it for me, i thought he was the love of my life—” okay let me ask a genuine question i genuinely think about that perplexes me: isn’t it weird to call someone the “love of your life” before, you know, you’ve lived the better part of that life with them??? i saw some very young person say it publicly the other day and i was impressed by their boldness and confidence, and also terrified for their inevitable fall back to earth. at twenty-two years old the love of my life was peanut butter sandwiches, or maybe jonathan from new kids on the block. HOW COULD THAT KID BE SO SURE. anyway, i admire rhonda’s misguided optimism. (i feel like the actual love of her life wouldn’t call off their wedding but maybe i’m stupid!)

rhonda said that she and kelvin knew they wanted to be together because they are both old christians who believe in god. (my words) she says they got engaged october 9 and immediately planned a wedding for november 16, which sounds insane to me. rhonda says that kelvin then totally humiliated her and, speaking of humiliating, she begins to “cry.” except no tears are coming out? it’s disturbing to watch her face scrunch up and her red lips twist as her eyes rapidly flutter and spasm, trying to conjure up even the barest hint of moisture, for ten real seconds which is sooooo long. she looks like anthony demartino! this is upsetting, i am upset.

because rhonda has been overcome with painful-looking fake emotion, the judge instead turns his attention to kelvin and asks for his side of the story. “your honor, we’re here today because [rhonda] is certainly angry about my calling off the wedding, and i felt i had very good reason to do that.” i don’t know if it’s his regular speaking voice contrasted against rhonda’s paroxysm of invisible weeping on the other side of the room but kelvin is almost terrifyingly calm. kelvin, speaking like the most boring pastor at the dustiest church service you’ve ever been to in your life, says that he would’ve married rhonda without a wedding, but “she paid for it because she wanted it. and now, because of her own actions, the wedding was called off.” holy shit, what did she DO?

kelvin says that he met rhonda in august and was set to marry her in november (i love romance!) and greg interjects to ask, “and you thought you knew her well enough after fewer than ninety days?” kelvin says he thought he did, and rhonda agrees. okay then what the hell are we here for??? rhonda says that kelvin “displayed some suspicious behavior when it came to phone calls” and yeah i’m gonna need an example of what the fuck that means. luckily, the judge agrees with me. rhonda says that she would call kelvin on the phone and he’d say something like “i’m on the phone with my brother, let me call you back” and it would take him several hours to return her phone call.

well first of all, that’s just called being old and black. i can’t get my old ass sisters off the phone to save my fucking life. my sister jane has this trick where she’ll text me something innocuous, i’ll respond, and before my finger even leaves the screen that shit is lighting up with a call, and when i don’t answer she will immediately text “I KNOW YOUR PHONE IS IN YOUR HAND.” and she’s right, but i can’t answer unless i’m ready to spend a minimum of one hundred and twenty-seven minutes listening to her talk about a bunch of shit i don’t care about but am forced to politely nod through because i don’t want to get in a pointless fight. if i pick up, i have to start plotting my exit at least half an hour before i actually need to get off the phone because my usual excuses don’t faze her. if i say “gotta go, i have emergency diarrhea” she’ll just say, through a mouthful of whatever she’s having for lunch, “i’ve been changing your shitty diapers since you were born, that doesn’t bother me.” that is 1 disgusting and 2 a really good trap. what i’m saying is……………..this doesn’t seem that weird to me? every phone call with an adult sibling inevitably devolves into litigation over some bullshit that happened in 1987, and that can take awhile. and sometimes even after a short phone call you gotta walk around your room for a minute or meditate through some deep breaths or pause check your socials! if somebody tells me “i’ma call you back” i don’t start to get pissed for at least three business days. rhonda needs to relax.

rhonda says the night before the wedding, as they were “decorating,” she “quietly approached” kelvin while he was on the phone and he turned on his heel and walked away from her. is that a rule, like not being able to see the dress? maybe dude was like “it’s bad luck for you to overhear my hushed conversation with a woman who isn’t you before the ceremony!!!!” rhonda then followed him out of the venue, where he informed her that he was upset because she questioned him about the phone call and said that he “had a life before he met [her]” and she couldn’t “control” him. am i fucking insane? because i’m about to defend a man. if i’m on the phone, bitch i’m on the fucking phone. if you need something from me, whisper what it is so i can decide if i need to stop conducting my personal phone business to deal with it. if you just want to know who i’m talking to, walk your nosy ass in the other room and eavesdrop. I TALK LOUD AS HELL. kelvin then told rhonda she wasn’t the woman for him and called off the wedding.

i’m a fucking sociopath, so i get it. if you don’t like to be interrupted while on the telephone, you can’t marry a telephone interrupter! i’m pretty sure that’s in the bible!!! if our wedding is so cheap that i’m up the night before hanging up streamers and shit (i say this without judgment; kirsty and i got married on the deck next to a grill with hotdogs on it) i have zero qualms about calling it off. i’m taking my party city balloons and my unlimited minutes and getting the hell outta there to find a wife who will let me gossip in peace.

kelvin’s version: his employer called and he stepped outside the church to take it because he did not want to be disrespectful to god. rhonda came storming out after him, accusing him of being on a call with “a woman from atlanta.” kelvin says that was a huge red flag for him, and not the kind of relationship he wants at this point in his life. amen, brother. the judge asks kelvin when the red flags started, and kelvin produces a printed out text sheet™ in which rhonda says “i’m feeling uneasy and i’m not sure we’re truly connected,” a message that she sent him the day after accepting his marriage proposal. i’m sorry, what???

the judge reads more of the text, in which rhonda says, “i’m not sure i’m the one for you.” rhonda’s defense is that she lashed out because kelvin can be curt and short when he is angry, which i agree is some shit you don’t want to deal with. why didn’t they just call the whole thing off? or, you know, spend a year (or two) getting to know each other better? if you get into it with some grumpy guy you’re dating you can just cool off for a few days without having to wonder whether or not your souls should be forever intertwined; signing up for a lifetime with a dude you just met elevates every squabble to world war three.

rhonda says she paid for the wedding in its entirety because as soon as she and kelvin got together he quit his job without telling her first. forget “short and curt,” we got a problem if you’re expecting me to walk down the aisle with “strapped and broke.” kelvin’s explanation is that he worked 12-hour nightshifts at the time, and the night he quit was particularly taxing, but he couldn’t tell rhonda about it because she was too busy losing her shit on him for not calling to “check in” earlier during his shift. rhonda proceeds to present evidence against herself, a printed out text sheet™ in which she accuses kelvin of not calling because obviously someone had “caught his eye at work.” i’m about to go lie down in the street.

these people are easily between 62 and 117 years old: at what point in our emotional maturation do we evolve past “you missed this arbitrary deadline i set for you, you’re probably cheating” or is this just something some of us take to the grave? imagine sliding your reading glasses onto the tip of your nose and prying open your jitterbug phone with your bulbous arthritic knuckles just to accuse a man who eats oatmeal for dinner of fooling around on you. i’m cryyyying. greg reads another text in which rhonda says “i told you if you mess me up you’re out of my life” and i’m sorry but it sounds like kelvin was just following her directions!!!!!!

the ruling: rhonda is mad that kelvin called the wedding off at 9:30 at night when their wedding was scheduled for 1:30 the next afternoon and i feel that. give me at least a week, damn! she says she had to get up at five in the morning on what was supposed to be her wedding day to start texting their guests that the wedding was off. that sucks, although can you imagine the relief those guests felt? i love when people cancel plans. i mean, waking up to a text that your entire day has been cleared and you can take that slow cooker you bought them back to kohl’s? that’s the dream!

greg asks rhonda if she and kelvin had agreed to each pay half, and she says kelvin was going to “pay for what he could pay for.” the judge points out that she’s asking for all of the money back, and she says that’s for the humiliation she suffered. well babe, if humiliation paid dividends i’d be swimming in money like scrooge mcduck. kelvin drones that he was “amenable to paying” (he really is a cyborg, wow) but says rhonda knew his circumstances. plus he’d told her that he didn’t need a wedding to marry her but she adamantly insisted they have one. the camera zooms out to reveal that rhonda has been standing next to a headless mannequin draped in her unused wedding dress this whole time, and honestly? give her all the money for doing that. it’s so bleak. and judge mathis must concur, because he says that kelvin misled rhonda up until their wedding day and for that she deserves three thousand dollars. in the hallway outside the courtroom kelvin menacingly says to rhonda, “you will give me that ring back” and the camera quickly cuts away. terminator 7 coming soon to a theater near you!

did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: “you can hide anything from a person for ninety days! he could’ve had a crack habit!! maybe he called off the wedding to go hit that thang!!!”

*bangs gavel*

plaintiff: dana from rochester, new york. dana’s giving glamorous mime, she’s giving impossibly chic zebra, she’s giving the most stylish referee on the powderpuff football field. dana strides into the courtroom wearing a black-and-white striped boatneck top, which reminds me of this incredible bell-sleeved version i just bought from universal standard that is so good i will probably wear it every single day until i inevitably spill a giant glob of grape jelly down the front. anyway, while i pair my shirt with outside pajamas and neon orange beanie, dana has paired hers with a chic pair of black leggings and large white fashion earrings. she looks like a beautiful penguin.

defendant: frankeisha from rochester, new york. okay so frankeisha is rocking a look i used to love ten years ago, before perimenopause ruined my ability to self-regulate my internal temperature, the “cool and interesting jacket/scarf combo” that you definitely leave on even when you’re inside because it definitely was hiding a grubby, sweaty t-shirt with cat hair on it. a cool jacket is an easy way to look chic and put together, especially when you never take it off, and even though you wear it every single day no one thinks you’re gross because they assume your clothes are different underneath. i went to new york for a weekend in the fall of 2013 to do some bootleg events for the original meaty and i only took one shirt and no one was the wiser. anyway, i’m assuming frankeisha is also a genius.

the complaint: dana says she wouldn’t be in court today if frankeisha hadn’t stolen and married her boyfriend, and now she’s suing her for slander and emotional distress.

what does she want: $3000? damn, what the hell did ol girl SAY? frankeisha is countersuing for $5000??? what the fuck did she say?????

how it went down: dana begins, “your honor, we wouldn’t be here if the defendant didn’t steal my boyfriend, marry him, and slander my name.” okay, well, first of all, that’s not your boyfriend that’s her husband. i’m not a genealogist (shut up) but i’m pretty sure husband > boyfriend, right? okay never mind that, we gotta be serious: dana says that the slander she’s suing frankeisha for is because she wrote on facebook that dana had aids, and boy is that shitty. also, like, there’s PrEP now? and antiretrovirals? magic johnson is out here thriving, what kind of ridiculous outdated insult is that???

dana says she and frankeisha were incredibly close; so close, in fact, that when they were both pregnant at the same time they were going to be each other’s godparent. dana says that frankeisha was with her in the delivery room and even stayed overnight with her at the hospital, and a week after her daughter was born she found out frankeisha had slept with her ex. dana says a week after that she and frankeisha got into an altercation about the ex-boyfriend, and frankeisha retaliated by bringing her sisters over to dana’s house and busting out the window over her sleeping baby’s head. holy shit, it’s been awhile since we’ve had a case bad enough to be turfed over to murder court, do you think i should call and wake up the judge???

dana has six police reports detailing various incidents in which frankeisha has done a crime to her prior to the slandering. as dana gets together her printed out facebook evidence™ for the judge, frankeisha interrupts to say, “first of all, your honor, we were never friends.” lmao yeah girl, i guess not! she says that they grew up together and haven’t liked each other since middle school, and that she was friends with her husband before dana started dating him. frankeisha says the harassment has gone both ways: dana and her friends jumped her during her first pregnancy, dana had her cousins jump her in the supermarket, and dana had her new boyfriend kick frankeisha in the back (oh my god?) while she was pregnant with her second child.

frankeisha says that dana would show up at the hospital when she had doctor’s appointments and, when she was dealing with a cps case, sent her son over to visit his dad and asked him to steal frankeisha’s court documents, which she then posted on facebook. i’m sorry but i think i might be dying. this is all extremely horrible!!! frankeisha says dana has popped up on her at the store, at the gas station, all over town, and she’s stressed her out so much she went into pre-term labor with one of her sons. greg asks (kind of nastily) if she’s ever called the police on dana and of course she has, frankeisha says dana is on probation right now for fucking with her!!!!!!!!!!

there must be something damning in dana’s paperwork, because greg is unmoved. he asks frankeisha if she has any defense for the accusations dana has made and she says she never wrote anything like that on facebook. greg asks her if she’s sure and frankeisha says yes, she might’ve made some spicy innuendos and hit her with a few verbal jabs but no, she’s never written the word “aids” on facebook. my stomach just fell out of my butt, because the look on judge mathis’ face says YES YOU FUCKING DID.

greg adjusts his glasses and reads the following: “frankeisha: ‘this aids-having [bleep] still hating, don’t she know a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush? does she wanna go night-night?’” oh no, not her also slipping in a death threat with the defamation??? she didn’t stop there, the judge reads three more even worse comments and i’m not saying you should keep a copy of everything you’ve ever written online but how the hell did frankeisha forget she said all this? frankeisha says “i’m sure she deleted all the stuff she said to me” and that’s on you for not swinging by kinko’s on your way to court today, ma’am! photocopied facebook threads are your responsibility!!!

frankeisha says she wrote all that shit because she was provoked and greg says, “good enough………….what about the lie you told me?” and i wonder if it’s possible to just give up in the middle of a court case. like when you’re in an argument and you know the other person is never gonna hear you and you don’t feel like fighting anymore so you just throw your hands up and concede, can you do that in an actual court of law? like, you see all the evidence your opponent is laying out and you know there’s no fucking way you’re gonna be able to counter that, can you just turn to the judge and say, “fuck it, i give up?” because if you can that’s what frankeisha should try to do.

frankeisha says that she didn’t deny it, she said she couldn’t recall what she’d written, and greg is like, “umm i read four paragraphs and you used the word ‘aids’ multiple times in all of them” and what in the 1989 are we doing here, just give dana her money and let’s wrap this shit up and go gouge our eardrums out! frankeisha says she was just repeating a rumor that she’d heard “on youtube” (WHAT) and besides, dana deserved it because she’d gone online and talked a bunch of shit about her kids.

judge mathis is pissed, and he says that because frankeisha had made a statement as if it was fact (not “i heard…” or “somebody told me…”) to a third party (in this case, all the nosy aunties on facebook) and since that statement could’ve damaged dana’s reputation, this is an open and shut textbook case of defamation. he’s ready to go, but first he’s going to embarrass frankeisha for having the nerve to bring a countersuit before him. he lets her tell him that dana “often waits until i am impregnated” (shudder) “to attack [her] with her entourage” and i do not like the way she worded that at all. greg asks if frankeisha had admitted anything to the police all those times dana had filed a report on her and she says, “why would i do that?” opening the door for greg to respond, “the same reason you’d come in here and lie to my face.” at this point, this is like watching a lion play with its food. get to the gavelling, already.

the ruling: frankeisha tries to tell greg about dana and her friends jumping her at her doctor’s office and showing up at her home unannounced, but because he’s already caught her lying the judge refuses to believe anything else she says. he asks her to provide proof that dana has defamed her, and she hands him a twitter screenshot in which dana says something like, “i will kick a [bleep]’s [bleep] for [bleep]ing with me” but that’s more of an idle threat than it is slander. (yes, i went to law school.)

the judge admonishes dana for her threats and says, “the violence and harassment cancel each other out” and okay??? is that a real thing????? sure, why not! for the first time in these interminable thirteen minutes the judge points out that the man these two are fighting over is in court today and neither of them has so much as gestured to him, and that’s the actual problem here. i can’t tell from the look of his maroon sweater vest whether or not he fucks good, but is there literally anything a man could do in bed that’s good enough to be clowning first on al gore’s internet and now on nationally-syndicated television over? i think the fuck not! judgment for the plaintiff.

did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: “that’s not defamation, all she was doing was suggesting that you two work out your problems violently!”

*bangs gavel*

plaintiff: william from springfield, ohio. ughhh this is some grody old lady shit but i’ve definitely reached the point in my decrepitude where unless it’s obvious that a person is sixty-five, every single human being i encounter looks like a child to me. for real, william walked in and i was like “is he in the seventh fucking grade?” i would say yes if it weren’t for his thin mustache and neck tattoo, both of which you can only legally obtain if you’re an adult.

defendant: casaundra from springfield, ohio. whenever young white people have old black people names, you gotta watch the fuck out. you ever meet a young white brenda? or found yourself seated at a wedding next to a twenty-year-old white shirley?? be careful, ma’am, that lady can FIGHT. if this was “cassie” or even “cassandra” i might give her the benefit of the doubt, but when the announcer stressed his blaccent on ca-SAUNDRA i knew immediately she did whatever homeboy says she did. and she’ll do it again!

the complaint: william claims casaundra destroyed his property with a butcher knife, so he’s suing her. (see what i told you???!!????!?!?!?!!!!??!?!?!!)

what does he want: $3000??? what the fuck did she carve up, a toyota?????

how it went down: william begins his testimony by saying he’s read the judge’s life story and finds him to be a big inspiration. greg, in a surprise twist, says that he’s glad the young man was inspired by him but the reason people know about his sordid criminal history is because when he was running for judge way back when the detroit news published a bunch of hit pieces about his past. he seems pretty salty, but like, okay…………..that is the nature of politics in this country? and the kind of due diligence we expect from competent journalists?? forget that a reporter exposed something nefarious he’d actually done, what if they had just made some shit up! imagine greg running for office in 2024 with all the AI sex tapes and robot spammers and shit out there. his old head would explode!!

william says he met his ex-girlfriend, the defendant, “through her mother and my father………..which were dating.” excuse me, brother? what did you just say? did you mean to say “that’s my stepsister” or do you really mean to be telling the entire united states of america that you had a sexual relationship with your dad’s girlfriend’s daughter??? oh, you did????? and guess what else, they also have a baby together!!!!!! OPEN THE FUCKING SCHOOLS.

william tries to launch into an explanation of the property he’s alleging that casaundra has damaged and greg is like, “whoa whoa WHOA, hold up, you think i’m just gonna let you blow by that juicy morsel you dropped at my feet????” william says that when he and casaundra first got together everything was good (who cares, please talk about your DAD) but eventually trust issues developed between the two of them because casaundra “started thinking [he] wanted his other child’s mother more than [he] wanted her.” greg wants to know what would make her think that; was william spending more time with the other woman? william says no, that he spent the majority of his time at home with casaundra, but casaundra interjects that the two of them would be on the phone all the time—LATE AT NIGHT!!! when all the naughty sex stuff happens!!!

the judge isn’t happy with the level of dirt they’ve shared thus far and asks william what reasons casaundra would have to be suspicious. william says “i guess she’s just an extremely jealous person” (LOL) and then casaundra says, “sometimes when we would go to her house to pick up his son he would leave me in the car outside for forty-five minutes to an hour.” and there you have it. y’all know i don’t believe in most accusations of jealousy and this case is a perfect example of why: casaundra’s not irrationally jealous of this woman she happens to be sharing a co-parent with, this dude leaves her in the car while he disappears inside this woman’s house for a sexual length of time! that’s not misplaced envy, she’s cold and the seat warmer doesn’t work and the radio is fucked up!! she needs roadside assistance!!!!!

okay so in august they decided to “try again” and william moved back into the house he’d once shared with casaundra and her mother. and, oh yeah, HIS FUCKING DAD. william says that he and his father got into an argument and in an effort to be “the bigger person” he moved out, which casaundra took personally, assuming that meant he was breaking up with her. okay i just……..i just cannot……………..i just cannot understand why no one has talked about how weird it is to be double dating with your fucking parents??? i know they’re not related but they’re not……………….not related?????

william says that shortly after he moved out they had to take casaundra’s daughter to get a dna test because he thought she was his. casaundra refutes this, then william says okay what actually happened was casaundra came over to his house after he moved out and “we did what we do” (had unprotected sex) and then three days later casaundra called to tell him she was pregnant. william asked how she could possibly know it was his baby since it had only been three days since they’d gotten busy, but because he’s a good man he decided to step up and take care of his responsibilities despite his doubts. (a true american hero!!) brother, you know what i could really go for right now? someone suffocating me with a pillow. this is bleak.

not too long after that happened they had to go to court for their other (actual?) child and william says when she walked in casaundra was already visibly pregnant and said, “sorry, i tried to trap you, i was already pregnant the night i came to your house.” i’m sorry but THIS IS NOT FUN. somewhere out there are two (or more) light-skinned, sandy-haired children who have been saddled with these two as their parents and if any of this is real, wow what a bummer! casaundra says that when they went to court she was already pregnant and she told william there was a possibility the child was his but it wasn’t. greg asks how far along she was when she told william and casaundra says three months, but she’d just found out a week before. unless she stabbed the baby, what are we even fucking talking about this for? as a former child with humiliating parents, can’t we skip this part and get to the play station she hacked into pieces or whatever the fuck property she destroyed of his??? this is boring and depressing.

here we go, finally: when they went to court for the child support hearing for the child they both agree they conceived together, casaundra apparently showed up with a box full of belongings that william had left at her house and they had been cut into pieces. shoes, clothes, and even a winter coat, haphazardly cut but still kind of intact? like, there’s a t-shirt with the sleeve cut off and it’s been cut off along the seam. i mean, do the other side and you’ve basically got a stylish muscle tee. who destroys clothes in this way???

the ruling: casaundra wants to know, too, because she claims it wasn’t her. she says that the garbage bag filled with clothes that she handed over to william in court that day was the same garbage bag of clothes he’d been living out of at her house. casaundra says “if i did that, why would he wait so long to bring me to court about it?” well, first of all babe, there’s a screening process. this is a highly produced, super professional television program, you better recognize! william says that he has printed out text sheets™ that prove he’s telling the truth, and casaundra says, “i don’t have a phone,” which would be a hilarious defense if it could actually work. judgment for the plaintiff, who will hopefully use it to buy some new gators. (she cut?? the heels????? off his gators???????? DIABOLICAL)

did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: *flipping through a stack of pictures of cut up clothes* “you sure you didn’t do this? seems like he has more than a shred of evidence!”

*bangs gavel*

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