plaintiff: lauren from fairburn, georgia. lauren is gorgeous, and you know i love watching pretty girls fight! if you squint she kinda looks like gina rodriguez? i mean not really but a little! anyway she’s wearing a fitted black skirtsuit with an ~extremely~ snatched waist, i’m talking 18th century steel-boned corsetry, and her skin is blushed and bronzed and whatever she wants to sell me? I’M BUYING.
defendant: okay i don’t usually do this but this woman’s full name is zhazha casanova and that is quite possibly the greatest human name i have ever heard in my entire fucking life! ZHA ZHA CASANOVA??? imagine if you got to introduce yourself to people that way!!!!!!!!! i gotta be like “hi my name is samantha irby no not irving irby with a y at the end no not e-r-b-y more like h-e-r-b-y but with an i” like a fucking moron, and this tall drink of water gets to go through life telling people her name is zhazha casanova, bitch i’m sick! the glamour!! with a name like that do you even have to do regular person shit? does zhazha casanova have to complete mundane tasks like going to the grocery store or pumping her own gas? samantha irby has to drag the garbage pail to the curb every thursday but i bet my life that zhazha casanova doesn’t! a goddess!!!!!!!
the complaint: lauren hired zhazha casanova to plan her 30th birthday celebration and was unhappy with the party so she is suing for costs associated with the event.
what does she want: $4534! i’m sorry????????? for a party????????????????? that’s not a wedding?????????????????????????? countersuit because of course: zhazha casanova wants $2300 for a venue fee and emotional distress. give it to her!!!!!!
how it went down: lauren says she and zhazha casanova met about ten years ago in “the club scene” and that zhazha casanova is an entrepreneur who’s had many businesses. ooh boy, if there’s anything my many years of nightlife has taught me it’s that you can’t trust anybody you meet in the fucking club, myself included. you know how much stupid shit i committed to while absolutely zooted out of my mind hovering over a bathroom sink at slick’s or crammed next to the bar at sonotheque??? i should be in jail for all of the schemes and plans i enthusiastically agreed to while shitfaced on overpriced stoli razberis! i mean, electric chair just for drinking stoli razberi!!!
lauren says that she has always supported zhazha casanova’s various ventures because she’s always doing cool stuff and supports women’s empowerment. lmao i desperately want to make a fucking JOKE but i will REFRAIN because i SUPPORT WOMEN. lauren has had a rough couple of years: she moved from chicago to atlanta four years ago and in that time she: lost her mother, lost her grandmother, lost her best friend, and survived both a car accident and a plane crash. yikesssssss. and i was just feeling bad for myself because i thought i burned a gluten-free costco pizza! blah blah blah, perspective, blah.
for her 30th birthday lauren decided to throw a “death to my 20s” birthday party, and that’s fucking funny. she hit up zhazha casanova and told her her idea and asked if she would organize the event and zhazha casanova said absolutely yes. zhazha casanova says she asked lauren what her budget was for the party and apparently lauren responded “i don’t have a budget, it’s my 30th birthday, i wanna go all out.” ummm, okay! is that real??? honestly i’m willing to believe that she said she didn’t have a budget but what really floors me is that she actually knows enough people to justify renting a concert hall for her birthday? i have thrown many parties for myself because all my friends are huge pieces of shit, but all those gatherings consisted of was my texting a handful of people “hey we’re meeting at _______ at _______ o’clock if u wanna swing thru it’s my birthday.” it never cost me literal thousands of dollars!
well lauren says that the budget was five grand. again, i say: DUDE WHAT. zhazha casanova drew up a contract and she hands that contract to the judge, except it’s only page 1 of 3 and listen why even bother bringing an accordion of truth™ if you aren’t going to put all the paperwork you need inside it! lauren contacted zhazha casanova in july to start planning the party that was supposed to take place november 1. zhazha casanova was supposed to book the venue, hire the caterer, and purchase decorations, but not one of those tasks had been accomplished by the beginning of october. she was also supposed to book a car service and a cleanup crew and design invitations; lauren wanted to get a photographer and DJ under contract as well, and zhazha casanova hadn’t done that either, even though lauren provided her with a DJ she already knew. i’m sorry, but, isn’t this too many things to trust one person to do???
now idk where we’re going with this but at that point i would’ve been done with the whole thing altogether and my party would’ve been me and whichever of my friends was available that night wedged into a sticky booth at chili’s, openly weeping about our sagging necks and indigestion over a triple dipper platter and a giant pitcher of watered-down margaritas. my mother didn’t go through this much trouble to squeeze me out into this world, there is absolutely no way i’m going to go to this much effort to celebrate that i’ve spent another year suffering in it???????
lauren says that she went on amazon and bought all of the decorations and cups/plates she wanted for the party and i literally don’t know anything but shouldn’t a caterer cover all that? but wait, zhazha casanova hasn’t booked a caterer. but wait wait, what food is there gonna be then????? this is so stressful it’s making my chest tight! october 17 comes around and lauren’s friend megan offers to do the invitations and she does a beautiful job, and one thing i think i missed earlier is that lauren was living in atlanta but the party was supposed to take place in chicago, which raises the stakes even higher! WHY IS THIS SOMETHING A SANE PERSON WOULD ATTEMPT. i couldn’t throw a party in my house without six months notice plus a refinance on the mortgage, is lauren just an optimist or naive or what??
lauren says she got to chicago on october 30 and got her hair and nails done thinking that everything was okay but it wasn’t. now you know i hate when the story has a choppy narrative arc, but we do what we can with what we have. instead of telling us that she arrived to an empty vfw hall with the wrong plates and no DJ or whatever, lauren backtracks and starts talking about how zhazha casanova never got the stuff she’d ordered and had sent to her, then we get into a long back-and-forth about amazon’s return polices (???) that culminates in zhazha casanova producing receipts that all of the items had been returned/refunded to lauren so what are we even doing here.
now we’re gonna clear up some confusion, i think: zhazha casanova, who is not here for this bullshit slander at all and my god i love her, has a list of things she asked lauren to order for the party. she contends that lauren ordered a bunch of extra unnecessary stuff and that those are the items she’s suing her about, but zhazha casanova doesn’t want to be held responsible since those weren’t things she requested in the first place. (for the record, we’re talking about shit like drinking straws and decorative candles, not chairs and booze.) zhazha casanova has brought a video of the party to court, and we are treated to lauren in a sparkly silver dress dropping it low next to a custom casket zhazha casanova built (the theme is “burying my 20s,” get it????) and coming perilously close to scorching her bottom on a bunch of burning candles placed around the floor. i don’t know, she looks like she’s having a good time despite her death-themed 30th birthday! geez, how’s she gonna ring in 40, a fucking crematorium???????
the ruling: THIS IS ABSURD. ultimately lauren’s case boils down to “she threw the party, everything worked out, but some details weren’t exactly like i wanted them so gimme my money back.” which is her right! would i quibble about the kind of straws my guests were drinking out of? probably not, but i’m also the type of asshole who would just invite all my friends to straws ‘R’ us and have a party there rather than organize anything of my own. zhazha casanova’s countersuit is because lauren and her friends stayed at the venue two hours over the time they booked it for, and because she lost the client who rented her the space because lauren was screaming at them, and quel surprise zhazha casanova has proof! from her battered and bruised accordion of truth™ she produces an invoice from the venue owner that says they stayed two hours over the time and at $150/hr that’s $300 for zhazha casanova!
you can tell that lauren doesn’t get told NO too often, and when greg turns to tell her that she’s not getting any money because she hasn’t sufficiently proven her case she starts crying before he even gets all the words out. he says that she contradicted herself because there’s clearly a party happening in the video so obviously zhazha casanova delivered? lauren should’ve taken her case to the people’s court or the view or some lady show because listen, no old black man is gonna give a shit that you got green napkins instead of pink ones or whatever the hell she’s suing for, especially when the party still happened and there’s video evidence of you having fun. this is like when my dad got me a scented strawberry shortcake doll and i cried because i wanted a plush rainbow brite and he was like “GIRL WHAT THE FUCK IS THE PROBLEM, THEY’RE BOTH WHITE” and sent me to bed without dinner. she shoulda gone to judge judy with that!
did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: (honestly he couldn’t get a word in edgewise with these two, but here’s one from the youtube comments) “[Lauren] survived everything but Judge Mathis 😂”
*bangs gavel*
babies, somehow this is the 100th issue of this nightmare project i have undertaken????? thanks for letting me cook! i love you with my whole heart.