who's on judge mathis today? #226
an idiotic recap of the greatest syndicated courtroom show of all time
plaintiff: sandy from jacksonville, florida. ALRIGHT NOW. it’s been a minute since we’ve had a great big handsome grizzly bear of a man up in court! sandy is approximately 12 feet tall and 937 pounds and he’s gorgeous: shiny brown milk dud head, bushy, voluminous mustache and beard, and a black dress shirt emphasis on “dress” because it’s so long it practically grazes his ankles. i’m obsessed!
defendant: valerie from jacksonville, florida. well well well if these two aren’t the jack sprat nursery rhyme come to life. (i fucked my whole algorithm up clicking on that shit ugh, but it’s worth it!!!!!!) valerie is tall and lithe, dressed head to toe in black, waist cinched, wig sitting RIGHT.
the complaint: sandy has known valerie for ten years, and she wanted to go into business with him because he looks like rick ross (i’m sorry, WHAT) but then stiffed him on an appearance fee??? i am already in heaven.
what does he want: $200 nope nuh uh no way, come on sandy! a hot slab of beef jerky like you can’t be in court suing for the kind of money i could find undigested in my colon right now!!! this is embarrassing! hang on, now we’re cooking with gas, the lovely valerie has filed a countersuit for $1000 for slander!
how it went down: okay babes i am so fucking sorry to be who i am but there’s no way i can press play on this case before alerting you to the existence of this, the single greatest tabloid headline OF ALL TIME. i can’t think about rick ross OR hear a richard ross banger OR lay eyes on a crisp and juicy lemon pepper chicken wing without remembering this story and crying laughing. even as a person who will inevitably shit herself to death it’s unbelievably hilarious to me!
sandy (i cannot get over that that is his name) says he’s known valerie for over ten years and he met her through a mutual friend because they are all in the “entertainment business” together. i would watch a documentary about these people. a beauty queen, a rick ross lookalike, and some other person who is at the very least interesting enough to know these two doing ENTERTAINMENT in jacksonville, florida? i mean, come on! this is either the most promising idea i’ve ever had, or i’m high from huffing bug spray after chasing two noisy flies around my room.
sandy says they got close and started partying together, and after a while valerie started clocking all the attention he was getting from people in the clubs because he looks like rick ross. the judge is like “wait, you do appearances as him?” and sandy clarifies saying that he doesn’t impersonate rick, he just goes out and people come running up to him thinking he’s the rapper. i gotta say, there is literally one person i love enough to humiliate myself in front of him at the club (okay fine, there are two), but i don’t know that i’d get out of the bathroom line to try to yell over the deafening bass of a trick daddy song (i’m sorry but that is how i imagine florida nightclubs!) to tell them how much i enjoy their work.
sandy says valerie wanted to capitalize on his similarity to rick ross, and the judge interrupts to ask if he books gigs making money as a rick ross lookalike and sandy says no? and greg asks again if what sandy is suing valerie for is related to his doing public appearances as ricardo ross and again sandy emphatically says no. okay then, so what in the fuck are we doing in here on this day??? they go back and forth a couple of times and it feels like a weird macho thing to me, sandy’s resistance to admit that he made a deal to show up someplace and look like rick ross for money. shit, it’s hard to explain it without writing a full dissertation and boring you to death, but you know how there are dudes who are like “it’s gay for a man to eat a banana?” and normal people are rolling their eyes like SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU WEIRDO AND GET THAT POTASSIUM!!! sandy’s hedging about this feels like that, like “i’m not out here imitating another man.” it’s not exactly homophobia but what is this called, misogyny? misogynoir? my dad was an old school misogynist who would say stupid shit like “i’m not watching another MAN play some little GAME” while walking through the living room sneering at the rest of us as we watched the super bowl (what a joyless loser) and sandy’s vehement denial feels like that. maybe it’s “fear of perceived dick riding?” i don’t know what it is but i do know that it’s very dumb.
greg thinks so too and turns in frustration to valerie, saying “okay can you tell me what this case is about?” valerie says that she met sandy ten years ago and the sandy she met then is nothing like the sandy standing before us today, who is vindictive and egotistical. she also says he’s lying in court, and that in his personal life he’s become a liar as well. greg asks valerie what she does and maybe something nefarious is going on between these two because she says she “assists celebrities” and “helps with causes and events.” girl what. those things don’t mean anything. if i go see jurassic park later i could claim i’m “assisting a celebrity” by paying full price for my movie ticket. what is she talking about! i donate money to moveon dot org every month because i can’t figure out how to turn off the automatic recurring charge, surely that qualifies as “helping a cause?” but i wouldn’t call it my job!!!!! greg is over it and sighs, asking, “what do you do, are you a fundraising coordinator?” and valerie says “something like that” (WHAT) and then she swiftly pivots to telling the judge that she’s pissed off because she wishes she was meeting him under different circumstances. yeah i bet you’d much rather be talking to him 1 not on TV and 2 not when you have to answer questions truthfully about what exactly you do for work.
valerie says she lost both her mother and grandmother to cancer a few years ago and she started partying to distract herself from the pain and would often invite sandy to join her because her “clients” were picking up the tab for all this going out. she says that people would run up to sandy and scream and holler because they thought he was rick ross, so she started cutting him in on the money she was making from her wealthy clientele “just to be nice.” okay i am a very generous person and if i were out with pocketfuls of cash from my “clients” i’d buy all the rounds and make it rain too but something just doesn’t feel right about this.
greg’s not buying it either (thank god) and says he’s never heard of a person giving 20% of their income to a friend just because they’re grateful for their presence at half price vodka night. valerie says “okay, i got a lot of attention because people thought i had a celebrity with me in VIP and that’s why i paid him.” i have been in the vip in a nightclub twice in my life and the 1 good thing about it is the chairs and the 9,348,372 bad things about it are how everyone else in the room stares daggers into your face while wondering aloud how the fuck a herb like you got into vip. (“she’s wearing flip flops!” i heard some hating-ass bitch shriek last time i was at the shrine.) greg says, “now it makes sense, you gave him money because he made you seem like you knew a celebrity.” sandy is simply NOT gonna let this narrative cook, and butts in to say that his bald head and beard weren’t the only things he was bringing, he also “owns [his] own publication and [he] has models” and that both he and his models show up to enhance valerie’s events.
well now i’m crying laughing because earlier valerie said she does “breast cancer benefits and democratic conventions” and picture nancy pelosi clasping this dude’s hands down at the local expo center like “oh my gosh, not THEE ricky ross?????” as he barks at her. greg tells sandy he’s confirming exactly the business he said he wasn’t in, and sandy continues to protest and what is really the problem here? is he worried rick ross is going to sue his lustrous beard??????
sandy says that valerie is a gold digger who goes after ball players and famous guys. SO??? this is another thing we don’t have time to unpack but unless these ball players are in the peewee league who cares if women go after them? a grown man doesn’t have agency to choose the woman he wants to spend time with regardless of her motive for doing so? this might be my misandrist vagina power talking (please click that, i’m begging you) but if a man willingly allows his gold to be dug what on earth does that have to do with this bargain basement richard ross????
sandy’s like “that’s why she wanted to meet you under different circumstances!” and okay fine, I LAUGHED. he says valerie told her that they should capitalize on his doppelganger status and promised she’d pay him $200 every time he showed up at one of her events. sandy hands greg a contract and valerie immediately erupts, saying that she would never party with the kinds of girls sandy hangs out with as she desperately tries to submit her own evidence: pictures of hot babes with tattoos and big asses wearing outfits made of those pop can rings that are killing turtles in the ocean or whatever. i guess we know what kind of magazine it is that sandy publishes, and i can’t wait to get gift subscriptions for all of the fathers in my life!
the contract is real (i am…………..shocked?) and valerie tries to explain it away with “i was just being nice” when the judge asks why she would write up a contract if she was just partying with this dude as a friend, and man i would love it if someone could explain their backstory to me because what is happening here??????? valerie starts explaining that she called sandy to ask if he wanted to go to the magic show with her in vegas because she was being nice and greg cuts her off, saying “every time you call yourself ‘nice’ it sounds dishonest to me.” and also, I’M getting bored. find her guilty just for that!
the ruling: finally valerie admits that she told sandy she’d pay him to just be near her looking kind of like rick ross if you’re drunk and squint your eyes a little bit, and i love that because i love a low stakes scam. greg asks if she paid him according to the terms of the contract she wrote and she admits that she hasn’t. now onto the slander: valerie says sandy went onto her client’s facebook and made some negative comments about her, then interrupts herself to throw some more shade at sandy, and now both greg and the audience have turned on her and it’s not pretty.
valerie has a statement from some guy named marlon that he saw sandy talking shit on facebook about valerie, and i’m not perry mason but is that admissible? a statement from a guy who isn’t in the courtroom today and claims to have proof of an internet comment no one has a record of??? i’m not going for that, and neither is greg. valerie continues to argue, and i’m wondering who her clients are if she’s going this hard over two hundred bucks. i don’t know the president (LOL) but even i would just toss a couple ben franklins at sandy out my car window and keep it moving so i wouldn’t have to be on here humiliating myself in front of the esteemed gregory mathis! judgment for rigor mortis ross, and if anybody wants me to sit in the same room as them looking vaguely like shirley from what’s happenin’ i am available.
did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: “good thing you aren’t out here pretending to be rick ross. folks have shot at him before!”
*bangs gavel*