who's on judge mathis today? #263

an idiotic recap of the greatest syndicated courtroom show of all time

plaintiff: calvin and alisha from jonesboro, arkansas. alisha, a rubenesque strawberry blonde, leads the way into the courtroom dressed in my favorite kind of outfit: multiple layered items of clothing, all black, completely indistinguishable from one another. i don’t know what the hell this nice lady is wearing and i love that. is that a cardigan or a long sleeve shirt? does she have on short pants or could that be a long dress? how many blouses are under that duster/kimono/bathrobe? you’ll never know! alisha looks like a pile of dark laundry slowly making its way to the washing machine and that is the only correct way to dress. calvin (shorter, younger, blacker) has a high top fade he should’ve had cleaned up by his barber before going on national television???? he’s wearing a crisp powder blue dress shirt paired with a royal blue tie, and the biggest watch i have ever seen on a person who wasn’t in a hiphop video at the time!!!!!!!!!

defendant: angel from jonesboro, arkansas. another zaftig beauty, angel makes her way into the courtroom in a bright fuchsia top beneath a black cardigan, and let me just pause for a second to say if this is a case about sexual relationships? my man calvin absolutely has a type: pretty white women with dumptruck asses.

the complaint: calvin and alisha, husband and wife, say calvin used to date angel (smh i knew it!) and she cheated on him with multiple men. calvin says he has doubts about their daughter’s paternity and is seeking a DNA test, plus they’re suing for property and emotional distress.

what do they want: $5000!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! the max! countersuit because it’s been a while: angel would like her own $5000 for rent!!

how it went down: calvin says that he dated angel for a long time and when things got bad she started “sleeping with unknown men in the household while i was there.” i would like to unpack that but i don’t know how, so we move. angel interjects to say that never happened but calvin repeats himself about the unknown men. greg is looking at him like “and you went to jail for fighting them, right?” but calvin says he didn’t do anything about it. the judge asks what room angel and her paramours were in and calvin says “the bedroom” and i’m sorry but what the fuck is this!

greg is in utter disbelief, like literally sitting there with his mouth hanging open? he asks calvin why he didn’t at least, you know, knock on the door while his girlfriend was getting her back blown out by another man to try to make homeboy stop doing that, and calvin says “i was only 18, i didn’t know what to do.” okay now that he says that when the camera pulls back on him and his wife it does look a little bit like a mom with her adopted son waiting in line for the circus. what in the foster home is going on here???

angel says that not only did she not have men over to their house for sex, she didn’t even have women over because at the time they were dating she didn’t have any friends!!!!!! she says she went to work then came home, lather rinse repeat, and that calvin was the one cheating on her with multiple women. hmm maybe he got confused because all the ladies he’s dating kinda look alike??? could this be a modern day parent trap type situation????? the judge clarifies “you never brought anyone home?” and angel says no and greg says “somebody here is telling a big lie!!!!!!!”

calvin tries to move on but greg won’t let this shit go. “how many times did this happen?” he asks, to which calvin casually responds “three or four.” the judge says “and you kept your temperament the whole time?” (this feels like profiling, but i’ll allow it) and calvin says yes he did. listen, i live with a seventeen year old boy. you can’t playfully ask this motherfucker how many pizza rolls he’s heating up without him getting a goddamn attitude, i literally cannot imagine a young man just sitting on his hands while his girlfriend gets railed in the other room in their shared bed, unless they had a kinky arrangement for that. but it doesn’t sound to me like calvin enjoyed his view from the cuck chair!

greg literally cannot believe his ears. “you’re telling me, you waited until they finished, then you ‘said something’ to them?” the audience is laughing but greg isn’t. calvin says “the first time it happened i didn’t have anyplace to go so i stuck it out” trying to garner some sympathy but greg has none to spare. “what about the second time?” he asks, and calvin says “the second time, i was sitting in the living room.” greg has had enough of this shit and sarcastically asks calvin if he was sitting there in the living room while this other man walked past him on the way to bone his lady and calvin says “no, they were already there.” WHAT.

the judge will not let this go! he asks calvin “so you walk in and where are they, in the living room, too?” calvin says no, angel and her mystery meat were in the bedroom, so he sat in the living room and waited for them to come out. (no pun intended.) okay wait, i will literally curl up like a snail and pray for death if i hear anyone fucking in real life, and i’m pretty stoic but i don’t know that i could just be chilling in the other room listening like “wow! sounds like he’s working that g spot!” and it’s my lady in there?????????? this dude must meditate or something because how in the hell do you get this zen???

calvin says that the man exited the boudoir and they “had a confrontation,” and after the man left he went and talked to angel. okay i think what is happening is we are witnessing a terrible story being made up in real time by somebody who’s not very good at crafting a narrative. if it was me in that courtroom these lies would have a backstory and a full emotional arc and everyone in there would be enraptured by my sordid tale, but calvin does not possess my same gifts. he keeps punctuating each word (although he’s not saying many of them) with a bang on the podium, he’s sighing a lot and reaching for words he doesn’t have, and you can almost see the hamster on a wheel in his brain slooooowly grinding out this nonsense and it’s very embarrassing!!!!!!

greg says “okay, what about the third time?” and off calvin’s look of terror (don’t ever let anyone tell you that writing fiction is “easy”) he says that this story is just so unbelievable that he needs to hear each instance of eavesdropped infidelity in minute detail. i am going to pass away! calvin says, and i am typing this verbatim (i should be a damn court stenographer tbh!!!!), “well…third time” slaps podium “same way, except” slaps podium “she went to go pick him up and brought him there.” please, god. greg, BAFFLED, says “you were sitting in the living room…and they came in?” and calvin nods in the affirmative, so greg keeps his foot on the gas. “so they walked past you and into the bedroom, what did you think they were going to do?” (play checkers!!) and calvin says “i was giving her the benefit of the doubt.” i’m about to lose my everloving shit, greg gotta put a stop to this!!!!!

finally he says “i think you’re lying” and we can carry the fuck on. calvin says he’s suing angel for personal property and emotional distress. greg wants to start with the property, and calvin begins “well, when she put me out” and the judge interjects “why’d she put you out?” and calvin says it was because he’d lost his job. angel would beg to differ, saying that she put him out because he punched her in the face two weeks after their daughter was born, oh my god?????? calvin says that angel wouldn’t give him his clothes after she’d kicked him out, and that’s the property he’s suing for.

okay, now we’re finally getting to the juice. calvin is suing angel for emotional distress because he’s been in and out of jail several times due to not paying child support. while jail does sound distressing, 1 you should pay it then? and 2 get mad at your dick. calvin says he hasn’t paid because in addition to never having been able to find a job he also doesn’t believe that the child is his. this is so fucking slimy, man. angel says that they’d had a DNA test done earlier at the behest of the child support people and it determined that calvin is, in fact, her daughter’s father, but calvin says he has “no recollection” of this. it’s worth noting that calvin’s wife hasn’t said shit the entire 700 minutes (that’s what it feels like) of this case so far, but when greg asks “have you paid any child support yet?” alisha pipes up “he just got out of jail again for child support” and are we in the twilight zone? angel isn’t the one pulling up to his crib with handcuffs, i believe the person calvin has beef with is the entire state of arkansas!!!!

angel’s accordion of truth™ is stuffed with paperwork from the child support office, and she reads from them as follows: “in the last six years he is $18,582 behind on child support; we go to court twice a year, for the last six years, and i have been at every single court hearing and he hasn’t appeared at a single one; and the last amount applied to his debt is $0.00, he hasn’t paid one dollar since our child was born.” this dude has more nerve than a fucking toothache, i tell ya. if you knew this about yourself, wait if you not only knew it but had been jailed multiple times for it, why on earth would you think that it’s a good idea to drag this woman you owe tens of thousands of dollars to over a funky ass suitcase full of clothes??? and a follow up: why sue this regular ass lady because you went to jail like she’s the one who signed the order? go try and sue the judge!!!!!!!

wait a minute, not only does angel have the paperwork from the court about his child support arrears, she also hands the judge a certificate that confirms the DNA results, a certificate that calvin! fucking!! signed!!! angel says that as far as the ~property~ is concerned, when they met calvin had three outfits, one pair of shoes, and less than $500’ worth of property, and he was living with his mother. angel says that calvin was cheating on her throughout her pregnancy and the first time she confronted him he pushed her down (she was eight months pregnant) and the second time she confronted his continued cheating he punched her in the face (their daughter was two weeks old). won’t say shit to the multiple men supposedly banging your girl but just fine knocking down your pregnant girlfriend???? cool, cool.

angel says that after the punch she told calvin to leave (get out) and he did. she gathered up his other two outfits plus all the other stuff she’d bought for him during their time together and bagged it up in three garbage bags, set those bags out on the front porch, then called him to come pick them up. angel says he did come get those things, and that she watched as calvin sat in the car while his sister retrieved the bags. she says that up until he filed the lawsuit he has never told her anything was missing and never contacted her asking after any of his “stuff.” these lies are amazing. jesus god what is really going on here???

greg asks angel (thank goodness) what she thinks is up and she says that calvin married his wife, a woman he’s known for less than a year, two weeks ago and that alisha got mad that he was put in jail and put him up to filing this case to get revenge on her. angel says that the “emotional distress” they’re suing for (i.e. the days he had to spend in jail) are CALVIN’S FAULT, that if he’d paid his child support his ass would be free. and i know, how is a regular dude supposed to come up with thousands of dollars in a short amount of time? well, angel says that he didn’t have to pay all eighteen thousands to stay on the outside, all calvin was ordered to pay was the arkansas minimum: $57 a week.

okay i’m getting mad. first at the state (fifty-seven dollars??? what does that buy, one pamper?) then at calvin and alisha, who must’ve just wanted an all expenses paid trip to chicago, because what the fuck even is this. the judge asks calvin why he’s denying the child after he signed a paternity certificate, and calvin says he started having doubts when angel would no longer let him see his daughter. angel says that calvin asked to see his daughter one time in six years, and that one time he came to visit he walked right past their child and tried to fistfight angel’s new boyfriend. calvin left the house in a rage, i hope he got his ass whupped, then returned with the girl he’d been cheating on angel with and shot up the house with a bb gun while she and the child were inside. i’m sorry, what? EXCUSE ME, PLEASE???? i know it’s a late decision but somebody go wake the guillotine operator at murder court, this is an emergency!!!!!!!!!!!!

the ruling: greg asks alisha if she wants to say anything, and she says yes she wants the court to know that she and calvin have been together over a year thankyouverymuch (SHUT UPPPPP) and reiterates that it’s somehow angel’s fault that calvin has been in and out of jail over the last year. “when’s the last time he was incarcerated?” asks greg, and alisha says it was just a couple of months ago. angel interjects “but he wasn’t in jail that time for child support, he was there for possession” and if this case doesn’t wrap it up soon i am going to drown myself in the bathtub. omfg how on earth did they think coming here was a good idea??? did they forget EVIDENCE exists???????? angel tries to explain how calvin owes her money for rent but greg is over this stupid shit and refuses to hear another word. 99.99% the father, both $5000 cases dismissed, and verdict for my beleaguered brain, who very much needs to go take a nap!

did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: a whole lot but instead here is a youtube comment that fucking slayed me: “his dedication to being a deadbeat is crazy!” lolllll

*bangs gavel*

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