who's on judge mathis today? #266
an idiotic recap of the greatest syndicated courtroom show of all time
plaintiff: hayden from gasport, new york. i’m sorry, where??? according to google this gassy, sporty town has a population of around 1600 people; my high school had 3600-ish kids when i was there 75 years ago and our graduating class was like 1100??? and we all knew too much about each other despite the overwhelming number of us????? i literally cannot imagine knowing the names (and crushes and birthdays and lunch periods) of every single person in my town. maybe if hayden wins this case he can use the money to move!
defendant: chad from middleport, new york. i can’t tell you what’s really going on in this region of upstate new york but here’s what i do know: there’s apparently a dress code. chad and hayden both are wearing deeply color-saturated mall shirts from structure (tomato red and inky black, respectively) paired with the shiniest satin ties i have ever seen in my life (hayden’s is a color i might describe as……………….electric coral? anyway it’s ravishing) and they look amazing, like they’re auditioning to be one of the roxburys. man, i hope they’re here to fight about something that happened in 1997!!!
the complaint: hayden bought chad a “specialty vaping item” (WHAT) but chad hasn’t paid him back for it, so he’s suing.
what does he want: $645 aka almost not enough to make the hassle of coming to court worth it (how many planes does it take to get from buffalo to the midwest, seven???) but plentyyyy enough to get some good weed.
how it went down: hayden begins, “first of all, your honor, this dude is a compulsive liar.” man, you gotta love a guy who says both “first of all” and “dude” to an actual judge. i did a new yorker podcast a few weeks ago and some old man fired up his antique typewriter to message my agent (which means he went to the trouble to find my website that i never use and simply has a clip art drawing of a toilet above my agents’ emails) and scold him for allowing me to ruin his special 3pm bedtime wind-down activity with all my “likes” and “rights?” and, god forbid, “like and right in the same sentence? she may be a wonderful writer but someone should teach her how to properly communicate.” well for your information, mortimer duke, i am NOT a wonderful writer!!!!!!!! imagine the bile shooting out this man’s eyes when he flips to a random page and sees “shitting during anal sex.” he would upchuck his tapioca!!
hayden says he’s known chad for “about a year” and in that time everything he’s told him has been proven to be a lie. apparently chad told him that he had a lot of cars and tons of money and dated lots of hot girls. i might be showing my age (or the quality of my friends) here, but if someone said this to me i would assume they were joking and laugh. these dudes appear to be in their mid-to-late twenties, i.e. too far removed from middle school to be doing shit like this! hayden says “i never seen the women, seen the cars, or seen the jobs” and chad needs to learn that the best lies are the ones to tell to people who you are never going to see again.
the judge asks hayden how long it took him to discover that his friend was a liar and hayden says not long, even though chad would occasionally have nice watches and fly cars (to fool people, i presume?) for short periods of time. greg turns to chad and says “let’s talk about all these lies” and chad says he never lied about having lots of girlfriends and clarifies that he’s still in possession of the titles to those fancy cars he used to flaunt in front of hayden, even though he doesn’t have the actual cars. i am going to cringe to death, but first: chad’s theme music.
chad says that he can’t help it, he just loves nice phones and watches. doyle the bailiff says “are you wearing one today?” and chad says “i’m not” and everyone in the courtroom laughs at him. greg starts poking fun and chad says “i was running late” which, like………….young man, just give it up!! stop lying, you’re on camera!!!!!! instead of heeding the advice i am currently shouting at a pre-taped episode of television, chad continues to elaborate on the lie, which is so humiliating i might have to go lie down. “see, i had my nicest watch on the dresser, right? but then i forgot to put it in my suitcase, and when i got to the airport i was going through security and touched my wrist to take it off then was like ‘oh no my nicest watch is at home’ but i didn’t have enough time to go back to get it and and and and and…” punch me in the fucking face!!!!!!!
greg is laughing with his head thrown back, his visible epiglottis vibrating with glee. if a judge laughed at me like this in a courtroom and it wasn’t in response to one of my most hilarious jokes (wocka wocka) i would immediately forfeit the case (can you do that?) and walk straight into the lake, forever. greg asks him about girlfriends and he mumbles something that pretty much boils down to “yes i have had sex before, you just don’t know her cuz we met at summer camp two years ago!” and the judge continues clowning him. good thing my man didn’t have to swear on a bible prior to his testimony, the nbc building would be a pile of smoldering ash.
SPEAKING OF SMOKING THINGS, hayden says he went to see chad at his workplace, “a vapor shop where they sell e-cigarettes.” he adds, “those are really popular nowadays!” what time period does hayden think the judge is in? who does this young man think he is talking to, thurgood marshall???
hayden says he told chad that he was on his way to a different “vapor shop” (i’m crying) to get something, and chad asked him to pick up a “specialty item” that he couldn’t get from anywhere else. why doesn’t he just say the name of it within earshot of one of his fancy phones? instagram will be serving his ass targeted ~specialty item~ ads within seconds!!!! chad told him that if he picked it up for him he would pay him back with his eventual tax return (*audible groan from everyone in the building*) and of course he never did!!!
chad told ryan that this item (WHY NOT JUST SAY IT) would cost around $200 and promised to pay him that plus a bonus fifty just for his trouble. chad goes to the other vapor store (sorry, i’m obsessed) and finds out it’s actually $323 (what are these kids smoking out of, an antique bong??), but he buys it anyway and delivers it to chad, who in turn pays him back $30. WHAT. that’s not enough to fill up the tank on even one of the four mitsubishis chad claims to own!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
the ruling: the judge wants to know why hayden is overcharging chad (greg hates a loan shark, as we all know), and hayden starts telling an “emotional distress” story about how one day he went to chad’s house to collect the rest of his money and as he was standing on his porch waiting for chad to open the door two dudes roll up on his left side while another pulls up on his right and they all start threatening to jump him. greg is like “what did chad do?” and hayden says chad was inside pretending to be asleep but he suspects he’s the one who called those dudes to beat him up. unfortunately for hayden, you can’t charge someone money because you think they called another person to whoop your ass. the more you know, i guess!
greg asks chad why he hasn’t paid hayden back and he says he decided not to when hayden started to threaten him and his parents. the judge exasperatedly asks whether or not anyone, with all these attempted butt kickings flying around, thought to call the police to file a complaint? chad has a witness statement from his mom but it doesn’t matter, greg thinks that if you really do fear for your safety it’s important for you to let the police know so they can make a record of it and zzZzZZzzzZZzZzz. judgment for the plaintiff, but only for the amount of the “special vaping device” or whatever the hell he called it (i’m not scrolling up!!!!!!), which he’s obviously gonna use to buy more vapes. I APPROVE.
did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: “you never had a girl? with all these fast cars and expensive watches you couldn’t come up???”
*bangs gavel*