who's on judge mathis today? #291

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

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*