who's on judge mathis today? #295
an idiotic recap of the greatest syndicated courtroom show of all time
plaintiff: elmore from chicago, illinois. elmore looks exactly how you think a dude named elmore looks: approximately 53 to 127 years of age, sad basset hound face, shiny milk dud head, dressed like a funeral director. exquisite, for sure, but we don’t usually get a lot of sharply-creased pocket squares up in here so consider me taken aback. i like it!
defendant: cleopatra from chicago, illinois. i’m sorry, ELMORE AND CLEOPATRA??? wtf is this, a fucking walter mosley novel????? miss cleo (i promise i won’t say that ever again) swans into the courtroom in a billowy black tunic with voluminous ruffled bell sleeves paired with chic black polyester-blend slacks (you can hear they have a lil zip-zop-zip to ‘em as she walks) and comfy white gym shoes with a tightly-wound accordion of truth™ tucked under her arm, the perfect accessory!
the complaint: elmore claims cleopatra told him she was pregnant (pregnant with WHAT??? a bean burrito??????) then asked for money to terminate the pregnancy. elmore argues his ex-girlfriend threatened him with a butcher’s knife and tased him, so he’s suing her for an assault and the loan. (LOAN???????????????)
what does he want: 1900 big ones!! countersuit filed: cleopatra would like $2500 for the cost of a wedding ring and two assaults!
how it went down: elmore says that he first met cleopatra fifteen years ago, but they didn’t start seeing each other until recently. he says that during their two-year relationship he didn’t know that she was married and she also claimed to be pregnant. my jaw is on the floor. these two are old enough that even if she’d claimed to be pregnant right after they met fifteen fucking years ago she would’ve been too old then. did she have a large tumor? or was it, like, one of these kinds of situations?????
the judge, scraping his bottom jaw against the bench, turns to cleopatra in disbelief. “ma’am, you were pregnant?!??!!?!!??!!!?!” rather than act insulted cleopatra instead rolls her eyes to the back of her skull in disgust and replies, “judge, if a baby crawls up outta here, you better name him hercules.” is that a real thing people say? i gotta brush up on my greek mythology, because i don’t remember zeus having an affair with a lady in an auburn party city shake n’ go bob, but maybe i just didn’t pay close enough attention in school. my go-to line to make shit extremely weird when the doctor demands a pregnancy test as a person who hasn’t had penetrative sex with a man since circa 2011 is “if you find anything in there, we should both go buy a fucking lottery ticket,” but i’ll have to try the hercules thing next time i get a scope and see how that plays. what if i found out i was pregnant a fourteen year old fetus! lolllll the kid’s in there trying to teach himself to spell while i fuck his brain up with microwave popcorn and sugar-free barqs!!! they’d have to pull him out with the jaws of life.
okay so elmore is having a little bit of trouble stringing together a cohesive story, but here’s what i can gather from his initial ramblings: he is 67, cleopatra is 57, and she told him she needed $400 to terminate a pregnancy and he gave it to her. he goes on a long tangent about how he’s too old to be a father because he likes to be out kicking it in the street and the doctor gave cleopatra pills which is why he didn’t accompany her to the procedure and then cleopatra tased him but also never paid the money back and everybody in the courtroom (plus me) is looking at him like HUH?
judge mathis turns to cleopatra for some clarification. she says that she started dating elmore during a separation from her husband. when they decided to reconcile she says that elmore begged her not to go back to the husband, and when begging didn’t work he tried to push her down a flight of stairs, but she caught herself on the railing with one hand and ripped his shirt with the other. wait, excuse me? before we get to the trading back and forth of assaults (bleak!!), greg wants to get this whole pregnancy business put to rest. cleopatra says she found out elmore was telling people she was pregnant when she ran into a friend one day who said, “oh hey! congratulations!!” and cleo was like “WHAT” and the friend said “elmore told me you’re having a baby” and i assume she was like “WHAT” again because………………….WHAT.
cleopatra claims that elmore was spreading the rumor to everyone in their wider circle of friends (what senior centers do we think he took this lie to, levy? renaissance court?? auburn gresham??? copernicus????) because he lost the money gambling and wanted to hide his degeneracy behind this fake abortion he made up. the judge says he does not believe her and okay i guess i can understand that but you seriously expect me to believe him instead? he hasn’t proffered any proof that the four hundred bucks even exists and also it sounds like he is actively trying to swallow his tongue every time he opens his mouth to speak!!!!!
elmore says (I THINK) that one day cleopatra came over to his house, tried to steal some papers (??) from the totes (???) in his bedroom, and when he told her to get her “crazy ass” out of his house she turned around and tased him. okay, i should be fucking nice, maybe that’s why he talks like that. so my tiktok algorithm is ~extremely~ cursed, because i only go on there when someone young sends me something to look at, or when i want to indulge in one of my weird passions like complicated otoscopies or skin diseases, and it makes me feel like a psychopath. anyway i was on there whenever, scrolling through a bunch of bullshit in the middle of the night, and i started getting served videos of people being tased.
so! many! videos! of people running away, getting hit with the taser, and shaking uncontrollably as they fall helplessly to the ground. i didn’t even know regular people could get their paws on one, and now a new fear has been unlocked, can’t wait to stay locked inside for the next five months terrified that anyone who comes near me in trader joe’s might have a taser on them. elmore is an old man, and the thought of him just falling on his face like a dead tree is distressing!!!!!! if someone did that to me, first of all i would probably die due to my weak constitution but let’s play like i am not made of the same meat as hotdogs, i would not rest until i figured out a way to kill them. i’m sorry but they have to die. the indignity alone!!!!! i probably shouldn’t even put this in writing, BUT: know that if i live through it (doubtful, but let’s pretend), the singular focus of the rest of my miserable life would be trying to arrange the murder of the person who tased me.
yes, i am losing it a little bit, but imagining standing across a three-walled courtroom outfitted with spotlights in lieu of a ceiling from the person who sent 2500 searing volts of electricity through my tender flesh??? i’d be frothing at the fucking mouth. elmore says that after cleopatra tased him, she went downstairs to his kitchen and started threatening him with a butcher knife. well you do have to cook your meat before you cut it up, i suppose. cleopatra says that none of this is true, but elmore claims to have proof, which is apparently a picture “of where she left the knife.” the judge asks, “how do we know she left it there?” and elmore replies, “because i know she did.” alright then!
as elmore flips through the ninety-five printed out evidence photos he’s brought with him to court today, greg asks cleopatra about the assaults she’s suing for. before she can get into that though, she wants to talk about the issue of her missing wedding ring. she says that one night she was over at elmore’s and took her rings off to wash his dishes and help him clean up. when she left she realized that she’d left her ring on top of his microwave and immediately called him. he told her he didn’t see a ring and said she must’ve lost it somewhere else. now cleo’s pissed, and she decides to set up a sting operation: she buys a new (cheap) ring, goes over to elmore’s place, “accidentally” leaves the cheap ring on the table, then calls him to ask about it and he claims to not have seen it so she yells at him for being a thief, which he denies. this is probably a good time to remind you that, collectively, these two people are one hundred and twenty-four years old.
the ruling: luckily for us, cleopatra brought a printed-out voicemail for the judge to read, which i will transcribe exactly as he reads it. “i got your message. you can pick your s— up, and you ain’t gonna like what it looks like, neither. you should’ve already come and get your s—. you all out in the neighborhood with n—s and s—, i already know about all that s—. all the things you been going through? everybody been telling me about your lyin’ a—. now gimme my money that i got a loan for for your punk a—.”
uh oh! another situation in which i would have to be put down like a rabid animal!!!! imagine being somebody’s fucking grandmother and a man missing his side teeth leaves you a message like this??? you already know where the fuck we’re going, straight to MURDER COURT. roll in the stocks and pillory, bailiff!!!!!! i mean, i’d call her a punk too if she’d tased me but we never got any proof that actually happened. the girls gave us nothing, so the case goes to no one. they were both telling wildly different stories and lacked believable proof (judge mathis did not buy that “come get your s—” was an admission that elmore had stolen cleopatra’s ring), plus they didn’t even get into half the s— they’re suing each other for, so the verdict goes to no one. actually, the verdict goes to youtube premium, to whom i pay $13 every month for the pleasure of watching these clips without fucking mounjaro ads peppered throughout.
did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: the judge was straight up mystified at the prospect of cleopatra having been pregnant at her advanced age, and he asked doyle to fetch his wife linda from the green room so he could tell her about it, as if it’s real, to try to convince her it might be possible for them to have another child. she doesn’t fall for it, and i am (still) too traumatized by having been born to a fifty year old dad to find this prank funny!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
*bangs gavel*
one more thing: i’m doing one event this summer. july 10 jen pastiloff is bringing her man who has been in a bunch of mission impossibles to kalamazoo and my condition for moderating this thing was that i get to spend the entire time gossiping with him about tom cruise and she said okay, so that’s what i’m gonna do. i am getting a busted wisdom tooth yanked outta my head july 8, so if you come you can enjoy the aftermath of all that.