who’s on judge mathis today? #309
who’s on judge mathis today? #309
an idiotic recap of the greatest syndicated courtroom program of all time
plaintiff: pauline from youngstown, ohio. pauline sashays into the courtroom in a black denim jacket over a chevron-striped collared shirt. her hair looks like—do y’all remember when prince’s hair looked like this? that’s what pauline is giving.
defendant: phyllis from youngstown, ohio. phyllis is wearing her hair in a tapered pixie cut dyed bozo red, and i am living. where are we, bronner brothers? how are these divas so gorgeous, why is their hair so laid! phyllis is wearing a long denim skirt topped with a cowl-neck sweater made of black teddy bear fur, and not only does she have an accordion of truth™ in one hand, she also has an old school tape recorder in the other. okay, walter cronkite!!!!!!!!
the complaint: pauline says she and phyllis sang in a gospel group together. they sold dinners to raise money to promote their CD, but the plaintiff insists she paid for most of the supplies and claims the defendant split their profits with her married boyfriend instead promoting their CD, so she’s suing!
what does she want: $1333 (is this an angel number) countersuit filed: phyllis would like $2000 for harassment and defamation!
how it went down: pauline says that she has been singing since she was eight years old (greg: “professionally?” pauline: “no…?” greg: “oh, in the shower?”) and she loves to sing gospel music. she says phyllis enjoys singing gospel music, too, and she started a gospel group called faith2faith (i have no proof this is how she spells it, but i know deep down in my soul this is how she spells it) that she invited pauline and two other ladies to join. she says they were working on a CD and decided the best way to advertise that CD was fliers, which were going to cost $500. they had a meeting at which they decided that to raise money they were going to sell chicken and rib dinners. greg is like, “RIBS, TOO???” which is exactly what i just blurted out. pork ribs are what, six dollars a damn pound? please! unless god himself is barbecuing the one he yanked out of adam, i’ll see you in the vestibule with a paper plate of potato salad and some chicken wings.
the faith2otherladies dropped out of the group, probably because they didn’t want to waste an entire saturday sweating over a pot of greens just to record their version of you brought the sunshine over an instrumental karaoke track that nobody was gonna buy. undeterred, phyllis and pauline decided they would carry on with the fundraiser and split the costs down the middle: phyllis would buy the ribs, pauline would be responsible for all the chicken, and they would split the sides. pauline says when they got to the grocery store phyllis couldn’t afford all the ribs they wanted to get, and of course she couldn’t! them shits are expensive!!!
commercial break: i would run through a brick wall for kirk franklin
pauline says she bought the ribs, chicken, macaroni and cheese, pasta salad, the cakes, and the pies. greg says, “you got any left?” and……..does she? a church plate would really hit the spot right now (although she can keep the pasta salad, we really don’t play around with our digestive system like that). the judge asks phyllis for her side, and she says she’s been singing since she was five years old and she sang in the church choir, so i think that means god probably likes her better. this is a great time to remind you that i, too, grew up singing in the church choir, and considering how i turned out maybe phyllis should hold off on bragging.
plot twist: phyllis says she has receipts for all the stuff she bought. pauline says that she, too, brought a receipt to court today, and when she gives it to the judge he scrunches his nose up and says, “three dollars??!?!?!?!!” um…did pauline mean to say she bought a mcchicken, or??? she says that the store wasn’t able to give her a receipt for the other stuff she bought, which is exactly what i’m going to say the next time i try to return a discount coffeemaker i copped from homegoods to crate & barrel for a refund of the full price.
pauline says that after selling the dinners, phyllis and her boyfriend (maybe? he’s sitting in her witness chair, clad in a gorgeous canadian tuxedo that looks like it was made by karl kani, who wouldn’t wanna hit that in the name of the lord) said they made a profit of $400. the judge asks what they were going to do with the profits, and pauline says they were supposed to use that money to make flyers to advertise their upcoming “gospel explosion” concert. pauline says that never happened, that phyllis took the money from the dinner sales and split it with her “married boyfriend.” damn, i should’ve known a lady picked out his fly ass outfit!
the judge keeps asking phyllis how much money she made off the dinners and phyllis keeps not answering him. he switches tactics and asks her if what she did make went toward promotion, and she gives him a receipt showing that she paid $300 for some radio ads. pauline interjects that she had no idea about the radio ads, and greg says that’s too bad because they’re even more effective than flyers. is that……………..true? maybe it’s because the only good radio station near me is WRKR 107.7 the rocker (i was driving earlier and they played styx come sail away and i almost ran my shit into oncoming traffic what a JAM), but who is gonna hear that fucking ad? me and the nice ladies who work at my dentist’s office???
commercial break: a gospel banger
the ruling: pauline is mad about the radio ads because she said she was out of the group by the time they ran but that seems like a pauline problem to me. if the purpose of the church plates was to make money for ads, and phyllis did indeed use the church plate money to pay for some ads, what’s the issue? greg agrees with me (should i go to law school?) and tells pauline that just because she left faith2faith after selling all those chickens2ribs, she’s not owed any money.
greg wants to get into the harassment. pauline says that after this all went down phyllis started “playing on [her] phone,” which is one of the most serious crimes you can commit against a black person. she says she filed a police report against her, and greg asks to see it because he says that’s not actually harassment and he wants to see exactly what pauline told the police. pauline says phyllis called her twenty times in one day and hands the judge a sheet of notebook paper that she says the officer wrote her case number down on. i’m fucking crying, because sometimes people roll up in here like perry mason with labeled evidence and crime scene photos and DNA results, and then other times people are like pauline. the paper looks like it came from the bottom of my jansport in 1996, folded with frayed edges that i’m trying to smooth out before mrs kellman comes around to collect the homework and sees that i am a slob. the judge is disgusted and turns to phyllis, asking, “ma’am, did you harass her?” and phyllis, of course, says she did not, so that’s the end of that. D- on pauline’s assignment.
commercial break: another gospel jam
as for phyllis’s harassment countersuit, she says that pauline had her daughter make a myspace page to “slander [her] name,” saying that she likes to sleep with other women’s husbands (gasp!) and she’s forty-five years old (gasp2gasp!!!) and, most slanderous of all, she’s a pisces. greg says that maybe they weren’t talking about her but phyllis pulls a printed-out myspace profile™ out of her full accordion of truth™ and lo and behold there is her picture at the top. greg asks phyllis how she knows that pauline is behind the page and phyllis says, “because it has the rain coming down in the background just like [pauline’s] does” and this is the funniest shit i have ever seen in my life. you had your kid make a FAKE MYSPACE PAGE and that kid made the fake myspace page look EXACTLY LIKE YOUR PAGE??? incredible.
phyllis says that pauline called her job and tried to get her fired, and when pauline denies it phyllis pulls out a letter her boss wrote. turns out her boss is the deacon of the church they attend, and he sent a letter detailing pauline’s harassment on the official church letterhead. i came to court with notebook paper with some pencil scribbles on it and my opponent has a notarized letter from god????? i’d have to kill myself on nationally syndicated television.
oh, remember how phyllis had that tape recorder? she plays some nasty messages from pauline, in which she clearly says “this is pauline” omg, calling her all sorts of nasty names and threatening to fuck her up. she goes on and on with all these bleeped out insults, and greg starts laughing because he’s a messy bitch just like we are. after the recording ends he looks at pauline and says, “you’ve got a lot of praying to do.” phyllis gets $2000 for getting called an ugly bitch, which is amazing because i have been called that for free. pauline says she only said all that vile shit on her voicemail (at one point she screamed “you look like the predator!!!!” which made me laugh but i did feel bad about it) because phyllis wouldn’t stop calling her. judge mathis says he believes her, and he’s awarding her $10 for her harassment claim. then he remembers that she also wanted half of what she spent on the groceries, so he rounds up $3.94 and adds two bucks to her total. [insert that 2 corinthians verse about god blessing abundantly so you can go forth and do good work]
did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: “so the deacon is lying on you, too? girl, you’re going to hell!”
bangs gavel
thanks so much for subscribing to bitches gotta eat. this post is public, so please share it with everyone you have ever met.
© 2026 samantha irby
123 main street, HELL