Judge Joe Brown

Wednesday morning, I sliced my left index finger open with the serrated edge of a tape gun, blood squirted from affronted digit like the stump-squirts in a horror movie when someone is decapitated...blah, blah. The upshot was I was fine, but was made under the authority of my boss and an ER doc friend to go to das Urgent Cave and get a tetanus booster, one of which I had probably not had since initial dip/tet ca. summer 1969.


Sitting for a couple of hours in the confines of the mallish triage, I never expected to fall in love; but then, I had no idea the staff would have the mighty Judge Joe Brown on in the background.

When I was young, there was the People's Court and all that, and I saw, not more than a month ago, an article somewhere talking about how cheap series of Joe's ilk are big moneymakers because they cost next-to-nothing to produce. But from the lofty climes of a non-tv watcher it was astounding! So THAT's what it's like out there.


The four cases I saw were:

1) girl getting sued by former mother in law for stealing some "clock lamps"... lemme google real quick...

Yeah, similar to this one, but much shittier. At the end of listening to this verbal scrapping, that also involved the defendant's ex-boo, Judge Joe ruled for the defendent, basically telling the mother-in-law she was obnoxious and that the lamps were "trashy."






2.) This case was about a roommate dispute, two young "lovelies" who had met "in the AA program" who had a falling out over a guy they met there (!), causing the defendant to move out and leave alkie the first holding the bag on some bills. It was hot because they talked about "going bowling," which made me think that the old saw about "sober bowling" must be, to an extent, true? I forget who won this one, so I will just say winner: JUSTICE!





3.) By the time the second action-packed half-hour started, I was getting the idea that alcoholics must get into lots of small claims-style fandangos, because case three had two ladies who met in "an Alano club" also carpering over unpaid bills. This was hot because the landlord of the pair looked like Spanky MacFarland and the plaintiff was claiming to be 27 when she was obvs pushing 40. Judge Joe squinted like a cobra at Spanky and again invoked the term "obnoxious." He also wisely stated "Repeated abuse of alcohol can impair memory and judgement!" Tell 'em, Joe!



4.) Case 4...well, what can one say? How about one neighbor (male) suing his neighbor (female) for 100 bucks because her dog ate his kitten, but wait! - there is added animosity because girl neighbor's beau is male neighbor's ex-lover: "He's on the down low and you know it, girl." The nice, affable girl neighbor said "Well, he [points] smokes crack." I was torn about this whole case, because, you know, an actual kitten died so both of these parties involved in the case should be put to death...regardless, there was no proof that the dog did anything and Judge Joe, all King Solomon-like, said Goofy Cat Guy owed Neighbor Girl 1100 bucks for harassment. Maybe she can use the bucks to get more sweats with Fabulous on them in olde English printe [sic].



What else did I learn? Well, that Steve whatever-his-name-is, head security guy on Springer, has his own show...and that The Doctors is just as awful as one would imagine.



Also, semi-relatedly, if you get a tattoo on your neck, you will end up in court.



Bonus:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbVETXBUA_Y