Forget the EBay scam artists and deadbeat landlords normally on Judge Judy. This case involves a dead cat, two destroyed television sets and a guy who routinely does stuff that would make Marilyn Manson blush.

Having said that, a recent “Judge Judy” face-off between two indie rock “former friends” Kate Levitt of the band Teeth Mountain (the plaintiff) and Jonathan Coward aka gross out performer Shams (the defendant) went beyond the merely unexpected into the realm of the ridiculously untenable.

Coward is a fellow who’s known for doing some rather extreme things, onstage and off. Things puking all over a piano and that can involve dead animals. If anyone in indierockland is a likely suspect for killing a cat, it’s probably him, but I don’t think that’s what happened, at least in this case.

Maybe Levitt pulled the wool over Judge Judy’s eyes, (although you can tell she’s wondering herself), but as you watch the clip, a few things become obvious:

1.) Levitt has no picture of the dead cat itself, just the smashed TV set(s). No blood is seen, either.

2.) Who in the world would still want to be friends with someone who deliberately killed their pet?

For those two reasons alone, it seems that what went down in the courtroom was probably a bit of indie rock performance art. The episode is pretty silly to begin with, but it gets really funny during the closing credits. Note the cameo appearance by noise musician Narwhalz, who calls Judge Judy “mama” and lives to tell. That’s what really lead me to conclude the whole case was fake!