An Old Timey Podcast - 30: Ya Call This Art?? (Patreon Bonus)

Episode Date: November 6, 2024

Note: Hi friends. We had to say goodbye to our sweet, 17-year-old cat, Boo, this week, so we’re releasing this episode from our Patreon. We’ll be back to our regularly scheduled programming next week.Teri Horton didn’t mince words. The $5 thrift store painting she’d picked up for a friend was ugly. Very ugly. It wasn’t even what she’d call art. It looked like blobs and sprays of paint flung willy-nilly on a massive canvas. So, when Teri’s friend didn’t want the painting, Teri wasn’t offended. But Teri was sure surprised when an art teacher told her she might have purchased a genuine Jackson Pollock painting. Teri’s response was quick. “Who the f*** is Jackson Pollock?”Remember, kids, history hoes always cite their sources! For this episode, Kristin pulled from: The documentary, “Who the #$and% is Jackson Pollock?”“The Case for Jackson Pollock,” by PBS Digital Studios“The Mark of a Masterpiece” by David Grann for the New Yorker“Jackson Pollock: Demystifying America’s Most Influential Painter,” by The Conspiracy of Art YouTube channel“$50-million question,” by Louise Baring for The National Post“‘Ugly’ painting’s creator still disputed; now artists claim it,” by Kristina Sauerwein for The Los Angeles Times“A thrift-shop Jackson Pollock masterpiece?” 60 Minutes“‘Bakersfield Mist’ pits art misfit against art maven,” by Barbara Yoresh for the Indian River Press Journal“Costa Mesa woman known for the fight to authenticate a possible Jackson Pollock painting dies without selling it,” by Susan Hoffman for the Daily Pilot“After 25 years, Costa Mesa woman still holding out for a ‘fair price,’” for the Daily Pilot

Hey everyone. It's been a sad week in the Caruso House. A few days ago, Norm and I said goodbye to our sweet, curious, 17-year-old cat, Boo. And we're having a hard time with her loss. And I think the rest of our animals are having a tough time, too, because Boo ruled this house. In fact, we called her Queen Boo. We're not really sure what to do without her, but we knew we couldn't work this week. So we're putting out this episode, which, actually comes from our Patreon. Every month, we put out a bonus episode for patrons, and the episode you're about to hear is one of our favorites. It's about a really tough woman who didn't take shit from anybody. We'll be back to our regularly scheduled programming next week, but in the meantime, please give your pets a scratch under the chin. Hope you're all doing well.

We'll see you next week. Hear ye! You are listening to an old-timey podcast. I'm Kristen Caruso And I was once retweeted by Iggy Azalia It's Normy C! It's true! And on this episode, I'll be talking about a very expensive painting?

Ugh. Question mark? Painting. What? Is this about art? I love this story! Damn it, Norm! Listen, you think you're hot shit

because one time in like 2015, Iggy Azalea retweeted you. I got news for you, son. You ain't she it? She hopped in my DMs. No, she did. I love what you're doing online. Keep it up, buddy. She did retweet me, though.

That was quite a moment for me. It was quite a moment. I said, Kristen! Guess who just retweeted me. What was the tweet? It was about net neutrality with the FCC. And I retweet. I said something like,

I'm sorry, you didn't want to hear about my, My painting story, but you want to talk to me about net neutrality? Look, the real subject of this story is Iggy Azalea, not net neutrality. I agree. I tweeted about how net neutrality was, was it really important? Hang on. I forgot where I stood. Joe, please don't cut any of this.

We need to make this as boring as possible to punish the patrons for paying for this content. Be quiet. Net neutrality. The FCC during the Trump administration destroyed net neutrality. And so I tweeted about how that was wrong. And Iggy Azalea retweeted me. Your good friend, Iggy Azalea. You know, I have another celebrity friend.

Who's that? Linda Evans. Oh, my gosh. I did notice. I don't know if you've noticed. This is a bonus episode. So all you history hoes should be able to watch the video version of this episode. And here I am debuting my newest piece of art that I purchased on eBay.

That looks like an ad for Crystal Light. It is. It is the very first advertisement for Crystal Light, 1984. Did you and Michael in the Discord collaborate over these Crystal Light images? What was that I was seeing in there? Okay, it's funny. You know, on one of our regular episodes, I asked the history host, who invented Crystal Light? Right.

Unfortunately, it was made in a laboratory by Kraft Heinz or something. but I also found the first advertisement for Crystal Light featuring Linda Evans. So I just said, well, I'm just going to say Linda Evans created Crystal Light. So that is why I went on eBay and I purchased this ad. And then after I purchased it, Michael in the Discord was like, you should definitely buy an advertisement and put it up. And I was like, great minds, think alike. I've already done it.

Norm, how much did that run us as a household? How much did we pay for that? Let's not get into the specific. How much did you pay for a crystal light at? I don't want to talk about it. I bought it with my own money. Norman. How much did that cost?

It was $20. Oh, okay. With free shipping. Well, I bargain at any price, I say. It's in perfect condition. Linda's looking lovely. The crystal light is looking refreshing. Crystal light's looking at a baysie.

Lemon, lime. Woo, baby. Wow. It's just my dream scenario. I walk in the house and Linda Evans is. standing there with a ice cold glass of crystal light in her jazzer-sized gear. Anyway, you wanted to tell me about an expensive painting? I did.

But first, thank you to everyone who's listening to this. That means your patron. Hello. Your patron? You're a patron, yeah. Oh, yeah. Hello. What did you think I said?

Man, just because I'm not Linda Evans. I'm just getting shat upon here. You said, you're a. Uh-huh. And it just sounded like you said, Your patron. Oh. We'll cut all this, Joe.

Don't worry. No, no. We'll leave it all in. Anyway. Hi. Thank you for supporting the show. We appreciate it. Hi.

Hi. And now Kristen is going to tell us about a very expensive painting. You're really teasing me with this topic. What are you even going to talk about? I know you're into art. Everyone. I have been obsessed with this story since I first saw this documentary. in the year of our lord 2007 i always wanted to cover it for let's go to court but there's not

really enough court stuff and so here i am baby i am telling you this story that i love so much and boy here we go see this is what's so wonderful about an old-timey podcast we can talk about literally anything as long as it happened in the past as long as it happened that's right okay so So this story, most of it comes from the documentary, Who the Bleep is Jackson Pollock. Uh-huh. So we're talking about a Jackson Pollock painting. Yes, indeed we are. Mm-hmm.

Maybe. Picture it! 1991. San Bernardino, California. Terry Horton was perusing her local thrift store, looking for a little special something. See, Terry's friend was depressed. And Terry figured that, you know, maybe if she found just the right thing, it could cheer her up. Mm-hmm.

At a thrift store? Yeah. Yeah. I like thrift store hunting. Mm-hmm. You sure do. Mm-hmm. You're not really into it, though.

You think everything's too dirty and gross. It smells funky. Thrift stores do have a smell. I don't like the scent. Yeah. You know what else has a scent right now? My lips, because we just had pizza for lunch and I've got that cheesy lip smell. You ever get that?

Okay. You talk to me about this. the last time you had pizza and I went to kiss you and I was like, why does your mouth smell like that? And you said, I got the cheesy lips. And you said it as if this is a thing everyone knows about. History hose, way in. When you eat pizza, your lips kind of smell like cheese. Not kind of. I mean, yours like, you're, you would think you had two mozzarella sticks just on your face. Yeah, I got to hit, I got to like do the listerine and brush after I eat pizza because it's real cheesy. Similar to a thrift store.

Okay. Especially the clothes section. So Terry looked through the thrift store and then all of a sudden she stumbled across this thing. It was a painting, sort of. Painting sort of? Yeah, I mean, it looked like just splotches of paint that had been flung at the canvas. No particular rhyme or reason. Definitely wasn't art.

And Terry's mind, a painting should be of something. You should look at it and know what it's about, like a... and Norman Rockwell, or maybe a nice close-up of a clown, if you're wondering, by the way, is Terry's living room wall covered in not one, not two, not three, but four clown paintings? You'd be wrong, because I counted six of them. Jesus Christ. Hang on. There's no limit to how many clown paintings you can have in a room.

I had to find that button. Mm-hmm. Why clown paintings? To each his own, Norman. Maybe she loves a clown painting on velvet, of course. Why was that such a thing? For a while there, everyone did Elvis on Velvet or clowns on Velvet. I really don't like clowns.

No, most people don't. They're terrified. What's that phobia when you're afraid of clowns? Clownophobia. No, it's not. Conchophobia. Colrophobia. Fear of clowns.

If you see a clown, it can cause anxiety. Naja, racing home. heart and sweating. Hey, it's a real thing, Kristen. I'm sorry. I just like the idea of you seeing one and just immediately vomiting. I like the idea of me seeing one and just sweating profusely. Oh, it's a clown.

Is it better if it's just a nice velvet painting of a clown? I can deal with just a painting. Oh, I just knocked the microphone. I apologize. That's fine. It's a bonus episode. We don't give a shit. We'll do whatever we want. Wow. Wow. Wow. You just bummed out all the listeners so badly that now they wish they had a clown in the room to lift their spirits or make them vomit, you know, depending on what their situation is. I'm thinking of like the worst situation where I would run into a clown. In the previous episode, we talked about eating at a restaurant and a magician came up to the table.

Right. That was bad enough. Imagine if it was a clown that came up to the table. Yeah, but that's not the worst situation. It would be for me. No, let me tell you the worst situation for you. What? You ready? You ready to get a little spooked?

Uh-huh. Okay. You and I like to hike? Yeah. There have been a couple occasions when we're out in Colorado. We start a hike and it's starting to get a little dark and we're like, oh, do we turn around or do we try to finish? You know, and it's always a little, oh. Let me throw a scenario at you.

Yeah. You are hiking. It's starting to get a little dark, but you decide to press on because that's the Normie C way. and all of a sudden big footsteps behind you. Uh-huh. Arka! That's the sound about it. Was it a goose? That was a clown nose.

Oh. Turn around. Just a clown. Is he following me or just hiking? Well, he says he's just hiking. Does he say, excuse me, and he walks by? No, he stops and pretends he's in a box. Oh, so he's a mime as well. There are no limits to what he can do.

Wow, you're pretty good at that. Can you keep doing that? Are you mesmerized? Yeah. You're really good at that. No, I'm not. No, you are. Your hand movements are really good.

Thank you. I think you really are in a box. What if this is how you find out that I actually didn't go to traditional college? I went to clown school. I mean, it would be a shock because we've been together for 15 years. Yeah, but then you just saw me in that box and you knew I had professional training. There's no way she just did that on her own. Someone had to have taught her that.

Anyway. This lady has a lot of clown paintings. Right. And she picks up a painting at the thrift store, and it's just a bunch of color splatters. Yeah, big, messy blobs of paint flung onto a canvas. So why didn't she buy it if she was like, this is an art? Could you hold on a second, sir? Okay.

You're acting like a clown is chasing you, and you have to, like, get somewhere fast. I do have that image in my head, and it did freak me out. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, especially if it didn't, if the clown said, excuse me and walked by, I'd be like, this is really weird. There's a clown hiking on this trail. But the fact that he, like, stopped and would not pass me and just stood behind me, that's even freakier. Let me throw something even scarier at you.

You're hiking on the trail. I thought you wanted to move on. Well, now we're back on the clowns. Now I want to scare you even more. Okay. You're hiking on the trail. You hear the clop, clop, clop of very big shoes. Yeah, big red shoes, of course.

You hear the fucka! Okay. Yeah. You turn? You see nothing. You keep going. You hear the quop, quop, you hear the conca.

You turn. And that's when you see a clown had been peeking at you from around a tree. No. Nope. He thinks he's hidden,

but you can see the tips of his big, bulbous red shoes. That's fucking creepy as hell. No. You're sweating right now. Yeah, I am. Do you remember those news stories

a couple years ago where there were people were finding clowns in the woods? No. Yeah. That's terrifying. Yeah, people were addressing as clowns and scaring residents of neighborhoods. That is an act of terrorism if I've ever heard it.

This is why I believe in the death penalty. My, Norman! This scenario right here. Anyhow. So Terry sees this painting, and she couldn't deny that although it was very ugly, She kind of wanted to buy it. Something about it, huh? Something about it spoke to her.

Okay. So she turned to the clerk and asked, how much for this? And the clerk, who was evidently knee-deep in the steamyest section of her romance novel, didn't even bother looking up from the page. Wow. She just said, $8. How big is this painting?

Oh, it's big. It's big? It's six feet by four feet, my dude. Oh, my God. It's a big. So 72 by 48. If you're looking for my help with mental math, you're going to have to turn to another woman. Linda Evans, Iggy Azalea.

What do you think, Linda? Linda says I'm right. I bet she does. So yeah, it's huge. But Terry here's $8 and she said, look, I love my friend, but I don't love her that much. Could you do a little better? And the clerk said, eh, give me five bucks. She haggled that for a giant painting?

Yeah. Wow. Okay. So Terry said, okay. She gave the clerk the $5, walked out of the store with her new painting. Right off the bat, the painting gave Terry some trouble. It was pretty big, as we've already said.

Yeah, how's she going to get at home? What is she driving? A truck. Okay. Yeah, so she's good. But the truck was full of hay. So she did have to kind of position it just so, you know. Uh-huh.

Terry drove over to her friend's place, and as soon as she got there, she told her friend, hey, I got you a little something. And the friend came out to Terry's truck and took a look at this very large canvas and said, A little something, where am I going to put this? That's not the reaction when someone buys you a gift. Sure. You say, thank you, and you take it, and then you complain about how big it is when Terry leaves. truth was the friend didn't want to hurt Terry's feelings. I mean, it was a gift, as you're saying, you know,

it's polite to just like, oh, it's a thought that counts. But Terry isn't one to mince words, and evidently neither do her friends. Because finally, the friend just said, Terry, this is really pretty ugly. Jesus. And the two women kind of had to laugh because it really was pretty ugly. So the friend didn't take the painting And that was just as well Because according to the documentary

It was literally too big to fit through her trailer Oh wow I don't see how that's possible unless maybe Well maybe if your entryway is really short somehow Anyway Maybe she had a tiny home The tiniest of tiny homes Yeah

Those were all the rage a few years ago Or maybe her friend was just like Oh no this won't fit through the door darn. Oh, darn. You're going to have to take it with you. Yeah, I have a four-foot door. Sorry.

I'm actually a gnome, so I don't know what you were thinking. I'm a goblin. So Terry took the painting back to her own trailer, but she didn't really have room for it either. And again, she thought it was ugly. So eventually she decided, I'm just going to put this in a garage sale. Oh, wow. Oh, wow. Wow.

And that's when this story gets wild. Okay. Because a local art teacher came to the garage sale. And when he saw that painting, he was like, huh? Whoa. I mean, I'm no expert, but this might be a Jackson Pollock painting. You fool! You fool!

Why? He does not know how to garage sale. You see something incredible. You don't say a word. You say how much. You pay for it. You leave. And then you gush over it.

I disagree. Oh, really? I think it kind of depends on the neighborhood. Oh, yeah? Well, if you're in a neighborhood where clearly, like, somebody doesn't have a ton of money and they're selling something that they have no idea, might be insanely valuable, might change their whole life, and you're in a position to, like, help them out and tell them the truth? What if you are also poor?

Oh, then all bets are off. So I'm saying. Okay. Yeah, I don't know. I think it's tough. I see what you're saying. Yeah. I understand your point of view.

Okay. I'm thinking back to my days as a young man. Uh-huh. I can tell you are. Buying stuff at garage sales and, like, finding some incredible deals. Sure. And I mean, maybe I'm being kind of silly about this because you are supposed to get, hopefully, a deal at a garage sale. Mm-hmm.

But I think ethically there's a limit to how good the deal should be. How about that? Sure. So, this guy says, this might be a Jackson Pollock painting. And Terry said, who the fuck is Jackson Pollock? A perfectly reasonable response. I don't think Jackson Pollock's like a household name. Hmm.

Depends on the house. Depends on the era. I mean, yeah, I guess. I don't know. It just doesn't seem like an artist that everybody would know. No, I agree. Okay. So let's talk about Jackson Pollock.

He is a very big deal in the art world, specifically the modern art world, and even more specifically, the abstract expressionist movement. He has a permanent room at New York's Museum of Modern Art. His work is displayed in the Tate Gallery in London. The Taint Gallery? Tate, Norman. It's right between the butthole gallery and the Vigine Gallery. Watch your step London stink

His paintings sell for millions of dollars In some cases they've sold for In excess of $100 million And that's pretty wild Because a lot of people look at his art And say You call this art Well you want to know why his art was that way, right?

Why? It's because he's a fish What? Pollock's a type of fish. Oh my God. That's so stupid. He's just flopping around and the paint splattering everywhere and that's a Jackson Pollock. It's like when you go to the zoo and they've given an elephant a paintbrush hole and it's drunk.

Yeah. He's a fish with a little beret. How does the burray stay on? He slaps paint on his body and he just flops around. And that's how he paints. Incredible. Did you come across that in your research? No, I didn't.

I must have skipped the fact that he was actually a fish the whole time. Your research is terrible. Evidently. To some folks, Jackson Pollock's art looks random, unskilled, kind of shitty, as if he was just a fish covered in paint flopping on a canvas. Bingo. Because he was. In fact, back in the day, one of Jackson's critics said that, that his work looked like a quote mop of tangled hair.

Hmm. Oh, yeah, delicious. Wait, when was Jackson Pollock born? Hey, if you'll just sit tight, Mr. Is He a Fish? I'm literally about to tell you. Okay, sorry. I'm good. Sometimes I think I have ADHD as well because I hear...

Go on. I hear Jackson Pollock and my mom. mind starts wandering off. Hey, was he involved with this thing? Did he do this thing? Oh, what about this thing? For those of you who watched that on video, I hope you made note of the meaningful glances I gave you. Everyone, Norm thinks he might have ADHD.

I've always suspected. And also, you know all the random facts from every movie you've ever seen. Anyway, you might have some stuff. I might have some stuff going on. It's possible. Anyway, in his heyday, in the late 1940s and the early 1950s, Jackson Pollock's work took the world by storm. He was born in 1912 in Wyoming.

Thank you. Went to high school in L.A.? Yeah. Moved to New York City in 1930, where he studied at the Art Students League under famous Kansas city artist, Thomas Hart Benton. That was the fact I was thinking of. What was the fact?

Well, I want that Thomas Hart Benton taught him and was not a fan of his work. Yeah, and Jackson Pollock thought he sucked too. Yeah. I remember hearing about that at the Thomas Hart Benton Museum, or maybe it was the Ken Burns documentary. But anyway, yeah, Benton was like, he sucks. Mm-hmm. This new art wave.

Well, the feeling was mutual, baby. Yeah, because it was kind of like a wave of a new type. of art. Oh, very much so. Yeah. And Benton was very like traditionally, you know. He had his own style. Yeah, he did. Wow. You, you literally took the words right out of my mouth. All right, I'm skipping ahead. Jackson gravitated toward Picasso. He liked the modern stuff. He attended a workshop led by David Alfaro Sikeros, who got Jackson thinking about totally new ways to create art. Why use traditional paint? Why use a paintbrush?

Why not fling the paint at the canvas? It helped a lot because he was a fish. Shut out. He can't even hold a paintbrush. Over the course of Jackson Pollock's short career, his style evolved a lot. He went from making Picasso-esque paintings to something totally different. Something like what Terry picked up in the thrift store that day. What do you think of that kind of art?

I have developed more of an appreciation for it just because, obviously, in addition to rewatching this documentary, I also watched a bunch of stuff on Jackson Pollock and his style. And I have an appreciation for it. Yeah, I've always really liked that kind of art. Yeah. And I don't think you necessarily have to look at a piece of art and, like, see something. You just be like, oh, that's pretty. You know, I think Pollock's stuff is very nice to look at. Or it can be, like, I like when you can see a rhythm in it.

I don't like when it looks totally random to me. Yeah, and I'd correct me if I'm wrong. I don't think a lot of his stuff was, I don't think he was just like flinging stuff randomly all the time, right? There's like a method to his madness. I mean, sure, I think it depends a little bit on who you ask. And I think as he evolved, his work got more abstract. But we'll get into that more in a second here. So he's evolving his style.

He's doing something totally unexpected, totally new, and even just the way he created his art captured the attention of the general public. At his studio outside his home on Long Island, Jackson evolved to laying his canvases flat on the ground. Sometimes he'd pour the paint on, sometimes he'd splash it, he'd fling it, he'd spray it. he'd come at the canvas from all angles with varying energy.

To watch him paint was almost like watching kind of a weird dance. It was kind of like jazz. He worked from his subconscious mind, which in those Freudian days was very hip and trendy. It meant he wanted to sleep with his mother. That's what all of his work meant. Basically. Uh-huh. Yeah.

Which you wouldn't think that'd be on a fish's mind, but hey, it's subconscious, okay? There's a lot about fish we don't know, okay? But there is one thing we know. There's one thing we know. It can be very talented artists. He worked with unusual materials, turkey basters, sand, string, cigarette butts. What, cigarette butts? Sure, drop it in. Why not?

Into the painting? Sure. He called his work, energy and motion made visible, and memories arrested in space. I think that's what I like about his stuff. the energy and motion made visible. Like you can really feel like how he threw himself into it. You can kind of envision how he made it. I know this sounds, this is going to sound so weird and maybe even douche.

It kind of reminds me of podcasting a bit. Oh, okay. No, no, hold on, hold on. Wait a minute. In that you do all this stuff to prepare for an episode. Uh-huh. And you've got your script and all that stuff. But then when you're actually doing it,

things surprise you like your husband talking about Iggy Azalea or actually Jackson Pollock was really a fish. And so like it just becomes this other thing. Like you go into it with a plan, which I imagine he always had some sort of plan. But there's a serious improv to it. His wife, Lee Krasner, was also an artist and she helped him hone his unique style. And by the late 1940s, he was a household name, Norm. I wasn't born in the 40s, so yeah, not to me. Your name says otherwise. The big artist in my life was probably Bill Waterson. Who's that? Calvin and Hobbs. Oh, excuse me. Or Charles Schultz?

Yes. I guess that's a little different than art. I mean, doing comic strips. Who's to say? He got a spread in Life magazine. His work symbolized American freedom. It was so unrestrained, so. so seemingly unplanned, but success turns out is not a cure for everything, Norm.

Damn, I kind of thought it was. Yeah, well, devastating. You know how when Iggy Azalea retweeted you and all of your problems vanished forever? That's not what happened for Jackson Pollock. He struggled with alcoholism, his whole life. And in 1956, when he was just 44 years old, he died in a car accident. 44. Yeah.

His mistress was flung from the vehicle, but survived. And another woman who'd been in the car with them, a woman named Edith Metzger, died as well. Was he driving? Yeah. Was he drunk? Yeah. What? I think that's fucked up.

That's all. Yeah, it sucks. Yeah. So, Jackson Pollock was a very influential and controversial artist who died young. And these days, his work is incredibly valuable. We're talking major, major money for artwork that to a lot of us looks like a random ass mess. Yeah. So when Terry Horton found out that she might have stumbled ass backwards into a genuine

Jackson Pollock painting, she was stunned. And of course, she took it out of the garage sale and went to her local library and did a bunch of research on Jackson Pollock and began the process of trying to figure out if her painting was real. And that, sir, is where this story gets downright infuriating. How so? Well, Terry's not from the art world. No. But that shouldn't matter, right? And yet, it does. It matters so much. In what way? Okay, well, I'll tell you. So let's talk about Terry. First thing you should know about her is that I am in love with her, completely in love. Oh.

She's tough as nails, funny as hell, smokes like a chimney, enjoys a strong adult beverage, and keeps her fingernails and her hair just so. And if you think that she's paying retail for anything, anything, you've got another thing coming because Terry will go to a T.J. Max and then drive by a few days later to check the dumpster to see if that thing she had her eye on happened to make it out back. Is that for real? Yeah. She dumpster dives? Oh, all the time. All the time. Her son had to ask her to stop because she was finding, you know, clothes with the tags on and everything.

And she would give them to the grandkids. And I guess the grandkid went to kind of a nice kindergarten. And somebody asked about his shirt and he said, thanks. My grandma got it from the dumpster. And then the dad was all embarrassed. Hey, people used to dumpster dive when I worked at GameStop. Well, I mean, it's true. Stores throw out perfectly good stuff, right?

GameStop would throw out tons of stuff, and they, we weren't allowed to take it home. They, like, had to destroy it because they could write it off the, you know, tax break. Yeah, but what if somebody just walks off with it, right? Oh, I definitely took some stuff. Wow. Yeah. Lock him up. I threw it in the dumpster, and then after work I went to the dumpster and took it out of the dumpster.

Okay. Did they have surveillance cameras? I don't think they did on the dumpster. Yeah, they probably didn't care enough. I mean, the biggest thing I got in trouble for at GameStop was eating yogurt. Well, you had no right to do that. Yeah, I was working at GameStop one afternoon, and I was the only person there. Clearly, you weren't the only person because you got in trouble.

I was the only employee. Uh-huh. And, uh, woo, busy day. Mm-hmm. And so I thought, it was a little lull in the day. I'm going to whip out this yogurt and slurp it. down. Was it a gogurt or did you have to spoon it into your mouth?

Because that takes extra time. I had a little spoon. It was like one of those like Greek yogurt, Chabani, whatever. And there's like one customer in the store. He's just browsing. So I was like, I'm just going to eat my yogurt. And then the guy left. Well, a couple days later, the district manager got a call from that dude in the store.

That is so ridiculous. Because I didn't help him. I didn't go up to him and say, Hello, sir, can I help you find anything? You were so busy. You were knee-deep in Greek yogurt. Yeah. And that poor man didn't know which way was up.

He was so lost in that GameStop. They legit took me to the back if the game stopped, pulled up the surveillance footage of me eating yogurt. Shut up. And they're like, they're like, you are not allowed to eat. in the store, we got a call from a customer that you were eating yogurt and not helping him find a game. Why on earth was it necessary to pull up the footage?

Did they think you were going to deny it? I mean, I, oh gosh. So I got written up for that. Fuck big corporations. It's funny, it was my dream to work at GameStop. Yeah. That was the worst job I've ever had, like easily. Yeah.

Anyway, back to Terry in her dumpster diving ways. I have plenty more GameStop stories, by the way. I really like your GameStop stories. So keep listening to the podcast, folks. That's how we keep them listening. So Terry is a dumpster diver, and it should surprise no one. Actually, where do you think Terry grew up? A city or what are you asking exactly?

Yeah, a city, an area. The South? You've been to this area. going to need to be more specific. Really? Tough as nails woman. She'll cuss you out, but, you know, got a good heart. Uh-huh.

Wants to help out a friend who's depressed. Where? She grew up in the Ozarks of Missouri. Oh, yeah, baby. Yeah. Yeah. It's a special breed of person. That is, for sure.

She came from a big family. Money was always tight. They didn't have electricity or running water on the farm. She married the first guy she ever dated, and a few years later, he left her. At some point, did you just sniff your cheesy lips? You did, didn't you? I saw it happen. I saw you sniff them. I don't think I did. Okay, I did. I admit it. I sniffed my cheesy lips. You think I'm not going to notice that you're sitting there going, how did you catch me? It was so obvious that you are sniffing your upper lips and loving it.

We sat down, we started recording. I was like, oh, shit, I have cheesy lips. I tell you what, here's what we're going to do. We're going to stop so I can get some more drinks. And if you need to do something about your cheesy lips. I got to hit the Listery. Okay, hit it. All right, I'll be right back.

All right, my cheesy lips have been cured. You sure? Mm-hmm. By the way, you know what this Crystal Light ad says? Do you know what Linda Evans says about Crystal Light? What does she say about Crystal Light? I believe in Crystal Light because I believe in me. That is so inspiring.

That's too much. No, that's really cool. I believe in Crystal Light because I believe in me. That's ridiculous. It's Crystal Light. But it's helping her reach her goals. Look at her. I believe in myself.

and therefore I believe in crystal light. Yeah. I hope you're all inspired. I know I am. I've got my crystal light right now. Do you believe in yourself? I do. Especially now that you're not sipping that stuff through two mozzarella sticks.

It did smell that way. So at some point Terry became a long-haul truck driver. She did that for like 20 years until 1987 when another truck driver collided into her. Oh. Immediately after the wreck, she cussed that dude out 12 ways to Sunday. And the guy was like, ooh, I'm glad you're not a dude because you would have kicked my ass by now.

Yeah. In other words, Terry was a tough cookie, a little rough around the edges. She had an eighth grade education, but a boatload of common sense, very good bullshit detector. And she'd always been a bit of a treasure hunter. She was always amazed by what other people were willing to throw away. It's true that some of it was junk, but every now and then she would find something of real value. It's quite a rush when you find a treasure.

What was your biggest treasure? Oh, man. There's a few examples I have. My favorite was, well, it's all video game stuff. Of course, yeah. My favorite video game of all time, Earthbound, which is worth. Quite a bit of money. I found at a thrift store for $2.

And I remember it was that much sweeter because I knew the owner of the thrift store. Uh-huh. And she outbid me at an auction one time and was very proud that she outbid me at the auction. Wow. So I went to her thrift store and she was selling earthbound for $2. What do you mean she was really proud that she had, did she rub your face in it? She seemed to gloat that she had outbid me at the auction. It was one of those old-timey auctions.

You know, you gather in the barn and you raise the little number and stuff. She outbid me on some video game stuff. Uh-huh. Yeah. But I had the last laugh. I got earthbound. Two bucks. Suck on that.

I think it was worth like $200 at the time. Damn. Man, she could have helped herself out by Googling, but I guess she was too busy outbidding you on auction items. But yeah, you just get like this rush when you find something super cool or value. and it's just like cheap. You get a hell of a deal. I don't think I've ever had that experience. You got to go thrifting more.

Yeah, I don't want to. But you don't like thrifting. Yeah, so I guess I'll just have to miss out. That's the spirit. You're not like Linda Evans. You got to believe in yourself. I believe in myself. Well, then believe in yourself to find that deal.

No, I'm not interested. I am interested in finding more crystal light. And I know exactly where it's at. It's in the kitchen. It's at Costco, too. Also at Costco. So here's an example of one of her big finds. You ready?

She found this watch. She gave it to her son Bill. And, you know, he wore it. He thought nothing of it. He knew it was a dumpster dive find. And when the battery needed to be replaced, he took it to this jewelry store. And the guy behind the counter is like, okay, that's going to be $85. And Bill was like, $85.

This must be a very special watch. Well, Bill was like, that watch isn't worth $85. Yeah. And the guy was like, wow. What? Yes, it is. It's an able watch. It's worth like two grand, maybe two and a half grand, actually. Look right there. Those are real diamonds. Oh, shit. Yeah, Bill was stunned. So Terry had scored some good fines over the years, and now she wondered if she'd scored her greatest find yet with this weird, hideous painting. Yeah. So Terry busted out the phone book and started calling up local art dealers, trying to see if she could get the,

this thing authenticated. But when Terry told the art dealers her story, they were total assholes. Let me guess. They were like, there's no fucking way you bought this at a thrift store. Well, sort of. They were like, there's no fucking way that a Jackson Pollock painting ended up at a thrift store. Yeah.

And Terry was just incredulous. She's like, well, how do you know that it's not real? Right. You know, again, these people haven't even seen the painting yet. and their answer was always some form of look, I'm in the art business, you're not. Jackson Pollock painting wouldn't have made it to a thrift store. End of story.

See, yeah, I don't like that. No. Stuff can end up anywhere. Yeah. I would be one thing if they took a look at it and they're like, I don't think this is a Jackson Pollock and here's why. But it's one thing to just outright be like, no, that's not it. For Terry, this couldn't be the end of the story.

and that type of dismissive snobbery just rubbed her the wrong way. One of the reasons that people kept dismissing her was because her painting didn't have provenance. In other words, the art world needed a record of who had owned this piece of art, and they needed a record of ownership that linked Terry's painting back to Jackson Pollock. Worth noting, records of ownership get faked a lot in the art world, so it's not like they're perfect. But they're still like the main thing that the art world,

and specifically art galleries and art dealers used to protect themselves. So they kind of have to like trace the origin of the painting. Yeah. It's how they establish whether something's authentic. One of the attorneys who was interviewed for the documentary talked about it like insulating them from liability. Right. If they've got Providence, then they can say, yes, this was definitely painted by this famous artist, and then they can charge an arm and a leg for it.

But if they don't have that, they're not charging anything for it. Yeah, it's like you need a certificate of authenticity. To say, this fish flopped around on this canvas. I hereby attest that I saw this fish flop on a canvas. So these art dealers asked Terry about the painting's provenance, and when Terry couldn't even pronounce the word, they took her even less seriously. Is it provenance or provenance? I don't know. I'm the wrong person to ask.

For shudo. So for what it's worth, Terry did try to find out where the painting had come from. By the time she realized what she might have, the thrift store where she had bought the painting originally was long gone. Well, and even then, even if it was there, the idea that they could trace who brought in the painting, there's no way. I mean, potentially maybe if the person had like asked for a receipt maybe to write it off, but even the, then, like, if they're asking for, no, yeah, who knows? Yeah, and then you have to find the employee that took in the donation. That'd be hard.

Her best bet right now is to take an ad out in the paper and be like, I have this painting. Did you own this painting and do you live in the area? Please talk to me about it. That's not a bad thought. That's the only thing I can think of. Okay. What year is it? 93, probably.

Yeah, so you can't like, you're not going to do like a Craigslist ad or anything. All right. So Dot Spot Thrift was gone. Dot was dead. All Terry had was her receipt. But these fancy folks kept acting like Providence was the one thing stopping them from even looking at Terry's painting. So she decided to invent her paintings. Oh, no, don't do that.

Are you ready to? hear a story that Terry told to actual real people in the art world. So she's only doing this so people will take her seriously? Yeah. Okay, let's hear it. Here we go. Terry got the painting from an old bartender named Pops. See, Pops used to have a bar in Mount Baldi, California.

His bar was the place to be in the 1940s. So naturally, every famous person you can think of used to go to Pops Bar. Okay? Well, one day the bar was filled with all the usual suspects. Oh, geez. And all of a sudden it started snowing. Oh, my gosh. And it snowed so hard and so fast that all these famous people got stuck in the bar. Oh, no. And since they had nothing better to do, Jackson Pollock, who was, of course, at the bar that night, busted out some of his paint because, you know, he always had paint on him. Oh, my God. And he was like, hey, why don't we all go off into our own little corners of the bar and paint. And, you know, after a while, we can show each other our work. Jackson Pollock, the guy who had a drinking problem, is going to stop everything he's doing at the bar and bust out a canvas and start painting. Why not? You can drink and paint. You ever been to one of those, you know, wine classes where they, tee, de, de, te, oh, yeah. Where you like, everyone does the same painting. Yeah, yeah. I haven't, I've actually,

never been to one of those. Well, that's why you think this story is fake, because you've never been to one of those places. Also, where is she saying Pop's Bar is? In Mount Baldi, California. Pay attention to this very real story, Norm. Why was Jackson Pollock in Mount Baldy? Well, hey, guess what? Sometimes people travel.

Is there any record of this business existing? I'm going to finish the story. Okay, you rude-ass dude. So anyway, Jackson Pollock comes up with this idea. Let's paint. Yeah. And, hey, we can drink while we paint, you know, Norm. We can do more than one thing at once.

So everyone thought that was a great idea. So the actor James Cagney went to his little corner. James Cagney. And Humphrey Bogart went to his corner. And John Wayne went to his corner. It's a who's who at this bar. And Jackson Pollock went to his corner. And Academy Award winner Broderick Crawford went to his corner.

And he stripped down completely naked because, you know, he thought it'd be funny to paint in the nude. And, you know, it's a rowdy scene. How many corners does this bar have? So many corners. It's just all corners. And, ooh, you know, Jackson starts doing his thing, dripping, flinging, flopping, dropping. But you know what? Well.

Freaking Joan Crawford kept looking over his shoulder, bothering him while he was trying to paint. Okay. The more people you add to this story. the less credible it gets. And the more incredible it becomes. And also, the more chance that people can verify if it's real or not. Anyway, Joan Crawford was a real pain in the neck because she had the nerve to tell Jackson Pollock, you know, how to paint what to do. Can you believe that?

Frankly, you know, pops the bartender thought John Crawford was way out of line and I agree, obviously. Anyway, some time passed. They finished up their paintings and all their little corners. And then they displayed them up on Pops Bar and get a load of this. Norm, you're going to love this part. Jackson Pollock was standing back, admiring his work. And he said, oh, wait, I'm not finished yet. I need to sign it.

So you know what he did? He got up on the bar, pulled down his pants, took out his penis, and signed the canvas with his dick. Yada, yada, yada. years and years later, Pops became friends with Terry, and in 1991, you know, he gave her that painting, just, you know. He signed the painting with his dick. Sure did. This guy had a big dripping hog then if he's going to sign a painting.

Provenance complete. Wait, did this painting actually have his signature on it? No. Okay, well, then that's just made up. Well, sure, it's just a little swiggly line. That was his dick that did that. Uh-huh. Believe it or not.

Some art dealers actually believed this story just a little bit. Dear fucking God, what? One art dealer even claimed to have also known pops. Oh, yeah. Mm-hmm. That's great for Terry because now Terry knows that art dealer is full of shit. Well, here's the thing. She thought everyone in the art world was full of shit.

Mm-hmm. It's just a matter of like who's going to be full of shit with me, with this particular brand of shit that I got. Norm, as you have already pointed out, uh, Terry's story. could not stand up to scrutiny, like even the slightest bit of scrutiny. Yeah, because you included like five or six famous people in the story. Yeah, it's so obviously made up. But by this point, she's like a dog with a bone. She had to get someone to tell her with actual authority whether or not her painting was a Jackson Pollock.

She reached out to the International Foundation for Art Research. They're the authority on authenticating works of art. So they examined her painting, and they reached a decision. They decided that what Terry picked up in the thrift store way back in 1991 was not a real Jackson Pollock painting. Why? They said it looked like one, but it wasn't. The splatter pattern looked intentional in some places, which that was not his thing. And that's a dead giveaway for it not being a real Pollock.

Okay. So final decision. There you go. That's the end of the story. No. Good job, Kristen. Oh? The report was unsigned.

And Terry asked, well, who issued the report? Like, who did you consult? And they wouldn't tell her. And to Terry, that just seemed like more bullshit from the art world. So she kept going. And if you're wondering, gee, were these art folks really that snobby? To Terry just have a chip on her shoulder? Well, the documentary did a superb job of letting people be themselves.

and tell on themselves. Okay. You know, Terry's there in all her glory with her clown paintings and she's smoking. She is who she is. And Thomas Hoving was who he was, which is possibly the biggest snob

ever captured on film. He used to be the... I can't stand this guy. He used to be the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and he comes from a very upper-crested. family. His daddy used to be the head of Tiffany and company. Oh, daddy. He has his PhD from Princeton, and he agreed to take a look at Terry's painting and give his expert opinion on whether or not it was a

real Pollock. And just in case, you are even thinking about questioning this man's expertise, I would like to read to you a direct quote. Here's what he said about his own expertise. and let's all just pray that we can have a tenth of this man's confidence. There are a lot of second-rate experts in the world. I'm not. Now, if I'd been a night watchman at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for 10 years instead of curator and director for 18 and a half, then you might say that my expertise is not so good.

My expertise is very good. Wow. he probably drinks crystal light. He believes in himself. He believes in himself. Oh, I wonder what it was like to be an employee for that guy. Yeah, I do wish I had that confidence. I'm glad you don't.

This man is the most insufferable man. I think it's one thing to have confidence. It's another to brag about it. To me, it wreaks of insecurity, actually. Yeah, of course. Because if you're really that's secure, you don't feel the need to shit on people. like this. Right.

By the way, this man with the incredible expertise. Yes, yeah. But who couldn't be bothered to find an outfit that fit his body or a tie that wasn't 12 kinds of hideous. Oh. You know, he did agree to participate in this documentary and came into an empty room where Terry's painting was positioned under bright lights and he began his examination. He looked at it from all angles.

He bent over. He touched it. He squinted. He sniffed his own farts. He sniffed his lips. He had the cheesy lips. He says, excuse me, I have cheesy lips. At the end, he said, it's superficial and frivolous, and I don't believe it's a Jackson Pollock.

It has no appeal. Don't have to roast the painting. We just want to know if it's a Jackson Pollock or not. It's dead on arrival. What a jerk. Hang on, I have a soundbite for him. Oh, brother, this guy stinks! Seriously, if you're going to be this snobby, get a blazer that doesn't hang off of you like it once belonged to a much larger man.

Right? That's the least you can do. This blazer once belonged to John Candy. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. The real John Candy, okay? So later in the documentary, Thomas and the interviewer had this exchange about Terry. And Thomas says, well, she has no right to be.

bitter because what she has is no good, so why should she care? And the interviewer goes, well, she's not bitter about that. She would respectfully disagree with you, Thomas. Yes, but she knows nothing. So does it matter to me? I'm an expert. She's not. What a dickhole. This man is a cartoon character. It is ridiculous. So I think that gives you an idea of what the art world thought of Terry and how the art world talked about Terry. She has nothing. It's so obnoxious. Yeah, what a douche. They treated her like she was stupid.

And, okay, to be fair, it did seem unlikely that an incredibly valuable work from one of America's most celebrated painters would slip through the cracks. But the funny thing is that a lot of Jackson Pollock's works might have slipped through the cracks. After he died, his wife, Lee, was in charge of his estate. She'd always been pretty careful, but as she got older, one of the guys in charge of tracking her. the inventory said that he was concerned about her memory. It was slipping. And he said that it was absolutely possible in those final years that a painting as big as Terry's could have, you know, gone missing. And even while they were making this documentary, 32 pieces of art all believed to be by Jackson Pollock were discovered in his friend's attic, like 50 years after Jackson Pollock.

32. There's, I looked into it more. It doesn't seem like, you know, there's, there's talk of whether those were really his or not. But still, there's, there's talk. Yeah. An art dealer named Alan Stone had an incredible story about getting a call from a guy who said he had a Jackson Pollock painting. And when Alan arrived to take a look at it, all he saw was like this sign advertising used cars for sale. And the dude turned it around.

Sure enough, it was a Jackson Pollock painting. Wait, what? Turns out this car dealer had fished it out of the East Hampton dump decades ago so that he could use it as a sign for his shop. He didn't want to have to go buy another piece of material. Wow. So it turns out that Jackson Pollock, when he painted something that he wasn't particularly proud of, didn't really like, he'd take it to the dump. He just throw it away? Well, sure. Why not?

It wasn't valuable back when he was doing this. So these things he threw away. This was before he kind of blew up and became famous. Yeah, but I mean, even then, even when you become really famous, I'm sure you do some work and you're like, well, that didn't turn out how I want it to. I don't want to sell it. I don't want it attributed to me. It's kind of like a lot of authors have books that they don't want to publish because they're like, I don't want it out there as being mine. So the art dealer got it, got it authenticated by a Jackson Pollock expert.

and he sold it to ABC. And now it's in their permanent collection. ABC, like the American Broadcasting. Sold it to ABC. I know. That's a weird twist. So it's not like it was impossible that Terry might have stumbled upon a real Jackson Pollock painting. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, I think that's true of anything. Like any of us could stumble upon something very valuable and just not know it. But there was something about this painting and maybe something about her. that never quite passed the initial test with the art world. But Terry kept going. I'm trying to figure out how they could authenticate this thing. Well, what ideas do you have? Because that's an interesting question.

Well, the first thing I would do is I would look on the back of the canvas and see if there's any signs there. Like what? I would try to date the canvas. When was this canvas made? Okay, yeah. Because if it was made after Jackson Pollock died, it's like, well, obviously, Jackson Pollock didn't paint this.

Yeah, yeah. I guess that would be my first step. But my other thought was, is Jackson Pollock Studio? Like, can you go to Jackson Pollock Studio? You sure can. So what do you do? If you can go to Jackson Pollock Studio. Maybe see if you could match the paint.

Like, did he use this paint? Mm-hmm. Sure. I don't know how you would test that. There's like, because paint doesn't have DNA or anything, right? Oh, my God. The DNA matches. Every can of paint has a little bit of semen in it, and that's how you get the DNA.

Just a little bit of semen. Uh-huh. That's how it spreads so smoothly on the canvas. You're thinking really well here. I like where you're thinking. Thank you. It's because I believe in me. It's all the crystal light that's doing its magic for you.

Or you sniff the painting. Mm-hmm. O'w. Reeks of fish. Oh, this was clearly painted by a fish. Dead giveaway. But, hear me out. This is clearly a Jackson Pollard.

You got to look out. for forgeries. So, you know, was it, did someone slather a trout and paint and have a trout slap around on there? You got to, you got to be real careful these days. The patterns don't match a Pollock. It's more like a trout. It's more of a Fred Trout painting, actually. Shut up. I hate that I laughed at that. Fred Trout. Yes. Anyhow, she started researching this man named Peter Paul Beiro. Peter Paul Beiro is a forensic scientist who uses forensic science to authenticate artwork. Match the paint.

Yeah. With the semen. That's right. That's what he does. And you know what? It's never a match, sadly. Damn. I haven't authenticated one painting in my life.

He's done this for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He's done it for the National Gallery in Washington. The Tate Gallery in London. Blah, blah, blah. The list goes on. He has authenticated two Picasso's, a Thomas Hart Benton, even though we all agree he sucks. No.

I love Ben. I do too. Maybe I'm a little biased, though. We are biased because he's from Kansas City. Yeah. So the way Peter operates, you know, takes a lot of the snobbery and bullshit out of the authentication process. Yeah, they use data and science. I like it.

Peter is big on fingerprints. Ooh. Yeah, that would be a good way. So when you're looking at Peter Paul Beiro's greatest hits, You got to go to this time when he took a painting that hadn't been worth much, found a fingerprint in the paint, and he matched that fingerprint to a fingerprint that was also in the paint of a painting by J.M.W. Turner. And J.M.W. Turner is a big deal if you like a landscape, even bigger deal if you like a painting of a ship in a really nasty storm. I do love that. So as a result of this fingerprint match, that painting that previously hadn't been worth much at all was all of a sudden worth $10 million.

I wonder if we have anything around this house. Probably that Linda Evans thing. Oh, I can trace the origin to this, okay. Worth noting fingerprints aren't the only way that Peter determines a painting's authenticity, but they're one of the ways. Right. Also worth noting, fingerprints aren't perfect. No, and you also have to think, how many people have touched that painting? Sure.

Because it was in a thrift store at one point. Well, the one thing I'll say is it's in the paint. So it's touched when the paint was still wet. Now I'm thinking about, man, just being in the right place at the right time that Terry walked into that thrift store on that day at that time and bought that painting. Yeah. And set off this wild sequence of events. Yeah. that we're talking about now on an old-timey podcast.

Are you having a moment, Norman? Like what brought me to this time? I kind of am. Yeah. Yeah, I'm kind of like disassociating myself with reality. Oh, my. Zoning out. All that talk about clowns got you real freaked out.

Now you're like, why am I here? Oh, God, why should you remind me about the clown on the hiking trail? Now, there's a painting. Oh, a clown on velvet on a hiking trail with a scared. with a scared, non-threatening boy. Yeah. So when Terry found out about Peter, she was like, this is the guy. This is who I need to hire.

So Terry's son Bill hired Peter and flew him out to California to take a look at the baby. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. How much money is it to hire this guy? Okay, I saw a figure that came from an article that I read that came out in 2010. Yeah. And he said his figure was two grand a day. Very expensive. Sure.

Two grand a day. Yeah. And Terry's son Bill's foot in the bill. Or this. Okay. Oh, I get it. Bill. Yeah.

Okay. Hang on. Thank you. Peter spent two days pouring over the painting, microscopes, high-powered cameras, just snap, snap, and away. But it wasn't until he turned the canvas around. Aha. That he saw a partial fingerprint.

Yes. That was huge. It was something. Huge. But one partial fingerprint means nothing if you can't compare it to one of Jackson Pollock's fingerprints. Fair. Maybe they could go to Pop's bar. Find some beer bottles.

Yeah. Yeah. What did he drink? Oh, look at this. Yeah, Zima. You just drank nothing but Zimas. Was Zima around in the 40s? I don't think so.

Probably not. Yeah. That joke was D-O-A. Wow. Thomas would say the same thing. Your joke had no heart and soul. I'll tell you that. And I'm an expert on jokes.

I remember when you were doing, let's go to court, and you would always be like, I'm a professional comedian. Yeah. And I would tease you for calling yourself that. You're like, I get paid to tell jokes. Yeah. My favorite thing is to say a joke that bombs and be like, people pay me to tell jokes. So anyway, he's got a partial fingerprint, but he needs to compare it to Jackson Pollock's actual fingerprint.

Yeah. Was Pollock ever arrested? Nope. Fuck. Never joined the military. Nope, nope, nope, nope. Maybe in his studio. Oh, maybe.

There's got to be some fingerprints there. Yep. So you go to Long Island. Yeah, and while you're on Long Island, find the Long Island medium. Oh, God. And she can just tell you if it's a real Jackson Pollock. Yeah. Because she can ask Jackson Pollock because he's dead.

You know what? That should have been step one in this whole story. Terry could have saved herself a whole lot of heartache. Just go to the Long Island Medium with anything. Man, my mom and my grandma love the Long Island Medium. They have seen the Long Island Medium live. Really? Yeah. Where?

Did she come to Michigan one time? I think so, yeah. I know my mom definitely saw her live. I don't think your grandma did. My grandma doesn't really leave that. house. My grandma goes to Meyer once a week. Yep.

And that's about it. And if you try to take a different route into the Meyer, you're wrong. Oh, man. Yeah, my grandma. I drove my grandma to Meyer one time and I parked in the back of the Meyer, which has an entrance. And my grandma was just like, why did you park here? And I was like, it was way less crowded than the front. I thought I'd be helpful to Grandma.

You were not. But she doesn't like... You ruined her whole day. She was like, I don't go into Meyer from the back of the store. Yeah. So I had to drive around to the busy front. You fucked up. Just admit you fucked up big time?

I did. It was a huge mistake. And I hope you never make that mistake again, sir. There's only one way to enter a Meyer grocery store. Now I know. Now you know. But yeah, Long Island Medium. Uh-huh.

My mom and grandma, big fans. She could help out in this case. She could. So Peter had to do this the hard way. He had to do in-depth, hardcore investigations into other already established Jackson Pollock paintings and pray like hell that he'd find a fingerprint on one of those. And eventually, he did. Kind of. On another painting?

Yeah, so someone in Berlin owned a Jackson Pollock painting, and Peter was able to spot a partial print in it. He didn't actually have to go, like there were high-quality reproductions. So he was able to find it. But the print wasn't, like, quite clear enough for him to make a really clear determination. Send him Polaroids. Do you have a better camera, maybe? This is from my flip phone, so it's as good as it's going to get, buddy. Yeah, it's from my Motorola razor.

But this did kind of light a fire under him. So, just as you suggested, Norm, he went to Jackson Pollock's old studio on Long Island. The studio is currently set up as a museum. It's seasonal. You have to call ahead of time. I looked into it, everybody. Damn. And it turned out to be kind of a treasure trove. I bet there are fingerprints all over that place. The entire floor of the studio was covered in paint. It was everywhere.

So Peter got on the floor with his high-powered camera. What was it, a Motorola razor? What'd you go? Well, that's the flip phone. Yeah. And he went to town, just zooming in on every little thing, trying desperately to find a fingerprint in the mess. He had a cannon power shot. That was his camera. Okay. Make every shot a power shot.

Oh, yeah. But Peter wasn't having any luck. And then he looked up. Along the wall was a case of paint cans and paint brushes that Jackson had used. And holy shit, on the side of a can of blue paint right there, clear as day, was a fingerprint. Fingerprint. When life gets you down and you've got a frown. Don't look away, look up.

What is that? From Hey Arnold. Just when you said look up, I was like, song. Why are you looking at the camera like that? Peter photographed it. Wait a minute. Why did you look at the camera like that? What?

I'm just connecting with the audience. Okay. I feel like you're judging me right now. I love you. Oh, that's sweet. I love you too. Okay. He photographed it?

Yes. And, you know, it took a couple months to make a determination on this, but he ultimately came to the conclusion that the fingerprint on the back of Terry's painting and the fingerprint on the paint can in Jackson Pollock's studio were one and the same. Wow. He called in the former head of the Canadian Royal Crime Lab to check his work. The Canadian Royal Crime Lab. Peter Paul lives in Montreal. Yeah. Peter Paul lives in Montreal.

Oh, man, we could do a poem, but there's no time. Peter Ball lives in Montreal, y'all, y'all. Oh, man. Norm, your rap career, it never did take off. It didn't. I think it's because of snobbery in the music industry. It's not because you weren't good. I think you're right.

When I sang on that episode of an old-timey podcast and we lost 10,000 patrons, it was just all the snobs who hated my singing. Yeah. It really generated a lot of buzz. There's no such thing as bad press, as they say. So yeah Canadian Royal Crime Lab dude It's like yeah That's a match eh

And Kristen Apologies to our Canadian history hose What? Because I said A It's offensive Okay No

I mean they do say A in Canada Yeah Uh huh So wait did they match this Like a legit crime scene thing It matched that that way Like did they scan it in the pooter Did they scan it in the pooter

And they lined it up You've seen CSI, right? Yeah. Enhancy image. Enhance, enhance. They did that. And holy shit, they were certain. That's amazing.

Yeah. So this is a Jackson Pollock? Well, let me give you a little more evidence, okay? Okay. To make this even better, Jackson Pollock never had an assistant, didn't have students. He worked alone. So these fingerprints very likely belonged to him. Well, and if they matched them, but you also said,

said fingerprints aren't always. So the thing about fingerprints that you can criticize is you could take into question like someone's level of expertise. Another thing. And Terry pointed this out in the documentary. If it's enough to send someone to the electric chair, why can't it be enough for this? Fair point. That's where I'm kind of like, yeah.

Fair point, Terry. I mean, I think if you're looking at different ways to authenticate something, You've got to look at a number of factors. And personally, I don't see why if you find a fingerprint, that seems like a good jumping off point. Sure. But anyway, you might be thinking this is a slam dunk norm, but it's not. The art world was still not convinced. Are you ready for another quote from Thomas Hoving?

But the fingerprints match, a Canadian royal crime lab guy was like, yes, eh? Mm-hmm. Also, Peter Paul Biro, who has experience in this, yeah. And the art world is still like, no. Here's what Thomas said. Okay, yeah, what did this guy say? Scientists are very interesting, but they come after the true connoisseurs. Fingerprints, all that stuff, is kind of that lovely, what if. It's not essential to the heart and the artistic soul of that thing.

Oh. And that has no Pollock soul or heart. That's it. Where is this guy? He has since died. I was going to shoot him with a water pistol. Well, you're too late. Fuck.

This man later... That seems way more credible than it just doesn't have the heart of a Pollock. See, this, I agree with you. And I do think there's something to be said for people who have studied art. Like, absolutely, let's look at their expertise. But when someone is this defensive about their expertise, To me, it just really is a big reminder about how subjective this stuff is. Yes.

And also, like, thinking about when you create things, gosh, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. And you can't tell me that Jackson Pollock every now and then, maybe he just drew whatever he wanted and it was different than his usual thing. Right. Again, I'm not an expert, but this doesn't look different than his normal thing. Yeah, but I'm saying just like, if he wanted to like imitate Dilbert from the Sunday comics, then like... And he did. We all do. You know, I guess Dilbert wasn't around back then. But, you know, again, it's subjective.

Like, what's to say Jackson Pollock didn't switch it up every now and then? Sure. Would you like to know who Thomas Hoving thinks did this painting that Terry has? Yeah, that has the matching fingerprints. Yeah. He told a newspaper reporter that Terry Horton. Martin's painting was probably made by a decorator, quote, to please a client down in Palm Springs.

Blow it out your ass. This guy sniffs his own farts. Guaranteed, baby. Thomas wasn't the only expert who thought that Terry's painting didn't look like a pollock, but others, myself included, after seeing a side-by-side shot, think it looks a whole hell of a lot like Jackson Pollock's famous painting titled Number 5, which sold for $140 million in 2006. It is unreal how much these two paintings look alike.

Yeah. Now, it could be a copy. Yeah, I just keep going back to the fingerprint, though. So you keep coming back to the fingerprint. Yeah. We've got a little more than that. for a long time, and one of the experts in the documentary actually repeated this, there was this belief that Jackson Pollock never painted with acrylics.

They said that acrylics weren't popularized until after he died, so that's a way that you can tell, oh, this was not a Pollock because it's done with acrylics. So they analyzed the paint is acrylic on this canvas. But go to a studio. I bet there's acrylic paint in there. But that day in Jackson Pollock's studio, Mm-hmm. Peter Paul Biro had done more than just take a fingerprint.

Yep. Or a fender print, which is what I said. He'd also taken a sample of paint off the studio floor. It was acrylic, wasn't it? When a British scientist compared the paint on Terry's canvas with the paint from Jackson Pollock's studio floor, he found that Jackson Pollock absolutely had painted with acrylics. And those paints were chemically similar.

He also found gold paint on a match on the floor. It had been embedded in there. It wasn't just like hanging out. Yeah. And he found flex of that same gold paint in Terry's painting when you really, really zoomed in. Yeah. So it's not exactly a slam dunk, but it does go to show that, you know, maybe what we think we know might be different from what's actually true.

Well, it shuts down the argument from the naysayers that are like, it couldn't be Jackson Pollard because this is acrylic paint. It's like, uh, nope, he used. acrylic paint and we have scientific proof he used acrylic paint. Sure. But Norman, none of it ended up mattering. Ten years had passed since Terry first began her battle with the art world. For a long time, she'd been really energized by the fight. Yeah. But now she was getting tired. If a fingerprint wasn't enough, then what else could she possibly do? Things were getting tense. Meanwhile, word had gotten out about this painting that was maybe a Jackson Pollock, maybe it

wasn't, maybe it's worth $50 million. And somebody decided they wanted to take a chance on it. Okay. What? How much? An art dealer reached out to Terry's son, Bill, to say that someone who wished to remain anonymous wanted to offer Terry $2 million for her painting. I would take it.

Why? Ten years. Yeah, I'm sure she is tired of dealing with this. No one believes her. Well, clearly somebody. believes. Yeah, but it's like the most money she's probably ever seen in her life. Oh, sure, without question. She could retire comfortably with that money. I would take it. Yeah, Bill was thrilled. $2 million? Great. Most of the time he was the one stepping in to help his mom with rent money.

So, you know, he presented this deal to her and Terry snapped at him. She said, I ain't selling that painting for $2 million so don't even try to talk me into it. Whoa! Yeah. So she kept it. I mean, Bill really tried. He was like, Mom, you are 73 years old. Do you have any idea of what you're passing up? You could invest that money, live off what you earn, never touch the principal.

You could pay your own bills. You could leave the kids a nice inheritance. But Terry refused. She's stubborn. She's stubborn as hell. I admire that, I guess. Yeah. I, an unthreatening boy, would give up and just say, okay, I'll take two million.

Okay, I had this thought. I want to hear what you think. Okay. I was thinking this morning, especially getting to this part. Well, let me read you first, but I'm going to read you a little more, and then I want your opinion on something. So the documentary crew obviously asked her about this. Here's how that conversation went. Interviewer. Terry, $5 investment becomes $2 million.

That's real money. And Terry said, is it really? Not when you're sitting on principle. It was principal. An interview with Anderson Cooper went kind of the same way. Anderson said, there would have been some people say, look, $2 million, you spent $5, you're offered $2 million, take the money and run, some people would say. Terry. True, but it was not a fair offer. Be fair with me, and I'll sell it, Anderson. So you're not really sure at this point what you would take for this painting? Terry, no, I'm

going to let him steal it from me. Okay, so my question for you, if this woman's sitting before you, Kristen Caruso, if she had been born into the circumstances that Terry had been born into, would I be Terry? If you had been born in the Ozarks, grew up poor. Well, and specifically, like, in this time period where women are really, really pushed around, I just think, today, this morning, it kind of, I don't know. You would not sell. Hell no. Hell no.

Now, it would be hard. The thing that would maybe influence me is if I wasn't able to pay all my own bills and my kid was helping me out, that would make me be like, oh, I need to. Yeah. You know. But that stubbornness, that whole like, this art world hasn't treated me fairly. they think they're better than me. They want to give me $2 million. Meanwhile, as soon as someone who buys it for $2 million,

then it's going to magically get authenticated. Ooh, I wonder how that's going to work. And then it's going to sell for $50 million. Oh, I'm telling you. Yeah. I just feel like I'm looking at my personality that was dealt a much different hand. You know?

Yeah. And I'm not saying it's good because I think it's very self-destructive. To think that way sometimes. Yeah, but I do like her mindset of like you can't really put a value on principle. In many ways you would feel like you lost and like. Yeah, if you didn't get a fair price for it. Yeah, you feel like you lost and you gave up. And so I get that like not wanting to sell.

It's weird how you can hear a value like $2 million. And even that is just like, no, I'd rather. I don't want to do it because like that feeling of defeat would be worse than the happiness of having two million dollars. Sure. I still think I would have sold. No, I think that's a very normal, like that's probably a more healthy way to view it is like, you know what, sure. Let's be done with this. I don't fault Terry at all.

I don't think Terry, you're crazy. No. No, I get it. So it was official. Terry was willing to die on this hill. which was kind of funny because Jackson Pollock, when he was alive, never sold a painting for less than what he thought it was worth. Even when he was broke, even when he really needed the money, it was the principal. I admire that. What was the cheapest painting he ever sold, do you know?

Oh, I don't know. And it would have been, it would have been, you know, fairly cheap. I mean, back in his day when he was first starting, it was like a couple thousand dollars. But, you know, that was big money. But, you know, he had in his mind what something. was worth, and he would hold out even if it was kind of self-destructive to hold out in a way. I think that's what my eBay seller did with this crystal light advertisement. They're like, I want $20, and that is what I want. I mean, it is kind of incredible that they got $20 for that.

You had a buy-it-now price on it. No auction. This is what it's worth, and you're going to pay me for it. I get it. So Terry was sticking to her guns, and although she claimed, She reached a point where she was ready to give up. I do not buy it for a second because in the early 2000s, she found herself in a bookstore. And she stumbled across a book by Todd Volpe titled, Framed, Colon, Hollywood's dealer to the Stars, tells all.

Ooh. And even though Terry wants you to know that she never paid $25 for a hardcover book in her life, she did that day, she had to know what Todd had to say. So, who the hell is Todd Volp? Yeah. In short, a huge douche. Oh, okay. He had slicked back hair, which is tough because he's nearly bald. But, you know, A for effort.

He's also the biggest name dropper, this side of the mighty Mississippi. Back in his day, he was a big-time art dealer. He wants you to know that he worked with Andy Warhol, ever heard of him, Barbara Streisand, Bruce Willis, Jack Nicholson. Bruce Willis? Yes. Are you impressed yet? I am.

But oopsies. Todd ended up stealing like two and a half million dollars from his clients. And yeah, he got caught. He was about to go to trial for fraud. But like two seconds before the trial was going to start, he got a plea deal. And now he's writing his tell-all book. He wrote his tell-all book during his two-year prison sentence. To kind of get some of the money back.

Sure. That he's going to owe to Bruce Willis. So Terry wasn't bothered by his past. She wanted to work with him because she figured the whole art world was full of fraudsters. He's just the guy who got caught. So she's like, she's not worried about this at all. So she reached out to him. And you're not going to believe this, but he was very much available to be hired.

Of course, yeah. He desperately wanted back into the art world and Terry's painting presented a unique opportunity. So he came up with a big plan. He created Legends Art Group. I saw another name for this company that was just Providence. which I think is a good name. The idea was he'd create a group of rich people who would pool their money, get the painting out of Terry's hands,

because, you know, use Peter Paul Beiro's skills to get the painting officially verified, along with a lot of other iffy paintings, and then they'd sell those now authenticated paintings for a tremendous profit. So like a group package? You get like multiple paintings. Ah, okay. Yeah. They're investing in authenticating art.

According to Todd's plan, Terry would walk away with $25 million. Yeah, I don't know if I trust this guy. Yeah, I don't trust him either. Didn't he just go to prison for this? Probably doesn't surprise you to hear that this never panned out. Yep. So I don't know for sure what happened. But I'd imagine that once you've gone to prison for fraud,

it's really hard to convince people to invest in your sketchy company, especially when you're trying to reenter the field where you're, just finished ripping people off. That's just a guess. Yeah. You know, I was thinking of your description of him being bald with slick back hair. Uh-huh. And you were getting turned on?

No, it made me think of that product back in the day. It was like spray hair. Yes. Yes. And I was like, I wonder if he used that to cover up the patches. No, it's a shiny dome. It's not really patches. It's just like, you know, it's completely bald up here, but he's got some.

And he's just kind of slicking, slicking it back. Yeah, yeah. It's a good look. It's a good look. Is it? When you're driving around and you're convertible, you want your hair kind of flapping in the wind a bit. Absolutely.

So. Your sideburns flapping in the wind. Terry clung to her painting, stubbornly, waiting for an offer. By the way, she kept it in storage, obviously, in a very, like, secure. Climate controlled, baby. That's right. Mm-hmm. And after this document.

came out, Peter Paul Bureau found another fingerprint on a Jackson Pollock titled, Naked Man with Knife. Sounds terrifying. And it was hanging in the Tate Modern Art Museum in London. Do they compare? That fingerprint matched the one on Terry's canvas

and matched the one on the paint can from Jackson Pollock Studio. Yeah, this is a fucking Jackson Pollock painting. Right. Is it? Because that wasn't enough. Terry found her. once again in an odd dance.

The art world wouldn't authenticate her painting, but some people in the art world clearly believed she had the real thing. I don't understand. You have two fingerprints that match. The art world doesn't believe in that, though. It seems like hard evidence to me. Sure. Just because it's a Pollock that you've never seen before doesn't mean he didn't do it.

an art collector offered Terry $9 million for her painting She said no It's a lot more than 2 million In fact it's more than four times as much money Math math math math math math math math math Yeah but she said no For what it's worth At least a dozen people came forward to claim that they were the ones

Who did Terry's painting Yeah right Yeah who hired them Oh Norm's Put your tinfoil hat on more. Yeah, I've gotten full conspiracy there. Did some art snobs hire people? Yeah, why don't you claim you painted this?

They talked about living in California near where Terry purchased the painting and imitating Jackson Pollock's style. Yeah, I explained the fingerprint then. There were also people who pointed out that Jackson Pollock's brother lived in Inland Empire, which apparently isn't too far from the thrift store where Terry bought her painting. Uh-huh. So, you know, there's this other side that's like, look, it's not that mysterious that it might have ended up in this area if he had a brother who lived nearby. Sure.

The documentary created a lot of conversation about whether Terry's painting was real and also about classism in the art world. Yeah, no kidding. That was kind of the interesting thing to me is the guy who did this documentary said that to him that's what this is about. And I completely agree. They're mad that. It's about classism. They're mad that a poor woman found a Jackson Pollock in thrift store. Jealous little bitches is what the documentary should have been titled.

That's what it's really about. But the documentary also created some unexpected conversations about the expertise relied upon in determining the painting's authenticity. Specifically, whether Peter Paul Bureau's analysis could be trusted. Oh, no. What did he do? This fucking breaks my heart. What did he do? Is he a pedophile? Oh, sorry.

Not that I know of. You know, I shouldn't say not that I know him. I should just say no. That's crazy. Sorry, that's where my first thought. Damn it, we can't use. I mean, he could. We can't use his expertise.

He's a pedophile. Damn it. No. No, this was, this was so upsetting to me. Because like I said, I saw this in like, 2007. I have loved this documentary ever since. I didn't come across this until like last night. What is it? And I don't know if you noticed that my mood dipped really bad last night, but here's the story. It did. I was like, what is wrong with you?

I couldn't tell you what it was. It made me, oh, God. Okay, so here you go. Here you go. Four years after this documentary came out, the New Yorker did a piece on Peter Paul Biro. And holy, shit. What? In it, the author wrote that in the 80s, Peter got into some legal trouble, as in he and his dad and his brother and their various art businesses had been sued more than a dozen times in the 80s and 90s, sometimes for lack of payment, but other times it was for selling questionable and possibly forged artwork. This article goes in depth and it is upsetting if you want to believe in part Peter Paul Bureau at all. The author questioned Peter's scientific methods because it turns out

Peter is a mostly self-taught scientist, especially when it comes to fingerprint analysis. But what about his Canadian Royal Crime Lab friend? I mean, again, yeah, he's not self-taught, but I think there's something to be said for if you're just checking someone else's work, maybe you're not, yeah. All right, well, bring in someone else then. Hold on. The author talked to fingerprint experts who suggested that some of the fingerprints that Peter discovered

on these major works of art might have been planted. Like he did it? planted in recent years as opposed to imprinted in real time as the artist worked. What? The author talked about how other experts are suspicious about Peter's findings. The stuff about finding acrylic paint on Jackson Pollock's studio floor, apparently other experts have done similar examinations and found no acrylic paint on the floor. And then when they were like, well, what test did he use to determine that this was acrylic?

Yeah, didn't he send it to? to Fred Trout or... So these other experts say that the method that they use to test it isn't the method that you use for testing whether something is acrylic. I know. I know. Damn it. I wanted to believe. Here's the thing.

This thing goes on and on. I am giving you just the highest level stuff. You're just giving me the titty-bitty. And it is an upsetting titty-bitty. I read through this. I was like, I wouldn't believe a word this man says. That's a great discord name. An upsetting titty-bitty.

Someone claim it. I didn't write down in-depth this stuff, but like basically Peter's dad was a painter, kind of not a very successful painter. And I guess they sold some famous works of art to this couple. Yeah. You know, supposedly attributed to some artist. I can't remember the name. This is Claude Monet. Yeah.

And Claude Monet's wife. or whoever the fudge, saw them and was like, those aren't, those aren't real. I can tell those aren't my husbands. So the couple came back, not really thinking like, oh, they defrauded us, but they were like, hey, where'd you get these originally? And they could never quite come up. Well, ironically, I think they said someone named Pops. I'm not making that up.

It stood out to me. And like, this went to trial. And like, there was all this stuff about like, okay, well, who is this guy? how did, you know, how was the, you know, just like asking basic questions and they were like, um, we paid for this with a Steinbeck or was it a child? I mean, sketchy, sketchy shit. This guy can't be trusted is what you're telling me. That's what I'm telling me. Not a pedophile that we know of.

We have no reason to think that. But can't be trusted to verify art. No, and I will say, just because this dude's clearly a fucking sketchy. ball and now we're heartbroken and we can't trust anyone on this earth. No one. It doesn't necessarily mean that this wasn't a Jackson Pollock. It just means that this expertise that we pinned our hopes and dreams and crystal light on cannot be trusted. Can we get another fingerprint?

There's other people that can do fingerprints in this world. Can we bring them in and analyze the painting? Well, so that was always the funny thing is like people wanted to bring in their own fingerprint analysts. Yeah. And of course, nobody. Nobody wanted other fingerprint analysts on the scene, which I can understand you don't want every expert weighing in and muddying things up. I do.

Okay. The more experts, the better. Bring them all in. Peter did sue the New Yorker over that article. The lawsuit was dismissed. But with Peter Paul Beiro's reputation under question. Yeah. That left Terry's already questionable painting under more questions.

Just question marks abound. Yeah. And then you think about, damn, I should have sold it for $9 million before the New Yorker wrote this. Terry died in 2019. She was 86 years old. She never did sell that painting. So her son has it now, I'm guessing? A lot of people knew her from the documentary.

But a lot of people also knew her as the woman who would go panhandling when her money got tight. Her son always asked her not to do that. But, you know, it's what she did. There have been more efforts to get the painting authenticated, but it's still kind of in limbo. One independent researcher said that he believed that Terry's painting was the original version of number five, but that it had gotten damaged. And when the buyer returned it to Jackson to have it repaired, he just painted a new one. And that's the one that sold for $140 million. Is there like verifiable information that that's what happened?

I didn't go in depth into that claim. But when you look at these paintings side by side, I can see it. Can I look it up real quick? Yeah, sure. Yeah, they do look very similar. They do, don't they? Yeah, like colors and everything. Yeah.

Man, that's crazy if somebody was like, uh, my, my art got damaged. Can you fix it? And Jackson Pollock's like, how about I just make a new one? I don't think it's that nuts, you know? I think it just shows how much. talented the guy was. Yeah. In an interview after his mom died, Bill said, I'd take $50 million if the painting could be authenticated. But I'm being a realist. I'm not going to fight the art world like my mom did. And that is the story of a long-haul truck driver who maybe bought a

Jackson Pollock painting. Question mark, question mark, question mark. Wow. Wow. Incredible. I love that story. I just, I love her. And man, I was just, you know, like I said, I was fucking devastated by that New Yorker article. I mean, very well reported, even though I hated reading every word of it, because it did not make my tummy feel good. I think it's so funny that you could tell I was upset last night. Yeah, I was like, is everything okay? And you finally had to be like, Norman, you're not responsible for my feelings. Just let me feel how I feel. And I was like, okay. Yeah. But I was like, but I am your husband and I'm just worried about you.

I know. I was just, you know, it's like I, because I knew I was about to tell you this where it's like I couldn't tell you this thing. And also it felt a little silly that I was just so sad about it. But I am sad about it. Well, excellent story. That's probably the most recent story we've done on a little tiny podcast, right? You know, it's funny. I was kind of like, does this count?

And I was thinking, well, here was my logic. I was thinking, if we're treating this like it's a Jackson Pollock painting, then it was probably painted in 1947. In which case, old timey. Old time, baby. Hey, history is the memory of things said and done. This has been said and done. Check and check. If you really want to feel old, feel old yet?

Ninety-four? 30 years ago. I do feel old. Yeah. Thanks. Ancient. Wow. Hang on.

I have a soundbite for this. I'm an old man. But don't you think that Terry would think it was so fitting that even Peter Paul Biro was full of shit? She probably even suspected it all along. Yeah. Man, is everyone just full of shit in the art world? Maybe everyone's full of shit everywhere. Who knows?

Except Charlotte on Sex and the City. She knew her art. She was a gym. We can all agree. Mm-hmm. Okay, Norm. You know what time it is? Ooh. Yes. Okay, everybody, I got into the Discord, and I asked a question, inspired by my own recent experience of spending way too much money on a basement toilet.

And I asked, what's something ridiculously, stupidly expensive that you have purchased recently? Oh, yeah. Let's see what the history hose have to say. All right, I got to. Well, we have a lot of answers here. Gay Frog says a PhD What did I say the other day when we were recording? I was like there was some character in one of your episodes and it was a doctor. And I was like, are they like a doctor doctor or just like a smarty pants doctor? Yeah, I can't remember what you said, but you clearly had some thoughts.

There's a big difference. Rushmore of this up your butt says, and she included a picture. My horse is pretty dumb. I love him, but not smart. Oh, what a cute That horse is Imagine owning a horse You'd be very good at it

I love animals You do and you take excellent care of the animals I just had to take boo to the vet the other day Yeah She had a pneumonia A pneumonia She had a Well how do you even say this?

You just say pneumonia She had pneumonia Yeah yeah Okay I always thought it was she had a pneumonia She had pneumonia Yeah Yeah she was like

A lot of boogers She was coughing sneezing. Uh-huh. She just seemed miserable. Yeah, she did. Her breathing was really heavy. Yeah.

She had pneumonia. But you're really good at, like, I mean, you knew something was up when peanut started drinking too much water. I was just like, whatever, you drink water, leave her alone. And you knew, and we took her to the vet. And she had diabetes. She was drinking water for like two minutes straight. Yeah.

Yeah, it wasn't normal. What in the world? Yeah. But I feel like a lot of people, like, they miss signs like that. but you don't miss them. I love the animals. Supa flavor, uh-oh, says Magic the Gathering. Way too much for a card game.

I'm triggered. I am triggered. You're triggered. Yes, that is a very expensive card game. I spent a lot of money on that game when I was a young man who didn't have a lot of money. Yes, I agree. Magic the Gathering. Oh, everyone's mentioning their pets. Old and decrepit 25-year-old said,

cat. He needed dental surgery and he's very dumb. His name is chicken. I love that. That's a great name for a cat. That's a great name for a dumb cat. I mean, especially like, yeah, animals are expensive. Yeah, but they're worth it. I agree. Yeah. Karen, like the meme says, it's my pool. I love it, but we had a plumber come fuck it up after putting a heater in and now I have regrets, but I will love it again soon when the water is warm. Oh my gosh. Karen, I would love to spend. too much money on a pool. I would love it. You do really want a pool.

Yeah, but we don't have, I mean... Where the hell we're going to put it? Exactly. Nowhere, Norm. We're going to have to have an indoor pool. We had to get like a baby hot tub because we had like no room for a hot tub. I love my baby hot tub. Cotton candy math teacher says, saying kids is mean, right?

Oh. Her answer is children. Yeah, I know I didn't get it. I'm sorry, a little slow there. I think we can all laugh at it. the joke, though. I think we can. Kids are expensive. That's right. And, you know, all these dumb politicians are like, it's a real mystery. Why are people having less and less children? I just don't understand. And it's like, how expensive it is to have a child. And then they want to make fun of us

really cool childless cat ladies. Bad idea. What do to upset them, those weirdos? Sucks Balls Donut says, a $90 Moana Crab costume to embarrass me. my nine-year-old as her bus goes by. That sounds like a wonderful investment. So they're going to wear the crab costume. Oh, very interesting. Oh, Problematic Bluey says, I have a degree that I don't use, but in the spirit of the question, I also have a hot tub.

Yeah. Congratulations to you, Problematic Bluey. I think a hot tub's a great answer for... Oh, fuck. See, the bad thing about this question is I'm getting ideas on how to spend more money. This is the opposite of what this question was supposed to do. Are you looking at the massage chair? You know it.

You know it. Allie Pat Murrow says zero gravity massage chair with heat and Bluetooth. Oh my God. I have looked at those online and they are stupid expensive. They are very expensive. So bad. But like when they have them at Costco to demonstrate, I cannot get in one. No.

And it's cringe when you walk by and there's somebody. There's somebody sampling the massage chair. It is disgusting to walk by someone who is in an orgasmic state in the middle of what is essentially a grocery store. They have chlorox wipes right by the massage chair because after you get out of it, they got to wipe that thing down. That should be done in private. I honestly think I would rather see someone use a toilet than watch them be massaged in a zero gravity chair. Okay. I have a good answer here.

Okay. Toot and Scoot says, my most embarrassing was paying for my ex's plane ticket, hotels, and food to come visit me, and an engraved bottle of his favorite whiskey, only to have him cheat on me less than a month after that. Okay, that does. That's a great answer. That is an excellent answer because it's so true. I feel like we all have somebody who like either you spent too much money going to see them or like, and then in. In the end, you're like, why did I do that? Why the hell?

I never went through that. But, you know, my dating history is like two fingers. Two fingers. That's about it. Oh, we have multiple answers for my children. Biblically accurate Furby says, I spent too much money on Pokemon Go when it came out. I was a broke high schooler, but I was a ripped Pokemon trainer.

Hell yeah Hey as long as you enjoyed it Just like I'm gonna enjoy this new toilet we have I still haven't used it Yeah Desi says I think I speak for a lot of gamers When I say I've spent way too much on games That I don't even have enough time to play

Unfortunately I still buy them Yeah That's a Normy C thing Oh yeah So Steam which is like a platform on The PC to like play games and download them They have sales every year Yep

And games are just dirt cheap. Yep. And I buy like 10 games per sale because I'm like, oh, I'm going to play that. I'm going to play that. Sure, sure. I will never play them. Never.

I have noticed I have to be really careful about a sale because that's how I get tricked. I'm like, well, this is a great deal. And of course, it's not a great deal if you're not actually going to use the thing. Ooh, you're ready for this one? Yeah. Save Bandit says, my husband decided he needed a writing lawnmower for our petite yard. He used it three times before deciding it was more trouble than it was worth. $2,500.

You had a little petite yard, just a cute little petite yard. Man, how quick was that mow? Was it over in two minutes? But I can see if his thing was like, it takes so much to get this thing going, and I don't know, all the bells and whistles you have to push. But if it's too much, sure. I'd rather just use a regular mower. Lou Roy Jenkins

A Disney Gucci wallet I'm a Disney adult And a designer handbag Kind of gal Oh my Kristen What would you do if I bought you

Disney I bought you Gucci But it was Disney Gucci Oh man I'd be pretty sad Pretty sad Because how much is that Let's look it up I didn't even know they collaborated

Disney X Gucci card case wallet. Wow, this is very, very fancy looking. Probably the fanciest looking piece of Disney merch I've ever seen. I mean, it should be. How much? Hang on. Hang on. Wow, they have lots of designs. It looks like they average around $500. $600. 600. That's honestly less than I was expecting. So now I'm like, what a bargain. For a wallet? That's expensive for a wallet. Well, it's Gucci, baby. Oh, Katie Coe says, my ex-husband, he was dumb and the divorce was expensive. Ah, see, that's a real answer right there. We shouldn't be complaining about this toilet, okay? At least we're going to use the damn thing. I haven't used it yet because I'm so

intimidated, but yes, I will one day. Please let me go down there with you. I'm not, no, and show you how to use it. I will one day muster all my friends. Oh, no. Two whole new podcast says, I'm perfect prey for a mall kiosk person or a door-to-door salesman. I bought a $2,000 kirby vacuum and made payments on it for three years after someone rang my doorbell. I've been talked into bug treatments for the yard. I've almost bought textbooks. I recently made a guilt donation to Doctors Without Borders. A great cause, but I really didn't want to make a $90 recurring quarterly donation.

Listen, we've all been duped before. Kristen has stories. I have stories. Are we going to tell any stories? If you want. Sure. Although mine wasn't a donation. This is so, oh my gosh.

You received a call from the IRS apparently. I was, gosh, I was in my early 20s. I got this phone call from someone saying they were from the IRS and there was a problem with my tax return. I got super scared. I can't even remember how much money she got out of me. I think it was like $200, which like was a lot. Fun fact, folks. Wow.

Wow. Wow. The IRS will never call you. Yeah, I did not know that. Instead, I gave them my info as quickly as possible. I was so upset. And the worst part, worse than, like, giving the money is then being like, oh, I was duped out of that in like 12 seconds from a phone call from some random ass lady. I fell for the door-to-door salesman.

they were selling like books or something. Uh-huh. And I didn't need any books, but I was... You were told it was for a good cause. Yeah, and I was like, oh, well, I'll buy them for like the Boys and Girls Club or something. Yeah, yeah. And like, it was just... After they left, I was like, wait a second.

Yeah. Look, we've all been there. Yeah. Okay. But, hey, it's a moment to learn and grow. I have a great answer here. What? Very expensive says,

once I decided that I wanted to start being more adventurous and outdoorsy. So I found a pop-up camper and bought it for $3,800. Oh, okay. I'm an extremely impulsive person. Long story short, I never used it because my SUV could not even tow it. It sat in my yard for years and I gave it to someone for free. So I just didn't have to look at it anymore. Honestly, I think that's smart to be like, I'm going to cut my losses.

Well, they didn't fall for the sunk coffee. fallacy. Exactly. That's what I'm saying. Like, Yeah, that money's gone. Yep. It's gone.

So like. No, the worst decision would be to be like, I'm going to go out and buy an even bigger, more expensive vehicle that can tow this thing that I never actually want to take anywhere. Yes. This is turning into us helping justify people's purchases now. That's right. Oh, Orlando Bloom is in our discord. Oh.

And says, when I was in middle school, I went on a school field trip to the Boston Aquarium. and I spent 50 bucks on a bongo. That's a lot of money for a child who can't even play the bongo. I agree. It's amazing. Man, I can't believe the Boston Aquarium even sells $50 bongos. I remember when I was a kid, we went to like this little store and they sold baseball hats. Uh-huh.

And I really liked the Toronto Blue. Blue Jays when I was a kid. Right. But they didn't have a Blue Jays hat. But I was so hyper fixated on like, I want a baseball hat. Hyper fixated, huh? I bought a Baltimore Orioles hat, noted rival of the Toronto Blue Jays, by the way. Uh-huh.

Because I just had to have a baseball hat. Sure. And I remember walking out being like, that was so stupid. Oh. I was really hard on myself. I'm sure you were. And my brother teased me relentlessly for her. My brother is an Orioles fan, by the way.

He was just like, you don't even like the Orioles. Why'd you buy that? That was stupid. Oh. So look. Sweet little norm. People do dumb purchases sometimes. It happens.

King Curtis Bacon is good for me, says, Congratulations on the new toilet. I spent $1,000 on a copper IUD. I should have saved that money for all the diapers I had to buy for the baby I had a year later. What the fudge? I thought IUDs were supposed to be like the thing. I thought it was slam dunk, no babies allowed when you have an IUD.

Okay, I am glad people are starting to talk about how painful it it actually is to get an IUD inserted. My doctor had tried to talk me into one, but I was like, I'm freaked out by how painful it's going to be. And she's like, oh, it's fine. It's no big deal. And I held off because I was like, there's no way. It's no big deal. There's no fucking way they can insert something into you like that and have it not be painful. Yeah.

And now, years later, there's all this talk about, oh, it actually is painful. And if the dudes got IUDs, they'd be probably knocked the fuck out for the whole procedure and given, you know, pain meds for months. That's just me talking. But still, you get the idea. Poorly fleshed skeleton says, I bought a stone replica of the bust of Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. It was very expensive to buy and very expensive to import from England. And I bought it instead of new furniture that I desperately needed, but I don't regret a single

scent. That is amazing. Good for you. Okay, we've got a shitty one to read. Okay. Lesbot the Digital Cow says, I took a spontaneous trip to Kansas City last March. Lesbott. How fucking dare you?

Wait, wait a second. Wait a second. When did she take that trip? March. The live show? Yes, the live show. What the. What the?

Wait a minute. Pretty sure we met. Uh-huh, we definitely did. Should we read one more? Can you find one more for us? Slut for frozen pizzas. Here we go. Does 19 years of Mormon tithing count?

Tithing. Tithing. Oh, tithing. Does 19 years of Mormon tithing count? Joe, please leave it in. No. Just leave it in. Joe, if you don't cut this, you're fired.

Joe. Joey, Joe, Joe, Jr. Chavidoo. Keep it in. Everyone, should we introduce Joe to the people? Hey, Joe. He's our video editor. Okay, well, that was... Jimmy Hendricks.

Yeah, Joe's going to probably cut that just because he's embarrassed by it. But, yeah, Joe is our new video editor. Everyone, say hello to Joe. Hello, Joe. Should we wrap up on the tithing? Or do you want to do another one? I kind of want to look for a few more. Sure, go ahead.

Headshot portraits for my dog. Well, those look pretty darn cute. That's amazing. I think that's worth all the money. What the hell? A royal historian says they purchased a title in land in Scotland. They get one square foot of land for 175 years. That's kind of sounds like...

It's like buying the stars. Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking of. Okay. Great Alaska Bush Company says, My husband and I wanted to buy some off-grid property for a cabin close to recreational activities. Sure. The state does land auctions and we spent days snow-shoeing out to multiple pieces of property

to then be outbitted auction. Finally, we decided to just go for it with two acres sight unseen. Long story short, we now own two acres that are. covered in trash, a dilapidated cabin, and six abandoned vehicles. Oh, no. That's so good. That's so good. Buying something sight unseen is it's a risk. Hopefully you got a good deal on it, though. Yeah. But hey, our toilet, we studied it on Costco.com.

We did. And I'm excited to use it. It was so much money. Okay, should we wrap up? Let's wrap up this episode. Kristen, do you know what they say about history hosts? We always cite our sources. That's right. For this episode, I got my information from the documentary.

Who the bleep is Jackson Pollock? The article that devastated me. The mark of a masterpiece by David Grand for the New Yorker. The video The Case for Jackson Pollock by PBS Digital Studios. The video, Jackson Pollock, demystifying America's most influential painter by the Conspiracy of Art YouTube channel, as well as reporting from Newsweek. papers.com. That's all for this episode. Thank you for listening to a bonus episode of an old-timey

podcast. Please give us a five-star review wherever you listen to podcasts. And while you're at it, subscribe! Support us on Patreon. Oh, you're already supporting us. Never mind. You're here. Thank you. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook and TikTok at Old Timey Podcast and follow us individually on Instagram. I'm Kristen Pitts-Carruso and this man right here is Gaming Historian. And until next time, Tootulu, Tata, and Cheerio! Bye! Bye!