The James Donald Forbes McCann Catamaran Plan - Episode 8: The Art Auction Happened

Episode Date: February 13, 2022

We had the first annual James Donald Forbes McCann Catamaran Plan X Lonely's Fine Art & Collectables Art Auction. Here's how it went, all the things went wrong in the lead up, and how much money we made.Comes and see James Donald Forbes McCann's Aesthetic at the Adelaide Fringe:https://adelaidefringe.com.au/fringetix/james-donald-forbes-mccann-aesthetic-af2022?fbclid=IwAR2oBtAKwY8W1ANb0OskIqe-Am7uhLHrYEr7GWpf--7xK7Dr8vVHZZDZJq8We currently have 13 patrons, a most unlucky number! Will you please sign up as sailing club member number 14, to get us into a more lucky type space? We only need #justonemorehttps://www.patreon.com/jdfmccannGood golly gosh, I'm enjoying this art auction, but I'm going to love it when this podcast is about a boat again. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thank you for listening to this episode of the James Donald Forbes McCann Catamaran Plan. If you'd like to listen to bonus episodes, go sign up to the Patreon. That's patreon.com. Clom? Ah, we f***ed it. Anyway, look, you'll find a way. Catamaran Home! Thank you for listening to this episode of the James Donald Forbes McCann Catamaran Plan. It's a podcast all about me, James Donald Forbes McCann, and my plan

to buy a catamaran. There are a couple strains to that. There's the podcast is a big one where we get money from ads. If you've just heard an ad, possibly for an erection tablet, thank you for listening to that ad. Every thousand people who listen to an ad like that, we get $25. So at the moment, each episode of the show is making around $2. So thank you for listening to that ad, if that ad did happen. If not, we'll keep trying until we become more successful, more people can listen, and we get more advertisers in your region. The other thing we do to get money for the catamaran is other plans that we come up with on the podcast and use the podcast

to promote we've just concluded the first such plan the art auction way back in an earlier episode i spoke to dusty rich i took his napkin from a gig. I auctioned that on eBay. We got $200 on eBay for that napkin. Now, there were some expenses, framing it, sending it, and I split the money with Dusty. So in the end, the catamaran plan gets, I don't know, like $60, $70. I've got to figure that out.

I do actually have to figure that out. I do actually have to figure that out. It's been quite a while and the money's just been paid to my account. So Dusty, if you're listening, I'm getting you the money for that shortly. But that started us on a journey towards having this big art auction, which took place last Friday. So today's episode, it's really only about two things. There are only two things that this general meeting has to be about and the second i'm going to go on a big rant about the art auction say how it went how much money there was thank a bunch of people forget to thank a bunch of people i'm sure uh but the first thing is that i have an adelaide Fringe comedy show coming up this Friday.

It runs for two and a half weeks. James Donald Forbes McCann Aesthetic. The money from that show will not go to the catamaran. It will go to feeding my family. I have spent a lot more time on the catamaran plan than on work for money. And this is my last week at my job. So please come to James Donald Forbes McCann Aesthetic at the Adelaide Fringe. Boy oh boy oh boy oh boy.

I think it's going to be a good show. But more importantly, I need it to be popular. So we keep this rental. Okay. Let's talk about item number two on the agenda, the art auction. I didn't speak about this too much on the podcast because I didn't want it becoming public, but a lot of things behind the scenes on the way to doing the art auction were going very, very wrong. I like to project strength, unity. I love my listeners.

I love the support you give me. And I want everyone to, you know, man, you want to feel like people who put their faith in you and put their money in you, that you're doing a good job. Everything went wrong before this auction. In the lead up to it, it was real Murphy's Law type stuff. Everything that could happen to derail it happened. Up to and including a gavel loss. I lost the gavel. If you listen to last week's show, you can hear me go off.

I speak on the radio about going out and buying a gavel. I speak on the radio about going out and buying a gavel. I talk on the podcast about going out and getting a gavel. I had the gavel. I drove out to a lady's house in the eastern suburbs in a retirement village, and I paid money for a gavel plus the little wooden thing you hit with the gavel. And then I lost it. I don't know where it is. I don't know if I've been the victim of a gavel thief. I don't know if it's just floating around under the detritus in which I live. I don't know where the gavel is. And so

on the day of the auction, I was frantically rummaging through my house and car and places I had been trying to find this gavel. Not easy to find a gavel on Facebook Marketplace. It's not like you can just pay a trip over to the wooden hammer shop. I didn't find the gavel. There's not even a positive ending to that. There was no gavel for the art auction. Disaster. There were no gavel for the art auction. Disaster. There were bigger disasters as well.

We eventually found great art and enough great art to do the auction from wonderful artists. However, there were some knockbacks along the way. There were some artists who I really like, who I wrote to, who got back to me. I entered into conversation with them, who at the end of conversation was saying, Hey, look, thank you for the chat. I've enjoyed this conversation. Now is just not a good time for me to be providing some art for a novelty boat auction.

Art sale. Thank you. Time, energy wasted. And there were times when I thought we're just not going to have enough art for this auction. We're not going to have good enough art. We had excellent art, but it wasn't always going to be like that. For a time, we didn't even have a room to do the auction in. I thought we had a room over in the Central Market, and I made the Facebook event saying, come to the James Donald Forbes Weekend Art Auction at Lonely's, only to find out after I'd made that event

and had, I don't know, 30, 40 people sign up to this event, we didn't have that room. So for a while, there was no room and venue to do the art auction in we were people were registering to come to an auction on facebook that did not yet have a home i went to the hilton just because i thought shit where can we do this art auction the hilton was next to where we were going to do it in my mania i went to the hilton i said yeah art auction please and they sent me a a lovely letter explaining how much money it cost to do it at the hilton huge for me for the hilton i'm sure a very reasonable price but here's another thing the covid

regulations and the omicron was spiking while we were preparing to do the art auction so capacity for hospitality in venues in south australia was hobbled so even when we did manage to find a room and a wonderful room at the howling, originally our capacity when we started booking for it was 40, which is really not enough to do an art auction. Unless you know, you know, 40 multi-millionaires, we needed more people. And we couldn't get them in there legally at the time that we were planning it. and then one by one things started to happen that meant the auction could keep going these roadblocks lifted sometimes miraculously omicron numbers as we're all now aware they just started coming down and then a week before the auction interior capacity, and we got to have 80 people, which we got. We sold it out.

We sold out the 80 people. We got the rejections from the artists, and then we got art coming from artists better than those artists. Wonderful, fantastic pieces of art that sold for not insubstantial amounts of money, which I can talk about in a moment. I didn't find the gavel, but there was a hammer at the Howling Owl venue, and I just used that. It was like a normal hammer, and it was very funny. I don't have a gavel, but I have a hammer. I dropped the hammer several times because I drank, drank and there was the other issue sponsors we couldn't get sponsors you know we reached out to wineries i had someone on the patreon who used to

work in wine uh pr knows the wine industry much better than me and said james can i help you can you give me some information i said here's what we can do here's how many listeners we have this is the sort of auction we're having. She got back to me a week later, and she said, James, this is not the right. I'm sorry. I'm a big fan. She's a patron. She said, your event is an unusual size. It's not a charity. This is not something that it's easy to get a wine company to give the tick of approval for. And I thought, well, that's it. I'm just going to, you know, people just aren't going to drink or I'm going to have to spend my own money that I don't have. By the way, while this has all been happening,

oh, oh, we're as poor as we've ever been. Today, I went through the car, I went through my car and I took, I just took all my coins in to the coin ATM machine. And then I had to try and do a shop for the week to the amount of money I got for the coins. That's where we're at financially, just so you know. The boat, after the auction, ooh, very healthy, very healthy finances. Personal finances that we live off, ooh, not very good anyway so for the wine i just three four days before the art auction when we were hanging up the pieces of art i just on a whim called the company that

does my favorite reasoning i thought you know what let's just start calling my favorite wineries like aim for the top we don't have a lot of time left i will just randomly call pikes because my favorite wine is a riesling they are in the clear valley it's like a two hour drive north of adelaide i just call them i'll ask a man answers the phone at pikes he goes good day this is pud and i say hello, this is a weird call, but we're doing an art auction, and I'd like some free wine, and Pud goes, yeah, we'll probably do that. Do you want to talk to the guy who's in charge of the winery? I said, what?

He put me under. Jamie? Jamie said, Pud put you through? Well, tell Pud you can have a few bottles of wine. Well, tell Pudge you can have a few bottles of wine. All of a sudden, not only some wine, enough wine from my favorite winery for our event. I mean, I didn't have a relationship with them. I just called.

I just looked up my favorite wine. I called them, and they said, go for it. So can I say, Pike's official wine of the James Donald Forbes McCann catamaran plan. I want to work with Pike's whenever and wherever I can. If you're at a Bottle-O this weekend, buy the Pike's. If you're driving around the Clare Valley, stop in, see Pud and say, Pud, man, thank you for getting behind this catamaran plan. James couldn't have done it without you. The wine, we used up all the wine. We used all of it up. It flowed merrily.

And the people bid merrily as well, lubricated as they were by the beautiful Pike's wine. Oh, Paul, who I was doing the auction with, he clutch, managed to get Pirate Life beers to the event as well. We had beers. We had no gavel, but we had a hammer. We had excellent art. We had 80 people at a sold-out event. Couldn't afford the string quartet. Couldn't do it.

I couldn't afford a string quartet. But Kieran, another man I was running it with, he's the other half of Lonely's with Paul. Kieran did some sort of magic to get us a cellist. One quarter of a string quartet. We had a glorious cellist there. There was cello, there was free wine, there was beautiful art, and we had the art auction.

And you know what? It went very, very well. How well? I think in gross, we moved about $12,000 of art out the door. Wow. That's a lot. I don't get all of that. Not $12,000 is coming through to the catamaran plan. I'm very open about my financial situation. Some would say too open, but I'm very open about it. And as part of the art auction, a number of artists had different arrangements that they wanted some people

just gave us their work outright and said sell this keep all the money some people were not in a position to do that and they had a different deal some people had a reserve so a lot a lot of that money goes to the artists some of that money we have to we have to buy i bought little you know i there were some things that I did have to buy for the event. We couldn't do it totally for free. There was some Blu-Tack. There was some, you know, I had to pay for parking. I bought small bottles of Fireball myself.

I didn't think to contact Fireball Corporation. But I bought little bottles of Fireball for the VIP room, which was just a balcony with the word VIP on it. And anyone could go in there. It was a self-identified VIP room. But I just thought that was important, to spend $30 on Fireball. And then I'm splitting it 50-50 with Lonely's.

Lonely's is taking half. And I am putting my half of the money into the James Donald, Forbes, McCann, Catamaran plan. I can reveal now that I think I think what we will have raised for the catamaran plan and we will have a final detail and a full figure for you shortly but for the time being it is well north of two thousand dollars that I'm walking away with it might be three thousand dollars might even be four thousand dollars if i've done the maths very badly but it's i can tell looking at the numbers that it's worth the auction we've come through i think at least two thousand

dollars a wonderful success some people have been speaking to me about the event people at the event were very enthusiastic god bless them and God thank them for being so enthusiastic about and they said James you've got to do this event again you've got to make it semi-annual you've got to make it seasonal and I've said no this is an annual event it was the first annual says it on the ticket first annual, says it on the ticket, first annual James Donald Forbes McCann catamaran plan slash ex-lonely's fine art and collectibles art auction. We'll come up with a better name for it in the future. Once a year. And if I buy the boat, I want to keep doing it. I want to keep doing this art auction. It was so great. I love, love auctioneering. I learned a lot. I made a number of mistakes.

I had not done it before. I'd done like one charity auction once, but I hadn't really done this before. I say it was a charity auction before. It was like a comedy gig and there was a raffle at the end. I think I auctioned off one thing. This was 18 pieces, one after the other, auctioning off. I learned so much. Some things went for too cheap because I didn't know what i was doing some things went for a really bloody

good price because i had a vibe on either way it's um it's north of two thousand dollars that we've managed to secure i want to thank all of the artists i want to thank most of all Jasmine Crisp. I want to thank Jasmine Crisp very much. This is the lady, Jasmine Crisp. She's a great artist and she did the painting of me for my fringe show that's coming up, Aesthetic. Get your tickets now, debuting on Friday. And at the very start of this, when I found that napkin, I called Jasmine and I said, Jazz, you're an artist. You're in this world. You're a successful person. How do I do this?

And she said, use my name. She said, James, you can use this person, this person. Use my name to open doors. Go make this happen. And I did. So Jasmine Crisp, look her up. Follow her on Instagram. Buy her art.

She's wonderful. I mean, importantly as well, come and support my fringe show, Aesthetic, at the Adelaide Fringe, so that people know that the poster that she did for me is really moving tickets. Jasmine, thank you so much. Thank you to all of the artists. I want to thank the Lonely's Boys, Kieran and Paul, for their tireless work getting this up. I want to thank Rach and Mick at the Howling Owl. I want to thank Pike's Wines once again. I want to thank, oh, I want to thank the people at Pyrolife Brewing. There's more people I'm going to thank, and I'm going to remember to thank them at some point in the future, but my beautiful wife for coming along. I want to thank her for her support. We got it done.

Oh! The art auction will be annual. And we will rule this city. And I will buy that catamaran. But mostly I am just so tired. It was as high stress and activity as I've ever done. stress and activity as I've ever done. And my goodness, I was really partaking of some of those beautiful Pike's wines. A Riesling on a hot night will just go down like nobody's business.

Anyway, so I was a bit drunk. And I want to thank Angela. Angela, you are wonderful. Angela did the door. Angela wrote down the bids. Angela made a couple of bids of her own. Actually, Angela is wonderful. Angela, everything I do going forward, I want to involve you.

Angela's looking for a job. And I'll tell you right now, first person I would employ if this podcast gets big enough to start bringing people on and giving them money to work towards me getting a catamaran, it's going to be Ange. We've got to have Ange on this podcast. She was sensational. I also want to thank Laura O'Callaghan. We got $375 for that big picture of the two footballers, neither of whom are Mark Rusciuto, signed by Mark Rusciuto.

Of course, I want to thank Mark Rusciuto as well. Oh, what a big event. Many people will be asking, James, how much did you sell Dusty's napkin number two for? Well, for those people, I have some extremely exciting news. I, as well as the gavel, lost the napkin. It's somewhere in my office. I don't know where it is. I haven't been able to find it.

It's somewhere here. $200 estimated value napkin floating around somewhere. I will find it. I'm sorry that I didn't find it in time for the auction. However, I have a frame. I'm gonna find that napkin. And when I find that napkin, we're going to pop that on eBay. We've got actually several excess pieces that there wasn't time to sell at the auction.

We're going to put them on eBay. We're going to sell them. Redown's piece. Redown's done a painting. Couldn't get that to Adelaide in time for the auction. We're going to pop that on eBay. Joe in Cairns. Don't think I've forgotten about you,e up there in cans sent me a wonderful piece a wonderful piece about a duck that i think is doing cocaine joe we're going to be putting that

one on the internet as well oh the auction goes on the catamaran goes on. I'm ready for more events. It was fun. And you know what? It's doable. That was the most shocking thing as it was happening. As these big, big numbers were being made for the art, I was going, holy dooly. I can. This is.

This is. You can do anything. You can do anything. What am I going to do next? So I've made a list. I'm going to have a music festival in the middle of this year. I don't know what I'm going to call it. Boaterpalooza?

Boat day out? I was thinking I'd call it Blink Midwinter, because Adelaide in the middle of the year is very grim. And there's no need to tell everybody that my share of the money goes to the boat, necessarily. But some of them might want to hear it oh there's nothing we can't do there's nothing we can't do. There's nothing we can't do. There's nothing we can't do. There's nothing we can't do. There's nothing we can't do.

This episode is brought to you by Google Pixel. I'm Jessi Cruikshank. I host the number one comedy podcast called Phone a Friend. I also have three kids. I need help making every day easier. So I switched to Google Pixel. It's a phone powered by Gemini, your personal AI assistant. Gemini can help you summarize your unread emails, suggest what to make with the food in your fridge, and it helped me achieve a family photo where everyone is smiling at the camera. I didn't think it was

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