'Antiques Roadshow' knows I'm poor

There's nothing more American than betting it all on your artifacts

(Photo: PBS)

Getting rich quick doesn’t have to be a scheme. It can be as simple as taking a haunted doll on a TV show.

Lately, I’ve changed my background TV noise from the Bon Appétit channel¹ to the “Antiques Roadshow” one. I’ve never watched so much of this show in concentrated doses. If you own a Samsung smart TV, you, too, can brainwash yourself with a 24/7 stream of PBS’ most tchotchke-forward programming.

“Antiques Roadshow” is a thing of beauty. For 30 years, American yokels² have schlepped their family heirlooms to nondescript convention centers across this great nation, just to stand in front of fussy British men who tell them whether they can quit their day jobs or not.

The guest/appraiser dynamic delights me. The experts are troublingly versed in the minutiae of the objects before them, from federal-style tables to hand-blown glass. A guy in a bowtie will ask a Lutheran grandma from Duluth if she has any guess as to the value of her 1800s stethoscope.

She never does. It’s a little game the show plays.

There are many such rules to “Antiques Roadshow.” I’ve started to pick up on the biggies. Rarity is king. The fewer of a thing that exists, the better. Just because a violin is old doesn’t make it worth moolah. Custom coffee mugs that John Wayne gave out to the crews of his movies, though? Can’t get those just anywhere.

Walking canes, for some reason, seem to be hot tickets. So are vases, but only the right vases, and paintings, but only the right paintings. This disquieting piece was worth $35,000 when it came to the roadshow:

This issue is going to have a lot of photos of my television screen.

When an item is one of a kind, it’s time to hoot and holler. Take, for example, this plaster cast of an escaped convict’s head:

The appraiser valued it at $3,500. I would expect more for what appears to be a death mask of Hugo Weaving.

About 40 percent of the treasures on “Antiques Roadshow” are deeply cursed. That’s a huge reason I’ve been watching for a week straight. Look at this fisherman figure, which once stood guard over a fish shop. He is the devil.

The actual biblical Satan. Lucifer Morningstar, who fell from heaven and landed in this lady’s hands.

Now, I do not come from the kind of people with valuable heirlooms, but I do come from a long line of treasure hunters. One of my favorite books in elementary school was a guide to 20th century advertising collectibles. My eye is trained. Probably why I needed glasses by third grade.

Many of my Saturday mornings growing up were spent digging through cardboard boxes at garage sales, trying to uncover gems with high resale value. Estate sales had primo goods, but unfortunately, they usually knew it, and you had to get there before sunrise if you wanted anything worth a damn. I even remember looking through some garbage cans on our street once and coming back home with toys to fence.

In middle school, I started an eBay account to ship my finds across the country. I was too young, but mind your business. My most consistent hustle: VHS tapes. I would rummage through stacks of them at garage sales and buy them for a quarter each, sometimes a dime. Then, I would list the tapes on eBay at a markup.³

It was just walking-around money. I was always on the lookout for the big find, the antique or collectible that would set me up for life. Perhaps it would be the plastic rocket toy with the faded autograph on the nosecone, or the holographic Porky Pig ring that I hid away in a box on my dresser, as if you could increase the value of plastic jewelry like you age wine.

To grow up working class in America is to know that a sudden windfall could actually make you happier. I learned from an early age that hard work alone does not make you safe or comfortable. Some days, I look at my comic book collection like how a shipwrecked cartoon character looks at their friend and sees a honey-baked ham.

Wouldn’t it be nice to take a clock onto a TV show and find out it’s worth a whole salary?

This makes “Antiques Roadshow” compelling drama. It’s aspirational, but not fantastical. The documentary format whispers to viewers, “A deus ex machina might be in your attic, just waiting to rescue you.”

In fact, I cannot stand when the guest on “Antiques Roadshow” is a non-yokel. A well-heeled doyenne who knows that her oil painting is valuable? She is of no entertainment value. When a guest indicates they have no intention of parting with their newly appraised treasure? Get off the TV.

No, I’m in it for the adult daughter who chokes up at the value of her mother’s diamond earrings. I’m in it for the old codger who brings in a simple-looking watch and finds out he’s worn a small fortune on his wrist for decades. I’m in it for the lady whose toilet brush holder is appraised at $500. That one is real! I literally have the show on right now.

And yes, I’m in it for this guy.

One rad thing

Picture it: 1996. It was the raddest of times, it was the gnarliest of times. I got my first two comic books from an actual comic book store, “Green Lantern” Vol. 3, Issue No. 61, and “Superboy” Vol. 3, Issue No. 10.

The stars of those books, Kyle Rayner and Kon-El, remain my favorite characters, and they’re currently teaming up in the ongoing run of “Green Lantern.” For the past few issues, writer Jeremy Adams has sent Kyle and Kon on a B-plot adventure full of space heists, space vampires, and space bugs.

Also, the artists understand that a character from the ’90s needs to be hunky.

“Green Lantern” Issue No. 23 comes out on May 28.

Outbox

Last week, I included Tilda Swinton’s 1992 movie “Orlando” as one of the things that turned me out in April. I lied, bitch! I actually rewatched it in March, while I was working on a big cover story for Backstage magazine: “18 Indie Performances That Redefined the Craft.”

Y’all know that all I want to do for a living is write down my thoughts about movies, so this one poured right outta the dome. There were some personal favorite performances I wanted to include from the jump, like River Phoenix in “My Own Private Idaho.” Others jumped out for their historical significance, like Charlie Chaplin in “The Gold Rush.” I’d never watched Gena Rowlands in “A Woman Under the Influence” before this. I had not even heard of the groundbreaking 1954 pro-labor film “Salt of the Earth” or its star, Rosaura Revueltas, until researching this.

But forget all that. Doesn’t the print spread look gorgeous?

You can read the online version of the story here.

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Also for Backstage: my monthly TV watchlist column for May. “Poker Face” is back, amen. And not only did I get in a line about Nicole Kidman’s wigs, but my lovely editors shouted out cinema’s premier hairpieces in the headline. (The new wig is w-i-l-d.) Read the story here.

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When you were in high school, who were the bands that you clocked as What the Cool Seniors Listened To? At Crockett High School in the early to mid-2000s, cachet sounded to me like Modest Mouse, Brand New, and Rilo Kiley. I cannot listen to “Portions for Foxes” without de-aging 20 years on the spot. That’s why I am writing this to you in the throes of a second puberty, thanks to writer Reggie Ugwu’s profile of the band for The New York Times. Read it here.

1. I will return for you, Brad Leone.

2. As a person of yokel stock, I can say it.

3. I started normal cardboard slipcovers at $2.75, puffy plastic Disney cases at $3.25. If you purchased a copy of “The Truth About Cats and Dogs” from a seller out of Austin in 2001 … ’sup, that was me.