The Best, Worst and Sexiest Trophies in Sports, with Legendary Art Critic Jerry Saltz

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out I am Pablo Torre and today we're going to find out what this sound is It looks like an uncircumcised penis Held in his hand with the skin being pulled back right after this Sir Great to see you I'm no Sarah Jessica Raphael. What's her name? Parker. That's right. Yeah, in my universe Your own sex in the city isn't even better a series about back at you Congratulations on the Pulitzer prize, you know, just wanted to be able to hang out with you credibly Except I can't figure out how to monetize it at all. I was hoping that that would be what we found out today How do you make money off of this thing? You might be able to But I figured it'd just keep me in a job for 18 more months, and I used it up Well enjoy it at the top. We got two to three months Already behind us so the clock is ticking it is So Jerry, thank you for being back great to be here. You're surrounded by cloaks and Shadowed figures and I want people who are not watching to have the joy of Pulitzer prize winner for criticism Jerry salts New York magazine chief art critic and one of the great New Yorkers that I've ever met Thank you fellow Pulitzer prize winner just to two guys hanging out Surrounded by things veiled from public view And I would love for you to just describe as we go through here What we get to see together as we reveal them and I will give you these white gloves. You don't have to wear them just yet But I'll throw them at you because we will get to a point At which we have to engage the giant mystery box. I have no idea what we're gonna see You're also the subject of a new documentary called House of Criticism. Yes, it was just a Tribeca was so well-reviewed But I want to say that you are missing Do you mind if I say that she is your better half? Oh God. Yeah. No. She is by far Roberta Smith. Yes, our critic a former our critic of the New York Times and We'll show a still frame here of you and Roberta Smith Look at that as you're on your knees Praying to her. It seems like I'm praying to her and to one of the greatest paintings in all of modernism Picasso's five horrors of Davaneon Street or Famous cells to Avaneon painted in 1906 that changed everything everything. I dare say that That Pablo cannot hold a candle to what's going on here in this studio with me. I dare say you're insane Well the last time the last time you were here. You're reviewed a Pablo as it were and for those who don't remember your last Appearance could you please describe this? Oh a butter sculpture of my host Pablo That's pretty good. That's a good. What didn't I like it? You did like it. A butter on Pablo By the award-winning food sculptor Jim and Marie Palton of Pennsylvania. Yeah, I think you compared it to almost like a JFK style. Yeah Bust. Yeah, that's your look. It's kind of cool because it's too big. Yeah, it's bigger than you are slightly It's still good and it was good until I would say this happened Could you describe what you're seeing? I'm seeing a knife sliced through the front of Pablo's face and serve it up in chips and shards. Yeah It was good. I would rather it been a cake. I briefly I recall I being butter me from my wife and child to We're listening. I briefly did make out with some other art critics in Washington Square Park They came by and planted one on us. Wow. Yeah, congratulations. I never get that and as a consequence, I got my face cut off But there is one brief update we have for you in the athlete statue genre That's what you came on to review last time. Yeah, because as an evolution of what it is to depict the human form Intribute. Yeah, we do have this and so this is Argentina Patagonia. This is in the desert there. Could you describe what you see here? This is a Enormous sculpture. How tall is it 85 foot 75 feet of Messi Skitting after having just scored a goal with his right arm raised to the heavens Preaching like Zeus It's epicly great Oh 130,000 dollars is what this cost the time to say that this was a public funded project This is a remote oil town in the middle of the Patagonian desert to the local sculptor his name is Aldo Barossa great artist Aldo and he wielded oil pipes into the shape of Messi's skeleton Wow It's like he's kind of naked below. It reminds me of a famous artist Tracy Eman who's from England and their greatest sculptor and above. It's like a half a body Plunked on this sort of open-legged mass. It's it's tremendous He does look like he's kind of like Winnie the Pooing it now that I Think about yeah, it's like there's a top and there's the bottom Well, that looks like he's got an enormous penis from this angle. Yeah from the back now Yeah, from the behind. It's kind of great because it's cement That's what makes it great them the rawness the materiality is not hidden There's no lie to this sculpture. It says I am artificial. I am a monument to the eternal God Messi His like Jersey his shirt. They've worked the folds in You can see the fold. Yeah, which is so almost beautifully precise and then down below It looks like he has a giant Yeah, no, it's awful for for me as a Jewish boy. I do not want to see I don't need to see that But no, it's it's it's enormous as it were yeah, and the ass is just sort of just like a flat that's good Okay, yeah, yeah, this is a great work of art It parallels the very large-scale Melania sculpture. I'm looking that up right now It's a homemade in her city. Oh wow. It's pretty cool. Are you familiar with that Portrait of I think it was was it mother Mary that got sort of like disfigured. Oh, yes. Yeah, the um, it's a painting The 17th century painting of the Virgin Mary that got ruined after a furniture repair man was paid approximately $1500 to restore it. It is a tremendous painting now because there's no other Madonna on earth remotely like it and I just want to Split screen the wooden Melania in Slovenia with that Disfigured uh mother of Christ. Yeah, good combinations there. Just great. I'm sure there's a larger message there But I'm not the guy with the Pulitzer for art criticism. So I'll leave it well I'm not the guy with the Pulitzer for a podcast so I am though Going to let you now if you keep it on your gloves your white gloves happily Yes, and I will do the same because we are gonna have you open Uh the little black box in front of us. Okay as a way in to the strange podcast that you have once again Consentially agreed to participate in yes, and uh it'll be the first of the multiple Divine mysteries that are surrounding us and so That's the size of the world cups culture. That's it. Let me see. Yeah. There you go. I always thought it was enormous I should admit of course. Um, this is a unfortunate replica Of the world cup trophy. They wouldn't let us have the real one Not well. I'm sorry Yeah, I think they've maybe watched other episodes that we've done in there like no that's not okay This one is uh, yeah about Five four five inches size of a butt plug basically a butt plug size replica And god bless if you're a butt plug exceeds about four inches in length which is what I'm told in my ear This technically is but hey and it looks vaguely phallic. Yeah, but I love it Because of its abstraction. Okay, so the real one. I'll set up the dimensions Yeah 14.4 inches high about three and a half times bigger than what you're holding And what does it look like in its abstraction? So it looks like it's a ball wall, which has a map of the globe of the world on it. It's held up by figures, each abstractly sort of with their arms outreached, with their mouth open, their heads cockback, and kind of a twisting stem that looks again vaguely like a penile shaft with veins. But I don't say that to be funny, but the abstraction realism, just the sculpting of it, is pretty fantastic. I could imagine hoisting that over once had feeling pretty darn good. So this was commissioned originally by FIFA for the 1974 World Cup. The Italian sculptor his name is Silvio Gad-Zaniga. It looks like a catch, a taliano kind of sculptor's idea in the 70s of what abstraction would look like. Frankly, I don't like to talk this way, but it looks like an uncircumcised penis, the skin being pulled back. I think that's absolutely correct. And you just have to say what things look like. It's all gold. It's got a 18 carat. 18 carat and it's got a base. We don't know why. The artist never asked himself about it. He just wanted to do that. So he put it on a dumb base. And that's what it is. I'm going to say something that we should be evaluating here is to borrow the language of the metaphor and the literal object, the base of the thing. Yeah, right. Yeah. That's a bit tossed on. It kind of feels like it's like the envelope for the card. That's a good metaphor. If you really think about what's going to be sitting on, I wonder if other trophies have given the base more thought or maybe the thought is comes delivered whole as if from the universe where no one else will ever notice the base except, you know, a pointy headed art critic. Well, I should point out that the world cup trophy that you're seeing is not the original world cup trophy. That's the current one. It was commissioned because something strange happened to the previous trophy, which I do need to point out as we show that visual. This is what is known as the jewellery may cup. It's an actual cup kind of, as you can see, it's neo Greek revival, neo fascist. It's a woman not bare breasted, but with enormous breasts held in by her toga with her arms holding an urn filled with the deceased's ashes. And she's got great wings underneath. Nike, the goddess of victory is the lady with the boobs. The new one is much better really much. Oh, wow. So this looks like your standard European kind of idea of what a trophy should look like. It's not gaudy and nor is it specific. That could be for billiards. It doesn't matter. It could be for tiddly wings. Yes. It's not specific to the game of football. I was going to ask you whether the cup makes it more satisfying because you're actually living up to the name of the tournament, but you're saying this looks like a generic worse in the sense that that's not quite a cup. It's an eight sided hexagonal octagonal nut bolt with like an ash tray indentation. So it's not really saying much other than it's great that you want it. But I think the new one is better because it's gaudier, it's kitcher, gold. It is gold. And that is FIFA and Trump. And, you know, the new world order, it's what the world is right now. And what you're saying is that the representation of the climate, sociologically, politically, emotionally, that is more meaningful as a matter of what does this say about the people who are awarding it and receiving it. Absolutely. And that is part and parcel of the object itself. And anyone who's holding it or talking about it is seeing that without recognizing that that's what they're seeing. Yes. Today, one of the contents, the content of that sculpture, that cup, that whatever it is. Uncircumcised. Yes, is today. And our values today, I would imagine that most trophies are now gold. Yeah. I should point out that the brief history of the old trophy is funny. And what is it? In 1938. And now we're getting, we're getting, we're getting deep into it now. An Italian FIFA official hid the cup in a shoe box under his bed to prevent the Nazis from getting a hold of it. 20 years later, 1958, journalists believe it may have disappeared after the Germans won the World Cup. 66 comes around and a colleague, a dog named Pickles, found the cup and the cup was wrapped in a newspaper under a garden bush because it had been stolen in London, apparently. And the originator of it, Jules Ramey, who was the former FIFA president, he'd wanted the trophy to remain in perpetuity in the possession of the first nation to win it three times, which brazil did in 1970. Only for 1983 to come along and a bunch of apparently hooded thieves broke into the headquarters of the Brazilian football confederation. They tied up the Night Watchmen, took off with the World Cup, esconded with it, along with some other stuff. And the investigators found the robbers, not the trophy. And they said maybe it had been melted into gold bars or something like that. Right. That makes sense. It's like El Chappos stuff. It's like very narcos. It's very FIFA narcos corrupt post fascist. It's a fitting story. Well, and I should point out for legal reasons that a convicted Argentine gold dealer testified that he had not melted the cup down. I guess he could sue us from grave. So I guess what I'm saying is the original World Cup trophy may still be out there somewhere floating. I do want to ask you in the World Cup context, do you like perhaps this one anymore or any less? This is the current women's World Cup trophy. And I don't know how you would describe what this is going for. This is what they got going for the women. Yeah, that's a twisted spiral gold with a soccer ball in its sort of grip. It's not very good. I'm afraid. And women in America are the only ones that have kept the game alive for so long. I want the game to become much, much more popular here. It's a game that you have to be so witty to to play it because everything is against you. You can't use your hands. And that's our most natural thing. You have to use your feet. There's no time outs except for the hydration breaks, bulls**t, like life. It never stops and you only score rarely. And that is exactly like life. And it can come down to a tiny, tiny thing making you score or not score. Now that we're into the sort of grand sweep of metal balls on top of bases and so I do want to just speedrun through some of this. I just wanted to know if you recognize what this is. Well, I do because it recently came to the New York mix. It is an abstract rendition below of a basket elongated behold the Larry O'Brien championship trophy as it is officially known. I don't think it's a great sculpture. Yeah, honestly, there's a kind of plainness to it again that this bizarre, kitsch, ugly object, you know, doesn't have, but that has real scale. This is Tiffany in code designing and creating this in 1977. It's on a huge tilt. Why? We don't know. Yeah, it's a regulation sized basketball at the very top. So that's one to one scale of the ball. Yeah, but like two to one of the basket and there's this kind of insane world's fair base. It must be amazing to hold and almost impossible to hold up with one hand. Yes, 29 pounds. The Larry O'Brien trophy named after the former NBA commissioner and former postmaster general. Lawrence O'Brien. There you go. Do you like this sculpture? You know, part of the reason I wanted to do this is because I've con. addition my brain to associate this with the pinnacle of something. Absolutely. And now hearing you say what you're saying, I'm like, that's kind of sucks, actually. Yeah, it isn't great. I would love to see an actual artist make one of these things and no one would like it, but it would push the thought into some other dimension. That's very, very literal. Yes, you can even see the etching of the net. Yeah, and the writing of the National Basketball Association is very large. You know, I like the sculptures when they get personalized or abstract or unaccounted for the ones that might have names written on them. I think that's a cool idea. I want my name on the art critics trophy, but there are none. Also, not yet, not yet. I would like you to evaluate though this because this feels of a similar kind of aesthetic in that regard. The Vince Lombardi trophy. Okay. This is complex for me because this is America to me. Football is a sport I love. And the object itself is like America. It's not specific, but it is only what it is. So I suppose that it makes it quite specific. It is a tilted silver football on a sort of large trapezoidal T. And it celebrates the one aspect of football that every single person feels that she or he could do, which is kick the ball. So it's a very egalitarian Jeffersonian ideal and reduced almost minimal. When was this one designed? 1966. Yes, at the height of American movement called minimalism, which was stripping down and simplifying a form. The football has no texture. No, it has the stitches. The stitches, but no texture. The trapezoid itself just has our first president, Vince Lombardi, written on it. Look at that. Let's just say football, nothing special and you can't have it. It's kind of great. The origin of it, apparently, because this was made by Tiffany's, as well. And what they did was, apparently, the design chief knew nothing about football. He brought a toy ball and FAO Schwartz, if you can recall, the toy store that I grew up, also going to and fantasizing about. He put the ball on his kitchen table, ate a bowl of cornflakes at said table. And in an apparent epiphany, it seems, he started cutting up the empty cereal box, turned it into the trophy bays and voila, Americana. He made something that says football to any football fan. To nobody else is it special, but I think that's a speciality of all of these trophies. Except maybe again, the, um, the uncircumcised. The world cup one, yeah, yeah, bizarre. I love how you are entranced by the tiny trophy, as we present you with all of its competitors. And yet you return to the veins. It could be because it's the only material thing I'm seeing. And so, uh, its presence is a form of grace and its presence keeps me pulled magnetically back to it. It could just be that simple. Well, I do think we need to enter into the evidence here, some other gravitational fields. Uh, but before we do, I just got to show you this. Whoa. That's a crystal Tiffany egg. No, it's a crystal, water ferd, water ferd egg, yeah, uh, of the Hindenburg squished together. And it, it goes to the coach of the year. Here is the coaches trophy given to the winner of the BCS national championship game. If you remember that until 2013, the coach is trophies, but it says along the base, uh, and like impact font, which is kind of funny. Uh, uh, that I think about the water ferdness versus the like, right printed this on Microsoft word. Good point of it. Now you're doing it, Pablo. I'm not kidding that go on. But also as we evaluate its crystal, this, uh, it seemed like it may have inspired the object that Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, recently offered the pope on his recent trip to the Vatican. If we have shite, absolute shite, and he's an American pope. And he can't even, but that's what America offers the pope. Yeah. What is he offering? He's offering a little, uh, thing that you put in your vagina and egg that you stick up there. And I think you walk around all day with it in there and it's glass football. It's a glass football about three inches long. Yeah. Why? It says the state department. That's why. Yeah. This does look like one of those Jade eggs, a Yoni egg is what the, yes, that, wow, you're good. You got a strength in the pelvic floor. Yeah. No, that's a good thing to be healthy on now. That said, um, the pope, I just can't reiterate his review enough, which was, wow, period, okay, period. It is. Wow. Okay. That's what it is. God, I love our country. We are, we are a magnificent creature. Yeah. The coaches trophy and college football when given to the, whenever the previous championship game. And this is now what the national champion gets instead. I'm so sorry, uh, college national champions that they're giving you an absolutely generic idea of an abstract football, super ball sculpture. It's sad, you work very hard and it doesn't look like much of anything. The base, it goes down to a little silver thing before it meets like a little marble base that says national champion with, I'm really sorry. It has nothing to it except gold. Yeah. This is also the thing that JD Vance kind of dropped when he was delivering it to, uh, the national champions when they visited the White House. The base there was actually key to Ohio State's visit. You kind of let the base fall off the thing and it was, wow, it wasn't great. But this is 24 karat gold bronze and stainless steel. And the way I'm seeing it now, it does look like a football. And maybe this is almost like the, the, the, the, the contrails, yeah, like the things sort of like making those waves in the air. Yeah. Good call. It's an idea of someone else's idea of a trophy. And I'm sorry, uh, they can do better. This was designed when do you have its date? Yeah. This was in the twenty teens. Yeah. It looks like that. Yeah. Nobody's got an idea. Get that department to just make one, make it gold in a, in a football. Yeah. That's it. It's a shame. Sports is better than that. The thing that makes me smile though when I think of the college football landscape is this, a pop, that's insane that there's a label that says pop tarts on your trophy. This is the pop tarts bowl, trophy. You get it for winning the pop tarts bowl. And where is, what is the pop tarts bowl? I'm so glad you asked for it. What is it? The coach football culminates in a series of one off games. Yeah. Not everybody can be in the college football playoff field. And so you play these one off games and one of them is sponsored by pop tarts. And where is it played? This one was played in Orlando as is sort of like very tiny font along the bottom of the pop dart with the fight taken out of it at the base. Well, here again, it's all derived. This works like artworks. It works from the Super Bowl trophy from the tilted football that that guy had the idea for. Yeah. And it keeps repeating, repeating, repeating. So far in American sports, you have found the Err trophy, which is the Super Bowl trophy. And that's what they're all taking off from. Does this object gain anything in your estimation by virtue of the fact that it's also a toaster? It's a functional toaster. Oh, my God. Now that makes it like a tool. to shop. It's like an assisted ready made that's a found sculpture to shop created. - Marcel Duchamp, of course, yes. - Created the urinal. So this is a trophy that functions like a working toaster. So I could toast my pop tart or toast in there every morning. - I don't know if it would accept toast, but the brickelage of you putting toast inside of a pop tart trophy. - That's cool. - I mean, that is, that's avant garde. - It's avant garde and it's complete crappola of the highest order of idiocy, American kitsch, but and it's shameless of pop tarts. It's just shameless. They probably paid all of four million dollars to get this naming rights thing. And it's ridiculous to sell your soul for something like this, but that's what we are in this country. And we love ourselves for it. And everybody gets a toaster. - I should say that according to our exhaustive fact checking process here, we have just discovered that the pop tarts bowl paid two million dollars. - Oh, Jesus, stop it. Stop it, America's in sports. You could, you could have sold-- - We just gave you a 50% off deal, dear. - Oh, Jesus, it's, I'm sorry. - God, America, you sell yourself. You like trump it, go on. (upbeat music) - I wanna now use these white gloves for real, for real tactile evaluation here, because we have a real sculpture here, Cherry. And behind you, there is an object. And I would love it if we could. Oh, we have the door opening. We're gonna bring in our docents. - Hello, docent. - Hello, hello. - Rob and Patrick, please-- - Hey, Rob and Patrick. - Please reveal what has been behind-- - I'm gonna turn all the way around. - Cherry salts, oh, they're bringing it over. - Wow. The truly iconic Heisman Memorial trophy. - The weight of history. - Cherry, you may touch the object. - May I? - With the gloves. As a prophylactic, you may. - What is it, way? - It weighs 45 pounds. - My God, I'll tell you this is an American classic. It pictures someone running with a ball, presumably a running back. - God, is this fantastic, the sheer weight, the sheer iron, throne, power, magnificence of this again. It's like a robot, a tiny little doll, like just bam, it's just amazing. It's the running back, giving a stiff arm, holding the ball to his bosom, and making a huge stride, exaggerated, but it's fantastic. It looks pre-World War II is what it looks like. So this is an America that no longer exists, of just barely with the equipment that we would recognize, no apparent Jersey, you know, almost like the Olympians playing Half-Naked, but whatever it is, it's just a powerful, heavy block of American history. - Well, another you mentioned, it does have sort of the aspect of our own version of, it was, it was a, "Discopalus" by Myron, right, the guy with the, the disc, the throne. - Oh, yes, yes, yes, exactly. - Yes, there it is. - It has, it has. - Genius, if I had said that, I'd leave today happy, but I didn't, so that is brilliant. - You know, the way this was made, and you can, yeah, it's solid as you are. - Yeah. - 'Cause you are. - God. - God. - Feeling it. The ancient method it used was lost wax casting. - Yes. - Hot wax poured into a mold, and then dipped into a liquid ceramic, it was called the investment, the liquid ceramic. Egyptians use this, apparently. Dates back to 4550 BC. - It's just utterly archaic and ancient that way. It also feels like earlier American illustration, Allah pre-Norman Rockwell, but Americana. - Yes, so it's just a piece of America that's right in front of me. - John Heisman, the director of the Downtown Athletic Club, is what it's named after, summoning that, you know, again, Rockwellian. - I never knew that. - Yeah, the Downtown Athletic Club here in New York City. And the guy who is the model for this is the friend of the sculptor. The sculptor's name is Frank Ellis Q. Apparently he designed this when he was 19 years old. - Yes. - His friend was a guy named Ed Smith, full back passer runner and punter on the NYU football team, who is pictured here, Jerry, as you can see. - What a face, what a mug, what a great mug. - I do wanna bring another image to the table here though, 'cause what is not in this box just to be clear about what we're not gonna show you is this, and I do really want you to evaluate this, because this trophy, it's the Borg Warner trophy. And can you describe what is at the base of this? - Well, those are the kings on the base, little tiny portraits of each winner of said race. What race is it? - This would be the Indianapolis 500. - Well, that's incredible. You want, if possible, to have your face or name engraved or sculpted onto an object to make you part of its history. Because that is part, it can be part of what a trophy is where you attach your spirit to the spirit of the winning of that trophy. And because, I mean, car racing is a great sport. I love F1, I don't like-- - Indie car. - At all, because they only go around in a circle, but I have nothing against it. And that's a kind of an amazing sculpture. - All the names of all the winners are right there next to the tiny little bus. - Yeah. - And this, I mean, you talked about before, will no one think of the base. This is essential. - Yeah, absolutely. Every part of this sculpture is part of it. The whole base holding a great Greco-Earn filled with the ashes of the great burning and abstract stylized flame. But it's just, and look how enormous it is. It's taller than the vehicle that won the race. It's tremendous. - More than five feet tall. And it keeps on growing to accommodate more bases and more faces on a set basis. To give it that almost like Stanley Cup dynamic in hockey. That's the sort of accumulated history manifesting. - Great, that is a great idea. Wouldn't you want to have your name on that thing? - I think every art and journalism award should also have this. That's a genius idea. - There is a veiled piece of hardware that I now feel comfortable bringing to this desk. And it is the one behind me. And so into the museum here, return our dozens. And now, what do we have here? - The James Mortimer Memorial Cup for what sport is it? - Well, Harry couldn't read it. - I think it's best if we play this clip. - The best in show winner at the 148th annual Westminster Kettle Club Dog Show is the miniature poodle. - I have to say, when America was founded in the 1700s, 1800s, our design style was Greek revival. All of our cemeteries have either Egyptian all blessks in them or earns Greek temples if you're buried that way. A lot of our homes are designed that way. And so comes is no surprise, does it? That we haven't moved on from that. What is the definition of trophy? It is not earn. What is an earn? It is. a place to put ashes. So yes, there's an immemorial aspect to all of these great cups, but it again feels terribly American to me. Yeah. 150 years is what the Westminster Kennel Club dog show. How long they've been at it. So this is the second longest running sporting competition in America after the Kentucky Derby. This is America. Yes. And the video we saw was, of course, sage, the miniature poodle from 2024. Previous winners also include wasabi, the peaking ease. Well, hate. Hate the dog. Well, I love the dog, but I hate the dog. Because the haircut. Well, I'd like to see a dog swim win, but they're never gonna win. Well, there is a certain hierarchy, of course, a cast system. Are you a dog person? I grew up in the city and I never had a dog. I do dig the sort of like, I don't know. It's got Star Wars character kind of good point. Kind of like that. Good point. And we have one more. Okay. Trumpet. The bloodhound. Oh, come on. Trumpet. You've got Dumbo ears. You're beautiful. Love. 2022. Love you. Madly. This is a one of one trophy. So I get to keep this. Well, if you, Jerry Salts, can defeat a variety of best in show, worthy dogs, you might be able to get this for one year or forever. Well, this is the rule. So the trophy stays at the headquarters of the Westminster Kennel Club here in New York City, not with the winner. And it stays in perpetuity unless it is visiting our podcast, or the best in show winner wins five times and is American bread. And you get to keep it then. Which has never happened. No, it's never going to happen. That is the bar you got to clear. It's sort of an echo of like that World Cup original design, where it's like, hey, if you win it three times, you can keep it. The Brazilians got it. Of course, they changed it. But this no one has met that standard. And of course, the president of the Kennel Club, a gentleman by the name of Don Sturz told us, yeah, you think it's never going to happen? Never going to happen. The last object here, well, I suppose I should ask you because under this large black cloak, this veil is, and I will give you this clue, not the Stanley Cup. Unfortunately, because the Stanley Cup and the keeper of the cup, who accompanies him, been there done that. You know about that. Yeah. Wow. We have our own guardian of this mystery box who is here by law. Okay. And I do want to explain that we are not allowed to touch the trophy inside this box. Okay. And the guardian of said mystery box has been just outside the studio this entire time. Wow. Watching us. Perhaps cringing. I'm sure. Perhaps growing aroused at times on the resonance of our descriptions doubtful. But I do believe it is now time to take the Westminster Kennel trophy away and replace it with a clear sight line to what is underneath this. Georgia, please do us the honors of revealing what's underneath. It's a giant Louis Vuitton coffin scaled suitcase package. A big red V across the front. Many sort of like golden buckles. The inimitable and very, I am told, valuable print of Louis Vuitton all over this thing. It is a trunk. Okay. A very large trunk. Jerry and I'm into it. Can we reveal what's inside the very large trunk? The top has been popped. A hookah? No, what is it? It's a gigantic. It's like a four foot tall chest piece, a hookah, a fountain thing. So this giant, I mean, trophy, it's affectionately known as the old mug. It was crafted in 1848. Wow. By a master silversmith by the name of Edmund Cottrell. This is a style. Jerry, I don't know if you're familiar with it. Neo-manorist. Was it made in Europe? It was in fact made in London. Year of Revolution 1848. Can you just describe the shape as we sort of go if you could look up and down? The shape on the top looks like a little syrup poorer thing. A gravy boat of syrup. A gravy boat perched to top, a candlestick, perched to top, a tuffet, perched to top, you know, a two-tiered bell-shaped base. And the whole thing has got writing on it of a lot of etched words. I should say that the people who have been allowed to touch/hold this figure include billionaires, such as Richard Branson and Larry Ellison. It's not for smoking. I thought it might be a cigar smokers. I do love the idea of putting in one of those like coals at the top and like smoking this thing. So what did they do? Branson was in the air ballooning. That's a ballooner sculpture, right? You are getting both warmer and colder at the same time. Clue, water, water, sailing. You are looking, Jerry Salts, at the America's Cup trophy. The America's Cup, of course, is called the America's Cup because the first race in 1851 was won by a boat named America as Race by the New York Yacht Club. And so this is a very New York, a New York institution in its history. Wow. I never knew. I had no idea. Congratulations, all you sailors. I mean, what can I say? You could say that if you were to look closer and you can look closer, you will notice that there are spelling errors everywhere. The fonts are different everywhere. This is according to the official historian Magnus Wheatley because what a name for the official historian of the America's Cup. According to legend, nothing fair about winning this. This is the hardest trophy in international sport to win because when you win the America's Cup, you basically get to decide where they'll race what sort of boats they'll be racing with. You kind of get this all-powerful ability to dictate the race itself. So if I win it this year, I can say next year we're going to go and figure-rates in the East River, in the East River because that's my best shot at winning. I would like Jerry Salz, Pulitzer Prize winner for criticism, to gaze at this and the utter generosity of Georgia aside. Yeah. I would like you to do what you do and tell us what artistically you are looking at. Well, this is a combination like you called it neo-manorist. Manorism was a movement after the Renaissance where every artist thought, "How am I going to do something different than the 'er' object of Michelangelo?" So they started making figures do this and posing strange. A manorist tendency means to take an 'er' object and sort of pull it apart, twist it around, add something to it, throw in a different culture and that is sort of what this is. It has like almost like a fencing sort of epay handle. Yeah. Over there. Yeah. And then like a genie's gravy boat at the top. Yeah. And it has, I mean, you said it was a, was it a muffin or tough it? But no one knows, but it's like a muffin top on the top. Correct. It's like a bust, a girdle, a corset. It's just a lot of things. Does it work as one? Think again of it as a chest piece. Kind of does feel like every chest piece combined into one chest piece. Yeah. That's what it does. That's it. It kind of feels like the chest piece that says, "I'm buying all of the other chest pieces." is it the best trophy? It is, it is not the best trophy, but it does appear to be the biggest trophy. You'd think they could like pick up on Tibetan, like lore or like South American or Aboriginal. I don't know. I think it's colonists. It's colonizing. The trophies are all colonized. Yes, they've colonized themselves. And us are expectations for what it looks like to be a winner. Yeah, that's true. And what is more winner-like than having a kind human being named Georgia, who we've conned into opening a Louis Vuitton trunk inside of which is the greatest Huka, the world has ever seen. Absolutely. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you, Georgia. Jerry, I'm going to let you keep that butt plug. Is that true? Yeah, I get to take this home. I mean, I love this. I can't co-sign exactly what you're going to do with it, but we are a country of freedom. This, I get to keep this. Yeah. We brought you the **** America's cup, Jerry, and you're obsessed with that. I won. Publatory finds out is produced by Walter Avaroma, Maxwell Carney, Ryan Cortez, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lomon, Rob Cray, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, and Chris Tumanello. Studio engineering by R.D. Systems, sound designed by Andrew Bursick, digital strategy by Bailey Carlin and Andrew Northern, theme song, as always, by John Bravo. And we'll talk to you next time.