Taken at the historic Lummis House (ca 1880), this is a fundraiser for the Historical Society of Southern California, featuring a Medicine Show with Pop Haydn and Phil Van Tee, followed by a casino night in which Phil and Pop suckered the people with the shell game, three card monte and fast and loose.
Photos are here: Lummis House
My campaign for president is humming along with the support of so many wonderful people, and here, representing the non-voting canine population is an Australian Shepherd named Cash, who is my faithful dog. He is wearing a Pop Haydn campaign button, and looks very proud about it.
You can still get a free campaign kit–as long as they last–with free shipping. It features a large campaign button, a membership card in the Greater American Confidence Party, and a Vote Pop! campaign poster postcard. Just go to ACP Headquarters and register for the party as directed. This is a totally virtual party, and anyone from any country is welcome to join. We have only virtual truths to support and only virtual goals to implement, and only virtual votes to cast–our party is too honest to participate in reality.
Campaign Kit
In the course of a tour de force round of stories and virtuoso performances of a number of entertaining pitches and ballys, Bobby Reynolds explains the Horn Nut Scam, a ruse he used as a child to sell worthless Chinese horn nuts as Chinese Water Lily bulbs.
The scam is evidently very old and has some interesting associated stories.
The nut looks like a water buffalo head, and the horns will float upwards when the nut is placed in water. A hole is drilled between the horns, and a gladiola flower is glued in place. Three or four of these are floated in a bowl of water.
Horn Nut
Nancy Magill and I were delighted to participate in both of the Senior Pitchmen Reunions in Las Vegas. This is a gathering of pitchmen over sixty years old, people who sold medicine in the medicine shows, svengali decks in the carnival, puppets on the street corner, and kitchen gadgets, miracle cleaners, dusters and a million other items on television and now on the internet.
We videod four hours of interviews at the convention in 2009, and that became our DVD, “The Senior Pitchman’s Reunion, 2009” from School for Scoundrels (available at www.scoundrelsstore.com)
This video is from volume II, “The Senior Pitchman’s Reunion, 2010.” We should be releasing this volume in the next month or so.
— Pop Haydn
Here are Bobby Reynolds, S. David Walker and Wally Nash talking about the Medicine Show pitch at the 2nd annual Senior Pitchmen Reunion in Las Vegas in 2010.
Nancy Magill and I video-taped four hours of interviews at the first convention in 2009, and that became the Senior Pitchmen Reunion DVD available from www.scoundrelsstore.com
This clip is from the second annual convention DVD, the Senior Pitchmen Reunion 2010. We will be releasing this DVD in the next month or two.
Magill did all the camera work, and I did the editing and titles.
We want to thank Gene Haaheim for letting us be a part of both of these wonderful get-togethers and record them for posterity.
This is a convention of pitchmen–the guys who sell watches, puppets, svengali decks, flower bulbs, kitchen gadgets, miracle cleaners, knives and dusters on the street, in carnivals, in stores, on television and on the internet–all of them over 60 years old.
These are guys who spent a lifetime hustling, drawing a crowd, and pitching the product.
Pitchmen are not only a fascinating, unique and attractive life-style and sub-culture, they are a fountain of information on how to survive and prosper in this most basic of entreprenurial fields. But their knowledge is also helpful to magicians, salesmen, emcees and others who need to know how to draw and hold a crowd, how to control their thinking, and how to sell them a product.
“All voting is a sort of gaming, like chequers or backgammon, with a slight moral twinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions, and betting naturally accompanies it.”
Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, 1849
El Alisal is the home built by Charles Fletcher Lummis between 1896 and 1910 on the west bank of the Arroyo Seco in northeast Los Angeles. It takes its name from local sycamore trees, one of which is featured in the home’s interior courtyard. The house is built using stones from the arroyo bed, concrete, and wood. The design of the home is influenced by mission architecture and the dwellings of the Pueblo Indians. Though not directly influenced by the English Arts and Crafts movement, the house shares many of its design principles; it is furnished with hand-crafted wooden furniture, and features exposed wooden cross-beams and concrete floors.
Fundraiser for the Historical Society of Southern California
Join us Saturday, October 1st, from 6:00–9:00 pm for a special fundraiser celebrating money and magic in the West. This will be at the historic Lummis house in Los Angeles.
Buy in and participate in demonstrations of classic games like the shell game and three-card monte.
The dealers will be Magic Castle magicians Pop Haydn and Phil Van Tee. All proceeds go to HSSC. There will be a silent auction as well as music, food and beverages. Western outfits and period costumes welcomed. Hats, yes. Guns, no.
Members $60, Nonmembers $70.
Special price for reservations received and paid before Sept. 10: Members $50, Non-Members $60
For Non-Members, you can get tickets HERE.
Facing the 21st Century
There have been some nasty rumors and innuendoes in the media, and especially here on the world wide internet web, about me and about my sincerity in running for what has become the most important office in the land–the presidency of the United States.
I will not dissemble.
I am, in fact, developing a reality television series. That part is true.
It is the true story of 19th Century expatriates trying to get by in the 21st Century any way they can–the struggles of common hard-working people who are basically undocumented aliens in their own country. These are people who–by no fault of their own–were translated into a world 100 years in the future.
The True Story of these brave and resourceful transplants is available at Pop Haydn’s True Story. The working title is either “Desperate Townfolk” or “Househusbands of the California Desert” but that may change until we get a final working title.
In this little reality series about our village in the California desert there will be sex, violence, nudity, drama, and whatever else it takes to get ratings.
But this is a reality series meant to confront real issues and raise real questions.
We have serious and artistic goals to accomplish that are much more important than the quick infusion of cash this might supply our other projects.
And most importantly, it reflects nothing on my current campaign for the presidency of the United States.
My campaign is much more than just a publicity stunt for a reality television show!
I am surprised that the magazines and talk shows would suggest as much.
Surprised and disappointed!
Why, this is the type of yellow journalism that has soiled news gathering for so long now, and is beneath the contempt of right-thinking individuals who know what to believe when they see it.
Those who have tried to minimize and ridicule my candidacy as such are just desperate and unhappy people…people who may have something to fear from my entrance into the fray.
I don’t know why these media bullies need to pick on a small group of unfortunate maroons from another era who are just trying to get by in the 21st Century like anybody else, but let me just say that whether the show gets picked up or not, my campaign will continue just as seriously.
I will sit here puzzled and saddened by these charges, but undaunted.
My faithful dog Cash is beside me, and he seems to have a higher opinion of me than many of those whose opinions I value less.
Thank you for your attention, and for your continued support in this important cause.
–Pop Haydn
The Greater American Confidence Party has a new website. Just click on the picture above, or HERE to be taken there immediately. There you will find out information about this new third party–a virtual party from the sanity fringe of American politics.
Join Pop Haydn, Nancy Magill, Steve Mitchell and all the other Confidence Partiers as we have some fun, and poke fun at the American political process and at our leaders and shakers.
Happy “Talk Like a Pirate Day!”
Click for Pop's Website
Sorry for your loss. They leave such a huge hole when they pass...
Thank you for this beautiful thought! I lost my Diamond Girl, black collie shepherd Lab, and feel he
Next week.
when are you performing at the Castle?
No, it was sold some years ago.
Reblogged this on Pop's Soapbox.
Happy Birthday Neil - We are planning on coming back April 17 to celebrate our Anniversary. My wife
Nancy Magill
Pop Haydn
Pop's Soapbox 