Shell Game with Matchboxes. Barcelona
This is an interesting warning for tourists in several languages and cartoons about the dangers of playing the shell game:
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Waiting for photos from our members:
Anyone else receive their campaign kits?
We are about to ship out another hundred, and still only a handful have posted photos with their buttons. If you haven’t signed up to get your free campaign kit (with big Pop Haydn button, campaign poster postcard, and American Confidence Party membership card), then go to Campaign Headquarters and you will find out more about the Greater American Confidence Party and Pop Haydn’s campaign for President of the United States in 2012.
The Lummis House:
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
BofA’s New Debit Card Fees:
Bank of America
From today’s Los Angeles Times, from a column by David Lazarus:
“I asked BofA’s Pace how much it really costs the bank to process a debit card transaction. She declined to answer.
“I asked how much it costs the bank to provide fraud and overdraft protection. She declined to answer.
“I simply asked how many debit card users the bank has. She declined to answer.”Nevertheless, Pace said that BofA is trying to be “clear and transparent with customers” about the fees.”
Canine Support
- Cash
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
The Horn Nut Scam
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
New Senior Pitchmen DVD
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.
Birds of a feather talk together
The Australian Museum’s Search and Discover desk, which offers a free service to identify species, has received numerous reports of encounters with talkative birds in the wild from mystified citizens who thought they were hearing voices. Martyn Robinson, a naturalist who works at the desk, explains that occasionally a pet cockatoo escapes or is let loose, and “if it manages to survive long enough to join a wild flock, [other birds] will learn from it.”Birds mimic each otherAs well as learning from humans directly, “the birds will mimic each other,” says Jaynia Sladek, from the Museum’s ornithology department. “There’s no reason why, if one comes into the flock with words, [then] another member of the flock wouldn’t pick it up as well.” ‘Hello cockie’ is the most common phrase, though there have been a few cases of foul-mouthed feathered friends using expletives which we can’t repeat here. The evolution of language could well be passed on through the generations, says Martyn. “If the parents are talkers and they produce chicks, their chicks are likely to pick up some of that,” he says. This phenomenon is not unique; some lyrebirds in southern Australia still reproduce the sounds of axes and old shutter-box cameras their ancestors once learnt.
Henry David Thoreau:
“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
Nancy Magill
Pop Haydn
Pop's Soapbox 