1960s Crooked Gambling Catalog

Forrest Flanders, collector of old catalogs of every stripe, has put a complete set of scans of the the old K.C. Card Company Blue Book up Flickr. Until the 1960s, it was legal to sell crooked gambling equipment. Along with the H.C. Evans Company in Chicago, the KC Card Company (also in Chicago) was one of the major U.S. providers of gaffed cards and dice, as well as various various carnival games. Forrest has scanned each page of the company's 1960 catalog, and offers them in a variety of resolutions. I could spend all day perusing these scans.

Also: If you are the kind of person that feels the need to own an original catalog, you can find it here at Earth's Largest Magic Shop. Tell 'em Jim Morton sent you.

Link.

YouTube as Jukebox



I have a real soft spot for minimalist approaches; single-color Rubik's Cubes, Andy Warhol's early films, and the like. So I was delighted to come across the YouTuber who goes by the moniker "thunderbird1958." Instead of fancy video productions for each song, he (and I am pretty sure it is a he) shows the 45 as it is being played, complete with the sound of the needle hitting the groove at the beginning. Brilliant stuff! So far, he has uploaded almost 1,500 tunes. Here's one of the more Pop Void choices: Martian Hop by The Randalls.

Lost Metropolis Footage Found

Great news for fans of Fritz Lang's classic silent film, Metropolis: Three reels of long missing footage have been rediscovered in Argentina. The three reels had been acquired by the Museo del Cine in Buenos Aires back in 1992, but only recently were found to include footage that was edited out by the American distributor, Paramount Pictures.

A copy of the film was sent to the F. W. Murnau Foundation in Wiesbaden, Germany, for analysis and verification. Researchers at the foundation confirmed that the scenes were original. "The film can now be shown more or less as Lang originally intended it," foundation head Helmut Possmann told the Reuters news agency. "In terms of understanding what it's about, we'll be seeing a new film."

Due to the poor quality of the film, the restoration may take a few years.

You can get more details on the story at dw-world.de, or, if you speak German, at Zeit Online.