Monday, November 19, 2012

The Third Man Novelties Lounge

Jack White has expanded the Third Man Records store. It was about three yards square and is now about six yards square - but what an addition! Here's the video announcing the new nook:



It features Jack himself tearing down the wall -  to open up the Third Man Novelties Lounge which is indeed a cornucopia of impressive coin-operated gewgaws.  A Scopitone with 16 mm films of Third Man acts like the Dead Weather, a full-color Photobooth, and a small coin-operated injection-molding device which pumps out small red plastic models of famous Montgomery-Ward Airline guitars! Each machine is carefully branded in Third Man livery and is cleverly operated by Third Man 'gold tokens' because you just know that half of those will be bought and hoarded by collectors and never put back in circulation.

To round things off, you can buy a sort of modern-day Zoopraxiscope disc of a 50's stripper, Tempest Storm, and watch her strip in jerky half-motion! This is probably not sexist but actually ironic or Hipster or something. And I'm always a fan of things pioneered by Muybridge (in this case jerky half motion, not stripping) as he is my fave early film-maker.

(Possibly one of Jack's faves as well, as one of Jack's concert posters is a Muybridge series rather hilariously altered to conform to a Kafka short story...somebody is a well-read clever boy, but of course it could have been the graphic artist rather than Jack.)

Perhaps if we buy enough gold tokens we can organize a multi-strip-in inside the photobooth and make our own Zoopraxis movie disks!!eleven!


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