Dumpster Diving for Gold: Monster Fun Book Art Project Follow-Up!

Following up with my previous DD4G post, I finally finished up my Monster Fun Book art project in which I took a very cool Goodwill find and showed it a little bit of love.

The frame was fairly beat up, so I gave it a nice sand job (how naughty!) and went about staining it with my homemade tobacco wood stain. Now, while my wood stain concoction gave the frame a nice color and made it look infinitely better, it was not nearly dark enough for my taste. So after multiple coats I gave in and picked up a small can of ebony wood stain to finish the job to my satisfaction. Now, while my initial stain didn't do exactly what I originally intended, I am pretty thrilled with how it all turned out, as the brown from the tobacco stain seems to have mixed very well with the ebony wood stain.

*Left side is the original frame with the right being the final product*

And here is how the whole thing looks all completely cleaned up and put back together. The glass was a filthy mess, so a little Windex proved to be an easy yet big help in making this awesome little Monster Fun Book look light years better than when I picked it up.

So for now, this nifty relic has found a nice comfortable place right on top of one of my DVD shelves, fittingly right next to a Sideshow Frankenstein's Monster collectable. As I mentioned in my previous post, who knows how long this thing sat in that frame for, and whoever put it there is an utter mystery. However, while that mystery will forever remain unsolved, the truth of the matter is this thing has found a home and is now amongst friends. How sweet.   

Dumpster Diving for Gold: Lady Dragon's Big Box Monster Art Project

While on a recent excursion to the Appalachian Mountains with the intent of collecting berries and an array of life-giving fruits for the 1st Annual Chuck Norris Ate My Baby Fruit Festival and Farmer's Market in July, I decided to make a quick stop at the local Appalachian Mountain Goodwill to see if I could uncover any gold to go along with my berries and other assorted fruits. As luck would have it, the Appalachian Goodwill willingly gave good to me, and I was lucky enough to come across a few things that I shall now share with you in the next paragraph.

First up is an Imperial Entertainment VHS release of Lady Dragon, starring the one and only Cynthia Rothrock. Outside of the rental stickers, the box is in pretty good condition, and the film is more than enjoyable enough. It's not an upper tier Rothrock flick, but it's certainly WORTHy of the always lovely Mrs. Rothrock. 

The next two tapes I stumbled onto are big box releases of Terror Out of the Sky and I Dismember Mama. Both are a little on the beat up side, especially Terror with that sweet looking "Jeni" graffiti sprawled across the front. Regardless, they're in more than suitable condition (as good if not better than the copies that are being sold for some pretty hefty prices on eBay), and I have to say that I was simply elated to find not one but two big box tapes, which is something of a rarity in these parts, let alone in a Goodwill. On top of it, all three tapes were .99¢, so I spent less than three bucks for this trio or terror.

Next up and rounding out my Good Goodwill finds is this very random framed newspaper that my awesome lady friend found. I wasn't sure what to make of it at first, but I knew for a fact that I loved it and had to pick it up. The thing ran me $4.49, and I figured I could maybe put it in a new frame and hang it up somewhere just because it's aesthetically pretty neat looking.

When I got the thing home I naturally popped it open to see what else this oddity might have tucked away within its glass confines, only to find an intact, four page Monster Fun Book from a 1974 edition of some newspaper called The National Star.

Here are a few blurry photos of both sides of this monster mash-up of monster themed news articles. 

I mean, I don't know about you, but I think it's about as cool a find as one can have, and while I am certain there is no retail value with this thing, the idea of finding something such as this is simply just cool.  

Anyway, while I would love to frame the entire thing and hang it up, I don't really feel like spending the cash on a new picture frame. In fact, I think it would actually be a lot more fun to take that shitty, beat up looking frame that it came in and try to spruce it up like Martha. This way I can have myself a little fun art project to do while also being able to eventually return this Monster Fun Book back to its original home (and who knows how long it sat in there).  

So my brilliant idea has led me to doing a little DIY project wherein I will sand the bastard down and attempt to re-stain it using a homemade stain fit for a Monster Fun Book. 

My ingredients for such an undertaking are as shown:

Chewing tobacco mixed with equal parts water and ammonia should just about do the trick. And the Milk Duds? Well, those are for me, so get yer filthy hands outta there, bro.

I am hoping this concoction will present me with a nice dark doo doo stain, however, it does take a few days for the tobacco and such to mature. I really have no idea if this will work at all, but if it doesn't - or if I don't like the results - I will simply spray paint the thing and make it look all sick and shit.

Anyway, I've gone on more than long enough, but I will be doing an update in the next few days with what I hope will be the results of this monster sized art project. Well, unless it comes out horribly. In that case, let's just pretend this conversation never happened.

CNAMB Presents: Monster of the Week!

Hey, remember this segment?! It sure has been a while since I've done a Monster of the Week…maybe I should change the name to Monster of the Quarterly! Aww jeez, just how silly would that be?! Not that I ever really did Monster of the Week every week per say, but it has been far too long since I have done one, so for that, I apologize. So, in it's long overdue return to what will hopefully be a more normal rotation, I have what would be an interesting monster for this edition of Monster of the Week. This is a creature that draws mixed reviews from horror fans for it's celluloid incarnation, but for me, it is a monster that scared the corn right out of my ass when I was a kid and one that I still have a soft spot for.

Alright, lets get this long overdue show on the road and introduce our Monster of the Week… 

Rawhead Rex!

Rawhead Rex is a monster to be reckoned with – this massive madman has appeared in print, film, and even a handful of graphic novels. My first introduction to Rawhead Rex came via the 1986 film adaptation of the short story from Clive Barker's third volume in the Books of Blood series. So, while some may say the movie is awful (including Barker himself), at the time I saw it, it was pretty damned scary, mostly due to how monstrous and toothy Rawhead was. Plus, the Ireland setting is a fantastic one and there is a very appealing and natural atmosphere about the film due to it's dark and gloomy setting. Granted, I was pretty young when I saw the movie, so that of course factors heavily into my fear of the creature quite heavily.

Now, whether or not I enjoy the movie, I know it's not all that great, something that came to me when I first read the short story some years back and was blown away by how good it was in comparison to the film. However, even as I read the story, all I could think was how difficult a story it is to translate to screen, mostly due to the inner thoughts of Rawhead himself. Anyways, the film is not a good one, but it is a fun one for being cheesy and completely out there (that baptism scene?!), and you gotta love that big dopey Rex with his crossed glowing red eyes and intense fear of the female flow.    

I really wish Rawhead Rex would see a rerelease on DVD again someday. Lions Gate Home Entertainment owns the license, but still no plans are in place for a release, which is unfortunate. Either way, I still love me some Rawhead (wait, what did I just type?) and I think he makes for an interesting and fun return to Monster of the Week! 

CNAMB Presents: Monster of the Week!

I haven’t done a Monster of the Week in some time - I’ve just been so busy watching Steven Seagal, his Martial Art prowess, his peach colored sunglasses, and his special “Seagal Sense” on Lawman to spend as much time as I should be spending here…with you. Ma bad. So for this week's Monster, I am going with a little something special, a creature that almost harkened back to the creature features of the old days, but did so with a sly sense of humor and a double dash of fun and set in a modern age.

This week’s Monster of the Week goes to…

The Graboid(s)!

These subterranean invertebrate first appeared in the 1990 giant monster movie classic, Tremors and the Graboids were created by that films director Ron Underwood and the writing team of Brent Maddock and S.S. Wilson. Graboids are based off the Mongolian Death Worm and they are incredibly large creatures that are attracted by noise, or better yet, vibrations. They can grow up to about 30 feet at full adult state and have an almost beck like mouth that contains three smaller mouths that extend beyond the Graboids bite and even seem to have a mind of their own. Only weakness that a Graboid has is it cannot pass through solid rock or concrete as it is an underground creature. However, these Graboids are monsters that have brains to go along with their beauty and are able to come up with creative and destructive ways of drawing their pray out for a little snack.

There were a few different versions of these creatures as the series went along, but I only need to focus on the O.G. Graboid as that is where it all started. So sorry, no ass-blasters! The Graboid appeared in four Tremors films altogether and also in a very shirt lived Tremors television series that kinda got the shaft in how it was all handled. Tremors is a fantastic little horror/comedy that mixed in classic B-Movie sensibilities, with a fistful of black comedy, an original creature, and it worked to…Perfection.

Mad Monster Throw Down!

Earlier in the week I was asked to participate in a blogger opinion article for GeekBlips, and the question posed was one of epic proportions - Which are more dangerous to the human race, Zombies or Vampires? Being I am a fan of both Zombies and non-Twilight Vampires, I was more than happy to participate in such a task. There were a handful of other bloggers that joined in on the fun and the end result is some great answers that make for anentertaining read that goes perfectly with the ongoing Chucktober celebration. It's funny, I was asked to try to keep my answer under 200 words, and I really did try, but I'm so full of hot air, I ended up a little over the required word count. About 400 words over to be exact! Way to impress the people over at GeekBlips by not following directions!

If you do not know what GeekBlips is, well, it is a collection of all the hottest Geek related news stories via websites and blogs. If you like a particular story, you can Vote It Up! and give it a little boost in the rankings. The more people that vote for a story, the longer it stays on the front page and the more chances that others may see and read that post. Also, links from other blogs and sites help with a stories placement along with the actual blogs/sites positioning on the overall blog rankings list. Other than GeekBlips, there are plenty of other "Blips" to be found and enjoyed, such as MovieBlips, TVBlips, and of course my fave, HorrorBlips (just to name a few). HorrorBlips is one that I check out the most, and I should note that I have a pretty nice consistent ranking with in the top 10-15 on there for this fine blog that you are enjoying right this very second!

If you want to read my answer to the age-old question of who is more dangerous to humanity, Zombies or Vampires, I would be very upset with you if you didn't head over to GeekBlips to read my definitive answer! While you are there, check out all the shit you can find and if you find it in your heart, I would love if you took the time to vote for my posts over at HorrorBlips and GeekBlips (which I just joined) along with any others that may tickled your pickle! If you have a blog and aren't on board, then I would suggest giving it a try too. It's good for traffic and gets more eyes on what you write, which is kinda the point, right?

Here is a direct link to the article on GeekBlips, and if you wanna go the horror route, you can find it through HorrorBlips too! Hope you enjoy my answer, and I would love to hear your opinion on the subject...especially if it's an opposing one - cause there aren't many!