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.