Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Weekend Finds 1: Eartha's Generosity!

Good morning!

Thanks for all your kind comments on my ma's wedding dress both on the Facebook page and back here on the original post! I will followup with that photo of the woman herself in the same gown some time soon! :) I've got wedding on the brain, but I'm fighting it tooth and nail this week to tell you about all the goodies I snagged in the last weekend or two that have yet to show themselves on the blog. Take a look!

Jamie posted the other day about Eartha Kitsch's awesome, "take anything you want, please, it's free, I need to clean out this garage" event at her house the other day. IT WAS AMAZING. I told her after I got home, I was surprised at all the neat stuff I had in my car when I got back home. I'd been so busy crackin' up with the assembled parties (Rae and Travis were there, too, and Mr. Kitsch of course, who added funny origin stories about some of the stuff we were taking off their hands), that I'd forgotten about the freaking amazing haul of goods exchanging hands! First of the very neat things I got? Board games:


Confession: I have a sick, Quentin Tarantino like weakness for any seventies' movie or tv tie-in merchandise period, but board games are really high on the list of things I won't pass up. I have board games for everything from Welcome Back Kotter to Dukes of Hazzard to Happy Days, so you can imagine my STUPID amount of glee at showing up first to Eartha's house and seeing not one but TWO amazing board games sitting on the drive way. First, this Planet of the Apes board game.


This is you, running through Earth in 3978 AD in your bearskin clothes, trying to stay alive on the ape planet. I love how the cover blares the stark truth of the game's goal: "OBJECT: BECOME THE LAST SURVIVOR". Yeah, don't help your friends, or try and salvage the space ship to get home, or acclimate to ape human society, JUST SURVIVE. I haven't gone through the game play rules yet, but Eartha forewarned me that if any of the pieces were missing, it was probably her brother in 1978 AD who misplaced them. Possibly, he is also the one who wrote "You are a dummy, dummy" in ballpoint pen on the inside of the lid. I actually laughed out loud when I opened that and read the secret message for the first time.

Hold up...why do I have to build my own ape prison? I have to construct the means of my entrapment? Not cool, Milton Bradley. Not cool.


Isn't the board itself magnificent? This score dulls the pain of the $25 Dr. Zaius bank I didn't buy at the flea market this weekend (I know, I know. I wasn't thinking. Forgive me, Dr. Zaius!). I love the black and white background photos and the colorfulness of the color portions of the board!


OH MY GOD. IT'S THE BIONIC WOMAN BOARD GAME. Obviously perfect for a couples game night in which we could play The Six Million Dollar Man and Charlie's Angels board games from my collection. I have to say the one disappointing thing about a lot of these games is how tedious the actual rules of playing go...for example, the Dukes game is pretty much Sorry with less continuity and more "You got chased by Sherriff Roscoe and ran into a ditch, go back two spaces" cards. Ah well. Look upon Jaime Sommer's illustrated visage!




Heck yes, it features her fictional character's signature. I mean, duh.


Also heck yes, she is trying to net a cougar on the cover of the box. What else would she be doing? Did you guys ever see the episode where she teamed up with Evel Knievel to fight the KGB on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall? THIS WOMAN KNOWS NO LIMITS. Bring it, cougar.


The board is ok, but the the gameplay cards on this one are just fantastic. The one you're seeing reads "ADVENTURE 3: ATTEMPTED PLANE HIJACKING! Jaime foils attempt and saves passengers." Naturally. See the illustration where she has the hijacker in a bionic chokehold? 



Another of the garage hauls? Home wares! You know how I am about coffee tables, and I SERIOUSLY needed a smaller one for the ad hoc trunk-as-coffeetable situation going on in the green room. I almost died when Eartha said this was up for grabs:


Seriously, could it be a better looking piece of furniture? She said the original glass top was broken in a cleaning casualty, but it's extremely lightweight and easy on the eyes in spite of its missing piece. I just love this! The whole room (I took it back into the living room for lighting purposes, but it actually sits in the green room) just looks better with this fancy little atomic piece. I love it!

Also, this lamp? Tiny, plastic, tiki-style perfection:


I haven't quite figured out where to put it, but it lights up a darkened room with a blue glow like an aquarium, and I am all about that.

This wasn't even half the box of stuff I took home-- two pairs of shoes, a blue vase, a porcelain pair of kitties resting under a sunbonnet, a Marshall Dillon Gunsmoke puzzle, a mostly-complete NUDIST CAMP puzzle ("I might have to mail you a boob if I find it," in the immortal words of Ms. Kitsch), two skirts, two pitchers, and some other odds and ends are still sitting in my den ready to be distributed throughout the house. I had so much fun AND got so many neat things to take home. So thank you, Eartha!! :)

Did you have any tv board games as a kid? Been the recipient of someone else's extreme generosity? Make any good scores at the flea market or estate sales lately? Let's talk, folks!

I've got two more posts of "junk I have known" coming this week, so stay tuned! See you tomorrow. 

15 comments:

  1. First of all, please tell me I'm not the only one who thought the arrows on the POTA game look like penises...or am I just a dirty bird? I'm picturing Eartha's brother doing a Fred Sanford impression while scrawling "You are a dummy, dummy"!
    That table. WHOA. That table. It doesn't even need the glass top anyway! It's gorg enough without it!
    That lamp. HOLY CRAP. That lamp. There's nothing like the glow of a mid century lamp!
    I have a lot of old board games. My favourite simply due to the fact that I love the game and played it on summer afternoons with my Mama D is my late '50s Monopoly game....I was always the Scottie dog, of course!
    I also have a really fab-ola game that I need to dig out at my parents' that features pigs in space. No, not like the Muppety Piiiiigs In Spaaaaaaaaace. Atomic, late '50s/early '60s pigs. In space. I think it's a Valleydale promo. Totally sweet! It needs to be in my house instead of a bin in mom and dad's basement!
    Killer scores!

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    1. HAHA, I'm still trying to see what you see on the POTA. Aren't they cool finds? Eartha has really good taste, so it was funny going to this "yard sale" where everything THERE was fabulous. I thought immediately of the Muppets Pigs in Space, but that boardgame seems even crazier than my role model Miss Piggy in an astronaut suit!

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  2. Oh my gosh - ""You are a dummy, dummy" - that was totally written by my brother because he used to say that ALL of the time. I can just hear him in my head. I think that he did get that from "Sanford and Sons".

    I bet you anything most of the parts to the ape prison are missing. I just can't see those staying in that box with us being such rambunctious monkey children. And god, anyone knows that you CAN'T catch a leopard with a net. Even if you're bionic. Thanks for picking through my stuff. I know I'm trying to go minimalist but I'm sure it will happen again one day...

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    1. I love getting a back story behind that board game graffiti. Have I told you about my Charlie's Angels board game? Mint on the inside, with all the pieces, but the outside of the box has all the Angels but Farrah with black eyes and teeth and scars, owing to some (probably) kid brother's efforts with a Bic Pen to "spruce up" the cover? I like it even better than if it was in perfect shape.

      Watch me try to jerry-rig some pieces of the ape prison. Can't just have humans running free in ape country! I need to see if there's some precedent for the big cat/net scene as depicted on the BW cover from the series.

      Thank YOU, lady, for all the fun swag! :)

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  3. Awesome stuff! You guys are super-lucky!

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    1. Wasn't it cool of her to just let us go through all this fabulous stuff? I was happy as a clam with my finds!

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  4. This is obviously your first time in the DIY Ape-human-future prison community.

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  5. i haven't brought my boxes in yet! i told myself i couldn't until i cleaned the other vintage stuff off my kitchen table! ugh, it's a sickness! i looooove those kinds of games too. Please lets have a game night. i have a ninja turtles pizza party game that involved complicated dice flipping, and that ET game that I've been to intimidated to play!

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    1. Can I invite myself if I bring my 1984 kids trivial pursuit (it's hard as hell) and of course full house!?!?

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    2. Look at you being good, Rae! I try to take stuff out as I bring stuff in, but GOSH it is hard!! GAME NIGHT, we just gotta have a game night! And Kimmie, PLEASE bring full house!

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  6. My boyfriend totally has that Dr Zaius bank...he bought another one to match it at the flea a couple months back from a guy in the antique building where Jamie was set up with her wares. I'll tell him if he's ever willing to part with them- you're a willing recipient

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    1. An embarrassment of riches! That is so cool. Yep, if he's ever in the market to unload Apes memorabilia, hit me UP! :)

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  7. Wow! Everything is so awesome! I love the colour of that table so much and I have a weakness for neat lamps and fun board games but I am so very intrigued by the idea of a nudist camp puzzle that I'm finding it hard to concentrate.

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    1. Isn't that blonde wood pretty? And with no glass top, it's super sturdy but light weight. I'll have to discreetly cover some of the anatomy (all female) and post it on the blog someday. It's four pneumatic women playing croquet on this completely fake background of like the Swiss Alps. WHAT DOES IT MEAN?!

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