Monthly Archives: July 2008

Song Lyric Thursday Salutes an Extreme Home Makeover Gone Bad


Rob, my husband, does a weekly thing he calls Song Lyric Thursday, an idea he “borrowed” from Uncle Keith. Essentially he picks a song, that may or may not have deep meaning, posts the lyrics and if he is lucky and can scrounge up a YouTube video, his readers get to hear the song as well.

This week I am following suit because I got a song stuck in my head that goes along really well with a news item I stumbled across about a 2005 Extreme Home Makeover family in Georgia who are now in foreclosure. It seems that despite the ABC show building them a mansion worth close to a half million dollars AND raising a fund of another quarter million to not only pay the taxes on it for 25 years plus put their three children through college – they’ve lost it all. Apparently they sat on the house and cash for roughly a year before deciding to go into the construction business (and before you wonder – no neither husband nor wife had any experience in that area) which they financed against the entire balance of equity in their PAID FOR freebie home. Within 15 months, they were broke and the bank is foreclosing.

The American Dream in a nutshell. Win the lottery or its equivalent and blow it.

To make matters a tad more interesting, this family was not your typical Extreme Makeover bunch. They had healthy children. No heart wrenching disabilities or illnesses. Something that always made my stomach lurch about this show was the way it sought out people in their misery and in exchange for a house and some cool tech – exploited them for an hour or two for profit.

Anyway, in dedication to all the Extreme Makeovers (wouldn’t that be compelling television revisiting some of them a few years later?) here is a Thursday Song Lyric:

If I had a million dollars
(If I had a million dollars)
I’d buy you a house
(I would buy you a house)
If I had a million dollars
(If I had a million dollars)
I’d buy you furniture for your house
(Maybe a nice chesterfield or an ottoman)
And if I had a million dollars
(If I had a million dollars)
Well, I’d buy you a K-Car
(A nice Reliant automobile)
If I had a million dollars I’d buy your love

If I had a million dollars
I’d build a tree fort in our yard
If I had million dollars
You could help, it wouldn’t be that hard
If I had million dollars
Maybe we could put like a little tiny fridge in there somewhere
You know, we could just go up there and hang out
Like open the fridge and stuff
There would already be laid out foods for us
Like little pre-wrapped sausages and things

They have pre-wrapped sausages but they don’t have pre-wrapped bacon
Well, can you blame ’em
Uh, yeah

If I had a million dollars
(If I had a million dollars)
Well, I’d buy you a fur coat
(But not a real fur coat that’s cruel)
And if I had a million dollars
(If I had a million dollars)
Well, I’d buy you an exotic pet
(Yep, like a llama or an emu)
And if I had a million dollars
(If I had a a million dollars)
Well, I’d buy you John Merrick’s remains
(Ooh, all them crazy elephant bones)
And If I had a million dollars I’d buy your love

If I had a million dollars
We wouldn’t have to walk to the store
If I had a million dollars
Now, we’d take a limousine ’cause it costs more
If I had a million dollars
We wouldn’t have to eat Kraft Dinner
But we would eat Kraft Dinner
Of course we would, we’d just eat more
And buy really expensive ketchups with it
That’s right, all the fanciest ke… dijon ketchups!
Mmmmmm, Mmmm-Hmmm

If I had a million dollars
(If I had a million dollars)
Well, I’d buy you a green dress
(But not a real green dress, that’s cruel)
And if I had a million dollars
(If I had a million dollars)
Well, I’d buy you some art
(A Picasso or a Garfunkel)
If I had a million dollars
(If I had a million dollars)
Well, I’d buy you a monkey
(Haven’t you always wanted a monkey)

If I had a million dollars
I’d buy your love

If I had a million dollars, If I had a million dollars
If I had a million dollars, If I had a million dollars
If I had a million dollars
I’d be rich

The Jane Austen Book Club is My Lame Hump Day Hmmm


During the enforced downtime during my bout with illness a couple of weeks ago, I actually watched one of the dvd’s I checked out from the bookmobile.

Rob and I were watching quite a few flicks over the colder months thanks to our public library, but warmer weather equals much daylight up here and so we aren’t as inclined to while away hours simply watching. As a result, we are still checking out dvd’s that catch our fancy but often returning them unwatched.

I happened to run across an adaption of Karen Joy Fowler’s The Jane Austen Book Club and since I was too tired, light-headed and otherwise shitty feeling to even write a blog post (that is as low as it gets for me) I decided to watch it.

And let’s just generously say that hours of my life are just gone forever now.

The frustrating thing about books that become Hollywood movies is that more often than not the entire book is seen as merely a guideline for film rather than the basis for the movie’s existence. Throughout my viewing I was acutely aware that I was being shortchanged. Characters appeared and vanished. Main characters behaved in ways that the other characters seemed to understand without question but left me with nothing but questions.

My main question was this: what was the real version of this story. I knew there had to be a better one. One that was rich and full of real detail.

So, as I often do in these situations, I sought out the book.

Did the page and paper thing.

Actually read.

Reading just the prologue – not even five full pages – I realized that the film was even less a guideline than I had suspected. Four and a quarter pages of the author’s original intent told me the following:

  • the character’s ages had been altered in favor of younger people. Everyone was at least 5 to a dozen years older in the book. I guess a novel can have women of a “certain age” but the big screen mustn’t show women over 50 if they can help it (and then they must be “quirky” because that will explain the “old looking thing”.)
  • it was supposed to be told from just a single character’s perspective and that the filmmaker had dropped the idea to avoid voice over – I’m guessing – but a narrator certainly would have helped the movie because it jumped all over without much explanation save the passing of the months.
  • although the author had the women “typed” ie: flamboyant woman of a certain age, best friend, perfect friend, younger woman friend in need of mentoring, Lesbian, the simple paragraphish introductions seemed more flexible and fluid than their rigid and wooden screen counterparts. I credit the imagination. The mind is a far better screen.
  • I knew the book was going to be way better.

I hate film versions of novels by and large even if I haven’t read the book first because it is often so obvious that the story was diluted to make it “fit” the screen and running time.

When I was a kid I loved movies. Almost as much as I loved books. But anymore I find them slow and easy to out-think and insulting. The last because the filmmaker doesn’t view my time as valuable or my attention worth working for. Better to try and dazzle me with visuals and distract me with soundtracks.

My question for you is book or movie?

74 Pages, 20,042 Words and 5 Days Ahead of Schedule


Just a very quick update.

The novella is coming along. I printed a third draft last evening after supper for my Beta reader to comment on.

At this point I am light on words. About 30,000 words light as a short novel is 50,000 plus. I don’t expect that my story will be that long. I am thinking I might add another thirty pages max which at roughly 300 words per page is 9,000 additional words. With the minimum for a submission being 50 pages, I am okay with my estimates. I have the end of this week – minus the weekend as there is masonry to do – to decide what to do, or not, with Beta’s suggestions/comments (which are almost always very insightful or back up something I was already toying with), and then the month of August.

Deadline for submissions is September 15th and I am feeling pretty good about it.