Thanks to amazon streaming video that comes with my Prime membership, I am finally getting that opportunity.  I see why people wouldn’t shut-up about this show.  :)

I’m on episode 18 now.  Love being able to watch these on either my laptop or the Kindle and completely without commercials or other ads.  Unless I have a crappy internet connection, which apparently happens sometimes at the community center, the videos play seamlessly and without interruption.

So now I’m not so lost anymore.

I know I’m behind the times on a lot of things, but I think I love doing it this way.  I did this with Harry Potter.  Only read the books last year, and watched the movies.  Like Lost, it’s hard to jump into the middle of the story with that one.  When I’d already missed the first one, then the second, I avoided all the others until I got a chance to start at the beginning.  I ended up borrowing books and buying used DVDs.  I read the book then watched the DVD with Elijah and, often, Sarah.  Nice doing it that way, I can just move from one to the next, no waiting!  Did the same thing with The Hunger Games.

So, yay, me.  Ha, that’s all that’s new right now…

Now, I’ve completed the first section in the book which is the first four chapters.  Included in that section, is the death of Johnny’s older brother Jack, an event that affected him until he died in 2003.  Surprise, surprise, the movie portrayed it differently… and unfairly, I believe, to Cash’s father.

In the movie, his father is shown from the start as almost explosive and maybe even hints at abusive.  In the book so far, Johnny talks about his father as a hard working man providing for his large family during the Depression, he’s not alluded to a hint of an overly rough man.  Now, if that comes up later, I don’t know about it yet.  In the movie, Johnny and Jack head down the road, both with fishing poles, while Jack imitates Bugs Bunny.  Johnny is then waiting while Jack saws up some wood with a large table saw.  The wood gets stuck, the saw starts jumping around and Johnny runs over and turns off the saw, saving Jack’s fingers and maybe his life.  Jack then sends Johnny ahead to go fishing, saying he’s got to finish up.  Johnny is then seen fishing but gets up and starts walking down the road.  A car driven by an unidentified person comes up and his father, in the passenger side is clearly upset and asks him, “where you been?” several times, then tells him to throw down the pole and get in the car, and drags him in.  Johnny is taken to the hospital where he sees bloody clothing in a basin, he is shoved in to Jack’s room ahead of his father and you see Jack laying there dying.  There’s some dialog and it’s clear that he’s been sliced along the middle.  The young Johnny is yelling, “do something” while everyone else is quiet, and Jack dies.  In the next scene, the family is home, it looks as if it’s funeral day, Johnny is listening to the radio and his father calls him “nothing” and yells at his wife that the wrong son died, he even raises his hand to his wife as if he will strike her should she come closer.  After that scene, it appears as if his father doesn’t care if the now-older Johnny heads off to the Army or not.

Now, of course, the book is different.  It’s true that Jack died from wounds received in a table saw accident.  However, he states that that day, Jack had a bad feeling that something was going to happen and he and their mother encouraged him to stay home from work or to go fishing instead with Johnny.  Jack said while he felt that something was going to happen, the family needed the money and he went anyway.  He and Johnny walked to the intersection of the roads where they would split.  Johnny states that Jack was indeed imitating Bugs Bunny, but that it was very much out of character for him to do that and that he just kept doing it even after they parted ways, as he went down the road, just “What’s up Doc?” over and over.  Johnny sat to fish for a while but couldn’t really bring himself to, he got up and started home.  His father told him to toss down the pole and that they had to go home, he asked what was the matter and his father said, “Jack’s been hurt really bad.”  They went home and he took Johnny into the smoke house and laid out Jack’s bloody clothes to show him how he had been cut.  He said that he was afraid they were going to lose Jack, and then he cried.  When he recovered, he told Johnny that he’d come to find him and that they needed to go to the hospital.

Johnny then proceeds to tell how Jack was in the hospital for four days before he died.  The doctor didn’t hold much hope for recovery, saying that he’d had to remove too much of his insides during the surgery.  But the family still had time to gather everyone together and be with Jack before he died and that there was even a time where they really hoped he’d be fine because Jack was very animated and talking and laughing happily.  But when the day came, Jacked talked crazy for a little bit, but then was lucid again, and then finally talked of seeing heaven before passing away.

Never once during the account has Johnny talked of his father being violent towards him or any other family member, blaming him for Jack’s death, or wishing that Johnny had died instead of Jack.  In fact, he talks about returning to the fields very soon thereafter and his mother breaking down for a few minutes and that “my poor daddy came up to her and took her arm…”

Those beginning scenes really set the tone of the whole movie and instill an intense dislike, if not hatred, for Johnny’s father in the average viewer.  So I have to ask, are we all so much about entertainment that movies about real people and events have to be dramatized so much as to ruin the reputation of an innocent person who’s no longer around to defend himself?  Ah, all in the name of entertainment.  There are plenty of ways that those scenes could have been shortened for time and dramatized without changing the story or insulting someone.  Of course, everyone perceives things differently, but even so, the movie is supposed to be based on that one book…

Of course, there’s also the parts to concern his first wife Vivian.  I heard that her family and daughters were not happy with how she was portrayed in the movie and it really does portray her as very impatient, uncaring, and selfish, amongst other things.  I’m curious to get to the parts concerning her in the book.

It just always really bothers me when movies don’t follow books and the changes are nonsensical.  Not just in non-fiction, but novels, too.  I read that Dean Koontz book Intensity, which was really good, and later happened to catch the movie.  I remember there was one change they would have had to make due to censorship issues with a made-for-tv movie, so that was ok (it was very minor), but they even went so far as to create characters that were just completely unnecessary and change the ending quite a bit as wellas other changes that made no sense whatsoever and really took what could have been a very good movie and flushed it down the toilet.

I don’t really know what it’s called, if anything, but I call it whimsical scrapbooking, ha. Just a different look, dreamy concepts, etc. The kit I used is called A Place to Treasure by Irene Alexeeva.

I’ve also learned it’s a great way to salvage an otherwise crappy photo. In the original photo I used, I’d once again put my finger in front of my pop-up flash (SOOO not used to using it anymore, now used to my flash being a foot over the top of my camera, ha) and the whole right side of the photo was pretty dark. Not to mention the surroundings were just, meh. However, K was discovering at the time, she was checking out her brand new play kitchen on Christmas morning. She had the two coffee cups in her hands.

And though it doesn’t seem like it, I have been doing a lot of scrapbook-like stuff, just not for me. Been working pretty solid on finally getting my sister-in-law’s wedding book done. This one’s taken me longer than any of the others I’ve done, in part because we’ve been so insanely busy the last couple of months in this area, and in part because it’s longer than any other book I’ve done. I think it’s come out very nice. Waiting for it to upload to the publisher now so they can print it and ship it to me! All I have to say is that it had better be good, more stellar than other companies I’ve used, ’cause they are charging me a friggin $17 to get it shipped.

I’ve also decided that these wedding scrapbooks take way too much time. I’m not doing another one unless I’m being paid a lot of money! Or, more than likely, someone just asks really nicely…

But speaking of freezing to death. Oh. My. Gosh. I know my friends in colder climates are laughing their butts off about now but it is 18° F outside right now! And that’s better than it was yesterday. Yesterday it was so cold that Steve and the other electricians were sent home, pulling wire too cold can cause it to crack and break so they couldn’t work. I think today they are just barely pulling off working. Our thermostat is set at 74 and I feel so cold yet if it were warm outside, I’d be sweating at this temperature. Blasted old, drafty house! We had our first snow of the season Sunday morning, it’s still out there, but there’s not much at all.

After my packages get here today, most of the Christmas presents will be here. The one that really sucks though that’s still not here is one that I need to add it to other things and turn around and ship out somewhere else. I have a feeling that one won’t reach its final destination until after Christmas. Got some really awesome soap from Naked Soap, too. Love it! Unfortunately, some of it is for my mother-in-law and she stopped by while E and I were off at his 4-H meeting and I hadn’t finished wrapping and she saw it. Also unfortunately, it looks like I have one package arriving tomorrow and one Thursday as well, so I don’t know when I’m supposed to find time to edit…

I wasn’t expecting anything at my box so it’s all really a surprise but inside was this book, Weird Missouri, from the writers. My gift for allowing them to use one of my photos. :)

My photo is a full page bleed on page 73. It’s been some time ago that I was contacted for requesting to use the photo and I ended up giving the guy permission to use anything he wanted or could use. All I wanted was a copy of the book, haha. Well, I completely forgot about it until today and they ended up only using the one photo, but I’m happy. I am a bit disappointed that the Bonne Terre Mine didn’t make it into the book at all (I had some photos from inside it that he also expressed interest in), it would have been nice to have seen a piece on the mines, even if they didn’t use my photos.

So, anyway, the photo?

I told you it was weird!!

By the way, here is the piece that these same guys did on the mines for their History Channel show:

(The mines are extra special to me because three generations of my ancestors worked there, two as miners and the third as a machinist. Also, it’s too bad the video gets cut off slightly early…)

So, anyway, to WeirdUS: thanks! I can’t wait to actually sit down and read the book. :)
Everyone else: buy the book! heehee :)

Well the other night Elijah brought me the book to read to him which is funny in itself because he never does that. So we sat to read it and the first scenario (which you can see pictured if you click the book then click it again at amazon to read inside and click on excerpt) says:

Mommy says, “Do you want peas for breakfast?”

What do you say?

So I read it for him and asked him “what do you say?” He paused for a second, thinking about what to say then finally said, “PLEASE!!”

That’s my kid for you, outside the box!

Of course, I had to shatter his tiny little ego and let him know that not everyone likes peas as much as he does because when you lift the flap, the little girl is clearly disgusted with them and she says, “No thank you!”

:-P