Summer Dreams

It's been a good month since this blog has been touched, and I guess it's my turn to contribute to it. So here I am, talking about life in general. 

In case y'all didn't know, I (Alex/Tally) have been living in Pennsylvania for the past two years (it's a long story). However, this summer (six more weeks!) I'll be moving back to Texas to be with Savannah and my family and other friends. Needless to say, I'm ecstatic. Of course I'm going to miss my great friends that I've made here in Pennsylvania, but I'm not going to lie...I miss Texas. I miss everything about it. The people, the pretty sky, the weather, the shopping (wait what!?), my school, my house, my neighborhood, the Mexican food, the Bluebell ice cream, the flat landscape (mountains make me feel claustrophobic)...everything. A lot. There are good things about Pennsylvania, too - the friends I've made, the Italian food, the closeness to all the big cities (New York City <3, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Scranton, Harrisburg, Washington, D.C., Jersey City (ew), etc.), the abundant historic places and great photo ops...and there's probably more. It's just that Texas is home, and nothing can change that. 

I've also been involved in my school's musical this year, Godspell. Since singing, dancing, and acting isn't really my thing, I'm the stage manager. Basically I make sure that all of the props are in their place, I stay on book and call lines during rehearsal, I help the actors with their costumes and lines, and I work the lights. It isn't much, but I love being involved with my friends and something that lots of people will enjoy. It's kinda taking over my life, though. But in the best way possible. 

Oh, I made another blog. I know. It's pretty sad. I deleted all of my old ones though, so hopefully this one will last. It's called sweet tea and summer dreams and I'd appreciate it if you'd follow me. :)

That's about all that's happening in my life right now. So, goodbye for now. 

- Alex

Running A Million Miles An Hour

My life is crazy and because I gave up my beloved Netflix for lent I have found myself craving more and more YouTube. I have even gone so far as to use my account to actually upload videos. Shocking, I know. So if you think an awkward random girl (possibly named Savannah) could be kind of interesting or funny time and again please check it out. I've uploaded 2 videos so far and hope to load another soon. My username is Savannah Marie and you can find my first video here: Awkward Me (First YouTube Video)

So are you the type of person who gets on YouTube every second of everyday? Or maybe you're obsessed with some other social media/random site? Don't try hiding it you know who you are! Maybe you just get on occasionally? Perhaps you're the type of person who lives under a rock and has no idea what I'm talking about. Silly me, those people don't exist. (or do they? peeks under rock) Anyways I have several people that I subscribe to on YouTube and I figured I would share them with you wonderful people. I'm linking their username with their channel so that you can find them super easily. Some of them you may have heard of before or they may just be a completely new experience to you but YOU WILL LOVE THEM. (or not, some cursing in most videos...you've been warned!) 'You've been warned'...What am I a creepy old man living with an apocalypse sign tied to his chest. Anyways....
PRESENTING these fantastical amazingly random hooblah mesh magical genie unicorn what am I doing!? YouTube-errrrrrrs:

NigaHiga

Jenna Marbles
Sxephil
ItsKingsleyB****
MysteryGuitarMan
321ACoupleOf <<
Only a few but don't worry they'll keep you busy for a while. Hope you like the videos and please come back for more and we will try to post more often. But you know how it is. Life is crazy!

Busy Busy Busy

 I haven't posted in who know's how long! (Or do you know because you just went to check?!) Anyways, seeing how crazy long it's been since I have written on this blog that my wonderful awesome friend and I share I decided it would be a good time to create a post.

What has been going on in my life? Well...Let me tell you. What has currently been on my mind of course is Christmas. I mean it's December 11th isn't it? Who doesn't have Christmas on the brain! Unless that is you think the world's going to end on the 21st and you're trying to sale everything you own. I'm sorry for you and hope everything works out.

Going along with the season, last night I watched parts of two adorable movies that had some strange similarities. The first I watched part of was Hallmark's Holiday Engagement. I only watched a portion of it but what I gathered was cute, funny, and very Christmas-y. (not a word I know, but it's seasonal!) The other great movie was ABC Family's Desperately Seeking Santa. This
film is about a workaholic lady desperately trying to increase her mall's profits in order to get a promotion with the help of a very funny "Sexy Santa." It's cliche but still very cute and seasonal.

Also recently (and by recently I mean about 2-3 weeks ago), I read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (real name Charles Lutwidge Dodgson). This classic novel, that you've hopefully heard about, is about a young girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole. This story is rather strange and I imagine you'd have to be more than a little mad to have written it. Oddly enough, I never even liked this tale as a kid. In fact, it even scared me a little. Seriously, what's more frightening than crazy people throwing tea pots and an evil queen beheading everyone in sight!

More recently though I've come to some more positive outlooks of the fantastical journey and have even found myself to love it. I can give some special thanks to Disney's 2010 film, directed by Tim Burton, Alice in Wonderland. Also I more recently discovered a magnificent modern outlook on the tale with Syfy's miniseries, Alice, which happens to be on Netflix, just saying. I especially love the portrayals of the Mad Hatter by Johnny Depp and in the latter, Andrew Lee Potts. 

While I'm on the topic of Alice in Wonderland, I feel like it's a good time to mention one of my favorite artists, (and one of the few modern artists that I keep up with) Julie Dillon. How is this relevant? Julie works especially in digital media, and one of my favorite art pieces of hers is titled Solitaire. She made it for a "Alice: Madness Returns" art show. I love the colors she uses andher fantastical style. Please check out her other artwork on her website at www.juliedillonart.com 

Now that everyone knows what is going on here, stay warm from the cold (Starbucks doesn't hurt), enjoy life, and Merry Christmas (or at least Happy Holidays)!!! 

The Raven

Hey guys, Alex (Tally) here. I know it's been a couple of months since I've been on here, but you know, things happen. So, I'm going to make a useful contribution to this blog that I've been dying to put somewhere. 

I recently took a trip via airplane, as I often do. While flying, I downloaded a movie on mommy dearest's kindle fire so that I could watch it. That movie just so happened to be The Raven. I've been wanting to see the said movie for some time, especially since Edgar Allan Poe is one of my absolute favorite authors of all time. I adore his work, and after visiting the Edgar Allan Poe House in Philadelphia last summer, I have also grown to appreciate his difficult, sorrowful, and strife-filled life as well. Here's a brief summary (according to IMDb) of the movie, in case you aren't familiar with it:

When a madman begins committing horrific murders inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's works, a young Baltimore detective joins forces with Poe to stop him from making his stories a reality.

Intense, I know. I'll admit, I never read any type of description/summary of The Raven before settling in to read it. That was my first mistake. I actually expected this movie to be a theatrical version of Edgar Allan Poe's popular poem The Raven. Stupid me, I know. Naturally, I figured out the plot not too far into the movie. It took me a little while to accept this plot since it is extremely far-fetched and very historically inaccurate. Those were my two major problems with this movie. I know, it's a work of fiction based (very, very) loosely on fact, but...I don't know. I feel that if Poe could be with us today to watch this movie, he would laugh, or perhaps scoff at the way in which Emily, his wife (or, in the movie, fiance) is portrayed. Then again, he was never a very predictable fellow, so maybe he would love it and think it was a charming representation of his life. However, I seriously doubt that.

Here's some major points at which the movie was historically inaccurate:

1. Poe was not a raving drunk. Sure, he was arrested for public drunkenness a few times and kicked out of a few taverns in his life, but he wasn't a crazy man whose very life revolved around a bottle of whiskey. That's exactly what his character is like in the movie, however.

2. At the time of their marriage, Emily was only thirteen. You take a look at Emily in the movie and tell me she's thirteen. I didn't think so. She wasn't intended to be thirteen in the movie, and I know it would have otherwise been ridiculous if they hadn't tweaked that detail, but it just sort of...bothers me.

3. Anabel Lee was written after Poe's wife's death. In the movie, it is presented to her as a love poem; historically, this is not the case.

4. In the movie, it seemed to me that Poe only wrote stories for money and to make a living. I know that many authors do this, but there must be some passion behind the stories or they are meaningless. Poe obviously had this passion, but I did not feel this reflected in the movie. He seemed to magically conjure up a poem or story when he needed some extra cash. Some of his struggles with getting his works published were reflected in The Raven, and I did like that. He lived most of his life in poverty, but that wasn't focused on much in the movie. This wasn't a movie about his life, so I guess gritty details like that aren't completely relevant, but it still would have been nice.  

5. The publication of some of his works were out of order. I know, I'm probably the only one who would catch this, but I just thought it should be said. It doesn't take away from the movie at all; it's just a little historical flaw.    

I did think that the director did a fabulous job of showing how unfortunately misunderstood Poe was during his life. People took him as a madman who was to be ignored; many people though him an atheist  and everyone thought him politically incorrect. He didn't care, though, and I though that this movie overall did a very good job of displaying that.

As for a horror/detective/mystery type movie, I though The Raven was very good and original  It almost reminded me a bit of Urban Legend, but just a little bit. In Urban Legend the characters are murdered based on urban legends, and in The Raven people are murdered based on Edgar Allan Poe's stories. About halfway through the movie, Poe's beloved Emily is kidnapped by the murderer and hidden somewhere, and Poe must find each dead body, receive a clue from each, and find Emily based on the clues before she dies. If you have a substantial knowledge of Poe's works, you will probably recognize most of the murders and may be able to identify which murder goes with which story. If you have a very vast knowledge of Poe's life story and his works (not to toot my own horn, but I just so happen to fall under this category...) then you will most likely be able to figure out who the murderer is, where he/she has hidden Emily, and which story the final scenario is based on about three-fourths of the way through the movie (at least, that was about when I figured it out). I was watching The Raven with my mother, who majored in English and literature in college. We exchanged predictions throughout the movie, and she had some good ideas as well. It's been a long time since she's read Poe though, so she said that this movie was a good "memory refresher". 

The acting in this movie was mostly mediocre, except for the part of Edgar Allan Poe, played by John Cusack. He is an amazing actor and did an awesome job. It wouldn't have hurt him to understand Poe's genius a little better perhaps, but overall, he did a pretty good job. 

All in all, The Raven wasn't a bad movie at all. Historically speaking, well, it wasn't very accurate and was extremely far-fetched and exaggerated. But if you're looking for an entertaining movie based loosely on an iconic literary genius, you may want to look into The Raven. 

Trick or Treat

I don't know about y'all but my October started out very cold. It's starting to warm up now and I'm super excited for Halloween! To celebrate the fun holiday, here's a neat video about the history of all Hallow's Eve. Enjoy!

What Blog? Oh, Right!

Now it must be that our 5 adoring fans have been dying without posts from our amazing blog. Tally and I have been crazy busy. So in other words, school has started. I can't believe the summer went by so fast. One moment I'm saying bye to friends on the last day of school, and the next, I'm hauling around an outrageously heavy backpack overflowing with school supplies.

As if school weren't enough, I'm now nearing the middle of my cross country season. I realize it varies from high school to college as well as by region, but here in Texas we begin having meets in September and continue to run until about the beginning of November, depending on how far you go from District to Regionals. For training we've been running since the week after school ended. So I can easily say I've been running 20+ miles per week during the school year with a considerably larger mileage during the summer.

That basically sums up my recent schedule, running and tons of homework. Hopefully, I'll make it to Thanksgiving break without too much trouble. On the bright side of things though, I watched Urban Legend with a couple of friends this past weekend. The movie is a late 90's cheesy horror film where a crazy serial killer is murdering people using urban legends. It's pretty scary, especially to a scaredy cat like me, but the best thing about it is the main guy is played by Jared Leto! If you don't know who he is, please, find out, now. The lead singer for 30 Seconds to Mars does a great job as well as having an amazing voice.

So hope everyone's having a good September. I'm probably going to continue being busy but at least I have a great vampire playlist I can listen to on Spotify. (check it out, Vampire.) ¡Adios!

Greetings, good civilians!

  It's been a while (five months, to be exact) since either Savannah or myself has written on this blog. 

That sounds like something I would do.

First came the excitement of the end of school, then summer, and - BAM! - Tally & Shay's World is dead. Well, this is still our world, and I intend to keep it that way. Savannah is flying up here to see me, and she'll be in at 10:00 - tonight. Yeah, late, I know. But we do what we've got to do to see each other (also, she recently had a birthday, so happy birthday Savannah!). Maybe when she's here (for two weeks, to be exact) we can update the blog. Sorry, kiddos, but I really don't know what's going to happen here. Our fanbase is, what? Like five people? Yeah, that's what I thought. So anyways, I just wanted to update y'all on what's going on here. We're not dead, we've just been in hibernation for a while. Yeah...lame excuse, I know. 

P.S. - I'm going to use this space to advertise my Tumblr blog that's been going  strong for a few months now. It's all my original photography, and I'm rather proud of it. :) Follow me, or, if you don't have a Tumblr, check it out!

http://alexwalkerphotography.tumblr.com/