Royals Review

                                        

A song that has been playing on the radio lately and has been very popular is the song Royals by Lorde. I had never heard of Lorde before I heard the song royals. However with not being well known until now, she is very known because of her song royals. Lorde is just Ella Maria Lani Yelich-O’Connor, no wonder she uses a stage name she really does need it. Lorde is from New Zealand, and Royals is her first single that has made her famous.  With the record being released on November 22, 2012, it had already hit number one in 2013. Lorde only being sixteen, she is very young to have such a hit song in a different country than her own. I see Lorde having a strong music career in her future.

This song is so popular because it has an unusual beat that a lot of people seem to like. The beat gets stuck in your head and is never forgotten, which is why so many people know and love this song. I also love this song because it had a cool echo part. This is where Lorde sings Royals then echo’s royals in a higher pitch. If there was one part of the song that everybody knows by heart it would be this echoing part. The echoing happens a lot throughout the song, almost like its apart of the chorus.

This song also has a great meaning behind it. The song talks about how you don’t have to have the best things in life to be happy.  The song talks about how they are living in a motel with barley anything, but they can live like royals depending on how they look at life. A lot of people can relate to these ideas and like how she sees’s life that way too. The music video takes place mostly in a motel room, where her and too guys are making the best of their living situation. They make living in the motel enjoyable because of how they look at life. Overall this song gives off a good vibe and a good meaning too it also. 

Royals Music Video 

Willow Shields

                          

Up and coming actress Willow Shields has made her debut in the Hunger Games series. Willow had been in just a few other movies with very small parts but really became a star when she played Primrose Everdeen in The Hunger Games. The Hunger Games is about a country that is divided up into twelve districts, the districts send one boy and one girl to fight to the finish until there is only one person standing. The movie is based off the book by Suzanne Collins. More Info. Willow Shields plays Primrose Everdeen who originally gets picked to represent district twelve. But her older sister Katniss Everdeen, who is the main character steps in and volunteers for her.   

Even though Willow plays a small part in the movie I think that she did a very good job playing she scared little girl role. Willow, for such a young actor  plays the role very well and convinces the audience that she truly is poor and scared for her life. Since she is so young sometimes it is hard for younger people to act so deeply for something that is all just fake. But nothing is fake about Willow Shields. Willow has a twin sister Autumn and an older brother River. Willow says that the bond between Katniss and Primrose is just like the bond between her and her twin sister so that’s why playing that role isn’t so hard.

With the new Hunger Games movie coming out, Mockingjay, Willow has been getting a lot of publicity lately. Recently I have seen her on the cover of my Seventeen Magazine, which is a magazine for teen girls. Personally I thought she looked gorgeous in her cover picture. Her interview was very good too. I learned things about her that I never had known before. Actually before her appearance in Seventeen I only had known her as the girl from the Hunger Games.
So far I haven’t seen in the news that Willow has gotten herself into trouble, and let the fame go to her head, I just hope it stays like that. I hope she is really down to earth and won’t let the new found stardom get to her like a lot of other stars do. I think that with Mockingjay premiering in about a month her career is only going to rise from here. She is like a mini Jennifer Lawrence in the movie and in real life. Since Jennifer’s career got subcutaneously better after her role in the Hunger Games, it is only likely to think that Willow’s will rise too.

School Lunch: Good or Gross

                      

This year has been full of changes at my high school. With a new principal you would think that there would be a lot of small changes, but really there has only been one really big one that I can notice right away. This change was school lunch. There is a lot more variety in the school lunch this year. In the past there has a lot of variety with all the different stations but this year the main line has drastically changed. Such as last week at school, on each day there was food from a different place in the country. Such as there was waffles and chicken day, Hawaiian Chicken and Rice day, and Philly Cheese Steak day.

I’m definitely not saying that these are the best meals I have ever had in my life, but I’m saying that I like the effort to make the choices different and unique. I personally think that none of the school food is good because frankly its school food, but some days are better than others. Some of the popular food choices are chicken strips, turkey gravy, and bow tie pasta, although the most popular by far is the potato bowl. Potato bowl comes with a scoop of mashed potatoes, gravy, and popcorn chicken. I feel like this meal however has gotten worse from last year because the gravy now is really thin and the chicken just doesn’t have a lot of flavor. I do like however how the school is trying to get us to be healthy by giving us healthy alternatives and fruits and vegetables, but I hate how they took away dessert a few years ago. We used to receive either cake, or cookie dough, or some kind of delicious dessert item. Now the closest thing we get is flavored ice, which happens once in a blue moon.

The other thing that I hate about school lunch is how expensive it is. For just one lunch from the main line it is close to three dollars. If you want something else like burger basket, pizza, chicken patty, or pasta it is close to the same amount of money but you get far less food. This is a big problem because growing high school students, especially the guys need a lot of food to satisfy their hunger. Overall I don’t think that the food is wonderful, but it is gradually getting better, and hopefully we will eventually get better food. 

Here is a link to the school lunches,check it out and be the judge too! 

                           

Scream Acres

                   

With Halloween on its way, a bunch of friends and I went to a haunted house to celebrate the Halloween season. We decided to check out Scream Acres at Bloomsbury. I get scared very easily so it probably wasn’t such a great idea that I went, but it ended up being a lot of fun!  Scream Acres has three scare events, the clown house, the slaughter house, and the corn maze. First you would go through the clown house in groups of up to four. During this scare fest you would walk through the house, which look as if it were a circus tent, while clowns jumped out, chased and scared you. The clown house was kind of confusing because there would be certain ways that you couldn’t go so it was like a maze, where there were dead ends. The only part of the whole clown house that I really didn’t like was a part at the beginning when you would walk through this tunnel that looked like it was spinning, but it actually wasn’t. This just made me really dizzy, and wasn’t even scary. I thought that overall the clown house was the least scary, but then again some of my other friends said that they thought that was the scariest one.

Next you would get into line at the slaughter house. The day that I went to Scream Acres there wasn’t a lot of people there so the lines were relatively short. Also the people that worked at letting people in were really nice and funny so it made the wait a lot more fun. As we entered the slaughter house we saw everything from broken floor boards to pig carcasses. All of you senses were tested in this frightening house. The music and the actor’s voices added to the terror of the slaughter house, because of how creepy it was, and it added to the anticipation. Since the slaughter house was actually a barn, your sense of smell was tested because it actually smelled old, and like you were in a deserted place. I thought that the slaughter house was the scariest feature at Scream Acres, because of all the disturbing things you see in the house.

Lastly you would go through the corn maze. This for me was the most fun, and a lot of random stuff was going on, so there was mostly never a dull moment. Notice how I said mostly never a dull moment; there were a couple of times that there was nothing going on for five or six minutes at a time. But overall the corn maze was a favorite part of the night and would most definitely recommend going to scream acres if you are in for a good scare.

If you don’t like haunted houses however, and would like a more relaxed activity, Bloomsbury has a ton or things to do for all ages.

Cheer Perfection Finale

                                 

Last night I watched the series finale of the TLC show Cheer Perfection. As I wrote in one of my previous blogs, cheer perfection is about a rising level 2 cheer team from Arkansas. Through this television show shows the ups and downs of the crazy sport of cheerleading, it also majorly has to do with the mama drama. On the finale of cheer perfection it takes place at the US Finals in Virginia. This is the last competition for the team, and this is what they have been getting for all season.

Even from the beginning the team is looking to good. In their warm up they are dropping stunts everywhere and not together as a team. While the team is warming up a different cheer team, USA All-stars, the number one level two team in the country come by for a little chat. The whole team comes in and discuss the competition, and make it very known that they are the best. I feel that this isn’t very necessary. I like how the team comes to say hello and wish CTR good luck, but I don’t really think that those are their true intentions. “The girls on the team don’t understand what is going on but us as adults do understand” said head coach Alisha Dunlap. I feel like USA All-stars really only wanted to be on TV and make it known to the country that they were number one.

When CTR begins everything is looking great, all the stunts are perfect, and it looks as if it is the best time they have ever performed their routine. But this good luck quickly ends when a back base, Kylie H, is hit is the nose, making her bleed everywhere. This event had about blood going everywhere had playing as previews since the show first started its second season. I think that they made it sound a lot worse than it really was. Sure they could have been disqualified but Kylie only had a bloody nose, not a broken bone. When the coaches realized that Kylie wouldn’t be able to perform the rest of the routine, James, one of the coaches ran up on stage and helped Kylie off. This is where the panicking begins. Not only were the cheerleaders and coaches panicking, but also the parents. You would think that they would be panicking and worried about Kylie’s nose but half the parents didn’t even know that someone was hurt, they were more worried about if they would get to perform again. The parents went crazy, with many of the moms crying and shouting. One mom said “it’s just not fair”. We later find out that the team can perform again, just they were only be scored after the part where Kylie was taken off stage. You would think that this was a good thing since the first part of the routine was perfect and they get to perform again, but there were still complainers.

After a lot of pep talk from Coach Alisha the team performs for a second time, doing just as good as or better than the first time. All the cheerleaders are so pumped up because they think they have this in the bag, when the coaches get a call from the judges. When you get a call from the judges usually it isn’t good. We find out that CTR has done an illegal stunt and will get a major deduction. The team ends up getting fifth out of nine, and the team is destroyed. This is a lesson on you can think positively, just don’t get to cocky because you can’t win everything.