Important Dates!

At the time of this post, there are only 22 school days left.  22 days till the Senior class is unleashed upon the world.  There are several important dates coming up that you Seniors need to remember.

Graduation Orders – April 26th; if you did NOT pay off what you owed for your cap and gown or other items and have not received any information about what you need to pay, then you should probably talk to the office.

Honor Day – May 11th.  Tell your parents/family/friends so they can be there.  Starts at 9am.

Prom – May 12th.  Get your tux soon (or your dress if you procrastinated).  Papa John’s Stadium in Louisville at 7pm.

Last Day of School – Tuesday, May 22nd.  Finals each day for all students, starting Friday, May 18th.

Senior Trip – Thursday, May 24th.  Holiday World!

Graduation Practice – Friday, May 25th.  Seniors need to be here by 11am to practice walking in for graduation.

Graduation – Saturday, May 26th.  2pm.  Salem High School.

The Butterfly Project

by Caitlin Campbell

Writing or doodling on teens’ bodies has been around for a while.  For some people it is a way to doodle, expressing their self, remembering homework, and things like the butterfly project.

For Elizabeth (Lizz) Conley, it is a way of expressing herself and her art. She not only writes on herself, but on other people as well. One person that she writes on quite frequently is Miranda Palmer. When asked, Palmer said, “I really don’t care. I think it looks cool.”

Some people, like Cyrena Jones write on their hand what homework they have, but for the most part people write a lot of people write on themselves out of boredom. Like Tossie Kinnaman, “It’s just something to do”, said Kinnaman, “I like the way it looks.”

But for others, like Rachel Smith and I, We wrote/write on ourselves for inspiration. For Rachel, she would write inspirational quotes on her arms to “get her through the day”. For me, I am doing the butterfly project. The butterfly project is where you draw butterflies on yourself and name them after people you care about. This is a project for people who self-harm. The people who created the project said that if you cut with the butterflies on yourself, you kill a little bit of the people that the butterflies are named for. For me and others, it works, but for some it doesn’t. If you or a friend, anyone you know, self-harms, give it a try. Whether it works of not, it is always worth a try.

The Vow makes you cry…and cry…and cry.

by Paige DeNardi

In the romantic tale of love found and lost again, Channing Tatum stars as Leo and Rachel McAdams is his beloved wife Paige who sustains serious brain injuries in a car accident and forgets everything about her life since she met her husband. Now she feels the need to reestablish her relationship with her mother Rita (Jessica Lange) and her father (Bill Thornton). Once she does this, she starts to have feelings for her ex- fiancé Jeremy (Scott Speedman) as she can’t remember why they broke up. Now Leo sets out to save their marriage before he loses the love of his life forever.
Personally, I loved this movie. Tatum and McAdams have amazing chemistry together and make you truly believe they are in love. Because of this amazing acting, I guarantee you, if you have a heart that is, that you will cry at least ten or twelve times… in the first twenty minutes. With all the memory loss, falling in love, falling out of love, lying, and sadness, you come out an emotional wreck, but it’s worth it.
There are also plot lines within the plot lines that leave you staring at the screen yelling, “Come on Paige! Just realize the truth and go back to Leo!” I won’t spoil them, but there is a deception in her family that made her walk away from them when she married Leo. Now, she starts to realize it again, and she’s mortified. Like I said, amazing.

I would definitely recommend seeing this movie. There were even a few men in the theatre that were crying and enjoying the movie. It’s a less cheesy love story about a man that actually cares for his woman! Some people could learn from this.

The Darkest Hour shows a more realistic alien attack on Earth

by Paige DeNardi

In this Sci-fi alien thriller, beings from another planet, composed of electricity absorbing matter, come to earth to collect our precious metals. In the process they end up destroying the majority of the planet. Now, a group of four young party goers, Sean, Natalie, Ben, and Anne (Emile Hirsch, Olivia Thirlby, Max Minghella, and Rachael Taylor) find themselves lost in foreign Moscow with an evil business stealing maniac, Skyler (Joel Kinnaman), with no human interaction, and having to fight for their very existence.

In the middle of the movie, the five survivors find themselves stumbling upon another human guarded up in an apartment complex. It actually turns out to be two people, Vika and Sergei (Veronika Ozerova and Dato Bakhtadze) who inform them that concentrated microwave beams will injure the alien’s protective “shell” giving them enough time to fatally wound it. On their mission to destroy the aliens, three of the survivors are absorbed, and it’s clearer than ever that these “things” need to die.

The movie was something I personally have never really seen before. Sure, there have been plenty of movies about aliens, but they’re usually green little bobble-heads or human look-alikes who act like robots. These aliens came for a reason. They needed our precious metals for food, and they were definitely different from your stereotypical alien. They were just big orbs of energy, invisible to the human eye. However, something gave them away, and that something is a resource we use every day, electricity. The fact that the surviving five could figure this out, and stayed true to each other after one by one they were picked off by the invaders, made the story that much more relatable. Especially since once you started thinking about it, the information made total sense, and if there really are alien life forms out there, seems like the more realistic option.

I would definitely recommend seeing this movie if you’re into modern day Sci-fi, or really even if you just want to see a movie that won’t make you cry or put you to sleep. The story line is incredibly realistic, the characters act like any person would in that situation, making the movie much more relatable, and it’s something new that many haven’t seen before. What’s there not to love about that?

Beauty and the Beast 3D keeps the Disney magic alive

by Heather Nale

What child didn’t grow up being completely enthralled by Disney films? Boys learning about super strength and doing whatever they can, girls developing unreal expectations about hair and men? But, unfortunately, Disney has lost its spark. The movies and shows that they’re producing are less than satisfactory. Disney is doing all that it can to get viewers back, including bringing back the classics: completely restored and in 3D.
The latest movie to make its second debut on the big screen in three-dimensions is the wonderful tale of “Beauty of and the Beast.” Everyone knows the tear jerking story. A handsome prince doesn’t know how to treat others and mistreats a witch in disguise as a beggar. The prince gets turned into a hideous beast; the only way to break the tragic spell is to get a girl to fall in love with the man behind the furry, scary, evil, nasty, ugly beast. The girl that the most attractive man in town wants, falls in love with this ferocious beast, who desperately needs some anger-management classes. And boom! It’s true love! The beast turns back into a prince at the very last second after defeating the villain. The couple lives happily ever after and all that.
I’m pretty picky about my Disney movies. I still watch them on VHS when I get bored and one does NOT mess with a classic Disney movie. Disney released “Toy Story 3” in 3D and later restored “The Lion King.” I was eager to see both of those movies. “Beauty and the Beast” is my all time second Disney movie (first being “The Lion King”) but it was definitely my favorite in 3D. It definitely had the most effects out of the three movies. I loved the way the silverware popped out as they danced to “Be Our Guest” and the beautiful ball room scene between Belle and the Beast.
Overall, I think bringing the movies back in 3D is a neat thing. Next, the fishy tale “Finding Nemo” will be hitting theaters and I can’t wait to see what that brings!

SHS Drama Club presents The Giver

by Shana Wireman

Last Saturday, January 14th through Monday, January 16th, the play “The Giver” was presented by the Salem HS drama club, directed by Mr. Trueblood. The play is a serious/drama story “reminding me of the Twilight Zone show,” Mr. Trueblood told me.
The play is based in a small community where everything is perfect. There are no pain, feelings, war, or disease. Everybody has to be perfect also and if not then you get the lethal injection.
Chief elder (Claire Shelby) gives speeches to the eleven year olds. Jonas (Kyle Medlock) just turned twelve and is the boy that plays the main actor. He has two best friends that are also twelve: Asher (Josh Worrall) who is clumsy and careless, but a good humored boy, and Fiona (Kelsey Price) who is a sensitive girl that Jonas likes. Since they are twelve they get their lifelong job assigned to them now. This causes them to lose touch with each other. Jonas got assigned to be the next receiver who controls all the past memories from before when they were not perfect. He has to be taught by the giver (Chuck Hedrick) who is in control of the memories now. Jonas has a mother (Katherine LaHue) who is responsible for upholding the rules in the community, father (Phillip Applegate) he takes care of the newly born and a little talkative sister Lily (Sidney Calhoun).
As the play goes on, Jonas learns about how they kill people by lethal injection and how everything is actually really wrong now instead of before. He learns about emotion, love, trees, snow, war, and colors. So he wants to let everybody see and feel these things. Jonas and the Giver make a plan to fake Jonas’ death so he can leave his community and when he does it will send all of his memories to everybody else. As soon as he is about make the great escape and finds out that Gabriel, the little baby his parents have been watching, is going to get the lethal injection. He takes the baby with him and tries to bike ride out of the community. Weeks later he is till bike riding away and is about to starve to death, so he tries to remember the good memories he learned. It’s snowing now and he sees a hill that he remembers from one of his memories and goes up the hill and sees the sled just like his memory. Gabriel and Jonas sit on it and sled down the hill hoping the bottom there will be civilization that accepts him with open arms.
This fabulous play wouldn’t have been done without the helping crew. Sound controls were done by Christian Bowling and Steven Morgan. Lighting was done by Austin Luckett, Steven Morgan, and Ben Strange. The paintings were by Logan Thompson.
The next play will be in Spring in the first weekend in May. They will be holding auditions in mid March if you would like to try out.

My Week With Marilyn is a smash with Smith

by Rachel Smith

As one of my idols, the portrayal of Marilyn Monroe has to be outstanding for me to even begin to enjoy a film about her. Michelle Williams, who played Marilyn in her new movie My Week with Marilyn, captured Marilyn’s beauty, sensuality, and elegance.
Alongside Williams, Eddie Redmayne played Colin Clark, an employee of Sir Laurence Olivier’s, who documents the tension between Marilyn and Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) during the production of “The Prince and the Showgirl”.
The movie is based on a missing week from Colin Clark’s journal titled “The Prince and the Showgirl and Me.”
This movie was one of the best I’ve seen in my entire life. I was afraid I would be disappointed in Williams portrayal of Marilyn, but I was completely blown away.

Student Council selling chocolate messages for Valentine’s Day

by Tossie Kinnaman

Do you want to give a certain someone something for Valentine’s Day? Now is your chance to do so. During the week before Valentine’s Day (Feb 6-10), you can buy a message paper from a student council member. The council members will be going from classroom to classroom during activity period selling papers. The papers cost $1 and during activity period on February 14, Valentine’s Day, the person you sent your letter to will get the letter and a candy bar that you will be able to choose at the time of writing your message.

“Puss in Boots” continues the story from the world of Shrek and co.

by Paige DeNardi

In the Shrek spinoff Puss in Boots, Antonio Banderas voices the classic children’s character Puss in Boots who goes on a mission to find the magic beans he has been searching for so incessantly for years. Along the way he meets some interesting characters

SADD Members face protestors at Capitol building

by Brittany Campbell

On November 22^nd, the Tuesday before Thanksgiving break for students at SHS, members of the Salem High School SADD group went on a field trip to the Indiana State Capitol building. The members of the group were going to the Capitol building to raise awareness about their county SADD chapters, the attending SADD member’s job being to track down the state representatives from their county and inform them about the activities and goals of their SADD chapters to gain some PR for the group. The members that attended from Salem SADD were; Amber Hollen, Angie Hollen, Brittany Campbell, Kaileen Martin, Lisa Wynn, Nicole Gibson, Tossie Kinnamon, Tracey Hammock, and Tyler Sizemore. They were accompanied by their sponsor Mrs. Jeanne Page. The group met up with other SADD chapters from across the state and their State Coordinator Jamie Vickery to set up a meet and greet with pamphlets about SADD, doughnuts, and coffee to welcome the representatives to work.