Rob and a Wall. What does that make YOU think about?

We joke about Lower Alabama, but we do it with love. To tell you the truth, it's not that bad. While we definitely don't have all the fancy-schmancy things that a New York or a Los Angeles has, we work with what we've got.

And what Dothan, Alabama, has is the officially sanctioned vandalization of public property.

Boy, thug life sure loses it's edge when it's okie-dokie with The Man.

No, Dothan doesn't have gangs who tag our buildings (which we are very thankful for). What we do have are a bunch of downtown buildings with murals all over them. In fact, Dothan is a "Mural City." A local artist has painted 19 murals on buildings, each depicting a different piece of Wiregrass History.

Here's one honoring the Peanut, featuring Dr. George Washington Carver and the National Peanut Festival:

And another depicting the abduction of Elizabeth Stewart Dill, the only female survivor of an Indian attack on a U.S. Army supply boat:

Grey gets to work in a building that has BOTH sides painted with murals. One side shows the oldest African Methodist Episcopal Church in Alabama:

And the other side has Country Music legends:

Here is my favorite mural, dedicated to that most noble of animal--The Mule.

"Hey, Shrek, I'm on a mural!"

Ok, so while each mural showcases an important piece of Wiregrass history, some of them are pretty funny, like The Ode To Mules above. Another one you have to love is the Turpentine mural. Yes, that's right--an artist spent weeks depicting the once-great importance of turpentine. We hope everyone can appreciate the irony of it taking weeks to paint a mural about turpentine.

Turpentine, while a very important part of Wiregrass commerce back in the Stone Age, is kind of boring. We wish that they would let us choose some of the mural subjects. Then you would have awesome murals like this one:

OMG, Taylor is such a showoff.

Now this mural would really pull in some tourism.

Reason #2 Rob Should Visit Lower Alabama: Charitable Electronic Bingo

*Tonight is the night of George Clooney's star-studded charity telethon for Haiti. Since Rob is involved, it will obviously be a success. Or will it? LTR's Version of Tonight's Telethon . Anyway, in the spirit of "charity" comes today's post. Prayers to Haiti and good luck with the telethon, Rob! I can't watch it, and I will explain why not on Monday--Grey*

Is Rob a betting man? We're not totally sure. Of course, he IS currently dating Kristin “Sure Thing” Stewart*, so maybe he’s not into taking risks. On the other hand, he had to know that the odds of being able to handle her mullet were 50-50, and he took that action anyway, so maybe he is. If that is the case, then Rob The Gambler would have a great time in Lower Alabama, partaking in our famous Charitable Electronic Bingo.

Just like Las Vegas. Except not.

A little bit of background:

Charitable Electronic Bingo (or as the blue-haired old ladies down here lovingly pronounce it, “bang-o”) is a big issue down in the Wiregrass at the moment. See, gambling is sometimes illegal/sometimes legal in Alabama (you have to check daily to know for sure, it is very ambiguous), but bingo for charity is ok.

Now, by bingo for charity, we think what the Alabama government means is like what they do down at the Shriners Hall—smoky, crowded rooms, with older ladies sitting elbow to elbow, 12 to 24 bingo cards laid out in front of each lady, purple bingo marker firmly gripped in the right hand, teal bingo marker in the left hand (you can daub twice as fast that way!), cigarette dangling from ruby red lips. All eyes glued to the monitor, watching for the next ball to pop out, hoping—nay, PRAYING—that it is B 14, the one square needed to achieve the elusive diamond shaped B-I-N-G-O. Ahh, sweet, sweet victory for those ruby-lipped, double-daubing ladies. And for the Shriners Hospital, who gets all the proceeds from the event.

One of my favorite Roseanne episodes of all time--when Roseanne gets addicted to bingo. Double-dauber style.

I’m betting that Rob would fit right in at the Shriners Hall. I can see him now, with his one bingo card (maybe two, if he’s hasn't had too much to drink already), bingo marker in right hand, Hot Pocket in left hand (they have a microwave in the back), cigarette dangling from perfectly kissable lips that suddenly declare “BINGO!” because he just won the first round with ball N 41 and is declared Bingo King for the rest of the night. (That means every time N 41 is called out, one of the bingo bosses shouts out “Pay the King!” or something like that, and the King gets $50! So it pays to be the Bingo King.)

I just wanted to post this incredibly hot new picture of Rob. I don't know how I'm going to make it relate to bingo. Oh wait, I just typed bingo. So now it relates.

And even though everyone in the entire building looks right at him and grumbles “Got damn” (correct spelling—that is how it sounds when old southern people say GD) every time someone yells “Pay the King!”, no one would have any idea who the hell you were. Because they’ve probably never seen Twilight, or Harry Potter, or Little Ashes. (I can almost guarantee you they’ve never seen Little Ashes.) You’ll just be the Thursday Night Bingo King to them. I know you wouldn’t mind the anonymity.

And Dali was his name-o.

But we were talking about Charitable Electronic Bingo, right? Sorry. Well, CEB is nothing like Shriners Bingo. It’s more like slots, apparently. You just press a button, and your bingo card on the screen fills up electronically. If you have 5 in a row, you win! There’s this brand new, huge bingo pavilion that just opened up down here, and boy howdy, it’s hopping all the time. People are lined up to play the slots, I mean, bingo, and to mix and mingle with country music’s finest—George Jones, Lorrie Morgan, etc. Oh, that's because it’s a COUNTRY themed bingo pavilion. Open 24 hours a day, seven days a week to cater to Lower Alabama’s finest compulsive gamblers and folks just out for a good time.

So if Rob comes down on a Thursday, we can take him to the Shriners Hall for some traditional “bang-o”. We’ll stay there until they kick us out (which is 10pm, by the way) and then we’ll head down 231 South to the all night electronic bingo pavilion, turn $20 into $43.50, get sloshed on Sutter Home served chilled in a plastic cup, and JAM OUT to Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler” all night long. “You gotta know when to hold ‘em…know when to fold ‘em…”


*We don't know if KStew's nickname is really "Sure Thing." We are not privy to whether or not she puts out. We just thought it was funny.

UPDATE: In the 10 seconds between finishing this blog post and checking out Twitter, Rob must have read this. He totally has his Electronic Bingo look nailed.

Our Bloggy Heroes

The most awkward part of a teenager's day--lunchtime

Imagine that it is the first day of high school...you walk into a crowded cafeteria at lunch time, and you don't know a soul. (For a clear mental picture, just imagine Bella's first day at Forks High School, or pretty much any cafeteria scene from any teen rom-dram-edy, because apparently, scenes that happen in cafeterias are very pivotal.)

The Cullens prove that all high school stereotype groups can get along: The Constipated One, The Arty Chick, The Jock, The Bitchy Cheerleader, and The Emo Kid.

You see this table full of fantastically good-looking vampires teenagers, and as you sit down at that lonely, empty table that no one every sits at because it has that wonky leg, you find yourself wishing that, maybe one day, you too could be a part of the in-crowd, the cool kids, the Plastics, the Cullens. If not for the fame and adoration and the social status, then at least so that you could sit at a table where you don't spill your drink every time you rest your elbows on the table top.

Wow. This is a nice cafeteria.

Since we got into the Twilight game after New Moon came out, Andee and I sort of feel like all those new kids in all those movies. There are already established, wildly popular Twilight blogs/websites out there, and here we come with our little podunk blog. Who do we think we are, anyway???

Our lunchroom was about 20 of these babies pushed together. Every other stool was missing, I swear. I don't know who would take them, or why, but they did. I bet Edward wouldn't have looked as sexy not eating at these tables.

When Andee and I would look at those fantastic cool-kid blogs (with their Lisa Frank folders and their hot pink Trapper Keepers with--OMG!--a Spottie Dottie pen/pencil holder that clips in, where did you get that???), we would immediatly begin e-mailing each other back and forth about what we read. We were lurkers, who instead of actually commenting on the BLOG, we commented to each other. Counterintuitive, we know. Those e-mails would turn into day-long conversations, and finally Andee told me that we had to write a blog, because if we were spending all that time talking Twilight, we might as well do it publicly--bloggy style. Yeah, I said it.

The Trapper Keeper. Mine was just as sexy.

So we really wanted to give shout-outs to all the blogs that really led us to creating our own. We do this, not only to honor our Twilight Bloggy Heros, but also to make sure that they know that we are not copying what they do. Because I remember how annoying it was to see little freshmen show up at a senior party, and we don't want to get kicked out of the senior Twilight Blog party for disrespecting our elders. (Did you guys feel like that in high school, or is it just a southern thing?) Oh, and also, we don't want to drink out of a beer bottle that someone has peed in, which, for the record, NEVER happened to us.

Freshmen would get dropped off at our parties. Which is weird, because they were in fields. How do you convince your parents to drop you off in the middle of a field? We would always set fire to something, the boys would never let us use their truck radios for booty music, and you had to sleep in your car. "Sure, son, I'll drop you off right here on the side of this lonely, country road. Riiiiiight."

Anway, so that UC and Moon from Letters don't have to ask themselves who the HALE we are, or STY and JJ from Twitarded don't start calling us "corncob knobs" (a southern addition to your creative cursing book!) behind our backs, here is a run down of all the people we look up to in the Twilight blogging world:

Letters to Twilight and Letters to Rob
Twitarded
Twicrack Addict
Robsessed


You guys bring awesome to people every day, and while we are really just doing this blog for our own personal satisfaction and love for Twilight, we hope that maybe someday, someone out there will want to read our blog like they read y'alls!

The Origin of WTFYall: The Second Part of Part One (seriously, people?) or Andee and Grey Meet Twilight. And Like It.

Grey's turn at the mike...

So Andee had been telling me about these books, the Twilight Saga, early in 2009. “Oh mah gaaaaah,” I thought (and that’s a pretty accurate description of how it actually sounded, to be honest), “No. No. I will not read a stupid series of YA romance novels about teenage VAMPIRES. No."

But Andee was smart: she wasn’t too persistent or anything. Never annoying. Yes, even then, in the early days of our Twilight obsession, she understood innately how to lure others into the fandom. I put her off, because at the time I was reading the collected works of Jane Austen. *Andee: Blah, blah, blah* Jane Austen versus Twilight…hmm…who do you think won? Oh, I was so foolish at the time.

This was the man I was in love with at the time. I mean, besides my fiance. Err...right.

You see, I was a book snob *Andee: VERY MUCH one*. My family and I have always been avid, I mean AVID, book collectors. We have books out the yinyang at our house. *Andee: she's being very honest here people!!! They have them under the coffee table, stacked under the dining room table, and literally up the wall* Why would I want to read Twilight when I could take my pick of meaningful literature? And don’t even get me started on the MOVIE…I had heard that it had A-W-F-U-L acting, *Andee: sorry, I love KStew...but she was def a mouth breather*, and if there was one thing that I was more snobby about than books, it was movies. And Bad Acting is my number pet peeve when I expect to be entertained.

Bella must have sinus problems. (Note: Bella rocked it in New Moon. MUCH better, KStew!)

Anyway, in May of 2009, Andee, her husband, me and my fiancé went on a trip to the beach. “You have to promise me that when you’re laying out (and by “laying out,” she really meant “sitting with every single body part hidden in the shade of your umbrella because, for a southern girl, you’re awfully pale”) that you’ll read the first part of Twilight. I promise that you’ll love it.” And since it was such a pretty day, and I was having such a good time, and she had stolen all my other reading material was so nice about it, I agreed.

Unfortunately, I can’t say that the Twilight fairy sprinkled her magic dust on me then, on a beautiful sunny day on a white sandy beach with the clear ocean in front of me. That would be too poetic, too perfect. Nope, the addiction to Twilight came later that night, when we were all getting ready to go out to eat and I suddenly got sick on my stomach. I mean SICK. Everyone else was looking forward to eating out, so I sent them on without me (in retrospect, such a Bella thing to do, right?) And after hurling my guts out all night long, the ol’ stomach finally settled down. I sat outside on the balcony to wait for everyone, in the cool night air, listening to the waves crashing into the beach, with Twilight in my lap. And it made me feel SO MUCH better. It...dare I say it? Healed me. *Andee: Yes....I brought goodness to your life...well Stephenie did anyway. But I helped*

Best Friends Forever.

The Origin of WTFYall: Part One, or Andee and Grey Meet Twilight. And Like It.

Andee first, cause she's the reason this whole thing started:

Soooooo...I was sitting at home bored and sleepy one day (ok, fine. I called in sick to work. What about it?) I scanned the pay per movies on my TV, and there it was...Twilight. I thought, "Well, I'll try it and see what everyone is talking about." I was immediately glued to the TV, ya'll, and I still can't really describe what happened, but there was SOMETHING about that movie! *Grey: And the "something" is Robert Freaking Pattinson. It's always been Robert Pattinson.* So after it went off, I waited 5 minutes and watched it AGAIN, of course. When my husband walked in on the second viewing, I automatically told him that it was the first time I had seen it. Funny thing is, I don't remember him even asking about it...maybe it was my first moment of Twi-induced guilt.

Do you remember where you were when YOU first saw this poster?

After that, I tried not to act like a scary freak for the hubby's sake, so I remained calm until I could make it to the local Wal-Mart *Grey: A southern tradition, for sure. Thank God for Wal-Mart* to pick up Twilight the very next day. Umm...it gets a little fuzzy after that, because I can't really remember the next 6 days because it was a whirlwind of reading all 4 books, page after page, chapter after chapter, Twilight to New Moon to Eclipse to Breaking Dawn. My husband remembers it VERY well though. I didn't cook, or clean, or even remotely look in his direction for that whole week.

I would call my aunt (who had already read the books) to convince her to tell me what happened next. It was literally KILLING me. *Grey: She's not kidding. She MUST be told everything. There is not a spoiler out there that she hasn't pestered out of me. Eclipse spoilers? She made me spill them. Remember Me ending? She knows it. She even made me tell her what her Christmas present was.* Then I cried when Breaking Dawn was finished. But then I remembered that I could read it again another time, and another time, annnnnd another time. Just to make sure I got it, you know? And my husband would just look at me and say, "You're ridiculous!" every time I would start the series over again.

Do you remember where you were when you first saw THIS poster? I remember where I was shortly after viewing it for the first time--on the floor laughing.

So that's my story. But it continues with Grey and how I seduced her into reading Twilight. It was tough, let me tell you. I'm pretty proud of myself, because I've successfully "turned" at least 4 people, so I guess I'm someone's Carlisle (or Esme, because she's a girl...and I'm a girl. But I still love me some PFach.)

Are YOU someone's Carlisle? How many have YOU turned? Tell us about your first Twilight experience!