A Charlie Brown Parody

As many may know, I am part of the Brashier Middle College Newspaper. It has been a while since I posted on here, but time for another story!

So recently, I have started with a new video for the newspaper. We are doing a parody of A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. I have received an understudy named Isaac Lipe who is helping me with many videos in and out of school. For this video, we had 7 different people (including myself) act as various characters form the episode. I played the role as franklin who was more of a side character in this video. We filmed at one of my mom's rental houses.

Normally, in the Peanut series, Charlier Brown had some trouble saying to people and was kind of bullied. Even though he was, he just accepted it and did nothing about it. However, in our video, we had Charlie Brown just flat out saying no and fighting back. One of the scenes, Peppermint Patty (Lauren Cain) insults him about the Thanksgiving "Feast" that he prepared because it was just toast, popcorn, gummy worms, and pretzel sticks. In the actual video, Charlie runs away, but in my video, we have him start a food fight because he didn't like how peppermint patty was treating him.

I think that the video will be fun to edit because I enjoyed making it as well. Until next time!

-Dan

Joining Generations Winner!

I am part of the Brashier Middle College Newspaper crew and there was a contest that was available for any newspaper staff member to participate in. I decided to participate in it. The contest was called "Joining Generations". For it, you had to do a multimedia story on someone at least 60 years of age. I decided to do a video story because I am the absolute best at creating a video than anything else that entails newspaper. The story also had to have a small writing portion with my video and I had my editor, Mary Alice, and my newspaper Advisor, Mrs. Yon help me write that section of the story. I did my story on a local musician known as Ted Dillard. He has been all over the world and played with so many people and just an amazing person overall! I finished my video and the writing section just in time and I turned it in. When our school went to the SCSPA conference about 3 weeks ago, they were handing out the awards and I ended up winning FIRST PLACE! I was so astonished that I literally cried! Not only was I happy that I won the award, but I learned so much about someone who is so influential and I was able to show that to so many people!

Xspander A Revolutionary Case

Probably something that not many people know is that a small private investor from Chicago named Charlie Corry has created a revolutionary phone case for the iPhone. The iPhone is notorious for having a horrible battery expectancy, storage space, and the ability to be charged because Apple always makes the new phones with different chargers. This new case almost solves all of it! It is called the Xspander case and was created to counteract Apple's schemes to make money. This case allows you to have a micro SD card slot on a iPhone 4 or any higher generation phone which is removable and easily stored anywhere! This allows you to not only have up to 64gb of extra memory without paying for a new phone, but it also allows the user to easily maneuver their storage on their phone without going through Apple's complicated processes. Not only does the case extended your storage but it also extends your battery! Now there are many cases that have an extra charge or battery so that way your phone can last you all day and I actually have one, but the fact that Mr. Corry also incorporated the micro SD card slot and several other features is insane! When you turn on your iPhone, it shows that second batter icon at the top of your screen . The case also makes any iPhone 5/5s charging port into a previous generation charging cord, so this means if you have an iPhone 5/5s and you have this case on it, the charging port is the same as to the ones used with the iPhone 4/4s and earlier generations. This can seriously cut Apple down because they have become so large that the government has started to watch them closely, so that way they don't become a monopoly. The case makes the phone 6.3mm thicker than an iPhone without a case which is next to nothing! This case is actually really affordable compared the rest of its market. I would highly suggest anyone who has an iPhone 4 or higher to get one of these cases!

Handlebar Closes Its Doors

          In downtown Greenville, SC, there is a local bar/stage known as the Handlebar. It has been in business for so many years! It was here before I moved here almost 8 years ago! I have been to it several times and the Handlebar is one of my favorite places in downtown Greenville. They have very good food, drinks, music, and talent that goes in and out of that place.
          However, The Handlebar will be closing on April 30th. Many people are very disappointed and wonder why the place is going to close. WYFF4 conducted some interviews and they were told that the main reason they are going to close is because they haven't payed their rent in almost 3 years. Their rent monthly is $5,691. The Handlebar has 5 owners 3 out of the 5 refused to be interviewed.
          In other news, they posted on their website that they will be reopening on September 15th at a new location. Many people are excited for this, but no one knows where they are going to reopen. When they posted that they were going to close, they also announced their reopen. One of the owners said "The Handlebar will reopen Sept. 15, 2014 at a new location. Between now and then, The Handlebar plans to pack so much talent and fun into its schedule that people will be talking about it until the unveiling of a new Handlebar."

R.I.P. Flappy Bird

                 In May of 2013, a private entrepreneur released a game by the name of Flappy Bird. Flappy Bird did not reach it's true popularity until around December. It was widely known for being for addictive and very agitating. The game had about 50 million downloads before it was taken down. Flappu Bird was a platform game that looked exactly like Mario in my opinion. You had to push on the screen and the bird would flap its wings. You had to navigate between two pipes that looked exactly like something from Mario and there was a very small space between the pipes. Each time that you tapped the screen the bird would go up a little bit, but it was like there was a 1,000 pound dead weight on it.
                 The game was eventually taken down on February 9th. There was several reasons why the inventor took the game down, but I know that he had received thousands of hate messages a day. Not only that, but there was a killing over the game on who could get the higher score. There was two teenagers, one 17, one 16. They were playing a head to head game to see who could get the higher score. The older brother won and so the younger brother took a knife, stabbed his 17 year old brother 17 times, when his high score was 17. The inventor never said the exact reason why he took it down, but he did say "I can't take it anymore."

MBW Drum Company

                MBW Drums is a local drum company out of Greenville South Carolina. MBW is owned and operated by Michael Bouvier. He is a local common working man and has over 20 years of custom wood making experience. MBW is a very unknown drum company. I personally have only heard of them through my drum teacher, Kevin Heuer, and he is a very close friend to Michael and he is endorsed by MBW. I have personally played on a snare drum made form MBW and it sounds absolutely perfect! I have never heard a better snare then what MBW makes!
                MBW makes custom drums which is fairly rare in today's days. When I say custom drums, I mean be able to customize everything of the drum. The size, the color, the lettering on the drum, etc. Everything that is required to make a drum, you can customize. Not only that but, MBW uses quality everything. They use evans drum heads on all of their drums which is a top of the line drum head company.
                 Not only do they make their drums, but they make their own hardware too! Hardware is the whole thing that holds anything from cymbals to actually holding the individual drums together. MBW can and will produce nothing except quality drums. Actually, for my senior project, I am wanting to build a drum set from MBW. My drum teacher said he could definetely arrange, so I guess all I have to do is wait. All I can say is, whether you are across the city, nation, or across the world, get a MBW kit if you play drums. They are amazing quality and as long as you take care of them, they will last you forever!

Mophie Mania

                Recently, I have noticed that a lot of people, including myself, have changed their phone case from the standard otter box, to a Mophie. Mophie is a phone case company and all of their phone cases come with a built in charger! That's right! An entire extra batter charge on top of the one that your phone has. It comes in quite handy and I personally love it! I have the Mophie Juice Pack Pro Outdoor Edition. This is one of the most expensive phone cases that they have. It costed myself 150$. I actually spent more on my phone case then my phone. It was definitely worth it though! There have been countless times where I have been nowhere near a phone charger and I realized that I had my back up charge still.
               Another cool feature is that the case makes all phones compatible with a universal USB cord. This is a huge deal because if you have the iPhone 5 or just any iPhone, it makes the phone to where you could use the android cord. Now obviously the android is not the only phone that uses the USB, but it is one of the most popular. Any Samsung phone has a universal USB input and many others do as well. With this ability, you can get past apple's attempted scam to try and make you buy an entire different cord and you can use a cord that is just about anywhere.
                 Mophie does not just make phone cases for the iPhone. They also have juice pack cases for the Samsung Galaxy S 4 and s III. They also have several different products such as power stations, a small rechargeable battery and different holders and such for apple products. Mophie has many different cases and while yes there are going to be somewhat expensive, you don't have to go as far as I did and buy one of the most expensive items on their website. Many different Mophie products are available at retail stores such as Radio Shack and Best Buy. I would personally highly suggest that you, the viewer, go out and research them and if any of their products interest you, buy them. All of their products are nothing but pure quality and if something does break, Mophie offers a one year warranty on all of their products.