The Up-Beat - Ep. 1 - Spotify discoveries, a daily dose of Dr. Zbrozek, Pizza Olympics & bowling balls

Welcome to "The Up-Beat," where each week a group of Inkspot reporters take a break from breaking news to share what's been making them smile this week.  
B.J. Dumas, Lyra Townsend, Terrion Darnell and Bayli Ferris share what is making them happy this week.

Transcript

BJ Dumas  0:00  
Welcome to the upbeat where each week a group of expert reporters take a break from breaking news to share what's been making them smile this week. I'm BJ Dumas and joining this joining me this week are Lyra sounds and Terry andar now and Billy Ferris, as we tried to put some happiness into the headlines, Terry on why don't you start us off? What's making you happy this week?

TERRION DARNELL  0:19  
Yeah, um, well, I've been listening to like, a lot of music lately. And I think music is just something that keeps me keeps me really like focused. And so it's like a big a big part of my life. And this week, I've been finding on Spotify, I've been finding a bunch of different like new artists and exploring different genres that I wasn't exploring before. And, you know, music makes me happy. So.

BJ Dumas  0:48  
Alright, well, first of all, don't get key what artists you talking about?

TERRION DARNELL  0:53  
Well, the main one this week has been scoring. I don't know if you guys know him. But he's, he makes like a lot of like, melodic, like r&b kind of songs. And that's like the genre that I've been staying with. So it's like scoring. There's a lot of bands. I don't know if you guys know em, but it's just a bunch of like, r&b melodic artists.

BJ Dumas  1:15  
Okay, yeah, like, definitely, I've been exploring different music genres as well, for sure. Because I've been listened to a lot of rock, to be honest. Like, there's just one band that appeals to a lot called Super heaven. They're like, I don't even know how I describe them. But they made really good music. Louder. What about she wasn't making you happy this week.

LYRA TOWNSEND  1:32  
Um, a few things, most of them have actually had to do with like teachers at the school. Going off what you said, every day, since we interviewed Dr. brozik. I've gone up to Dr. brozik, and asked him what song he's been listening to. And we've just gotten, like, closer over talking about that, because we talked about music. And it's really enjoyable. Because when he's, he's such a busy guy. And like, it didn't sound like he, like had time to really, like get to know any of the students he's close with. But it's been really nice talking to him. But my, like, main source of happiness this week, had to do with my band director, Mr. Carter. Band has been really hard for me, I just started this past year on French horn, which is a pretty hard instrument. And like, it's just, it's hard to get to the level after people have been playing their insurance for like five years. And I'm, I've got like six months on them. So it's been a lot of like, challenging stuff, because I'm doing the same like tasks as them. And I get freaked out about it a lot. And Mr. Carter will sit down with me and just be like, You're doing a great job. And I'm really proud of you. And there's a lot of like one on one work that I'm doing with him and our student teacher, Mr. Gray. And it's not even just about like, the actual instrument like I've gotten to know them so well. And, like, I still have that, like, teacher like respect for them. But like, I care about them like friends. Yeah,

BJ Dumas  3:05  
no, it's always definitely good when you get to know your teachers, because sometimes they're pretty cool people for sure. And when they give you that recognition, they just feel so good. So like, I know, every Friday, when they do the little shout outs, I'd be like, hoping my name is gonna be on there one day, that was literally the day today.

LYRA TOWNSEND  3:20  
I didn't get called. But I stood by the phone. It was like, Today's my day, guys, Today's my day.

BJ Dumas  3:27  
I've been thinking like, One day One day is gonna be me, you know, but you know what, we got a couple more months left for that opportunity. So we're gonna see oh, yeah, baby wasn't making you happy this week?

BAYLI FERRIS  3:36  
Well, the first thing that came to mind was there's a new Taylor Swift album coming out, which is, you know, I'm one of those. That's okay, though. That's okay. So, yeah, I'm excited about that. But that's just kind of passing, I guess. So that's like, anticipation, excitement. What's actually been making me happy this week is I'm involved in a club called Young Life that we have here. And that just started up for this semester, this past week, this Monday. And so we had our first club. And that was just super fun to get back into that routine. That's a club that I really enjoy. Just because it's such a community based club, and I am a sucker for community. I love getting to hang out with people. So we did pizza Olympics, which is you call three different pizza places. And you see which one can deliver to you fastest and you like, congratulate all the pizza delivery people when they walk in and it sounds so silly, but it's just so fun. And like those people working it just kind of makes them like, get a little break in their job like Okay, so, but it's really fun to do and just get to hang out with people and so I've I've really, I was really glad that we got to do that and I'm excited for next weeks too. So, okay,

BJ Dumas  4:54  
so tell us about young life like what is that? What do I do?

BAYLI FERRIS  4:56  
So, um, it's honestly just A club where people can come together and hang out. It's Monday nights at 808 at REMAX most the time. Every so often they'll have like events like dodgeball tournaments, or they did like kickball last semester. And they do like the paint war. A lot of people know about color wars. So they do that. And that's really fun. So just those kinds of events are here and there. They usually have some sort of we have a social media. I think it's NCHS in life. not positive about that, though. But all they post about events on there, sometimes there'll be on bulletin boards are throughout classrooms in the school. But yeah, it's just a really fun place to kind of Mondays can be stressful. So it's kind of a place to chill out for the rest of your week and just have something good to do at the beginning of the week to kick it off. Yeah,

BJ Dumas  5:48  
sorry. I was at the kickball tournament everybody's talking about it was the kickball tournament.

TERRION DARNELL  5:54  
As great as, as we, as we wanted to, but it was fun.

BAYLI FERRIS  5:59  
To do that you went, I went I did not play. I know. I'm lame.

My friends went and you dress up in costume for the kickball tournament. And my friends went as they had a bunch of different onesies for different animals. And I had one kid dress up in like, Jesus costume from Halloween and they were Noah's Ark. So they won the costume competition, but I don't even remember who ended up winning the kickball de terian. Um,

TERRION DARNELL  6:24  
no, it wasn't. I think it was the I think it was the Soccer Soccer boys. Yeah.

BJ Dumas  6:29  
Oh, yeah. I think I do remember everybody talking about it's like,

TERRION DARNELL  6:33  
a third year in a row. I think worse. Yeah. Honestly,

BJ Dumas  6:36  
is that gene? Is that technically cheating? Like they play soccer?

BAYLI FERRIS  6:38  
The kicking sport, so yeah, no, no, no,

BJ Dumas  6:41  
that's not that's not fair to me. But you know, whatever, girl, what is it about Taylor Swift as like everybody loves so much.

LYRA TOWNSEND  6:48  
My Okay, so I would not consider myself like a Swifty. But there's definitely songs that like, they get relatable. Like, I know, I'm really drawn to songs that like I relate to, like, those are the songs I always enjoy the most. And there's a few songs that are just like they're really chill, and they're really relatable. And also, the energy around Taylor Swift. And Taylor Swift supporters have always been positive. Like, you know that, like, if you have a friend who's like a Taylor Swift Fan, you can like it's something positive that you guys can talk about, you know? Yeah, I

BAYLI FERRIS  7:26  
think she definitely brings a lot of people together. Like, I think you could say that about basically any music artist. But it's just like, she has such a large loving community surrounding her and people who do like her are very passionate about her. So it just is like, a conversation starter a lot of the times, but I think that she's just so like, diverse, like she's been making music for so long, that it's hard to not find at least one song that you can kind of get down to or cry to or like whatever it is, you know, so yeah, I agree, Lyra. She definitely has like, a good way with lyrics. I think she's a really good lyricist, which is one thing that I really liked about her.

BJ Dumas  8:06  
It's kind of funny that you're talking about the community surrounding Taylor Swift because like, as someone who's not necessarily Taylor Swift Fan, I mean, her old songs used to go crazy. I got a little playlist with some of them. But it's funny because like on Twitter I'll see people like talking bad about tears with and then like the whole Swifty community will come and just like destroy like, I don't know if you all saw what happened like a couple of weeks ago where the one guy was it was on like national news, where I don't think I could talk about what happened on the others podcast, but he wasn't he got like dogs is full government was out there. And then they had like the Supreme Court is talking about like, Yeah, this is unacceptable over Taylor Swift. I was like, That's crazy to be like, I bet the Taylor Swift community is why I feel like the only community that like can stack up to that in the terms of Ride or Die is like, BTS. Yeah. People go crazy for BTS. Maybe Kanye to Kanye is up there too. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Yeah. But I guess something that's been making me happy this week is first of all, like the weather is finally starting to be good again, because that was negative. So we're not at the time that it was negative and zero degrees, and the windshield was like negative 1000 degrees. Oh, yeah, that was like the worst time ever, like you could go outside, but like it was dangerous. Matter of fact, I literally got in an accident while I was in the passenger seat, thankfully. But you got a little accident on the way from school because we were trying to stop at the stop sign and weren't speeding or nothing but like we just hit a sheet of ice and we end up hitting the car in front of us. Luckily, like they said, it's fine. They just laugh which was kind of weird to be honest. But we got off with like no like crazy damage peripheral. But then she had dropped me off at my house and was on the way back to her house. And she called me saying that somebody else had heard the same exact way. I was like, wow, because it was really crazy. I'm glad that that week my car was in the shop because I feel like the parking lot was probably dangerous. The ice will do it for you. Yeah, cuz I know that in Sanchez got a lot of bad drivers. Yeah, not necessarily. It's gonna say I'm one of them, but I definitely seen some bad drivers in the parking lot. So I know they probably got crazy. My

TERRION DARNELL  10:11  
mom took my car away from me. When I got I see last year I got in an accident is that when he took it away? Yeah. I'm not trusted a dragon ice anymore. Oh, interesting.

BJ Dumas  10:21  
I saw that picture. But also something making me happy this week is I finally like I bought right. So that's like the one thing everybody knows about me. So I bought. So I finally bought a bowling ball for like, the first time and like, forever. And the reason that is so expensive. It was like $250. And that was, I mean, as expensive as they get. But I've been trying to buy this for like, weeks, and then I got the flu, then like something else came up. So I couldn't go in and then someone else came in. I've been trying to get this for a minute. So I finally was able to go get it like last Monday. So I finally be able to go boats tomorrow or Saturday. Yeah, tomorrow, for the first time with it. So that's kind of that's, that's exciting to me. You know, it's probably sounds lame or whatever, but I'm excited

LYRA TOWNSEND  11:05  
about it. Okay, so this is I don't know if this is like a stupid question. But it's not really a question. Could you tell us like what it's like to like bowl with the school? Because like it's talked about, but it's not talked about like the process.

BJ Dumas  11:22  
Okay, so bowling with the school is different than most sports, because it's not like a full team. So we would have had a full team but somebody, Landon Corbin, he plays baseball and football here, he got injured, he hurt his elbow, like pitching or something. So he couldn't vote. And then there's another kid named Jordan, who ended up getting COVID. So everybody that was else that was on the team and not been able to bowl. So it was just me. So I went to the regional tournament. And it was it's a little intimidating because you got these big teams that range from like five to 12 people. And then you're on the next lane over and it's just me, it's a little bit intimidating a little bit, but it's a cool experience. And it's fun, because everybody gets really loud. And really, it's kind of like the school students section in there for each school. You would never expected to get out for bowling, because it's bowling. But it's pretty cool to see and it was a good time. I really enjoyed my time Bowling for NCHS

LYRA TOWNSEND  12:15  
that's really that's awesome. Yeah.

BJ Dumas  12:17  
So just for everybody watching the podcast, let us know what's making you happy at all our socials that instead of just Inkspot and next week, we're gonna hear from three more of our reporters to tell us what's been making them happy. Thank you

Transcribed by https://otter.ai