Community

For two exceptional hours on March 3, left-click's Gutter Ball Z bowling team took to the lanes at Spare Time Northampton for the Bowl for Kids' Sake Masquerade Bowl. The event, which was also held last year with great success, raises money for the Hampshire County agency of Big Brothers Big Sisters. Bowlers wore masks, boas, beads, and, in one case, a wizard costume while the alley boomed with music and party lights.

You never know what you're going to get when you randomly pick a winner for a raffle, but we couldn't be happier with the winner of our Holiday iPad Raffle. Meet Lisa MacDonald. Lisa is a senior at Northampton High School where she is the Secretary of their chapter of the National Honor Society and president of Model UN. In fact, the list of awesome stuff Lisa does never quite seems to end; she speaks Chinese and has studied Latin, she got her black belt in Taekwondo and she throws shot put and discus, which she will continue to do at Oberlin College in Ohio this fall! Lisa entered our raffle after seeing it in Thornes' email newsletter. She hasn't used an iPad too much, except playing Fruit Ninja on her Mom's. She told us that's the first thing she's going to do on hers, now that she has one, and is also looking forward to seeing how it can be utilized in the classroom this fall.

Thanks again to everyone who entered, and let's all wish Lisa the best of luck in school this fall!

Ice Cream in The Underworld with a Pair O' Dice City Roller!

We spent last weekend at the awesome Twist Fair, a twice annual alternative craft fair here in Northampton, MA. We set up a green screen, handed people some goofy props and took their pictures as they entered the fair. We then dropped them into The Underworld, shot them to The Moon or sent them to the Beach, and uploaded the photos to Facebook throughout the day. It was a total blast! Huge thanks to Twist for partying with us, and thanks to the Pair O' Dice City Rollers for roping people into the booth and posing with them!

You can see all the photos in this Facebook album, or hit "Read More" to see some of our favorites!

If you're a member of the Western MA community you've no doubt heard the sad news that local fixture Pleasant Street Video is closing its doors for good. But their invaluable library of films, many rare or out of print, is not lost. In a brilliant move they're currently accepting donations from the public to move them over to the Forbes Public Library just down the street. You can even pick the specific title you'd like to donate. left-click did our part for the geeks by donating the entire series of Robot Chicken, and also dabbled in cultural preservation by donating a number of important musical films- Lou Reed's Berlin, The Monkees' Head and Frank Zappa's 200 Motels. So please consider doing a good deed and becoming a part of local history by donating. There's lots of good stuff left (CQ, Louis CK's Shameless and the 1966 Batman film, some of my absolute favorites, are all still available as of this writing), and PSV is still adding new films to their database. Hit "Read More" to see videos of the films we donated!