Jon wants to get into music in the worst way. And that’s pretty much how he does it.

 The young Brit (Domhnall Gleeson) is sitting on a seaside bench when he sees EMS workers pull a man out of the surf. “Our keyboardist is trying to drown himself,” another onlooker tells him matter-of-factly. The stranger goes on to say that he’s worried the suicide attempt will endanger the gig their band has that very night.

 Sensing an opportunity, Jon blurts out that he plays the keyboard, and he’s immediately invited to sit in on the club date. Then, even though the gig goes disastrously, he quickly becomes a regular member of the band with an unpronounceable name and a frontman who wears a big, cartoonlike head.

 Thus begins Frank, a droll tale based, if ever so slightly, on a fictitious character who once appeared on British television.

 Directed by Lenny Abrahamson (What Richard Did), Frank is inspired by Frank Sidebottom, a satirical, fake-head-wearing character portrayed by comedian and musician Chris Sievey. In fact, the script was co-written by Jon Ronson, who layed in the late Sievey’s rock band.

When he looks at senior Alana Gaither, Otterbein University football coach Tim Doup doesn’t see the first female football player to score points in the Ohio Athletic Conference or the holder of the female record for the Ohio High School Athletic Association’s longest field goal, according to MaxPreps.com.

 What Doup sees is a great place kicker. Nothing more. “As an athlete, she is no different than anyone else, to be honest,” says Doup, whose team opens the season Sept. 6 against St. John Fisher College in Rochester, N.Y. “At first, it was a little different. You do get some reactions from the guys. ‘Is this for real?

Do we really have a female kicker?’

 “Now I forget sometimes I have a female on the team to be quite honest. The only thing different is she dresses somewhere else. She is one of the guys.”

 “None of my coaches have ever treated me differently,” says Gaither, who made 32 of 40 extra points and 5 of 6 on short-range field goals during the last two seasons with the Cardinals. “I’m a human being who can kick a football and that’s all that matters to them.”

Once you have taken the top-40 cover bands out of the equation, the undisputed king of Columbus music is the jam band. Of the 30 or bands playing in Columbus on any given night, it’s a reasonable expectation that eight or nine of them will be jam bands, playing a brand of music that is now on its third generation.
 What is jam band music, anyway? Basically, it’s rock music which observes the standard structure of verse/chorus/verse during times that vocals are being sung. When vocals are not present, however, a jam band runs through a song’s primary chord progression an undetermined amount of times while one or more members play improvised melodies. There are some predetermined arrangements (typically a short, recognizable guitar melody), but it is largely left to the winds of fate.

 Or, according to their detractors, bands that play long-ass impromptu guitar solos which end only when the singer walks back up to the microphone or the drummer quits.

Ah, owning a record store on High Street--as if daily life isn't tough enough. You've got your one-legged drunken wheel-chair assailant enraged to the point of swinging because you don't want them interrupting a phone call (true story). You've got the infantile college boys who can't form a coherent question but just want you to be their motherly personal shopper--when they're not trying to shoplift. You've got your angry men from the 'hood who are absolutely sure you're a racist because you won't buy their decrepit Bing Crosby 78s found in a dumpster. Oh, I could go on. Strangers can be so strange.
  And then there are the people you know. Specifically, our High Street celebrity slob-gods. They can be a lot worse.