Columbus citizens may assume they now have and will continue to enjoy clean air, soil and drinking water. A group of concerned citizens aren’t so sure, and are currently organizing to make sure the Columbus environment stays healthy.

 This group is working towards passing a local “community bill of rights” in response to the toxic threats caused by fracking in the state. The group is collecting signatures on a Columbus Community Bill of Rights petition, an amendment to the Columbus City Charter, that would ensure the rights of Columbus citizens to a clean environment.

When it comes to “Young Professionals”, Columbus is a mecca of sorts. The Columbus Young Professional Club is the largest YP club in the US with more than 21,000 members. There’s also the Create Columbus Commission, a board of apparently elite young professionals appointed by Mayor Coleman and funded by city taxpayers

Anyone between the ages of 21 to 45 is welcome to join a YP group, but for the most part YP’s have a college degree and a skill that apparently deems them professional.

According to the Mayor’s office, the Create Columbus Commission “strives to make Columbus the nation’s number one place for YPs to live, work, play (and) serves as the community’s foremost thought leader on young professional interests, experiences, and priorities.”

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.