april moore skelton

“She looked like she had been riding for years on the very first day I watched her ride,” says snowboarder Lindsea Lumpkin’s father, Tommy. “It was incredible.” 

That was at age 4 - which is not all that long ago, considering Lindsea is now 12. Although Lindsea lists her hometown as Athens, she’s currently living and attending school in Frisco, Colo., enrolled in a special program that allows her to get out of class early some days to go train as a snowboarder. Since she began competing in 2005 - as a second-grader - she’s participated in 24 United States of America Snowboard Association National Championship events, and medaled at 15 of those - and that was when she lived in a place that gets, on average, less than 3 inches of snow a year.

When Nick Prueher discovered the cult-hit TV show “Mystery Science Theater 3000” as a kid, a dream was born: “I thought, these are kindred spirits! They’ve found a way to make fun of bad entertainment for a living. It was something to aspire to: You could be a professional smartass.”

“If you go to a show, and there’s a lot of people there in the audience, and they all like this one band, sometimes it’s a nice idea to just get rid of the band entirely,” says Matt Friedberger of The Fiery Furnaces.

It’s an unexpected proposition from a man who makes a significant portion of his income from live musical performance. Then again, The Fiery Furnaces have a bit of a reputation for undertaking projects that sound like jokes but are entirely serious. The Brooklyn-based group, whose changeable sound and intellectual pop reflect the varied whims and fascinations of brother-sister duo and core members Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger, currently is on tour, performing songs off their most recent albums, “I’m Going Away,” and “Take Me Round Again” (an album of covers of the songs from “I’m Going Away” - more on that later), but there are plans in the works for The Fiery Furnaces to tour to watch other people perform their songs.

Go ahead, stare. In the new exhibit at Athens Institute for Contemporary Art, breasts are front and center, though that’s far from the whole story.

The inside of a teenager’s mind looks a lot like a movie. Everyday events take on profound importance, time seems elastic and relative, and most importantly, there’s a soundtrack, with songs that distill complicated feelings into silver bullets of emotion. 

Is it a wonder that coming-of-age stories, then, make such wonderful films? Not to photographer Christy Bush, whose art exhibit, “Soundtrack to Nothing,” now on display at Ciné, could be the scrapbook from just such a story.

“BIKE,” it says, in letters as tall as a five-year-old. It’s an instruction, maybe. A suggestion? It’s actually quite self-explanatory. It’s a bike rack.

Watching the guys in the Athens band practice, the adults hanging around have so many good things to say about the fellas: how mature they are, how talented and ambitious.

The band, named for its hometown, is made up of four guys younger than 16, and the group has performed dozens of shows, mostly alongside musicians twice their age.

You can hear the pride in their parents’ voices when they talk about these kids, and they’re right - there is a lot of good to say about them. But for their peers - other teenagers who come to the shows they play at festivals, restaurants, gymnasiums - Athens the band could be summed up thusly:

EEEEEEEeeeeeeeee!!!!! (Please forgive if my speech is dated; it’s been a while since I spoke Teenage Girl.)

Take away the foam-covered walls and you’d never know it was only practice to watch Death of the Peanut King play in one of the rehearsal rooms at Nuçi’s Space. The group, made up of Gedia Powell, Jacob Samuelson and Sean VanMeter, is preparing to go into the studio to record their rock opera, “Death of the Peanut King,” to be performed tonight during a showcase at the Melting Point.

Although the Melting Point show is the official debut of their band, they’ve already played two shows, and they look and sound like pros. In the practice room, the group is tearing it up: Gedia is belting vocals, Jacob is wailing on his guitar and Sean is banging it out on the keys and practicing his hype skills. He points at the people standing around the room with a look that says, ” ‘You there, rocking out? Keep doing that! Meanwhile, I’m going to blow your mind with this jamming solo.’ “

Sometimes words are so limiting. There are days when a groan, a sigh, a growl or a sob can get your point across more clearly.

“One of my clients started doing these types of things in her marriage,” says Susan Elizabeth Hale, a music therapist and sound healer from Asheville, N.C. “When there were intense things that couldn’t be solved in words, they would take it into ‘sounding’ - almost like an opera - because it’s easier to just go ‘earrahughahuh’ than to say ‘you didn’t take out the garbage,’ which is really blaming. But if you’re kind of growling, and they’re growling, you’re working it out, then it’s easier to talk.”

Here we have a newspaper article about an art exhibition about newspaper articles.

The premise is unwieldy.

For one, in case you haven’t noticed, print media in general is not doing very well. But talking about that in the paper proves to be awkward. As journalists, our livelihoods are at stake, but we’re not supposed to get personally involved with the story.

Objectivity and all that.