I'm Teasing This Sucker Even if It Breaks Me

Photo courtesy of J. Levinson for blog promotional use only.

This weekend, I will be landing in San Francisco, Calif., for the U.S. Air Guitar National Championships. The event caps off the summer tournament that decides who will represent America at the Air Guitar World Championships in Oulu, Finland, in August.

I will confess I am a bit exasperated as I write this. I'd only put together a complete blog post when Wix logged me out at the moment I was about to publish it. To make things worse, I forgot to paste my draft into an email before I copy-pasted the password to log onto the platform again. Thus losing hours of work. So here I am again, Wix, and fuck you for trying to break me. But anyway. To get back to what I was saying...

Kara's indomitable mindset is as much a part of the award as glitter was a part of her stained-glass mosaics.

I can't remember the last time Kara and I went to San Francisco together. Probably for the air guitar semifinals in 2015. It's funny to think how stressed I used to get when she competed. Or maybe it's not funny. The "stage mom" in me could get pretty intense around her. At any rate, at least this time I won't be worried about whether my wife will advance through the Dark Horse contest and compete in the finals on Saturday, because she's already secured a spot.

--L'Orange, the inaugural winner of the Picante Sparkling Unicorn Warrior Award in 2024.

In the form of the Picante Sparkling Unicorn Warrior Award for the Most Excellent Creative Expression of the Year, an award established in her honor in 2024.

The name pretty much says it. The annual award recognizes the air guitarist who best represents the spirit of its namesake in pushing the art form to its limits. In doing to air guitar what Wix tried to do me, basically. Did they commit to an absolutely bonkers idea? Did they make stylistic choices without seeming to give a shit that it would probably cost them several tenths of a point? Did they do something that made you ask, "Does this person even know if someone is scoring them on a scale of 4 to 6? What the hell are they thinking? And why do I love what they're doing so much?!"

To be clear, the award is intended to be as prestigious as the national title in its emphasis on the purity of the art form. The Picante Sparkling Unicorn Warrior Award is a challenge to competitive air guitarists to elevate air guitar in ways that echo beyond the words and scores given at the judges' table. I mean, we all know what we think of judges, am I right? (Says one who has judged air guitarists several times. Boo!)

Eat this, judges!

Anyway, after the call for award nominations went out a few weeks ago, I felt so inspired that I worked with an award-winning filmmaker, Adam Sweeney, to shed some light on what the Picante Sparkling Unicorn Warrior Award (I love every syllable of this delirously long title) means to me as Ms. Picante's husband and air guitar "stage mom." I didn't create the award, but I can reflect on its broader implications as an honor of high distinction and try to express my understanding in visual form.

As others have described it, Kara's indomitable mindset is as much a part of the award as glitter is a part of her stained-glass mosaics. To me, this means the trophy sets the measuring stick for pushing artists to test the limits of what they are willing to believe and also what they are willing to believe in. In other words, art doesn't stop being art just because shit gets real. That's when art begins. That's when it gallops across the realms of the invisible in a wave of fury and sparkles.

Side note: I can't say THANK YOU enough to Luke and Nicole Sevcik for distilling this idea into the most gorgeous, Kara-forward trophy that could ever be imagined.

Okay, I'm going to wrap this up before Wix makes me want to bitch-slap its coding again. So here I go: No more talk, I'm teasing this sucker. The Sparkling Unicorn Warrior Award teaser trailer. It doesn't promote anyone or anything but the award and why it matters.

I hope you enjoy.

Until next time.

--Charles Austin Muir