The Spicy Wave Hits San Francisco Part One: I Get to Choose My Wife's Award Winner

KIDDING! Kara never won the national title. This was taken IN CASE she won the national title. U.S. Air Guitar National Championships, Nashville, Tennessee, 2019. Photo courtesy of Kyle Payton.

I wouldn't have missed the U.S. Air Guitar finals in San Francisco this year. But knowing I'd get to watch someone win Kara's award up close and personal made it even more enticing. Not only that, but the filmmakers I've been working with, Adam and Bethany, decided at the last minute to capture the event and see what an air guitar weekend is all about.

That's two dreams of mine coming together—the award hand-off and the climax of our documentary about Kara's adventures as an air guitarist flipping the bird to cancer. While working on a teaser to promote the award, I went to urgent care for a stress rash that looked like ground zero of a Michael Crichton plague thriller, but for a chance to expand Kara's legacy like this—with her tribe and with people who want to tell her story—I wouldn't have had it any differently. Worth looking like the plague's first victim before a steroid intervention.

There's too much to say about going solo to my first air guitar finals, so... I will just focus on the award.

I spent some quality time with the Mjolnir of air guitar—the enchanted hammerhead of stardust known as the Picante Sparkling Unicorn Warrior Award.

L'Orange gave me the nominees the night before the championship: Jolly Rancher, a flamboyant air guitarist out of San Diego; Hot Dog Show, a national champion out of Denver; Jessie Spandex, the current regional champ out of Chicago; Riff Raff, an air guitarist out of Santa Rosa who was as technological as he was technical; and Mr. Universe, a mad scientist out of San Jose who seemed to have a transporter that beamed him into every air guitar contest west of the Rockies.

As L'Orange reeled off his pitches for the nominees, I started to sweat—and not because of the weirdly drizzly San Franciscan weather. The list took me back to how hard it had been choosing a winner from last year's pool. Maybe these candidates hadn't trained the past year to win an award specifically for creative expression, but winning the award made a statement. The Picante Sparkling Unicorn Warrior Award wasn't just a shout-out for doing something unique in an already unique art form—it represented the highest standard of creativity within the community.

To pore over these talented performers and decide who best personifies Kara's artistic excellence? Who stands alongside the national champion as a groundbreaking performance artist? Who gives the community a glimpse into how far it can push air guitar beyond the measurements of technical merit, stage presence, and airness? Sign me up, please—but also—I could use a drink...

And it was over beers that I got to talking more about the award with world champion, Mean Melin. When the conversation turned to Jessie Spandex, he spoke of her performance with unusual gravitas. As passionate as we tend to be about this weird hobby, we're really just talking about people going on stage and wiggling their fingers... right? Maybe not. Like L'Orange, Melin didn't say much about what he saw, but he was unequivocal about its power.

By the end of our talk, I felt proud of Jessie for an accomplishment I hadn't even seen yet. Partly because I knew Kara played a part in it...

Kara at the same venue—the Independent—at the semifinals in 2014.

Still, when I got up the next morning, I told myself I couldn't let inside testimony or personal association choose the winner for me. I would have to clear my mind of what little I had heard about Jessie's routine when I watched her take the stage that night. Fortunately, I felt I had judged enough air guitar contests to weigh her performance on its own terms. Also, unlike traditional competitive settings, I didn't have to try to be objective within a point system.

All I had to do was watch some air guitar and ask myself, "Is this the most Kara?" There was no math to contend with—choosing a winner would be a purely intuitive process.

Thankfully, my schedule was full with the documentary team coming over to my room to shoot interviews. That set the tone for the day as I spent a few hours reminiscing with good friends about my wife, air guitar, and the four years we shared as her AIRmazing support network. Instead of lingering over award details, I rode a high of looking back on Kara's adventures through other eyes than my own.

After the interviews, I took a short rest. Then Adam, Bethany, and I headed to the venue. We scoped it out, shot some footage, and spent some quality time with the enchanted hammerhead of stardust known as the Picante Sparkling Unicorn Warrior Award. Walking around with it, cradling it like a baby, I felt Kara's artistry—her humor, her extravagance, her sexuality, her self-empowerment, her zero fucks—radiating heat from it as if were a living thing purring in the crook of my arm.

Photo courtesy of Jacob Calle.

Shortly before the doors opened, L'Orange asked if I would present the award toward the end of the show. Even as I said yes, I did a quick calculation: This meant talking about Kara's impact on the air guitar community in front of a crowd of 500 people, a Twitch livestream audience, and two documentary teams, including my own. Of course, I was honored by his invitation to speak; but at the same time, I knew that talking about my wife could make me cry as easily as if I were pregnant like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Junior.

To up the stakes, I couldn't fully consider which nominee was "most Kara" until Jessie Spandex went on eighth in a line-up of twenty-four competitors. While this gave me time to deliberate—I had until halftime to submit my decision—it only gave me the second round of competition to figure out what I would say about Kara and the award. As night fell and the venue grew packed, I began to feel the weight of what L'Orange had entrusted to me.

Photo courtesy of Cleo Plectra.

Fortunately, air guitarists set the gold standard when it comes to putting it all on the line in unpredictable circumstances. They've biffed it in back flips, lost body parts, hung upside down from second-floor balconies, and literally couch surfed with a couch stolen from the green room. Among these chaos artists, a spouse ugly-crying over his late wife in front of hundreds of people in a rock-and-roll venue would track like a gorilla breaking loose in an old-timey circus.

In other words, bring on the madness—this was an air guitar national championship, not a goop podcast!

The rawer, the better. Or anyway, in the back of my mind, that's what I kept telling myself as I hid out in the green room. If you're short on time, low on ideas, and about to commune with a mass of novelty-seekers who came to party on a Saturday night, there is no better place to draw inspiration than a backstage area full of competitive air guitarists.

It's like you're in the underground chambers of a Roman Colosseum dreamed up by Andy Kaufman. You can't help but get your creative juices flowing among pumped-up gladiator-jesters clad in pink tutus, space wizard hats, scalemail bras, lucha libre gear, Michael Myers costumes, and in one particularly baffling case, a hooded mask made of Lite Brites (I think).

Photo courtesy of Sandi Rose.

Just listen to the thundering through the walls: The people are hungering for spectacle and you better feed them. As long as it's untamed and from the heart.

Speaking of which, let's dream-shimmer ourselves into the scene now. We're in the middle of the crowd, working our way toward the front row. From the balcony above us, the judges are deciding the fate of the seventh contestant of the evening. The Picante Sparkling Unicorn Warrior Award's final nominee is about to enter the arena.

Photo courtesy of Shadows and Strobes.

This concludes Part 1 of The Spicy Wave Hits San Francisco

--Charles Austin Muir

Please forgive the icky YouTube title, it's all about clickability these days. If you haven't seen the teaser trailer for Kara's award yet, here you go!

final nominee she requested i not be shown any video

final nominee she requested i not be shown any video