Anna McCarthy at the Weekly's All Shook Down blog has this fun review of Saturday's Air Guitar Championship at The Independent. The event was a two-day regional spectacular in which winners move on to become finalists in D.C. on August 7th. Friday night's champion was a guy named Awesome with huge hair and a red beard, and on Saturday Jello Biafra (of Dead Kennedys fame) showed up to be a celebrity guest judge and apparently fell into the much hated Simon Cowell critic role. Boone's was a sponsor, so much of the pink stuff was drunk, and the winner, who went by the name of Cold Steel Renegate, was said to have brought air tears to at least one eye.

Highlights from the preliminary round included: at least three failed stage-dive attempts, a contestant dressed as a demon who the judges accurately described as "Kiss meets The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," a couple of air groupies who jumped on stage (also known as "air-mattresses") and threw their underwear, an MJ-dedicated air-performance of "Smooth Criminal" for which judges gave extra points because it was "topical, like an ointment," a contestant who saturated the audience in baby powder (cheaper than a fog-machine, but also more sneeze-inducing)... and, of course, the climactic final competition in which the top five contestants all air-rocked Biafra's "California Uber Alles."

Good times.