The third semi-final of the 2014 US Air Guitar Season has just taken place in San Francisco! Look, ok, I don't think of San Francisco as the Northwest either, but I don't make the rules or name the names. This semifinal brought together the top 3 air guitarists of the San Francisco, Portland, and Santa Cruz qualifiers - which would make it the smallest semi with only 3 qualifiers feeding into it, except that no one from Detroit showed up to the Chicago semifinal. But big things come in small packages sometimes. This was an intense battle!
Scores, as usual, started lowish. But it only took 5 competitors to bring the judges out of their shells (or, maybe it only takes the amount of time of 5 competitors for the judges to drink enough to loosen up). This was also about when the parade of Terrifying Guys from Santa Cruz kicked in, so maybe the judges were just too scared to give, for instance, John Face a low score. This is understandable.
But it was clear that the judges were not only giving out high scores due to the fact that someone like The Silverhammer might be covered in blood. This is clear because he was followed by Seth Leibowitz, possibly the least-terrifying-looking human on this earth, and he got straight 5.9s.
And from here we went straight to Sexytown. Sahexy's performances are never short on sexy moves, but it sounds like she was scolded for bringing too much of that sass to the stage... only to be followed immediately by Cold Steel Renegade's spandex-wrapped but in no way concealed junk, Tony Tapatio's rampant sexuality, and, later, Dirty Airy being naked except for a sock, all of whom got great scores. And I'm not saying all things were equal with all these performances, but I really, really hope we aren't in the kind of sport where a woman playing the sexy card gets told off - that it detracts from her performance - but men doing the same are hilarious and that it adds to theirs.
The second round had a tie at 5th place - John Face and CSR - and then in ascending order, Whalin Big Air (whom I wish was from around here so I could see him perform more than once a year), Dirty Airy, Seth Leibowitz, and Tony Tapatio. Sahexy astutely pointed out that she and two other women, Pops Roxwell and Kara Picante (pictured), were all tied for 6th place, just 0.1 out of the second round. I'm not saying there's any prejudice at play, though - more like, look at all these women crushing it on the West Coast. A difference that small is the vagaries of judging and next time around it can go in the opposite direction, so I would like to challenge everyone who thinks women in air guitar are still kind of a novelty to take note.
The second round song was a Queens of the Stone Age song, and this is when Dirty Airy showed up wearing nothing but a strategically placed sock and an American flag scarf. The judges were pleased... but they were even more pleased with Seth Leibowitz who jumped on him and rode him around in the crowd for his performance. And his scores wound up tying him with Tony Tapatio for first place, meaning it was time for an air-off!
Tapatio went first. This was balls-to-the-wall, throwing himself around, playing so hard a real guitar would have exploded, airness out the wazoo type stuff. He made some people's lives by doing a stage dive, which meant that people got to -gasp- touch him, at which point I assume they spontaneously got pregnant. 5.9s across the board. And then. Seth Leibowitz NAILED IT. I mean, he started off by picking up a pair of underpants that happened to be lying on the stage and stuffing them in his mouth, which seemed unnecessary, but then he proceeded to nail every note of the song, and ran into the crowd to boot. STRAIGHT SIXES. (I've also decided that if someone publishes an air guitar magazine, it should be called Straight Sixes.)
This means that your winner for the 2014 Northwest Semifinal was the man who has kept the inside joke of 2012 alive for not one but 2 years now, Seth Leibowitz! Second place, Tony Tapatio, and third place, Dirty Airy. However, in a late development, Dirty Airy has abdicated his third-place throne to pursue his education - meaning that the fourth-place finisher, Whalen Big Air (pictured), will take his spot and join the other two at Nationals in Kansas City!
As with any West Coast air guitar event, I'd like to thank Mrs. Facemelter for keeping us all updated on the competition as it happened - for everyone's scores and often their songs, check her Twitter! And if you'd like to see video of every single performance (you do), Arora Nasty has it covered here.
Photos by Dirty Airy (Aron Carlton) and Sweetness (Kyle Privette)