No guitar, no problem

By April Corbin

Wednesday, May 12, 2010 | 12:45 p.m.

Rock out with your cock out? Hell no. Tonight, we jam out... with our clams out.

This was the prevailing attitude Saturday at Tommy Rocker’s during the Las Vegas Air Guitar Association’s last qualifying round leading up to this month’s regional competition. In a showing that could be seen only as breaking the air glass ceiling put in place by prepubescent teenagers and frat boys, five of the seven competitors of Saturday’s air-guitar preliminary were female — and one was a man dressed as a juice box, which is far stranger than having a vagina and an imaginary instrument.

The female-filled night brought wicked hair whips, grinding hips and a few peeks of panty from underneath a schoolgirl skirt. Technical merit, one of the three judging criteria (stage presence and “airness” are the others), noticeably was absent from the competitors, as far as the judges were concerned, anyway, but the audience didn’t seem to mind. How could it with attractive females writhing and power sliding across the stage?

Coming out victorious after the evening of invisible instruments was the feisty “Amy Van Halen,” whose real name is the less iconic Amy Sung. Sung will complete May 28 at the Hard Rock Café on the Strip in the regional competition, held by the U.S. Air Guitar Championship. The winner of that event will be flown to New York City to compete for the U.S. title spot, the winner of which will represent our country in Finland during the world championships.

Of course, don’t think this means that public air guitar in Vegas ends in three weeks with the regional competition. According to LVAGA organizer (and Resodence creator) Chris Lose, future air guitar events already are in the planning stages. “You would think Vegas would have something like this already,” he says. “It’s just really fun. Stupidly fun.”