Air Heads

You enjoy concerts, right? Professional musical groups do a wonderful thing, and there is nothing like being right there surrounded by 10,000 screaming yahoos who apparently haven’t bathed since Bruce Willis had hair.

But what if the performers are merely moving but not actually making music? Performers such as Lindsay Lohan, 50 Cent and Milli Vanilli have been criticized for doing this. This is why it surprised me to learn that air bands have become hugely popular. Evidently it’s okay to lip sync and air guitar and air drum as long as you admit it beforehand. There are air band contests where people actually scream and applaud performers who cannot for the life of them play an instrument or carry a tune. Just look it up on YouTube if you don’t believe me. Here are a few links that might still work:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THBiP7E4MXc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdcsBYmzyqY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByFdvhGVzw8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BXDZMiDxQk

It’s bad enough that performers like John Tesh are famous while virtually no one even knows who invented antibiotics. Now people with absolutely no musical talent are being cheered.

What I want to know is, why don’t people applaud me? I’ve been air guitarring for 30 years and all I’ve ever gotten is thrown out of places. A lot of guys air guitar when they hear a good rock song. It’s a natural reaction for guys. But to have competitions and prizes for it? What next? Air sports, with guys pretending to catch footballs and hit baseballs? Air surgery, where we cheer for people pretending to remove gall bladders? How about air politics, where we vote for and pay charlatans who pretend to act in the public interest? Oh, wait...

I wonder what the prize is for winning an air band contest. Does the emcee move his arms and pretend to give the winners trophies? And who is to say that one person is better at air guitarring or air drumming than another? What are the criteria? Sweating? Bulging veins? All I know is that whenever I air guitar, people look for my MedicAlert bracelet.