US Air Guitar Tue Jun 10 2014
Nordic Thunder Returns to the US Air Guitar Semifinals
Half the reason I went to my first air guitar competition was that I had a free ticket; the other half was to ditch a lame party that had gotten uncomfortable. By the evening's end I had become a full fledged, hard core, air guitar nerd. I watched the gripping and hilarious documentary Air Guitar Nation and became an avid fan of Chicago's own air guitar god, Nordic Thunder.
When I got the chance to interview Mr. Thunder himself, my geek levels went into overdrive. I nabbed the interview opportunity and immediately went into a panic: how could I possibly prepare for an interview with someone who's won a world championship for playing an instrument that doesn't even exist? What on earth could I ask the man that he hadn't already been asked? How could I possibly manage to simultaneously hold in my mind these two completely true facts: by night Nordic Thunder is a world champion air guitarist; by day he answers to the name Justin Howard and holds a steady job at Rotary International headquarters in Evanston? There was only one way to find out -- screw up my courage to actually talk to the man.
— J.H. Palmer