"I'll never be a Rockstar but maybe I'll be an air guitar star," says Erin "McNallica" McNally. McNallica is a local air guitar champion who is preparing for this year's U.S. Air Guitar Championship. Air guitar as an activity outside the private domain has been steadily gaining popularity since the 1980s; seventeen countries currently participate in air guitar competitions. The ideology behind air guitar is tied with world peace and democracy. If one is holding an air guitar, he or she cannot be holding a gun. Air Guitar competitions are judged on three criteria: technical merit, stage presence, and "airness" or the ability for an air performance to become a work of art. Tied for fifth in the nation -- McNallica wants to be number one. McNallica and her close friends the "Air Alliance" take in as much local music, karaoke, and dancing as she prepares for her next competition. She plays air guitar alongside other musicians as though she were in the band and dances like she's on stage. For McNallica air guitar is not an extension of ordinary life, it is her life. McNallica can't imagine anybodies life without air guitar; for her, life without air guitar would be like "life without colors."