Do you hear that? It’s the sound of air guitars rocking Chicago.
The U.S. National Air Guitar Championships are coming to town for the first time this summer, July 23 at Metro.
“U.S. Air Guitar’s nationwide search for the country’s finest professional air guitarists will culminate in what will doubtlessly become Chicago’s premier summer event,” read a news release forecasting a slow summer in the city.
Winners of regional competitions in 18 cities — the local event is May 12 at Double Door — will bring their musical mime acts to Chicago in hopes of winning it all.
The winner gets paid airfare to the 16th annual Air Guitar World Championships, Aug. 24-27 in Finland.
What’s old is new
The Commodore 64 is back — nearly 30 years after it was first introduced.
Though it still resembles the old taupe, bulky keyboard, the new version includes a dual-core Intel processor, up to four gigabytes of RAM. There’s even a combo DVD-Blu-ray player on higher-end models.
By comparison, the original Commodore 64 had only 64 kilobytes of RAM, enough for basic gaming and word processing. A gigabyte contains more than 1 million kilobytes.
Commodore USA’s updated version sells for the same base-unit price of $595 that it did when first introduced in 1982. More fully loaded versions range as high as $895.
The new models sold out within 24 hours of introduction on the company’s website Tuesday, with a second run of shipments planned.
The number
54%
Portion of dining patrons surveyed by the private U.S. Food Safety Corp. who said they avoid looking into a restaurant’s kitchen area for fear of what they might see. That leaves 46 percent of us who look and eat there anyway.
— Rob Manker
