as Kasten prepares dinner, his daughters Jenna, 9, left, and Lexi, 7, and a neighbor show off their air guitar skills.
on par with the theatrical antics of his younger competitors, Kasten climbed atop a 9:30 Club speaker two years ago and jumped into an airy spread eagle. The next morning, he attend-
ed Samantha’s graduation from Walt Whitman High School on crutches. It took him eight weeks to recover, Tina recalls. “I wanted to kill him for doing that to himself,” she says. “It was a pain in my ass. I had to pick up the pieces.” With the D.C. regional only a few
weeks away, she’s worried her husband will hurt himself again. Kasten is down- playing his previous injury. “It was a slight break-slash-sprain,” he says. “A mild crack. U.S. Air Guitar says ‘break’ just to make it sound dramatic.” Tina acknowledges she’s not a huge
fan of air guitar. “I try to be supportive because it’s obviously very important to him,” she says. “I just think he gets a little bit of a rock star complex. He absolutely loves it. He’s been doing it forever, so it’s not anything I can really protest. I just have to keep his feet on the ground and remind him that he’s not Jon Bon Jovi.” She draws the line when Kasten’s
On his to-do list: picking up two-
by-fours from storage, buying window frames at Home Depot, delivering the frames to his contractors, meeting with a potential client. He crosses all this off before 11:30 a.m. “My life is high perfor- mance, running around like an idiot.” He sleeps five hours a day. “You can’t make money if you’re sleeping!” In the early afternoon, Kasten saun-
ters into his “dude room” at home. It’s no coincidence that this space — for- merly the garage — is nowhere near the home’s bedrooms. (Kasten likes to crank up the volume on his massive sound sys- tem.) There’s a pool table, a well-stocked liquor cabinet and shelves devoted to Kasten’s 250-item collection of Tech Deck Dude finger-skateboard dolls, pre- served in their original packaging. The remaining wall space is littered with snowboards, Rush posters, and framed newspaper articles and banners show- casing Kasten’s air guitar achievements.
Kasten has changed into a pair of
khaki cutoffs and a T-shirt. When he cues Van Halen’s “On Fire,” he becomes unusually focused and quiet. He fur- rows his brow and grits his teeth as he slams and jams each air instrument in well-timed precision to drum beats and frenetic guitar solos. His right arm windmills while his left slides along a nonexistent fret — each finger tensely pressing strings that aren’t there. After three songs in 15 minutes —
including Rush’s “The Spirit of Radio” and “Natural Science” — Kasten is sweaty and breathless; air guitar has served as his daily workout regimen for years. “I usually jump off the pool table to practice my jumps,” he says. “I don’t think people should be doing this at age 48 — jumping off pool tables and slam- ming stuff around, not unless you’ve done it before. So many people hurt themselves.” Himself included. Trying to stay
hobby threatens to affect the family fi- nances. Earlier in the year, Kasten had pondered ordering a vest outfitted with laser lighting as part of his costume. “It was $1,200, which is completely outra- geous and unrealistic,” Tina says. When it comes to Kasten’s daugh-
ters, they seem more amused. Lexi says she’ll compete when she grows up. Her father has already taught her some of the basics: “An air pick is what you use to play the chords,” she explains matter- of-factly. But she doesn’t practice with her dad. “He’s silly and he screams.” As for Samantha, 19, she acknowl-
edges it was a little odd when classmates at the College of Charleston recognized her last name … from Kasten’s air guitar following. “That was, like, ‘Whoa, that’s weird,’ ” she recalls. But for the most part, she thinks her
dad’s gig is pretty cool. As a high school senior, she and a pack of pals stood in the 9:30 Club’s front row to cheer him
july 18, 2010 | The WashingTon PosT Magazine 15
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