Sideways (and Kitchen Bench List)

Things on my kitchen bench:
a six-pack egg carton with two eggs left, 'Best Before 19 Jan'
two empty beer cans (Victoria Bitter) and an empty beer bottle (Reschs Pilsener)
empty Tabasco Sauce bottle
two dirty plates
Serafims Bourke Street Pharmacy receipt for ear drops and ear syringe
two felt tip pens, one blue, one black
pharamceutical company post-it notes (Zoton (lansoprazol) "Acts fast, fast, fast against acid.")
unopened Tazo packet
roll of paper towel (Tough Towel - Thick 'n' Thirsty)
stubby holder from Darlinghurst Cellars
one decomposing severed head (beginning to smell pretty bad)

I'm reading Stephen King's On Writing and he suggests setting a daily goal of 1000 words. I was kind of happy with my earwax story I wrote last night, but that's only 500 words. So far, tonight, I have written 129 words, most of those amounting to a list of crap on my kitchen bench. It was pretty easy to do, but took me a while to come up with the idea.

OK, well, here's another idea... I can write about the movie I went to see after work today. It was called Sideways and starred an actor who I instantly liked after seeing him play Harvey Pekar in American Splendor.
He was good in Sideways, too, a guy who always looks very uncomfortable. I like to watch movies with guys who look uncomfortable, it's like seeing myself up there on the big screen. I'm an uncomfortable kinda guy, you see. I can't stop sweating, and I twitch and scratch and pull at the back of my t-shirt. When I am having a live conversation with somebody, they probably wonder what the fuck is wrong with me. I wonder what the fuck is wrong with me.

Anyway, I was watching the movie, and had an excellent position right in the middle of the theatre, and there was nobody sitting close to me, just the way I like it. At the last movie I saw (Finding Neverland) there were two women right behind me who kept whispering to each other, making dumb comments about what was happening on the screen. I felt like turning around and saying Why don't you dumb bitches go and rent a fuckin dvd instead of disturbing the rest of us with your stupid friggin commentary? But I didn't do it, I kept my mouth shut, and tried hard to ignore them and pay attention to what was happening on screen.

Back to Sideways... Paul Giamatti's character, Miles, is a writer who has recently finished a novel and is waiting to find out if a publisher will publish it. In the meantime, his old friend Jack is about to get married, so he and Miles (who is also a wine fanatic - a truly idiotic obsession) go away for the week preceding the wedding. The plan is to drive around visiting wineries, and have one last mad adventure before Jack settles down into married life. The only problem is that Miles is depressed about his own recently failed marriage, along with the prospect of his novel being rejected. Jack doesn't want to waste his last chance to fuck some chick before his imminent marriage directs him to a life of monogamy, and he'll be damned if Miles's black hole depression is gonna sabotage his lusty plans.

Jack is also a very likeable character, although I'm sure many women would not agree. Who cares. In the movie he plays an actor, but an actor pretty close to the bottom of the ladder. From what I understood, he was mostly remembered for playing a guy in a soap opera. These days he mostly gets work doing the voiceovers for financial, or medical, advertisements.

Then there are the love interests, Maya and Stephanie. Maya, who gets hooked up with Miles, seems to be the more developed character (whatever the fuck that means...). I really can't think of anything to write about them, it's the guys in the movie who are the most interesting, the main focus of the picture.

Anyway. For Giamatti's performance, and Thomas Haden Church as Jack, I can recommend Sideways. It was pretty good. But make sure you see American Splendor too, it is superior.