I meant to watch Sideways years ago. Somewhere between “I only drink after 5pm” and “Jack & Coke makes a great mouthwash,” it fell off my to-do list. The movie appealed to me for three reasons:

1. I love Paul Giamatti;
2. I love Alexander Payne (director of Election); and
3. I loved wine.

While I preferred hard liquor for getting drunk, I loved wine for camouflage. Wine carries with it a snobbery that provides perfect cover for an alcoholic. I don’t have a problem, goddammit – I’m a connoisseur. A connoisseur constantly seeking samples. Even before I admitted I had a problem, I had a niggling feeling deep in my bowels that all my talk of tannins and the aftertaste of apple and pear was fancy-speak for “refill.” After all, I measured my wine consumption by the box.

Fast forward to 2010, five months into Round 2 of sobriety. I put Sideways on my Netflix queue. I may avoid wine, but hell, I still love Paul Giamatti. I adored his turn as Harvey Pekar in American Splendor, a role which earned him much critical acclaim, but did little for his commercial appeal. Sideways is the flick that put this talented actor on the map. I can see why. Giamatti’s Miles is the kind of guy you can’t decide if you want to hug or run over with a Hummer. He’s smart, amiable, a touch arrogant, beset by rejection, and prone to self-loathing. With his marriage long dead, his closest friendship is his old college roommate Jack, a Lothario who measures wine by its chugability.(Yes, that’s a word. Look it up in a few years, once the dictionaries catch up to me.)

Sideways is a tour de force of drunkenness, adultery, hope, despondency, and love. It’s a great film – but one that is, at times, a bitch to watch sober. The movie revolves around Miles and Jack’s trip through California’s wine country before Jack, an expiring actor, marries into money. The scenery is lush, rolling acres of green, of plump grapes nearly bursting on the vine. Along the way, Miles the struggling writer puts the full force of his talent behind explaining to Jack the deep mysteries of wine: how to judge color, pick up the bouquet, and separate the complexities as you swish the initial sip around in your mouth. Miles doesn’t simply like wine, or even love wine. Miles has a romance with wine. Lacking any significant connections to other human beings, it’s become his significant other – his exhilarating partner when things go well, and his lonely refuge when life turns sour.

Since Miles’ life is a package of Sour Patch Kids, he spends a good portion of the film either stumbling around drunk, or dragging a hangover around like a lead weight. Which I enjoyed watching. Okay, “enjoyed” is too sadistic. What I mean is that watching drunk people can be a boon to my sobriety. A few years ago, I hung out with friends of friends for the 4th of July. At the time I hadn’t had a drop to drink in over a year. Seeing everyone at the party get progressively wasted made it easier to steer clear of temptation. When your friend is telling you how much he loves you in sentences where every second word is so slurred that it’s unintelligible, you wonder, “Whatever made me think this was fun?”

But that’s not sustainable. It becomes sobriety through schadenfreude. For that reason, I don’t think I’ll ever give Sideways a second viewing. It feels too much like watching home movies of your ex-girlfriend with a box of Kleenex and a half-gallon of ice cream nestled in your lap. I’ll get my next Giamatti fixes from Cold Souls and Shoot ‘Em Up instead.

And no, you can’t talk me out of Shoot ‘Em Up. It’s Giamatti with access to high-caliber weapons. How can that be anything less than brilliant??

Uncategorized alcoholism, cinema, film, movies, sideways, sobriety

In the last incarnation of The Zero Boss, I made a big production out of drinking. I blogged while drunk, loudly and proudly. I had a good online friend concoct a banner that depicted me sucking back Mike’s Hard Lemonade while I downloaded the world via USB. Drinking was less social function, and more national pasttime.

In several posts, I mocked AA; secretly, I thought anyone who attended a loser. Only losers can’t control their liquor, right? George Carlin said that anyone who drives slower than you is an idiot, and anyone who drives faster than you is a maniac. It was like that, but with booze: anyone who drank less than me was a lightweight, and anyone who drank more was a raging alcoholic.

It was all fun and games, until I ended up “working from home” so that I could suck back Jack and Coke with my lunch. I had to drink myself to the edge of suicide, sitting in a boxed-up house 2,500 miles away from my children, before I admitted that, yeah…I had a problem.

I’m an alcoholic.

I admire people who admit that. I love and admire Rachael, not only for getting sober, but for all she does to spread the message, and help others who are lost to this illness. Maggie is my new Internet hero.

The old Zero Boss would’ve laughed at Jay Reatard for snorting and snockering himself to an early death at age 29. I can half-imagine the post I would’ve written about Rip Torn, who somehow ended up in a Connecticut bank with a loaded .22-caliber revolver. Torn was so drunk, he thought the bank was his house. (In his defense, it probably had as much money. So, easy mistake.)

Now I can only close my eyes and say a tiny prayer. There but for the grace of Goddess. My heart goes out to both men. One of them still has a fighting chance. The other – gone. Perhaps to return after a stint in the inbetween. Perhaps to abide eternally in the embrace of the Mother. Or perhaps to dissipate into ether, to kiss a peace that eluded him in life. I don’t know which of two beautiful options I believe more.

More than anything, these men and their struggles make me thankful for one more day without alcohol. I’ve been sober, gone back out, and come back in from the cold again. If I ever think about going back out, I remember the devastating pain and abject humiliation to which this disease brought me before.

And I think about men like Rip and Jay. In their weakness, I see mine. In their struggle, I find strength.

Uncategorized aa, addiction, alcoholics anonymous, alcoholism, jay reatard, rip torn