Checking for color and clarity.

Last night, we all went to see a special advanced screening of Alexander Payne's newest film, Sideways, with Paul Giamatti and Thomas Hayden Church. The film was totally amazing, shot locally in the Santa Ynez Valley, was worked on by many UCSB grads (including Lacey Rae nee' Palowitz, whom I went to high school with, as a two-line waitress). Because the film takes place in Santa Barbara's wine country and features wine as a metaphor for life and grapes as a metaphor for people, we all decided to spend our evening in drinking very cheap wine.

We tossed in a couple of dollars a piece in the hopes of getting an abundance of Trader Joe's Two-Buck Chuck and sent Jen and her homies from LA to acquire it. They returned with 5 bottles of Albertson's finest cheap wines: a Gallo white Merlot, 2 bottles of some unidentifiable Zinfandel (not quite red, not quite white), a bottle of Gallo White Zinfandel, and a bottle of Sutter Home Pinot Noir. So, following Paul Giamatti's wine-tasting rules from Sideways, we started with the Merlot. ("If anyone orders a Merlot, I am leaving.") We checked it for bouquet, color and clarity (which was difficult in our 4-for-a-dollar IKEA tumblers) and drank up. We moved on to the unidentifiable Zinfandel, which was strangely carbonated and raspberry-flavored. Then the Gallo White Zin, which was decent and probably the most wine like beverage of the 3. Finally, we finished off our evening with the bottle of Pinot Noir, Paul Giamatti's personal favorite in Sideways, the ultimate metaphor for his character . . . and that shit was probably the most disappointing Pinot I've ever had in my life.

After 5 bottles of wine, plus some beer and vodka supplied by Nikki, we all were terribly amused with the various 80's mixes that Heather had cued up for the remainder of the evening. At one point, Heather and Melissa were performing an entire Queen album (with help from Richie and myself on "Bohemian Rhapsody"). I did "Tainted Love." Heather belted "Total Eclipse of the Heart." Our tendencies toward drunken singing are vindication against our upstairs neighbors, who, we think, are either harboring large animals in their room or are practicing to go on Trading Spaces, but only between the hours of 11 pm and 11 am.

All in all a lovely evening. I fear for the photographic evidence.