Nope, I wasn't among the marginally insane who stood in line for hours yesterday, skipped work and stayed up late to see the latest "Star Wars" flick. I'll see it before the weekend's out -- probably at the last showing Sunday night in an effort to avoid some of the crowds.

Instead I stayed home and watched "Sideways" on DVD. I thought it was a pretty darn good movie. There's some unneccessary nudity, but otherwise it's certainly worth seeing. The real interesting part of the film for me was seeing where it was set. When I worked at the Lompoc Record back in the mid-90s, this part of California's Central Coast was my stomping ground. Lompoc's La Purisima Mission makes a brief appearance, as does Pea Soup Anderson's in Buellton. I've driven along just about every road in that movie -- from San Diego all the way to Solvang.

Talk about bringing back memories.

Anyway, the film does tell a good story and Paul Giamatti does an excellent job portraying a middle school English teacher/author.