9/30/08: Paul Newman

I am not a fan of Hollywood, as anyone who knows me is well aware. I severed my relationship with the film industry, along with TV and most established media, several years ago, and haven't looked back. That's another post, though. The point is, when I heard that Paul Newman had died back on September 28th of '08, it was entirely by chance.

And before you fire me an angry comment correcting the date of his death, yes, I know he died on the 26th, I just didn't hear about it until the 28th. But hearing about it at all was a feat, given my sequestered status. If I hear any news at all, it's typically in a roundabout way, so it's rare I'd receive word regarding something as trivial as an actor's death (not that anyone's demise is trivial, but you catch my drift). To be honest, I really don't remember the precise means by which I came across the news, but that's not really relevant, anyway. What is is that I got it at all, and what happened two days later.

First, let it be said that I know very little about Mr. Newman. I recall seeing him in several scattered films during my plugged-in childhood, but that's all -- which is to say, the man was by no means a fixture in my psychology, and when he passed in September of '08, I retained little more of him than a name and a vague face to go with it. In fact, when I received the news, I had to trawl my waters some to come up with even that, as I couldn't remember the last time I'd encountered anything relating to Paul Newman. So when I came across his name on September 30th, the second time in forty-eight hours, I smelled a hit.

At the time of Mr. Newman's passing, I had just taken up writing, and was therefore brushing up on my grammar, which was never my strong point to begin with. And what better way to sharpen my inner tongue than to partake in the myriad online grammar quizzes floating around the web? So I settled on one -- at random, of course, a fill-in-the-blanks-type thing spit out by Google -- and the subject of the screed was none other than one of Paul Newman's films. I haven't encountered Paul Newman since.