A Barely Appropriate and Incomplete Tribute to Paul Newman

It's odd for me to do a remembrance for a celebrity on this blog for two reasons. First of all, I don't tend to celebrate famous people (only mock) and, secondly, I always assumed he'd never die. He was one of those guys who, even into his eighties, put men a quarter of his age to shame. But here we are...

The one thing everyone noticed about Paul Newman was his ridiculously intense, blue eyes. Eyes come and go in my book. You can replace them with Gobstoppers and I would never know the difference. But the blue light that came from his iris would precede him, often by a good hour. As a matter of fact, there is ample evidence that those blue rays guide astronauts home. That's probably why Apollo 12 touched down in his grotto in 1969. Yeah, I know, "citation needed".

Since 1954, Newman appeared in over fifty movies, and yet I've probably only seen a smidgen of them. Nevertheless, he often commanded the screen whenever he walked in from stage left (or his dressing room - whatever) and all the other actors, mere scarecrows with Gobstopper eyes. I'll be damned if I didn't break myself away from the gripping storyline of The Hudsucker Proxy to utter, "hey, that's Paul Newman!"

Even with all the filming, directing and producing, he still had time to feed you well with his line of salad dressings and pasta sauce. The post-tax proceeds of these ventures went to charity. It's been said that he would deliver the packages to grocers himself in his race car, but only by those who like making stuff up. Yes, even though he is remembered as a humanitarian as well as an actor and race enthusiast, truck drivers are better equipped for such things.

Paul Newman died at age 83 on September 26 at his home in Westport, Connecticut of complications from Lung Cancer. He leaves behind his wife of fifty years, five daughters, an impressive catalog of work and a beam of blue light that left his face twenty years ago and is hovering somewhere in the troposphere.