I Am Furious at Paul Newman

9/27/07

I trusted Paul Newman. I trusted him because of his movies, and because of his salad dressings, which are all awesome. Everyone knows that. So I thought it would be fine, as I walked through the Tampa Bay supermarket yesterday (we have baseball games here now), to try the new line of “Paul Newman Pickles.” It came in a sensible jar with his face on the front, just like the salad dressing. I love dill pickles, so I couldn’t wait to have a taste.

The minute I left the store, I opened the jar. The pickles were small. I chomped into one, and the taste just about made me die.

It was a sweet pickle. FOR PETE’S SAKE! I didn’t even know these existed. What kind of irresponsible son of a bitch would sweeten a pickle?! Pardon my language, but this really rattles my cage. Only an asshole would love a sweet pickle. An asshole or a con man.

In a blind rage, I dumped the rest of the pickles on the ground and hurled the glass jar across the street. I should have looked first, because it hit a parked police car and shattered the windshield. No cops were inside, though, so I sprinted away.

Back in the hotel room, I decided to contact Paul Newman. For someone to betray my trust that way, the least he could do was answer in person. I got on the lobby computers and went to google.com. I typed in “Paul Newman’s address” and my current town, “Tampa Bay,” because google works better if you type in your location (this is especially good for finding florists).

Believe it or not, google returned Paul Newman’s exact address, and it was in Tampa Bay! I wrote it down and caught a cab. In about fifteen minutes, after another stop at the grocery store, we arrived, and I stormed up the cement walkway, pounded on the door, and began cursing. Nobody answered, so I took out the ten jars of real dill pickles I’d just bought, and hurled them through the window. “That’s a real pickle, you arrogant Hollywood fucker!” I shouted. “Those are real pickles!” Still, nobody came, so I took an autographed picture of myself from my wallet and left it among the shards of glass on the windowsill.

I’m not going to go into the aftermath. There have been a lot of phone calls. Joe Torre is trying to help. All I can say is that apparently Paul Newman has a double, and I was fooled. I went after the wrong one. The real Paul Newman lives in California somewhere. There may be a lawsuit — the tenth filed against me.

I myself have filed seventeen against other parties.