I'm not a fan of Steve Irwin and I have yet to watch any of his shows past a couple seconds - in fact, I have probably seen more parodies of him than I have of the actual guy. And yet I got a little bummed out last night when I found out that he died in one of those freaky ass accidents that nobody knew was coming. I felt immense sympathy for his wife and two young children, because though he did have that baby dangling incident, I think he was likely a pretty good father to his children and a good husband to his wife. Just his personality was so open that it was infectious - once you got past the seemingly child-like behavior, you could see that this man had so much passion for what he did that he didn't worry about how he behaved when he got pysched about presenting animals to the camera.

Now, there's been numerous sources on the news by different people saying the standard catchprase, "He died doing what he loved."

For some reason, that phrase has always irked me - it's like this Zen-like summation to a tragedy that befalls a person who was abruptly killed before his/her time. And I think it is a gross generalization for anyone to endure. Yeah, he was doing something he loved when he died, but I'm sure he would've wanted to die of old age, seeing his wife and children by his side. If I ever get hit by a boom mic while filming a movie, and someone said that about me, I'd be pissed. I'd haunt their ass.

Anyhow, condolences to his family. He seemed like a good bloke.