You've made my day, Spiegelman, you reactionary running-dog bastard.

God, I thought he had died! Jesus. Need to go calm my nerves.

@Helman: According to Hollywood's standards, he might as well be.

Hackman once said he worked for one reason alone: a paycheck. Obviously, he doesn't need them anymore, though he does still do voice overs on brokerage house commercials (Oppenheimer Funds), probably just to get out of the house.

Sounds much like what Gena Rowlands said a few years back about her reasons for choosing roles having changed. She basically said she just wants to hang out with friends, her son or, occasionally, someone she's always wanted to be in a movie with.

That's the sort of response that, to me, makes getting old sound just fine. They have their priorities in line.

"The Oldest Americans Are Also the Happiest, Research Finds"

[ap.google.com]

After you have made a scene like this...everything is downhill.

+ Watch video

I tried that once, but you're way less threatening with a Philishave "Cool Shave" waterproof electric razor.

@Pope John Peeps II:

er.. meant to reply.

@belltolls:

@Pope John Peeps II: Kind of takes the edge off of it.

Retiring, at 78? This anti-capitalist doesn't deserve to work!

Spiegelman, it's like your listening in on my conversations. I just saw an interview of Hackaman in GQ that just arrived in the mail today and was commenting to the boyfriend about this article and then immediately sat down at the computer to find this post. Weird. And yet sad. I concur though, getting older rocks in so many ways.

Boyle and Hackman. Two of the greatest actors of their generation. And gonzo comics. Love you, boys!!

And so the whatfuck about getting older? Here's to living long and well. I mean, what's the alternative? Mourning great talent wasted and lost young, like Heath Ledger? I'll take wise codgerhood, any day. Fuck Hollywood if they don't appreciate brilliance that lives and lasts.

To me Hackman's true genius perf is in The Birdcage. He even eclipses scenery chewer Nathan Lane. But with class! And goes from right wing politico to the world's ugliest transvestite. The man is a pro!

@rosaluxembourgeoise: Listen here, Li'l Red Commie Hood. I warned you about coming round here spouting that pinko crap. You got it good here. You don't even know how good you got it. But don't make me show you.

Don't rock the boat, Nikita. Don't make waves. We take care of ourselves around here!

@TripMcCane: No wy - it's Poseidon Adventure,.."You want another life? Take mine!"

@NinaHagen: way, you slack-ass typist.

@NinaHagen: No sweat, Nina. We're all fluent in TypoEsperanto.

@oneninesevenfour: I'm in yer brainz, stealing yer thoughts!

@ian spiegelman: On this page, our thought are all Copyleft. Or CopyDropped. Or CopyFellOutOfMyPocket.

@ian spiegelman: Look here, big bad wolf fuck. I'm on my way to visit your grandmother, to cheer her up. What's in the basket? Nut cake, copies of articles she once wrote in The Daily Worker, and a Paul Robeson Live in Moscow cd. She loves Гимн Советского Союза the best.

@rosaluxembourgeoise: Yeah, Rosie the Red? Well, I got news for ya! "Oh, what a powerful prominent forehead you have, grandma! And what a commanding presence! And what a heroic aura about you!"

Know why? Coz that ain't grandma, Pink Cheeks! That's Ike Motherfricking Eisenhower! And now he's got the drop on you!

@rosaluxembourgeoise: When your parents tossed your responsible cloth diapers in a washing machine, did the rest of their laundry come out pink? Because you're kind of turning me on with all this Trotskyist cant.

So don't stop now -- I'll bet you've also got apologies for Stalinism that have been waiting years to burst out of you, and I say this is definitely the place for them. Possibly a JA threadjack is imminent.

@skahammer: Oh so you're with the Reds too, huh, Dreadlocks? You're on notice, pal-o-mine. We keep things tight around here, buddy. And the rabble-rousing, well, that just don't fly, fella! Got it? Next time I come around this corner it's the bum's rush for you if you're still singing this Pinko song. You get what I'm giving? Wise up!

@ian spiegelman: OH, pshaw. I'm living under an socialist goverment, plagued with ministras, ha, ha, ha, even a pregger running the army. And look at me. Perfectamente contenta. Eat your corazones out, fachas.

@ian spiegelman: Do you even know how the story ends, onanist? Nah, you don't, because they don't let you read books in sweat shops, do they? Spoiler warning, running dog: the wolf gets axed, much like the forces of historical determinism will lay waste to this dehumanizing system of oppression. Inevitably, Spiegelman.

The masses will achieve the glorious dictatorship of the commentariat, class traitor.

@ian spiegelman: Can't help it. A rural upbringing means stout-waisted girls on tractors get me every time.

In reality I'm just a corn-fed, common-or-garden Wittgensteinian existentialist who enjoys the sound of Hegelian idealists and Marxian materialists crashing into each other while both incessantly scan the sky for a future that can never come nor even exist.

But if "Dreadlocks" is the sobriquet you choose for a ska-loving skinhead, then I'm compelled to dip into the revered Kapital and ask: False consciousness much?

@SarahHeartburn: Hey that's all fine and good for some of your other countries over there. If they wanna live like creeps, if they wanna be slaves to tin-god freakin' bureaucrats, if they wanna be cowards and leave it all up to other people, hey, that's their thing. But not here! Not in my country. Not now, not ever. You can take that hippie crap to the Third World where it belongs, Sandinista!

@ian spiegelman: @skahammer: @rosaluxembourgeoise: @SarahHeartburn:
Hi guys. Just want you to know that as per the Patriot Act I've copied and pasted your contributions to this thread and emailed them directly to this guy called Michael Hayden, or something?

@skahammer: Spiegelman's the red diaper baby around here. He just doesn't like to talk about it much. Without his Nana there'd be no International Ladies Garment Union. She was a comrade.

He's delusionally aspiring to being a petit bourgeois, and has turned his back on the pop-cultural Lumpenproletariat.

Ask him how that's been working out for him.

PS: You might want to avoid using both "apologies for Stalinism" and "Trotskyist cant" in the same post.

@rosaluxembourgeoise: That's cause it's a fairy tale, comrad. Know how it really ends? When Jimmy Lunchbox and Sally Punchclock realize that you and your commie thugs are sellin' a pack of dreams, that it's all flybait, they lift themselves up by their own bootstraps, they come into the factory, and they work even harder! Coz they know they got a good thing going here. And they know that lazy ingrates like you with all your fancy promises are just selling snake oil because you wanna run the show yourself.

But guess what, sister soldier. They ain't buyin' it. Your damnable lies are as thin as your platform!

@IBentMyWookie: That's fine with me, Wook! I got nothing to hide, unlike these undermining fellow-traveling unionizing bastards!

@ian spiegelman: Hmmm....seems to me me someone around here has a leetle too much knowledge of the workings of the proletariat. That, coupled with your last name...well let's just say, suspicions are being raised, capice?

@skahammer: Oh what a surprise... A lot of big ten-dollar words to disguise the truth. Me and mine keep it simple, see? Two syllables or less, that's my motto. That way Joe Sixpack knows what you're sayin', knows you're not trying to pull the pink wool over his eyes. It was good enough for my dad and my dad's dad and it's damn well good enough for me!

@IBentMyWookie: Hayden's a pencil-pusher...a grocery clerk for postindustrial capital. The goons I'm concerned about are Cheney's private army, and by now my cover's so deep, they won't be able to spot me darting in and out of their signal traffic in a month of centuries.

In fact, that's just the kind of clumsy, uninformed bluff I'd expect from a Canadian whose knowledge of the Patriot Act is limited to what she read in Maclean's. But I don't judge.

@rosaluxembourgeoise: So my permanent alienation from the surplus value of my labor clouds my perceptions! Won't someone from the vanguard serve as an instructive example for my fellow workers and me? I'd gladly throw away my chains if someone would only point them out to me!!

@TripMcCane: I vote for "The Conversation." He was amazing in that film, a very under-rated masterpiece.

@Trixie from Toronto: Heh. Speaking of Michael Hayden....

@rosaluxembourgeoise:

@IBentMyWookie:
Yeah, so what if my great-great-grand father did kill a Cossack in White Russia with a butcher knife in 1894 and then got shot to death? (true story) This is America, Lady Death Strike, and here it don't matter where you been, all that matters is where you're goin', see? You wanna drag me and mine and everyone else back down into the mud. Well, I ain't spent all these years toiling away in gossip mills just to have the likes of yous tell me what I can have and when I can have it! Spread yer pamphlets somewhere else!

And, I did it all for you, Wook-wook! This is how you repay me. You just keep breakin' my heart.

@ian spiegelman: Jimmy Lunchbox? Don't forget his hardworking immigrant pals, Kåmpbelsüpe Thermøss, Naljiin al-Q'ulaid, And Sarah N. Rapptkarratz!

@Hez: genius.

@ian spiegelman: Well, to be fair to your great-great-grandpappy, if the Cossack he killed spoke anything like Joan, he deserved it.

Too obscure?

@IBentMyWookie: For me? Yes.

@ian spiegelman: Joan Cusack talks funny and it can annoy me.

@IBentMyWookie: Okay, I should have gotten that. But I like the way she talks. I think weird lisps and stutters are hot.

@ian spiegelman: Get off my internet, freakshow.