If you used your own free time just to tell me I'm wasting mine, you're harrumphing backwards.

For the record Carlin was still killing into his mid-60's, it was just the last two specials as he approached 70 that really sucked.

Nothing physical tho even if he died shortly thereafter.

This ain't the NBA, this wasn't 'he got old & fell off' like Kevin Garnett in a Nets uniform looking like a staggering preying mantis missing his antenna.

If you're an artist that has your own lane, establshed & never transcended to the kind of megastardom that builds you up for an inevitably big fall, you can certainly still maintain in the arts.

Q-Tip made the best album of '08 two decades after Tribe dropped.

He's just still invested, possibly to an obsessive-compulsive level, in making a great album.

The Roots got bigger fish to fry but the albums still come, almost quicker than they did in the heyday.

Not to mention according to the critical chirping, they're 'bringing it' to stronger reviews than when they actually made strong rap albums.

Might be time to stop picking those joints up on the strength, took me both Volumes of the War & Peace albums to give up on Ice Cube even though instinctually I knew it had ended with 'you mean there snakes out there THIS BIG' in the trailer for "Anaconda".

Iron Mike wasn't old or cumulative punishment, he won the title back out of prison.

But when tested it became clear he'd lost his desire, belief and his skills had atrophied.