By THE NEW YORK TIMES Jim Carroll, the poet and punk rocker in the outlaw tradition of Rimbaud and Burroughs who chronicled his wild youth in “The Basketball Diaries,” died Friday at his home in Manhattan. He was 60. The cause was a heart attack, said Rosemary Carroll, his former wife. As a teenage basketball star in the 1960s at Trinity, an elite private school on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Mr. Carroll led a chaotic life that combined sports, drugs and poetry. This highly unusual combination lent a lurid appeal to “The Basketball Diaries,” the journal he kept during high school and published in 1978, by which time his poetry had already won him a cult reputation as the new Bob Dylan. The full obituary by William Grimes can be found here.

Folks have been recommending it to me for years. I noticed it was on AMC or TBS last week but I passed on watching it since I had the DVD. Last night seemed as good an evening as any to finally give it a shot.

Some friends lent this to me close to a year ago, I finally got around to watching it last night.

When I had my learner's permit I drove a variety of different cars including the one used in Driver's Ed. However, my first car was a grey 1974 Ford Mustang II (much like the model depicted below). It was a piece of shit I drove into the ground. By the time I got done with it I'm pretty sure it went straight to the scrap heap at the local junkyard.

I had the space station and the lunar rover. Remember seeing the kids on Julia playing with their space station? For some reason, the action figures were never shown, probably because of conflict of interest (which later became known as "product placement"). I've read Tom Hanks is going to be starring in a Major Matt Mason movie, that ought to be interesting.

This one oughta be good for starters... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqReNJxzJZk&feature=player_embedded

The T's at Local Band Free Beer Night at Tir Na Nog in Raleigh. Hard to go wrong with free music and free beer. The new T's songs sounded pretty promising too.

Nearly as soon as the rumor about Charlie surfaced it was snuffed out as originally posted in this thread so while it may be "good" news, its also old news.

I no longer lend out music, books, etc. either. People may think I'm being an asshole but fuck 'em. I lent out my copy of Hammer of the Gods to a "friend" and they never returned it. I'm not sure how much first pressings are going for these days but I imagine it's a pretty penny (not that I would ever part with it anyway). Years ago I lent out the magazine below to a "friend" who in turn lent it to one of their friends. You guessed it, I never saw it again. Hell, I had just purchased it myself and had barely even had a chance to read it. Now, it's bringing astronomical prices on eBay.

Thanks to their fanclub I've had seats in the first 3-5 rows for every R.E.M. tour since 1999. I never have gone through a broker and never will. Maybe it's just me but I've never had that much trouble finding seats I'm happy with. That said, I'd love to see a boycott against Ticketmaster but no one seems to be interested, it seems to be much easier to remain apathetic, meanwhile they continue to pull shit like this.

Hagar retracted his Zeppelin statement shortly after he made it saying he was shitfaced at the time.

Looks like Ryan's "retirement" from the music business is over as he's relaunched his Pax American record label. More info here.

Please don't tell me you're surprised by this. This person will reply with a string of articles, links and YouTube clips that don't have a damn thing to do with the conversation at hand. Something tells me the acid never wore off.

I don't necessarily consider Zeppelin to be "the absolute best in Music". They're without a doubt among my very favorite artists though. As for the songs you'd like us to list I'm not sure if you're asking for "Pop" songs (which can be interpreted in a number of different ways), what we consider our "guilty pleasures", our favorite music or what.

Copy the URL from YouTube, then click on the "Insert media" button and paste the link.

We are waiting on pins and needles.

Disc 1 Expanded edition, Disc 2 with some live Alice and outtakes from Billion Dollar Babies Disc 1 Perhaps the Truckers' most solid and cohesive record yet. Yeah, it's a rarities collection but it works in spite of that. Patterson cites R.E.M.'s odds n' sods comp Dead Letter Office in the liner notes but quite honestly that one had more uneven spots than The Fine Print (which was the beauty of it). There's not a track I desire to skip at present and have had their cover of Warren Zevon's Play It All Night Long on repeat more than once since the record came out last week. The icing on the cake here would have been their version of Skynyrd's Every Mother's Son, otherwise I can't complain. Expanded remastered version

Like maybe seeing at least a glimpse of the concert itself? Believe it or not, I've never seen Iron Man. For an action flick it lived up to all the praise friends have given it. I enjoyed Man On Wire but my fellow viewers were asleep within the first 10 minutes.