People Who Died
Monday, September 14, 2009

Been away in Nevada and California for a couple weeks and am just now getting caught up on news and correspondence that I missed. Was sad to come back to NYC and learn that Jim Carroll died.

Jim Carroll is best known for writing The Basketball Diaries. I got turned onto him in high school when I bought his second book of diaries, Forced Entries, at a used bookstore. It made me want nothing more than to be talented and cool, well versed in chemical and sexual deviancy, and obsessively chronicle my company with rockers and poets like Allen Ginsburg, Keith Richards, William Burroughs, Patti Smith and Bob Dylan. It took me years, and plenty of embarrassing scenes, to figure out I'd never be that cool.

Jim was one of the first "famous" people I interviewed for my college newspaper. You can still read the kinda' gushy interview I did with him 10 years ago (!!!) on his website.

He also, appropriately, wrote the awesome tune, "People Who Died."


"I salute you, brother!"

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