Today is a very sad day in that Beastie Boy Adam Yauch has died. He was a terrific musician and filmmaker and a warm, funny person who a lot of people loved. I got to know him a little bit in the '90s because my roommate from college helped him run his Tibetan-Freedom organization, The Milarepa Fund. The way that he handled the news of his cancer diagnosis three years ago impressed me as amazingly graceful. Which was not a surprise—the way he handled it, I mean. He had always handled maturing, and changing, in the public eye more gracefully than many other examples we've seen.

"There's a real void in the marketplace since Columbia Record club is no longer active, so we're hoping to hire a staff of tens of thousands to call our valuable membership over and over again and harass them until they cry." Good. Beastie Boy Adam Yauch seems to be recovering well from cancer. He's starting a subscription service for DVDs of the movies he produces through his company Oscilloscope Laboratories. And making funny jokes.