Damn, I missed reading like half of these posts and Marty's advice about the worm gear.
I was stuck in the Cap College parking lot for about 45 min just now because of that guy who flipped the semi. You can only listen to Living In America so many times in a row... so I decided to get the cd out. I took the cd player out, disconnected it, opened it up, and unscrewed the two screws at the top that hold the faceplate in; the bottom of the faceplate just clips into the housing and I didn't want to mess with it and end up breaking it off so I just let it hang there. Anyway, I just plain ripped the cd out. I reassembled the cd player and tested it out with a new cd and it still works. It actually ejects cd's once again too.