This post is going to have slightly less to do with actual skateboarding than anything I've ever written here before, but will contain two Jason Lee riffs that have been on my mind since getting dragged out by my kids to see Alvin and the Chipmunks over the holidays:


1) There is a skateboard in the background of a lot of the interior shots of Dave Seville's house that he shares with the singing rodents, yet he never has the opportunity to ride it in the film.  This reminds me of something my Creative Writing 101 teacher used to say, that I'm sure was some cliché he got from his own Teaching "Creative Writing 101" 101 class: If there is a gun on the table in Act 1, it has to go off by the end of the story. Talk about a missed opportunity: Why would anybody put both Jason Lee and a skateboard in the same kids' movie and not give the kids what they justly deserve for enduring the rest of Alvin and the Chipmunks?


2) Point number two is a more abstract but related riff, something I end up obsessing about a lot with different actors who appear in such strange sellout roles: Why do people like Jason Lee who are both extremely talented and extremely wealthy make the bad choices they make, when in terms of both money and credibility they could afford to be a lot choosier? Case in point: Jason Lee. By all accounts, My Name is Earl is a great TV show, Jason Lee is great in it, and it's a big hit, and his payday for it is assuredly more than you or me or anybody reading this will ever see for any work we'll ever do. Jason Lee is Co-Captain of the Stereo Sound Agency and its umbrella brands, a successful skate empire making money hand-over-fist and with cool points to spare. Jason Lee has also been undeniably great in a number of movies oozing with cool cred, starting with the Allison Anders flick Mi Vida Loca, a string of Kevin Smith flicks – including Mallrats ("I love the smell of commerce in the morning") – that cemented his Hollywood career, and outstanding turns in big, Oscar-bait movies like Almost Famous by Cameron Crowe. I'm going to let him get away with the voiceover in The Incredibles: Great movie, wise choice, I hope he made a lot of money off it. But Underdog and Alvin and the Chipmunks – I mentioned I have two kids, right? – in the same year? Let's not get greedy, Jason.


I clicked around for a while on this here Internet to see if people were giving him a lot of shit for being in this movie, or if he had offered any kind of apologia for it, some kind of karmic Earl riff, and instead stumbled across this hilarious defense from his Chipmunks co-star David Cross, which was actually the impetus for this post in the first place. Click over there and enjoy, but first: A Journey Through Sound, on the way to a croquet match. (I felt this post needed both more skateboarding, and Jason Lee in a better light)