Sucks to be a celebrity these days with the Internet and the number of bored people with blogs in the world, but despite the fact that it’s all an inane tempest in a teapot maybe David Cross deserves it.
Patton Oswald wrote the following on his My Space blog about Alvin and the Chipmunks.
GODAWFUL:
People who are pissed off at ALVIN AND THE CHIMPMUNKS
This Friday, ALVIN AND THE CHIMPMUNKS opens at theaters everywhere. And already hipster assholes are whining about how “their childhoods are being raped” and “how mercenary can Hollywood be”?
ALVIN AND THE CHIMPMUNKS is a blatant, soulless, money-grab — the only reason it even got MADE was because there was an family-movie-shaped-hole in the release schedule. Oddly enough, both Brian Posehn and I were offered the part of Ian, the agent. We both threw the script across the room in disgust. David Cross caught it.
But for people to whine and bitch about the movie runing their childhoods is even more disgusting. The only way the ALVIN AND THE CHIMPMUNKS movie is ruining your childhood is if you’re 70 years old, or retarded. In fact, if you liked Alvin and the Chimpmunks to BEGIN with, maybe you need your childhood raped.
Oswald was really making fun of people carping at such an easy obvious target, but apparently egged on by the Onion AV Club, Cross totally overreacted and lashed out on his blog.
To which Oswald said lighten up I was ragging on anyone who really cared about the Alvin and the Chipmunks movie, we’re cool.
Since I have no life and have had a really bad day, I figure why not pile on Cross.
I saw him live and he was fantastic. His routine about George Bush saying Osama Bin Laden hated our freedom instead of the reasons he actually cited for 911 was brilliant.
I met him and he was a real dick to me. It was at Largo, in Los Angeles, and he was probably in a hurry. I mentioned that I was friends with someone he used to work with and he treated me like he had stepped in me by accident in a dog park.
Should a person be judged by how they treated one fawning fan at some random moment? Definitely not, maybe he was just given some bad news, maybe he had just found out that his girlfriend had cheated on him, maybe it was that time of the month.
Nevertheless, you reap what you sow. Cross has a really funny routine about running into fellow moron Scott Stapp after pummelling him in his live act. They both appeared on Celebrity Poker Showdown (not a coup for either of them), and Stapp proved to be practically retarded. Nevertheless, sometimes a comic is so mean (Cross) that you wind up feeling sorry for the guileless moron (Stapp).
Cross’ reaction piece to Oswald’s good natured raging against mindless crap, says more about Cross’ ego than whether he sold out or not. Not everyone gets Tom Hanks’ choice of roles. I’ll make Alvin and the Chipmunks II – give me a call.
I met Doug Stanhope, who although he’s obviously uncomfortable with the fervor of some of his bigger fans like me, was really nice and gracious. We discussed what a great guy Mitch Hedberg was, I met him too and a kinder, gentler man there never was.
Anyway, unprompted, Stanhope said, “I really love what Bill Maher and David Cross have to say politically, I just wish they weren’t such assholes personally.” That’s not a verbatim quote, but it gets to the essence.
So the whole feud is obviously nonsense. Bloggers like me clearly need to get a life. But if I had to bet my life savings on it, my guess is that David Cross needs to get over himself, the sooner the better.
