In the early 1990s, Ross and Janice made a deal with a new animation company, and began working on some direct-to-home-video Chipmunk movies. As always, they invited us to take part, but Simon and I both declined. I was in my mid-fifties by this point, and the idea of ramping my voice up to act like a clueless child no longer held much appeal to me.
Alvin decided to give it a go, but he ran into problems. "I went over to Ross and Janice's house to do a quick read-through of the first draft of The Chipmunks Meet Frankenstein. And about ten lines in, I just stopped. I sounded terrible. I had started developing that 'old rodent' voice just in the couple of years since the cartoon was cancelled. I tried again, but the more I spoke, the more I could tell my voice wasn't right for the role anymore. Finally, I sighed and told them to forget it.
"It was kind of embarrassing, but not really painful. It was a lot like when the cartoon got cancelled. The money would've been nice, but at least it meant I didn't have to do these silly movies. Ross and Janice were really nice about it. They took me out for drinks and dinner, and we drank a toast to the end of an era." Thus ended our direct involvement with anything Chipmunks-related. After that, we just got a smaller percentage for having our names and likenesses used. Even if, by this point, the characters didn't resemble us in the slightest.
"It is very cheering to think that our handshake agreement from three decades ago remained in effect," Simon maintains. "It was quite evident that Ross genuinely cared about our well-being, and about doing what was right by us."
Off the Chipmunks front, our lives continued on. Most notably, a major event took place in Simon's life. "I was inexperienced, shall we say, with the opposite sex," he admits. "At least, in a romantic sense. I had several female colleagues and friends, but everything had always been kept strictly platonic. And so it remained until I met Professor Sadowsky. In 1992, she became the second rodent professor at Columbia University. Therefore, we obviously had some common ground." Love at first sight? "Not at all, although I found her pleasant and good company. We met for lunch, dinner or drinks a few times a month, and I did enjoy our time together. But that was the extent of the relationship."
So, what happened? "She forced my paw, one might say. One night as we finished dinner, she asked if I were currently dating anybody, and I replied that I was not. She then asked if I would consider her 'dating material', and I had to admit that I had not truly considered her in that regard. She stood up and said, 'Please consider it, and let me know your thoughts,' and then left." And? Simon grins. "And the next day I called her up to ask her out on a date. Your brother is not that big a fool."
About a year later, Professor Thomas Simone (né Simon Chipmunk) and Professor Leslie Sadowsky were married. Alvin flew in, and he and I were two of the ten attendees. "We wanted our ceremony to be quiet, simple and memorable," maintains Simon. "And it proved to be all three." Simon is now retired from full-time teaching. As a Professor Emeritus, he occasionally teaches a course, and he gives guest lectures on musical history at various schools. But he mainly spends his days enjoying his life with Leslie.
The Cemented project ended with a whimper rather than a bang. We played four monthly gigs after our Hawaii trip, but then Simon had a conference booked in another state and couldn't make the next one. We decided to take a break, and told The Beacon to take us off the monthly schedule. And as the months turned into years, the break became permanent. I do miss playing with my brother and everybody else, but at least I have a ton of great memories from those gigs.
As the new millennium approached, I slowly began easing myself out of the nuts-and-bolts operations of HalFlat. I still did the phone work, paperwork, and initial consultations, but Grace (and her assistant, when she had one) did more and more of the actual construction. Grace admits, "I thought this was going to be a fun little job I could do while I figured out what to do with my life. But I guess at some point I decided that building stuff was what I actually wanted to do." Several years later, I sold her a majority share of the company. I was getting older and slower, and it was just time for someone else to take it over. And HalFlat couldn't be in better paws than hers. I still do phone work or initial consultations if she needs the help, but those times are getting more and more infrequent as the years blow by.
I suddenly had a lot of spare time on my paws, and I turned my sights to the internet. I was way behind the rest of the Western world, but I was excited to start learning how to use it. I bought a computer, and eventually started my own blog called "WeAllScream". I made it my mission to review all of the ice cream parlors in New York City (and a few in some other areas, too). It was a lot of fun, even if the site was never all that popular. Sadly, I eventually got into a disagreement with the hosting company and lost the domain. I sort of gave up the blog after that. I probably should restart it someday.
Following my lead, Alvin ended up selling the majority of his company Safety Corps to his long-term employees Stephen and Jonathan. "I was a bit nervous, giving up control. I hoped they would do OK with it. About a year after they took over, they had expanded the business into the Inland Empire. In other words, yeah, they did OK with it."
After his company was sold, Alvin gave me a call, and we had a long phone conversation. With him retired from SafetyCorps, and no more voicework on the horizon, there was nothing keeping him in Los Angeles. Did he want to come back to New York and live with me? "I was very tempted to," Alvin admits. "I really did love Los Angeles, but I also liked New York, and I did miss seeing my brothers whenever I wanted to. But then it occurred to me that you didn't have anything keeping you in New York, either. Maybe you should come back to LA and live with me." We argued about this, in a friendly way, for almost an hour. But finally Alvin came up with the best solution - why not do both?
So in April of 2000, I packed up some stuff, locked the door to my apartment, and boarded a train for Los Angeles. I could have flown, of course, but I hadn't gotten to "see America" since my hitchhiking adventure thirty-five years before. As it turns out, America wasn't all that exciting from the train, but that's okay - I got a lot of reading done. When I arrived in LA, I borrowed some tools, bought some lumber, and did the final solo HalFlat project of my career. Within a week, I had my own bedroom and sitting room above Alvin's living room, and we were officially roommates
The main highlight of my return to Los Angeles took place on May 29th, 2000. On that day, Robert and I took our seats at Dodger Stadium to watch the Los Angeles Dodgers play the New York Mets. "I couldn't believe it," says Robert. "After four decades of talking about it, and a number of near misses, we finally got to experience a Dodgers game together." The Dodgers' Shawn Green made the game especially memorable by hitting a grand slam in the fourth inning. "You leapt onto your seat with your eyes bugging out, yelling 'Are you kidding me?! Are you kidding me?!' It was incredible. I'm so happy I got to share that moment with my long-suffering Dodgers friend."
Alvin calls our living arrangement a "dual citizenship". We live in Los Angeles for several months or a couple of years, and then decide to head back to New York for awhile. Occasionally, one of us moves to the other apartment a month or two before the other joins him. This gives us a little breathing room if we feel that we're starting to get on each other's nerves a bit.
We kept this up for about seven years, but then we started wondering if it was such a good idea. After all, we were paying for and maintaining two residences, and one of them was always unoccupied. Maybe we should just pick one city to live in? We went out for breakfast one morning in New York to discuss it. Over our pancakes, Alvin said, "Well, Ross and Janice have another Chipmunks movie coming out in a few months. Maybe that'll make us so much money that we won't have to worry about it anymore."
"I was totally kidding," Alvin insists. "I was guessing the movie would end up being like The Chipmunk Adventure - you know, a few extra bucks for us, but no big deal."
We never saw the movie - the previews were more than enough for any of us. ("Alvin literally puts Theodore's shit in his mouth," says Alvin, still not believing it.) But it felt like we were the only ones who skipped it. The movie was a monster hit. It grossed over $200 million, which meant that even our tiny slice of the pie was significant. When the reports for the opening weekend came on, Alvin, Simon, Leslie and I put on our nicest clothes and went out to a fancy restaurant. Alvin ordered champagne, and proposed a toast. "To AL-VIN, Simon, and the one that giggles known as Theodore - thank you for making us stinkin' rich."
I never believe people when they say that they have "no regrets in life". Surely they must have done something they wish they hadn't, or didn't do something they wish they had. That's certainly true of me, anyway. For instance, I wish I'd been a better boyfriend to the girls I'd been with. If so, I might have found someone to settle down with, like Simon did. I also regret not pushing me and my brothers forward as a band. Had we worked on our songwriting, and had the three of us forged ahead as a group, I think we really would have been a rock group to reckon with. But thoughts like these don't mean I regret how my life turned out - far from it, in fact. I've had an incredible run, and I'm very thankful for it.
...ugh! Look at me, droning on and on about myself! That's no way for a guest to act. Listen, I'll tell you what. Let me get each of us a cup of butter pecan ice cream, and then you can start telling me all about you. Sound good?