Jason Lee

Magical Music Hours: I don't go out much--like to bars with friends. My wife, Carmen [Llywellyn Lee] might go out on a Friday night with her friends. I'll be at home in my recording studio working on music. If I have a choice between a crowded bar and working on music, the choice is obvious for me. Saturday Driver: Saturday during the day, we always take drives. We like to go to this place called Dagwood's on Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica to get pizza and subs and stuff.

"Memphis Beat," which premieres Tuesday on TNT, brings us another quirky cop in a city that is neither New York nor Los Angeles. There is probably some equation here, having to do with exoticism multiplied by tax incentives. But I am all for local color, even if, aside from a few establishing shots, the show is actually filmed downriver in New Orleans. It stars Jason Lee, who spent four seasons in "My Name Is Earl," and before that was featured in movies by Kevin Smith and Cameron Crowe, and before that was a professional skateboarder.

Having co-starred in director Kevin Smith's "Mallrats" and "Chasing Amy," Jason Lee is part of the rising class of young, indie-oriented actors. Now co-starring with David Schwimmer in "Kissing a Fool," he has an opportunity for wider recognition. The former professional skateboarder, 27, is also set for Smith's next, "Dogma," with fellow "Amy" alumnus Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and Chris Rock. "CHASING" ACTORS: "People are wanting to work with everyone from 'Chasing Amy.'

"My Name Is Earl" star Jason Lee wants back on prime-time TV. The actor has signed on to star as a Memphis cop who lives with his mother and moonlights as an Elvis impersonator in the TNT project "Delta Blues." The cable network has ordered a one-hour pilot, which is being executive-produced by George Clooney and Grant Heslov. -- Denise Martin

"My Name Is Earl" star Jason Lee wants back on prime-time TV. The actor has signed on to star as a Memphis cop who lives with his mother and moonlights as an Elvis impersonator in the TNT project "Delta Blues." The cable network has ordered a one-hour pilot, which is being executive-produced by George Clooney and Grant Heslov. -- Denise Martin

Police arrested two suspects Friday in the shooting death of off-duty U.S. Customs and Border Protection employee Mylus Mondy. Mondy had walked up to an ATM in the 6600 block of La Cienega Westway at 11:30 p.m. Sunday when he was approached by a man who demanded money and shot him as he tried to run away. The assailant's face, captured on the ATM's surveillance camera, was broadcast repeatedly on local television news. McKenzie Bryant, 23, has been booked on suspicion of murder, said Jason Lee, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department.

L.A. has always been a hostile market for magazines, but somehow their parties always seem to wrangle a healthy Hollywood guest list -- and the launch at Skybar for the L.A.-based glossy Ingenue proved no exception. The pub features actors-on-the-verge whose upcoming roles are to be their breakouts. "A sampling of the new Hollywood generation," is how editor and publisher Dane Lee describes it, and that pretty much characterized who showed up.

The Italian Renaissance-styled McKinley Mansion, which is on Los Angeles' official list of historic-cultural monuments, was saved from the wrecker's ball over the weekend after a city building inspector arrived on the scene and declared that a demolition permit had been issued by mistake. Contractors hired by owner Jason Lee had been at work an hour or more and did what could be thousands of dollars in damage before building inspector Michael D. Tharpe ordered them to stop demolishing the $4.

NBC'S comedy "My Name Is Earl" takes a deceptively simple premise and plays it for deceptively simple humor. Earl is a boldly mustachioed guy who took a few hundred wrong turns in his life, and has made a list to right those wrongs. He's accompanied on his quest by a cast of working-class antiheroes, including a man-child brother (Ethan Suplee) and a venomous beauty of an ex-wife (Jaime Pressly). Earl is played by Jason Lee, who is also one of the show's executive producers. Taking a break from filming on "Alvin and the Chipmunks," Lee -- in a rare clean-shaven moment -- discussed Earl's fans, his own plans and trying to make television a cinematic experience.

AFTER dropping out of high school in his senior year, Jason Lee decided to become a professional skateboarder, so he did. Then, a decade ago, after snagging a role in the Kevin Smith film "Mallrats," he decided to become a legit, full-time actor. He did that too, with a 10-year film career that has taken him to a level somewhere between the guy who steals the show and the star in movies like "Almost Famous" and "The Ballad of Jack and Rose."

Police arrested two suspects Friday in the shooting death of off-duty U.S. Customs and Border Protection employee Mylus Mondy. Mondy had walked up to an ATM in the 6600 block of La Cienega Westway at 11:30 p.m. Sunday when he was approached by a man who demanded money and shot him as he tried to run away. The assailant's face, captured on the ATM's surveillance camera, was broadcast repeatedly on local television news. McKenzie Bryant, 23, has been booked on suspicion of murder, said Jason Lee, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department.

NBC'S comedy "My Name Is Earl" takes a deceptively simple premise and plays it for deceptively simple humor. Earl is a boldly mustachioed guy who took a few hundred wrong turns in his life, and has made a list to right those wrongs. He's accompanied on his quest by a cast of working-class antiheroes, including a man-child brother (Ethan Suplee) and a venomous beauty of an ex-wife (Jaime Pressly). Earl is played by Jason Lee, who is also one of the show's executive producers. Taking a break from filming on "Alvin and the Chipmunks," Lee -- in a rare clean-shaven moment -- discussed Earl's fans, his own plans and trying to make television a cinematic experience.

AFTER dropping out of high school in his senior year, Jason Lee decided to become a professional skateboarder, so he did. Then, a decade ago, after snagging a role in the Kevin Smith film "Mallrats," he decided to become a legit, full-time actor. He did that too, with a 10-year film career that has taken him to a level somewhere between the guy who steals the show and the star in movies like "Almost Famous" and "The Ballad of Jack and Rose."

L.A. has always been a hostile market for magazines, but somehow their parties always seem to wrangle a healthy Hollywood guest list -- and the launch at Skybar for the L.A.-based glossy Ingenue proved no exception. The pub features actors-on-the-verge whose upcoming roles are to be their breakouts. "A sampling of the new Hollywood generation," is how editor and publisher Dane Lee describes it, and that pretty much characterized who showed up.

Magical Music Hours: I don't go out much--like to bars with friends. My wife, Carmen [Llywellyn Lee] might go out on a Friday night with her friends. I'll be at home in my recording studio working on music. If I have a choice between a crowded bar and working on music, the choice is obvious for me. Saturday Driver: Saturday during the day, we always take drives. We like to go to this place called Dagwood's on Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica to get pizza and subs and stuff.

Having co-starred in director Kevin Smith's "Mallrats" and "Chasing Amy," Jason Lee is part of the rising class of young, indie-oriented actors. Now co-starring with David Schwimmer in "Kissing a Fool," he has an opportunity for wider recognition. The former professional skateboarder, 27, is also set for Smith's next, "Dogma," with fellow "Amy" alumnus Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and Chris Rock. "CHASING" ACTORS: "People are wanting to work with everyone from 'Chasing Amy.'

If they weren't too embarrassed by the nudity, crudity or gross bathroom humor, teen-agers laughed a lot in "Mallrats"--a film by, for and about the MTV generation. What they laughed at, of course, were the bare breasts and bums, the raunchy sex talk and the smelly doo-doo jokes. But the real fun of it all, they said, was that they essentially got to laugh at themselves--a generation of highly educated kids with little to do except shop, play video games and read comics, kids who use their verbal fluency to negotiate sexual favors, debate matters of high trivia (could Lois Lane physically have had Superman's baby?

"Memphis Beat," which premieres Tuesday on TNT, brings us another quirky cop in a city that is neither New York nor Los Angeles. There is probably some equation here, having to do with exoticism multiplied by tax incentives. But I am all for local color, even if, aside from a few establishing shots, the show is actually filmed downriver in New Orleans. It stars Jason Lee, who spent four seasons in "My Name Is Earl," and before that was featured in movies by Kevin Smith and Cameron Crowe, and before that was a professional skateboarder.

If they weren't too embarrassed by the nudity, crudity or gross bathroom humor, teen-agers laughed a lot in "Mallrats"--a film by, for and about the MTV generation. What they laughed at, of course, were the bare breasts and bums, the raunchy sex talk and the smelly doo-doo jokes. But the real fun of it all, they said, was that they essentially got to laugh at themselves--a generation of highly educated kids with little to do except shop, play video games and read comics, kids who use their verbal fluency to negotiate sexual favors, debate matters of high trivia (could Lois Lane physically have had Superman's baby?

The problem with most movie biographies of famous stars is that the wattage of the impersonators is rarely as bright as the originals. The exceptions--Barbra Streisand as Fanny Brice, for example, or James Cagney as George M. Cohan--only prove the rule. What's exciting about "Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story" (citywide) is that, in Jason Scott Lee, the movies have created a new star out of an old star.