Everything is hip in Hollywood–even bowling. How else can you explain the celebrity turnout for the inaugural 2005 Celebrity Rock ‘N Bowl tournament at Hollywood’s very plush Lucky Strike Lanes?
For stars like CSI Miami’s Emily Procter, The West Wing’s Dule Hill, The O.C.’s Benjamin McKenzie, Melissa Joan Hart and Ryan O’Neal, it wasn’t just about the joys of picking up that crucial spare.
The event benefited the Greater Los Angeles Chapter of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, raising essential funds and awareness for society’s efforts to cure leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin’s disease and myeloma and improve the quality of life of patients and families dealing with the maladies. The prospect of contributing to the Society’s efforts AND rolling a strike made it all worth putting on a pair of bowling shoes that thousands of other people’s feet have been in for celebrities like New Kid on the Block-turned-Broadway star Joe McIntyre.
“When you put those goofy shoes on, you’ve got to just go with the flow,” said McIntrye, who recently starred in the Broadway smash Wicked. The singer realized that he’d been more concerned with the shoes’ lack of style than the multitude of wearers. “You don’t think of the feet. Maybe that’s way they make ’em look so stupid. Because you concentrate on how bad they look and not how many people’s feet have been in them. That makes sense.”
“I’m an okay bowler — It depends,” Dule Hill told me. “We’ll see what happens when I get inside. Sometimes I’m good, sometimes I’m bad–but I think the more I drink the better I get, so we’ll see.” Fortunately for Dule, another of the event’s lures was Lucky Strike’s expansive bar, manned by a collection of sexy bartenders.
Oh, yeah, and then there was the live in-house mini-concert by Dishwalla. That may have been the real draw for Emily Procter, who’s recently had music on her mind. “I started a band,” she told me. “It’s a joke band called ‘White Lightning,’ and we tell the love story of people’s romances through power ballads, and we’re performing at Largo in May, May 18. It will be funny! It should be subtle humor full-on, like Heart, Whitesnake, Journey, Styx. I’m really excited about it. I sing.”
“This is what I have decided is really nice about being in the entertainment industry,” Procter continued. “You can convince people to let you do things that you’ve always wanted to do, like starting a band. I was like ‘I really want to start a band, I’m gonna start a band,’ and I sort of bamboozled everybody. I will take it as far as people will let me take it, but I don’t know how far that is. I don’t think it’s very far.”
Speaking of going far, I couldn’t get any juicy season finale spoiler scoop out of The O.C.‘s Benjamin McKenzie. “It’s a huge cliffhanger at the end of the season, but I really can’t talk about it any more than that,” he answered. But he did tell me where he’s spending his summer vacation, a sizeable distance away from The O.C. “I’m going to go to New York and Europe–London at this point, and then we’ll see where it takes me. Sometime in July we’re coming back, so I’ve got a good two or three months. I’m excited.”
I threatened to tell all of Ben’s devoted fans where he’d be staying if he didn’t give up the season finale scoop, but he dodged the not-so-subtle bowling ball I tossed his way.
“I can’t, I really can’t!” he pleaded. “I got in trouble before.” Oh well, I tried.
