When Celebrities Play Rough
Invited to: The 1st Annual Celebrity Dodgeball Tournament to benefit the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, at the Toluca Lake Tennis Club and Sports Center.
The setup: “Five balls?!” wonders diminutive “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” sidekick Alyson Hannigan, grasping that this event isn’t your father’s dodge ball. “I’m hoping they’re soft,” she adds . . . and is promptly beaned by a stray practice shot. This latest twist on the let’s-get-celebrities-together-to-do-something-for-a-worthy-cause idea is hosted by longtime foundation supporter Courteney Cox Arquette and husband David. “I’m ready, I’m prepared,” she says, showing off a cute pair of Nikes, though her duties this evening don’t involve perspiring (or grievous bodily harm). Team rosters for the celebrity matches include Cox Arquette’s fellow “Friend” Matthew Perry and a few other bona fides--the pinnacle of a fame pyramid, as it were--and are well bolstered with larger contingents from TV’s “Survivor” and the film “The Wash.” Doing the gustatory hostessing honors is a contingent of equally well-bolstered Hooters girls. The event raises nearly $90,000 for children with HIV, AIDS and other life-threatening illnesses. Others, such as David Spade of “Just Shoot Me” and Jeff Timmons of 98 Degrees, show up but decline to enter the fray. “It just brings back horrible memories,” says “According to Jim” headliner Courtney Thorne-Smith. “I’m rooting for nobody to die.”
The agony and the ecstasy: “In Toronto,” Brendan Fraser says of his early dodge-ball memories, “we had an awful name for it: ‘Murderball.’ ” When Kevin Richardson was just a little Backstreet Boy, he says, “we had about 15 balls going at once.” Richardson, however, ends the evening by messing up some previously completed reconstructive knee surgery. Perry also goes down early. “I was too aggressive,” he reflects. “It’s all for charity, but it’s really about winning and losing, and I lost.” Harland Williams and his teammates from the cross-dressing comedy movie “Sorority Boys” put on a better show.
“We may dress like women in the movies, but we’re all men on the dodge-ball court,” he says. Still it’s a double-elimination event, and in the end, the “Survivor” team takes the tournament. “Even in a rematch, the ‘Survivors’ were still the survivors,” David Arquette says. “It’s like reality TV meets reality. It’s frightening.”
Celeb Quotient: ** “Friends,” friends of “Friends,” a Backstreet Boy and a host of “Survivors.”
Wow Factor: ** Dodge balls and silicone.
Grazing Level: * Hooters isn’t exactly famous for its cuisine.
Rating Scale: 1=ho-hum 4=yowza