Seriously? OMG! WTF? » Ping Pong the new hip sport in Hollywood?
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[ # ] Ping Pong the new hip sport in Hollywood?
August 15th, 2006 under Odd

Owen Wilson can come out of the closet now – about his love for Ping-Pong.The "You, Me and Dupree" star said last month that "it sounds like I’m ready to go on a senior-citizens cruise" because he’s "big" on table tennis.But so are Jamie Foxx, Kevin Spacey, Hayden Christensen, Foo Fighter Dave Grohl and Primal Scream front man Bobby Gillespie – some to the point of obsession."I’m a Ping-Pong man," said Foxx. "I have a Ping-Pong table in my living room, and if I had the time to play, I’d play for days." No doubt he gets into the clothes, custom rackets – even table robots that companies like Killerspin market."When we were making ‘Shattered Glass,’ " "Star Wars" cutie Christensen recalled, "we had a Ping-Pong table on the set, and in between every shot, Peter Sarsgaard … and I would rush back to the Ping-Pong table, and we’d have an ongoing tally."Spacey uses his star power to feed his obsession. "Unlike a lot of stories that you hear about actors who demand lots of things in their contract and lots of people and chefs and all that jazz, I’m not one of those," he admitted to Australia’s Andrew Denton. "All I want on location for a movie is a Ping-Pong table in my living room in the hotel.""Superman’s" Lex Luthor adds that when "Shipping News" co-star Dame Judi Dench invited him to her country house, he bought a table and had it delivered when he learned she didn’t have one.Dave Grohl grabbed a paddle whenever there was downtime in the recording studio where he produced the Rye Coalition in the spring. "Dave takes his table tennis VERY seriously," noted Coalition guitarist Jon Gonnelli.But Grohl’s fellow rocker Gillespie took his addiction to the little white balls a bit too seriously – getting hooked on white powder while trying to improve his game, he admitted in England. "I used to do loads of cocaine," said the singer. "Me and my mates used to get sniffed up and play table tennis at my house. That’s the way to do it. Put lines [of cocaine] on the table and then you can do those Japanese topspins and backspins right."USA Table Tennis mag editor Larry Hodges says 300 million people play the game worldwide, including the 306 celebrities shown slamming away on his Web site, larrytt.com. "In a moment of sudden clarity," Hodges says, "I realized what this world needed was a Web page devoted to pictures of celebrities playing table tennis."

Rush & Molloy 

Anyone up for a game?

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