In the alley with Katie Couric

I’ve never blogged before. I’ve been too scared to. The mere thought of setting up a Typepad account kept me awake at nights. But if there’s anyone I would overcome my fear for, it’s Katie Couric. Particularly when it involves the cause closest to her heart, the fight against colon cancer. So when I heard about her Strike Out Colon Cancer event, held last night at the newly-relaunched 300 New York bowling alley at Chelsea Piers, I decided now was the time to lose my blog-inity.

Katie gathered a few hundred of her closest friends, including Whoopi Goldberg, The Sopranos‘ Steve Schirripa and John Ventimiglia, and Queer Eye‘s Kyan Douglas for the event. For each strike anyone bowled, 300 New York would donate $1,000 to the National Colorectal Cancer Research Alliance (NCCRA). I love bowling but I’m horrible at it, so my goal was to score just one strike so that my attendance wasn’t completely useless. My first few frames were pretty pathetic. But luckily for us, they hired the dashing former pro bowler Brian Voss to give us a few pointers. After Brian showed me his four-step technique, I hit not one, not two, but three strikes. Hear that, Katie? Three thousand bucks! No need to thank me; it was my pleasure.

In case you’re wondering, Katie’s a decent bowler herself. While shespent most of the time mingling, she did bowl four frames, and scoredtwo 8s and two 7s for a total of 30. (Watching her bowl while ahalf-dozen photographers crouched halfway down the lane to catch her inaction was pretty wild.) I asked Voss what tips Katie needed in hertechnique. "The same as everybody," he said. "Timing." As always, Katiewas quite the operator. When she made her speech in the middle of thenight and realized only 30 grand had been raised, she asked the bowlingalley owner, "Can we get half for spares?"

One strange side note. As I left to catch the end of American Idol,a woman in the lane next to me scored a strike and started screamingand jumping up and down. It was Fantasia. Wasn’t she supposed to be onstage in The Color Purple? Oh well, at least she was supporting a great cause.