All about the L.A. Lakers Kiss Cam

Here's an article from the L.A. Times about one of the most celebrity-filled Kiss Cams in North American sports: The L.A. Lakers at the Staples Centre. Highlights:

Midway through nearly every Lakers game at Staples Center, in a manner so pure and unscripted we sometimes cry out in wonder, it happens.

It's about twisting, spinning, lunging, stretching, feinting, grabbing, clutching and, ultimately, scoring.

It's about kissing.

...Nobody does Kiss Cam like a Lakers crowd.

Nowhere, it seems, are the couples as animated, or the crowd as involved, or the message about the heart of Los Angeles any more clear. In a night filled with supermen, it is a brief, heartwarming reminder that the Lakers have been built upon the hopes and ideals of those who are real.

In a town where everything is supposedly disposable, no Kiss Cam moment is cheered louder than a smooch between an elderly couple. In a town that supposedly doesn't trumpet family values, the second-loudest cheers occur for the forehead pecks of a parent on a child.

The third-most popular Kiss Cam moment? Hugh Hefner sitting in a luxury suite kissing three or four bunnies. C'mon, this is still Hollywood.

...In the end there is usually wild cheering, because there is usually Dustin Hoffman. Sitting several rows behind the scorer's table, Hoffman has inexplicably become the star of this show, giving the old-fashioned segment a vaudeville ending.

He will kiss wife Lisa passionately, or with popcorn coming out of his mouth, or mysteriously behind a program. Recently he topped himself by kissing her before the cameras found him, as if he's always making out in the middle of the game.

The cool thing about Hoffman is the cool thing about Kiss Cam. Not once have the Lakers talked with him about his participation. Not once have they warned him that he was going to be shown. Like everything else on the Kiss Cam, it just happens.

Read the entire article...