Damon spices up fund-raiser

There seems to be no lengths that good-guy movie star Matt Damon won't go to when helping out causes he supports. In Toronto for the film festival, the Oscar winner and Brad Pitt co hosted an event Sunday with economist Jeffrey Sachs, a former Harvard prof tapped to run the United Nations Millennium Project, seeking to eradicate world poverty. While hosting an auction, Damon attempted to increase a $50,000 bid for a package to attend the premiere of ``Ocean's Thirteen" by including a chance to have -- how can we put this? -- an intimate encounter with Pitt. The addition, Damon joked, was fueled by a couple of glasses of wine and his exuberance for the cause. As part of the fest, Damon and his LivePlanet production partners Marc Joubert and Larry Tanz, a Harvard alum, discussed their new documentary ``Running the Sahara" about three men who run across the desert in 75 days to draw attention to the plight of that region. Damon said he's working to establish a fund called Africa H2O, which will provide wells and clean water to poverty-stricken communities. ``It's truly mind-boggling, and outrageous, and unnecessary," Damon was quoted in yesterday's The Globe and Mail. ``But beyond the issue of just surviving, it's the whole issue of the quality of someone's life."

Parenteau back in Boston after prison

Former WBCN DJ Mark Parenteau is out of prison and back in Boston. We're told the legendary jock, who pleaded guilty in 2004 to second-degree child sexual abuse, is living at a halfway house in Cambridge and starts a part-time marketing job today for his longtime friend Bill Blumenreich, owner of the Comedy Connection. Parenteau, a prolific partier during his days at 'BCN, was accused of having sex with a 14-year-old boy in Washington, D.C., where he was working at the time as the comedy program director at XM Satellite Radio. For two decades, Parenteau, 56, was a wildly popular radio personality in Boston. Good buddies with Steven Tyler and Joe Perry, he was sometimes referred to as the unofficial sixth member of Aerosmith. Parenteau, who left 'BCN in 1997, served the bulk of his three-year sentence at a federal facility in Lexington, Ky.

Filmmaker Moore targeting healthcare

Muckraking filmmaker Michael Moore is hoping folks in Massachusetts can help him with his next movie. Moore's peeps have sent out an e-mail asking Bay Staters to share their stories about battling the healthcare system. The controversial director, whose last movie, "Fahrenheit 9/11," focused on the events surrounding Sept. 11, is hard at work on something called ``Sicko," which producers say will ``fight for quality healthcare." Among those who received Moore's missive was Ann Eldridge Malone at Mission Hill-based Alliance to Defend Health Care. Malone told us yesterday that she managed to find a few people interested in participating in the project. After "Fahrenheit 9/11," you might recall, Moore was sued by Iraq war veteran Peter Damon of Middleborough, who claims the director misrepresented his stand on the war.

Chris Cooper comes across as just a regular Joe in the new Improper Bostonian. In a Q&A with the mag, the Oscar winner, who lives on the South Shore, says he's "pretty irritated" with the Democrats' inability to assert themselves on the issue of the Iraq war. ``I wish they'd build up the Iraqi forces as rapidly as they can and start sending our guys home. We gotta move along on this."

At the Boston Film Festival last night, actor-writer Chazz Palminteri, star of ``A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints," was honored at a reception at the Lenox Hotel for his film career.

And David Leaf, director of the documentary "The U.S. vs. John Lennon" made the Boston festival rounds, chatting up his new film. . . . There may not be much to celebrate at Fenway these days, but the Sox are still managing to have a good time -- off the field. Coco Crisp, Eric Hinske, and country singer Pat Green got their grooves on at Game On! the other night to celebrate the birthday of Sox bullpen catcher Jason Larocque. . . . And, 8-year-old James Reardon was the man yesterday, bringing Bruin s center Patrice Bergeron to school for show and tell. Bergeron picked up the Scituate squirt in the team Hummer and drove him to the Hatherly Elementary School.

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