Don't Egg On Bacon

It's tough, being famous for just one thing. There was a country singer named Ernest Ashworth whose primary claim to fame was the big hit "Talk Back Trembling Lips." Old Ern dined out on that record for years and years. He wore sequined suits with giant red lips on them, and guitars similarly decorated, and every Saturday night he showed up at the Grand Ole Opry and sang that song to his adoring public.

I bring this up because of the difference between Ashworth and Kevin Bacon, who has been in dozens of movies over the years. Everyone loved him in "Footloose," and now he says his "worst nightmare is to be at a wedding and the DJ puts on the music" from that film. "They always start out being about the bride, and then there's alcohol involved," he went on. "And by about 10:30, the song comes on, and suddenly the wedding becomes about me getting out and dancing. People will literally form a circle around me and clap their hands like I'm a trained monkey. It's not because I don’t love the song; I do love this song. It's not because I'm not proud of the movie; I'm 100 percent proud of it." Just don't ask him to dance to it. See, if I were to meet Bacon in real life (my sister and her husband rode the Cape May Ferry with him one time; that's my six degrees of Kevin Bacon) I wouldn't ask him to dance. My request would be that he reprise his line from "Animal House," where he was in his ROTC uniform trying to hold back the rampaging crowd by shrieking, "Remain calm! All is well!" It's tough to be famous, not that I would know. And no one asked me to dance at their wedding, either.