Six Degrees of Separation?

Working in the TV biz, I watch a fair amount of the boob tube. Some news (okay, a lot of news) and some not, but one thing stays true in both cases: there are a ton of commercials. For the most part, I put the commercial breaks on mute and sort through emails. But every once and a while, one commercial comes along that actually makes me wait for the commercial breaks.

My latest favorite involves a balding, dweeby Kevin Bacon uber-fan named Ivan Googling TV shows and Internet clips of the movie icon in his basement. Downright creepy, right? Wrong. The twist is that under all that make up, Kevin Bacon's biggest fan is ... Kevin Bacon.



Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon just got a little more complicated.

With most actors, this would have been little more than some self-serving egotistical attempt at reviving a career. But Bacon takes the mildly creepy role and turns it into something that's both charming and hilarious.

"I didn't know how far they wanted to go with the look and the character. If it was just me kind of walking around, people would think it was weird," Bacon said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. "I walked into this house and I was like, 'Oh my god, you gotta be kidding me.' I loved it."

It's not the thousand and one pieces of Bacon memorabilia or how obsessed Ivan is with the "Footloose" actor that's scary. What disturbs me most, I think, is that I actually like this commercial. I don't know what they're selling and quite frankly, I don't even care. What I've learned from that commercial: Kevin Bacon is as cool now as he ever was! Maybe cooler.