July 16, 2001

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  When Dreams and Reality Collide, Part IV

  
  

  So there we were, on the Bacon Brothers’ tour bus. Just me, Kelly the photographer, and Kevin and Michael Bacon. As of yet, I had not fainted. I was having a little trouble making eye contact with my idol-for-more-than-a-decade, and then suddenly a flash hit me: I was acting like I had in grade school, when I had posters of Randolph Mantooth and Kevin Tighe up on my bedroom wall. I pulled myself together, and we began to chat.

  
  

  **Pause – Note: No other media outlet in town got an interview with the Bacons while they were in Austin. My husband claims that we did purely because of my nerves of steel.**

  
  

  I sat next to Kevin, with only his imported beer between us on the bus seat. Across from us were Kelly and Michael. Kevin’s voice is deep and resonant, and he’s genuinely funny. His brother has a more dry, sarcastic wit, which is hilarious in its own way. My big discovery was that…

  
  

  They’re just guys. Kevin Bacon is a guy, with two arms, two legs and is basically symmetrical. You know that walk he does in Footloose, A Few Good Men, and every other movie he’s been in where he’s just a little swishy? He walks that way for real. You know that smile with the dimples? He smiles that way for real. He’s just a nice, polite, funny guy that loves his wife and kids, but for two months out of the year he gets to play in a band with his big brother. ("How cool is THAT?", he says.)

  
  

  Michael, for the record, is a Grammy Award-winning musician in his own rite. Unlike the radio DJs had said, they were quite willing to mention movies. "We don’t pretend like there’s no famous movie star in our band," Michael says. "That’s why people bother coming."

  
  

  So anyway, Kelly asked if she could take a picture. "Oh, no!" they said. They weren’t ready for pictures! But they asked her if she’d like to be the only photographer allowed into the sound check, and of course, she said yes. She was the only "approved" photographer the entire night, so she got to climb around the stage and do whatever she wanted. This made her a happy girl.

  
  

  When the Bacons came onto the stage for the show, though, we giggled. They looked exactly like they had on the bus – same clothes, everything. What on earth wasn’t "ready" about them in the bus? We let ‘em slide. Ha.

  
  

  

  
  

  A t-shirt salesman saw us, also. "Oh, YOU two. You were in the BUS. Wink wink, nudge nudge. We know what THAT was." Yeah, that’s it. I was doin’ Kevin Bacon in the bus. You betcha. It’s ok. I had a pass.

  
  

  So we went home to our husbands at the end of the night (who were hiding out at my house, watching manly movies). I didn’t need Kevin for the whole weekend, after all.

  • 3:34 pm
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