Kevin Bacon Plays Pong at AD

Having not ponied up the money to go see him at the Hop, I was unable to attend the after party at AD—and reading the short notice about Bacon in the Daily D earlier this week did nothing to make me regret my choice. Yet seeing pictures of a B-side movie star in the basement of AD piqued my interest:

Julia Plevin ’09 has a piece up at the Huffington Post chronicling the event:

After viewing several carefully snipped movie clips, Bacon himself came out on the stage to accept the framed certificate that is the Dartmouth Film Society’s award. I could not help but wonder what he was thinking as he accepted this award; “great, I can add this to my resume under the ‘Awards Received’ section,” or “some actors accept Emmys, I accept certificates…what is my life coming to?” Either way, he feigned gratitude and attempted to make a speech, but cut it short by saying, “like politicians, my best speeches are written for me. I’m better at the question and answer part.”

The awkward recent Dartmouth alum [Michael Amico ’07] picked up on cue and transitioned into the Q&A part of the evening. His first question was not so smooth, “So here you are, Kevin, accepting this award at an Ivy League institution when you did not even go to college. Do you regret your decision to never obtain higher education?” The irony was that Bacon stars in the infamous college movie, Animal House, that is based on one of Dartmouth’s most disgusting yet most alluring and popular fraternities. Bacon claimed that he did not regret his decision because he knew what he wanted to do with this life and did not need to spend four years “discovering” his passions. As a junior with no idea what I want to do after college, I fully respect and admire Bacon’s decision. He did claim that sometimes he “felt like a dummy” and the whole snotty Ivy League crowd chuckled with an air of arrogance.

[. . .]

There was an after-party at the very frat that was made famous in Animal House. The party was for ticket-holders only and the frat looked cleaner than it ever had before. There was a real bar serving legitimate beers instead of Keystone Light and an array of little sandwiches. Students were standing around mingling as Bacon made his entrance. He was short, but all his vanity paid off because he was quite attractive for a forty-something. The president of the fraternity took him on a tour of house and the crowd followed. The tour ended in the basement where the theme song of Footloose was playing in his honor. While Bacon did not seem interested in the music or dancing, he was willing to play a game of pong, the official drinking game of Dartmouth College. Bacon seemed to have a knack for the game and even sunk the ping-pong ball into a cup of beer with his paddle a few times. I have never seen so many people watching a game of pong. Students swarmed around, taking photos with their cell phones and laughing. He probably thought us students were so lame, but we were excited to have a Hollywood star taking part in classic Dartmouth drunken revelry

Read the whole thing here.

More pictures of Bacon, paddle in hand, at IvyGate.

(Photo courtesy of the Huffington Post.)