Saturday Morning lagniappe*. Waiting for the coffee to brew, reading Dustbury, and coming across this item, I was intrigued by the link to the Oracle of Bacon. (Those unfamiliar with the Oracle of Bacon, or the concept of Bacon Number, should see here to salvage any degree of comprehensibilty from the remainder of this post.) Whenever I stumble across the Oracle, I test it by sticking in someone whom I would consider obscure (however, to me most actors are obscure, so my judgement is probably a bit off there). We've been watching DVDs of The Jewel in the Crown** recently, so I popped in the name of the only person from that production whose name I could remember, Art Malik.

Lo and behold, Mr. Malik has a Bacon number of 2, even lower than average:

Art Malik was in Booty Call (1997) with David Hemblen
David Hemblen was in Where the Truth Lies (2005) with Kevin Bacon

While Mr. Bacon is legendary for existing at the center of a vast connected web, it turns out that there are many other actors who are even better connected. The Oracle's site is a bit coy on the subject, but cutting to the chase, apparently Rod Steiger (yeah, I think I've heard of him) is the true center of the Hollywood universe.

*lagniappe – "a small, meaningless blog post, written solely for the purpose of making the blog appear active."

**Oddly enough, the two 'plot keywords' that IMDB lists for The Jewel in the Crown are "Based On Novel" and "Shirtless Male Bondage". Both are true, strictly speaking, but anyone looking to TJitC for the latter will be pretty disappointed.

Posted by David Fleck at 29 September 2007 09:14 AM