<p>You’d want Wolfie in the same room with you?</p>
<p>I’m betting George can still take him!</p>
<p>My children’s AP American History teacher had a paper each year that the kids had to write along this same line. They were to write about a dinner party they would host (with dialogue.) I don’t remember the exact directions, but they were to invite 5 people, living or dead, to a dinner party; the paper was to show and tell the conversation and actions of the invited guests. I believe one or two of the guest were to be from American History, but the others could be anyone.</p>
<p>This paper was never really “graded”, but each and every paper was read by the teach and many were sharded with the class. While the kids would complaint about the writing, most of them really enjoyed the assignment! I think many of the kids had much humor in their paper by including controversial guest and mixing the past with the present. I know my son had someone like Jerry Garcia along with Stalin, groupings like that. I should go look for those papers, there were really funny!</p>
<p>That’s essentially one of the University of Chicago essay prompts in this year’s application.</p>
<p>I believe it was Brooke AStor who said that the key to any good dinner party is a mix of guests who feel obliged to entertain the person sitting next to them.</p>
<p>I like to invite journalists, army officers, property developers and Crown prosecuters to dinner. They have the best gossip. Fiction writers are a surprisingly quiet group. They tend to spend the evening ‘observing’. Snooze. </p>
<p>Comedians and poets are notoriously depressed and narcissistic–tough going at a party. I like research scientists, captains of industry, surgeons, geophysicists, painters, headmasters, entreprenuers, literary critics and filmmakers. Personally, I like to mix up nationalities too. I have a friend who is a Sri Lankan Malaysian, doing her cardio surgery residency in Australasia after boarding school in England, undergrad in Scotland, med school in Dublin (where she broke her neck playing professional women’s rugby) and a 25,000 kilometer honeymoon driving offroad from Capetown to Nairobi, sleeping in a tent on top of a Land Rover. Oh yeah, and her mum has a summer home near George Clooney on Lake Como. That is a dinner guest with STORIES to tell.</p>
<p>Famous people I would like to invite to dinner:
Frank Gehry, Richard Serra, Robert Fisk, John C Reilly, Condi Rice, Gillian Welch, Prince (breaking my No Narcissists rule), Spike Lee, Azar Nafisi, Isabelle Allende, Muchiko Kakitani, Sam Shepard, Barack Obama, Pedro Almodovar and Jennifer Saunders.</p>
<p>CC cyber dinner guests: marite, fountainsiren, blossom, coureur, robrym, tsdad, TheDad, slugg, Alum, tlaktan, mini, momrath, SBmom, berurah, curmudge…the list is too long…</p>
<p>How dare you call Condaleeza Rice “Condi.”</p>
<p>I would enjoy sitting next to Fisk and, well, Fisking him to his face.</p>
<p>If George Bush can call Putin ‘Pootey Poot’, I can call Condoleeza ‘Condi’.</p>
<p>You must have missed the thread of outrage at W calling Condaleeza 'Condi".</p>
<p>This one is a no freaking brainer. A drunk Heather Graham and Alyssa Milano.</p>
<p>Cheers - I’ve had dinner with Marite, TheDad, and MassDad. </p>
<p>My dinner - Antonin Scalia and the team from UT that cracked Linear B.</p>
<p>Al Gore and a group of ozone burning SUV owners. Boy, I would pay good money to see that!</p>
<p>I was sure you would say Ulysses S. Grant…</p>
<p>John Waters and Don Delillo</p>
<p>Newt Gingrich and Barack Obama</p>
<p>I dont really like to discuss politics at the table-and favorite guests either help me with the dishes or don’t scold me if I don’t jump up to do them as soon as dinner is finished- but I suppose if pressed, two local authors could be interesting- Sherman Alexie & Tom Robbins- or maybe Jonathan Raban and Alan Arkin.
Or maybe Joan Didion and Camille Paglia- naw-</p>
<p>I’d like to have Mark Steyn and Lucianne Goldberg for the sheer dish of it. I’d also like to have Nancy Reagan, Rudy Giuliani, Stephen King, Norman Mailer and Anderson Cooper.</p>
<p>Okay, I change my mind about inviting NYU admissions officers.</p>
<p>I’d invite Warren Ellis and Blair.</p>
<p>And watch Ellis make fun of Blair. Oh my god, that would be brilliant. I’d probably die of joy.</p>
<p>I prefer dinner conversations which I can participate in, not just listen to and guests who are mindful of the need to be inclusive… Although one evening spent in the home of French friends was made more pleasant when they and their Francophone guests argued in French rather than English about GWB.</p>
<p>With this in mind I would invite Nora Ephron and Ellen Goodman.</p>
<p>Do they have to be alive? I want to have Charles Darwin and Stephen J. Gould for dinner. If I could have three people, I’d add Alfred Russel Wallace.</p>
<p>I’d have dinner with ariesathena at a steak place ;-)</p>
<p>If she was busy, I’d settle for Winston Chirchill, Claire Boothe Luce and Teddy Roosevelt.</p>