Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?
Today in the car, my Mother and I were discussing that famous question: “If you could have dinner with any three individuals, living or dead, who would you choose?” I began to wonder if one picks say, Julius Caesar or Hammurabi, if a second seat has to be reserved for a translator. I also worried that if I picked too clever a bunch, I’d be left out of the conversation altogether. What do I even have to say that Einstein, Aristotle, or Mozart could give a damn about?
I finally settled on Thomas Jefferson, whom I’d ask to give his opinions of modern day politics through the eyes of a framer of the Constitution, Douglas Macarthur, as he would definitely have some exciting war stories, and Takeru Kobayashi, just to see how much he would eat.
You probably think that answering today’s question is going to require you to compile your own list of three diners, which you are welcome to do, but the real question is yet to come
You see, later on we were listening to the radio and, utterly coincidentally, the host suggested that audience members draft a list of the 20 guests, living or dead, they’d invite to a cocktail party. Suddenly he was talking my language; and though he didn’t specify it, I think that it is assumed that the dead invitees would be somehow plucked from their former lives and placed in the room ready to party. A room full of cadavers does not make for a swanky soiree, and zombies don’t drink cocktails, they are cocktails.
Currently Playing: Oingo Boingo – Dead Man’s Party
I suppose now the question I am about to ask has become a bit more obvious, but here goes: Today’s Question: You can invite 20 historical figures to your cocktail party. Whom do you invite?
I am hard at work on my list, and will post it soon.
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How soon is now? Here are my guests. I hope they can all make it! I have alphabetized them so nobody feels bad about being at or near the bottom of the list. Also, I’ve selected ten men and ten women, to balance things out.
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Maria Callas Winston Churchill Cleopatra W.C. Fields Greta Garbo Cary Grant Ernest Hemingway Audrey Hepburn Hedda Hopper Veronica Lake |
Douglas MacArthur Groucho Marx Marilyn Monroe Dorothy Parker Sylvia Plath Edward G. Robinson Preston Sturges Mae West Oscar Wilde P. G. Wodehouse |
Musical entertainment will be provided by Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians.
eating wax is not good for you.
i see that simone simone did not make the cut. and your dinner guests are from the last couple centuries or so. why aren’t older corpses invited?
@Fizzy Pop, Eating Wax?
As for the unfortunate Miss Simon (or was she a Mrs.?), I would have invited her, but since you will obviously be my date, I wanted to avoid the inevitable cat fight that would have erupted were you both in the same room.
@Peasprout, Whoah– freaky– I just checked online. Simone Simon died two days ago. Now I feel bad about not inviting her. Also, she never married; she was holding out for me.
eating wax?? what?? yeah so why r u inviting people from the dead to ur luncheon? they probably wont be there anyways…. cuz u invited them. hehehe….
hey! whats up with u and ur peasprout???!!!??
Can I just be a coincidental stranger who mistakes your place for a different party she was supposed to attend and manages to charm her way in to your party?
Please?
@SatanLuciferi, I suppose in theory I don’t have a date to this party…
Many bonus points to you for inviting Maria Callas. I don’t know all that many who know her at all, let alone place her so high. She was a very gifted woman. Would that one day I might share a portion of her talent.
@Peasprout, I’d happily be your date. Anyone who can put that guestlist together is worth knowing.
Good question. Hmm. Without spending TOO much of my workday thinking about this… [I’d have to put a rider on this that my partners get to attend. Otherwise, it would be no fun for me. Or at least less fun.] Audre Lorde Richard Dawkins Stephen Hawking Joan Baez Zora Neale Hurston David Sedaris BB King Josephine Baker Thomas Jefferson Elizabeth Cady Stanton Frederick Douglass Buckminster Fuller George Bernard Shaw Carl Sagan Gloria Steinem Oscar Wilde Dorothy Parker Lizzy Borden Laurie Anderson Judith Martin (Miss Manners) Thinking of who would do the music was even harder than thinking of this list, so I gave up.
I always forget the lines don’t break in comments. Here’s a more readable version:
Audre Lorde
Richard Dawkins
Stephen Hawking
Joan Baez
Zora Neale Hurston
David Sedaris
BB King
Josephine Baker
Thomas Jefferson
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Frederick Douglass
Buckminster Fuller
George Bernard Shaw
Carl Sagan
Gloria Steinem
Oscar Wilde
Dorothy Parker
Lizzy Borden
Laurie Anderson
Judith Martin (Miss Manners)
thats quite a list
Ditto with the girl above who said she would like to charm her way into the party. I would like to meet: From literature: Charles Dickens, E.Hemingway, Kahlil Gibran, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte,Agatha Christie…From Art: Monet, Toulouse Latreuc, Michelangelo, Da Vinci,Andrew Wyatt, Steinlen, From Theatre: Audrey Hepburn, Cary Grant, Gregory Peck, Natalie Wood, From Music: Robert Johnson, Beverly Sills, and Billie Holiday.
How could I have forgoten Billie Holiday?!?
We like smaller dinner parties.
Jesus
The Apostle Paul
C.S. Lewis
Einstein
Ronald Reagan
Jerry Seinfeld
My daughter, Ash, wants Britney Spears as the entertainment.
Phil Hartman
Chris Farley
Marilyn Monroe
JFK (oooh, I bet they’d play footsie under the table)
Bob Marley (I better cook extra because he’ll have the munchies)
Audrey Hepburn
Gene Kelley
Andy Warhol because I want a first hand telling of Studio 54
Princess Diana
Jimmy Stewart
Grace Kelly
Daniel Tosh
ah man.. my list is going to be so lame.. here goes:
Music-
Hendrix (no brainer)
Nick Drake
Ray Charles
Stevie Ray Vaughan
Martin Sexton
Sports-
Jordan
The Arts-
Coen Brothers
David Fincher
Darius Khondji
Roger Deakins
Caravaggio
Katsushika Hokusai
Dorothea Lange
Walker Evans
Da Vinci ( cliche much? )
Misc
Pops
Grandma Z
Sri Ramakrishna
Eknath Easwaran
Benjamin Franklin
Nachiketa
Gandhi
Barack
@Kendra, Kendra– your party sounds like a somewhat sober affair, although I would like to see how Einstein, an atheist and a communist, gets on with Jesus and Reagan.
@Dave, I like your guests, although Nick Drake may be a bit of a downer. Maybe see if he can handle coat check, lest he depress people too much.
My party will have lots of jokes, a scandalous love affair, well dressed elegant ladies and gentlemen who dance and tell stories like no other, the one trippy guy with great stories, sweet regae music, and I’m cooking so of course the menu will be top notch. You intelligentsia are not invited so there!
@Audrey, Yes Audrey, your party and mine will certainly be much more upbeat affairs than the rest. Perhaps we can rent adjacent banquet rooms, especially since Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe are invited to both soirees!
I gotta pick how my guests? — they gotta be dead?
Nikolia Tesla — I’d let these three prowl the internet for about a month.
Robert A Hienlien
Theodore Sturgeon
Jayne Mansfield — just for the eyecandy factor
At this stage I honestly can’t think of any more.
I don’t want to eat with twenty people. Too much happening around me. Let me see if I can do this in no particular order( which is of course, a lie, I just don’t want people to think I REALLY thought of Warren Zevon first)
Warren Zevon
Townes Van Zant
Gram Parsons
Tom Waits
Joe Strummer
( this would basically be the corner of the table that I would stay in for the bulk of the evening)
James Joyce
Graham Greene
Kate Chopin
Kenneth Burke
Wallace Stegner
Michel Foucault
Jonathan Kozol
Ward Churchill
Augustine
Joseph Campbell
Dana Randall ( my wife)
Joseph Smith ( my grandfather not the mormon prophet….although)
Vine DeLoria
David Foster Wallace
Michael Stipe
You all are welcome too of course
Jesus
Buddha
Mohammed
Lao-tzu
William Blake
Soren Kierkegaard
G. I. Gurdjieff
Albert Camus
Ram Dass
Leonard Cohen
Roald Dahl
My great grandparents on my grandfather’s side
My grandparents on my mother’s side
My girlfriend ABC
Joe Strummer
John Muir
Ansel Adams
Albert Einstein
I’m sure I could think of more, but to plan for this bunch would be quite an honor as it is
You know I am too shallow for this. It would all be cute men. Jk. I will think of a list.
Here is my list, per request. Not sure if it would be a problem having Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick at the same party:
Princess Diana
Audrey Hepburn
Jane Austen
Eleanor Roosevelt
Edith Head
Sylvia Plath
Queen Victoria
Marie Antoinette
Edie Sedgwick
Zelda Fitzgerald
Leslie Howard
Cary Grant
Jack Kerouac
James Dean
John Peel
Robert Kennedy
Oscar Wilde
John Keats
George Harrison
Andy Warhol
Well, I thought twenty couples could make for an interesting night. People get lonesome with ennuie sometimes, you know. So here are lovers, rivals, collaborators, or just couples I wish had become of acquaintance. Real, imagined, or otherwise:
Jacqueline du Pré and Daniel Barenboim
Noel Coward and George Sanders
Andrei Tarkovsky and Aleksandr Sokúrov
Myrna Loy and William Powell
Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir
Lord Byron and Lady Caroline Lamb
Bette Davis and Joan Crawford
Fyodor Dostoevsky and Albert Camus
Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten
Queen Victoria and Prince Albert
Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy
Friedrich Nietzsche and Hannah Arendt
Peter Sellers and Alec Guinness
Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison
Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz
Cleopatra and Marc Anthony
Georg Cantor and Kurt Gödel
Napoleon and Josephine Bonaparte
Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith
Oscar Wilde and I (as his muse, of course)
@Chrissy a.k.a. Betty Grable, Will you be attending as Chrissy or Betty Grable?
@Chrissy a.k.a. Betty Grable, Also, how did I ever throw a party and not invite Peter Sellers. Perhaps he will end up accidentally invited to mine, à la Hrundi V. Bakshi.
20, eh?
1. Vladimir Horowitz
2. Theodore Roosevelt
3. Frederic Chopin
4. Alicia Keys
5. Paul Farmer
6. Walt Disney
7. Robert Frost
8.
@Peasprout, Chritty Grable