guess who's coming to dinner?

[bear]

you're having a dinner party and you can invite 6 guests, any person dead or living, real or fictional. who would they be?

[bear]

i would have socrates, charlemagne, da vinci, goethe, proust, and little richard

[Skelly Craig]

this reminds me of what Daniel Handler once said when asked this (/a similar) question:

You’re hosting a literary dinner party. Which three writers are invited?

I’m never good at the hypothetical dinner party. I keep imagining the reanimated corpse of Nabokov saying, “Wait, so I was raised from the dead so you and me and Raymond Chandler and Ida B. Wells could share a Cobb salad?” (source)

As for me, I'm not sure I'd want to meet some of my personal heroes, so as not to taint their inspiration to me. As for deceased people, I'd pick people I knew and would like to know from my family, so I'll stick to the living in my choices, if I had to choose right now: Paul Auster, Jamie Hewlett, Daniel Handler, Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Beck Hansen.

[Foxy]

Hmm... I would pick Jesus, my husband, my daughter, my dad... I am not really sure about the last two. This is kind of a fun thing to think about.

[bear]

i was inspired by karl pilkington's choices:

- Elvis ("i'd say sing us a song")
- the Elephant Man (Joseph Merrick)
- Peter Kay ("he's a funny man")
- the fella who lost his arm climbing a mountain (Aron Ralston)
- the woman who went 'round the world in a boat (Ellen MacArthur)
- another woman to talk to her, so... Kym Marsh

[trip]

the six wiggles who look least racist

[Violent BUN Fortuna]

My choices, by no intentional design on my part, have neatly split themselves down the middle so I shall have three living and three dead guests. What fun.
In no particular order, then:

Living: J. K. Rowling, Daniel Handler, Taylor Swift

Dead: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Danny Kaye

I also want to put Lucille Ball on there but considering I’ve only discovered her work much more recently than I have the others, I feel it’s fair that she is kept as a reserve guest.

EDIT: WAIT I totally missed the bit about being able to invite fictional characters. Bother. OK, I’m going to have a separate dinner party for fictional characters and I shall invite (again in no particular order):

Violet Baudelaire
Hermione Granger
Firestar and Sandstorm (as a pair because they’re from the same series, Warrior Cats. Yes, they are cats. This will be a fantastic dinner party.)
Paddington Bear
Brigit (from The Hounds of the Morrigan)

I realise this was only meant to be one dinner party but I messed up and anyway I like the groups I’ve got so I’m going to be rebellious and have more than one imaginary dinner party in my life.

[Skelly Craig]

wth are wiggles

[trip]

read a book sometime terry craig

[trip]

vbun's choices changed mine i want the five wiggles that look least racist and paddington bear

[Skelly Craig]

Feb 8, 2019 2:35:16 GMT -5 trip said:

read a book sometime terry craig

I don't really browse in the 'psychedelic nightmare' section

[nisforknowledge]

Like Violent BUN Fortuna, my choices have split neatly, but unlike Violet, I’m only having one party because I’m bad at parties, whether real or hypothetical.

Real: Daniel Handler, Alex Hirsch, Rebecca Sugar

Fictional: Lemony Snicket, the entire Pines family (they all count as one person because how am I supposed to decide which one and also because I say so), and... uh... erm... White Diamond! (Although she’s probably not going to fit in the house and I don’t want to accidentally make her mad.)

There. A recipe for awkwardness and hilarity.

[Violent BUN Fortuna]

Let’s be honest, everyone should be inviting Paddington.

Oh, and inviting both Daniel Handler and Lemony Snicket?Genius.

[Uncle Algernon]

Feb 7, 2019 15:46:52 GMT -5 Violent BUN Fortuna said:

Firestar and Sandstorm (as a pair because they’re from the same series, Warrior Cats. Yes, they are cats. This will be a fantastic dinner party.)

…Wouldn't you waste rather a lot of teaparty time explaining to the cats why they can now understand the twolegs and trying to ease the ensuing "your species has enslaved mine for millenia to the point that you don't know we're sapient?!?" culture shock? Of course, Hermione would take their side instantly (House-Elves, anyone?). 

[Violent BUN Fortuna]

Hmm, interesting tea party related question. I don’t think so, partly because I imagine at a tea party if this sort, everyone kind of just accepts that Things Are Going to be Odd Today and gets on with it. It will also be interesting to see if they will suddenly be able to speak English, or maybe we will all be able to speak cat? I guess I’ll find out when the party takes place.

If there were such a discussion, though, I would be firmly on the cats’ side with Hermione (though to be honest I don’t think the others would actually be arguing against them ... I think we’d all get along fabulously).

Although, in regards to the sapient thing, I assume you’re referring to the idea that cats see us as ‘big cats’, not a separate species? I’ve always had problems with this notion. I accept that cats treat us, in many ways, in a similar way to how they treat other cats, but that doesn’t mean they literally think we’re cats. They are able to distinguish human vs cat scents, and there are many ways that they treat us as distinctly ‘not-cats’: they don’t for example, view us as potential mates. Rather, I always think it’s touching that cats will, if they trust you, accept you as one of their own while of course remaining perfectly aware that we are not literally the same species. Really it’s pretty much what we do to them. When you trust each other, you become family.

If that wasn’t what you were talking about, though, I apologise for that small and somewhat peculiar diversion in the conversation. 😆