My Dinner with …

Well rather than drag out the suspense the folks who qualified for … well, I guess we’ll make it Thanksgiving Dinner.

Twelve folks (myself included) contributed names. Many thanks to Stan, Meera, Mary, Fred, Dodd, Nicholas, Timbo, Margie, Brian, Doyce, and Amanda.

One hell of an eclectic group, I’ll tell you. There were 151 different names submitted. Of that, only 22 names had more than one vote — and only six had more than two votes.

The core six diners, then (ones I voted for in bold):

Ben Franklin (4)
Robert Heinlein (3)
Thomas Jefferson(3)
Julius Caesar (3)
William Shakespeare (4)
Mark Twain (6)

I’m not sure about Caesar (I’d be more likely to vote for Augustus than Julius), but Heinlein is a fine choice.

Different folks had different themes. Some were into literary figures — which, except in cases where I know something of their personality, I tended to avoid as I didn’t know if they’d be any good at a dinner party. Sure, it would be cool to chat with Shakespeare — but what about? Was he all that good a conversationalist? Twain, on the other hand, seems a fine dinner candidate. (It would be actually interesting to see Twain and Heinlein interact.)

Chatting with Doyce this weekend, we realized that voting for “Shakespeare” might actually result in multiple people showing up.

Others went for religious figures — I threw in a number of those myself. Again, there’s always the question of whether they’d be interesting dinner companions, after you asked them a question or two.

Actually, taken a bit further, I could see different versions of the list for “dinner companions,” “road trip companions,” “someone to sit in front of the fire having a personal chat,” etc. Different dynamics, both in terms of the type of interaction, issues of privacy, and how well the person involved does in a group.

Away from the head table, here are the other guests (with 2 votes each):

Winston Churchill
Arthur C. Clarke
Leonardo Da Vinci
Charles Dickens
Albert Einstein
Neil Gaiman
Jesus
Stephen King
Lao Tse
Ursula K. LeGuin
Marcus Aurelius
Dorothy Parker
Teddy Roosevelt
J.R.R. Tolkien
Joss Whedon
Oscar Wilde

I regret not having included Parker or Wilde. I think both would be excellent dinner guests. My Inkling vote was for C.S. Lewis; I’d rather talk religion with him than linguistics with Tolkien. The other writers I’m not sure would be “dinner party” types, though I wouldn’t mind chats with any of them. Ditto Da Vinci.

It’s worth noting that some contributors went to pains to alternate men with women. I fear there weren’t nearly as many women on my list as there ought to have been.

In the also-ran category, outside, and alas being kept out by the bouncer, were, with 1 vote each:

J.J. Abrams, Adam, Douglas Adams, Scott Adams, Hans Christian Anderson, Susan B. Anthony, Antinous, Neil Armstrong, Attila the Hun, St Augustine, Isaac Asimov, Jane Austin, Honore de Balzac, Stephen Baxgter, Ludwig von Beethoven, Moon Zero Bird, William Blake, Boudicca, Chesley Bonsestell, Jakob Bronowski, James Burke, Bruce Campbell, George Carlin, Coco Chanel, Charlemagne, Geoffrey Chaucer, Julia Child, Henry Clay, Cleopatra, Christopher Columbus, Confucius, Noel Coward, John Dominic Crossan, Marie Curie, Peter David, Marion Davies, John Dee, W.E. Deming, Princess Diana, Emily Dickenson, Walt Disney, Amelia Earhart, Elizabeth I, Erik the Red, Eve, Douglas Fairbanks, Richard Feynmann, Ian Fleming, Diane Fossey, Robert Fulgham, Galileo, Mahatma Gandhi, Gerald Gardner, Stephen Gould, Stephen Hawking, W.F. Hegel, Jimi Hendrix, Herodotus, Alfred Hitchcock, Adolf Hitler, Victor Hugo, Hypatia, the Ice Maiden of Gorno Altai, Imhotep, St. John, St. John of the Cross, Diane Wynne Jones, Judas, Mercedes Lackey, Gary Larson, Marie Laveau, C.S. Lewis, Abraham Lincoln, Vince Lombardi, Ken MacLeod, Bill Maher, Francis Marion, Beryl Markham, Karl Marx, Mary, Mary Magdalene, Margaret Mead, China Melville, Montezuma, Moses, Mohammed, Napoleon Bonaparte, Nefirtiti, Isaac Newton, Florence Nightengale, Noah, Alfred Nobel, Patrick O’Brian, Turlough O’Carolan, Sandra Day O’Connor, Osama bin Laden, Otzi the Ice Man, Thomas Paine, George Patton, Paul, Mary Pickford, James Randi, Ronald Reagan, Eleanor Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Stan Sakai, Margaret Sanger, George Sand, Harrison Schmitt, Sei Shonagon, Sitting Bull, Al Smith, Joseph Smith, Kevin Smith, Socrates, Neil Stephenson, Joe Straczynski, Sun Tzu, Mother Teresa, Margaret Thatcher, Harry S. Truman, Voltaire, George Washington, Bill Watterson, Robin Williams, Judd Winnick, P.G. Wodehouse, Wu Chao, Chuck Yeager, Roger Zelazny.

This doesn’t count the dozen or more that Stan had as left-overs.

If I had to pick a few more off of that list to invite in, Asimov, Blake, Clay, David, Elizabeth, Gandhi, Napoleon, Roosevelt (either), Wodehouse … or maybe I’d just invite the three Smiths, to see how they interacted.

So. Make of it what you will.