Who would you have for dinner?

If you were having a dinner party and you could choose any ten people, dead or alive, who would you invite? They all need to have been real people, no fictional characters.1. Audrey Hepburn: We need a bit of glamour.2. Jesus: For entertainment, he can do some of his magic tricks and if the food and drink are running out he can conjure up some more for us.3. James Cagney: My favourite actor, I think he would have some great tales to tell about his movie days and if Jesus runs out of ideas then Cagney can sing and dance too.4. Marie Curie: Double Nobel Prize winner, it would be fascinating to talk to her about her life and what it was like to reach the peak of what was traditionally a man’s subject.5. Buddha: (Siddartha Gautama) Intellectual stimulation.6. Thomas Edison: Again an amazing intellect, he must have many very interesting stories to tell.7. Flinders Petrie: It’s an archaeology thing.8. Robert Louis Stevenson: Died too young and must have many unpublished stories to tell.9. Hermann Reimarus. I think we share a few similar ideas about the Bible.10. Finally, I will cheat a little, my mum and dad, so I can tell them how much I love and miss them.Who would be your ten ideal guests?Brian

I'll go with a "too soon gone" musical theme:

1. Harry Chapin
2. Jim Croche
3. George Harrison
4. Jimmy Hendrix
5. Buddy Holly
6. Janis Joplin
7. John Lennon
8. Jim Morrison
9. Rick Nelson
10. Ricky Valens

--Percy

I'll go with a "Influential genre authors" theme:1)Issac Asimov
2)Sheri S. Tepper
3)Arthur C. Clarke
4)Raymond Chandler
5)William Gibson
6)Louis L'Amour
7)J.R.R. Tolkein
8)Stan Lee
9)Murasaki Shikibu
10)Emily Dickinson (not really a genre author, but she needs to get out of the house more)I'd also invite Miyomoto Musashi, but by all accounts he was a restless sort so I doubt he'd stay long. Also my friend Dom would kill me if I had dinner with all his favorite authors without inviting him, so I guess I'd better set places for 12.The menu: food pills and tall, frosty pan-galactic gargle-blasters.Honestly, though, I worry that 10 people is a bit too many to have a really good conversation. 10 tends to break into smaller conversation circles.[This message has been edited by crashfrog, 07-14-2003]

In no particular order:
1. Nickolai Lenin
2. Dorothy Parker
3. Frank Zappa
4. William Burroughs
5. Albrecht Durer
6. Johnathan Swift
7. Thomas Jefferson
8. Samuel Clemens
9. Albert Einstein
10. Praxedis Guerrero G.and I would duct-tape my mouth shut so that I wouldn't be interrupting....

Yeah I suppose you are right, but we could do several things to avoid that.1. Just keep Audrey to look at, so she doesn't need to speak.2. No way Jesus is getting to speak anyway, he would bore us all to tears with his doom and gloom, plus he'd want us all to worship him.3. Petrie only has a few questions to answer, so wouldnt take long.

I could always get Audrey to come to my party, and I'd be so transfixed I wouldn'd be able to speak..

Do fictional characters speak? --Percy

You might want to replace Stan Lee with Jack Kirby, or risk being sorely disappointed.

I'll have1) Jack Kirby
2) Elvis Costello
3) Oscar Wilde
4) Osamu Tezuka
5) David Bowie
6) Will Eisner
7) Beck
8) Tom Stoppard
9) Conan O'Brian (around when he was writing the Simpsons)
10) Alan MooreThen, once they're all sated and sleepy from the meal, I turn my talent-stealing ray on them...

As long as he shows up and says "Excelsior!" I won't be disappointed.

Who is this, exactly? If it's the Lenin I'm thinking of (the famous one) isn't it Vladimir Lenin? Of course you could be talking about another Lenin that I'm too uneducated to have heard of...

Errr - a senior moment?

Yep, grumpy ol' YHWH don't make them like Audrey anymore:

Heck, I'd book a band also.Duke Ellington, piano
Charles Mingus, bass
Art Blakey, drums
John Coltrane, tenor and soprano sax
Eric Dolphy, alto sax, bass clarinet, and flute
Miles Davis, trumpet
Jimi Hendrix, guitar
Captain Beefheart, vocals (with maybe a little soprano sax and blues harp)with special guests
Louis Armsrong, trumpet and vocals
Coleman Hawkins, tenor saxOf coarse, Mingus, Davis, and Beefheart would probably get into a fight.Moose

What are you talking about? Minus the Tiffany's hardware she'd look just like Jennifer Love Hewitt, or Rachiel Leigh Cook. The big-eye ingenue look is pretty old, and hardly Audrey Hepburn's invention, I think.