Who Would You Invite to Your Dinner Party?

I've been doing a lot of thinking about this lately. I don't know if it's because I'm going to win a contest soon or what, but it's kind of a fun question.

Almost as much fun as picking the guests is choosing the ground rules.

First, all of my personal friends and family are excluded. The reason for this rule is obvious. I can't invite all of them to this once-in-a-lifetime event, so I need to have recourse to a rule that excludes them all equally. That way I can shrug and say, "If it were up to me . . . "

But for this rule, I would invite my octogenarian uncle who would thoroughly enjoy the night, though he may not appreciate most of my selections. This would be especially true of my aunt who would undoubtedly be his date. I would invite them anyway if I could. But rules are rules.

The next rule to work out is whether the invitee must still be living. Or could you invite any historical figure? My preference is for the living, because I want to maintain the fantasy that this dinner party could someday actually happen. Plus it just gets too hokey otherwise with people inviting Jesus, Buddha and Muhammad (I hope I spelled that right, don't want a Jihad on my hands) to the same dinner party, which would be awkward, and likely to produce interactions that would bring these people and individuals like them down a notch on the esteem scale.

But for this rule, I would invite either Jesus or Lao-tzu--it's a tie. The likelihood of ties is another reason for the rule.

Then you have to pick the number. Closely associated with this rule is whether the guests can bring a date. In my mind, of course the invite is plus-one. My guests are more likely to be comfortable with a date. And if they're not, they can come alone; it's their option. Of course, you run the risk that the guest will chitchat all night with his/her date without interacting with you and the other guests. But I think you have to defer to your guests proclivities in this regard. One presumes these will be esteemed people: they can do as they like. And perhaps if you think a guest might be ill-behaved in any manner, scratch them from your list.

I think with dates allowed, you have to limit your guest list to 5. You're going to bring a date too, right? So that's 12 people in. Anything more is likely to be unwieldy. Look at the Last Supper. . . Ok, I've just wasted a half-hour looking at a picture of DaVinci's masterpiece. I suppose John looks like a woman, but there is another disciple that could pass for a woman too, really just because neither of them have beards. And if Jesus did, in fact, bring a date, there are only 13 people in the painting. Where is the 12th disciple? What's the story? Are they saying that the painting depicts the dinner party after Judas has left to go do his turncoating? I digress.

If 13 was good enough for Jesus and we have to pick an even number, I'm going with 12.

Now you have to consider the shape and configuration of the table. Long is no good. I want maximum interaction, so I'm going with a specially-made hexagonal table with a pedestal base and a modest centerpiece that you can easily see over, one couple on each side of the table.

Is this a private dinner party? Or will we have it at a restaurant? I'm going with the restaurant. I don't want to have to deal with the cooking and the service. It's not like I have servants, or anything. And my place is too small. And I don't eat out at really nice restaurants all that often. Any excuse to do it works for me. I mean, how often are you going to get a chance to do this sort of thing? Getting 12 people together these days ain't easy, famous or not. People are busy.

And a restaurant's menu is going to have more variety. The last think I want is one of these people asking if there's a vegetarian option, you know what I mean? Or asking if something is Kosher, which is a distinct possibility, based on my list.

Now wait a minute here, let's think this through. Are these people expecting me to foot the bill for this evening? Probably so. They're invitees, after all. But they're all doing pretty well, to say the least, and I'm just a regular guy. And they're just as likely to get a lot out of the night as I am. Maybe someone else is setting this up. Maybe I could get a sponsor. But then they'd want to record it in some way.

Which is good, right? Posterity needs to have access to this. We could put it on YouTube. People would probably watch that. They're going to want an appearance fee too, in that case. And would they be as candid as they would be without the cameras rolling? Who cares, really? At that point, I would be  kind of famous too, being on TV or YouTube or whatever. Maybe I'd get something for my troubles too, then I'd be hobnobbing with these jokers all the time, probably. Then I'd see that these people are just like everybody else anyway. Why would anyone ever want to have dinner with these people? I'd just as soon sit at home with my girlfriend eating Chinese takeout watching Jeopardy as hangout with these self-absorbed prima donnas.

What a waste of a perfectly good evening that was!

Anyway, here's my list:

1. Eckhart Tolle
2. Jerry Seinfeld
3. Warren Buffett
4. Todd Rundgren
5. James Taylor

Feel free to put your list in comments.