You are probably reading serious writers and watching serious movies, then?
My immediate thought was my father … so many questions. He died 1988, 35 years ago, aged 59, I was almost 31 then. Now I am 66, he’d be 94.
Then I was surprised that all those adults named celebrities :-o and was quite relieved that the kids did it differently. Hope their further “education” and society don’t drive out all humanity from them, as it’s been done with so many of my generation and those before. Oh well, when I look around, it still seems to happens everywhere.
Yeah, but it means that they are currently NOT having that experience with their parents because they are working all day
If asked, at that age, I wouldn’t have replied that, because we always had dinner all together as a family, every day, so it wouldn’t make any sense to ask for something I already had. It is kind of sad that all of them said “their family” (which I understand was kind of the goal of the ad/promo, but it is a real modern issue).
It is an interesting question though … if I had to choose I’d probably choose Diogenes the Cynic or Lucian of Samosata. Those two seem to me like the most interesting people to have ever lived. We’d have grand fun!
I’ve always been unable to answer this question. If needed at exams or interviews, I went with some safe choice which was totally random.
I don’t want to dine with anyone in particular except family and friends (and of course the person should be alive) and there wouldn’t be any particular reason other than that I enjoy their company.
I hear other people’s answers and I think: “What made this person famous? Would you like this person as a boss?”(or “teacher” when I was younger) If I analyze the conditions, the why this person would be on a to-dine-with list, I find a lot of reasons not to choose them.
I’d rather read/watch/listen/see/visit/try the things they are famous for.
I don’t care about celebrities, I like to have dinner with living family members or friends. My father died at 61 when I was 27. Although I keep fond memories of him and of my childhood, I wouldn’t want him to come back for one dinner, this would revive sad memories of his disease and death.
Ground rules: I cook, they do dishes.
Not about the couple, about our (the plebs) perception of PR. Might be the one good thing that came from Harry, he blew and shuttered many smoke and mirrors.
Love that video! Our family, in my childhood, often had dinner together; not always, but often.
A famous fanzine in the 1970s posed a variation on this question by asking what three people one would invite to dinner. In addition to being predicated on one’s own interests, it implied that one might arrange the party to create an interesting conversation among the guests. That question was explicitly inspired by Steve Allen’s famous PBS television show, Meeting of Minds (which I enjoyed even when I disagreed with it). I wrote an answer at the time, but don’t remember what it was (my copies of the zine are in a box somewhere in my garage).
I feel like it is impossible to come up with one name. My interests pull me in so many directions.
A Founding Father? Washington was aloof, Adams was a prig, Jefferson was volatile, and Franklin was altogether too awesome. I would be so out of my league with any Founding Father.
An explorer? Too many, though I would especially love to talk to the intrepid and hilarious Gordon MacCreagh, author of the greatest exploration narrative (White Waters and Black).
A scientist? I have already had this experience, as I once described in a post, when I had a wonderful private breakfast with David H. Kelley, one of the principal decipherers of Mayan hieroglyphics.
A hero? Possibly Sergeant Alvin York (I visited his grave when I was hiking in Tennessee in my youth). I greatly respect how he cut the Gordian knot of choosing between Caesar and God.
A writer? Getting closer here. I think I would most enjoy myself with Jack London, who, despite his faults, was the very embodiment of a “hail fellow, well met.”
However, my gun-to-the-head answer is Eric Hoffer, I suppose, the longshoreman philosopher whom I have admired since childhood both for his writing and for his thinking.
What about Jesus? Well, I have dinner with Him—as well as breakfast and lunch—every day.
I’d skip Jesus because he might get to read the Bible and get REALLY angry.
Not to mention that kind of stuff … Jesus is definitely off the table, no pun intended
Edit:
It is Sunday, so I had the time to give it a spin. If I understand the article correctly, it is fortunate now that “gossip spectators to be more scrutinizing of the gossip that’s sold to them” which sounds good, but practically it means that now they are not just consuming gossip, they are getting invested in it. Sounds like a long-term loss in a way.
They always have been. But now people are less easy to fool and have become more critical of what they served.
Good.
Maussan claimed the bodies were nonhuman
You won’t find me fighting that one.