Dinner at the Dok’s

Stolen from Gay Men Rule

Imagine you’re going to organize a dinner party for yourself and nine guests. You can invite anyone who ever lived, whether they’re world-famous or someone whose name only you would recognize. If you choose someone from the past, they will be magically alive and present for this one day. But here’s the twist – in order for the magic to work, each chair will only hold a guest who fits into a certain category. Tell us who you would invite and, if you like, tell us a little about why. What do you admire about that person or what would you like to learn from him or her?

1. Guest one must be someone who is/was creative with words – a novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, journalist, etc. Who would you invite?  Anyone who’s been following my blog knows the answer to this.  He’s my hero, my dark prophet, the grandfather of modern horror and the prettiest girl at the harvest moon ball, Howard Phillips Lovecraft.  In his letters and essays he confesses to being very witty and funny in person in ways that never came out in his stories, and I want to witness this and learn from the master of cosmicist misanthropy, and worship him and shower him with adulation.

2. Guest two must be someone who is/was creative with images – a painter, photographer, sculptor, fabric artist, collage artist, etc. Who would you invite?  R. K. Milholland, the cartoonist behind Something Positive.  I think he and Lovecraft would get along well, and a table with that many misanthropes is bound to lead to some flying cutlery.  also, i want to pick his brain for comic-promoting ideas.

3. Guest three must be someone who is/was a performer – an actor, singer, musician, comedian, acrobat, etc. Who would you invite?  Stephen Fry.  we’d need someone of Oscar Wildean wit to defuse the miasma of hatred for all human life and keep the conversation going, but the writer spot is already taken and Fry is the next best thing.

4. Guest four must be someone who is charting/charted new territory – either in the physical sense, like an explorer, adventurer, or astronaut, or someone like a groundbreaking scientist or inventor. Who would you invite?  Indiana Jones, because his knowledge of ancient cultures would go well with Lovecraft’s
5. Guest five must be someone who is/was a leader of other people – perhaps in the area of politics, like the literal leader of a country, or perhaps a leader in the area of religion, military, business, or even a great philosopher or teacher, or an inspiring athlete. Who would you invite?  Ivan Stang, head scribe of the Church of the Subgenius.  He’d probably try to steal the show from Lovecraft, Fry, and the like and become the center of attention, but that’s part of why Jones is there, to give him a good crack on the jaw if he tries to upstage Lovecraft.

6. Guest six must be someone from any field who you believe is/was underrated and under-appreciated by most people, but whom you admire. Who would you invite?  Howard Phillips Lovecraft again.  Dueling Lovecrafts!  their powers of stodginess would nearly crush the breath out of everyone else in the room, but their ability to conjure horrors armed with nothing but typewriters would be worth it.

7. Guest seven and eight are wild cards, one must be a blogger and the other your choice! Is there someone you’d like to invite who didn’t seem to quite fit into any category, or was there a category where you’d have really liked to invite two different people?  Robin Williams for the wildcard, I’d say Ladypirate (of Bronte Kind of Day) for the fellow blogger, as she’s a fellow literary person.

8. Who in your family would you invite? Dad.  He gets to sit by Robin Williams and they can have dueling fart-jokes.

Bonus: Uh Oh! The dinner party is just about to end, and all your guests are about to disappear, and you realize that you’ve forgotten to ask one important question of one of your guests. You just barely have time to squeeze in that last question, so quick! To lovecraft, “teach me?”  I want to learn from the Master, so i can construct a proper horror story.