Bored? Me?

Well, I had my first real day of classes today. It was something of a marathon, since Tuesdays are now my busiest days, with four classes in all. I did survive, though. After class, I went to Santa Monica and did some reading before going to the supermarket and back home. I'm making a small effort to eat healthier; the change isn't major, but I made sure to get some veggies and try a few new things.

Hypothetical Question of the Month/Week/However Often I End Up Doing This
I think this might be fun...

I like thinking about hypothetical questions; some of you Marlborough people might remember the back page feature I worked on for the Ultra Violet with different students answering various questions. The fun thing about hypotheticals is that you can be as glib, in-depth, or ridiculous as you want, and, in trying to find an answer, you can figure out interesting little wrinkles in the question itself.

Here's the question... it's a pretty common one (those of you who have seen Adaptation recently will recognize it from the movie):
If you could have dinner with any person, living or dead, who would it be?

At first glance, I would say Leonardo da Vinci, largely because I admire his inventive mind and have always been a fan of the whole 'Renaissance Man' ethos. But, since this is a 'who would you have dinner with' question rather than a 'who would you want to get into the mind of' question, there are a lot of problems with that option, the most obvious being language. Even if I could learn some Italian for the occasion, I think it would be nearly impossible to learn the dialect that existed in Renaissance Florence. In addition, if I remember correctly, Leonardo was not a terribly social person. I wouldn't necessarily need or want a 'social butterfly' for my hypothetical dinner, but it would be sort of a letdown if you got to spend dinner with a genius but hardly got to talk with them.

So I would ideally want someone who could converse fairly well in modern (post-1800) English (well, I could try using my limited Spanish, but I would only succeed in convincing the person I was a moron) and who was sociable enough to hold a memorable conversation with. Given the choice, I'd probably have dinner with a dead person over a living one, since I could theoretically meet with the living person without having to resort to 'hypothetical magic'. Some intriguing possibilities (mostly dead, but some living) would be Einstein, Oscar Wilde, Dorothy Parker, Katharine Hepburn, Mark Twain, Gertrude Stein, John Lennon, Orson Welles, and Gloria Steinem (there are more, I'm sure, but it's late and I can't think at the moment).

Out of the group, I think I would go with Wilde, as his famous wit would probably make for an interesting dinner.

Feel free to give your own answers (they can be short if you'd like)...

Yes, I'm a dork...