This is something I've been meaning to do for several weeks - I'm creating a regular feature. For two years I’ve posted mostly when I 've had news to share. This is something different, and we'll see how I do with it. I don't much care for structure, but I hope this will be fun.
This is The Dinner List. Every week, as Jan and I hear news stories, see or read something fun, we often say of some remarkable person or another, “He gets invited to dinner.” Beginning today, I’m collecting these names into a weekly list of people we'd like to take to dinner.
First off, the Blixt family issues a standing invitation to dinner to: John Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Rachael Maddow, Neil Gaiman, Samantha Power, Joss Whedon, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Robert Reich, Patrick Fitzgerald, Owen Bennett Jones, and Doris Kearns Goodwin. These are the people we most often invite to our imaginary dinners, as they amaze us and think would be good company.
(NB: Barack Obama had a standing invitation until it was rescinded due to his FISA vote. We still think he's groovy, but his invitation now is on a week-by-week basis)
On to this week’s list. It's understandably more sports-oriented than our average list, as both the Olympics and the Bears pre-season are going strong. And many of these will seem obvious, I know, but there’s a reason they’re obvious – they’re remarkable people, and have therefore been remarked upon recently.
– Michael Phelps – yeah, I know. But we’re forming a real-world Justice League, and we’re starting with Aquaman. Also, he trains in Ann Arbor, which means my mother can cook for him.
– Dara Torres – who will be our Wonder Woman.
– Nathan Vasher – our beloved Bears were hobbled last year as he struggled with injury. But he's back now, and the defense is hopping! Of Bears, we usually say it’s Urlacher we’re going to invite, but this week, it’s Mr. Vasher. Did you see that strip in the endzone in the second quarter?
– Robert Downey Jr. – for pulling off a modern black-face role so well that the controversy about the film has to do with something else entirely.
– Cloris Leachman – Not just because of the wonderful, profanity-laden speech at the Bob Sagat roast, but also for being Miss Chicago in 1946, and for challenging Mel Brooks to a duel when he didn't cast her in the Broadway version of Young Frankenstein.
– David Schuster – for actually playing hardball on MSNBC’s Hardball with those morons from PUMA (Party Unity My Ass).
– Julia Child – We know she’s dead, but she still gets the invite. Super-cook, super-spy, one helluva life.
– Lin Huo, the Chinese kid who walked with Yao Ming at the opening ceremonies. Best story ever.
