The Party's Over

April 8, 2013.

The Party's over.

The Imaginary Dinner Party Game began February 18, 2013. I proclaimed the Dinner Party Game over on March 2 when all of the seats at the table had been filled. On March 3, I posted this:

I was one-upped by Miss M's Friend the other day. I pronounced the Dinner Party Game finished. He countered with a question, "How can we be finished when our guests haven't had any conversations?"

Right he was! How can you have people such as we all invited around a table and then not allow them to converse?

Silly me. 

And so... . We have the basic framework of how the Conversation Game will go, we're just working on the Game Board logistics.

To begin...

On March 4th our imaginary guests began conversing.

By April 8, 2013, we'd all had our say. More or less.

The Conversations on the Conversations Page is now in text format.

Thank you all for playing like we were having a dinner party!

Keep Talking... | Dinner Party Conversations

❤

Is this true?

* Kat tried to pull a 2-fer, arguing that her two submitted quotes went hand-in-hand. They did. But she had to choose one. And she did. But because the Rules of the Game are sympathetic to larger issues, here's what Patrick Stewart didn't get  to say:

Robert Johnson Chimes In

I'm not sure if he spoke before or after the filibuster ended-- but it seems a quite appropriate response to Thoreau, don't you think?

WE INTERRUPT ... THIS ... FILIBUSTER

TO ... BRING YOU ... SOME ... CONVERSATIONS

from "an interview" 

[Note. I see the missing "." Not A. Leland's fault. I take full responsibility. It was a copy-paste mistake I didn't see until it was way too late to re-do.]

Is it? Sounds like an X-Phi question to me!

Testify.

Yes. We are missing Robert Johnson's (Miss M) reply to H.D. Thoreau (Miss M's Friend). Miss M has been busy making a cake in the shape of a Tardis-- and getting the color quite right, by the way. A jury of her peers voted to cut her some slack. 'Cause, you know, as an American, she has an individual right-- it's hers, you can't take it away-- to be judged by a jury of her peers before the game-rule drones can swoop down and splatter her with Tardis-blue paint balls just 'cause she didn't come up with a Robert Johnson quote. 

This is just how things work in a Democratic Republic.

 AND NOW ... BACK ... TO OUR ... REGULARLY SCHEDULED ... FILIBUSTERING ... ... ...

What They Said! | The Conversations Continue

I for one couldn't agree more. But I'm anxious to hear how Gordon Ramsey and Robert Johnson will respond.

At Table 2... | Dinner Party Conversations

James, Keith, Jerry, and Willie have stopped playing and D'vorak has stopped conducting, so folks have begun to chat!

Meanwhile, at Table 1, some Thinkers are thinking about what to say in response to Harper Lee and George Carlin. 

[It's a game, people! And here at the Farm we take our games and other silly stuff quite seriously. We need time. No one wants to just blurt something out without thinking first. And speaking of silly stuff... . Work on the Tardis is progressing nicely!]

Let the Conversation Begin

Table 1 is yacking it up!

Mark Twain and Gordon Ramsey are listening in. It'll be interesting to hear what they have to say in response to Jack and Nelle Harper Lee.

Meanwhile... .

As I recall, Henry David had thoughts not all that different from Carlin's, but a few years earlier. But, you know, I'm just a figurative fly on the wall. I'll wait to hear what Miss M's Friend-- who seems to have cornered the corner of Table 1-- chooses Henry to say in response.

The Guests at Table 2 remain silent.

It's a Wrap | The Dinner Party

Miss Diane Keaton was seated between Lavar Burton and Alan Alda, and the three empty seats were filled:

Les Stroud (musician, filmmaker, survivalist; Kat)
Thomas Homer-Dixon (professor, etc.; Tony)
J.L. Austin (philosopher; A. Leland)

So we have successfully concluded the Dinner Party Game! 

If nothing else, playing the Dinner Party Game kept us out of trouble for 12 whole days!

Thanks for playing along with us!!

Three Empty Seats at the Table

For reasons that I'm absolutely wholly certain must be really really important, some folks were absent from our final round of play this evening. (Y'all didn't answer your phones/texts, etc. Hope you are okay.) Therefore-- and I'm sorry to have to say this because I know everyone is on pins and needles awaiting it-- I cannot post the final seating arrangements for our Imaginary Dinner Party.

The order of play this final evening of the game was this (from first to last): me, Miss M, Miss M's Friend, Kat, Daughter C, Tony, A. Leland, Mr. Big Food. After a necessary and sufficient grace period, we passed over Kat..., then Tony..., and A. Leland.

We five who played this evening invited...

Amelia Erhart (aviator, &c.; me)
James Cash Penney (rolling over in his grave founder of The Golden Rule Store now known as the tanking JCP; Miss M)
Mitch Hedberg (comedian; Miss M's Friend)
-- (;Kat)
James Taylor (cellist & musician; Daughter C)
-- (; Tony)
-- (; A. Leland)
Mike Judge (creator and star of King of the Hill; Mr. Big Food)

Truth be told, I'm a bit disappointed this evening. I was looking forward to wrapping up the data collection phase and moving on to the analyses. Alas, my data set is incomplete. One cannot assume Kat will invite a chef (since she invited Teddy Roosevelt) any more than one can assume Tony will invite a contemporary genius (since he invited a farmer) or A. Leland, an old dead white guy philosopher (since he invited Jesse James).

Meanwhile, we have a number of imaginary guests who've consumed too much imaginary home made wine and who are anxious for an imaginary dinner but who are, nevertheless, content to sit around chatting-- as long as the wine keeps flowing. 

At some stage of this game, though, our imaginary guests will rise up and demand they be fed. Three empty seats be damned.

Who's the first of our imaginary guests to demand this?

When in Doubt, Check the Math

I knew something was wrong, and I was right.

According to all of our previous calculations, to finish the Imaginary Dinner Party Game we should need to add three chairs tomorrow. But when I counted the empty chairs at Table 2, and subtracted from eight players, the result was two. It didn't add up.

And then, while pouring over the Dinner Party Invitation Log, it hit me!

Daughter C's pick from Tuesday had not been seated!! (Although it was dutifully noted in The Log.)

Beginning Tuesday, seating mattered to many of us. I hear tell that Daughter C's invited guests are mostly interested in sitting in chairs that aren't going to break. (This is embarrassing when it happens in real life. I mean, we have nice chairs but they are sort of crappy old nice chairs, and more than one has broken during a time when a real guest was seated.)

Your call, Daughter C. Tonight, seating mattered to almost everyone. No one had a chance to sit next to Diane Keaton. What should we do? At one end, we can turn back the clock and do a total re-do. At the other, Diane can just pull up a chair. Your call.

Please note that you can respond by logging onto you gmail account and fishing around and finding this blog and ... .

Only a Few Seats Left | The Dinner Party

We'll pull up two more chairs tomorrow.*

Tonight we sent invitations to

Representative Ron Paul (patriot; Mr. Big Food)
Antonín Leopold Dvořák (composer; me)
Alan Alda (actor; Miss M)
Oscar Wilde (playwrite; Miss M's Friend)
Freddy Mercury (musician; Kat)
Gene Roddenbury (policeman and screenwriter; Daughter C)
Joel Salatin (farmer; Tony)
Alvin Plantinga (philosopher; A. Leland)

With just one round left, here is the seating arrangement for Table 2 (as before, funny corner symbols represent table corners, blank spaces represent empty chairs):*

⊢
--
Philip K. Dick 
⊣
⊤
Gene Roddenbury
Alvin Plantinga
Bertrand Russell
Joel Salatin
Hunter S. Thompson
Willie Nelson
Ron Paul
John Wayne
Grace Kelly
--
Nassin Taleb
⊥
⊣
--
Jerry Garcia
⊢
⊥
D'vorak
--
Keith Richards
Thomas Edison
--
Denis Leary
Alan Alda
Oscar Wilde
--
William Shatner  
⊤

As we near the end of our little game-- which, by the way, has no clear "objective" other than our having fun-- I thought it might be useful to post Table 1's seating arrangement and a word or two about us.*

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner! | The Dinner Table Round 5 UPDATED

Interesting pairing thus far at Table 2: Hunter S. Thompson & Willie Nelson; John Wayne & Grace Kelly; Thomas Edison & Kieth Richards

What with the hubbub associated with our frequent power outages last evening, I didn't get around to posting last evening's invitations list, most of whom are seated at Table 2. Here they are now.

Phillip K. Dick (Sci-fi author; Tony)
Jesse James (bandit; A. Leland; seated at Table 1 between Richard Feinmann and Lauren Becall, age 19)
Willie Nelson (musician and pot head; Mr. Big Food)
John Wayne (actor, patriot; me)
Jerry Garcia (musician; Miss M; Mr. Big Food used to follow the Dead)
Keith Richards (musician; Miss M's Friend)
Neal Stephenson (Sci-fi/Spec-fi author; Kat; seated at Table 1 between von Neumann and Teddy)
Lavar Burton (actor; Daughter C)

Tonight's invitees are a mixed bag... 

Bertrand Russell (philosopher; A. Leland)
Hunter S. Thompson (author; Mr. Big Food)
Thomas Edison (inventor; me)
Grace Kelly (Princess of Monaco; Miss M)
Denis Leary (actor; Miss M's Friend)
William Shatner (spokesman for Priceline (TM); Kat)
Nassim Taleb (author; Tony; more on this dude later)
~~
Due to the power outages and my subsequent failure to post Monday evening's entire guest list, there was a miscommunication. Daughter C's Tuesday's choice will be posted as soon as I have it.

Alternatively... . One of my co-bloggers who has first-person knowledge of her choice is welcome to update! 

UPDATE: Diane Keaton (Actress; Daughter C)

~~

Sidenotes in Dinner Party History

Flashlight By My Side

Here's Table One. See this post to understand seating arrangement designations.

⊢
Harper Lee
Jack Kerouac
⊣
⊤
George Carlin
Henry David Thoreau
Robert Johnson
Patrick Stewart
Quinton Terantino
Benjamin Franklin
Richard Feinman
Jesse James (bandit; A. Leland)
Lauren Becall (age 19)
Samuel Colt
John Ford
⊥
⊣
Robert E. Lee
Martin Luther King, Jr.
⊢
⊥
T. Jefferson
C.S. Lewis
Ayn Rand
Teddy Roosevelt
Neal Stephenson (Sci-fi/Spec-fi author; Kat)
John von Neumann
Lewis Carroll
Christopher Wallas
Julia Child
Gordon Ramsey
Mark Twain
⊤

Table One Has No More Vacant Seats

What seems like several years ago, but was really just two months ago, Mr. Big Food, Kat, Tony & I were rummaging around Greensboro where I found an orange date book. Late in December I have good intentions with respect to date books, so I bought an orange date book. Early in the New Year, I filled in dates that were set for January & February-- commitments to go to Starkvegas, houseguests, trips to Memphis and NOLA, not to mention farm projects-- and I said, "Holy Cow! We will be busy in January and February." And Mr. Big Food said, "Yes. Yes we will be."

It is February 25th. There are tornadoes lurking around, but we survived January and are trending to survive February. 

This past weekend was particularly harsh for us. We were in New Orleans and we were so busy we had to pause the Dinner Party Game until this evening. And so... . After a glorious morning with the dogs in the overgrown pasture, and some time spent doing mundane satisfying chores, and trip to Starkvegas... . We sat down to a wonderful dinner, thanks to Miss M. (vegan lasagne is good!) and played another round.

Wow. I'm going to post this now on account-- we like to say that-- on account of the fact that the power has gone off now three times. And although my trusty little computer can run on battery... .

Intermission

Due to various technical difficulties, the fact that it's the weekend, &c., the Dinner Party Game is pausing, momentarily. Here's the 1/2 time show.

Stay with it. They're a family.

Some interesting folks were Invited

to our Dinner Party this evening. Unfortunately, because of some technical difficulties, I am unable to share the Guest List and Seating Arrangements with you.

As I recall, Franklin, Thoreau, and Lauren Becall, aged 19 were invited. Julia Child. Tarentino. But now it comes down to seating.

I'm sure my trusty co-bloggers will be along shortly.
~~

I had to reconnect three times just to post five lines.

I blame Katrina.

The Dinner Party Gameboard

"We're having a Dinner Party. Who should we invite?"

That's correct. I had nothing else to do today. On the bright side, I didn't make too big a mess.

Why yes. That is duct tape. How would you secure a table cloth to a cardboard table on a gameboard for a game about an imaginary Dinner Party?