Happy Friday Otterites! Francis here again and it seems the volleyball has been both served and setup for me this week and I need to do something with it.

The idea of hosting the ultimate dinner party with whomever in the world you wish to invite, living or dead, is an awesome thought exercise. The only requirement seems to be that a guest must be a real person and not fictional, but I think that idea might be an interesting exercise of its own for another day.

The other guys have done a great bit of work on their guest lists, and I’ll weigh in on some of my suggestions in a second, but I do want to ‘set the table’ first. For me, this dinner will take place in the middle of winter, in a private room of a wonderful Italian restaurant, family owned and served family style. All of us will be in formal dinner attire and I must say I will look smashing in my James Bond tuxedo and there will be plenty of bourbon cocktails before the meal begins.

Many bottles of wine will accompany dinner and there are multiple courses served over several hours. Some form of Bolognese pasta is a must, along with veal parmesan and other Italian delicacies. (Do try the garlic green beans, broiled in butter. Delicious. Sorry Martin, we’ll have some grilled steak filets for you, don’t worry.)

The evening will continue with after dinner drinks in the private room of the next-door lounge, with everyone sitting in a circle in leather couches and chairs in front of a roaring fire. Conversation will be the raison d’etre of the evening and everyone will enjoy the mastery of the world that will take place via the effervescent ebullience. (God, I’m loving this stuff.)

So who is on the guest list? Well, I’m inclined to have only one ‘special guest’ at a time so we can all enjoy the undiluted person for the evening. From our end, Martin, Robert and I are the hosts and of course you, dear reader, are absolutely invited to join us. Everyone is to bring their spouse (or special friend) which will keep our number at ten, which should be just about right.

Martin, scalawag that he is, beat me to the punch already with suggesting I would invite Bernard Cornwell and he’s absolutely right. I could easily see us having this event at a restaurant somewhere in either Cape Cod or Charleston, SC where Mr. Cornwell and his wife Judy reside, depending on the time of the year. (The menu would be location appropriate, so it would be lobster in Massachusetts or southern prepared seafood in Charleston. Pass the grits if you would, Robert.) Mr. Cornwell is known to love a good bourbon as well as a good cigar so I expect the evening would be an awesome one.

My second invitee for one of our dinner parties would be J. Michael Straczynski, creator of Babylon 5 and another writer of eminent note. I’ve been doing a lot of reading of his stuff lately, and after devouring his autobiography Becoming Superman, I would love to have a long conversation with him about not just being a writer, creator and dreamer but also as a survivor of extreme abuse and how he was able to grow roses out of those particular ashes. Joe is unmarried currently, but he is cordial with his ex-wife Katheryn so perhaps he would bring her, or anyone he chooses, of course. Joe has always said he is not exceptionally social, but I am confident that Robert, Martin and I set a good table and can provide a fine time.

The big kahuna choice, though, the one I would chose if I could only chose one, would have to be Papa himself, Ernest Hemingway . . . and the boys would absolutely adore me for it. Since I’m plucking Papa out of time for the event, I would chose the version of him from the early Thirties, right after A Farewell to Arms had been published. He would be married to his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer then and spending most of his time in Key West in the winters and Wyoming in the summers. He’s world famous by then and still a fairly young man, in his early thirties, as this would have been before his time in the Spanish Civil War.

I am quite certain Papa would dominate the evening for everyone, but of course that’s the point. I can easily see all of us being invited to join him and Pauline in Key West for several weeks of fun and adventure after this marvelous dinner. We would spend the days on his boat, the Pilar, with loads of pina coladas and rum cocktails. Yes, I can see him at the stern teaching Mrs. Francis the joys of deep-sea fishing with loads of laughter from us all. Warms the heart.

Yes, this dinner party stuff is a pretty amazing idea. And as a continuation of our party on the Pilar, here’s our awesome Hemingway episode: