| |
Guests
Each month's guests are smart, interesting, and usually prudent in public. They're joined by a common interest or two, courageous enough to more or less be in the news, and usually disinclined to spoil our social occasion or to embarrass anyone. Generally in revealing aspects of their panache, they don't get blotto.
But once they leave, we (Barb and Rick) sometimes do over-indulge, as we finish-up a bottle of red wine. Non-celebs need to decompress after hosting celebs.
We're not sure why these world-classers -- who never heard of us and who clearly are beyond our orbit -- venture to our place. Maybe they hope our ambiance will be a friendly respite from the world's anguish. Maybe they crave congenial and unexpected company: possibly they believe us when we promise that other famous folks will be there (that's the tactic a friend of ours uses to line up speakers for international conferences). Maybe these greats are alone, just passing through town. Or maybe they're attracted by Rick's claim that Barb's usually a first-rate cook. (Rick says 'usually' for once or twice her forever-secret recipes have bombed. Yet guests haven't particularly objected, not in our presence anyway.)
We don't invite our guests' lovers, keeping the group small so it's easy to follow the conversations. Besides, our budget and blog-space isn't big enough to accommodate these others anyhow.
Of course, in concert with these monthly greats, sugar-mouth Barb and ugly-ass Rick get to:
- thrash-out ideas about our times, touching on sports, childcare, character, elections, global warming, stem cells, pop culture's influence on our unconscious, how one goes about weighing a person's soul, misallocations of governments' resources, genetic modifications of foods, national delusions, and so forth (we cover a lot of so forths);
- offer quite sharply contrasting opinions about particular movies, concerts, art shows, magazines, books, and blogs -- in which case a momentary distancing sometimes occurs among us conversationalists;
- fill-in awkward silences with more personal patter about our medical adventures, our adjustments to aging, our own virtues and vices, and the like.
Such exchanges, however, are not highlighted here. Rather, the prime focus tends towards our visitors' outlooks and what they're about.
To be sure, at times our characters may seem detached or even evasive about fellow-guests' comments. Perhaps that's because we invite people who are responsible and don't have it in for those they've just met.
The italicized quotes ('thusly') by these guests are accurate; in this sense, this bog is reality-based. Otherwise, the scenes, exchanges, and actions are all imagined, for we utterly lack the audacity to actually ring up and invite these particular greats to sup with us. Hence, because we've cast real persons and factual quotes for our wishful ends, these 'accounts' should not to be taken at face value.
|
|
