Dinner With Strangers, Sorta

I've just gotten done watching a show on BBC America called "Come Dine With Me." The premise of the show is that four strangers are put together to "compete" by hosting four dinner parties in a row. They score each other on the overall evening each of them produces.

It's an interesting show. And it's the kind of thing that makes you both interested ("Oooh... What did she just serve?") and disgusted ("How can he say that about someone he's just met?"). But, overall, it was an interesting show, much more civil than a lot of reality shows.

Earlier today, while I was listening to the radio on my drive home, the DJs were asking about what celebrity people would pay $250,000 to have come hang out with them for two hours.

Frankly, if I had $250,000 to pay to have someone come hang out, I'd spend it on airfares for friends of mine from all over the world to meet up somewhere and hang out with no worries and no cares. (See also Tuesday's blog posting - even though I didn't mean to bring that up.)

But... Okay... To my point. I am on a mailing list for updates on Samantha Brown's latest Travel Channel shows. Although they send them to me all the time, I keep missing the shows for one reason or another. But here's the thing - I actually feel kind of guilty about missing it. It's like I'm standing up an old friend.

You see, Sam is one of the celebrities on my "fantasy dinner party" guest list. (Haven't we talked about this, before?) She's there with Lauren Graham, John Barrowman and his partner Scott Gill, Carrie Fischer and Debbie Reynolds, Tyler Florence, Alyssa Milano, and a rotating group of other fine folks. (Of course, the actual guest list for a fantasy dinner would entirely depend on the location, the seating capacity, and what I was planning to cook.)

Well, this past Monday I caught "Samantha Brown's Asia" and she was in Hong Kong and Macau. It felt like I was catching up with an old friend. She's still travelling the way I'd want to travel: slightly unstructured, with a few splurges along the way - at the same time practical and whimsical. And she's not averse to saying "ewww" when eating something strange or "Ohhh" when she's watching something amazing.

As I'm sitting here, tonight, waiting for a longtime friend to show up (her flight was delayed), I just watched a preview of next Monday's episode where Sam gets a pedicure - of sorts - in Cambodia. She laughed at it. She seemed to enjoy it. She reminded me why I like watching her.

Now I just have to figure out how to get my TiVo to record her so I don't have to feel guilty next week.