I first met him at the beginning of his 2008 campaign, when he came up to my office for dinner.
This can take a very long time, adding to the suspense of when, if ever the big box office After Dinner Speaker will speak.
Later, though, as we walked back to his office from dinner, he said: "We have a lot more wisdom now.
Jerry Dipoto, appointed as the Angels' general manager after a postseason cleanout of the team's front office, had dinner with Pujols's agent, Dan Lozano, in mid-November as a means of keeping every recruiting option open.
"I know there's something I do that's very John Lee Beatty," he continued, adding that the office in "Dinner" -- with its antique desk, ship models and swivel rocker -- is one quintessential example: "I just see it, and I smile".
Watching Mr. Cohen bounce from his office to dinner to a party, one can almost see the thought bubble hovering permanently above his head: "OMG!" For years, an unusually star-studded social life has been for Mr. Cohen, 42, a perk of his work in television, originally at CBS News, where he worked for 10 years, then in entertainment.
President Bush today rewarded one of his most loyal supporters in the Iraq war, Prime Minister José María Aznar of Spain, with a meeting in the Oval Office, a dinner at the White House and the inclusion of Batasuna, a radical Basque nationalist party, on the State Department list of international terrorist groups.
It created a setting in which people like Kal Ruttenstein, the longtime fashion director at Bloomingdale's, were sharing chicken skewers with people like Heavy D. By the end of the year, Celine had its office Christmas dinner there on the same night that Lil Kimm was also holding court.
Mr. Obama is a modern-day dad who leaves the Oval Office for dinner with his girls, rarely misses a parent-teacher conference or piano recital and prides himself on having read all seven books in the Harry Potter series aloud with Malia.
