Debbie.
There are a lot of Robin McKinley fans here. My username’s from Deerskin, which was my favourite of her novels. Don’t get hopeful about the Sunshine sequel- she writes very slowly.
I work in a bookstore and I feel it is my personal duty to acquaint the world with Robin McKinley, Tad Williams, Garth Nix, Michael Ende, Chaim Potok, and Nigel Slater. Everyone’s got to have a purpose in life, right?
Wow! Some great suggestions - and gave me some ideas, too. I wouldn’t mind hanging with:
Earl and Randy Hickey… and Catalina! Rowwrr. I love the My Name is Earl universe. Just keep Joy well away from me.
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Stimulating puzzles, grand adventures, wonderful Victorian atmosphere.
Wallace and Gromit. Zany inventions and lots o’ fun.
Kirk, Spock and McCoy: a friendship for the ages. Beam me up, Scotty!
The West Wing as an NSC staffer during the Santos Administration (just to see how it goes).
The Seinfeld gang. I’d be laughing all the time, so they’d probably become irritated with me, but still…
Han Solo and Chewie. 'Way cool and lots of fun.
The Nine of The Fellowship of the Ring. I’d like to go along for their adventures. Plenty more of Middle-earth to see.
The crew of Deep Space Nine, especially O’Brien and Dr. Bashir.
Bertie Wooster and Jeeves. Maybe I could be one of Bertie’s dissolute friends from the Drones Club? Guess I’d better get started on developing a taste for martinis and bloody marys, though.
The Big Lebowski bowling buddies. The Dude abides, and there are times that I’d like to be there with him.
I wouldn’t mind being a friend down the hall from Dr. Frasier Crane and his dad.
Or I could be a next-door neighbor of the Parr family from The Incredibles. On second thought… considering the risk of supervillains’ jets falling from the sky, maybe I’d better be a few houses down the street.
Lastly, hanging out with the boys from Ghostbusters would be a blast, even though I have very little technical experience with unlicensed particle accelerators.
Spenser and Hawk from Robert B. Parker’s Spenser books.
Bluto from Animal House
Scott Evil from Austin Powers
Mr. Miyagi from The Karate Kid
Val Kilmer’s Doc Holiday from Tombstone
The Dread Pirate Roberts from The Princess Bride
Obi Wan (the Alec Guinness one) from Star Wars
The T100 from Terminator 2
Jessica Rabbit from Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Ralph Wiggum from the Simpsons
!!!
Well, I suppose I wouldn’t want to be his enemy, at any rate…
Oh, and another one for my list, Mike Slackenerny. Except that I sometimes worry that I am Mike Slackernerny.
I came back to the thread to mention Hawk, whom I thought of today at the movies. With him at your side, you’d never have to worry about having enough suits for your group; people just give him stuff.
Smiley is the one who first came to mind for me, too. Because, if we were friends, we might be sitting around the fire one evening having a whiskey when he’d say something like this:
“Sometimes I think the most vulgar thing about the Cold War was the way we learned to gobble up our own propaganda,” he said with the most benign of smiles. “I don’t mean to sound didactic, and of course in a way we’d done it all through our history. But in the Cold war, when our enemies lied, they lied to conceal the wretchedness of their system. Whereas when we lied, we concealed our virtues. Even from ourselves. We concealed the very things that made us right. Our respect for the individual, our love of variety and argument, our belief that you can only govern fairly with the consent of the governed, our capacity to see the other fellow’s view - most notably in the countries we exploited, almost to death, for our own ends. In our supposed ideological rectitude, we sacrificed our compassion to the great god of indifference. We protected the strong against the weak, and we perfected the art of the public lie. We made enemies of decent reformers and friends of the most disgusting potentates. And we scarcely paused to ask ourselves how much longer we could defend our society by these means and remain a society worth defending.”
(From The Secret Pilgrim)
Right about then is when I’d yawn really wide and say, “George, I forgot to mention this, but I really need to get up in the morning.”
And when he left, I’d call The Dude.
Most of mine have already been named, but here goes, in no particular order:
Spencer and Hawke
Kinsey Milhone
Holmes and Watson
Wiz Zumwalt and the gang
Nita and Kit
Gandalf
Dumbledore
Dr. Urth
Commander Vimes, Captain Carrot and The Librarian
R. Daneel Olivaw
Commander Data
Counselor Troi and Dr. Crusher
Hey, Holmes is probably a pretty good friend; I think you’re confusing him with his dramatic descendant, Greg House. he has a distressing tendency to shoot indoors–but he’s a good shot, and he never aims at Watson, and if the landlandy doesn’t care, why should you? Holmes isn’t one percent as misanthropic as House; he always makes sure Watson has a place to hang his hat between wives without making too much of a fuss; he never bugs Watson for money or is late with his share of the rent; he doesn’t make the doctor wait outside the apartment for hours while he jerks off.
Nah, Holmes is a god guy.
- Einstein, the sentient dog in Dean Koontz’s Watchers.
- A dog as smart as any normal human, yet with an intellect that’s still essentially doglike. What boy (and maybe girls too) hasn’t fantasized about their dog being able to communicate, to understand them?
- Larry Underwood from Stephen King’s The Stand.
- There are a dozen characters from this story I’d love to be friends with, but Larry’s fuckup-to-hero arc is something that has always stuck with me.
- Philip Carey from W. Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage.
- This character is another of the best friends I had growing up.
- The Childlike Empress from The Neverending Story. (film version)
- Oh, I’ll call your name all right, honey. And you’d be screaming mine. What?
- Leto Atreides (grandson) from Herbert’s Children of Dune.
- Paul Atreides was never a very human or sympathetic character to me. Ironically, his son who made himself into an inhuman monster, was.
Elastigirl, from The Incredibles.
For the obvious (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) reasons…
The FBI guys and the non-evil townfolk of Twin Peaks, excluding Donna. She’s whiny.
The aforementioned cast of DC Comics’ Starman. In fact, I’d be friendly with a lot of the non-evil DC folks. Even Batman. Maybe not Booster Gold though.
Veronica Mars and her dad, Keith.
Most of the folks from Buffy and Angel, especially Giles and Wesley.
Delenn and G’Kar from Babylon 5.
Ferris Bueller
What reasons? Utterly painless childbirths? Ability to take the trash out for herself (without even leaving the kitchen, at that)? Yep, sounds like an ideal spouse to me!
Oh, wait. You mean SEX stuff?!? 
I’d hang out with the gang at Callahan’s any day–no matter who stopped by I’m sure we’d have some fun, and I just love Irish Coffee…
Gandalf would be a cool friend to have–especially now that he has time to just hang around, smoke a bowl, and chat.
James Bolivar “Slippery Jim” diGriz, a.k.a. the Stainless Steel Rat
Stile/the Blue Adept from the Apprentice Adept series
Vultan – the leader of the Hawkmen from the Flash Gordon movie. Not only fun and entertaining, but a good guy to have at your back when trouble comes
Gil Grissom may be absent-minded, but I think he’d make a good friend.
Deanna Troi from Star Trek TNG.
Stephanie Plum might make an interesting friend, but I would never loan her my car.
And SmartAleq came up with the best list by far: everyone at Callahan’s Place, but especially Mike Callahan and Doc Webster.
Oh, Holmes is a good friend, no doubt, but I can see where he’d be a bit of a pain in the ass. I mean, there I’d be trying to do the Word Jumble in the London Times or something, and he’d show me a rock that he picked up in the street, and he’d ask me what I would make of it, and I’d say a paperweight, and then he’d give me “that look” and spend the next two hours pointing out various aspects of it and tell me stuff like how that spot of mud on the lower left hand side proved that this rock was carried into battle by King Darius of Persia in ancient times, and I would say something like “By jove, Holmes! You’re so full of shit, you need a septic tank!”
Of course, at that moment, the door would fly open, and King Darius would stride in and yell “Thank God! You’ve found my rock! It’s the only souvenier I have of that battle at Athens!!” Then Holmes would give me “that look”. No, not the look he’d give when he was waving the pistol around stoned out of his mind on cocaine. I mean the look that he’d give me whenever he wished to imply that if I were any dumber, I’d be Ernest P. Worrell, and right about then, I’d start asking myself if Forrest Gump was looking for a roomie.
I giggled aloud about four different times while reading this. Bravo.
Hoss Cartwright - hell, all of 'em.
Bull Meacham
Jack Burton
VI Warshawsky
Kinsey Millhone
Sharon McCone
Archy McNally
Edward Delaney
Funny, my husband and I were talking about this very thing last night!
Bull Meacham???
Um…so you LIKE racist, misogynistic, child-abusing wife-beaters?
He does have a helluva sense of humor, tho.