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New York, 2:07 PM
Sat Nov 28
12 posts in the last 24 hours
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In the name of Thanksgiving and the recent news of that famewhore couple crashing the White House State Dinner, I bring you less of a tragic tale and more of a "hopefully the statute of limitations on legal implications have expired so I can now tell this Thanksgiving story", and what better venue for its public world premiere than this incredibly awesome Gawker thread. Unfortunately, not enough liquor plays a role in this story, so I won't even pretend to compete with the more booze-fuelled main-dish gems that have been written already, so consider this a mere sweet potato casserole side with gratuitous amounts of marshmallow topping.
In November, 1999, my gf (now-wife) Emily and I used both our Thanksgiving work holidays to visit the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago, largely due in part because I play the steel drum (which is where it was invented, as there's lots of bands and local drum makers there) and we both wanted to go somewhere warm and interesting but not overrun with obnoxious tourists. TT is not very touristy and therefore is not usually a vacation destination for Americans, but the idea of being able to roam around the actual raw Caribbean as it exists sounded appealing and adventurous. The only problem was that this was to be the first time I was ever going to miss Thanksgiving dinner, since we would be in a foreign country on that day. Before our trip, in my quest to be the consummate problem-solver, I came up with what I thought was a goddamned brilliant idea. Seek Americans! Naturally, the obvious place you would find Americans in any given obscure foreign country would be the U.S. Embassy. Certainly I was conscious of the longshot of pulling anything off, as I have never directly dealt with the federal government in any of my shenanigans, especially in any quest for a fancy holiday dinner!
After a little research, I found that the current serving deputy United States Ambassador to Trinidad Tobago was originally from Texas! This was indeed a score, because of all the states, I have never known a more instant-brotherhood-affirming icebreaker than saying you're from Texas to someone from Texas. I decided to place a little overseas call. But what's the hook? Why the hell would they feed two random American vacationers Thanksgiving dinner? When I called, I told the receptionist the best story I could come up with -- which was a very vague nonsensical explanation that we were visiting TT the following week doing research for a pilot documentary on Americans abroad and how they celebrate American holidays and was wondering if the Ambassador was to be celebrating Thanksgiving. Completely stupid. Oh, yeah, and that I'm from Texas. I'm put on hold and suddenly I'm talking to a man named David, the Deputy Chief of Mission. He's from Dallas (triple-word score, I live 30 miles away in Fort Worth) and instantly we bond over the brotherhood. He admits he's not exactly clear on what our intentions were, but like a true fellow DFW'er, I have nonetheless succeeded in charming two invites to Thanksgiving dinner at the motherfucking U.S. Embassy.
Emily and I were dating for about four years at this point and even after proving my skills with many successful smaller-time-gate-crashing feats, she was calling BS on this success of this one. She was much more shy back then and I knew to pull this off she'd have to play along with the shenanigans. She had some nervousness about something backfiring, but was good for following my lead nonetheless.
On our fifth day of our visit to this wonderful country, we arrive at the Ambassador's mansion, which was guarded by two U.S. Marines. Unlike those toolbags who crashed Obama's State Dinner, we were on the list :D .. We were escorted into the house, where photos of the family of the man who I scored the invite from were all over the walls -- posing in what appeared to be different countries with all sorts of dignitaries. I didn't really think about it at the time, but Ambassadors and their crew are hand-picked by the president, and this man was chosen by Clinton himself to have this post in lil' ol' Trinidad. That intimidation was eased when this guy's wife appeared to show us around the house. (Interesting side note: in the bathroom there was a button under glass mounted to the wall that actually was labeled "Panic Button". The thought of Marines busting down the door whilst in mid-poop elicited a giggle or two.) At this point I still didn't quite have to explain what exactly we were doing there, as the topic of our being from Texas took over. I brought some Texas wine as a gesture and they had a house attendant pop it open immediately. Ice has been broken!
A small number of other people began to show up and we are now seated in a palm and mango tree-covered garden veranda chatting up a storm while drinking some sort of cocktail made with sorrel, a local herbal fruit somewhat like a cranberry. After a celebratory "I can't believe we've hacked this" cheers-clink with the girl, dinner is now being served! Holy. There were about 20 people at the table, and the local Trinidadian house attendants were bringing out all the fare but with an awesome twist of Trinidad. About half the Trinidad population is comprised of people with Indian descent and the other half African descent, so you can imagine the food was ridiculously incredible. Sweet taro casserole, curried stuffing, mashed pumpkin and potato, and of course, jerk turkey. And so here we are, eating Thanksgiving dinner, presumably paid for with my own tax dollars, with foreign dignitaries. I never felt so patriotic.
Everyone has had copious wine, and now it's conversation time! Uh oh! So people are going around the table introducing themselves, and most of them were friends with the host, so it became clear I was going to have to do my song-and-dance afterall. When it got around to me, the host introduced us as a couple of documentary filmmakers, and then let us finish the sentence. I froze for a moment, stuffing some curry-infused awesomeness in my mouth but eventually squeaked out some lame vague explanation as to how we're here to see how Americans abroad celebrate American holidays, and so far this is the best one! Everyone seemed to have bought it (afterall, what the hell ELSE were two random American kids in their early 20s doing at this table??) Playing to the crowd, though, only prompted a serious of questions that I was not prepared for. "What production company are you working with?" "Who are you pitching this to?" was met with "Oh, an independent startup" and "Whoever we can" were half-ass deflections, but fortunately my ruse reminded someone at the table of their higher-up dealings with PBS or some shit and I managed to get the attention off of us.
Following dinner, they flipped on the Dallas Cowboys game. All the times I've watched the Thanksgiving Cowboys game I (and I'm sure the players) had never imagined people in the Trinidadian embassy may be watching. How cool was this. So, all in all the Thanksgiving dinner hacking was a success, yet it had gone down in my great book of shenangians as the one I never felt comfortable talking about due to me lying my way into what was a secure Marine-guarded event in a foreign country. Of course, not being terrorists and not doing anything of too much asshattery, our presence was for the most part under the radar. Once 9/11 happened, though, I figured this story likely wouldn't be smiled upon by some. But now that this has been ten years ago to the day, and now that those fametards have gotten so much press for hitting up the White House, I figure perhaps now it's ok to share the tale. :[]
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[www.nytimes.com]
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