Tips for the aspiring party crasher

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Mother Theresa. Nelson Mandela. Princess Diana. For some people, these individuals are idols.

Tareq and Michaele Salahi are my heroes. The night of Nov. 24, 2009, they decided to go out for dinner together. However, they didn’t go to the typical Italian restaurant down the street. Rather, they walked into the White House and sat down for an official state dinner in honor of the Indian prime minister.

Unlike the other 300 high-profile reporters, celebrities and politicians that attended, the Salahis weren’t invited. They knew no one there and were people of relatively little status in the D.C. area.

Essentially, they crashed the White House dinner. How they passed through security is beyond government officials and is currently under investigation.

The pair’s antics were discovered when the Salahis felt the need to upload some pictures taken at the dinner to their Facebook. These two nobodies had pictures of them socializing with Rahm Emmanuel, Joe Biden and even Barack Obama.

Some people ask why anyone would want to attend (crash) a party they weren’t invited to where they don’t know anyone. Clearly these people do not get a kick out of pulling off such a caper where you get to make up an alter ego and the respective details about a completely fake life you live, usually while eating and drinking on someone else’s tab.

As a moderate party crasher myself, I have learned a few tricks along the way. If you get creative, you can find some good parties to crash this holiday season. Here are some tips to help get you started:

1. Always dress the part. The way you look and present yourself significantly influences how much you can get away with, while giving a good indication that you “fit in.”

2. Act like you’re supposed to be there. Underpinning this rule is George Costanza’s maxim that “it’s not really a lie if you believe it.” I once successfully crashed the General Electric CEO’s box at a Washington Wizards game in Washington, D.C.

I got past the two security guards at the door by explaining that I was a wife of an employee and my husband, who was on his way, had our tickets with him.

With a completely believable delivery of this BS story, my girlfriend and I upgraded our $20 nosebleed tickets to box seats, complete with open bar and buffet.

1. Associate yourself with someone who is actually invited. On your way into the venue, or right when you get into it, immediately start chatting up someone who was actually invited. Try to pick someone not too close to the host and who consequently needs someone to help relieve the social uneasiness of being a party without knowing many people. If you develop a good rapport with this person early on, they can help you out later on.

2. Don’t discuss too many details about yourself. Although I agree with many of the Wedding Crashers’ creeds (rule #65: “When your crash partner fails, you fail. No man is an island,” or rule #10: “Invitations are for pussies”), Owen Wilson’s and Vince Vaughn’s long-winded, extravagant and fallacious stories can be detrimental when crashing. From personal experience, the best tactic is to create a rough story about where you’re from and why you’re there but that’s it. Do not start telling everyone you were there the night Michael Jackson died. Converesly, try to get people talking about themselves; it’s a great way to distract them and keep a low profile.

3. Don’t push it. Do not be the last person there, clutching a bottle of Jack, toasting to people you don’t know, while “remembering” events you were never at. Crash the party, have fun and then leave before you push your luck and someone zeroes in on you.