When Greek
Night Meets Reality
December 6, 2004
Always good for a laugh at a Greek Night is watching the non-Greeks who
happen to unknowingly wander into the party from another part of the club. You
can’t blame these folks when it happens at some Greek Nights, when the Greek
Night isn’t the only event at the club, Greek music isn’t the only thing
playing, and that Greek music is sounding more like everything else playing at
clubs these days. It’s rare though when the people who wander into these Greek
Nights overshadow or should overshadow the entire event.
Picture the scene. Thanksgiving night, 10:30, a Greek/International night at
a club downtown. It was too early for more than a handful of Greeks to have
arrived, despite the open bar until 11:00. The room though was full because many
of the people from the first floor of the club wandered two floors up to see
what was happening in the private VIP area. A guy walked in who looked out of
place, not only for a Greek/International Night, but for late November as well,
wearing a pink polo shirt. I joked to my brother that it was one of the cast
members from this season’s, The Apprentice. He looked like Kevin, the law
student from Chicago. A minute later, a girl who looked like Ivana, the Venture
Capitalist from Boston walked in. This time it was my brother who was the first
to make a joke that it another cast member from the show. At this point we
started to take the joke more seriously. It wasn’t until another girl walked
in who looked like Sandy, the Bridal Salon owner from Rockville, MD, and a
photographer who was in the club took a picture of the three of them, that we
realized that it really was three cast members from The Apprentice. It
probably helped that we had just finished watching an episode of
The Apprentice with the three of them in it before going out to Greek
Night.
We asked ourselves what these three were accidentally doing at a Greek Night.
You know you’ve been going to Greek Nights too long when you don’t know the
reputation of a club or restaurant as anything other than what it is as a Greek
Night. (It took a Third Thursday at Tuscana West a few years ago to make us
realize for example that it wasn’t just a club called Diva that we went to
once a month for Greek Night.) We didn’t think this club was anything too
special that would merit a cameo appearance from not one but three celebrities.
We didn’t realize at the time that Sandy was from the DC area and that Kevin
grew up in Silver Spring, which would have answered our next question – what
were three reality TV stars doing at a club in DC on Thanksgiving Night?
We quickly realized that we were the only ones in the club, particularly the
only Greeks who realized who these people were. Maybe Greeks don’t watch
reality television, or this particular show, or celebrity doesn’t impress them
enough to pick up their cell phones to call the rest of their friends to tell
them to show up. That can’t be entirely true though because we remember a few
years ago at Acropolis when the rumor of Ricky Martin and Gloria Estefan in the
VIP section was enough to pack a Greek Night on the main level of the club.
Did the DJ realize that there were celebrities dancing to his mix? Probably
not. We would have most likely given a shout out to these folks if he had. If he
had realized it, we wished he would have gone all Greek the whole time, the kind
of Greek music where you can’t pass with your normal club dance moves.
The funniest part of this whole experience is that my brother, a.k.a. Camera
Guy, actually had an “in” to talking to Ivana due to both of them having
attended the same undergraduate business program and had a mutual friend through
that connection as well. (We thought that her having gone to school a couple of
hours from here was their reason for being in the area.) The normally shameless
Camera Guy who has no problem approaching Greeks he doesn’t even know in DC
and elsewhere and taking their pictures, was virtually paralyzed with the
prospect of approaching this girl. He wasn’t going to do the normal, “Oh my
God I’m such a fan, can I get your autograph, picture, etc.” routine. The
camera was secure in its holster and it wasn’t coming out for any reason in
this exchange, with the fear of getting sued by The Donald or
The Peacock for posting their picture looming. (NBC would probably then
find out that we didn’t like their Olympic coverage.) After wrestling with the
approach for a while, he finally found an opportunity when she wasn’t
surrounded by her entourage to talk to her. Poor girl had just finished fiddling
with a loose contact lens and was even more thrown off when Camera Guy
brought up the school connection first and not her celebrity status. He wasn’t
rude enough to not acknowledge her celebrity at all, but starting it the other
way probably led to a more genuine interaction.
A minute later her and the rest of the cast were pretty much out the door and
into a limo which left a few minutes later. We left a few minutes later as well,
seeing two other Greeks coming in as we were living, who would have oblivious to
the fact that for a few minutes, this Greek Night was any different from the
others.
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