  Our anniversary didn't turn out quite as we had hoped, but we had fun anyway. We had planned to go to a reading by Kurt Vonnegut, Salman Rushdie and others. But when we got there, the line went around the block twice. I hope that my Douglas Adams curse doesn't claim Vonnegut too. I heard that Douglas Adams was in Santa Barbara while I was there, studying for my masters degree. I kept putting off going to see him speak. I found out later that he had died, in Santa Barbara, right before his last speaking engagement. With our original plans obviously not going to work out, we found a nice Sushi place around NYU. It was good, cheap sushi and sake and the Manchurian Candidate at a Time Square Movie Theater. We've gotten a couple of unlimited metrocards so we've been hopping around the city like crazy. It's nice to decide to have dinner at NYU and then catch a movie in Time Square and not have to worry about how to get there.
Before we met for dinner, I went to the financial district to see the Giscard Games. It was this interpretive dance show, where women dressed as floor traders danced up and down the steps of the federal building to mimic the violent turmoil of the market. The music sounded like a tribal techno remix of Pink Floyd's "Money". The dancers woke to the bell. Then they angrily gesticulated at each other, holding up different numbers of fingers, shaking their heads yes and no. Then they ran up and down the stairs to show the flux of different markets. Then the final bell rang and all the dancers ran up to the top of the stairs, except for one who feigned a stumble. Then in reference (I think) to the sexual harassment cases against major trading firms, the dancer who stumbled was forced to dance while all the other dancers watched, hooting and cat-calling.
It was a really surreal scene in itself, but the extra security in the financial district made it even stranger. It was another one of those America in a Nutshell moments. Officers in full body armor watching women worship the market gods in the holy citadel of capitalism. The pictures that I could get (my battery ran out) are up at: urlLink http://www.seq.org/~acasteel/newyorkgiscardgames/index.htm 
