My old friend Al Stanger, the St. Louis juggler and human calculator, brought me to the City Museum tonight, where Circus Day (a great organization that works to build character and expand community through teaching circus skills!) teamed up with the Galilee Circus (a Jewish/Arab youth circus) and the St. Louis Arches (this area’s youth circus) to perform as “The Galilee Arches.”

It was a great show where these kids showed amazing teamwork despite language barriers (most of the kids spoke only English or Arabic or Hebrew) and they did impressive variety arts: juggling, highwire stunts, balancing acts, acrobatics, unicycling, flying through the air. 

You can see Circus Day’s shows at City Museum pretty regularly. It is a great cause, and since its just a few blocks from our apartment, we like to go frequently.

We stumbled into a huge convention at America’s Center today. It was of YTB, which stands for “Your Travel Business,” a MLM, or multi-level marketing outfit. 20,000 people from around the US and Canada are in St. Louis this weekend to get revved up about “moving money up their down chain.”

This picture is of one of the many concurrent seminars (sermons) teaching the YTP business owners (cult members) how to get their friends and family in their down chain. Brilliant tactics right out of your best Evangelical mission!

The BBB of Missouri has been grumbling about complaints to the Missouri Attorney General about this YTB “home business opportunity,” more than 40 complaints have come in this year alone. You’d think that you’d make money in this travel business by selling discount travel, but 80 percent of the company’s revenue in the first quarter of 2008 came from recruiting new members to pay the $450 start-up fee to own the business, and the $50 a month membership fee to continue. You get a cut of everyone else’s fees they pay if you recruit them.  This last Monday, Jerry Brown, the California Attorney General, sued YTB and its founders for operating an illegal pyramid scheme. But the presentations pictured above were fun to watch — picture a business version of the prosperity gospel televangelist Creflo Dollar, only no talk of saving souls or God rewarding you with wealth, but just out and out teachings on how to make a buck off your friends and family.

We know how fired-up their adherents to this business-cult get: a couple nights ago we went to the casino (losing a little money for the first time EVER) and while standing in line, fully two different YTBers gave D.J. their business cards and invited us to get involved. 

If only we could get them to do our windows.

We’re happy to report that the Downtown Cantina is beginning to be a hopping place in its new location, even on weekday evenings. It is a great little Mexican restaurant and bar, a block from our building. It is a drinkers’ bar, which we don’t mind, since it is fun to hear the loud drunken conversation during dinner (we have odd tastes). 

They have great happy-hour specials and a fantastic lunch buffet that we have gone to a number of times. Stop by, and enjoy the best little Mexican restaurant downtown.

We rode a bus, the same bus I will be taking every day to law school!

But we had no way of getting the groceries home, so we had to buy a personal shopping cart, which I had to put together outside of Schucks.

I was very proud to walk our groceries home from the bus-stop. Everyone will be living a carfree lifestyle eventually, as the cities become the place that the well-off financially live, and the urban poor are pushed to the suburbs. 

If you want some interesting and inexpensive American and Mediterranean food, check out Slay’s on Zaytoon. We have no idea what the name means, but they have friendly staff, and some really tasty food. And they stay open till 7 or 8pm, which is great for grabbing a light dinner. 

Rose Martelli gave them a pretty good review in St. Louis Magazine, and I think they have taken the advice to heart. It is a great place to grab a bite.

Here is a picture tonight of fireworks that D.J. took from our living room in the Syndicate. Yes, we have a fireworks fetish. That is me lying on the back of the couch.