November Introducing the FORTUNE Business Calendar: Everything you need to know about what's going on, and a whole lot you don't.
By Grainger David

(FORTUNE Magazine) – For more information on these events, see fortune.com/calendar.

1 Executive Compensation Seminar, New York City. Says program director Fred Meuter: "The general thrust of the seminar is two words: executive compensation. That probably describes it the best way." So what's the point--is executive compensation too high? "Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no," he says (eight times). Topics include The New Look of Employee Contracts and Maximizing the Value of Pay. Elsewhere, Dell reports earnings, and in Donaldsonville, La., the Sunshine Festival begins--weather permitting, naturally.

3|4 World Pumpkin-Chucking Championships, on a farm in Delaware. Eighty teams in six divisions try to hurl a pumpkin more than 4,085 feet, the current record. "Out of the boredom," notes one observer, "came an event that has grown to be possibly the second-largest two-day event in Delaware."

5 Cisco is scheduled to report earnings. Last month CEO John Chambers inspired a market rally by stating that the company would hit its target. We shall see. Also: Guy Fawkes Day, when inspired Brits drink a lot and run around with burning tar-soaked barrels.

6 Election Day. Michael Bloomberg jokes are fun (did you hear he's running for mayor?), but check out the hot gubernatorial action in New Jersey (lots of negative advertising) and Virginia (two Marks--Warner [D] and Earley [R]--neither of whom is supported by the NRA).

7 FORTUNE's Revolutionaries Ball was tastefully redesigned post-Sept. 11 as Leadership in Turbulent Times: A Benefit Conference; it starts today in N.Y.C. (Alternative names suggested by staffers--such as Punctuation That Belongs in a Serious Title: Colons--were rejected.) Says FORTUNE editorial director Geoffrey Colvin: "It's the A-list of CEOs--plus the man who defined leadership in this crisis, Rudy Giuliani--talking about the No. 1 topic in business." Attendees include Michael Dell, Jeff Immelt, and Ali G. Sorry, our mistake. Mr. G.--a.k.a. "International Superstar and Ghetto Pimp"--will be in Frankfurt, hosting the MTV Europe Music Awards on the 8th.

9 Esther Dyson's High-Tech Forum should have ended today, but like a lot of things this month, it was canceled. Besides ditching sponsorships to keep discussions candid, the conference is known for its strong attendee list. This year, however, only 36 signed up. To win them back, we'd try speaking to this point: The Rise and Fall of the New Economy as Seen Through Selected Writings of David Halberstam. Seriously, check it out: The Children, The Amateurs, The Best and the Brightest, The Powers That Be, The Making of a Quagmire, The Reckoning, The Year the Dream Died (foreword), and The Next Century. Beat that, Internet guru lady.

10|11 Veterans Day. Armistice Day originally celebrated the termination of World War I on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. Sunday--in the midst of a new battle--we celebrate Veterans Day and honor the 42 million war participants of the U.S. Armed Services.

12 Some 150,000 people descend on Las Vegas for the weeklong tech orgy known as Comdex. The expo starts today, but the event was kicked off last night with a speech by Bill Gates. Look for him at the high rollers' bridge table.

13 Scott McNealy turns 47. What's the president of Sun Microsystems doing to celebrate? "It's a workday, isn't it?" his assistant says. "His schedule is packed, so he's not going out to dinner or anything." Bummer. Send McNealy a card at Corporate Headquarters, Sun Microsystems, 901 San Antonio Rd., Palo Alto, Calif. 94303. If you want to buy McNealy a gift, bear in mind that he likes to play golf and his birthstone is topaz. Other birthdays this month: Larry Flynt (the 1st); Christie Hefner (the 8th); and Ted Turner, Calvin Klein, and Jack Welch (the 19th).

14 National Book Awards. If Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections doesn't win the gold sticker this year it will be funny but sad--like Marshall Faulk losing the Heisman Trophy to Gino Toretta. On this day in 1972, the Dow hit 1000 for the first time.

15 Addiction Day. Today marks the Great American Smoke-Out, the release of 60 million bottles of Le Beaujolais Nouveau, and Starbucks' reporting of earnings. For those craving self-loathing, Don Rickles plays the Stardust in Vegas.

17|18 College football's Rivalry Week. UCLA-USC. Florida-Florida State. Alabama-Auburn. Yale-Harvard. Wait: Yale-Harvard? It may not be Lennox Lewis vs. Hasim Rahman at Mandalay Bay (also Saturday), but watching the kids claw each other's cardigans can be pretty entertaining.

19 Anniversary of Lincoln's 1863 Gettysburg Address, winner for best November writing. Runner-up: Guns N' Roses' "November Rain." "So if you want to love me/Then darling don't refrain/Or I'll just end up walking/In the cold November rain."

21 That Harry Potter movie came out last Friday, but this is the first day you'll be able to get near a theater. By now Warner Bros. execs will have decided which kind of car--the Aston Martin or the Ferrari Modena?--they're going to buy.

22 Ode to Thanksgiving: Shall I even compare thee to Christmas Day?/Thou art more relaxing, and warmer/Rough times can follow stuffing, and turkey makes me sleepy/But honestly, nothing compares to a holiday / And a nation / That can bring back the turkey fryer.

23 "The biggest shopping day of the year," says Kurt Barnard of Barnard's Retail Trend Report. "But this year will be muted." Understatement prize! Look for home-merchandise spending, he says. "The home is where people retreat, safe from chaos and confusion" (but not from Inside Schwartz).

24|25 Chitlin Strut, Salley, S.C. Sixty-thousand people, 10,000 pounds of chitterlings (fried pig intestines), and a beauty pageant. Factor in the legal purchase of fireworks, and you shouldn't need another reason to move to South Carolina.

26 International Symposium on Applied Algebra, Algorithms, and Error Correcting Codes, in Melbourne, Australia. Because you can't just go chitlin-strutting through life, son.

27 A quarter-billion Monarch butterflies arrive in the mountains of Central Mexico by this time each year. They travel 3,000 miles (sometimes to the same trees), and their journey is triggered--according to a new study at the University of Kansas Monarch Watch--by a 56-degree angle of the sun at noon. Then again, it could also be the cold weather. Nobody really knows. In any event, when that many butterflies flap their wings something strange is bound to happen (remember the famous relationship between a butterfly's flapping in Brazil and a tornado in Texas?). And so on the 28th, in 1967, in Mexia, Texas, Anna Nicole Smith was born.

29 Absolutely nothing is going on, so do what you always do. Wake up. Go to work. Surf the Web. Go home. Eat too much. Maybe even watch Inside Schwartz. Who needs a freaking calendar?

30 Full moon again (the first was on the first). Two full moons in one month, and the second's called a blue moon. And technically, this one's a full beaver moon--time to set traps. Also on this date, in 1982, Michael Jackson's Thriller was released. Aoooooow! See you next month.

To submit events: E-mail: calendar@fortunemail.com Fax: 212-467-1409 Mail: The FORTUNE Business Calendar, FORTUNE, 1271 Avenue of the Americas, Room 1560B, New York, N.Y. 10020