New Year’s Eve–amateur night to some, and to others the best excuse for one hell of a time. Musicians usually add a slight twist of their own, including Alina Simone, who gets creative with her resolutions. Neimo spent one New Year’s Eve performing for a good cause. And then there’s Johnny Foreigner, who turned it into an entirely new holiday (just add booze).

No matter how you spend it, have a great night, don’t do anything we wouldn’t do (options aplenty) and see you new and improved in 2011!

Getting good barbecue in New York City is as tough as getting a decent knish in Memphis–unless you live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Then it’s as simple as rolling down to the Fette Sau (“fat pig”) at 354 Metropolitan Avenue.

Since 2007, the converted auto body repair shop has been providing a rendered-fat-loving populace with the finest smoked meats, craft beers (by the gallon!) and American whiskies anywhere outside of Tennessee.

Eating at Fette Sau is like listening to Anika–it seems like you’ve been there before because it’s intrinsically comforting and reassuring, but at the same time, surreal, exciting and never, ever boring.

Like all good Memphis pit-masters, the chefs at Fette Sau refrain from applying sauce during the cooking (and discourage the application of sauce afterward, though a pupu platter of delicious options is available for the non-purists, like me), believing that anything more than hunks of well-marbled pork and beef topped with spices and rigorously smoked protein is superfluous, if not anathema, to the experience of BBQ.

(MORE SAU AFTER THE JUMP)

The Dirtbombs will release an album of Detroit techno covers titled Party Store on February 1 via In the Red Records. The group takes a stab at songs from Cybotron, Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson and Carl Craig, who also contributes to the reproduction of his song, “Bug in the Bass Bin,” released under the Innerzone Orchestra moniker in 1992.

Detroit is one of the originators of techno, so it’s no surprise the throwback-loving Dirtbombs have shed some new light on their hometown history. We were lucky enough to sit down with the group, who hipped us to a couple local gems.

Guinness is best slurped in Ireland; croissants are best noshed in France; hairy crab is best crunched in Shanghai–and Philly cheesesteaks? Outside of the City of Brotherly Love, cheesesteaks are just crappy sammies with substandard and under-seasoned meat, soggy bread and, (to add insult to injury), Cheese Whiz.

It’s just wrong! Would you order a bagel in Paris? Non!

I am married to a Philly-born cheese and meat fanatic for whom the cheesesteak represents the apotheosis of culinary excellence, and in Philadelphia proper, there are only six to eight (depending on his mood, the season and how long it’s been since his last visit) shops in the city itself that are capable of putting out a decent cheesesteak.

Outings to cheesesteak huts are treated with the same reverence, high degree of pomp and intolerance for tomfoolery with which attending Sunday mass was approached in my youth.

Never in my wildest dreams did I think that we would find a cheesesteak joint in New York “bagel ‘n schmear” City that would ever pass muster. Then there was Wogie’s.

(MORE AFTER THE JUMP)

Christmas is arguably the only major religious holiday where non-Christians have developed yearly traditions. So whether you plan to spend the holiday with family, volunteering with an organization or, like us, at a Chinese restaurant with the Jewish homies, you’ll be in good company. Face it, you could be getting barked at by the staff of the Maury Povich show, receiving a pet rat as a gift or being torn between which family to spend the day with. Cheers!

The Ace Hotel, situated at 20 West 29^th Street, squarely in the Southern side of Midtown, seems like an unlikely candidate for hyper-edgy hipsterdom.

But the boutique chainlet (there are other locations in Portland, Seattle and Palm Springs) feels more like the edge of the Julian Schnabel-run art world circa 1982 than the edge of the Donald Trump-run Times Square Disney-ghetto circa 2011.

Simply put, it’s a great place to hang out.

Next time you’re in the hood (isn’t your office around there?), slip in for a hot cup of Red Hook-roasted java at Stumptown, some nose-to-tail terrine at The Breslin or a few buttery bites of sustainably sourced local oysters at The John Dory.

(MORE AFTER THE JUMP)

Copenhagen is reportedly one of the happiest places in the world, but CALLmeKAT (Katrine Ottosen) knows a thing or two about heartache. Armed with an intoxicating voice and upwards of five keyboards, this Danish native makes the somber something to sink into.

After releasing the single “My Sea,” and an EP, I’m in a Polaroid, Where are You?, CALLmeKAT made her full-length debut with 2008′s Fall Down. Critics have since called her music “lovely, delicate” with “serious synth talent and [a] voice to melt your ears.”

She’s toured with Blonde Redhead, Bat for Lashes, Okkervil River and others, including stops at SXSW and NXNE, and is widely known in Denmark, though she now calls NYC home.

We sat down with CALLmeKAT, who told us about her recording process (both at home and in leaky barns), her favorite keyboards (KORG gets mad props) and why Copenhagen has that happy reputation, anyway.