DON’T MISS: TO HER WITH LOVE
Growing up in Canada, Paul Shaffer remembers seeing Lulu perform “Shout” on the TV music show “Shindig.” (It was 1965.) “Fantastic,” he says. “She killed me as a kid. She is a voice that so many singers cite as an influence.”
Lulu hit it big two years later in the US with “To Sir With Love” — the theme for the Sidney Poitier film in which she also had a part. And tomorrow, Shaffer is playing in the band backing Lulu at B.B. King’s in her first New York City concert.
The David Letterman band leader sees a similarity in Lulu and today’s Brit girl singers like Adele: “Both of them have their roots in American gospel and soul music,” he explains. “This gig is all about her going back to these roots.” Adds Shaffer, who will be playing alongside the Fab Faux’s Will Lee, Jimmy Vivino and Rich Pagano, “I am really like a little kid looking forward to this.”
8 p.m. at 237 W. 42nd St.; (212) 997-4144, bbkingblues.com. tickets start at $36.
— Billy Heller
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CHECK IT OUT!: SKIN OF HER TEETH
Ever hear the one about the impressionist and the circus star? It’s no joke — just an elegant new show at the Morgan, about Degas and the making of his masterpiece “Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando.” Painted in 1879, it immortalizes a mixed-race Prussian bodybuilder (real name: Olga) who caught Degas’ eye as she swung 70 feet in the air, held up only by the rope between her teeth. The painting, on loan from London, features a gorgeous domed hall and the acrobat looking, as curator Linda Wolk Simon puts it, “like a secular angel.” Simon has surrounded “Miss La La” with sketches, photos and posters, some picturing La La’s co-star: the 155-pound cannon she held up by a rope between her extremely strong teeth. When the cannon was fired, Simon reports, “La La didn’t even flinch.” Madison Avenue at 37th Street; themorgan.org; free admission Fridays 7 to 9 p.m.
— Barbara Hoffman
National Gallery, London / Art Resource, NY
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WATCH IT!: UNCONVENTIONAL
Star Joan Blondell called “Convention City’’ (1933) “the raunchiest [film] there has ever been.’’ Producer Robert Lord claimed this sexy and reputedly hilarious comedy about conventioneers and Atlantic City gold-diggers was chiefly responsible for rigorous enforcement of Hollywood’s Production Code by censors the following year. No prints are known to exist, but Film Forum will offer a dramatic reading by local actors of the surviving script for this lost pre-Code classic on Monday at 6:35 p.m. It’s part of a monthlong retrospective of 1933 movies. Houston and Varick streets. Info: filmforum.org and nypost.com/blogs/movies.
— Lou Lumenick
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GET IN FASHION!: SEW DIFFERENT
If you’re weeping into your Badgley and your Mischka that Fashion Week is over, cheer up. The edgy Williamsburg Fashion Weekend is back for its sixth year, today and tomorrow. And founder Arthur Arbit (a longtime tailor) promises his event is different.
“It’s not just aesthetics. It’s more about how conscientious they are about creating their clothes — using sustainable fabrics, factories that don’t use slave labor,” says Arbit. He cites Nathalie Kraynina from Bulgaria, who gives underprivileged women jobs. “That’s something I’m adamant about promoting,” Arbit says. In his “different approach,” he says there are performance-based shows — plays and music — and no runways.
Doors open at 8 p.m.; $15 (day of show) at The Space, 50 N. Third St., Williamsburg; williamsburgfashionweekend.com.
— Doree Lewak
Jena Cumbo
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CHEW ON THIS!: CHEESY DOES IT You’re used to seeing presidents on dollar bills, but have you ever seen them on some actual cheddar? Get ready for a real taste…
National Geographic/Getty Images
