DON’T MISS!: STRUMMER TIME!
JOE Strummer died 10 years ago, but the memory of him and the Clash live on among New York City’s music community. On Tuesday, his life and work will be celebrated during a benefit show at the Bowery Electric for Strummerville, a foundation created in his memory to support disadvanted musicians around the world. “The Clash loved New York — the characters, the sights, they always soaked it up when they came here,” says MTV’s Matt Pinfield, who will host the evening. “New York City has always had that same love for him, too. You only have to look at the big mural that’s in the East Village [on Avenue A and Seventh Street] to understand that.” The lineup features local musicians including Brian Fallon of the Gaslight Anthem, Joseph Arthur and Jesse Malin, who conceived the benefit idea along with Pinfield. “It wasn’t difficult to get people involved with this show,” says the host, who expects “special guests.”
$25 in advance, $30 day of show. 327 Bowery, at Second Street; 212-228-0228, theboweryelectric.com.
— Hardeep Phull
Bob Gruen
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SEE THIS!: SURREAL ESTATE
Frottage! Decalcomania! Exquisite corpses! Leave it to the surrealists to find an array of vaguely erotic-sounding methods for their madness. (Rough translation of those three: rubbings, wet-image transfers and a game of artistic, blindfolded ad-libs.) The Morgan’s eye-popping new “Drawing Surrealism” show is organized more or less around those very techniques, though curator Isabelle Dervaux says, “We can’t be too rational about a movement that didn’t want to be rational!” Indeed, the artists represented here prided themselves on drawing on their subconscious. And there were more of them at it than you suspected — not only Dali, Miro and Man Ray, but countless men and women from Britain, Tokyo, Czechoslovakia and America who frottaged themselves into a frenzy between 1915 and 1950, when surrealism more or less petered out. Next stop: abstraction, minus the fun words. Surrealism — see it now! 225 Madison Ave., at 36th Street; themorgan.org.
— Barbara Hoffman
The Pierpont Morgan Library, New
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WATCH IT!: TRY AGAIN
Synonymous with big-budget flops for the past quarter century, “Ishtar’’ (1987) grossed only $14 million in North America on a reported budget of $55 million. “A truly dreadful film . . . a massive lumbering exercise in failed comedy,’’ wrote Roger Ebert in a syndicated review that appeared in The Post. Critics weren’t much kinder to writer-director Elaine May or her Oscar-winning stars, Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman, cast as ninth-rate songwriters accidentally embroiled in a CIA plot when their agent books them into a lounge gig in Morocco. Never released on DVD in the US and not as bad as its reputation, “Ishtar’’ is getting another chance with audiences in a new digital restoration tomorrow and Sunday at 6 p.m. at the Museum of the Moving Image as part of a tribute to composer Paul Williams, who collaborated with May on the intentionally awful songs. 35th Avenue at 37th Street, Astoria; 718-784-0077, movingimage.us.
— Lou Lumenick
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HAVE A TASTE!: CHILLY WITH A CHANCE OF CHILI
The thermometer has plummeted, but Sunday’s annual NYChiliFest will offer warm refuge from the arctic blasts outside. Inside Chelsea Market, chefs from 23 restaurants will ladle out their chilis — an estimated 2,900 pounds or 2 ½ tons ! — paired with four types of Sam Adams suds, along a 500-foot “chili concourse.” Last year, the Southern-themed Brooklyn Star nabbed the runner-up prize for its tripe chili made with ground beef and slab bacon, and topped with Fritos for a salty crunch — but this year, the Williamsburg restaurant is upping its game: “We’ll have to bring more Fritos!” says general manager Bill Reed. “We ran out [last year] . . . a lot of the people who were voting didn’t try our full recipe.” Chef Joaquin Baca has also tweaked the recipe to incorporate more Lone Star beer and chipotle smokiness. Plus, live country music from the Dixons! $50 for unlimited chili, $55 for unlimited chili and beer; 7 to 9:30 p.m.; 75 Ninth Avenue; nychilifest.com.
— Christina Amoroso
Getty Images
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CHECK IT OUT!: JUST SAY SNOW
Local TV meteorologists may not have reported this, but it’s been snowing in Central Park all week long! It’s not Mother Nature’s doing (although she may help out today), but comes courtesy of some state-of-the-art snow-making machinery and the NYC Parks Department — all to get Central Park ready for tomorrow’s annual Winter Jam.
New Yorkers can watch snowboarders fly through the air — or try it themselves, along with cross-country and downhill skiing, snowshoeing and just playing in the snow. Equipment will be supplied — and it’s all free.
“It is cold, and New Yorkers tend to stay inside,” says Parks Department assistant commissioner Betsy Smith, “but we love to get people into the parks.” (There will be a warming tent and hot cocoa, she adds.)
Bring your pooches for Winter Jam’s inaugural Doggie Snow Zone, where Fidos can frolic.
11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Central Park Bandshell; nycparksgov.org. Enter the park at 72nd Street and Fifth Avenue.
— Billy Heller
Theodore Parisienne
