Critical 5 things to do in NYC: working for the weekend, Jan. 18-20

Don’t let mid-January slumps and the realization that your New Year’s Resolutions list is already quietly gathering dust somewhere get you down. Check out some of these for-a-limited-time-only events.

You’ll laugh, you’ll drink, you’ll play freeze tag with strangers.

East Ville des Folies: Beer and Whiskey Festival, Jan 19

This weekend, former speakeasy Webster Hall is hosting its first annual beer and whiskey festival. Fill up your commemorative glass with 4 floors’ worth of obscure beer and whiskey samples while sashaying to some swing jazz bands and enjoying local food vendors. If malt, barley, and Prohibition-era tunes aren’t enough to sway you, the event will also feature circus acts, trapeze artists, and burlesque dancers for Roaring Twenties-style entertainment. Indulge your vices and relive the First Golden Age.

Winter Comedy Jam, Jan 19 

Get a little tipsy and giddy at the Beacon Theatre with the Winter Comedy Jam this Saturday night. With professional laughmakers Joe Torry, bad boy of comedy Smokey Suarez, and former “ComicView” host Bruce Bruce starting out the night you are sure to be cracking up by the show’s close. One of the “original kings of comedy” D.L. Hughley and the ever-emphatic Earthquake will round out the night with their mix of social commentary and observational humor.

Totally Tubular Time Machine, Jan 19

A self-described interactive and intergalactic pop music experience, Totally Tubular Time Machine will take over your favorite '80s-inspired disco bar, Culture Club, for a night of immersive reality-based theatre. With a cast of celebrity pop stars performing your favorite 1980s pop hits, you’ll be sure to moonwalk across the light-up dance floor at least once. Part show and part party, it’s Back to the Future meets the MTV Music Awards, and it’s a guaranteed good time.

Freeze Tag on Wall Street, Jan 20

Now in its eighth year, Freeze-Tag on Wall Street returns post-Occupy and post-Sandy for the ultimate childhood game medley of Freeze-Tag, Blob Tag, Wolf Sheep Rock, and Red Rover. Those who forget such schoolyard games will have a refresher course before taking over the streets of FiDi. Meet at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets at 1pm and get ready to embrace your inner Peter Pan-ism.

DJ Spooky: The Nauru Elegies, Jan 18

This Friday night, Paul D. Miller, aka DJ Spooky, continues his “The Met Reframed” series with another thought-provoking multimedia performance piece. This time he explores colonial and postcolonial issues in our digital world via the overmined South Pacific island of Nauru. Part live string-quartet performance, part video, part digital-animation, and part live Internet feed of GPS coordinates, the project is a stirring, multivalent look at the global economy.