This Weekend in New Orleans: What Year? When?

Puppets and Pajamas

The Calliope Puppet Center will host “Puppets and Pajamas Friday” on – you guessed it – Friday evening. Curtain is at 6:30 for their take on The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, performed through puppetry and audience participation. They invite you to wear pajamas to the performance.

Proud to Call It (Your Children’s) Home

The Louisiana Children’s Museum and Historic New Orleans Collection have collaborated to bring you New Orleans: Proud to Call It Home, an exhibit at LCM’s 420 Julia St. location that is geared to kids aged 4 through 10 in order to teach them about life in 19th-century New Orleans. LCM will unveil an expansion to the exhibit from 9:30 a.m. until 2:30 p.m. Saturday, during which time kids can romp around recreated centuries-old buildings and act out life in the 1800s.

Kermit and Big Sam Rock the Joy

The newly reopened Joy Theater (1200 Canal St.) hosts two living, legendary bands on New Year’s Eve: Kermit Ruffins and the Barbecue Swingers and Big Sam’s Funky Nation. Tickets are un peu cher, but they include four hours of open bar. You can check out pricing at Ticketmaster.

Zoo Year’s Eve

The Audubon Zoo (6500 Magazine St.) has crafted a New Year’s Eve countdown especially for children, with a soda-pop (cold drink?) toast at noon, as well as games and prizes for participants. (They warn that the number of prizes is limited.) The celebration runs from 10:30 a.m. until 12:30 p.m. and is included in zoo admission.

Fire the Laser, Brah!

The Kenner Planetarium (2020 Fourth St., Kenner) will host two “Laser Holidays” light shows, at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., Saturday. It’s also steps away from the river levee, so if you don’t want to drive to the French Quarter, just climb the dyke and watch the fireworks. Which brings us to ….

A NOLA’s New Year’s Eve

This ain’t Times Square, baby. Beginning at 9 p.m. in Jackson Square, we show those Big Applers how the Big Easy does a New Year celebration. (We even have the good sense to wait an extra hour after their version.) There will be a fleur-de-lis drop, and the “Symphony in the Sky” fireworks display ignites at midnight. Suck on that, Gotham.

Fan Fest

On occasion, football fans have been known to take celebration to unlikely extremes. So if you plan on tailgating the 2012 Sugar Bowl for, say, two hole days, there will be a “2012 Allstate Fan Fest” in the Jax Brewery parking lots along Decatur Street (at the Steamboat Natchez launch) from noon to 8 p.m. Sunday and Monday in anticipation of Tuesday’s bowl game. Just pace yourselves; it would be a shame to go to all that trouble and then forget to go to the game itself.

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