Friday, January 15: There are plenty of comedy nights around town with big names, but it’s time for the next generation of comics to make a stand. Tonight at Coco66, Nick Turner (from CollegeHumor.com) and Jason Saenz (an organizer of the DC Comedy Festival) host their weekly “Too Cool for School” show featuring some real up-and-comers, including Baron Vaughn (pictured).

Monday, January 18: Our friends at Sweet and Nasty Burlesque say that tonight’s show at Public Assembly will be the last ever. “Burlesque shows are born, get covered in glitter and various sticky substances, and ultimately pass through the veil to world beyond,” Nasty Canasta told us this week. Canasta (pictured) says her final show will be part Irish wake, part Viking funeral and part “getting naked onstage in front of strangers.”

Monday, January 18: Yes, she’s spacey and she’s ethereal, but English singer-songwriter Beth Orton is not New Agey garbage. If she was, would everyone from Ryan Adams to the Chemical Brothers to Annie Lennox be hounding her for collaborations? And would everyone from Bristol to Bensonhurst be dying for her long-promised follow up to her trippy “Comfort Of Strangers” LP? No.

Monday, January 18: It wouldn’t be the third Monday in January without the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s annual tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. This year’s event features actor/humanitarian Danny Glover (pictured) and the New Life Tabernacle Mass Choir — plus every politician in town. Yes, Chuck Schumer will be there!

Tuesday, January 19: She’s not a Brooklynite, but we’re going to head to PowerHouse tonight to hear English writer Zoe Heller read from “The Believers,” her book about faith, family and the flaws that keep it all interesting. Heller’s own family history — Stalinist mother, screenwriter father, atheist upbringing — is a novel unto itself.