It’s music festival season: this weekend South by Southwest is in Indie-rocking in Austin, and next week Miami Beach will descend into a disco inferno as the Winter Music Conference (WMC) rolls into town from the 20th to the 25th.

Once a year the city of Valencia does its best to blow itself up to celebrate the arrival of spring. The festival is called Las Fallas and includes a week of fireworks barrages, parades, and parties all leading up up to St. Joseph’s day on March 19th.

This weekend, the tiny town of Hokitika, New Zealand, population 4,500, will be flooded by 17,000 foodies, who are flying, driving and bussing in from all over sample the oddest delicacies they can get their mitts on.

Chinese New Year started with a bang (literally) on Sunday, with firecracker ceremonies to ward off evil, and runs through the beginning of March.

Brangelina and the Zagat guides are doing their best to help New Orleans back on its way to hedonistic health, but a party like Mardi Gras really speaks for itself.

Whether the locals call it Mardi Gras, Carnevale, or Fastnacht, Carnival is happening this weekend, and it’s the world’s biggest party.

Large swathes of the populations of Chicago and Indianapolis will be on the move this weekend, along with scores of other Americans, traveling to Miami to watch the Bears face off agains the Colts in Super Bowl XLI.

There are two approaches to throwing a party to get through the darkest and coldest part of winter: embrace the freeze with ice sculptures, ice castles, etc., or beat back the cold with brute force by burning as many things as possible.

Yes, that’s right: today is the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere (I’m choosing to ignore the you dratted southerners who are basking in summer sun right now).

Our friends at Gothamist linked to Kelly Loudenberg’s new video on last weekend’s Santacon in NYC.