Aside from the Steve Almond/James Joyce dirty business at Great Scott that Nina will be attending (and we can't wait to hear what she thinks of Almond's recitation), here are four more options for your Wednesday. Two of them are naughty omg!
How did Tom Brady go from being a sixth-round draft pick to the Patriots’ star quarterback and one of football’s most celebrated players? Ah, the warm-fuzzy story of the underdog. Sports journalist, former Phoenix staffer, and NPR contributor CHARLES P. PIERCE tells the tale in Moving the Chains: Tom Brady and the Pursuit of Everything, and he reads (did we mention that he’s a totally funny guy?) at Newtonville Books, 296 Walnut St, Newton | 7:30 pm | free | 617.244.6619.
Sure, sad little electronica musicians cum pseudo-social-justice bloggers (we’re looking at you, Moby) sometimes think they know how to inspire change through the written word, but the “AMERICAN PROTEST LITERATURE” panelists actually do. British author ZOE TRODD discusses her American Protest Literature (leave it to the Brits to know us better than we know ourselves), TIMOTHY PATRICK MCCARTHY reads Eugene V. Debs’s Statement to the Court, JOHN STAUFFER presents the images and photos that have altered public opinion, and playwright DORIC WILSON discusses excerpts from his Street Theatre. Cause a stir at the Old South Meeting House, 310 Washington St, Boston | 6:30 pm | free | 617.428.6439.
Remember that Seinfeld episode where Elaine doesn’t get the joke in a New Yorker cartoon and asks an editor and he doesn’t get it either? Could the ones they turned down have been better? A 90 percent rejection rate of submissions (even for regulars) prompted contributor Matthew Diffee to salvage lost gems scribbled by the mag’s top 30 cartoonists in The Rejection Collection: Cartoons You Never Saw, and Never Will See, in The New Yorker. He’ll present them as part of a live comedy show with colleagues Drew Dernavich, David Sipress, and Eric Lewis at the Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle St, Cambridge | 7:30 pm | $15 | 617.876.6387. (We'll be there, probably not in the front row because there are rumors of audience participation and we tend to have a blushing problem. Report tk next week!)
Last but not least, the superfresh Boston Phoenix Author Series continues with GEORGE PROCHNIK's Putnam Camp: Sigmund Freud, James Jackson Putnam, and the Purpose of American Psychology. In other words? More sex talk. Lots of it. The reading, signing, and reception is at the Burren, 247 Elm St, Somerville | 6:30 pm | free | 617.776.6896.