Martin Schneider writes:

There's a fun event with two New Yorker luminaries on March 18 at the powerHouse Arena. From the press release:

The powerHouse Arena is pleased to invite you to a talk and reading

"Funny Because It's True"
with Simon Rich and Benjamin Nugent
Moderated by Ben Greenman

Wednesday, March 18, 2009, 7-9PM
The powerHouse Arena
37 Main Street, Brooklyn
For more information: (718) 666-3049
RSVP: rsvp@powerhousearena.com

The powerHouse Arena invites you to a night of laughs, moderated by Ben Greenman, featuring Simon Rich, author of Free-Range Chickens and Ant Farm and Other Desperate Situations and Benjamin Nugent, author of American Nerd: The Story of My People.

About Free-Range Chickens
Simon Rich is a 24-year-old writer for Saturday Night Live, former president of The Harvard Lampoon, and author of the acclaimed book, Ant Farm (Random House, 2007). In his second book, Free-Range Chickens, Rich returns with another collection of humor pieces that mines more comedy from the absurdities of everyday life in our hopelessly terrifying world.

In short comic vignettes divided into sections such as "Growing Up," "Going to Work," "Relationships," and a topic that has always puzzled him—"God," Rich examines life's biggest and smallest questions, from why people check their email every three minutes to God's master plan for mankind.

In the nostalgic opening chapter, Rich recalls his fear of the Tooth Fairy ("Is there a face fairy?") and his initial reaction to the "Got-your-nose" game ("Please just kill me. Better to die than to live the rest of my life as a monster"). He goes on to imagine office life as a "Choose Your Adventure Story" and later points out how we could all learn a lot about life and happiness by looking at the world through the eyes of free-range chickens. In his final chapter Rich imagines a conversation with God: Does God really have a plan for us? Yes, it turns out. Now if only He could remember what it was...

About American Nerd: The Story of My People

"American Nerd is very funny and consistently smart, but it's also mildly controversial—I'm not sure I've ever seen these kinds of cogent, intuitively accurate arguments made about any 'type' of modern person. Benjamin Nugent is just weird enough to be absolutely right."
—Chuck Klosterman, author of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs

"The coolest book about nerds ever written. Heck, one of the coolest books ever written, period. Benjamin Nugent is the Richard Dawkins of geekdom. Outsiders of the world, this is required reading. Know your roots!" —Paul Feig, creator of Freaks and Geeks

"What everyone should be talking about...funny."—GQ

Most people know a nerd when they see one but can't define just what a nerd is. American Nerd: The Story of My People gives us the history of the concept of nerdiness and of the subcultures we consider nerdy. What makes Dr. Frankenstein the archetypal nerd? Where did the modern jock come from? When and how did being a self-described nerd become trendy? As the nerd emerged, vaguely formed, in the nineteenth century, and popped up again and again in college humor journals and sketch comedy, our culture obsessed over the designation.

Mixing research and reportage with autobiography, critically acclaimed writer Benjamin Nugent embarks on a fact-finding mission of the most entertaining variety. He seeks the best definition of nerd and illuminates the common ground between nerd subcultures that might seem unrelated: high-school debate team kids and ham radio enthusiasts, medieval re-enactors and pro-circuit Halo players. Why do the same people who like to work with computers also enjoy playing Dungeons & Dragons? How are those activities similar? This clever, enlightening book will appeal to the nerd (and anti-nerd) that lives inside all of us.

About the author:
Benjamin Nugent has written for The New York Times Magazine, Time, New York, and n+1. His first book, Elliott Smith and the Big Nothing, was published in 2004.

About the moderator:
Ben Greenman is an editor at The New Yorker and the author of several acclaimed books of fiction, including Superbad, Superworse, and A Circle is a Balloon and Compass Both: Stories About Human Love. His fiction, essays, and journalism have appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Paris Review, Zoetrope: All Story, McSweeney's, and Opium, and he has been widely anthologized.

His current projects include Correspondences, a limited edition handcrafted letterpress publication created by Hotel St. George Press and Please Step Back, a novel published by Melville House (due in April 2009). He is also a regular contributor to the music and psychology blog www.moistworks.com.