Selections: Our picks of the week's best events, Jan. 18-24

Mike Doughty

MUSIC

The theme for this particular evening seems to be one of second acts. In the driver's seat, we have one Mike Doughty, best known as frontman for '90s alt-rock outliers Soul Coughing ("Super Bon Bon"), but now making it on his own in music and letters (having penned a memoir of the "hell" that was life in the Coughing called The Book of Drugs). Doughty is touring behind his new and expansive album The Heart Watches While the Brain Burns, written in tandem with hip-hop producer Good Goose. Riding shotgun with Doughty is NYC's Wheatus, best known for 2001 radio hit "Teenage Dirtbag." The band kept at it hard, long after the initial bloom fell off the "Dirtbag" rose, only to receive a most unexpected (and stratospheric, frankly) boost when One Direction took to covering "Teenage Dirtbag" every night on tour in 2013. This allowed them both the freedom to work on new material and a new lens through which to view a song that they were maaaaaaybe getting a little tired of. If you come out, you'll get some hits – SOME – but keep an open ear for new material. Surely they've earned that much. – Matthew Moyer

with Wheatus | 7 p.m. | The Social, 54 N. Orange Ave. | 407-246-1419 | thesocial.org | $20

George Takei

EVENTS

When Facebook first launched, you'd have been hard-pressed to find anyone who would predict that its most influential user would end up being a septuagenarian actor. But George Takei, famous for portraying the USS Enterprise helmsman Hikaru Sulu in the original Star Trek series, has experienced the rare second act in public life. He's found a wide audience for his mixture of humor and progressive social policies on social media. This appearance at Rollins College sees him speaking about his time in a World War II internment camp for Japanese-Americans; his recent musical, Allegiance, based on that experience; and his long fight for LGBTQ rights. – Thaddeus McCollum

7:30 p.m. | Warden Arena, Rollins College, 1000 Holt Ave., Winter Park | 407-646-2145 | rollins.edu | $15-$50

No Dice

MUSIC

Part of a thankfully never-ending stream of weirdos burning up I-95 North from Miami to throw down at Orlando's most intimate dives, we've got No Dice. A new project featuring members of Nunhex, Antifaces and Bruiser, No Dice deals in an ultra-aggressive outsider strain of hardcore as indebted to Leather Daddy as the Germs. Particular standouts include the thrashy guitar work of Gordo and vocalist Maddy's out-of-control delivery. We've got the good luck of experiencing their first out-of-town show. Openers are Birthday Party-gone-Black Flag local(ish) band Problem Child and new, young pop-punk project (you read that right) Pathetic. Sounds like a good Friday night. – Matthew Moyer

with Problem Child, Pathetic | 7 p.m. | Sandwich Bar, 2432 E. Robinson St. | facebook.com/sandwichbarorlando | $5

Women's Rally: Orlando March

CIVICS

Despite all the pinching your arm has had to endure since Nov. 8, yes, Donald J. Trump and all the behaviors he displayed on the campaign trail will be sworn in as the 45th president of the United States this weekend. And the resistance isn't taking it quietly. A day after the inauguration, thousands of people are planning to descend on Washington, D.C., for the Women's March on Washington. The women organizing the march are asking "all defenders of human rights" to join them in protecting the rights of women of all races, immigrants, Muslims and people of other faiths, LGBTQ people and other marginalized groups. More than 270 sister marches will be happening around the nation and other countries, including a march in downtown Orlando's Lake Eola Park. Bring your sign and a good shouting voice so they can't say they didn't hear you. – Monivette Cordeiro

1-4 p.m. | Walt Disney Amphitheater, Lake Eola Park, 195 N. Rosalind Ave. | womensrallycfl.org | free

Kathleen Madigan

COMEDY

Kathleen Madigan is an inveterate comic. Many of her peers hope that stand-up will be a bridge to a sitcom. "But not me," Madigan told us in a recent interview. "I'm really good at knowing what I don't want to do." During the early '90s she was offered a gig at ESPN 2. "But I'm not passionate about every sport," she says. "I don't know anything about NASCAR. Learning about that would be work." Madigan was offered an opportunity to write for a recent Roseanne Barr vehicle, which was ultimately ill-fated. "They wanted me to work for them and I said that I could if I wrote from my garage," she says. "That obviously didn't work out. I would only be interested in a sitcom if was all about me. To me sitcoms are rabbit holes. There may be money there. But it doesn't often pan out. When it does, you're chained to it. I like to do what I want." What Madigan wants is to make an audience laugh. "That's all I ever wanted to do," she says. "I can't believe this is my job." Madigan, who has an hour-long Netflix special, Madigan Again, doesn't pay attention to trends and could care less what her fans, the media or anyone thinks. "I'll never pander," Madigan says. "I couldn't live with myself if I wasn't honest onstage. You know for sure that I'll always be true to myself. I don't care about anything but making people laugh." – Ed Condran

7 p.m. | The Plaza Live, 425 N. Bumby Ave. | 877-435-9849 | plazaliveorlando.org | $28.50-$45

Functionally Literate: Kelly Luce

LITERARY

Even if it accomplished nothing else (which is not the case), Kelly Luce's first novel, Pull Me Under, is extraordinary in that it is a book about a female human that covers adolescence and early adulthood, and yet the word "girl" and the color pink are nowhere to be seen. There is nary a high heel nor lipstick nor cocktail glass on the cover. Truly, the woman who can get a big-league publisher to avoid those stale signifiers must be a powerful one, and the powerful Luce reads from her novel Saturday at Functionally Literate. Her novel unfolds the story of a Japanese woman's repeated self-reinventions, exploring the meaning of transnational identity and the immigrant soul along the way. There's plenty of blood and bullying and slow-burning rage here, making it a story with more than enough psychic resonance for Americans feeling trepidation about the post-Jan. 20 world. – Jessica Bryce Young

with Dan Lopez | 7:15 p.m. | Blue Bamboo Center for the Arts, 1905 Kentucky Ave., Winter Park | functionallyliterate.org | free-$40

Orlando Philharmonic: John Adams

MUSIC

American classical music might be younger than its European counterpart, where it originated, but the amalgamation of musical styles and forms that defines it makes it seductively idiosyncratic. For 40 years, composer John Adams has been at the very center of it all, one of our most important living composers. A 2003 Pulitzer Prize winner, Adams' music synthesizes minimalist techniques with large-scale Romantic idioms to produce sweeping and emotionally powerful statements. Adams turns 70 in February; with this program, the Orlando Phil continues its celebration of his milestone birthday – they recently performed his landmark 1978 piece Shaker Loops – and his music. Saturday's program opens with Adams' accurately titled Short Ride in a Fast Machine, a high-octane, five-minute fanfare for large orchestra. As well, Puerto Rican soprano María Laetitia will sing the mordant, mournful aria "Am I in Your Light?" from Adams' riveting opera Doctor Atomic, about Dr. Robert Oppenheimer's historic Manhattan Project. It also includes two large-scale works not foreign to Adams' Romantic side: the virtuosic Rachmaninoff 3, featuring young soloist Colton Peltier from Juilliard, and Brahms' Third Symphony. – Esteban Meneses

8 p.m. | Bob Carr Theater, 401 W. Livingston St. | 407-770-0071 | orlandophil.org | $21-$62

Monster Jam

SPORTS

Saturday! Saturday! Saturday! The Monster Jam returns to Camping World Stadium to fulfill the dreams of prepubescent kids everywhere (and the prepubescent at heart). Monster Jam combines ridiculously impractical trucks with all of the pageantry and spectacle of professional wrestling to create entertainment that's larger than life – and tons of fun to watch. Colorful performers like Max-D, El Toro Loco, Monster Mutt and Grave Digger compete against each other (because the trucks are kind of treated like they're people) by doing freestyle runs around an obstacle course, trying to incorporate as many badass tricks as they can into their run. Points are deducted if the truck flips over, has to go in reverse or stops, which encourages the drivers to make each run a whirling, flipping, gravity-defying display of chrome-and-rubber fury. – TM

7 p.m. | Camping World Stadium, 1 Citrus Bowl Place | 407-423-2476 | monsterjam.com | $22-$182