I wear a pocket watch now, as an accessory for my iPhone. It’s like living in two centuries at once.
But there’s a practical reason. I wear overshirts and jackets and vests, and that’s where I keep my phone, in outer pockets of outerwear.
It slips out of those pockets. A lot. But that’s the absolute best place for my phone. So first I just made sure I had a sturdy cover on the thing so it wouldn’t break: the leathery wallet-like Book Book cover. Then I jam a little memo book next to it in the pocket. Still, occasionally there’d be a phone spill. So, when I was on a field trip last month with my daughter’s tag program to the museum of natural history in New York city, and saw an inexpensive souvenir pocket watch in the museum gift shop, I bought it and clipped it to my phone case.
I’m more bound up in chains and such now, and look like a steampunk than the plain punk I often resemble.  But I have no fear of pickpockets. And , between phone and watch, I always know what time it is.

Har wants to celebrate my new home-leasership by painting a wall, and I won’t let him because—arrgh!—I worry about the security deposit.

The Quiet Quire is so quiet that you can’t hear them even if you want to.

Club noise is their concept. They play, but they play without benefit of microphones or electrified instruments.

Truly, if you are at the foot of the stage and listen up close, then you can hear some stirring, subtle, gentle strains. But it’s you doing most of the straining.

As a conceptual performance exercise, QQ partly just wants to see what happens when the crowd realizes that they can’t hear them.

Bandleader K. Johns, who prefers not to discuss the act’s artistic thesis but is happy  to report on the response to the shows themselves (there’ve been three), says “Sometimes we’re just ignored. People just drinking at the bar often don’t pay attention to the band anyway.”

Tonight on the scene: a kiddie (high school) concert at Hamilton’s with Orange Plunge, Thurty, Who Invited You?, The Membership Cards, Thousands of Doors Rocked, Top Issues and ReEntry … Strangely, a bunch of graduates from previous high school battles at Hamilton’s are now in regular bands doing regular band things at the Bullfinch: Public Safety & Violence, CVP, Unprecedented Numbers (formerly the Naughty Numbers), Stacks of Richard and Issues or Initiatives.. An Evening with The Wofts at D’ollaire’s, but the much better band, Mihtohseeni onki, is opening….

The Toonine Eyes swarmed like wasps on the D’ollaire’s stage. They hadn’t been booked en masse, but there they were. Bandleader Stefan Staph had been told he could open the local stop on the Red Flesh tour, but only as a solo act since the stage would already be set with several bands’ worth of drum kit, not to mention house-sized speakers and a dragon’s head.

But Stefan Staph is a Socialist, and devil-may-care, and some would say willfully self-destructive. So his “solo” show involved a cadre of sidemen ten times the size of the band he usually plays with.

The boys (and two girls) ran wildly about the stage, banging on anything handy while Stefan and his oldest friends Flash and Bambo strummed mad power chords on acoustic guitars. Some of the songs were vaguely recognizable as 2-9-I tunes, but really it was just a relentless thunder of thumps.

Ten minutes in, the crowd was cheering. Fifteen minutes in, the headliners’ roadies had expressed worry about the gear. Sixteen minutes in, lights were dimmed and mics turned off. There was an insistence on retuning and rebalancing everything. It was an hour and a half before the next band played.

There were the usual rounds of “You’ll never play here again” and “I’ll sue,” but the Tooniner’s popular annual Metal High School Holiday Festival continues to be listed on the schedule, though it’s still two months away.

Was it worth the trouble to bring one’s pals onstage with you rather than simply moshing a couple feet away in the pit? “I know where I stand,” quoth Stef quizzically.

Tonight: Basement Show with nonagenarian troubadour Johnny Seed and five other singer-songwriters in the “Music Room” of the Senior Center. Don’t you all be jumping onstage at once now… A cooking demo at the Bullfinch? No, just popcorn-hurling malcontent Randolph Q. Mertz… At Hamilton’s: The Tribulanterns, playing “hits from the ‘40s,” with the son of a guy who in a big band once on sax… D’ollaire’s? Who cares?…

Gar finally moves out.

The conkers have come! Uneven as the weather has been, the chestnut trees have known it’s time to drop the chestnuts.

For old British schoolboys–like my father, who taught the sport to me– that means conker season has begun.

We found handfuls of conkers on New Haven Green after church and brought them home. There, we poked holes through them and strung embroidery thread (because we couldn’t find string) through them. Then we went out in the backyard and whacked them against each other and turned out to be pretty good at it.

We scored a few “around the world”s and remembered to say “No stamps!”

That night, one of the dogs got at the conkers declared the match a draw.

Keep dogs away from conkers. Horse chestnuts are poisonous, for starters (for dogs and humans). Whack safely.

Gar says he will never give us cheap tickets to a concert again.

“When you assume, you make an ass out of you and me.”

I’ve always hated that expression. Nothing wrong with assuming. An assumption can be an informed deduction or conjecture that involves deep reasoning. Not all assumptions make asses of people.

This also says nothing of the other definition of “assume”: to take on a new job or responsibility. “He assumed power.” Who does that make an ass of?

Besides…:
When you assign something, does it make an ass out of a sign?

When you drink Assam tea, does it make an ass out of Sam?

When you get asthma, does it make an ass out of Ma?

When you assure, does it make an ass out of a brand of deodorant?

When you assemble, does it make an ass out of historic evangelist Aimee Semple Jr.?

When you assault, does it make an ass out of a peanut?

When the superheroic god Thor goes to his mythical home Asgard, does his entrance at the hallowed gates make asses out of the guards?

When you take ascorbic acid, does it make an ass out of Corbin Bernsen?

When you’re at Aspen, are you mocking writing implements?

When you look askance, are you disagreeing with the 18^th century philosopher Emmanuel Kant?

When you’re asleep, do you have a problem with Leap Year?

When you study astrology, are you expressing a dislike of streetcars?

And if you’re astonished, is your silverware dirty?

Or so I assume. Join me. Us asses have to stick together.

There was a death in the Bullfinch family. mysterious co-owner Marty had a brother, Mark, whom everybody really liked and who had something to do with starting the club decades ago before it even had bands. Mark died, and the Bullfinch closed for a week in his honor– and because the funeral was out of state and the entire staff (even Q) wanted to be there. A sign explaining all had been posted top the front door, but seems to have been swiped before anybody got a chance to see it.

The Bullfinch reopened Thursday with a special bill of bands who knew Mark. There were speeches to, especially after everyone had drunk too much. (We might have given a speech ourself. Seriously can’t remember.)

We are all in the thrall of Bullfinch Mark. Bands that had been scheduled to play the club when it was closed over the last week, or on Thursday when they were bumped by the memorial, will all be rebooked, some as special third acts on previously two band bills.

At the Bullfinch tonight!:

Stinque Stanque Stunque  (formerly Stink Stank Stunk) and Bastard Breath. It’s the alliteration-athon!.. At Hamilton’s: Hem Skemminge and the Polka Puppies (a college on the hill German Club event)… At D’ollaire’s: an evening owt with Owl Pellets…

Gar is still living his drama, wanting us to feel sorry and take him back.