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Friday, March 29, 2024

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Aggregation No. 1Give Oona’s Experienced Clothing a welcome-back hug. The revamped, renovated vintage store brings in spring with an invitation to “you beautiful people to come help us scuff up our fancy new floors,” including adult beverages, music by Somerville DJ Studebaker Hawk and what the managers describe as psychedelic easter-egg-style face-painting. (“Yeah, don’t worry. We may be stocking designer clothing now, but we’re staying weird,” owner Ellie Mueller says.) Oh – and the store is now buy/sell/trade, with new spring stock in place and transactions going on throughout the event. The Spring Reopening takes place from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. at Oona’s, 1210 Massachusetts Ave., Harvard Square.

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Aggregation No. 2Schlock Around the Clock at The Brattle. Camp out (in at least two senses of the term) at The Brattle Theatre for weird, fringey film experiences ranging from the creepy “Carnival of Souls” and, oh my god, “Spider Baby” (“starring Spider Baby and Lon Chaney”) Saturday afternoon to the actually totally solid but undervalued action flick “Dredd” Sunday night. In between there’s such highlights as the Wonder Woman television pilot – in which she’s blonde and Cathy Lee Crosby, not brunette and Lynda Carter – and the latest Trailer War, which is all the trailers you want to see to all the movies you don’t want to see. This annual tradition runs from 1 p.m. Saturday to 9:30 p.m. Sunday at The Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle St., Harvard Square. (Regular ticket prices apply for all screenings, although there’s a $60 Schlock Weekend Pass – $50 for students, seniors and Brattle Members – for this festival that started Friday evening.)

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Aggregation No. 3Go Upstairs/Downstairs at The Middle East. Stay upstairs at this rock institution and you get Thrashachusetts: Metal vs. Punk III, which organizer Duncan Wilder Johnson describe so well himself:

For centuries, great thinkers such as Stephen Hawking, Plato and GG Allin pondered the question, “Which genre is more gnarly? The Heavy Metal and all of its subsidiaries or The Punk Rock and all of its various branches of afterthought?” On Saturday, The Center for Family Achievement Through Bong Hit Therapy at Thrashachusetts sets out to answer this question for … well … a third time!

Locals Razors in the Night and Trans Fats, out of Providence, R.I., present the punk argument, while Sexcrement, of Boston, and Soul Remnants, of Littleton, debate the metal merits. For a taste of Razors’ hardcore-plus-Oi!-plus-garage kind of fun, check out the video above. Then try to grasp that part of the delights of the area’s creative culture is that the band’s Troy Schoeller crosses paths with the night’s Middle East Downstairs act, Rob Potylo and Vermin Supreme, as an actor in Potylo’s Web series, “Quiet Desperation.”

What’s Potylo doing at The Middle East? He’s helping performance artist, prankster and perennial political candidate Supreme screen his 2009 film “Vote Jesus: The Chronicles of Ken Stevenson,” in which Supreme goes undercover to experience life among the Republican religious right. The two have made an unlikely, but tight duo, possibly because each know how to commit to a character – and some may yet remember Potylo as Robbie Roadsteamer, although that persona was left behind years ago in favor of a more biographical role as the lead of Allston-based “Quiet Desperation.” Potylo provides the music Sunday while Supreme does the screening, talk and Q&A session.

Whether you go upstairs for the screaming Saturday or downstairs for the screening Sunday, each is 18-plus, each is $10 (tickets for Potylo/Supreme are here; pre-sales for Thrashachusetts have ended) and each start at 8 p.m. at The Middle East, 472-480 Massachusetts Ave., Central Square.

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Aggregation No. 4Flash your ID to see “Bouncers” at the Cantab. This one isn’t for the kids. Stickball Productions, which brought “The Friends of Eddie Coyle” to Oberon last year, again plumbs the urban underworld in John Godber’s comic classic “Bouncers,” following a raucous, raunchy and rancid night in the lives of four lager-fueled young British lads, four not-so-ladylike ladies and the four bouncers at the Mr. Cinders nightclub. The collection of anti-heroes alternately spew, grind, dramatize Swedish porn and dance their way through the Friday nights of youth with few prospects gone wild.

The play’s won decades of critical praise since its premiere in England in 1977 and has become among the most frequently produced plays in the United Kingdom. This is the first known performance in New England, according to the production company, and takes place appropriately in a venue with a full bar – Central Square’s historic Cantab Lounge.

Starring Joe Siriani, James Bocock, Patrick Curran and Seyi Ayorinde and directed by Bill Doncaster, the play runs through April 27. This weekend it’s at 8 p.m. Saturday (doors and bar a half-hour earlier). Tickets are $10, and the show is 21-plus. Look for it again April 12-13; April 19-21; and April 27, all at The Cantab Lounge, 738 Massachusetts Ave., Central Square.

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Aggregation No. 5Get your storytelling and author readings in one place (last chance). Story slam and author-readings fans get Part 2 of this free event (Part 1 was March 23) sponsored by the Somerville Arts Council with novelist Elizabeth Searle; memoirist Daniel Gewertz; Ethan Gilsdorf and Elaine Mar; and storytellers Randy Ross and Judah Leblang taking to the stage at Bloc 11 in Union Square to tell their tales. The event is from 7 to 9 p.m. Saturday at Bloc 11, 11 Bow St., Union Square, Somerville.

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Oh, and there’s the biannual Miller Street Open Studios in Somerville from noon to 5 p.m. Saturday; and “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for $4 at 7 p.m., also Saturday.