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Friday, January 6, 2012

TV Today in Portlandia: Links! Links!

Posted by Alison Hallett on Fri, Jan 6, 2012 at 10:44 AM

And so we crawl ever deeper into our own surprisingly roomy navel.

(Someone make a Portlandia sketch about grudging alt-weekly coverage of Portlandia, please. Alternately, the several agonized "I want to like it, but it just isn't funny" hipster-on-hipster conversations that took place in my living room while we watched season one on Netflix instant last week.)

Fred and Carrie were on Fresh Air yesterday.

A Good editor (and former Portlander) writes about "why the Portland backlash is good for Portland."

Slate's June Thomas, whom I love because I am embarrassingly addicted to their Culture Gabfest podcast and she has the best accent, offers a longtime Seattleite's perspective on Portland and Portlandia:

Like bigger, stronger, cooler siblings everywhere, Seattle doesn’t worry too much about Portland. It’s just a place to go to when you want to buy something without paying sales tax

Salon interviews Brownstein for a "Portlandia guide to Portland," the first paragraph of which actually makes me want to die, right here, just fall down dead at my standing desk:

Portland, Ore., has plenty of reasons to be smug. It’s a bohemian wonderland where, despite high rates of unemployment, homelessness and hunger, sensitive Subaru-driving beardsmen can consume Rogue Voodoo Donut Bacon Maple Ale, enjoy a crispy pig-head roulade, share trailer-refurb workshops with other craftspeople and meet tattooed girls who DJ, knit shrugs and ride custom-made bikes.

The Wall Street Journal reviews the afterparty for the New York premiere of the show:

The room, which flickered orange-ly from low-set lights, incorporated elements from the show’s second season, like jars of pickled items, a huge rainbow parachute suspended from the ceiling, bicycles and a sign that read “Women and Women First Bookstore” (it’ll make sense once you see the episode).

I'm sure there are plenty more stories out there, given season two's launch and the subsequent tour (the New Yorker article is a great read no matter how you feel about the show). But the feelings of compulsion and self-consciousness I have upon reading all these stories lands somewhere between Facebook stalking my ex-boyfriend's current girlfriend, and spending a whole afternoon trying on dresses that don't fit (or maybe just Louis CK's "three kinds of shame glaze"), so I'm gonna stop.

 

Comments (13) RSS

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1
Fred was just on the Kathie Lee and Hoda hour of the Today Show.

It's one long cut lengthwise up the arm right? Not side to side?
Posted by kiala on January 6, 2012 at 11:01 AM · Report
2
Make it stop.

(For the record, having lived in Seattle for awhile, it is bigger and stronger, but most definitely not cooler than Portland. If anything, it feels kind of uptight and square when I go up there.)
Posted by Blabby on January 6, 2012 at 11:11 AM · Report
3
Portland = Fred and Toody, not Fred and Carrie!
Posted by Jwiz on January 6, 2012 at 11:29 AM · Report
4
Pooping back and forth, forever.
Posted by cat & beard on January 6, 2012 at 11:59 AM · Report
5
I don't even know what a shrug is, no wonder I can't make time with tattooed girls.
Posted by Todd Mecklem on January 6, 2012 at 1:00 PM · Report
6
Well Todd, I shrug-ed off most of this post, although I do have to agree for once) with Carrie. I always have time for tattooed girls, but the sensitive subaru driving beardsmen and Volvo driving "artists" can fuck right off....way the hell too many of you emo losers here
Posted by The Showstopper on January 6, 2012 at 1:06 PM · Report
7
I've always chuckled at that Seattle attitude. Fact is, they just couldn't hold back from climaxing too soon. Portland's going all night.
Posted by ($8239f8h248cerfehjf23@&*@ebdjhb23f237OCDBO#BD*(# on January 6, 2012 at 1:39 PM · Report
8
Like Portland and its vaunted hip neighborhoods, there is much more to Seattle outside of downtown, capitol hill, fremont, and the like. Much like tourists, transplants, and NYT reporters annoyingly seem to think Portland ends at the western edge of downtown and 39th.

A much bigger city, Seattle has more of everything, and is a way more beautiful and all-round interesting place.
Posted by jake on January 6, 2012 at 6:23 PM · Report
9
That's silly, jake, Portland doesn't end at 39th. Only the good part does.
Posted by Todd Mecklem on January 6, 2012 at 6:32 PM · Report
10
You piece a few of Carrie's quotes together and the contradictions are glaring. We are apparently either a city defined by well-offs obsessed with minutaie or layabouts stacked neck-high in small apartments. I do know these descriptors are played up for the sake of the show. I'm not insulted. I'm not. But it all seems lazy. And I know people in both camps. But the vast majority of people I know bust their ass at what they do, are obsessed with inconsequential minutaie (sorry, this is pretty universal), many of them also stacked up in apartments.

I love that culture gabfest pod. Why haven't I heard of this until now? Instantly smitten.

Also, Seattle is far more uninteresting and stagnant than Portland.

Posted by TSW on January 6, 2012 at 7:40 PM · Report
11
If I want a humorous, well informed critique of our city, I'll ask Andy from Beaverton.
Posted by Lewcifer on January 6, 2012 at 8:07 PM · Report
12
I'll take a stagnant, uninteresting city with a soul that simply operates as one over a "curated" annoyance that thinks it's unique when it's just a large collection of the "hip" shit that exists in virtually every large city and dominates due to the fact that it was previously the Hartford of the west coast anyday.
Posted by jake on January 6, 2012 at 11:51 PM · Report
13
@11 hey oh!
@12 " the Hartford of the west".....ouch. btw, funny but I doubt most will get it
Posted by The Showstopper on January 7, 2012 at 2:03 PM · Report

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