KEEPING PORTLAND SANCTIMONIOUS, part 2

all of the promotional material for "portlandia," fred armisen and carrie brownstein's new ifc sketch comedy about portland, advertises the show as beginning its television run this friday, january 21st, but the first full episode has been available at hulu and ifc.com since at least the fourteenth, which was also the day of the premiere party at @large films on ne couch for everyone in town who considered paying ten dollars to watch a twenty minute digital clip the ultimate expression of self-congratulation.

if any of the viewers at @large managed somehow not to be disappointed, i still hope that they were included beverages with their entry fees, because i imagine it would have been difficult to face the scoffing majority sober post-premiere. monique watched "portlandia" episode one, "the farm," on friday afternoon and asked if i had seen it when i saw her that evening. i hadn't. in fact, i didn't watch it until yesterday, after which i told monique that i hadn't thought it all that great, to which she responded that she'd reserved expressing her similar reaction until after i'd had a chance to pass judgment myself.

we have chickens. well, mostly monique has chickens, but they live at our same house. while on friday evening i was getting ready to leave to walk to the (ahem, locally owned) grocery store for a pick me up rotisserie chicken, monique joked that there were more local ones in the backyard. "the farm" uses a similar joke to drive armisen and brownstein's locavore foodie characters to the farm outside the city that produced the chicken they're thinking of ordering at a downtown restaurant for lunch while their waitress holds their table. ok. we get it. the joke is overplayed, but "portlandia" is sketch comedy. i don't, however, have any idea why the farm turns out to be a mennonite polygamy camp. there's a retirement community in albany called mennonite village, but that's all the internet got me.*

i liked that this first episode of "portlandia" featured a couple of locations in ne portland near my neighborhood (the feminist bookstore in other words and pcc cascade, both on killingsworth), and the two funniest bits of dialogue take place there. the non-actor old woman at the pcc library during the adult hide and seek competition was unchallenged for best performance. that woman is probably at the pcc library everyday, and i hope that the florida room offers to give her a special discount so that she can continue her exchanges with the students after they head to the bar.

the spoof of in other words didn't look for laughs anywhere beyond the cliché of the dowdy and grating feminist activist, and i was bored by the time that steve buscemi came into the sketch as a man trying to use the bookstore bathroom without making a purchase. carrie brownstein of all people should know that the feminist activists here don't need any glamour tips. in fact, there don't seem to be attractive young people of any persuasion in the show at all. you can't live the dream of the 90s without an infestation of underemployed twenty-somethings, can you? we may be just as simpering as armisen and brownstein play us in "portlandia," but we certainly don't look like that. to be honest, i'm surprised that steve buscemi got past airport security to make that cameo. before his arrival, though, one beautiful gem for the city that drinks to get through the winter and then drinks to celebrate the sun:

"addiction isn't funny."

"yes it is."

as a whole, "portlandia" could have been much better, and we didn't really like it. but we couldn't really, could we? and that's the paradoxical essence of our city that "portlandia" hasn't been able to capture. of course we'll keep watching. and we'll keep scoffing, but we won't miss an episode. is it too much of ourselves that we see in the show or not enough? either way, it's the our important nuance they're not getting, and people in general probably wouldn't get it anyway --though we don't really have time to worry about it. we've quirky and esoteric things to be doing. someone has to keep living the dream.

*a friend who lived and worked at a farm in cottage grove assured me that he and his farmmates only practiced polygamous abstinence.