More Portland than Portland: A paen to 'Portlandia'
EUGENE, Ore. - Morning radio. But ... no alarm.
Thank you, darling.
Soon enough, NPR delivers a piece by Ari Shapiro on "Portlandia." (Shapiro also covers the White House, I'm told)
Turns out, Shapiro is a Portland native.
Hmm. Really?
I don't know where else his family had lived, but our S.W. Avenue sported a Portland address with a Tigard ZIP Code and a mish-mash of Beaverton and Portland schools.
"Unincorporated Warshington County," I likes to drawl.
In fact, another contemporary of ours from the other way down the block seems to get his name in the credits of every Pixar film - more than a couple times.
Not that I'm up to dropping names, mind you.
Now, back to Mr. Shapiro ...
In his radio report of over 7 minutes - S-E-V-E-N minutes! - Shapiro roams around with Carrie Brownstein, formerly of Sleater-Kinney fame (so sorry I missed their last show at the Crystal! But I gotta know: which come first? The Oly, Wash., road sign or the band name?) and lately of "Portlandia" fame.
Brownstein's buddy works in some sort of live theatre in NYC. Anyways ...
America loves Portland, Ore.
Or at least Portland thinks so.
Growing up, my prom date went off to private college back East before I finished high school.
She recounted this story to me - and I've borrowed this trope time & again.
"You Oregonians think you're better than the rest of us!"
And that was 1992 ...
"I'm sorry," my friend lamented.
"We are."
Seriously: Fred Armisen and Lorne Michaels are lucky to have produced this show at all. The dream of the 90s IS alive in Portland. Shoot, had we realized Ernst Callenbach's earlier non-fictionalish novellas as dreams, nobody from NYC would be getting in or out of the North West without a significant amount of scrutiny.
But I digress ...
Good luck, Portland: You are about to get your overdue 15 minutes of fame (Could be worse: Seattle got "grunge").
Except ... wait ...
Hey, darling ... do we not get IFC? Isn't that the one "Mad - " no, AF - C _ wait ... how much do we pay for this thing?
Shoot. I tried to wait and watch this on TV but ... guess I'll watch "Portlandia" online.
---
Mark Furman writes about stuff and makes decisions.
