PORTLANDIA: Where Young People Go To Retire

NEW YORK TIMES: It is always a risky proposition when anyone tries to codify the spirit of a proudly independent, nonconformist scene. (And in this case Mr. Armisen, a nine-season veteran of “Saturday Night Live” and resident of New York would seem to have less of a claim to it than Ms. Brownstein, a guitarist and singer from the Portland rock band Sleater-Kinney, which broke up in 2006.) But together Mr. Armisen and Ms. Brownstein, two guileless if unlikely collaborators, hope they possess enough street cred to serve as ambassadors of Portland’s counterculture and to present their version of it, in “Portlandia,” to an audience beyond the Pacific Northwest. “It’s not funny or that interesting to make a documentary about Portland,” Ms. Brownstein said in an interview alongside Mr. Armisen as they worked on the postproduction of “Portlandia. “One’s interpretation of it is far more magical and curious than what actually exists there.” Mr. Armisen, a former drummer in the Chicago rock band Trenchmouth, made his move to comedy several years ago, helped along by a satirical video he made at the 1998 South by Southwest music festival. Though he is now the resident impersonator of President Obama at “S.N.L.,” he has never lost his connection to the alternative scene. MOREWIKIPEDIA: Portlandia is a sculpture by Raymond Kaskey located above the entrance of Michael Graves‘ Portland Building in downtown Portland, Oregon at 1120 SW 5th Avenue. It is the second-largest copper repoussé statue in the United States, after the Statue of Liberty.^[1]