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" Oblique Coffee Roasters, in Portland, Oregon, describes itself on its website as &amp;quot;a super bitchin&amp;#039; Victorian Coffee Mercantile with scrumtrulescent beans micro roasted in an \u00FCber German cast iron roaster named Bart!&amp;quot; Whatever jokes you could make about the place and its twee vibe would be almost too easy. So when Portlandia, IFC&amp;#039;s Portland-skewering sketch comedy show (returning for a second season in January), shot and based a scene at Oblique, it didn&amp;#039;t go near the venue&amp;#039;s hacky-sacky dudeness. Instead it aimed high and wry with an incisively hilarious jab at the city&amp;#039;s DIY idealism: The overzealous mayor (played by Kyle MacLachlan) rides his bike to Oblique, where he enlists the show&amp;#039;s stars\u2014former Sleater-Kinney guitarist Carrie Brownstein and Saturday Night Live&amp;#039;s Fred Armisen\u2014to assemble a Major League Baseball team called the Portland Thinkers. Armisen and Brownstein place an ad, round up some bad-news ballers, and hold ragtag tryouts on a city field. (Armisen, holding a baseball, quizzes a prospective player: &amp;quot;What&amp;#039;s this?&amp;quot; Brownstein: &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m looking for a metaphor here.&amp;quot;) As a city, Portland is as close to Boho Disneyland as \u00ADfunctionally possible. It&amp;#039;s the country&amp;#039;s food-truck capital. There&amp;#039;s an annual naked bike ride (Portland police say: Just wear a helmet). Bumper stickers that decree KEEP PORTLAND WEIRD! sell for $2 each. Thousands of college-educated twentysomethings relocate there every year, drawn to the city&amp;#039;s hip, dreamy optimism and practically sanctioned hospitality. That the unemployment rate remains high (around 9 percent) and per capita income low (less than $40,000 per year) doesn&amp;#039;t seem to matter, as money doesn&amp;#039;t drive ambition in a town where bikes carry more prestige than cars. (Though it&amp;#039;s worth mentioning the city has the most per capita Toyota Prius hybrids in the country, with the solar-powered car-charging stations to prove it.) The city is also a mecca for indie bands: They either are from there (the Decemberists, the Dandy Warhols, the late Elliott Smith), move there (Modest Mouse, the Shins, Stephen Malkmus), or simply love to play to the throngs of young, impassioned fans there. Brownstein came to Portland in 2001 for the music. The other members of Sleater-Kinney\u2014her critically adored punk band that blasted through the Riot Grrrl rock scene in the mid-&amp;#039;90s and lasted 12 years, churning out full-throttle anthems about sex and heartbreak and feminism, and jamming to Springsteen covers along the way\u2014were already living there. For those who knew Brownstein as a pioneer for reappropriating male performance styles\u2014spastic leg kicks, guitar-hero flourishes, a Chuck Berry swagger\u2014her transition to TV comedienne might have seemed too true-artiste to bear. But even before she bought her first guitar at 15 (with her own money, as her parents had tired of funding her creative whims), Brownstein wanted to be an actress, enrolling in theater camps in the suburbs of Seattle and marveling at the other\u00ADworldliness of Hollywood. &amp;quot;I was such a dreamer as a kid; very melodramatic and very much had an overactive imagination,&amp;quot; she says over lunch in Manhattan. Brownstein is an unassuming presence for someone so bold\u2014quiet when you first shake hands, and not just slim but slight, in that way that everyone in, say, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, seems to be. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;d write letters to Ricky Schroder and Rob Lowe and all the young hotties, and they wouldn&amp;#039;t write back, because, of course, they were too big. I just wanted some lifeline from some person down there that said, &amp;#039;Hey, I know you exist, you little one up in Redmond, Washington.&amp;#039;\u2009&amp;quot; When Brownstein and Armisen met at an SNL after-party in 2003, their bond was based on an almost adolescently earnest love of music. (&amp;quot;When you mention the name of a band we love, it&amp;#039;s not like, Hey, isn&amp;#039;t that cool? It&amp;#039;s more like, Isn&amp;#039;t that what makes life worth living?&amp;quot; says Armisen.) They longed to collaborate creatively and figured it would be through music (Armisen was a drummer in the Chicago punk band Trenchmouth), but then they started making just-for-fun videos in her adopted hometown under the moniker ThunderAnt instead. Armisen &amp;quot;could just tell&amp;quot; she&amp;#039;d have a knack for improv. &amp;quot;I assumed it,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;She just made me laugh. And I was right\u2014whenever she delivers a line, I always believe it.&amp;quot; The sketches organically took shape around the idiosyncrasies of Portland: judgmental feminist bookstore owners, yuppie chefs who take issue with their online reviews (and reviewers).  IFC, with its focus on offbeat narratives and a new interest in alternative comedy, green-lighted Portlandia based on the duo&amp;#039;s guerrilla improv, with Lorne Michaels as executive producer. The debut season aired last January and surpassed the network&amp;#039;s expectations with 5.35 million total viewers, while still feeling small and rarefied, like a great underground band you discover in a bar and can only assume was meant for you alone. &amp;quot;They did six episodes, and there was a great reaction,&amp;quot; Michaels says. &amp;quot;It didn&amp;#039;t get overpromoted. It went viral and kind of became its own thing. This season there&amp;#039;ll be 10 episodes, and God knows how many the next\u2014but I think it&amp;#039;s found its audience, and I don&amp;#039;t think it&amp;#039;ll ever betray that audience.&amp;quot; Portlandia&amp;#039;s premiere set the stage for an array of location-\u00ADspecific archetypes, like the couple who grills their waitress about the chicken on the menu: &amp;quot;How big is the area where the chickens were able to roam free?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Did he have other chickens as friends?&amp;quot; (The waitress scurries off and returns with the chicken&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;papers.&amp;quot;) There&amp;#039;s Armisen&amp;#039;s pierced bike messenger: &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m on a bike! I get this whole lane! Cars\u2014why?! Whole Foods is corporate!&amp;quot; There&amp;#039;s the feminist bookstore owners direct from ThunderAnt, in which guest star Steve Buscemi asks, &amp;quot;Do you have a tip jar?&amp;quot; and Brownstein responds, &amp;quot;What do I look like? Somebody that works for tips?&amp;quot; And there&amp;#039;s the much-quoted &amp;quot;Put a Bird on It,&amp;quot; a hilarious subversion of folksy-boho culture, in which the duo insists that any pillow, purse, or teapot looks better with...a bird on it. &amp;quot;I was getting r\u00E9sum\u00E9s from people who wanted to come work at the network with birds on them,&amp;quot; says Portlandia producer Jennifer Caserta. &amp;quot;I went to South by Southwest and there were stop signs people made with the word cacao&amp;quot;\u2014referring to a sketch in which Armisen (as a woman) and Brownstein (as the greaser boyfriend) decide their sexual &amp;quot;safe word&amp;quot; will be cacao, the natural ingredient in trendy raw chocolate. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s when we knew that people were really paying attention to this.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Put a Bird on It&amp;quot; was Brownstein&amp;#039;s idea, as was the skit&amp;#039;s ending, in which an actual bird flies into a craft store and everyone panics, swatting at the bird while Armisen screams, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m allergic!&amp;quot; &amp;quot;A lot of the ideas for pieces come from her,&amp;quot; says Jonathan Krisel, Portlandia&amp;#039;s director and a former SNL writer. &amp;quot;She&amp;#039;s living in Portland, so she&amp;#039;s seeing a lot of funny stuff going on. She&amp;#039;s so smart. Superarticulate. Fred is amazing at infusing the reality to crazy people, and Carrie just does that effortlessly.&amp;quot; Though Portlandia indicts a culture of co-op-patronizing, self-righteous-bicycling, plastic-bags-are-for-criminals-espousing fauxhemians\u2014is this \u00FCber-livable city really so livable?\u2014Armisen and Brownstein have an unmistakable affection for their characters, as if asking with a wink, &amp;quot;These people are us; you, too?&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve heard people say, &amp;#039;Oh, they&amp;#039;re just making fun of us,&amp;#039;\u2009&amp;quot; Brownstein says. &amp;quot;But we&amp;#039;re making fun of ourselves. Even Fred&amp;#039;s bicyclist: He seems like an extreme character, but when I think of how I am on a bike...anybody that bikes even once a summer\u2014you get on your bike, and you&amp;#039;re like, Oh yeah, cars?! It&amp;#039;s so easy to slip into that mind-set. A lot of these progressive ideals, and the reason people toss around the term elitist, is thinking, Well, this is the way everyone should be living. It&amp;#039;s a very prescriptivist lifestyle, and, if anything, I think Portlandia is asking: Really? Is this the best way? Look at how silly and absurd it can be.&amp;quot; The show effectively sends up not only Portland but similar-leaning metro-suburbias far and wide: Austin; Boulder, Colorado; Seattle; Williamsburg. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s the comedy of the left wing,&amp;quot; Krisel says. &amp;quot;The shtick of Portland is a great way to make the show cohesive, but it&amp;#039;s just the starting point. In Portland it rains all the time\u2014but who cares? That&amp;#039;s not funny. That&amp;#039;s not universal.&amp;quot; If you really want to get to the heart of the matter, Portlandia is funny because, as a duo, Armisen and Brownstein are a study in comedic chemistry, bringing to mind the effortless symbiosis of late-&amp;#039;50s improv masters Elaine May and Mike Nichols, who in one classic sketch pretend to be teenagers on a first date\u2014only truly intimate friends can play that awkward. Caserta calls Brownstein and Armisen soul mates, adding that they&amp;#039;ll spend 12 hours working together and then go catch a movie; MacLachlan says they&amp;#039;re &amp;quot;like twins\u2014or at least family&amp;quot;; Michaels says Armisen &amp;quot;is crazy about her and trusts her totally. &amp;#039;In sync&amp;#039; doesn&amp;#039;t quite convey it.&amp;quot; The real story behind ThunderAnt was &amp;quot;a way for a guy and a girl to hang out that wasn&amp;#039;t weird,&amp;quot; Brownstein says. When Armisen first started visiting her in Portland, she says, &amp;quot;there was definitely a crush awareness or vibe. When someone flies out, stays at your house, the expectation is: We&amp;#039;re going to hook up, right? But we never did. The love affair we started was ThunderAnt, and that blossomed into a full-blown relationship. So I think we sort of dodged a bullet. It&amp;#039;s one of the most intimate, fun\u00ADctional, romantic, but nonsexual relationships we&amp;#039;ve ever had.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s a relief when we get to hang out together,&amp;quot; Armisen says. &amp;quot;Being in a room with her\u2014we&amp;#039;re set. Like, I&amp;#039;m good right now.&amp;quot; On SNL, Armisen can be big and campy, as the shoulder-\u00ADbobbing Joy Behar, or his clownishly unprepared singer Garth. But on Portlandia, he finds the humor in a pause, eking out his characters&amp;#039; eccentricities with a fine-tooth comb. For her part, Brownstein is compellingly self-possessed on-screen, with deep brown puppy eyes that always look a little sad and sometimes a little sly. &amp;quot;She&amp;#039;s very still,&amp;quot; Armisen says. &amp;quot;I think when people are still, you&amp;#039;re just drawn to them. You can&amp;#039;t keep your eyes off of her.&amp;quot; At a mid-October New York concert featuring Wild Flag, Brownstein&amp;#039;s new band, on tour for their eponymous debut \u00ADalbum, Armisen came alone. Transfixed in a corner of the balcony\u00AD, he watched Brownstein be a teenage boy: thrashing, kicking, rebellion pulsing like shock waves. Her voice was a javelin, battle-crying a cover of Patti Smith&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;Ask the Angels.&amp;quot; In heeled booties, she climbed onto the kick drum, turned her back to the audience, and struck a pose\u2014a wisp-thin silhouette of a guitar-slinging icon. Indeed, he couldn&amp;#039;t keep his eyes off of her. Armisen was the first Carrie Brownstein fan to realize her potential seamlessness between music and improv comedy\u2014and, moreover, the chance to marry the two. Though Portlandia&amp;#039;s first season featured guest stars including Buscemi and Heather Graham, Armisen and Brownstein were most excited about getting Kaia Wilson (a seminal punk rocker from Team Dresch) and the toddler son of Sara Lund (a drummer in Unwound) to play extras. (About this season, which includes a guest-star lineup of Andy Samberg, Kristen Wiig, and Tim Robbins, Krisel tells me that Armisen was the most psyched about Johnny Marr, the guitarist from the Smiths.) &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s no other group of people I could be working with who would be superexcited to be in the presence of Sara Lund and Kaia Wilson,&amp;quot; Brownstein says. &amp;quot;Being noticed by a musician we admire\u2014that still means something to us.&amp;quot; A spoof of Portland&amp;#039;s pretentiously arty Ace Hotel features Brownstein and Armisen as audiophile desk clerks; when Echo Echo, a fake band\u2014comprised of Corin Tucker from Sleater-Kinney, James Mercer from the Shins, and Colin Meloy from the Decemberists\u2014walk in, Armisen and Brownstein abandon their airs and go full-on fan. &amp;quot;I think you know a friend of mine?&amp;quot; Armisen says. &amp;quot;I guess, like, he might have taken a picture with you?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s as if we&amp;#039;re still in high school and still judging people by the band T-shirt they&amp;#039;re wearing or what posters they have on their wall,&amp;quot; Brownstein says. She stops, catches herself, smiles. &amp;quot;I mean, of course we&amp;#039;ve evolved beyond that.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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