Sort of Funny Show Gets It Kind of Right

Portland, ORE. (Reuters) -- Every Sunday night the Baghdad Theater and Pub keeps its doors open late to screen for eager beer-drinking viewers the latest installment of the not-quite-hit, not-quite-original, not-quite-funny new show Portlandia (IFC). This new series takes on Portland, Ore., in all its -- as the show would have you believe -- charming eccentricity. The truth, however, is far more alarming. This reporter has compiled the following list of must-know top-ten factoids about this self-styled Doorway to Nowhere that any viewer of the show should know in order not to be cajoled by its catchy theme song and suggestive meretriciousness:

1. The dream of the 90s is by no means alive in Portland. Portland is a city whose clock stopped somewhere in the early-to-middle 1980s, and has yet to realize that the Do Not Resuscitate order the rest of America has, by dint of its attempt to stay current with world trends, imposed by proxy upon this sluggish Rain Belt city has yet to be rescinded. Portland is a place where the 80s came not to die, but to live out a superannuated existence, untroubled by the realities of fashion or good taste or even (this reporter hates to say) good manners.

2. Portland is a city where tipping in excess of 20% is expected (and, it is shameful to say, violently remarked upon in its absence) without the concomitant belief in good service, or, in fact, of service of any kind.

3. Public education in Portland still operates on the macaroni-and-hand-tracing paper plate Thanksgiving turkey decoration model. In high school.

4. Funding for public education has been whittled down to 0.0001% of the GDP of the state. Students are required not only to provide their own materials and textbooks, but to provide their own teachers.

5. There exist 35,362 forms of mold in Portland alone, ten times that in the rest of the state. Fully 95% of them are toxic.

6. Alcoholism was recently redesignated from a public health concern to a city sporting event.

7. 9 out of 10 recent tourists interviewed in a New York Times poll couldn't tell the homeless from the residents. 10 out of 10 found both equally annoying.

8. Portland's Chinatown now contains no actual Chinese residents.

9. In Portland, one can wear harachis, balloon pants, an orange taffeta vest, and a hat made of toilet seat sanitizers, and NOT be making a fashion statement.

10. 6 out of 10 Portlanders don't know that the river that runs through the middle of their city -- the Willamette -- is a Super Fund site. 2 out of 10 were surprised to learn that there was a river running through the middle of their city. 2 out of 10 were too stoned to answer the question.

This reporter hopes that the information provided here will serve to offset any misrepresentation created by the new series Portlandia. But, of course, as in all things, you should really see for yourself.