SCOOP FUNDING JAMES FRANCO: We’re big fans of “crowd-funding” website Kickstarter, which allows people to follow through on brilliant and/or stupid project ideas through cash pledges from generous ’   More

Food & Drink Longtime WW contributor Chris Stamm broke our hearts and moved to Seattle a few months ago. We asked him to give us his assessment of the Emerald City's version of PDX cuisine. Feel free to leave your own 5 Spot taste test notes in the comments. As Ruth Brown reported last month, Seattle comfort food institution 5 Spot, which apparently has a rotating gimmick menu, would be putting Portland on the ...   More

SCOOP SO LONG AND THANKS FOR THE PITAS: Portland is set to lose one of its most beloved food carts: Ziba’s Pitas is up for sale on Craigslist. “After 5 years of serving Portland I have decided to retir   More

Movies & Television Celebrity commencement speakers are a mainstay at college graduations, but not something you expect to get in high school—unless you go to Oregon Episcopal School. This year the seniors get to have comedian Fred Armisen bid them adieu. (For all you television-ignorers, Armisen is the co-star of IFC’s Stumptown satire, Portlandia, and is a Saturday Night Live regular, often impersonating President ...   More

Movies & Television Good people who put birds on things, rejoice. As reported by pretty much everybody while I was in a PIFF screening, cable's Independent Film Channel has renewed Carrie Brownstein's contract to dumpster-dive into Portland absurdities, renewing the sketch-comedy series Portlandia for a 10-episode second season. But you'll have to wait a while to continue your dream of the '90s: The second season won't ...   More

Movies & Television Looks like people really want to see this Portlandia thing. Just hours after WW reported yesterday that the Hollywood Theatre and Beer and Movie were presenting a preview screening of Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen's comedy-on-fixies IFC series, the 350 tickets for the Jan. 14 show sold out. (UPDATE, 4:43 pm: Folks at the Hollywood Theatre box office tell me that while screening tickets are ...   More

Movies & Television Didn't get a ticket to tonight's Portlandia preview at the Hollywood Theatre? Don't want to wait until next week's premiere on the Independent Film Channel and the Mission Theater? Why not just watch it now, at your desk? IFC, perhaps realizing that not very many people actually have IFC, has released the first episode of the much-buzzed Carrie Brownstein TV show on Hulu. Finally, you can stop ...   More

Movies & Television Portlandia, Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein's making-fun-of-Portland TV series that perhaps you heard about, debuts on cable's Independent Film Channel on Jan. 21. What's that? You can't wait that long? You want to see the series a full week early? You want to see it on a movie screen, while drinking a beer made specially for the occasion? You want to see two episodes at once? You want to see ...   More

Movies & Television The Hollywood Theatre's phones were apparently ringing all through the weekend with people hoping against hope they could somehow get into the sold-out preview screening of Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen's Stumptown comedy series Portlandia. Hope triumphs: A second show has been added at 10 pm Friday, Jan. 14. Like the 7:30 pm show, it'll have both episodes of Portlandia, plus stand-up comedy ...   More

Movies & Television If you see TV cameras while staggering between MusicfestNW venues tonight, give 'em your most disaffected sneer: Portlandia, the IFC improvisational comedy starring Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, will be shooting incidental footage at MFNW over the next several days. At a mini-junket luncheon today at Besaw's, Armisen (the Saturday Night Live Obama impersonator) and Brownstein (the Sleater-Kinney ...   More