Portlandia S3 E1, The Simpsons S24 E7

The Decemberists guest starred on The Simpsons S24 E7, but
didn't, alas, play their weird 20 minute version of the Táin Bó Cúailnge 

S3 E1 wasn't the greatest ever episode of Portlandia but that's ok, Portlandia's other two seasons started slow and crept up on you. The best bit was the initial sketch about Portland's hipster community suffering winter depression and desperately following a patch of sunlight around the city. I also liked the man who was addicted to pasta. . .but like I say, this was not the show firing on all cylinders...
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Portlandia is a loosely related series of vignettes set in contemporary Portland starring Fred Armisen of Saturday Night Live and Carrie Brownstein of the 90's grunge band Sleater Kinney. Its an affectionate look at and satire of Portland's hipster culture with the central premise being that Portlanders are so leftie and PC and up themselves that in fact they've become gentle, sodden, quasi fascists, not completely removed from the loopy Roderick Spode of the Wodehouse universe. 

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The first episode of Portlandia I saw was episode 2 of season 2, the great Battlestar Galactica episode (in which a couple binge on the BSG DVD box set to the point where it destroys their lives) with cameos from Edward James Olmos, Jamie Bamber, Eddie Vedder and Ronald D Moore - a geektastic introduction to the show. Nothing has quite been as good as that but there are a lot of decent episodes out there (and many fun famous actor and singer cameos) and having now visited Portland itself and done a mini Portlandia tour the whole thing has a lot more resonance. (And on the Greyhound bus back to Seattle I was delighted to see the famous Sleater Kinney off ramp sign on Interstate 5 just outside of Olympia).  
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When The Simpsons discovers a thing it usually means that thing is already dead (a meta concept S24 E7 actually explored). It was with some trepidation therefore that I watched the much anticipated Portlandia episode of The Simpsons.  Armisen and Brownstein guest starred as Portland hipsters (owner operators of a knock off Voodoo Donuts Van) who moved to Springfield and gentrified it (or hipsterfied it if you will) until it looked like a mini version of Portland. I particularly liked the couple's alienated son played by Patton Oswalt who was ironically bored with all of contemporary civilization and who expressed this Weltzschmerz and anomie by having a West Ham United poster on his wall...Nice touch that.

Duff Beer

The beard is really starting to get out of control now

Homer Simpson's beer of choice is Duff. On the show it's usually characterised as a lousy product that's been shrewdly marketed to idiots. Despite this many companies have asked to license the name Duff Beer and have always been turned down. Matt Groening doesn't want Duff beer to be licensed because he says it would cheapen the fictional brand and he doesn't want to encourage under age drinking. These are both pretty good reasons if you ask me. Fox's lawyers have gone after anyone who has tried to sell Duff beer and they've shut a few operations in Australia and the US. There is a Duff beer that's made in Mexico that Fox is going after at the moment and the one I tried last night is brewed in Germany and it probably won't last too long until the lawyers close it down too. 
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The big question of course is how does it taste? If Beer Rater is to be believed Duff is supposed to be terrible. But, actually, it's not that bad. For a start because it's brewed in Germany it is legally required to follow the Reinheitsgebot which guarantees certain minimum standards in German beer and although I am not a beer geek I didn't notice much difference from your bog standard lager. The head did not over foam, there was no metallic bitterness, the beer was pleasantly drinkable and the aftertaste (such as it was) had a pleasing citrus quality to it. If I was pushed I'd say that there were mild lemon notes and a slightly annoying sweetness. I've definitely had worse. Duff is a bland, harmless little beer and although I will certainly never be buying another one a chilled bottle on a very hot day wouldn't hurt at all.

Banksy Goes To Springfield

When I found out that English graffiti artist Banksy was doing the pre title sequence to Sunday's Simpsons episode I thought it was going to be a typically lame celebrity cameo or something. It wasn't.

Hmmm I thought this vid would be safe because I cut and paste it from Banksy's youtube channel. However after I went to bed Fox initiated a breach of copyright claim. The best I can do for now is a kid who taped it off his TV here.

Wednesday update - the YouTube seems to be working again. Does that mean Fox's copyright claim failed?