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- A tumblr site dedicated to the people and places that make up Oregon and Southwest Washington.
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I've found that living in Oregon requires a sense of humor. What else can I do but laugh when I go back east and people ask me "Isn't it, like, legal to kill people there?" or "So, how do you like living in Seattle?" If people can locate Oregon, they are even more likely to poke fun at the state. When Oregon sent Jeff Merkley to the U.S. Senate, blogger Wonkette explained his victory over the Republican incumbent this way:
Oregon is overrun with wacky libtards, drinking their microbrews while riding unicorn-horned mountain bikes to their gay weddings every day, in the rain.
Stephen Colbert has called the state "California's Canada" and poked fun at the Oregon Health Plan lottery system. (Perhaps Colbert doesn't realize how often Oregonians make Californians the butt of our jokes.) The recent Sam Adams scandal has resulted in quips from here to the Tonight Show (sadly, the clip is no longer available).
With so much fodder for humor here, perhaps it's not surprising that some local comedians want to make Oregon a destination for standup acts. For the second year in a row, the Bridgetown Comedy Festival is shining a light on local entertainers as well as big-name touring favorites. Organizers say they're hoping this event will help to grow local comedy into something comparable to Portland's thriving music scene.
Salem-based comedian Ron Funches is excited to return to the festival this year and he says the recession could even boost the turnout. "The poorer people get, the more likely they are to come out to a comedy show to try and forget their troubles," he told me. "We're cheaper than a movie!"
Do you go to comedy shows in Oregon? What are your favorite jokes about the state or the region? What's so funny about Oregon, anyway? Where do you get your laughs?
GUESTS:
- Virginia Jones: Comedian based in Portland
- Ron Funches: Comedian based in Salem
- Auggie Smith: Comedian who has appeared on Comedy Central’s Live at Gotham as well as many venues around the country
Tagged as: comedy · humor · standup
Photo credit: ricknight/ Flickr /Creative Commons
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I took Amtrak from Albany to Los Angeles a few years ago, and as we rolled into downtown LA, I was standing in the vestibule waiting for the train to stop. I was wearing a backpack, rain parka, shorts and Birkenstock sandals with socks. Another couple entered the vestible and he said to me, "You must be from Eugene!" (SO, is that the Oregon Costume?) Apparently....
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I don't know if this is true, because I have never been, but I think Comedy Clubs/Bars at least for me---seem like the equivalent of going to a sports bar. Perhaps this is why comedians have a problem in Oregon. Comedy clubs just seem kind of cheesy. I guess stand-up itself seems a bit cheesy. I love humor though, but I guess it just seems to work better when it isn't so literal or when it is integrated with some other medium.
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My exposure to comedy began at Second City in Chicago; I had the great fortune to work there for almost 3 years. I met some great comics but what really left an impression on me was the nightly effect on the audience. After every show the energy level was so effervescent, I always left work feelling wonderful! Now, I am a regular patron at Harvey's Comedy Club in Portland and am so grateful for their comp ticket program. Humor is the best medicine and in these times, I need regular and large doses. Keep up the good work!
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Things that I find hilarious/infuriating about Oregon:
The left-lane pace-drivers who hold up traffic for miles.
Short-haired, be-spectacled, Teva/Birkenstock wearing Subaru drivers.
The ruts in the road made by studded tires, that make changing lanes like trying to derail a train.
People wearing utili-kilts.
People with B/O.
Snowboarders that smell like they marinated in themselves in marijuana on their drive up to the mountain.
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The funniest thing for me is that guy standing at the top of the steps hailing a cab! You know, the Seward Johnson sculpture in Pioneer Courthouse Square? http://www.sewardjohnson.com/collection/business/sub-sub-A/sub-sub-sub-details/sub_sub_sub_detail_02.html
This makes no sense at all! In Washington DC, for example, the same [commercially produced] figure stands on the curb facing the street. Time to get the fellow out of his predicament and moved to a more logical place, such as sidewalk in front of an Old Town Chinatown pub.
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I never thought about the logic of that piece--it's true. Kind of silly since it is near that Max stop. I always disregarded that sculpture after hearing that the artist donated them to every major city in the US to get his name out there. (It's not my style anyway!)
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I was watching a Robin Williams show one time and what I noticed was that even when he had the whole room laughing he was absolutely intensely working hard to do it! He was so dead serious in contrast to the crowd.
Ever since then I have really appreciated how hard comedians work at their job.
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How many Portlanders does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
3. 1 to screw it in and 2 to write a boring, pretentious folk song about it.
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Hi Dave,
Sounds to me like the folks in Manzanita are pioneers in what I would call "Open Source Laughter". Totally free and intrinsically funny. Who needs comedians? In fact, what do comedians and newspapers have in common?...
-Mike
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I once heard a Southern California based comedian tease Oregonians for being fat and pale...done so well, I fell off my chair laughing. The larger folks in the audience didn't find it so funny but, there was a lot of truth in the observation. Being translucent myself, I know that if I can't laugh at myself, then I shouldn't be laughing at most jokes told.
I want to thank the comedians for biting the bullet and making fun of truths, even if they aren't well received by everyone.
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As a member of the improv comedy scene here in Portland, I agree with the studio guests. The media here refuses to cover comedy. Did you know that the ComedySportz World Championships were held here last summer? If you did, you are either a regular follower of ComedySportz or you may have seen one of the tiny blurbs that were printed in the local papers.
Improv comedy thrives here with 3 successful improv-centric theaters, but without the media support in the community, we depend on word-of-mouth. When they have covered comedy in the past, the Willamette Week and Mercury often have used critics who admit to hating improv or standup. Even when they do like a standup comedian, they seem to prefer comedians who have niche, rather than broad, appeal. As a former standup who did not succeed because I didn't use broad appeal, I think that these papers don't get it.
Portland has exported many excellent improvisors to Chicago, the improv Mecca (Second City, IO Theater and Annoyance Theater all reside there). These fine comedians do successfully represent the fact that Portland has a superb sense of humor.
-Bill Cernansky
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Thank you!!
I know that alot of my friends would love to go to comedy shows as much as they do music shows, but there is just not alot of advertising for it, in say the mercury or ww. I hope this changes.
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where can you go see comedians regularly?
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Harvey's is the largest standup club in town.
For improv, ComedySportz, The Brody Theater, and Curious Comedy Theater.
For sketch, Curious Comedy Theater.
For less "regular" sketch comedy, there are many community theaters that feature sketch show runs.
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cause I would love to go, I just dont know where to go.
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Open Mics:
MONDAY:
BOILERROOM, 9pm, NW 3rd and Davis, Portland.
Host: Kevin Michael Moore
Special Notes: - The granddaddy of them all! 7 years and still going strong.TUESDAY:
SUKI'S, 9pm SW 4th and Caruthers, Portland.
Host: Dax Jordan
Special Notes:- Always a good comic and fan turnout, occasional arrests, 2 years old and counting!WEDNESDAY:
ROOTS BREWERY, 1st and 3rd Wednesdays of the month, 9pm, 1520 SE 7TH, Portland.
Host: Heidi Heyward
Special Notes:- Enjoy some of the best locally brewed organic micros you can buy.THURSDAY:
MT. TABOR THEATER, 9pm, 4811 SE Hawthorne Blvd, Portland.
Host: Veronica Heath
Special Notes: - Great room in the smaller stage area of this revered local venue, great laughter for hippies and hipsters alike.Showcase:
FRIDAY:
THE BAGDAD THEATER, time varies, 3702 SE Hawthorne Blvd, Portland.
Host: Tristian Spillman
Special Notes: - Not an open mic, but a long-running showcase of established local acts in the classic spacious McMeneman's Bagdad movie theater. Temporarily at 7pm -
I have a couple of observations about Oregonians that might be useful for the comics. First, I have never lived where people have bundled up in winter--hats, scarves, gloves, parkas, and . . . flip flops!
Second, the state "vehicle" must be the Subaru. What is this all about?
I am enjoying the show. Diane
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Your show has convinced me to buy a whistle. The comics were largely defensive. Is that supposed to be funny? I'm going to Manzanita.
Lazy
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The guest is right about it being an art form.
Think of the great court jester tradition; jesters put their lives on the line to tell the king some truth that no one else could or would tell him and tell it in a way that the king would laugh at his own follies without putting the jester to death.
That's courage! That's an art form!
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Caught the segment earlier in the show in the car about what's acceptable as far as language goes and have a comment about that. I enjoy all kinds of comedy and don't have a PC attitude. I watch and enjoy local and national comedy and watch Comedy Central frequently. But I'm waiting for someone to talk about why so many comics, from Bill Maher whom I enjoy tremendously, to Second City, whom I saw recently in Eugene, think it's acceptable to refer to people as retards, or things as retarded, when they wouldn't use words like nigger, spic, kike, wop, mick, beaner, chink, etc. Some comics solve that by using all of those words in an equal opportunity fashion.
But I dare anyone to argue that there isn't a strong attitude throughout our society that using the word "retard" is somehow more acceptable than using racial and ethnic epithets. And let me also say in anticipation, that there's a difference between satirizing lazy Mexicans, Irish drunks, shifless Blacks, and what have you. Those are inaccurate stereotypes and deserving of satire. The lower intelligence of people labeled retarded is not a stereotype. It's a fact, even if it's just one aspect of who they are. So ridiculing that is not satirizing a stereotype. It's making fun of who they are or using who they actually are to make fun of other people who do things we consider stupid.
I'm prepared for the response to this of the "he's just thin-skinned" variety, but that's not the issue. Think about it in your own interactions and see how often someone uses the word retard or retarded in the ways I've described, and does so in situations where they wouldn't dare use any of the epithets or sterotypes I listed above. It's no different.
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Props to you, Tom. Well said.
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Tom,
I'm in-between, I personally don't use the word retarded because I think if someone is around and they have a family member that is well, mentally retarded, it might seem offensive. But many words have multiple definitions and retarded is a matter-of-fact word, that in its own right isn't really offensive. Intent is important, and if you are not using the word to make fun of people who are mentally retarded, then it really does seem acceptable. Sometimes I say "I feel so brain dead today." Isn't that sort of the same thing? Or is "brain dead" also unacceptable? What if I was to say "I'm so emotionally retarded"---is that offensive? You can't really trade mark a functional word, with multiple accurate meanings.
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Scotmil and whcernan,
Thanks for the responses. Not sure how live this thread will stay on a date-specific program, but what the heck. I understand the dilemma with phrases like I feel brain-dead, what a f___ing idiot, you moron, that's crazy, he's a lunatic, etc. Despite my sensitivity to the use of retard, I like colorful language and I'm kind of a sarcastic critical type, so I still find myself challenged to avoid those kinds of phrasings and the many others that work off of mental illness and cognitive disabilities. I was also raised on the Three Stooges, so words like moron are deeply embedded in my psyche!
It kind of limits your ability to describe people and events when there is no organic reason for incredibly incompetent behavior. What I could call dumb or stupid or idiotic if I wasn't trying to avoid that terminology. Doesn't always work for me. And that's despite the fact, and here's the full disclosure, that I have a brother with autism and work in the field of special education! But I also know that terms like moron and idiot were the actual clinical terms for mental retardation a century ago. It changed to mental retardation, and when that became stigmatizing, it changed to developmental disabilities, and now intellectual disabilities. Maybe a century from now those will be the terms kids use to tease the less capable. Who knows? But it does seem hard to get away from using hurtful words at the expense of people who are less intellectually capable than others. And they are hurtful words. Anyway I appreciate the discussion and the lack of flaming I thought might result.
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Comments are now closed.
I write for a comedy show here, and I have to say that I don't think Oregon, as a state, is particularly funny. And by that I don't mean that the people here aren't funny - on the contrary, the people here are REALLY funny. It's just that Oregon doesn't have a lot of joke fodder. Birkenstocks with socks, Seasonal Affective Disorder, pumping your own gas, legal suicide and good weed. That's pretty much Oregon's permanent fodder list. Other issues (such as the ones discussed in the intro) can pop up periodically, but not often.
But even with a dearth of fodder, there are so many funny people here, I imagine for the same reason there are so many great writers and unbelievable musicians. The rain. It draws people here who want to while away the hours indoors, imagining. And then its relentlessness pushes them into the kind of deep, bitter depression from which great comedy is born. (It's been said that comedy is tragedy plus time, but I think comedy is also tragedy plus vodka. Or tragedy plus a whiffleball bat to the nuts.)
One other comment I'd like to make is about the political correctness of Oregon, or at least Portland. I'd love to hear from one of the comics who's coming from out of town about what they think of Oregon audiences. My experience of them is that they can be hypersensitive to any non-PC stuff. If you do a sketch that parodies a racist or a sexist, people are really uncomfortable laughing at the lines that define that character, even when they know the writer doesn't actually believe what's coming out of that character's mouth. Or maybe they don't know that, and that's the problem.
In any case, looking forward to hearing the show!