Friday’s episode of Portlandia on IFC had no shortage of indie-rock cameos: Modest Mouse‘s Isaac Brock attempted to donate some bad records to an elite preschool (Talk Talk, Temple of the Dog); Annie Clark, aka St. Vincent, did a runway walk in a proposed new cyperpunk uniform for the Portland Police Department.
The comedic duo of Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen also hit one of my favorite hipster-for-life archetypes: the itinerant ex-D.C. punk. (Sadly, the clip’s not online.) “Do you know Ian, who runs the label?” says Armisen’s character to Brownstein’s. “He’s got that other band now, but for a while he had those other two huge bands?”
Brownstein: “Yeah, so do you know the other Ian, he was in Nation of Ulysses…”
“Yes, do you know Dante?”
“Yes.”
“He had the restaurant for a while.”
“And you know Zach?”
“Yes.”
“Moved to New York?”
“Which Zack are you talking about?”
“Barocas.”
“Oh, I was talking about Zak Sally.”
“I know Zak very well.”
“I know Zak too, we were very close.”
And so on. (No Mary, though.)
Nicely played. But the joke’s a tad familiar, no?