We all know that the dream of the ’90s is alive in Portland, where young people go to retire. But sometimes, in Portland or Brooklyn or Austin, all the DIY pickling and knitting and beard-growing starts to become reminiscent of another ’90s entirely — the 1890s. In the seemingly too-good-to-be-true follow-up to last year’s blockbuster musical number, Portlandia’s Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein have brought us “Dream of the 1890s.” Microbrew or die, bitches!

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Portlandia is a show that works almost as a series of inside jokes. The sketches are all knowing winks to the audience about the culture they presumably know all about, in which your friend has begun pickling everything and people can “put a bird on anything and call it art.” But it also works because Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein are the kind of people who you’d like to share an inside joke with. Both are unquestionably cool in their own right, but it’s their friendship, both on and off television, that’s an equally compelling force behind their television success. In interviews and on the show, they seem like two BFFs having fun as much as professionals with a television show, riffing off each other and cracking wise. But not all twosomes translate as well off the HDTV screen, so it’s a relief that the Portlandia live show, which wrapped up its first leg in New York this weekend, shows the friends to be every bit as fun as they seem. After the jump, the best moments from the show at The Bowery Ballroom, plus what Armisen and Brownstein had to say about spirit animals, overanalyzing text messages, and a possible Portlandia movie.

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Today at Flavorpill, we celebrated National Trivia Day with 119 amazing facts courtesy of our friends at Mental Floss. We got a behind-the-scenes look at Conan O’Brien’s daily life. We enjoyed this fantastic Joker-by-Seuss mashup from DeviantArt member DrFaustusAu. We got incredibly excited watching Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein cover Salt-N-Pepa’s “Push It” during the San Francisco stop of their current Portlandia tour. We tried to decide on our favorite color in the new Nicki Minaj for OPI collection. We reimagined Game of Thrones as a buddy comedy. We wished that all of our dreams were as pleasant as this photogenic Finnish baby’s look to be. We tried to identify all of the movies featured in Stephen Wildish’s 1990s Film Alphabet. We met a multimedia artist who says that Lady Gaga’s recent holiday display at Barneys ripped off her work. We discovered that Catherine the Great may have invented the roller coaster. We found out a lot of things that we didn’t already know about Stephen Colbert thanks to this fascinating New York Times Magazine profile. And finally, we listened to a bunch of rappers spell out their names for us.

Today at Flavorpill, this supercut of 40 TV Christmas moments reminded us that Saved by the Bell once did its very own rendition of A Christmas Carol – and Slater was Tiny Tim. We found McSweeney’s “Jingle Bells FAQ” illuminating. We thought it was very sweet that Jonathan Ames bought Bored to Death fans $1600 worth of drinks at a memorial for the show Wednesday night. We enjoyed an NSFW animated holiday card from Dan Meth, featuring appearances by both James Brown and Mike Tyson. We explored the Matt Damon Hairodox: “The more awful the hair, the better the performance.” We overanalyzed Carrie Brownstein’s candid photos from the set of Portlandia. We gawked at Hilary Duff’s festively painted baby bump. We got hungry thinking about the ten most mouth-watering moments from the Bible. We reminded you that this is your last chance to demonstrate your generosity and Flavorpill love by donating to Food Bank for New York City. (We’re competing with other NYC media companies to see who can raise the most money for this great cause, and the contest ends tomorrow.) And finally, we wished our readers a very happy holiday, whether you’re observing the birth of Christ, celebrating the Festival of Lights, or airing your Festivus grievances. We’ll be counting down the first half of our top 20 posts of the year over this weekend and will be back with new stuff on Monday.

“It’s not just regular science fiction,” says Fred Armisen’s character in the latest Portlandia Season 2 clip to emerge. ”It’s actually good.” And that’s how he, Carrie Brownstein, and so many of us get sucked into Battlestar Galactica. What follows will be familiar to anyone who’s skipped out on normal human interaction in favor of an entire evening (or day… or weekend…) glued to all available episodes of any given addictive TV series. We won’t ruin the sketch by saying anymore, but, as usual, Fred and Carrie totally get us. Feel understood (or, you know, terribly ashamed) after the jump. Read More »

Today at Flavorpill, we decided that these have got to be the most hardcore holiday decorations that we’ve ever seen. We heard that NYU will be offering a course on Occupy Wall Street next semester. We wished that Will Ferrell would make a free commercial for us. We learned some interesting things about the way that Pixar works. We watched a funny outtake from Louis CK’s upcoming comedy special. We read an interview with Carrie Brownstein in which she discusses why she loves Portland. We wished that The Lonely Island guys were really releasing a Christmas album. We were happy to see that the viral marketing campaign for The Dark Knight Rises is already underway thanks to a pair of leaked “CIA documents.” We rather enjoyed this clip which reimagines Angry Birds through the eyes of Guy Ritchie. And finally, we decided that this guy who has 15,000 websites tattooed on his body has to be faking us all out. Right?

After playing in bands for her entire adult life, Carrie Brownstein is no stranger to the road. But we’re betting she’s never done a tour quite like the one she’s planning for next month. Brownstein and her Portlandia co-star Fred Armisen have announced Portlandia: The Tour, a seven-date mini-jaunt that will take them to such hipster capitols as Seattle, San Francisco, New York, LA, Chicago, and — of course — Portland between late December and mid-January. The live show will see the duo performing music, previewing footage from the sketch show (whose second season premieres January 6th), and offering behind-the-scenes stories. Tickets go on sale tomorrow; check out the dates after the jump.

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It’s official: We want to be Carrie Brownstein when we grow up. Over the weekend, we watched her rock out, guitar heroine-style, with her new band, Wild Flag. And today brings a new preview clip for Season 2 of Portlandia. Although we’ve been assured that many of our favorite characters will be back when the show returns in January, the video introduces us to Brownstein and Fred Armisen’s newest creations — the Sanitation Twins. Together, they host an informational video about the latest recycling initiative in Portland, which, of course, turns out to be impossibly complicated. Learn how to separate your regular coffee lids from your lipstick-stained coffee lids for the good of the environment after the jump.

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One of the great advantages to being a culture nerd in the era of the internet is its ability to provide context for your obsessions. Learning about an artist’s life and interests outside of the field for which they are known can change your perception of their work and allows you to discover more awesome art in the process. We all know how wrong this can go when huge stars try to capitalize on their fame in every possible market (see: celebrity perfume lines). Thankfully, today, with the ease of self-release and DIY art, smaller and more interesting musicians are broadening their creative horizons with fabulous results. With that in mind, here are a few artists whose musical work we love, but who have other creative projects that deserve more attention. As always, please leave your own additions to the list in the comments.

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For those of us who love TV, this time of year is a dead zone. Your favorite series are either running reruns or not returning for months to come. But here’s some exciting news: 2011 is bringing in more exciting changes than we usually see — and we’re not just talking about the fact that American Idol is moving to a new night for the first time in a decade. From a handful of promising looking British imports to a new HBO series that’s being referred to as “The Sopranos with swords,” after the jump we’ve rounded up 10 of the most interesting new shows that we could find. Add anything that we’ve missed in the comments.

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