Third time's the charm. (Photo by Chris Hornbecker)

The third season of everyone’s favorite IFC comedy-sketch show is fast upon us, with Portlandia slated to begin on January 4. In advance of the inevitable onslaught of new hipsterisms, hereto-unknown eccentricities and brand new organic fetishes, The Observer cornered co-creator Fred Armisen about what new “dreams of the Nineties” he would bring to life.

First among them is an appearance by No Doubt, the very ska-tastic Cali band that brought us Gwen Stefani before she turned all L.A.M.B. He would not divulge how Mrs. Gavin Rossdale and her cohorts would be featured in the show, but one might assume they will not be going Navajo. The Brooklyn-based band The Dirty Projectors will also be featured in the coming season.

Another newcomer to the show will be Chloe Sevingny. Ms. Sevigny recently guest starred on the third season of Louie--closing her act by unabashedly masturbating in a coffee shop, sitting next to a flustered Louis CK.

Ms. Sevigny will play a roommate to Carrie and Fred, Mr. Armisen said, as they are looking for something to “define their relationship a little bit more.” The dynamics of a third wheel crush perhaps?

“I’ll just say this, she causes a rift in the relationship, she kind of causes some problems in our friendship,” he said. But he stops to check himself, “I wouldn’t even describe it as problems, she kind of challenges their friendship.”

Fans can also look forward to a Christmas special, “Winter in Portland,” to air on IFC on December 14.

As a precursor to all the excitement, a travel-book based on the show was released on November 13th. Co-authored by Mr. Armisen and Ms. Brownstein, Portlandia: A Guide for Visitors, is intended as something of a keepsake for the fans.

“It was almost like going deeper into the stuff that already exists. Little things we couldn’t really do on the show,” Mr. Armisen said about his experience writing the book.

By way of an example, he refers to Candace and Toni, the women who own a feminist bookstore (‘Women & Women’)--which has had visitors like Aubrey Plaza, Heather Graham and Steve Buschemi in the past--on the show. Expect to find a ‘fem-zine’ insert, made by Candace and Toni, in the book. “When you look through that, you get a sense of who they are, it’s like their little book, it’s got their voices,” he said.

Putting the book and the third season together caused Mr. Armisen to reflect on what exactly he and Ms. Brownstein have tapped into with the show.

“The show is actually about people, it’s about trends, it’s about cities in general, and I am not just talking about living in the United States. I travel, and these communities exist in places like Sweden and England,” Mr. Armisen told The Observer. "It’s almost like Portland is sort of like, the book cover, it’s the wooden frame around it.”

Before letting Mr. Armisen get on with his busy schedule, The Observer just had to ask the SNL veteran if there was one personality he was itching to impersonate on the late night show. “I haven’t done Bill Maher yet. I just haven’t figured out a way to do a sketch about him,” he said, adding that he was a fan of Mr. Maher’s.

Nsharma@observer.com

Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein (Getty Images)

First, a little bit of back story: The night before The Observer was to go to the screening party for the sequel season of Portlandia, the IFC comedy show starring Saturday Night Live fixture Fred Armisen and Sleater-Kinney's Carrie Brownstein, an Irishman stepped on our lighter in a bar. In exchange for the gaffe, the gentleman offered us a fist-sized piece of homemade organic chocolate truffle, wrapped in decorative foil. How sweet!

As we dashed our way to the Museum of Natural History last night in order to see what could possibly top the catchphrase "Put a Bird On It," we split the giant confection with a fellow famished coworker. Which would have all been fine, if we hadn't made the completely understandable mistake of confusing "chocolate truffles" for "chocolate-covered mushrooms." No, not truffle mushrooms. The other kind. (In hindsight, putting actual truffle mushrooms into chocolate doesn't make any sense either.)

We guess that's why your parents warned you never to take organic candy from strangers. Ooh look, there's Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig! Are those two glowing, or is just the hallucinogens kicking in?

Portlandia as a show works by playing on conventions of hipster culture. While the first season took on broad subjects like eco-freaks, obsessive crafters (Put a ___ on it!), and outraged feminist retailers, the episodes screened for next season were more niche in their targets. Andy Samberg played a cocktail creationist torn between the life of an artisan mixologist and that of a SoCal bartender, while Ms. Wiig's amazing cameo as a feline band's Misery-inspired super-fan reminded us why we never let the Keyboard Cat take creative control of our musical group.

It should be mentioned, our coats just felt really good, sitting in that theater. So soft!

The opening scene in Portlandia's second season tried to recreate its success with the "Put a Bird on It" catchphrase. Unfortunately the new slogan "We can pickle that!" felt like a Mad-Libbing of last season's hit formula instead of fresh material.

Midway through the show, we realized we were sitting so close to Friday Night Lights/American Horror Story's gorgeous and talented Connie Britton that we had to physically restrain ourselves from touching her hair. But we really wanted to? She has great hair. To be fair, we had on our Red Wolf Spirit Hood, which at the time we believed rendered us invisible. Or invincible. (One of the two.) Jeff Goldblum, sitting three feet away, had a really deep purple chakra. Lorne Michael's chakra, visible two rows over, was pewter and had a slight Canadian accent.

After the screening, guests were ushered up to a Portlandia-themed bar room, which featured a lot of colors, pickle jars, anxiety emotions, a giant children's parachute, and a two-to-one celebrity/non-famous person ratio.

While Fred Armisen posed for photos with his mother, we asked if the actor felt like his show resonated as much to the East Coast, Williamsburg audience as it did with Oregonian hipsters. Did he see them as sister cities, or was the location of the show crucial to its humor?

"Portland's got a lot of sister cities," Mr. Armisen replied in his surprising dulcet voice, while behind him the wall began melting distractingly. "Williamsburg, Tokyo, Austin...that culture can be found in so many places now." The pandemic of 20-something liberal arts majors in large cities whose tastes run towards raw foods, hypocritical eco-snobbery, and a fanatic disdain of anything "mainstream" could explain the show success: to date, it's had the highest ratings of any show on the network.

Making our way to the back bar area where the cast and crew of Saturday Night Live were spending the evening, we were in high spirits. We were the spirit god Red Fox! No, you can't touch our hat! It's a hood! It has powers!

We found SNL writer and Law & Order enthusiast John Mulaney chatting with a small group about his love for American Horror Story. His lady friend was clearly a supporter of West Dillon High, with a shirt reading "Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can't Lose." Ms. Britton herself was nowhere to be found, though we did spot new cast members Vanessa Bayer, Taran Killam, and Paul Brittain all trying to look old enough to drink. We managed to tackle Mr. Killam; telling him how much we loved his recent cameo as a deranged glee teacher on Community, which lead to a short discussion with the actor on the NBC show's brilliance and unfortunate hiatus, before Ms. Bayer rescued him from an evening of chit-chat with an accidentally intoxicated reporter.

"Tell her how much you love her Miley Cyrus impression," a nearby friend elbowed us. Come on, we weren't that stoned.

While Mr. Hader and Ms. Wiig were early arrivals on the scene, looking glamorous, costar Jason Sudeikis showed up around midnight in what appeared to be sweatpants and a backpack. Coming from the gym, perhaps? Kristen Schaal, Seth Meyers, Dave Hill, Heather Lawless, Todd Barry, Kumail Nanjiani, Jack McBrayer, Jon Glaser, and David Cross rounded out the comedic social network. A heated debate between ourselves and our + 1 over the name of that Nicolas Cage film directed by one of the other Coppolas resulted in Mr. Cross leaning in and asking, "Are you having this conversation for my benefit?" (Totally! How did he guess?**)  There may have been some incisive commentary to parse from that exchange, regarding the parallels between celebrity and hipster narcissism, but we didn't feel like chasing the analogy once it took corporeal form as a misshapen bunny and hopped to the exit. We decided to follow our hallucination's pragmatic work-night vibe and put a bird on our evening before last call.

As for our tiny coworker with whom we shared our candy? We hadn't heard from her in the last three hours; as far as we know, she's still camped out somewhere in the museum, living out our childhood fantasy from The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. If she doesn't show up by tomorrow, we'll assume she's decided to live in the museum and off the grid for good. That would just be so Portlandia of her!

**The movie, by the way, was Deadfall.

Today is the official start date of  New York's annual Comic Con, the sad stepbrother of San Diego's way more famous nerd convention. Still, New York has its fair share of amazing graphic novel writers and artists (which was what Comic Con is all about, right?), and DC and Marvel have spent a good chunk of cash flying out some big name celebrities for panels as well.

There's also the indie comedy factor: IFC and Adult Swim have their hipster lineup of comedians, including David Cross, Fred Armisen, Carrie Brownstein, Patton Oswalt, Kristen Schaal, etc.

Since Comic Con can be a little overwhelming, we made a list of some of the more famous names coming to the Javits Center this weekend, and where you can presume to find them.

The new show, which premiered Friday on IFC, depicts a eco-friendly wonderland where the denizens of this magical Portlandia enjoy a rigorous pursuit of the liberal ideal. There are militant feminist bookstores, restaurants with overly extensive information about your dish's living experience on a sustainable farm, and the openness to not scoff at adult hide and go seek games held solely as an excuse for the microbrew-sponsored after party.

How accurate is the show? The New York Times treks all the way to the Pacific Northwest to investigate whether or not the people of Portland like the show as much as the more objective New York crowd who watched it with The Observer at the premiere party.

Local opinions are mixed, but The Times managed to find a cast of characters who may very well be future targets for "Portlandia" creators Fref Armisen and Carrie Brownstein. Let's take a look at the representative sample!

• A restaurateur that has on hand the skull of the pig that provided the pork head mortadella (The name of the deceased was Sir Francis Bacon).
• The owner of a nonprofit feminist bookstore.
• A boad member of said nonprofit feminist bookstore.
• A photographer for the blog Eater PDX.

Like it or not, Portland may have to get used to the mocking on "Portlandia," as they're providing the writers with no shortage of episode fodder.

Click for Scandal Report: Champagne Mania Makes for A Boozy Golden Globes

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

It was the premiere of "Portlandia," the sure-fire TV hit from Fred Armisen (of Saturday Night Live fame) and Carrie Brownstein (of now-defunct rock heroes Sleater-Kinney), and everywhere we looked we were greeted with a wash of that plaid-heavy cozy super-nineties fabric, flannel.

The bartenders serving up Portland's own Rogue Ale? Wearing flannel. The caterers swooping around with balls of organic goat cheese and grass-fed beef sliders? Wearing flannel. Many of the people in the crowd from Portland or associated with Portland? Wearing flannel.

And with pine trees and giant drawing of birds lining the space, the Edison Ballroom did indeed feel redolent of that Pacific Northwest city that gets lovingly mocked in the show.

"It's like my escape," Armisen told The Observer about Portland, the place that bears more than a passing relationship to the vigilantly, outlandishly eco-conscious world of Portlandia. "I go there, and I feel really good when I'm there."

He paused to grab an hors d'oeuvre, a chicken skewer placed on a wooden tray that stated the name of the organic farm where the chicken was raised. The chicken, the sign claimed, came from Aliki Farms. This may have been a joke: in the first episode of "Portlandia," which will air on IFC this Friday, Armisen and Brownstein have to ask the waitress to hold their seats at lunch while they personally visit Aliki Farms to ensure that the restaurant was not lying about it being a suitably organic environment.

"This is an opportunity to be silly, and to explore absurdity -- things that I would never want to marry to music," said Brownstein, whose former incarnation as guitarist in Sleater-Kinney confirmed her spot in the canon of Portland rock.

Armisen's keeping his day job on SNL, so many of the castmates (including current squeeze Abby Elliott) showed up to take in the show, which consists of a series of short, uproarious skits. When they first saw each other Andy Sandberg and Seth Meyers embraced in a fully minute-long bro hug, complete with backpatting and ear-talking. Cast members from SNL's metafictional counterpart showed up as well -- Jack McBreyer, for instance, had more conversations with preening pretty girls than Kenneth has had in his entire life (though we did see him leave early and alone). 

Kyle MacLachlan was also on hand, having filmed a spot for the show in which he plays the super enthusiastic mayor of Portland. It's a casting move that's genius to anyone familiar with "Twin Peaks."

"In Fred's mind maybe I lent a little bit of, uh, authenticity to the proceedings," MacLachlan told The Observer.

Standing and chatting in an olive-green dress, Heather Graham explained how she scored her role as an unwelcome member of a journaling group at the feminist bookstore.

"[Fred] kind of pitched an idea, but it wasn't totally written out," she told The Observer, mentioning that the skits are often just improvised.

Then she complimented our outfit, insisting that we looked like "a character out of Franny and Zooey."

The organic crab cakes begat organic apple pie pastries, and many of the guests went out to claim their gift bag (You get a big bottle of Rogue! You get a big bottle of Rogue!) and depart.

But we wanted to get some hints as to what we can expect from the future of Portlandia, so we asked Fred Armisen who, if anyone, would be his ideal guest star on the show.

"I wish Prince would host," he said. "I think he could play anybody."

Mulling this over, Armisen then said he would put in a call to Prince's agent the next day.

Click for What Twitter Taught Us: Glenn Beck Meets Bono and the World Collapses

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

Mr. Scanlan mentioned that it was Mr. Beresford's 70th birthday, which drew gasps and a burst of applause from the audience. Many of his friends and much of the cast of the film he's currently working on, Peace, Love, and Misunderstanding, turned out to fete Mr. Beresford. The Transom spotted child actor Nat Wolff, CNN correspondent Alina Cho, Gossip Girl's Chace Crawford and Catherine Keener, who appeared from the state of her hair to have gotten caught in the sudden rainstorm outside. (She still looked great.)

The role in Peace, Love, and Misunderstanding that has everyone talking, however, belongs to Jane Fonda: She plays a Woodstock-dwelling flower child now embarking on grandmotherhood. We suggested delicately that perhaps the role had given Ms. Fonda a chance to get back in touch with her hippie roots; she, of course, was a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War. "My what roots?" she asked, holding her remarkably well-behaved little dog in her arms. "Stoned hippie grandma?" Ms. Fonda insisted that she has little in common with the character, really. "I've never played a character like this before, and I never was like this character! Protests, yes, but not like her. She's very colorful!"

We asked about the funny, strange Scissors Sisters comedy video released earlier this month, in which Ms. Fonda appears along with Amanda Lepore, Kylie Minogue and Juliette Lewis. She explained she's a friend of the band. "And I went to the concert when I was in Paris. Un-friggin'-believable. Unbelievable. [Jake Shears] ended up almost naked, I might add. It was great."

Kyle MacLachlan had also been to Paris lately. "I did one trip to Paris, which is my wife's favorite city, and I love it, too," he told the Transom. "We happened to hit it right at the height of a heat wave, which is difficult-but we enjoyed that very much, took our son with us." Now that Desperate Housewives has wrapped up, Mr. MacLachlan has again been flexing his indie muscles. "I worked on a little thing for the Independent Film Channel with Fred Armisen called Portlandia a couple of months ago. That's been picked up, it's going to come out and that will be kind of fun." We looked it up-it is co-written by Carrie Brownstein of the indie rock band Sleater-Kinney.

The man of the evening, Mr. Beresford, admitted to the Transom that he knew "virtually nothing" about ballet when he set out to direct Mao's Last Dancer. "I'd directed a number of operas, but I didn't really know anything about ballet! But then I've done a lot of films where I never knew anything about the subject. You know, you've got to research it," he said. But he didn't try out any steps himself: "None whatever! You know, you've got to be so fit, and it's one of the most rigorous things you can possibly do. To learn to be a great ballet dancer is years and years of training, you know, from childhood. Very tough."

We also inquired as to whether Mr. Beresford had rented any of the classic ballet movies-like The Red Shoes (yes) or Center Stage. "Oh yeah, Center Stage, I saw that one, yeah," he allowed. "There are a lot of 'em!"

Apparently, Armisen initiated the collaboration during the writer’s strike and though he’s clearly the star here—there’s something oddly profound in the way he transforms the former Iraqi dictator into a British pop star circa 1969, replete with cockney accent (maybe it’s because Armisen's Hussein sorta looks like Colin Farrell)—Brownstein certainly holds her own. Watch as she defends her new Portland eatery, Katchenza, from online commentators accusing the restaurant’s waiters of stirring customers' drinks with their penis and giving birth while serving beef brisket (“When I saw the baby crown, I had to stop eating my dessert,” one writes.) “As far as I’m concerned, anyone can have a baby in our restaurant,” Brownstein haughtily replies. Right on, sister.

Both have new "product" out–Sleater-Kinney's The Hot Rock (Kill Rock Stars) and Built to Spill's Keep It Like a Secret (Warner Brothers)–that has been praised with language usually reserved for beloved but dying monarchies. It's been about a half-decade since the Kids of America traded in their guitars for a blank prescription pad, and this has constituted a crisis for a critical class, schooled in minutiae, that posits that there are unbroachable sonic and ideological differences between the Who and R.E.M. or, more to the point, between the Volcano Suns and Dumptruck. Every couple of years, the pop scribes give in to a neurotic need to elevate a band or two as rock's (read: the white man's) next (read: last) great hope. Why? To coax back the sugar rush of youth, as if their job were less to figure out what's going on in front of their faces than to construct a Cleveland of the heart.

One can't help but feel sympathy for these writers. (I, for one, pity myself.) It takes a dedicated pedantry to fill your head with the endless crap necessary to possess a tenuous grip on a morphing popular culture you suspect is slipping away from you. Take Sleater-Kinney and Built to Spill, for example. Members of both bands have a lengthy indie-rock pedigree trailing back into the Green River era. They come from a geographical area cherished for its now-dead promises of innocent, righteous hedonism. (Call it a Seattle of the mind.) But they, out of an endless selection of likable, kind of edgy, kind of sad peers, have been anointed.

Is the music of Sleater-Kinney and Built to Spill worth our time? It depends on what your definition of "is" is. For the Anointed, "is" represents "was," a period of 15 or so years ago. Today's critics, who came of age during the thrift store-clothed "Amer-Indie" onslaught of the 80's, haven't quite come to grips with the fact that the success of that movement is represented by its annihilation. Speaking for myself, when I listen to Rykodisc's recent Meat Puppets reissues–a band I was never particularly fond of–I find myself tearing up, pining for a kinder, gentler old ignorance. But I was not a better man then than I am now, and much of my and others' critical embrace of a forced slack-jawedness smacked of the flawed pedagogy of album-oriented radio. Most of us (white, middle-class) mid-80's types were only vaguely aware of work by the likes of, say, George Clinton, Ornette Coleman and Liquid Liquid, which in some cases had been created only a half-decade before. Or less. Instead, it is this generation's little bit o' hell to find positive and Pavlovian mimetic associations in the work of Journey, Pat Benatar and Loverboy, or a weaker echo in their stepchildren Pearl Jam and Soundgarden. SST has long gone the way of that old, reliable horse in George Orwell's Animal Farm , and Sony will be around long after we're dead. Who you gonna call, Ghostbusters?

Ridiculous, you say. We have paged through our latest issue of Request , and have broken bread in our college cafeterias. The matters of Rock still matter. Look at the Offspring. Better than Ezra. Australia's sun-dappled Silverchair! To which I answer: Behold Andy Williams! Glance upon the Adonis that was John Davidson in his prime! Now decipher the Roman numerals on the back of their album covers. These artists reached their commercial peak in the late 60's . They ate well during the psychedelic era. History is gracious before the fall. Bow before Ozymandias!

So bands such as Sleater-Kinney or Built to Spill are a necessary amniotic fluid, protecting us from the crassness of our nostalgic longings for pure stink. By definition they can't push the envelope into new territory lest we merely enjoy them for their own sake, and then turn to the Devil (or at least Ozzy). Which is to say, enjoying Sleater-Kinney and Built to Spill is an admission of a kind of failing of human nature: that we cannot escape ourselves. As Montaigne wrote, concerning suicide (not the band), "There is greater constancy in wearing out our chains than in breaking them."

Then again, Guy Fawkes told us that "a desperate disease requires a dangerous remedy." That said, The Hot Rock has much in it to recommend, Keep It Like a Secret , less. The double vocals on some of the strongly No-Wave-influenced Hot Rock is a neat trick, though I wish that it represented more of a conflicted consciousness. It is certainly superior to Doug Martsch's guitar solos on Keep It Like a Secret , a singular weapon of aggressive boredom. Woody Guthrie's wonderful and inaccurate statement "This machine kills fascists," painted on his acoustic six-string, has been updated through Mr. Martsch's insistent fingertips to conclude "… and then some." You don't merely oppose his guitar solos to make a statement against Rock-ism. In fact, the guitar may very well have a future in the traditional sense. Yo La Tengo's Ira Kaplan, for one, continues to evoke unencumbered, off-centered joy whenever he sets himself up for a little wank. But Built to Spill could improve its work immensely by cutting each ditty of sad-eyed optimism in half. If the fade-out is good enough for Neil Young, it's good enough for Doug Martsch.

The faux-naïveté of Sleater-Kinney's professionalism contains considerably more appeal. Janet Weiss, also of Quasi, is a fine rock drummer, and producer Roger Mountenot gives her some great snare sounds. Many of the guitar riffs, courtesy of Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker, are intertwining and insistent, with dulled-down strings. The riffs remind me of other obscure records, especially on "Don't Talk Like," though I'm embarrassed to admit I can't quite place them. This gives some of the record an accidental Pavement-like feel of inspired appropriation and theft.

Mr. Martsch has also been tagged as something of a naïf for the way his music evokes his Idaho background. There is, as has been noted, a "sprawl" to it, of a prosaic sort. Oh, I'm too harsh. It's fine for what it is. However, this stuff sort of reminds me of Socialist Realism, with the modern-day concession of emotion replacing politics: a plod through our day-to-day minor tribulations. The ecstasy is someone else's and, as in Raymond Carver's work, the suffering was noted long ago, and in wiser terms.

Sleater-Kinney seems to acknowledge this, in certain ways. Many of their lyrics obsess on perceived substitution and are directed at subjects whose minds the protagonists may well not know. "I'm not the one you wanted/ not the thing you keep," sings Carrie Brownstein on the title track. No, what I wanted passed by long ago. Should I just take what's here?