Portlandia, Ep. 1: Thank You for Embracing My Weirdness

Ah, Portland: The largest city in Oregon, my brother's home for the summer, and the place where men wear skinny jeans on a regular basis. Suh-weet.

I'm here for almost a week visiting my bro, which means that as soon as I got out of the car I made him do, uh, exactly what I wanted to do. 

First stop? Eat (veggie) sushi. They seem to have a lot of these conveyor-belt type restaurants in Portland, where you pick up plates as they whirl around you in a tantalizing fashion.

"Please stop taking things off the conveyor belt and putting them back." Nope.

At these places, you can eat as soon as you sit down. This is a plus. On the other hand, this tends to result in overeating for me some people. (To the point my brother was disgusted.) This can be construed as a negative depending on who you're asking.

Round numero uno...for me. 

Portland is known as an outdoorsy type o' town, evidenced by the skilled moves of this outdoor Zumba class, which, obviously I stopped and took pictures of. (It's not everyday a small town girl gets to see real life people doing Zumba!)

They're sexy and they know it.

After stuffing myself and oogling Zumba-goers, I bribed convinced my brother to see Katy Perry's Part of Me by offering to pay for his ticket telling him I had heard really great things about it. Surprise! It worked. Don't we look just like her?

Jack, lookin' good. Me? Not so much.

Not going to lie: I cried about four times. I had one foot over the "I hate Katy Perry" fence until I saw this movie, and now I'm one step away from dying my hair blue and trying to crawl onstage with her.

 For starters, I'd never realized that she writes her own music or how much creative control she truly has over her image and performances. Love! It was also incredibly inspiring to hear her rough start in the music industry, when she was signed and dropped by label after label until she met a record exec who was willing to go to bat for her. (Hint: it involves stealing all the Katy Perry files from one company and shuffling them over to another. Awesome.) 

As record labels tried to shape her into "the next Avril Lavigne" or "the next Pink", she held her ground and insisted on being the first Katy Perry. She's proof that being your authentic, weird self coupled with not giving up WILL lead to success. I'm literally still thinking about this movie almost a week after I've seen it. GO SEE IT NOW.

I'll leave you with a little clip from the genius show Portlandia. Thank me later.

Don't be the "next" anybody. Be the first "you"!