By now you’ve met our unpaid marketing intern George (he’s single, ladies!). He’s tried a variety of approaches to meet a nice girl, but without much luck.
But George is being proactive. Allow us to enumerate some of the steps he has taken.
Portlandia
He’s watched all eight seasons of Portlandia.
Portlandia is an American sketch comedy television series starring Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, set in and around Portland, Oregon, and spoofing the city’s reputation as a haven for eccentric hipsters. The show was produced by Broadway Video Television and IFC Original Productions. It was created by Armisen and Brownstein, along with Jonathan Krisel, who directed it. It debuted on IFC in 2011. and concluded in 2018 after eight seasons.
The show shared its title with the sculpture of the same name that sits above the entrance of the Portland Building on Fifth Avenue in downtown Portland, which appears in the show’s title sequence. The show won a Peabody Award.
George learned valuable relationship skills from Portlandia, but sadly he ended up smitten with the Portlandia statue.
The Academic Approach to Meeting Women: HTML
George took a community college course in HTML, thinking it stood for How To Meet Ladies. Turns out, he was very mistaken.
Jehovah’s Witness Potluck
So our poor George tried his luck at meeting women by attending a pot luck with the Jehovah’s Witnesses. What could go wrong?
Let’s just say things didn’t go well. He ultimately had to join the Jehovah’s Witness Protection Program[1].
George (he’s single, ladies!) walking innocently into a Jehovah’s Witness potluck thinking it’s a casual meet-and-greet, when in fact he is entering a realm governed by:
casserole diplomacy
spiritual pamphlets
suspiciously vigilant aunties
and a hard NO on all forms of romantic pursuit
[1] I stole this line from a book I’m currently reading: Mania, by Lionel Shriver.
The JW Guardians. Where have I seen these women before? And why do they scare the crap out of me?
Following the potluck, George was plagued by nightmare – of being smoot (smited? smitten? smytatized?) by Jehovah himself.
“Celibacy… or Astrology?”
Ah, poor George. He was so lonely, he attended an astrology meet-and-greet. A true act of desperation. Even though astrology goes against everything he holds dear, the guy is lonely!
Out of extreme desperation, George decides to attend the local “Astrology Singles Night: Because Mercury Can’t Ruin Everything.”
There was temptation….
Later that night, George is experiencing a crises of self – celibacy or astrology? Later, in his sleep, he is visited by the ghost of Neil deGrasse Tyson, who encourages him to abandon the entire astrology route.
George gasps.
“Mr. Tyson? Are you here… to guide my love life?”
Neil sighs the sigh of a scientist who has explained gravity to flat-earthers one too many times.
“No, George. I am here to save you from astrology-induced romantic ruin.”
The Intervention
Ghost Neil sits on the edge of the bed—hovering, technically.
“George, listen carefully. Astrology won’t help you meet women. If the alignment of planets determined relationships, Uranus would be responsible for every bad date. And that’s… not a world you want to live in.”
George nods slowly, trembling.
“So… what should I do, Mr. Tyson?”
Neil’s eyes soften.
“Be yourself, George. Maybe get a nicer shirt. And stop joining religious or mystical groups hoping for romance. It’s weirding everyone out.”
A long pause.
George whispers:
“But… what about the workshop lady who said she felt my ‘Venus energy’?”
Neil stares at him flatly.
“She was talking about someone behind you.”
George winces.
Departure
As the cosmic vortex begins to re-open, Ghost Neil leaves George with one final message:
“Also—stop bringing potato salad to everything.”
And with a swirl of galaxies, he vanishes.
George wakes up the next morning with a renewed sense of clarity—and a restraining order from the astrology group.
References
Portlandia Statue
About Portlandia is a sculpture by Raymond Kaskey located above the entrance of Michael Graves’ Portland Building in downtown Portland, Oregon. It is the second-largest copper repoussé statue in the United States, after the Statue of Liberty.
Elder G answers the question we are all asking: Is the statue Portlandia modeled after a real woman?
Elder G: Short answer: Yes. The statue Portlandiawas modeled after a real woman—a Portland resident named Sharon Bronzan.
A bit more detail:
The sculptor, Raymond Kaskey, used Bronzan as the life model when designing and sculpting Portlandia.
He didn’t try to recreate her exact likeness; instead he used her as an anatomical and proportional reference to create a larger-than-life figure inspired by the woman in Portland’s city seal.
Portlandia’s pose—kneeling forward with the trident—is original to the sculpture, but the model provided the physical form and presence that Kaskey needed.
So yes—George (he’s single, ladies!) has technically fallen in love with a statue based on an actual Portland woman from the late 1970s and early ’80s. Which somehow makes his shrine both more romantic and more unhinged.
Semi-Sequitur: Sharon Bronzan
“In a classic Sharon Bronzan painting you find a woman alone in a wilderness booby-trapped with daggered cactuses. She doesn’t look away but stares unflinchingly into danger. When she relaxes her hold on strict logic, her life-saving guardians appear: a lion, an alligator, a Joshua tree. Bronzan specializes in peril and its antidotes in myth and folklore.”
Astrology is a range of divinatory practices, recognized as pseudoscientific since the 18th century, that propose that information about human affairs and terrestrial events may be discerned by studying the apparent positions of celestial objects. Different cultures have employed forms of astrology since at least the 2nd millennium BCE, these practices having originated in calendrical systems used to predict seasonal shifts and to interpret celestial cycles as signs of divine communications.
Western astrology, one of the oldest astrological systems still in use, can trace its roots to 19th–17th century BCE Mesopotamia, from where it spread to Ancient Greece, Rome, the Islamic world, and eventually Central and Western Europe.
Prior to the Enlightenment, astrology was generally considered a scholarly tradition and was common in learned circles, often in close relation with astronomy, meteorology, medicine, and alchemy.
Confirmation bias is a form of cognitive bias, a psychological factor that contributes to belief in astrology. Astrology believers tend to selectively remember predictions that turn out to be true, and do not remember those that turn out false. Another, separate, form of confirmation bias also plays a role, where believers often fail to distinguish between messages that demonstrate special ability and those that do not.
Joseph Stalin‘s granddaughter, Chrese Evans, is a Portland, Oregon-based artist and antique dealer who is sometimes described as a boutique manager. She is the daughter of Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva. Evans also goes by the name Olga Peters.
Who she is: Chrese Evans is Joseph Stalin’s granddaughter, born Olga Peters. She is the daughter of Svetlana Alliluyeva and architect William Wesley Peters.
Her life in Portland: She is a long-time resident of Portland, where she is an artist, writer, and antique dealer. She has managed boutiques and has been involved in the local community.
Connection to her mother: Evans has a very close relationship with her mother, Svetlana Alliluyeva, whom she describes as her best friend. Her mother, who defected from the Soviet Union, also died in Wisconsin.
Personal life: Evans has chosen to live a life far removed from her notorious grandfather’s legacy. She is a Buddhist, a tattooed, punk-rocker, and an all-American who also enjoys cooking borscht.
Stalin’s granddaughter is an all-American badass
She’s got her dedushka’s eyes — but this gun-toting, punk-rocking gal is as American as apple pie, although she does love to cook borscht.
