Put a Bird On It
One of my favorite Portlandia skits showed up in an old Salon article.
Parodying the parody extends beyond indie designer in-jokes. Humor blogger and “Portlandia” fan Jenny “The Bloggess” Lawson created a tote bag sporting a silhouette of the extinct Dodo bird and “Put a bird on it!” in a cheerful font and posted it for sale in her Zazzle store. When Zazzle informed her that a complaint had been issued regarding the show’s intellectual property, she wrote, “I thought it was funny that a show based entirely on satirizing an entire city would have a problem with my bag satirizing their show.”
“No one ever buys my bags, anyway,” Lawson said. “That was the funniest thing about the whole situation. Legal departments, bloggers, production companies and television stars all getting involved in a strange debacle that netted about $11 in sales. If they made it into a skit no one would believe it.”
If you want a lawsuit, you have to show damages.