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IF YOU’RE LOOKING FOR A SOLUTION to everything that’s gone wrong, you’ve come to the wrong page. The people you’re about to meet don’t pretend to have the answers, unlike the bozos swept into office last year. They’re just really good at telling us what the problems are.
Funniest Five 2026
One trait the Funniest Five comedians in Portland share—asisde from taking to Revolution Hall on Thursday, Feb. 5, for our 14th annual Funniest Five comedy showcase—is that the funniest things they’ve seen often amount to systemic breakdowns. Take Andrea Menchaca, voted Portland’s Funniest Person by nearly 100 of her peers. An immigrant born in Juárez, Menchaca told us the funniest thing she’d seen recently was a pharmacist who couldn’t help a patient who didn’t speak English.
That doesn’t instantly clock as a bucket of chuckles, but the story works on a few levels: She presents a familiar problem by sending up the person causing the problem. The health care system really has enough money to make things smoother for the patient and the pharmacist, but doesn’t. Meanwhile, having myself worked in health care, I marveled at the way she described the pharmacist’s stupidity: so close to figuring out how to help someone, with Google Translate a phone tap away, yet doubling down on the dumbest possible choice of just repeating himself louder and slower.
Menchaca is the hero who steps in to give us the happy ending we need now more than ever. She pointed out a flaw, remembered and shared it in a way only she could, and revealed that the day was saved with laughs for anyone who heard it. But she’s not afraid to point out a problem in a way that sticks with her audience.
The same can be said for Erica Figueroa, whose tale of a car theft got even worse after a phone call threatened to have her arrested for missing jury duty. Jordan Casner has a story about witnessing hit-and-run property damage that makes us feel as if we’ve all been the one behind the wheel. Ash Allen finds humor in the weird Christian billboards littering Portland’s thoroughfares. And Lucas Copp has seen our worst nightmares about those benevolent Benson bubblers come to life.
Some call people who point out problems without offering solutions “complainers,” but those folks fail to see that, especially now, with so much wrong, stories like the ones from our Funniest Five help us feel less alone when we see so much unapologetic failure and mediocrity around us. And if you are in need of humor like theirs, Portland’s comedy scene has plenty of shows coming up to air those grievances.
Things aren’t right, and that’s not OK, but we’re going to make it anyway. Laughter can keep us strong when morale is low, and there’s plenty to wear away at ours right now. Comedians synthesize pain and problems into the best medicine for dealing with them. Portland’s Funniest Five are just what the doctor ordered. —Andrew Jankowski, Assistant Arts & Culture Editor
