Las Vegas Weekly

Some important facts about Flight of the Conchords

Ugh, they’re soooo Wellington.

Photo: Sam Erickson/ AP

Flight of the Conchords—Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement—are from Wellington, New Zealand. There are 20 species of stick insect in New Zealand, and 21 species of giant land snails.

As far as we know, FotC is the only New Zealand comedy-music act to achieve the grand slam of pop-culture appearances: a slot on Letterman, an interview with NPR’s Terry Gross, a performance at the Omniture Web Analytics Conference and a gig at the Google/IO convention.

They have been denied funding from New Zealand public television because they were thought to be “too Wellington.”

Apparent signs that one is “too Wellington”: A 2008 Grammy for best comedy album (The Distant Future); a two-season run on HBO; being named No. 2 new TV show of 2007 by Time. (Of course, it’s possible Time doesn’t circulate in New Zealand, and that people there think a “grammy” is a species of giant land snail.)

FotC played the Sasquatch Music Festival in 2008; the closest thing New Zealand has to a Sasquatch is a possibly mythical Canadian moose roaming the hinterlands.

Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement were “flatmates” in college. We don’t know what that means.