kiwi humour

I thought I'd posted this a long time ago, but they came up in conversation recently and I realized they hadn't made it onto my corner of the internet:

One of our favorite aspects of New Zealand culture was the willingness to poke fun at themselves, and just about anything else. It even manifested itself in a government advertising campaign for home safety. The ACC - Accident Compensation Commission - pays for all medical bills resulting in any accidents, for anyone in New Zealand. (This takes the place of personal injury lawsuits, which are generally not allowed in the New Zealand court system). The ACC put out a series of TV ads to try to lower accident rates around the home, but the ads have a serious black humor to them.

For example, every time this ad came on TV, Kirsten started laughing uncontrollably:

More of the ads can be seen here. And here's one more that wasn't on-air while we were in NZ.

kiwi humour, part II

One more for you-

This is an official Australian tourism commercial that got a ton of play in NZ our last few months there. Apparently it created some controversy in the UK, since "bloody hell" was seen to be a bit dirty:

This is a NZ take on the ad, apparently put together by a consumer advocate program:

OD on FotC

I've been gorging myself on Flight of the Conchords lately.
Partly, it's just because I miss Kiwi accents and want to hold onto the New Zealand connection anywhere I can. Partly, it's because they're damn funny.

Since I returned to this country I've been preaching the Conchord message through You Tube clips. Then I found out they'd have an HBO series starting up in June.

I prepared by going to an advance screening (I need to find more of these, I like seeing movies for free) of Eagle vs Shark. The movie has one of theConchords as the lead and one of my New Zealand comedian acquaintances in a role as well.

The HBO show started last week, it's two episodes in (still haven't met anyone here with HBO, so BitTorrent has been my savior).

Also this week I ended up downloading the six episodes from the BBC2 radio series.

This all may be a bit much. I'm just waiting for some of the other New Zealanders to make their way over here.