I just bought the Flight of the Conchords album, appropriately titled Flight of the Conchords, yesterday at Urban Outfitters. I understand that I was a little slow on this one. I knew that it had been released awhile ago, but I was busy avoiding my thesis for most of April, and then I was busy writing it for most of May. Now it's the end of July, and I only bought it because Urban had placed it at impulse eye-level on the checkout counter.

This is, of course, neither here nor there, and you might be wondering why this is even newsworthy. Most of us already know what the duo is about; they're two New Zealanders struggling to make it in New York, and their status as an import is the essential punch line of the HBO series. The only timely event related to Flight of the Conchords was an appearance at the Sub Pop 20th Anniversary Festival earlier this month. But all of this, though interesting, unfortunately neglects the new episode of "Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List" airing tonight.

Now, in the tradition of Lewis Carroll (another import), I ask you the following: How is Kathy Griffin like Flight of the Conchords? The answer I'm getting at is both simple and complex. But first, the setup. If you listen to Flight of the Conchords carefully, you'll notice that there is a certain thematic repetition to the tracks. There are a lot of women who get noticed at parties before ineptitude ensues, and two of the songs on the album prominently feature an inability to pay the rent. This means that, as a Conchord, you are just as likely to awkwardly bring someone back to your apartment as you are to get evicted from it.

So now, here's another riddle: Do we really think that either of these things are issues for Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement? I mean, I understand the series is fictional, but the characters "Bret" and "Jemaine" seem pretty closely related to the people Bret and Jemaine, and therein lies the problem. If the likeability of curiously autobiographical characters hinges on their universally-relatable scuffle toward success, what happens when their inspirations make it big? This is a dilemma I don't think the Neorealists ever had to grapple with.

The suspension of disbelief that will be required for future seasons of "Flight of the Conchords" is the same one currently requisite for "Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List." Here's the thing: She won an Emmy. She's not on the D-List anymore. She's probably raking in the dough like the fictional Conchords' New York landlord. But the real Kathy Griffin still has to wear outfits twice and get banned from "The View" because it's necessitated by her character.

The phenomenon of building a public persona disconnected from one's actual personality isn't new. But both "Flight of the Conchords" and "Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List" build personae in a new way. American culture is saturated by and fascinated with celebrity, but it's equally preoccupied with the human flaws of everyday people (the spate of reality shows on air as I type proves it). Because the reality of their notoriety hasn't yet hit the mainstream, the Conchords and Kathy Griffin are able to dominate the intersection of our two cultural obsessions in a way that blatantly famous personalities never could.

But they won't be able to do it for long. The people have almost outpaced the characters-and if un-famous is the new infamous, it's only a matter of time before other not-quite-nobodies take their place.