If Flight of the Conchords were an Australian woman...

…they would be vlogger Natalie Tran

By Mandy Van Deven
Published: February 13th, 2009 | 12:05pm

Natalie Tran is an Australian vlogger who has gained worldwide popularity by using YouTube as a forum for witty criticisms and general hilarity. For the past two years, Tran has been using the world wide interweb to share her humorous insight into issues both trivial and non-trivial — like daydreaming about the kinds of inappropriate jokes an ultrasound technician could make to a patient, or explaining why she's disappointed when her "hotness" is likened to a Maxim model by a Web site that ranks sexy female bloggers. To date, she has produced 114 short videos under her online alias, CommunityChannel.

It’s not as though she’s come up with a new funny lady formula: Tran simply has conversations with the camera about her daily life, ones that involve sharp wit and self-deprecating sarcasm. But she must be doing something right because her antics have gained her a lot of fans; there are nearly 140,000 subscribers on her YouTube page alone. Tran's Katy Perry parody (or should that be Perry-dee?), "I F#cked Your Mum," received over 2.9 million hits since its July debut, though the previously mentioned “The Ultrasound” leads the pack with 9.5 million views since February. Anyone with their own Web page can tell you that is a whole lot of hits.

In "My Seeds & Your Grandchildren," Tran sets the scene by reading a racist email she received entitled "Your Not Australian" (no, that's not a typo) from a person who emphatically explains why her Australian citizenship is not only illegitimate, but also destroying the true, white Aussies’ way of life. Instead of deconstructing the sender's arguments, Tran sardonically details how she will “spread her seed,” promising to "have as many slanty-eyed kids as possible" who will then take over the country. Her sinister-sounding rant prompted my remembrance of Beau Sia's similarly ironic poem entitled "Asian Invasion."

While most of Tran’s videos are not as explicitly political as “My Seeds & Your Grandchildren,” they all have undertones that leave little doubt that this woman is using a feminist analysis in her comedic work. So laugh at the absurdity of ideal beauty and the lengths people go to get it as Tran teaches you how to fake a six pack by drawing lines across your abdomen with a sharpie and blending them with make-up. It’s so much better than dancing cats!