Show This Friday, November 13th!

2 Girls 1 Show. Ends this Friday! Gotham City Improv, 48 W. 21st street. 7 pm. $10. See "Kara Buller LIVE!" my comedic characters show. Amy Daulton does her one-woman show "How to be Neurotic" before. Email me for more details.

2 Girls 1 Show: Tomorrow

Amy Daulton and I are doing our one-woman shows tomorrow night at Gotham City Improv, 48 W. 21st street. 7 pm. $10. On the Eighth Floor. Amy does "How to Be a Better Neurotic" and I do "Kara Buller LIVE!" a collection of wacky, eh not so wacky, characters.
Email me if you want more info. Thanks dudes!

Joke of the Day

I've recently been diagnosed with Guillaume-Barr syndrome. I am unable to process certain episodes of "Benson" as well as "Roseanne."

Joke of the Day

Women are now suffering from gender disappointment, post-giving birth. Whatever happened to just being happy you didn't die of diphtheria from a rusted tong? I know I know. Diphtheria isn't caused by rusty tongs. It's caused by being a member of the royal family.

Joke of the Day

The new hybrids are too quite and could pose a danger. Sound techs are creating sound effects you can pick and choose for your car. I want the "discrete lady fart" for my car. It's a soft fart followed by a desperate attempt at distracting conversation.

Joke of the Day

A friend of mine asked me out for Pakistani food in Tribeca. I said, "let's wait till these drones monitoring Pakistani activity are out of the beta phase."

Joke of the Day

Is it just me or is this Catholic church celibacy requirement bringing priests not closer to God, but closer to thinking they are God?

Joke of the Day

Conde Nast has cut Modern Bride magazine. Post-modern Bride magazine however will remain in print and totally unintelligible.

Joke of the Day

The Southeast Asian Games are set to commence this December. Events include "lady boy or real girl," "who can carry the most chicken cages on their motorcycle" and "most disgusting smell coming from a food."

Joke of the Day

Sorry, gentlemen, I'm not available. First of all, I'm a lesbian. Secondly, I have a boyfriend.

Joke of the Day

An article published in a military journal argues for the repeal of the "don't ask don't tell" policy governing "homosexual servicemembers." No word, however, about when they will stop using the term "homosexual servicemembers."

This joke lacks parallelism.

Joke of the Day

I told my mom, who's Lutheran, that I was dating a Jewish man. She said, "Well, you know their Passover Seder deserts are made from the blood of Christian babies." I told her "Mom! He's not a practicing Jew."

Joke of the Day

A jobless man in England uncovered 1,500 pieces of early Anglo-Saxon treasure. Meanwhile, basic human emotion in England remains deeply buried.

Joke of the Day

My dad asked me the other day, "I heard a writer refer to a midwestern suit. What's a midwestern suit?" I said it's a suit that comes with a secret pocket for all your excessive, unspoken judgments and prejudices.

Joke of the Day

My friend told me that every good American Jew reads Philip Roth. I told her every good Midwestern Lutheran reads the comics.

Joke of the Day

I became very concerned that I wouldn't make a difference. Then I decided to subtract one quantity from the other.

Joke of the Day

The world's oldest living person died today at 115. She ate bacon, fried chicken, ice cream and referred to black people, like herself, as "colored" and watched Jerry Springer. Now half the South is going to think they're going to live forever.

Joke of the Day

The Russian education minister is making the Gulag Archipelago assigned reading. All who do not comply will be given striped pajamas and sent to a work camp.

Joke of the Day

One million new york city high school students returned to school today, making the commute of five million subway commuters one million times worse.

Joke of the Day

Iranian vote counters continue despite strictly enforced no-sitting-on-chairs rule.

Joke of the Day

Oliver Stone is working on Wall Street 2, hoping to inadvertantly inspire a whole new generation to go into morally depraved financial jobs.

Joke of the Day

Love is an action and it looks like spellchecking.

Joke of the Day

Took the day off. :(

Joke of the Day

"Hold on a second, let me put on my guyfocals. Okay, there we go, now all I see is what is physically wrong with women."

Joke of the Day

Other than that Iranian joke I posted on Facebook, no real jokes written. Try to write something about the long-suffering Diane Sawyer, who finally got a nighttime news gig. Feel there could be something I can do with the word "avuncular." Fun word. So that's it. No new joke for today. :(

Joke of the Day

I don't write a joke. I just write down ideas like "had fight with bf" "boss made me do work" and "old people are impatient." Joke larvae.

Joke of the Day

An unpredictable wildfire raged through the Los Angeles area, destroying dozens of homes. Some Angelenos can't wait for Lindsay Lohan and Sam Ronson to breakup.

Joke of the Day

Kara apparently takes the day off like a Chinese restaurant.

Joke of the Day

I set my apartment on fire today. Nothing wild, nothing Richard Pryor 1982. Just a single woman and an unattended candle. So cliche.

Joke of the Day

Kara observes the Sabbath apparently.

Joke of the Day

My dad was raised Mennonite. That's like being Amish, but instead of a buggy you have a Buick LeSabre.

Joke of the Day

I have a tempura problem. I can’t control my batter!

Joke of the Day

"We are not going to allow Europeans to define and describe our children," said a South African close to the Semenya matter. "We will however continue to let Bono infantalize our continent."

Joke of the Day

My mom is Lutheran and my dad is Mennonite, so nobody's going to understand the joke that would come right here.

Joke of the Day

Cowboys and Indians

I’m so liberal, when I have kids I won’t let them play cowboys and Indians. They’ll have to play Social Historian and Chinese Transcontinental Railroad Worker. One child will turn to the personal diaries and other primary sources to try to piece together a narrative untold by the traditional, mainstream academy. The other child will have to build a railroad.

Joke of the Day

I saw an ad in a magazine for a Distinctive Psychiatric Hospital. That’s for when your television talks to you, but from behind a tasteful oak cabinet.

Me Against the Hamptons

On Sunday, my boyfriend and I drove out to the Hamptons for a fundraising event for his job. We tooled around in this really adorable red Mini Cooper and sang along real loud to Alicia Keyes “No One” out on Montauk Highway. Then we had to talk to people. Talking to people out in the Hamptons—wait a second. I’m going way too fast. Let’s start with the fight about what a sundress is.

“Okay, so there are three things you can wear,” my boyfriend says to me, the day before the Hamptons. “White pants with a tunic or blouse, a sundress or a long dress that goes down to your ankles. “

Right there, I was feeling uneasy for a number of reasons. Number one: my boyfriend knows what a tunic is. Only gay men and Phyllis Diller know what tunics are.

Two: there are only three categories of things I can wear. Seems a little rigid.

Three: I’m reminded that every girl in Murray Hill is wearing a long dress down to her ankles and that something normally ethereal and a delightful rare treat is right now an overplayed standard.

“Okay, so I’ll wear my J Crew linen sun dress.”

“Yes, except that’s not a sundress.”

“What?! That is too a sundress.”

“No. A sundress is cotton and has straps.”

Now I was getting angry. He clearly had something against the J Crew dress. Why not just say what his problem is with the Crew dress?? But I didn’t say this. I went to the internet and looked up “sundress definition.” Eventually, I found a definition that made me think that a linen strapless dress is too a sundress.

OH! OH! Before I forget. So we have this fight. He seems not on board with the linen dress. I fume around Manhattan and part of this involves running to an open mic in my wonderful but totally ancient (2004) and about to fall apart Calvin Klein gladiator sandals and what Greg R calls the Hiawatha dress. Well. Around the Montrose stop, the Hiawatha dress—which is I should mention pretty much SEE THROUGH--began to fall APART. Ripping at the CHEST. Not good. But a girl can carry on. If a wind doesn’t blow, and I’m not carrying a backpack, the chest piece lays flat and covers my boobs. But then, I get to Union Square where I get off the L to transfer to the F to get down to Comedy Corner, which I should say is run by a smart Russian dude Bad Slava who maintains a fantastic, accurate weblisting of open mics. (He also interviewed me for his great website wherein he does even MORE service work by interviewing comics.) ANYWAY, back to my day of horrors: as I am walking off the train, my foot gets stuck on what is presumably a wad of gum. MOTHERFUCKER! I yell to the long gone Neanderthal who once thought it was okay to put gum on the ground. I look down and what I see is my bare left foot. What the hell? I then look back, and there is my Calvin, totally Kleined. My sandal has been ripped in two by a subway rivet. It got caught and when I kept walking, part of it flew off. I go back and grab the pieces of my sandal and then begin TO WALK BAREFOOT THROUGH NEW YORK. (“Folks, I’ve heard of Barefoot in the Park but not Barefoot in the Subway, okay!”) A new low. Luckily, there is an Urban Outfitters right up at the intersection. I walk in, yes, left-foot barefoot, and prance down to the shoe section. Whereupon I grab some $12 blue canvas shoes. Like what a retarded person would wear in the 70s. Or a retarded person in 2009 if her shoe broke off.

So while I am at Urban (I know: annoying. I hate it when people call it that), I decide to peruse the sale section. If you are going to walk around barefoot in a long flowing see-through dress, the basement of Urban is the place to do it. THIS IS REAL PEOPLE. I AM NOT MESSING AROUND. I am an artist and I am poor and I am crazy. Deal. I am the package you are trying to buy.

Okay, not really but let’s pretend. So I am looking at the—ugh. This is boring me. Bottomline: I buy an adorable blue SUNDRESS with straps that my boyfriend later declares too small for me. Well. So there you have it. Through it all I tried. Tried to wear a dress with straps that would distract from my armpit wrinkles.

So before we go to the Hampton’s garden party, we decided to eat food. Never good to arrive at a garden party famished and just stuffing your face with upscale potato salad for the first half hour. So we go to grab some breakfast sandwiches.

Let me just say that you have not seen a line for breakfast sandwiches until you have seen a Sunday morning Hamptons sandwich line. People were wearing pink shorts embroidered with lobsters, waiting in line for lobster breakfast sandwiches. These people knew how to live. With an abundance of lobsters.

Let me assure you that preppy fashion is alive and well and not even in an ironic way. It looked very serious, the preppy hanging out in that breakfast line. But it was 20 people deep and we were hungry. We kept walking until we found Southhampton’s other breakfast sandwich place, which was not nearly as crowded. We got two breakfast sandwiches and when the total came to $18 I yelled out “Jesus Christ!” Which I really hadn’t intended to do but it just sort of happened BECAUSE TWO BREAKFAST SANDWICHES CAME TO $18.

At that deli, lots of ladies were prancing around in skinny tan bodies wearing drapy silky beach gowns (?) and high heels. Here’s the thing: when the milk’s gone bad, the milk’s gone bad. Aint no way to make it not smell sour. You can put on all the high heels and lotions you want, but you’re still 37.

That was mean. But seriously. This world is cruel. I am 33 and I might as well start packing up. We could be just months away from a gray pubic hair.

ANYWAY, we got back into the car, where I just wanted to stay and play Beyonce’s Halo over and over while he did his work stuff.

Here’s the thing about Hamptons parties. Luckily no one wanted to talk about what they did for a living because it appeared that some people did NOTHING for a living. Which is actually a lot like being a receptionist at a dying non-profit. So I found I had a lot in common with these people. Also, luckily being the daughter of Bill Buller has adequately prepared me for William F Buckley-based conversations, and that proved to come in quite handy.

A problem: the hedges. They really like their hedges. So you have to slow down quickly when you come to a break in the hedges to get a glimpse of the homes. A borderline dangerous game.

There was a woman selling jewelry in the pool house. The pieces started at around $3000. I mentioned to her that I had been trying to sell my Tiffany gold (ON CRAIGSLIST. This part not mentioned.) She said I shouldn’t sell it. I should expand the hole in the disc and get a chain with DIAMONDS so that it really pops. The way I had it now, she said, it just got lost against my skin. The diamonds would stand out nicely. My bf and I nodded in agreement. The diamonds would really help.

DIAMONDS.

I went back to waiting in the lemonade line.

Here’s something about rich people. Everything is always nice. “This weather is amazing! Perfect day for this event!” No it’s not. This weather is terrible and I want to go inside. I am sure the inside of your giant house is air-conditioned. I am sure you have a nice plush basement where we can go hang out and play video games and drink lemonade. Not sure why we are standing around a pool outside in garden dresses when it is 98 degrees out. Also, doesn’t anyone have pot? Why aren’t we smoking pot.

After four hours of being at a garden party (!) My bf and I got back in the car and drove back to Manhattan. It seemed like most people at the party split their time between Manhattan and the Hamptons. I feel that’s really the most practical way to do it. It was annoying having to rent the car and drive back the same day. If my bf and I had property in the Hamptons, we could have just stayed the night.

On the car ride back I made all sorts of disparaging comments about money and people with money. I think at one point I think I even said “Give me Bushwick anyday” by which I meant “I am insane.” Yes, it’s nice to have things “real.” To be in touch with the common man. To sit on the L train with America, to know that we aren’t supposed to use the words “cripples” and “negroes” anymore. But would it kill me to make some money? To actually take some solid actions towards earning serious money? Probably not. I would be able to buy a non-see through dress and have my Calvins re-Kleined.

Me Against the New Madonna Song

After enduring a barrage of gushing Madonna-Celebration-related Facebook messages, texts and emails from my gay male friends (okay: three), I finally forked over my $1.29 for the new Madonna song. Guess what? I’m disappointed. Much like the 2005 release of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, there was no way the product could live up to the hype purported by gay men. The first sign of trouble came with the song photo, which displays a collection of black and white photos of Madonna and
her skeleton head in various phases of “Party” or as she says it: “Potty.” One such photo shows her sucking on a cigarette while a male hand lights it. Potty. If it is 1993 and you are hanging out in the school parking lot, ditching class. There’s also the classic Madonna dance pose: one hand raised defiantly above her head, while she looks down to the ground, mouth open in serious “getting stuff done” dance mode. Potty.

The song does start with an authoritative dance beat, but before long Madge has to open her mouth with her commentary:

“I think you wanna come over, yeah I heard it through the grapevine.”

Pretty typical but pretty clear. Madonna is in control, in possession of the necessary information. She is a woman in the know, connected to the “grapevine.”

“Are you drunk or you sober? Think about it, doesn’t matter.”

Here she gets confusing. If it doesn’t matter, why do I have to think about it. WHY EVEN BRING IT UP. This reminds me of certain fights I’ve had with my boyfriend. I will ask a question that should have just been a statement.

Kara: Are you feeling comfortable treating me this way?

Boyfriend: What are you feeling Kara? Is there a feeling that you want to say?

Kara: YES. I FEEL LIKE I DON'T LIKE IT WHEN YOU TALK TO ME LIKE THE WAY YOU WERE TALKING. AND I DON’T LIKE THE WAY WE ARE TALKING RIGHT NOW. (takes to bed and starts crying)

Back to Madonna!

In the next lyric, she doles out some terrible advice:

“and if it makes you feel good then I say do it”

Madonna, I’m not sure how many AA friends you have or friends who compulsively eat hamburgers, but pretty much for some people? If it makes us feel good? We probably shouldn’t do it. Because it kills us. So…pretty stupid advice if you are talking to, well, Americans.

More silly lyrics:

“Let’s get this started, yeah
Coz everybody wants to party with you.”

“Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?
You look familiar…
You wanna dance? …Yeah.
I guess I just don’t recognize you with your clothes on… (laughs)”

“I’m a slut” humor: I used to be a fan. When I was 15.

Okay, maybe I’m being too hard on her. Have I tried to write a dance song? No. So let’s get a little Atticus Finch and try walking a mile in a man’s dance shoes before judging.

Here is my dance song:


Ooohhh you know I like to dance
But sometimes I feel uncomfortable
Don’t know whether to do the grocery store
Or to dance like Dr. Huxtable

I just wanna dance
Just feel the beat and get on the floor
Come on now
Put your carrot cake down and dance with me

I put on a special bra.
So I can wear a strapless dress
and still dance
Yes they served carrot cake at a wedding

Ooohhh you know I like to dance
But sometimes I feel uncomfortable
Don’t know whether to do the grocery store
Or to dance like Dr. Huxtable



Okay, so writing a dance song is pretty hard. I guess Celebration is pretty good. It does what every good Madonna dance song has made me do: make me laugh at Madonna and love her at the same time. Download it today.

"How's Business?": A Mid-morning Rant

As I was taking off my headphones this morning, after enjoying a very sensual DJ Kaos Love the Night Away remix, some elderly business douche asked me in the elevator “How’s business?”

“How’s Business?”

I’m sorry, what? To what the fuck are you referring? How does it look like I think business is? My hair is wet, I am wearing headphones and I still have a crease on my face from my bedsheets. How’s business? I have no fucking reference point for this conversation. Unless of course it’s your not-so-subtle attack on my not-ready-for-prime time business attire. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I don’t look like Bette Midler in Big Business. Sorry I am not wearing a shell-pink Anne Taylor suit and spectator pumps. But I can’t. Because 48 hours after I put on a shell-pink Anne Taylor Loft suit I will be found in my Aurora, Illinois hotel room, dead from suicide.

Sorry I’m wearing vintage running shoes with giant black Lily Tomlin “I’m on Broadway” pants. Not my first choice either. But we work with what we have. I currently make 41,500 American lady dollars a year and frankly that appears to be enough for iced coffee, bagels, the ownership of karabuller.com and frightfully little else.

How’s business?

How the fuck do you think business is? Ask yourself before you ask others. He better check himself before he wrecks himself. How’s business.

Office Talk

I was in the elevator at work the other day and this guy turned to another guy and was like, “hey looks like you were pretty heavily lauded for your work on the newsletter.”

Here’s what I have to say to that. Let’s all just settle down. Let’s just take a ten minute cool down. I think we’re all getting real nervous in this economy and we’re acting a little squirrelly. We’re using words we frankly shouldn’t be using. We might be using words where we don’t even know what they mean.

Let’s just sit this thing out with our dignity intact.

I work at an office and I have to say, I don’t really do well. There are office conversations there that as far as I’m concerned could be like Guantanimo Bay-approved acts torture. “Now, there was a Sandy in Accounts payable, but I think there was also a Sandy in HR on 14, before she left for the Toronto office. I think the Sandy in Accounts Payable left because her baby had some sort of problem.”

Okay, you know what I’m not really interested in following the sad career trajectories of mid-level people named Sandy. It’s just not my thing. It’s apparently your thing and you appear really into it. Me not so much.

Like, I once had a three way on top of a moving vehicle. I’m friends with gay boys who shit their pants and have it come out their pant leg. Those are my kinda stories. That’s were I’m coming from. That’s my wheelhouse. If you don’t have shit coming out of your pantleg I’m not interested. If this story about Sandy in Accounts Payable doesn’t end in a shitty pant leg or humiliating public sex I’m not interested.

In the Bag: Inside Women's Handbags and My Soul

Three years ago, I was interviewed by my gay best friend for his blog. He asked me probing personal questions, and I got to feel like a star. “We hear you are moving to New York soon. Why?” “As a comedian, have you ever gotten down to business inside a comedy club?” “Do you have any STDS?” But the best question of all came when he indulged me in that time-worn celebrity profile chestnut—the Purse Peek. “Describe your purse for us and all of its contents.” I wasted no time laying out the contents of my vinyl, iridescent beige Le Sportsac: an iPod, a PalmPilot (cut me some slack--it was 2005), FACE Stockholm pale pink lipstick, Black Honey Clinique lipgloss (“a must have,” I declared), Clinique powder, protective goggles for tanning, a black Uni-Ball pen, a mod notebook from Target for my jokes, Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi, Aleve Gelcaps, SuperGroom nail and cuticle groomer from Blisslabs NY and Eclipse gum. I loved that Jeremy naturally knew to ask, and I naturally knew to oblige and add running commentary.

For celebrity nuts like me, a glimpse into a star’s handbag is akin to a man’s stolen glance between a woman’s thighs. If I am idly flipping through a magazine, a shot of a ritzy purse spilling its contents will stop me dead in my tracks. My pulse will quicken. I’ll look around to see if anyone notices. This is it. This is what I want. It is a peek into a full life, well-lived—and lived with shitloads of money. (Let’s not kid ourselves; a big part of this is about money.) Just like us, these are human beings with bad breath and ragged cuticles. But oh, look at what they have to take care of these imperfections! The breath mints are tucked into a $5,000 purse, and Madonna’s manicurist is on speed dial in that cellphone. These are the belongings of people who are doing something right, and so I stare at those lists of objects as if I am divining the Torah. Answers can be found inside the depths of that handbag. Why am I thirty-two years old and still not making a living at comedy? Maybe I should be more like Rebecca Romijn O’Connell and pack some extra handywipes for the airport and a Granny Smith apple in case I get hungry?

I am not alone in this obsession with handbag innards. Inside Your Handbag porn, as I call it, is something of a phenomenon. There is a seventeen year old boy in the Phillipines who runs a site, insidemyhandbag.com, where anybody can scan in an image of their bag and its contents. You can scroll through image after image of candy-colored designer bags spilling Dior lipsticks, pink cellphones, and sun tan lotion. Under each image is a simple label: Balenciaga in San Francisco, Manbag from Istanbul. Bryanboy, the “curator” of the site, says that there is no discrimination, all handbags are welcome. However, the site pretty exclusively features designer handbags loaded with pricey goodies from around the world. There is no Liz Claiborne bag from Duluth spilling Vaseline tubs and a Gap wallet.

But never fear, Liz Claiborne in Duluth, there is a place for you too in this vast handbag-exploring world. In a shopping forum on Style.com, a website owned by Vogue and W magazines, one user asked for members to detail the contents of their bags and twenty five women responded—making it one of the most popular posts. A wider array can be found on InStyle.com, where they maintain a blog entitled “In Your Bag,” where you can peek inside Celebrity and non-celebrity handbags. Ivanka Trump opened up her purple croc purse to reveal a much-used passport (two additional inserts), lip gloss and Altoids. In Style, knowing the drill, has the owner explain a few of the items. We learn that Ivanka is reading Gore Vidal because she “doesn’t like to waste time reading trash.” Please allow me to interrupt and call “bullshit!” right now. She’s not reading Gore Vidal. But she, like myself, understands that the illusion of fine literacy has its power. I got halfway through that Lolita in Tehran book and gave it a rest. But, it stayed in that purse in case someone impressively academic-looking boarded my train. Where is the truth? I don’t want the studio’s press release version of inner-purse life; I want the real thing.

For this, there is the reader comments section. Scroll down and watch America dump out her purse. “In my purse i keep LIPGLOSS, MONEY,MINTS,MY GRAY RAZR & a couple SNIKERS bars.” “In my Xhilaration bag from Target: a blood pressure monitor and medications for my allergies and hypertension.” Seriously. Now we are talking! “…my library card and an inhaler.” Inside a Degas bag, we see a bible (“Always with me”) and Fender guitar picks. Another has keys for her home and her percussion practice rooms.

Oh, Becky and your blood pressure cuff! How infinitely more interesting you are than Ivanka and her chapped, Chanelled lips. Bring on Heather, with her pot pipe and tin foil and a her ex-boyfriend’s note ripped off her Toyota Corolla. Each one of these women is her own gothic novella, some dark Nowheresville tale waiting to unfold. Oh the secrets and lies lurking in the handbags across the nation. The private sorrows and furtive dreams. Ivanka’s is nice to look at, but Tammy from Des Moines--hers has a live, beating human heart.

In the end, I need both. The celebrity bags keep me dreaming and moving forward, forever feeling incomplete. One day, I too shall carry a lucky seashell from my movie premiere at Cannes. Maybe backup designer sunglasses from a boutique in Venice. But, until then, the Duluth bags keep me grounded, in the moment and grateful for my own purse’s partially used Kleenex, waiting to collect my over-chewed gum.

Let's Wear the Right Shoes When We Go to the Buddha

I am happy to report that I went to meditation last night and I saw no shoes that were of major concern. Sometimes I will go there and I will see outside the door a pair of brown leather Doc Martins lying slightly askew next to a pair of tossed-off large white running shoes and I will say “no no no. How can I experience an absence of suffering with this going on. I suggest you people “look deeply” at your shoes and then get back to me.” Of course, I am slipping off gigantic black New Balance USA 992s but that is because I am a compulsive runner and am part lesbian and therefore am exempted from the standards to which I hold others. But *these* people. Coming to the Lower East Side to meditate? Let’s clean it up and come dressed appropriately. Last night there was a black pair of Uggs, which I’m fine with, as well as some Velcro black canvas jobbies that looked “very cool gay man.”

At one point the leader pulled out his fancy microphone/recorder so that he could record it for his podcast*, and then everyone started making what I felt were very ostentatious “I want to hear myself on the podcast noises.” A guy loudly flipping through his notebook of Buddhist notes (!), a woman clearing her throat then slightly moaning. They were all wanting their moment in the spotlight. I had no craving for this, what with my television show The Kara Buller Show and my other media outlets.

The leader made a reference to his iphone and an app that he particularly loves, called “Things” which helps you organize your to-do lists. I felt buoyed. Perhaps if I study meditation enough, I too will have clear skin and an Iphone. Right now, all I have is the itouch, which is fine, but if walking the way of the Buddha can lead to more, then I’m on board.

click http://www.theidproject.com/podcast.htm for the podcasts. Boy, I tell you the 31 year old kid who runs this thing is on fire. He talks like the supersmart friend you got high with in high school before he left for Harvard, looks like the supercute gay friend we all want to have or be and is committed to prison reform like that gray-haired lesbian who looked at me like I’m a slut yesterday probably is! Goooo Ethan Nichtern!

The Lefse Story

In August of 2008 I went to Norway with my mother for a mother-daughter “lets connect with the ancestors” tour. We were both obsessed with our Scandinavian ancestry in a way that was so prideful that—I might as well say it—it bordered on racist. It was no secret that in our house to be Scandinavian was to be superior or, more accurately, simply more pleasing to God. I remember once complaining to my mother about a boyfriend who was alcoholic, unloving, and Finnish. My mother: “Oh you didn’t tell me he was Finnish.” I too fell into this “blinded by the Scandi” syndrome. To be tall and blonde, out on fjord near naked, in hiking boots, eating berries, as I had honest to God seen depicted in a tourist brochure, was in my mind the pinnacle of human existence. I was aware I was traveling with my seventy year old mother, and the chances of encountering these nude, berry-eating types was next to nil, I felt it was still worth a shot. Just to see them from the distance or to be able to offer them my seat on the ferry boat, would be worth the trip.

While I was hoping for Bjorn and Leta nude on the fjord, my mother was pursuing something less erotically charged. She was looking for lefse, the flatbread that we eat each Christmas. It looks like a tortilla, flat, round and soft, with little brown spots from where the lefse pan lightly burns the dough. Lefse is made from mashed potatoes, sugar, butter and lots and lots of flour and has a mild flavor of Protestant restraint.

On the wall of my mother’s kitchen hangs her lefse turner, which she takes down once a year when she makes her Christmas batch. My mother rolls out the lefse dough, which has been chilling in the refrigerator for the past twenty-four hours, while my father mans the lefse grill: a flat, circular piece of metal that sits on a platform, which plugs into the wall. He flips as she passes more and more lefse rounds his way. It’s a delight to see my parents, who have done nothing but plague us with their incessant petty bickering (“Bill, I don’t think you should leave your coffee cup on the table like that. Don’t you like to use a coaster?” His response: IF I WANTED TO USE A GODDAMNED COASTER I WOULD HAVE USED A COASTER!” Hell.) Once the lefse is heated and put on a blue and white (my mother wouldn’t have it any other way) plate, we spread butter and grape jelly on it and roll it up. The lefse is the linchpin of Christmas at the Bullers—without it we might all come unhinged. We would know that something has gone terribly, terribly wrong.

Lefse is the pale, flavorless heart of Norwegian-American cooking. At Lutheran churches across the Midwest, a polite but serious competition exists amongst the ladies of the church. Who has the best lefse recipe? Who made the best lefse at the Norwegian Independence Celebration? Not too sweet, not too dry. Was it Peggy Lutherman? Or Nora Olufsson?

And so, with each ticket agent, train conductor, or shop attendant we encountered, my mother would ask, “Do you know where I could find lefse?” They would tilt their head to the side, look off into the distance and ask, “lef..lefse..wha?” “You know, lefse.” And my mother would get nervous and start buttering an imaginary piece of lefse in her hand, as if that would unlock a specific memory in the Norwegian’s mind. “No, no…I do not know,” the kind but pretty much unemotional Norwegian would say. In Stockholm and Storlien and Trondheim, my mother asked about lefse.

“Mom, why do you want to try their lefse so much? You know what your lefse is like? Why would you want store-bought lefse?”

“Oh, just to find out. You can’t go all the way to Norway and not try lefse!”

In Ostersund, Sweden, we got close, when the lady at the train station information desk (“Aah yes! I have been to America. I love Elvis. So I have been to Memphis.”) directed us to a pastry counter in town, but alas all we found were plump breads and bagels.

It wasn’t until we got to Norway’s lousy-with-foreigners capital, Oslo, the town my mother dreaded, because of all the “Pakistanians,” that we found lefse. We were standing in a 7-11, trying to buy drinking water, when I spotted a lit-from-the-back sign above the store-owner’s head. There was a hot dog, plump and sweaty, nestling in a piece of lefse.

“Is that lefse?!” I asked the Pakistani store-owner.

“Is flatbread, so yes, lefse.” The man wore his shirt unbuttoned down to his sternum and you could see his ample black chest hair crawling forth.

“You have heard of lefse?!” My mother practically jumped across the counter.

“Yes, yes. You can find it at the grocery stores in town.”

“Which one?” My mother and I asked at the same time. Apparently I had gotten pulled into the Great Lefse Hunt without my realizing it.

“Oh any of them. Just ask for lefse.”

“Thank you very much. We have been looking all over Norway for this.” I paid for the water (probably $5 US dollars), offered more gushing gratitude and unnecessary explanations, possibly even going into the annual Buller Christmas dinner, and wished him a good night.
My mother and I walked into the wild Oslo night reinvigorated. Lefse was in this very city! Now it was just a matter of time. We walked and walked, until we stumbled upon a grocery store, which was right next to a club featuring stand-up comedy, which I do unprofessionally, as I like to say. It was as if God was smiling down on the Buller women. Stand-up comedy and lefse in the same block! While my mom went to the grocery store, I went to check out the comedy. I walked into the bar, and followed the signs up the stairs to a packed room, where a comedy show was in full swing.

“Ick vul drod jammerskold ja tik nul!” The crowd exploded into laughter.

I asked if the show was free, and they said it was, but it was all in Swedish.

I went back down to find my mother in the grocery store.

I found her in aisle two, amidst a pile of lefse. She had several draping from one arm, while others were resting on the bread slicing machine (!).

“Look at the varieties they have!” She showed me oval lefse, gluten-free lefse, whole wheat lefse… “They are ten dollars each though!”

“No, mom, that’s Norwegian Kroner. So that’s two US dollars each.”

“Oh, that’s right, what am I thinking?” My mother had been making this mistake the whole trip, never having been to a foreign country before—and apparently, now at the age of seventy, incapable of taking in new information.

“Well, then we really have to stock up!”

We bought lefse for co-workers and church members and friends and family. Some for the flight home and some for the train ride back to Sweden. We left with about ten packs of lefse. On the front, the packages said “Lumpe brod: A Taste of the Old Norway.”

Back at the youth hostel we tried to entice our fellow boarders with lefse.

“How bout a taste of the real Norway?” my mother asked the very attractive Frenchmen she would be sleeping across from that night.

“Ahhhh, no thank you.”

On our train ride back to Stockholm, my mother and I enjoyed our lefse, even though it added an extra twenty pounds to our luggage. We agreed it was quite good. It tasted just like hers, it was just missing that flawed homemade look.

It was the absence of the weight of the lefse that I noticed as we lugged our bags up the ramp to the ferry to leave the retreat. “The lefse!” I cried out. But with a plane the next morning and a ferry schedule to stick to, my mother and I did not turn back.

The Swedes on the ferry asked why my mother and I were so down. “Our lefse,” we pouted. “Your what?” Only the Norwegian Americans would understand.