Kara Buller

8 Fabulous Things to Give Yourself

2011-12-09T15:02:00.014-05:00

the MoMa Thermal Carafe, $42

Struggling with what to give yourself this Christmas? Imploding over the stress of what to get that special someone (you)? Let KB make a few suggestions.

Home Comforts: The Art & Science of Keeping House, by Cheryl Mendelson.

If you have ever felt a lack of confidence about your ability to keep house, and if you have ever swooned over a beautifully executed sentence about dust, this book belongs on your mindfully-dusted bookshelf. I showed up late last night for a comedy performance because I became convinced I needed to have this book. I was right. I needed to have this book and so may you. Buy it for yourself without reservation and for someone else with caution. I know I might take offense if someone handed me a housekeeping manual. Ms. Cheryl Mendelson, Esq., you are rocking my domestic world. http://www.amazon.com/Home-Comforts-Science-Keeping-House/dp/0743272862/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323452992&sr=1-1

Earphone Splitter - The Branch.

How else could Irving and I so luxuriously enjoy an episode of "Bored to Death" while riding the F train? Sure we could do the whole "one bud for you, one bud for me" thing, but that's so high school. We're 35 now! At least I am. Get the Branch. Or as Irving calls it, "The Aorta." $10. http://www.momastore.org/museum/moma/ProductDisplay_Branch%20Earphone%20Splitter_10451_10001_111827_-1_26663_26663_111856

HUT Studios Christmas tree ornaments.

These are for anyone who loves NYC--and who doesn't? That's right: I don't. But I live here and I'm a comedian and have to keep up that whole "life isn't treating me right" schtick. Get your miniature Twin Towers, your Chrysler Building, your Empire State Building. Also: West Village, Times Square, Lincoln Center, the corner of Evergreen and Jefferson where I got mugged.... I wish they made a 1970s Times Square and a 2011 Times Square. Maybe in time. For now, enjoy all the different hoods and highlights AND one of the most obnoxious websites since I made one in community college: http://hutstudios.com/

Everything Kitchen Book (I need to get the real title).

I purchased this book over ten years ago when I moved into my first apartment in Chicago's Ravenswood. Contains very helpful hints, such as the stay-with-me-for-the-rest-of-my-life "if it floats, it's old." That's in regards to eggs. I was recently at a dinner party and the conversation turned to fun kitchen tricks. Okay, I grabbed the wheel and cranked it towards "kitchen tricks." We had fun. Save your family from a bad egg, and get yourself this book.

Hudson Bay Blanket.

My heater is broken. Guess who doesn't care? Besides honey bagdger, I don't care because I have a thick, super warm wool Hudson Bay Blanket. I purchased mine years ago at an antique store along the Wisconsin-Illinois border for a reasonable $125. Woolrich is selling them for $370, but find them on ebay and at antique stores for less. Check out the pic from a New Yorker fiction photo. Worth it, don't you think? http://www.woolrich.com/woolrich/browse/productDetail.jsp?icSale=true&icProduct=995040&icSort=

LL Bean Flannel Sheets.

For the ultimate "camping with your loving family in the Adirondacks in the 70s" experience. Never experienced that? Who did. Whether you are taking to your bed due to seasonal depression or reliving a fantasy past that never happened, these are the sheets for you. Get them in one of the charming prints: Evergreen, Vintage Skier, or Plaid Forest. $69 to Prices I Can't Afford. http://www.llbean.com/llb/shop/23840?feat=66505-ppxs&dds=y

J Crew Minnie Pant.

I tried these on last Wednesday and went total lesbo for myself. That's how flattering these are. Get them in the bi-stretch wool. I don't care that they are cropped-legged pants like my mom wears. Prices I Can't Afford. http://www.jcrew.com/womens_category/pants/minnie/PRDOVR~47383/47383.jsp

MoMA's Shiny Red Thermal Carafe! REMOVED

Usually I rave about things I already own. I do not already own this. But it looks great and I bet it works great too. UPDATE: this thing looks nothing like the photo in real life. I thought it would be shiny just like the pic. It's a matte plastic rather than glossy. For shame MoMA! Get a more realistic pic before you get a torrent of highly descriptive and artsmart complaints from your high falutin' customer base.

http://www.momastore.org/museum/moma/ProductDisplay_Modern%20Classic%20Thermal%20Carafe_10451_10001_112096_-1_26669_26671_112154

What are your favorite gifts to yourself this season? Anything I absolutely shouldn't miss?

An Oldie But Goodie: Lutherans, Death and Exaggerating Aunts

2011-11-04T15:40:00.002-05:00

This Sunday I was home for Easter with my family.

I have always loved Easter. Lutherans go absolutely apeshit for it. The resurrection of the body of their Lord, Jesus Christ has them positively mad with happiness. The hymns at Easter have more horns than a Mighty Mighty Bosstones tourbus and have the congregation literally crying out “Prince of Peace! Lord of Lords!” As I child, I remember each Easter in Sunday school making some sort of artistic rendering in honor of that fantastic Sunday morning when they rolled away the stone. A removable cut-out of the stone that you could place back on the tomb, a Mary Magdalene finger puppet, a bath towel brought from home and fashioned into headgear for an in-class play. Frankly, I was never on board with the whole “he’s gone up to heaven” theory. It went against everything I had gathered in my ten years on the planet. If something is missing, it’s because somebody took it or a tornado came and whirled it away. Just like when Chastity Gunther had her hearing aid disappear. It wasn’t because it ascended into heaven. It was because Mark Cody took it. I was no fool. I wasn’t buying any of this “he disappeared and went to this magical place in the sky” bullcrap. And to predicate a whole way of life upon it? Flimsy at best. I started refusing to go to church. None of this made any sense. Of course, what Ellie Buller could have done was sat me down and told me that as members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, we weren’t biblical literalists and were going to church more for the built-in friendships, folk songs and annual recipe book. That I would buy. But my mother resisted my resistance and we’ve been locking horns ever since.

Still, I go to church. For her.

After church, in the parking lot, waiting for my mom to hug hello to every solo senior lady in the church, my brother asked me what I do during the service. “Oh, I try to really be present for it. You know, really listen. Try to sort out the bullshit from the stuff that actually makes sense.” I went on. “I think it’s interesting that every religion tries to circumnavigate death. Like we just can’t accept that we might die and that’s it. We’re either reincarnated or go to heaven. We just can’t accept that this might be it.”

Mom and Dad eventually came and we drove home. I didn’t mention that I noticed Steve Templeton’s mom had purchased a commemorative Easter lily in his honor for the alter— even though her son is the one who back in summer of ‘94 told everyone, post-make out with me, that he “wouldn’t touch Kara Buller with a ten foot dick,” causing me to take to my bed for the whole summer. I’m pretty sure we did make out so I’m pretty sure it was okay for me to tell everyone. Sure, I have no clear memory of making out with him now, but if I back then said I did I must have… at any rate it was clearly wrong for Steve to say that thing about a ten foot dick.

Back at the house, I went back to working on my blown out egg project with Cassandra and steering a child towards crippling perfectionism. “Hold it very carefully Cassandra. Don’t—better let me do it.”

“Oh shit!” I heard my brother yell from the living room. Then my dad started yelling. “Now look at what you did!” My brother had knocked the fake window panes off the window while he was looking out the window. “Maybe we shouldn’t be tacky and have fake window panes!” I thought in my head.

“Is Buddy out!?!?!!” my mother yelled from the kitchen. “I’ll get the leash!”

“The dog is out again!?!” my sister yelled.

Our beagle runs away at least once a day and sends the whole family skittering all over the neighborhood in a shameful panic. There’s the Bullers, out of control again with their out of control dog.

My brother ran outside of the house then came back in.

“Mom! Mom! Come! You need to do CPR!”

“The dog isn’t out?!??”

“NO! Just come!”

As my mom and dad grabbed their jackets, I went out to the front yard with my brother to see what was going on. Across the street, under a clear blue sky and amid trees just starting to bud, a car was parked up on a lawn, next to a bent utility pole and on the green grass a man in a peach shirt was lying motionless. I could hear a girl screaming “MY DAD MY DAD SOMEBODY DO SOMETHING!!!!”

Her wails were desperate, pained, and apparently, futile. Neighbors came out of their houses and a crowd started to gather around the body. Nobody attempted CPR or took his pulse. Eventually someone brought out a blanket and placed it over the body. I guess early on it had been determined a lost cause.

The wailing continued and was intolerable, too much for me to take. Too heartbreaking. That one moment you are driving down the road on a beautiful Easter Sunday with your annoying, joking father and the next he is lying dead on the ground. I went back inside.

“What’s going on?!?!” my niece asked.

“Let’s just wait inside. Let’s just wait inside.” If I was disturbed by this scene, I couldn’t imagine what it would do to a ten year old.

“What’s happening?”

I held my niece close and rubbed her back. “It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay. Even when things aren’t okay. They really are okay. Even when people die it is okay.” I realized I was comforting myself more than I was her—and saying really inappropriate things—a horrifying preview of how I would parent.

“But what’s going on??”

“I think someone’s losing her daddy right now.”

When I was eleven, Palm Sunday took my mother’s mother, then one week later Easter took my father’s father. I didn’t know these people. They were ancient people from another world—and literally another century. Proper, simple people. Rickety and serious with 1950s glasses and worn bibles. Still, it was jarring to me. The buds on the trees, the light breezes and the soft pastels my mother made me wear. All these things were signifying life, comfort and family, and in the midst of it was irreversible, inarguable death. I remember standing next to my mother in the pews of a small Lutheran church in Wisconsin as we sang “Amazing Grace” at her mother’s funeral. I couldn’t do it. Tears streamed down my face and I hiccupped as I tried to breath. My aunt rubbed my back. “Oh Kara. It’s okay. It’s okay. We know you miss her.” I wasn’t crying for my grandmother, though, who I hardly knew. I was crying for my mother and for me and all that I was learning.

I wanted to protect my niece from this sort of “death amid the willows” imagery, but I supposed there was no use fighting it.

Eventually, the Crystal Lake Fire & Rescue showed up with two trucks and my parents and my siblings walked back to the house.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Oh some woman was freaking out. I guess she just had shock. Her tire blew out.”

“Well, what about the man?”

“What man?”

“The man who was lying on the ground motionless, who had the blanket pulled over him.”

“That was a woman.”

“But there was a woman screaming about her dad and the dad way lying on the ground!!”

“No. The woman had shock and was yelling like crazy for her dad. She was driving when her tire blew out. Must not have been going more than like 35.”

“So nobody died Aunt Kara?”

“I guess not.”

A tow truck drove by towing the woman’s car. Later, a utility team showed up to try to fix the pole.

Cassandra’s dad showed up out of nowhere. “So somebody died?!”

“No. Aunt Kara just thought somebody did.”

“There was a man lying on the ground and someone was screaming her head off! Yes I thought somebody died!”

We went back to our blown eggs.

“You told Cassandra somebody died?” My brother asked.

“Well. Why was that woman looking so much like a man!?" I really thought that lady was a dead man.

Buller vs. Buller: The Mouse Trial

2010-09-16T17:28:00.002-05:00

Prosecutor: Ms. Buller, can you tell us what woke you in the early morning hours of September 16, 2010?

Ms. Buller: Why yes.

Prosecutor: You don’t have to do your little money-maker Jackie O impression for us Ms. Buller. Just tell us what woke you.

Ms. Buller: Well, at first I just knew it was a squeaking sound. A loud, close squeaking sound, like someone was rubbing rubber clown shoes on a car window.

Prosecutor: Is that what you thought Ms. Buller? That someone was rubbing clown shoes on a car window inside your room?

Ms. Buller: No. I just said it sound—

Prosecutor: Ms. Buller, can you tell me WHY someone would put clown shoes on a car window that had been placed inside your room?

Ms. Buller: You are bad at your job.

Prosecutor: Well you are bad at your job. Did you do anything to investigate the sound?

Ms. Buller: No. I was terrified. I wanted it to be squeaky clown party shoes worn by my roommate or a radiator hissing, but we don’t have radiant heat..so

Prosecutor: Do you even know what kind of heat you do have Ms. Buller?

Ms. Buller: You’re just like attacking me for random things and not even forwarding a specific line of questioning.

Prosecutor: “You’re just like attacking me for random things and not even forwarding a specific line of questioning.” Gettin’ all fancy pants I see. Think your 1.5 years at a flagship university entitles you to smarty pants aggressive language like that. But you had to struggle to arrive at that particular word string didn’t you?

Ms. Buller: What are you like, the evil voices in my head?

Prosecutor: Well, yes. That’s exactly who I am. Your negative self inner-talk.

Ms. Buller: And you are putting me on trial for what happened on the night of September 16, 2010?

Prosecutor: You got it! Ms. Buller, can you tell us what’s under your bed right now?

Ms. Buller: Well…currently, just glue traps, and some strips of carpet tape, and well now, something else.

Prosecutor: Why don’t you tell the jury what that something else is.

Ms. Buller: (long pause, looks down) A live mouse.

Prosecutor: A live mouse!

Ms. Buller: Yes.

Prosecutor: And what is the mouse doing?

Ms. Buller: well, I don’t know right now because I’m on brain trial here and not in my room, but I can tell you that it is, well, affixed to a glue trap and….

Prosecutor: Crying. Isn’t that right Ms. Buller? It’s most likely glued to a trap, it’s cute little paws outstretched, outstretched in glue, as it cries and writhes for freedom, the freedom which you snatched away from him on the night of September 16, 2010, when he scurried INNOCENTLY and cute-like along, onto one of your heinous glue traps. Ms. Buller, why do you even have glue traps in your room?

Ms. Buller: Well, first off, “objection!” all over the place on your last couple sentences. “Leading the witness!” That’s something, right? Anyway, I have glue traps because my landlord told me to put them down to catch the bed bugs.

Prosecutor: Bed Bugs! So you have bed bugs on top of mice! You must be a pretty disgusting person Ms. Buller.

Ms. Buller: Okay, that is exactly the kind of harsh language our therapist warned us about. I’m not disgusting or bad or gross I just happen to have traps all over my room to catch live animals. Oh god.

Prosecutor: Ms. Buller, I’m going to let you have your moment of shame there for like 3 (looks at watch) seconds, before I ask you this: glue traps for bed bugs? Nowhere on the bedbugger.com website--pretty much the web-based authority on bedbugs and I think you know that because you were on that site in a pretty much addictive way for two weeks in August. August.—anywho, on this bedbugger website does it say “put down glue traps and just kinda see what you catch?”

Ms. Buller: No. I agree. Nowhere on there does it say glue traps. My landlord told me to put them down.

Prosecutor: Ahhhh. Your landlord. Now if your landlord told you to jump off a short pier, would you do it?

Ms. Buller: Umm…that’s not really how that phrase goes but no, I would not jump off a short pier. I was thinking I should do everything my landlord tells me to do as far as bed bug remediation or elimination, so that if it goes to trial I would be able to say, “I did everything that was suggested.”

Prosecutor: Ms. Buller, are you insane?

Ms. Buller: Generally, no.

Prosecutor: Preparing for mock landlord trial? What sort of trial was this Ms. Buller? Some sort of bed bug court? The Brooklyn Court of Bed Bugs?

Ms. Buller: I’m sure it won’t be long...

Prosecutor: Can you tell us a bit about your relationship with mice?

Ms. Buller: Well, I harbor no ill will. I think they are actually sort of cute. There’s that children’s book A Mouse in the House—well I think. I loved Ratatouille. Of course, that was a rat, but…I generally don’t freak out about little creatures like other people do. I like that Jeremy Benthem quote “The question is not do they think but can they feel.”

Prosecutor: Ehh…according to the internet the quote is “The question is not, "Can they reason?" nor, "Can they talk?" but rather, "Can they suffer?"

Ms. Buller: I stand correctable.

Prosecutor: What did you do when you heard the mouse’s cries for help?

Ms. Buller: well, first I want to say that there’s a bit of anthropomorphizing going on here—and that’s going to be inevitable. Cries for help? Okay, fine... That’s what they were. They probably weren’t mating calls. It was a call so that it could be saved and live and go on to mouse school and have mouse children and have a mouse midlife crisis and buy a mouse convertible. Have a mouse affair. Comb his hair over to one side at the mouse high school reunions. Go fuck yourself. It’s just a mouse.

Prosecutor: Are you aware that the Human Society has labeled glue traps as inhumane? And yet you had one under your bed.

Ms. Buller: FOR BED BUGS.

Prosecutor: ANSWER MY QUESTION.

Ms. Buller: Which one.

Prosecutor: The one where I really stick it to you and ask you what you did once you heard the cries for help.

Ms. Buller: Well, it was agonizing. I felt—

Prosecutor: Not looking for feelings, looking for actions.

Ms. Buller: I put my earplugs back in. They had fallen out.

Prosecutor: You put your earplugs back in so you wouldn’t have to hear the cries from a terrified and emperilled creature.

Ms. Buller: Yes. There was nothing I could do!

Prosecutor: Maybe take a shovel and put it out of its misery maybe!

Ms. Buller: Okay, right, with the shovel I keep in my closet right next to my Proactiv kits and vintage skirts.

Prosecutor: Do you own a hammer?

Ms. Buller: Oh God. I do.

Prosecutor: Well, tonight, instead of working out, I want you to go home, get some newspapers, lay them down, get the trap, then get the hammer and put that living, suffering thing out of its misery.

Ms. Buller: Oh Lord. For being the evil voices in my head you’re actually thinking quite…bravely and ethically. Can’t I do this with poison? Maybe some mouse euthanasia?

Prosecutor: Let’s research this together on the internet. Me, the part that always criticized you but helped you get pretty much straight A’s through college and you, the “true self” of consciousness or whatever Oprah bullshit you call you.

Ms. Buller: Again, kinda sounding pretty much on target here, Evil Voice. Let’s go.

2010-08-19T13:46:00.000-05:00

Here in New York there’s a bar named The 13th step. I don’t mean to sound sensitive, but that’s like creating a “More Choices for Sophie Children’s Cancer Hospital.”

2010-08-19T09:17:00.001-05:00

Police continue to search for two Arizona fugitives. One is missing an incisor tooth and the other is missing half of her finger. Quite the pair, well, where a pairing occurs.

2010-07-02T11:36:00.001-05:00

Mia Farrow will testify in Naomi Campbell "handful of diamonds from Liberian president" case. What's next? Stockard Channing as star witness in Linda Evangelista arms to Darfur rebels trial?

2010-06-30T15:44:00.001-05:00

Benigno Aquino III, the new President of the Phillipines, has promised, in his efforts to signal change and honest leadership, that his calvacade will stop at red lights and not use sirens. Also, he will yield to pedestrians, tip homeless window-washers and not pick his nose in the car.

Confirmation hearings continue for solicitor general Elena Kagan. It appears to be a slam dunk and the bulk of what is transpiring is procedural--most agree she will be confirmed lesbian.

2010-06-29T17:55:00.001-05:00

So happy to hear about Kevin Costner's oil separating machine! Also, Rebecca DeMornay's pelican-cleaning machine...excellent development.

2010-06-29T17:54:00.001-05:00

The New York Times reports that the even the most significantly advanced robot administrative assistants are unable to process jokes, irony and sarcasm. As technology advances though, the avatars will someday be able to forward prayer chains and terrible jokes about men.

2010-06-29T17:53:00.001-05:00

California's controller began printing i.o.u.'s in lieu of cash to pay taxpayers, vendors and local governments. Also, the state began coloring in coupons for "free back massage and car wash" and began making a list of everything it appreciates about you.

2010-06-28T13:53:00.004-05:00

New York Times Finally Able to Publish Robert C. Byrd Obituary.

Today the New York Times unveiled its sixteen year old obituary of Robert C. Byrd, the ninety-two year old United States Senator.

"This has been something I've been dusting off for a good two decades. It's really the end of an era for those of us in the Obituary section." The obituary, originally written in ugh I got like four poor quality hours of sleep last night.

Show This Friday, November 13th!

2009-11-10T14:54:00.003-05:00

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

2009-11-05T14:50:00.002-05:00

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

2009-10-16T16:10:00.000-05:00

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

2009-10-15T11:51:00.001-05:00

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

2009-10-14T11:22:00.001-05:00

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

2009-10-13T14:14:00.000-05:00

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

2009-10-11T16:21:00.000-05:00

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

2009-10-05T15:56:00.001-05:00

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

Joke of the Day

2009-10-02T15:56:00.000-05:00

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

2009-10-01T14:37:00.001-05:00

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

Joke of the Day

2009-09-30T16:48:00.000-05:00

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

2009-09-29T16:49:00.000-05:00

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

2009-09-25T12:20:00.001-05:00

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

2009-09-24T12:41:00.000-05:00

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

2009-09-23T12:44:00.000-05:00

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

2009-09-12T16:36:00.000-05:00

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

2009-09-11T12:15:00.000-05:00

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

2009-09-10T11:38:00.000-05:00

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

2009-09-09T11:34:00.002-05:00

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

2009-09-08T17:58:00.002-05:00

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

Joke of the Day

2009-09-07T17:56:00.000-05:00

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

2009-09-06T11:31:00.001-05:00

Love is an action and it looks like spellchecking.

Joke of the Day

2009-09-05T11:35:00.001-05:00

Took the day off. :(

Joke of the Day

2009-09-04T11:32:00.001-05:00

"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

2009-09-03T16:41:00.003-05:00

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

2009-09-02T16:40:00.000-05:00

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

2009-09-01T16:03:00.001-05:00

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

2009-08-31T15:59:00.000-05:00

Kara apparently takes the day off like a Chinese restaurant.

Joke of the Day

2009-08-30T15:58:00.000-05:00

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

2009-08-29T15:57:00.000-05:00

Kara observes the Sabbath apparently.

Joke of the Day

2009-08-28T15:56:00.000-05:00

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

Joke of the Day

2009-08-27T16:48:00.001-05:00

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

Joke of the Day

2009-08-26T15:10:00.001-05:00

"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

2009-08-25T15:09:00.000-05:00

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

2009-08-24T14:09:00.000-05:00

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

2009-08-23T13:28:00.000-05:00

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

2009-08-21T11:07:00.002-05:00

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

2009-08-17T14:41:00.004-05:00

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

2009-06-16T11:23:00.004-05:00

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

2009-06-16T11:22:00.000-05:00

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

2009-06-11T13:43:00.003-05:00

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

2009-04-21T13:57:00.001-05:00

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

2009-04-15T15:23:00.003-05:00

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.

TomKat with My Own Two Eyes

2007-11-16T19:47:00.000-05:00

Oh my fucking god you would not believe how Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes – o – licious my day was. Never has a day been so Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes – o – riffic. It all started when I threatened to quit my job. Which I do very inefficiently and on a regular basis. I'll like walk up to a lampshade or a bellman and say, "You guys are really gonna get it when I'm gone!" "You don't understand how bad I want a four day work week!" And then I'll walk away. What I need to do is just walk away. Enough. ANYWAY, I told one of the managers that he doesn't understand how close he is to losing me, and he immediately went back to looking up diet information on his computer. Then I ran into him in a hotel hallway after work when I was in streetclothes, which I'm pretty sure is NOT acceptable. At least in my world. Disney workers CANNOT be seen smoking holding on to their Goofy heads. You get the idea. I have standards. Okay we get it. Let's get to the TomKat! So this co-worker/manager (anybody who is younger than me but has power over me gets the term "co-worker/manager") says "Why don't you go across the street and see what's going on?" Across the street I could see barricades set up and papparazzi hanging out. What the fuck. I was going to go to the library and work on some freewriting but FUCK THAT. We got some celebs coming our way. So I walk across the street to go in front of the fancy catering hall that I SWEAR one of these days I will set foot in. They have two various barricaded areas set up where people are penned in like pigs: one for the press, one for the public. I figure, what the fuck. What the fuck do I have to lose. So I crawl into one of the pens. Having no idea who is coming. I'm just standing there like an idiot. "I wike cewebwitieees! Me like pwetty peepow!" Eventually one black guy standing with us asks, "Who are we waiting for?" "Tom Cruise?," one other girl says. I laugh. We have no idea why we're here. I think it would be funny to start telling people Tom Cruise is coming when it's probably just like low level like British celebrities. Then I ask nobody in particular if maybe it is for real Tom Cruise. A girl turns around and sayss "Yeah it's a tribute to Tom Cruise." ALMOST as if on cue, another black car pulls up to drop off more rich doctors and their botoxed wives. This time the driver gets out and yells, "Who y'all waitin' fuh?" in a real dumb ..:NAMESPACE PREFIX = ST1 />Brooklyn accent. "Tom Cruise!" we yell. "It's a tribute to Tom Cruise!" yells the lady who knew it was a tribute. She's been really into the word "tribute" which I feel is a weird choice of words. I have heard of like a tribute to the Beatles or to the Firefighters killed in 9/11, but Tom Cruise? So then the car driver yells out, "A tribute for what?" Real incredulous. "I wasted my gas for that!" Then he gets back into his car and drives away. Which I think a lot of us agreed was great. One girl got offended and was like "You got paid didn't you." Clearly pro-Tom. Around this time a hub-bub breaks out over in the press pen. The men with big cameras standing on stools (yes step stools) standing behind the pen start yelling, "GETTIM OUTTA HEAH! Gettimmm outttTA HEAH!" I look in the press pen and I can see a somewhat retarded looking man with a press badge, a trench coat and a hunchback, with a wussy-looking camera around his neck and no step stool at all trying to get in next to the cool looking press with their hipster sneakers and big ass "I can see Britney's snatch" telescopic lenses. "GETTIM OUTTA HERE!" The hipster papparazi keep yelling. Security tells the pap to settle down. "Go easy!" Eventually the trench-coated man gets comfortable and pulls off his cap, revealing a deeply pathetic 1970s-style combover. So there's an incident which I think we can all pretty much agree can pretty much take the cake as most bizarro disconcerting event of the night.
But wait. We're just getting started.

Now from outside Cipriani you can see that inside Cipriani, there is a huge screen flashing still shots from The Color of Money, Top Gun, Risky Business. Another slide simply states, in fancy lettering, "The Museum of the Moving Image Salutes Tom Cruise."
So now it's like really happening.

Then a black car pulls up and the press starts going wild. Flashes start, the yelling starts. I crane my neck and it's like Brian Dennehy. Or Patton Oswalt. Some fat guy with baby face a skinny lady in an evening dress on his arm. We're all confused. "Who is that?" different people ask. "Is it Brian Dennehy?!" I ask, hoping to be the one who's got the answer. "No," sniffs the woman next to me. "It's not him." Well excuuse me. At least I'm trying here lady. I don't hear you making any guesses.

A couple more black cars pull up dropping off men in tuxes and ladies in cream or black. Some cool old gray-haired guys even come in cabs. Some more black cars. Then finally comes a big fat shiny black SUV. "Here comes the big fish!" I say. Which may very well be the dorkiest thing ever said in a public pig pen device, but whatever. Then the press really start to go ape shit with the flashing of the lights which I don't even get because aren't they just taking a picture of a black truck? Then out of nowhere all these black people come. Or maybe it was just one black family, but either way now there are black people hanging around here holding Tom Cruise pictures and Sharpies and now there are like ITALIAN people from out of nowhere and now at this point no one is paying any attention to the pen idea. Hordes of people who have materialized out of nowhere and who certainly weren't waiting here with us for the past half hour are now gathering outside of the pen area. The rear door of the SUV is opening and at this precise moment there is like a surging of the ground beneath us and suddenly we are all three feet taller than we were before. If you were standing near a barricade you are now standing on top of a barricade. If you were standing on your heels you are now standing on your tippy toes and you are stretching your body more than you ever have in your life. If you are a small child you are now on your daddy's shoulders. Suddenly out of nowhere there are all these people yelling Tom Tom Tom! And holding Tom Cruise pictures. I am getting pushed from behind by a tiny Greek woman who is yelling at me "Do you see anything? Do you see anything?" I am craning my neck doing the best to see what is coming out rear passenger door, and that is when I see a tiny head with shiny dark hair and so that is when I realize that I am spotting with my own two eyes the tiny dwarf head of one Mr. Tom Cruise. Which will have an amazing effect on your mood, I will tell you that. It is like I am no longer thinking or feeling anything. I have no name. I have no bills. I certainly have no full-body venereal disease. I am floating in another dimension. It was like when I was doing nitrous in college but now I'm doing it with Italians and black kids and trench-coated men with wussy cameras and a whole sea of people. This feeling is only amplified when I see a second tiny head with shiny dark hair come out of the car. At this point I'm losing air pretty fast. I can't decide which tiny head to try to find. The countless heads in front of me are now surging higher and higher. I am in a sea of heads but there are only two that count. I decide it's live or die. I climb up on a barricade to get an unobstructed view of the unbelievable TomKat. What's great is that you can tell that Tom is not quickly advancing through the crowd. He is stopping and signing autographs. So you can really get a lot of time looking at him. He is smiling and waving and greeting his fans. Katie is standing there looking at the crowd and showing us the most unbelievable back you have ever seen. But no one has pictures or Sharpies for her. She isn't signing anything. She is standing five feet away from him smiling into the crowd. "Oh my god the poor girl! Nobodies asking her for any autographs!" I report down to my precincts on the ground. "Oh I know!" says one girl.

Okay so here it is: Katie's back is amazingly perfect looking. Muscular but not too muscular looking. I was surprised by how skinny she looked. All scapulae and spine as one friend once put it. Her dress was very low cut in back so it was very much about the back tonight.
Tom has annoying longish hair now and is definitely short.
I was creeped out the whole time. From the moment their tiny heads came out of the SUV.

What was so creepy? The yelling. The car. The flashes. The money. The tiny heads of real people. That Katie Holmes really is that pretty. That these are just two human beings. Ugh. The whole thing. So much to be creeped out about.
And so after all that, here's a press pic from perezhilton from tonight's event. Damn they work fast.

My Life if Written as a New Yorker Fiction Piece

2007-11-06T19:44:00.000-05:00

She was tired but unable to fall asleep, worrying that she would not remember that tomorrow morning she would have to go to the ATM inside the Chrysler Building and withdraw eighty dollars to put into her cash drawer at the hotel. Each agent was to have one thousand dollars inside her locked drawer at all times. Randomly, once a month, a young Ecuadorian man came down from an office upstairs to count their drawers. She enjoyed watching him count out the money, counting the bills under his breath. She liked how he progressed, starting with the foreign currency then working his way down until he had counted the last penny. If he found a discrepancy of over twenty dollars, however, he would ask the front office manager to issue a write-up. If an agent was missing over one hundred dollars, he and the front office manager would notify HR, and she would be automatically terminated. Once, she had noticed that it had been a while since she had seen a co-worker, a cute Latina girl who looked like she might be a lesbian and who she had imagined maybe getting to know better. She asked another agent about her. "Bank problems," a fellow agent said, with a knowing look.

She had been sick lately, an angry itch covering her whole body. Her various doctors, each perplexed and unable to issue a diagnosis, had each recommended over-the-counter allergy medicine, which made her flighty, buzzed and prone to error. Towards the end of one shift, feeling the painful itch in her legs and unable curl up and scratch the itches till they bled like she wanted to, she announced that she was going home early, and angrily put her cash drawer away without doing her nightly count. After that night, she began to give into her disease, whatever it was, and decided that certain things, like her nightly drawer count or watching what she ate, she didn't have to do.

The unbearable itching, which immediately followed the start of a new relationship with a penniless 45-year old musician she met in a self-help group, left her self-pitying, annoyed and with even less ambition. She had caught a glimpse of her doctor's notes on her case: "31 year old woman with genital lesions and thigh rash unclear etiology." She felt hurt by the doctor's careless phrasing, the crude lack of even proper punctuation. And the phrase "genital lesions" was especially painful and shameful to see in print.

That day at work she had been tired but pleasant, a mood that always allowed her to make the most tips. Her tiredness slowed her down, and allowed her to connect with the guests, and her pleasantness gave her a generosity that granted most of her guests' wishes. After taking care of every aspect of a Missouri farm couple's stay, the husband pushed a crisp folded twenty dollar bill across the desk. "Oh I couldn't," she said, creating a little back and forth between her and the husband, before deciding that she absolutely could. She spent most of the rest of her shift imagining what she could do with the twenty dollars. At five forty five, she decided she was feeling well enough to face her cash drawer and count her bills. This was when she noticed one hundred dollars missing. Had she gone mad one day from the itching, taking out a hundred dollars for some now-forgotten extravagance? Had a guest, noticing her listlessness, tricked her out of money? Certainly there was someone she could talk to about this and they could reason things out. Realizing that this was not the case, that there was no excuse the hotel would accept for one hundred missing dollars, and that there was no one on her side she could talk to, she became despondent, frustrated and wanted to scream.

When she met with her friend that day, a young man she had met while performing comedy in Chicago, having accepted her monetary loss, she wanted to complain to him instead about what she saw in her file and how frustrating it was to not have a diagnosis, but she knew that this was too personal to mention to this proper, well-educated young man. He had been educated on the East Coast, something that never failed to impress and intimidate her, and she felt the need to conform to her idea of proper conversation.

That night they went from bar to bar using a list of open mics she had printed off the internet. From bar to bar they went, finding they had either come at the wrong night, or that the show was cancelled or that the club had closed down altogether. After they travelled to every bar on her list, and found nowhere to perform, they began to play one of her favorite games: how it's better in the Midwest. In the Midwest, nobody ever counted her money—she used insurance money during the day at her job as an insurance adjuster. Insurance money could not be counted as easily as cash, and so nobody ever did it. If she had allowed attorneys to settle cases for too high, she never heard about it, and she could always argue that it would be much more expensive to take it to trial. At night, when she did comedy, she knew exactly where to go and exactly who she would see there. There was no need to carry around sheets of paper with addresses printed on them. She simply put on a wool jacket and asked to borrow her art professor boyfriend's car. She didn't mention these things to her young friend. They simply agreed: in the Midwest, although the stakes were so low, you could perform, no problem.

The next morning, she went to the bank and withdrew four crisp twenty dollar bills. At eleven a.m. that day, the Ecuadorian man came down. She watched him as he counted through her money, progressing from the foreign currency all the way to the last penny, until he said, after tabulating his numbers, "Very good. One thousand."

Checkwing In?

2007-07-29T23:29:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite things to do at the hotel is to talk to foreigners with the words they say to me. To the Japanese, upon arrival, I'll offer a comforting "Checkwing in?" or to Spaniards, upon departure, "You want to make check out?" I find that a "you go now?" can be issued to almost anyone. And a "no no, no two bed, one bed" is quite enjoyable to any four-member family who will hear it. I don't mean to be mean, but we do need to move business along. We never promised you a rose garden, and certainly not two beds.

And now for our feature presentation. Here is a Bill Bryson-esque essay about the Buller family and our family vacations. It's a start.

Bill and Ellie Buller, my beloved yet infuriating parents, are big fans of that tiresome, self-righteous and wonderful philosophy: live simply so that others may simply live. I believe the phrase should be revised to "live simply, so that you may live painfully and uncomfortably but have the luxury of judging other people." My parents shun many common things, deeming them wasteful and indulgent. Things such as air-conditioning, paper towels and high self-regard. These have no place in the Buller house. If you go into Ellie Buller's house looking for a paper towel, she will cheerfully suggest, "Why not this heavy leaden plate or this grease-stained rag dear? I was just peeling an orange myself on this fifty-pound wooden block!" (And by the way, if you do walk casually into Ellie Buller's house, that is exactly how she will respond: cheerfully. This contended, self-satisfied, and somewhat dangerous and self-imperiling manner will be of no comfort, I assure you. It will only add to the intolerability of the situation.) If, in the oven-like heat of a Midwestern summer, you ask Bill Buller if the house can please, please get cooler, he will point out that we have already blocked off all sources of sun-light and all possible air-holes so maybe it's high time you rode your bicycle to the library-and on your way there, why not drop off that 50 pound stack of newspapers at the recyclery? While the house and its surrounding were Commanders' General main torture center, for two weeks each summer during the 1980s, when we lived in Oklahoma, we would all be transferred to a new holding cell: the Buller's 1979 Ford Fairmont, for the annual family vacation. The brown 1979 model we had did come equipped with air-conditioning, but only a toxic gas cloud sweeping over the Oklahoma plains would get Commander Bill Buller, an environmental scientist, to roll up the windows and turn on the air. To make matters worse, there was a dreadful upholstery arrangement that has forever scared (perhaps literally) the two outer occupants of the back seat. The Ford Fairmont back seats are cloth, except for two exciting six-inch panels of vinyl on the bench's edges. Back then, my brother was a baby and my sister was a teenager. So my baby brother, bubbling away at the mouth, would sit in a toddler seat in the middle of the backseat of the Fairmont, and my sister and I would sit on the sides, staring out our respective windows, engrossed in our hobbies (Jenny: listening to Stevie Nicks sing "Sara" on her headphones, over and over; me: determined nose-picking) while the unrolled windows turned the interior of the car into a tornado site. (Yes, as if things weren't gloomy enough already out on the Oklahoma plains, we had to have Stevie wailing away on a cocaine high about some girl having to rebuild a house, and then having to call someone once it's completed. I think if anyone ever wants to know why I am so often deeply depressed, plagued by an unrelenting inner sadness, I think we can confidently point to this moment and quickly move on to more puzzling matters.) This arrangement--my sister and I flanking our drooling, smiling baby brother--meant that for my sister and me, one thigh, our inner thigh, would be resting comfortably on the warm, light brown cloth seat, while the outer leg melted into the deep chocolate brown decorative vinyl side panel. Why the hell some designer at Ford opted for this stylish vinyl flourish I will never know. Perhaps they were Mennonites like my dad, certain that a life of unspeakable pain and irrational fear secured your entry into heaven. A six inch panel of flaming hot vinyl would tame the wild spirit of the child, teaching him that life was not like an endless stream of Saturday morning cartoons. Life was filled with pain, sorrow and third-degree burns. Or maybe the designers wanted to add just a flash of luxury to the Fairmont interior. Frankly, it's a miracle this flourish made it past our parents. Didn't they see the polyurethane and sense that it could entice their children to lead a lifetime of dancing, cigarette-smoking, and beer-drinking? I can only imagine that this was the cheapest version of the Fairmont on the lot.

This horrific upholstery arrangement meant that for hours after my sister and I got in the car, we would be propping up one leg, letting the treacherous hot lava beneath us cool, while our tongues wagged outside of our mouths and our eyes rolled into the backs of our heads with agony, the lactic acid building in our legs. In the front seat, our parents would be calmly noting how the car was actually "quite cool" and thankfully we didn't need to turn the air on "just yet." While we breathlessly awaited a diverting stop, whether it was the Childhood Home of Laura Ingalls Wilder or the West Whitlock Recreation Area of the Historic Lewis and Clark Trail, we knew that the respite would be brief and ultimately we would be returning to our cells.

Further notes on the 1982 Ford Fairmont. This car was the source of much sorrow for me. I had seen several friend's mothers' Cutlass Calais's and Cutlass Supremes. While inside, I spotted a variety of shiny silvery buttons that could make windows lower and rise, and car seats shift forward and back. Also, those cars had seats that were upholstered with a soft, velvety mauve fabric, with not an inch of vinyl in sight. If my parents had one of those cars, or even if we had a super cool Ford Fairmont station wagon, certainly my aim would improve in softball, I would no longer struggle so with memorizing my multiplication tables, and definitely I would stop peeing my pants in public so much. The secrets to success were uttered inside those maroon, full-powered sedans. The Bullers, doomed to a life of upright, simple living, would be forever locked out, spending our summers lifting one thigh, fretting over a girl named Sarah and her rebuilt house, while the gales of Oklahoma wind blew our feathered hair straight back.

Grave, Grave Concerns

2007-07-19T00:08:00.000-05:00

I have grave concerns about what I see below.

Pretty Shaken Up Right Now

2007-06-19T00:11:00.000-05:00

Check this out and see how you feel after.

http://www.leveragedsellout.com/2007/02/pocket-changed-my-life/

I can't decide if I'm outraged or inspired, or outraged that I am inspired. These Patrick Bateman types have always been a source of inner conflict for me. Some say this blog is a parody. I secretly hope that it's not, but I fear that it is. Douchebags don't write that well. But this guy does have a lot of information...

My God I am totally avoiding prepping my set for Carolines tomorrow! I prep for my sets with the same obsessiveness and pride I imagine top chefs devote to their meals.

Carolines
June, 19 2007

Amuse bouche
Missed Connections

Entree
America's Next Top Lesbian

Dessert
Jokes

I have prepared a six minute set. If they give me eight minutes, I will have to pull out some dishes I would rather not serve, such as "Good Sex," which is a joke about childhood sex abuse and "Occasions" which is about celebrations in the sex and love addict community. I hope they give me only six minutes.

Today the police were really sticking it to our guests. All these Wall Street types were trying to drop their cars off for valet, double parking their cars, but the cops were yelling at them, not letting them double park, issuing them tickets for staying in their cars.

"But officer, I'm running late for a meeting, and I can't back up.."

"DID I ASK YOU FOR EXCUSES?"

Hahaha. I like it when the blue collar really stick it to the white collar.

I like it when things get really intense in NY. One Japanese lady was crying because it took valet parking an hour and a half to pull their car around. They were trying to get to the airport for their flight. Valet Parking's response? "Lady, this is Manhattan."

HaHA! See what I've been saying people!? Lady, this is Manhattan. I couldn't have put it better myself!

On Maui Taco

2007-06-17T00:05:00.000-05:00

Today after work I went to an open mic in the basement of a restaurant just south of the Empire State Building named "Maui Taco." It was hosted by a big friendly Puerto Rican man and was attended by a delightful collection of amateur New York comics.

One of the comics was talking about how the perfect girlfriend would be Helen Keller. "You're just hanging out with your buddies and then there's some deaf and blind chic you like keep in a cage." This is the moment preceding the moment where I stand up, grab my purse, and yell, real loud, and very much like a lesbian prison warden or an Indiana football coach, "FUUUUCK!" and then storm out of the bar/restaurant/taco stand.

Which is, I think we can all agree, hilarious.

I then charged up and down Fifth Avenue like an unemployed man about to punch his girlfriend. Lots of rage. Up and down Fifth Ave. Then I decided to calm down and that this was all really ridiculous and isn't this exactly the sort of stuff that gets one laughed at real good and hard?

So then I walked back in. The guy apologized to me in front of everybody, but someone hadn't read the O magazine where they tell you how to apologize (always review what you did wrong), so then I got pissed off all over again because I don't think he got why he was apologizing.

But I stayed and it turns out that he's a sex addict as well, so then I got attracted to him.

I went to look for him after the open mic ended, but he was gone. So bittersweet.

My sponsor made me make a spreadsheet of all the qualities I want in a partner. I am to review any future dating partner and ensure that he or she has a sufficient number of pre-selected qualities. Unfortunately, "good sense of humor--like mine" is high on the list, and so Mr. Helen Keller is out of the running.

In the category of news we can only categorize as "Awesome!":

On March 31, 1993, David married Laurie Lennard; they have two daughters named Cazzie and Romy, and they live in Pacific Palisades, California. Like her counterpart, Cheryl David (played by Cheryl Hines), in Curb Your Enthusiasm, Laurie is an environmental activist. Since May 2005, the couple have each been contributing bloggers at The Huffington Post.[1]
On June 5, 2007, the couple announced their intention to amicably separate.[2]
Amicable separation? Awesome!

Once I get to know Larry more, I will be able to see how he does with regard to the list.

Just a Little Recap of Today

2007-06-11T20:50:00.000-05:00

Today after work I picked up three apricots, some
V8 juice, some milk and two apples.
Zoe Cassavettes, the daughter of Gina Rowlands and John Cassavettes always has two Fuji apples and some non-fat milk in her fridge, according to the New York Times. I looked for Fuji apples, but they didn't have any so I bought Granny Smith, which I found to be very "Mischa Barton", and also DKNY ad campaign (blech) so I was a little disappointed.

Then I came home and watched some Home of the Sparrow, or Flight of the Conchords or whatever it is. I felt bad because I am not on television. I have to go to lots of meetings and be obsessive about things. I think if I wasn't quite so crazy, I could definitely be on television.

Then I made fliers for my next show. The fliers are made with crayon and index cards.

Tonight I'm going to go to a cafe and try to write a joke about a family of five quietly driving around in a car, where everyone is looking out the window with the same facial expression, which is that of someone with bad diarrhea. We'll see.

Oh! I am performing at Carolines on Tuesday! It's a gay and lesbian and bi pride show.
Please contact me for further information.

Give the Jokes

2007-06-08T22:04:00.000-05:00

Today I was tromping around town wearing this polyester gem of gown:

when a man waiting beside me at the corner of 57th and 5th turned to me and said, "I think that may be the most beautiful dress in all of New York."

He was a black man in a pink dress shirt and flower print tie.

I turned to him and said, I think quite reasonably, "Are you making fun of me?"

"No. Are you an artist?"

"No. I am a performer though."

"What kind?"

"I am a comedian. You know, stand up."

"Oh, you give the jokes?"

"Yes."

"You know what they say, don't you? The people who give jokes, they live long lives."

And then he walked away.

Well, slap me on the ass and call me Michael Landon, I think I just received one of those little-talked about but well-known Angel Visits! I have had those often in my life's journey, but none quite so succint and quite so in front of the legendary Plaza! Talk about a stroke of good luck! Can you believe this? "Those who give the jokes live the longest." Wow. I mean, what an incentive to give the jokes!

Also notable today:

While I was sitting in the cafeteria, reading a NYT article about those scary-smart, scary-young Google programmers and their endless quest for a "better search" ("Keep going kids!" I say. I'm still trying to track down some key employment information on some ex's ex-girlfriends so KEEP ON IT!), I was rudely interrupted by a Jamaican lady yelling "Hey Lady! Yo Lady! You with the paper!"

"Yes?" I say, finally catching on.

"Where's Wisconsin?"

"Above Chicago."

"It's not Massachusetts? He's sayin' it's Massachusetts or something!" She gestures to a cross-eyed Indian man sitting next to her.

"No. It's...it's not Massachusetts. It's...above Chicago."

I say Chicago because Chicago is a generally recognizable city here at the hotel.

"Okay! Thank you!"

I guess I don't know jack shit about Jamaica so I should just shut my prissy trap.

Big Mama Don't Care!

2007-06-07T22:28:00.001-05:00

So there are clearly some guests at the hotel who I plain and simple do not like. When they start to act up, I immediately pull that shit away. They are no longer a friend of Kara J. Buller's, I will tell you that. Somebody ain't readin' that Secret shit so somebody needs to git away from me! That's how I see it. I don't need no more negativity rubbing up against me. I'm tryin' to fight the good fight over here and I don't need no babies cryin' about no lukewarm brefass buffet, you hear me?

Today there was a travel agent acting up. She didn't like her room.

"I mean there's no make-up mirror, there's no bathmat, there's no bathrobe. I want you to get me a nicer room."

"Listen, bitch I can get you a nicer room but it ain't gonna be at this hotel, okay? It gonna be ova at the St. Regis or some shit. We be talking the London or the Soho Grand or some shit like that if you gonna be talkin' about makeup mirror."

Dumb bitch. I told her three times that our rooms don't come with no makeup mirror.

"I want you to move me to a nicer room."

I moved her to another room that was the exact same as her nasty room. Dumb bitch. That'll teach her.

After that shit, I asked to go out and stand in the lobby by the checkin machines. Stand there all day and fart and smile at people. All day long. Now that be the job, girl! Just fuckin' stand by the automated check in machine and help the retards get their credit cards swiping the right way?! That's right!

On the train ride home I was sittin' across from some bitch who had some bag from Stretch World, Inc. "Specializing in Stretch Fabrics since 1997. 252 West 38th Street New York, NY 10018." I ain't shittin you! Check out their website, yo! They got demin metallic stretch for 8 bills a yard, yo!

Grrrl, I dragged my ass to some literary event over where the homos live in the Chelsea, you know? They done gone and postponed that muthafuckin' literary event! I's standin' out there flippin' through my New Yorker lookin' for some other literary event to go to like some junkie trying to get his fix...

Mama took it over to the French res'rant, mmkay? Mama got some crepes and some warm pineapple juice poured over ice. Put those feet up and pulled out my Backstage. You know what I'm talkin' about. A girl has got to keep up. Check out those audition notices and shit. Grrrrrrrl, you have got to! Even if yo ass be real ugly and you ain't got no talent and you just stutter and get all sweaty when you up there… Turns out that comedy club Gotham's lookin' for comics. You only gotta bring four people. Then what. Then they give you a videotape so you can add it to the pile with all your other videotapes. You know what I'm gonna say to that don't you? That's right. That's some buulllllllllshit!

Got home and put me in some Entourage. Now that I got me a Jew manager I got to keep on top of these things. See how this mutherfuckin shit gits done!

But you tell me why mama wants to watch some show about some skinny ass pretty boys fuckin pretty girls and goin' around all day talkin' about pussy and televisions! All day long. Pussy and televisions. Televisions and pussy. Big mama don't care!

Grrrrrl, I tell you what. It's been one of those days. Mama gonna draw herself a bath, and get ready for another day of some bulllllllshit.

Joan Didion You are KILLING Me!

2007-06-03T09:51:00.000-05:00

"She was lying on her back on the asphalt. An ambulance was called. She was taken to UCLA. According to Gerry she was awake and lucid in the ambulance. It was only in the emergency room that she began convulsing and lost coherence."

Dear God! I don't see how she could think that any of this was funny! This is dreadfully serious stuff! And I haven't seen a real honest to god set-up/punch since page 43, when she was talking about her chanting in Latin at St. John the Divine.

I am, of course, reading Joan Didion National Book Award-winning The Year of Magical Thinking.

I am sitting in a French-style cafe on the Lower East Side where apparenly, actor-musician Mos Def can be found at least weekly. Well. I could use the man right about now. He suggests you try to French toast, and you can bet I did. Anything to block out Joan and the heat. Note to readers: do NOT mix sweltering heat and books on grief. This should be a no-brainer, but Old Buller here thought she could take it.

I FedExed a sample of my comedy to Murfreesboro, TN today. It took everything I had to spell it the way the true spelling requires that it be spelled.

I have been charging up a storm on my credit card getting my dvds out of my house. Now I just need to charge up a storm getting me out of this country.

I am wearing vintage Lilly Pulitzer green and turquoise pants given to me by a Columbia-educated friend I was in love with. She is gone, but her pants remain. I am hoping that the pants will attract a new, Columbia-educated well-connected friend. Don't the wealthy have an eye for one another's things?

Earlier today a black man sitting on a lawn chair yelled to me "Yo fly's undone!"

So we do know that black men sitting on lawn chairs have an eye for open flies.

The line to sum up today? Doing the best I can. The Four Agreements says "always do your best." I think the "always" is a bit much. I think "more often than not" is better.

About That Girl...

2007-04-05T09:56:00.000-05:00

Note to self:

The time thinking about her? That is wasted time. The time thinking about her perfect auburn hair, long and wavy like a girl in a library in a J Crew ad. Her perfect setups and punchlines, so precious and perfect as well, as if crafted with small tools in a top-secret Harvard Comedy Graduate School, which for all we know may very well exist, those near demi-Gods being so reserved and appropriate, not needing to tell everyone about their attendance at an elite comedian breeding ground, which you know would be the first words out of my crusty red-lipsticked mouth. Oh world! Why have you rendered me so imperfect! My dimpled thighs and bucked tooth (just one bucked, the one on the right--not even my imperfection can be perfect!), my black-wire hair, my pockmarked and blackheaded skin! All to match my crooked speech and uncontrolled and lugubrious set-ups. Oh world! When will the mercy come! Make way for the mercy of the Lord! Give peace to me. Cease these days at the register. These days of typing blogs from beneath the sheets, lest the world (which is of course my roommate, my world so small) see the hideous beast I have become and incur a shock to the immune system, a temporary shutdown, as the system recalibrates after being exposed to such a horror. Oh God why have you made them all so attractive! And why must they all get on at one train stop! Certainly you could spread them out! Some on at Morgan, some at Graham. No! We must endure the concentrated assault, the shock and awe campaign that is Bedford Avenue. Oh please merciful Jesus! Draw our attentions away from the unending slim-legged beauty engrossed in the John Updike and deliver it to the four foot Peruvian curled up on the urine-soaked bench! This prayer God? Allow me to stop this prayer. Allow me to think no more of these children, these, okay, women and men, who haunt my dreams. And lord! Please explain to me why I murdered two men in my sleep last night, symbolized only by the rigorous slicing of a beet, and then entered into another nightmare, where I was awaking from that previous nightmare, filled with terror that I am the sort that is capable of murder in dreams, and then perhaps capable of murder in real life! And God! What happened the other day with the Viva paper towel commercial? The one with the son who sprays the mother with orange pop, prompting the mother to spray the son with the kitchen sink hose? The one that I couldn't get out of my mind, and when I prayed to you to make me stop thinking about it, pondering the perhaps misogynistic, anti-mother message of it, that only made me think of it more? And granted God this is better than some unending spirals of other more personal thoughts, for example those thoughts, those thoughts about them, the ones I took to Dr. Weiss. "I have got to know about them. Why didn't I put a chip in his sock the last time I saw him? Why wasn't I more proactive with this? Isn't there a detective you can put me in touch with? You have been doing this long enough! Certainly you can make a referral." And when she asked me which couple we were talking about now I laughed at the absurdity of it. Does it really matter Dr. Weiss? Does it really fucking matter? If I don't have a chip to place in a sock or the business card of a handsome and trusty gumshoe. Any one of them. I'll take any information on any of them. Restaurant menus and hotel bills and sexual positions and inside jokes. Calories consumed, parties attended, fights…please Dr. Weiss, maybe if we work together on this we can come up with something. "All we know about is you." Well that's no fun Dr. Weiss! We know about my acne and my gravel driveway and OH the pain that that caused. Oh the humiliation. The crunching sound as the clear-skinned wealthy beauties I considered my cohorts and colleagues pulled their Volvos and Grand Prixes (yes! I even consider a Grand Prix to be a vehicle for the upper crust!) into our humble, pebble driveway. Leading of course to that place. That house. Oh Dr. Weiss, if I could only present for you in power point presentation the horrors that happened in that house. Mostly involving denied shopping trips to TJ Maxx and literal crying over spilled milk. Oh to be the girl who spilled the milk! Oh pity her! For her night—and her snack of cookies and milk is ruined! Do you see the horrors Dr. Weiss? Do you see them in full color detail? Please deliver me from this insanity, Dr. Weiss. Wipe clean the dry erase boards of my mind. Thrust the erasers out the window and bang them together, releasing into the spring air the yellow dust I miss so much. Wring out the white cotton cloth and slap it against the slate tables of the Olive Tree Café. Oh Dr. Weiss! Write out for me a prescription for peace, wealth and a trip to Santa Fe. Santa Fe! Could you imagine! Do you remember the night Doug Milken and I ran through the Santa Fe WalMart, looking for underwear for him, and I felt so uncomfortable, because I was the 17 year old nanny and he was the 50 year old father? Of course you do not remember, you are not a God but a shrink, but oh how I do like to pretend that you know it all. How comforting.

Oh Lord, please look upon me with favor, and grant me a ticket to Elton John's 70th birthday bash. We have missed the 60th and that is fine and well. But please lord for these next ten years, let your light shine down upon my face and allow me to share with all the world what they need most: my coffee-stained, buck tooth smile.

Please, please take a look

2007-03-31T09:56:00.000-05:00

http://www.stars-productions.com/index.php?ID=AR/artistroster

I was online shopping around for an agent, someone low level, someone to tide me over until ICM or William Morris comes my way...and I found this delicious line-up of talent. I don't know who I want to see first: Crystal Roxxx, Gradie Stone or Undisputed! So many choices.

On the Downtown Train

2007-03-26T09:59:00.000-05:00

On the Downtown Train

Last night, after drinking one margarita that left me nice and loopy, I ran out of Two Boots at 7:30, possessed by the idea that I had to do something. Something for my comedy career, something for my brain, something to get me back into first class again. A friend said she had an audition for Montreal at Stand Up New York on 78th, so I ran up over and down to the subway, jumped on the 5 and rode it up to 86th Street and Lex. Maybe I could strike up a conversation with the booker. Flirt, charm, wow, entrance. Yes. I rand down Lex, so fast the pen popped out of my back pocket. My lucky pen. Stolen from the bartender. "Screw it, keep running!" I ran from 86th Street to 78th when I asked myself, "78th and what, Kara?" "Well, you know, 78th and…comedy club. You know, 78th and…and…upper wsst sd…" said the thirteen year old with ADD who lives in my brain most of the time. "UPPER WEST SIDE, dear. Upper West Side. You need to go to the other side of Manhattan" said the Olympia Dukakis part of my brain. I then ran west on 78th street, over to Park Avenue, trying to simultaneously "be in the now" and enjoy the buzz and not too aggressively remind myself that being late and messing up directions can cost us valuable opportunities. I walked quickly across Central Park, remembering that in Jodie Foster's next psychological thriller (does she do anything else?) she plays a New York talk show host who is brutally attacked in Central Park. I'm still not sure where "walking through Central Park at night, alone and female" sits on the stupidity index, but I have a feeling it's up there. But there's something about running past the old oaks and under the glow of pink lights from the midtown skyscrapers that I can't resist. I finally got to 78th and Broadway, home of Stand-up NY, where the show had only recently started. Comedy clubs must post ads asking for "Big friendly black man to host comedy show. Must act "black" and not be especially funny." I'm sorry. I know I'm a type too. "Edgy, kinda cute comedian needed. Must be smart but not too smart. Must have one major physical flaw, eg big nose or teeth." As we all know, the bigger the flaw, the funnier you will be. No wait. I'm sorry. I mean the more I will like you. . Lucille Ball had a weird nose. Fine. Roseanne is big and squawky. Love it. But Sandra Bernhard, well, she's just a doll.

I'm sorry, but let me take a break to tell you all just how much I love Sandy B, as I lovingly call her.

Here is a list of things Sandy B will do:

- adopt a non-foreign baby.

- Give Rupaul a much-needed manicure on his show

- Go to the Bodhi tree bookstore (hello episode three of TKBS reference! I'm totally doing cross platform plugging, which hellooo, is so Sandy.)

- Wear a shitty Abercrombie and Fitch outfit to her House of Blues show and charge me $60 for it

- Pose nude even though she's got a really weird bod

- Pose with Madonna in matching ripped jean outfits

- Make comedy albums that aren't funny and know it

Pose with a fan with an active pustule.

Here's a list of things Sandy B will not do:

- marry a man.

- Cry if she makes a mistake on the register

- Murder somebody

- Get busted for a DUI

- Use a racial slur in a genuine and non-funny way

See! Isn't she great!? Anyway, I love Sandy and all her flaws and her assets. Jeremy used to play her for me all the time when we grew up, creating my one pleasant memory from my childhood. At any rate, I think what I'm saying is: black men need to be more like Sandy. But I'm not getting racist here. I think we could all stand to be more Sandy. More sensual, more brave, more bold, more honest.

After the show ended I was no longer at all drunk but still needing to make something happen. I went up to the booker and asked him if he wanted my dvd. Maybe I was still drunk. He appeared disinterested, and maybe even disgusted. Who was I becoming? Who was this girl? This classless, desperate girl? This is a girl who has felt the warm wet towel of first class rubbed across her body and she won't rest until she feels that feel again. I asked him for his business card and said "Cool, I'll send you my stuff." He seemed utterly unamused. "He has no idea who just talked to him." I walked outside, where several comedians were pointing to a car that was on fire. Had I done this? Did my new personality spark this?

Everyone went separate directions after the show. As always, I walk away alone. Sometimes it seems as if the whole world is in pairs, and I'm the girl walking down the street alone, staring into windows, staring into my reflection and wondering where things went so terribly wrong. How is that something is broken so badly in me but not broken inside other people? I was staring into a high-end card shop called La Brea, looking at their beautiful porcelain doggy dishes and irreverent 1950s postcards, thinking about the healthy and whole people who need to buy such things. I shoved my hands into my pockets. I felt something squishy in my right pocket. They were the earplugs from my flight from LA to NY. I pressed them between my fingers and smiled. I may not have a boyfriend or a girlfriend, but I have someone better than that. I have a best friend, a constant companion who has accompanied me on all my travels. On all of my journeys, she has been there, providing her lively commentary through the backroads of Cambodia and Thailand, the quiet, sad rooms of mental wards and the first class cabins of coast to coast flights.

I look at the sign. "La Brea." I walk in. Anything to be closer to California, but California isn't inside this store. California is inside my magazines at home. (The Hollywood Reporter. The Variety they handed out on the plane, as if this was a necessity, like beverages and earplugs.) California is inside Jeremy's apartment on Barnam Blvd. It's inside his car, where we laughed and talked, but mostly talked. California is inside my mind and I can't get it out. I want to be with it still. I want to carry parts of it around with me. I walk to a newstand. New York, US Weekly, In Touch, The Post. No Variety, no THR.

I get on the subway to go home, so I can be with California at home. At the Union Square subway station I look at their magazines. New York, US Weekly, The Post. I see a wrinkled copy of the Mark Walberg Premiere. Fine. I buy it, along with a Snickers Dark. The magazine is $4.50 and I have to dig for dimes in my bag in order to buy it.

I start reading the magazine as I walk. It's nowhere near as detailed as Variety or THR and it pisses me off. It's written for mainstream America, not for studio execs.

I walk through the tunnel leading to the L. There is a woman standing by herself in the middle of the tunnel. She has dirty blond feathered hair and the terrible skin of an acne patient who smokes two packs a day. She is wearing a lavender ribbed knit turleneck like you would find in the clearance section of TJ Maxx. She is belting out, at the top of her greying lungs, these well known lyrics:

.
-- never found anyone who fulfilled my neeeed
A lonely place to be and so I learned to depend on me

I decided long ago never to walk in anyone's shadow

I feel moved to drop my Premiere, and my choclate bar, and walk towards her and look into her eyes, and join her.

"If I fail., if I succeed at least I'll live as I believe"
No matter what they take from me, they can't take away my dignity

The few passersby have stopped to watch.

Because the greatest love of all is happening to me
I found the greatest love of all inside of me
The greatest love of all is easy to achieve"

A crowd of thirty has gathered, and all, even the most hardened Brooklynite is moved to applause and tears.

Unfortunately, I can't sing and so this didn't happen. It did make me realize something though. I am in New York now. And I need to be here now. And for this, I am so very, very glad.

Jeremy's Still Sleeping

2007-03-23T10:07:00.000-05:00

I went insane about three hours ago. We're back to sincerity. I think I'm a very troubled person. I think there are somethings in my life I will never get over, wounds so large they will never heal. Even if Jeremy wakes up now, we won't have time to order a pizza before we have to leave for the airport. Like even when I was in college, when I was fun and blonde and drank a lot, there was always a sadness, a distance. If we go back even further, to like third grade, I think we still find a very troubled, sad girl. Someone who never quite fit in, whose attempts to do so only made her weirdness and sadness that more glaring. Even if I put in an episode of Golden Girls, I'll still be sad because that will remind me of mortality, and of Florida, which I've never been to but I'm sure would result in a deep, deep depression. Maybe the world needs some people to be irretrievably, irrevokably sad. "When it is dark enough men see stars." Please. I'm not seeing stars. Certainly not in this apartment. Certainly not in this mirror. Sad girl, with my sad shaped head. Have you seen my head? Even my head is shaped sad, long and shapeless. No joy here. I think maybe it's just time for the lanai. Out on the lanai is where I do my best thinking. It's cold out on the lanai. Best to stay inside. What if I miss my flight? Should I wake Jeremy up? What if I stayed in LA forever, in this apartment forever? God, Richard Jeni. See. Us comedian types. You got to watch it. There is a darkness. Maybe it's just California apartments that are to blame. Well. Look at Chris Farley. Sexy Hancock pad and look what happened there. I'm trying to find a common denominator here and unfortunately I'm only finding comedian and death. Christ. Well. They didn't have hope. I have hope. I have hope that I get on that plane and get back to NY and wear my bathing suit on the job. Christ. See. Things are pretty bad. Maybe I just need to smoke a cigarette and have some diet coke. Oh, does anyone want to be my agent? We can just pretend. I think it would be fun. We can work that whole Dumbo angle. Believing=achieving. No? Fine. Maybe it was watching The View this morning. Rosie and her Kelly talk. People and their partners. I am so unwaveringly alone. Not a lesbo, not straight. Just this weird sad girl with a long face. Dear lord in heaven. Why did that Will Ferrell movie have to be so bad and make Jeremy fall asleep. Now I'm practically crawling over the lanai. Christ. Sorry folks. Gonna grab some diet coke and start up the chemical roller coaster. I better fucking get first class. After a day like today? You gotta have it.

Sleeping with the Stars

2007-03-22T10:01:00.000-05:00

So I'm home now.

I am happy to report I did not wear my bathing suit at work today. I went ahead and wore dirty underwear. This seemed more mentally healthy.

As we all know I was in a deep, deep depression on Wednesday. This was prior to seeing the artistic tour de force lightshow that is LAX International Airport. As you enter the airport, green columns of light stand guard around an enormous white cement "LAX". You then realize there is no chance of you catching your breath any time soon when your Kia rounds the corner, and you feel compelled to rub your eyes, as what lies before you is something that can only be called "purple glorious spaceladytron", a purple lit control tower with four outstreched legs and a glass "eye-window" on top. Your car then glides over to the departure drop off, revealing the piece de resistance: beautiful Southern Californias in resort wear opening up trunks of Mercedes Benz. An instant shock to the system. All thoughts of credit card debt, relationship failure, and sexual dysfunction instantly vanish in the heat of this sweltering tableau. Seriously. I dare you to be depressed at LAX.

Besides, there's too much to be angry and anxious about. In a horrifying turn of events at Security Gate 3, I was stripped of my brand new Tom's of Maine Organic Whitening Mint Tooth Gel (purchased mere blocks from the Studio City sushi house where Vince Vaughn had his recent, loud lady-bashing!!) and my Duane Reade Contact Lens Solution (purchased in the Crysler Building…less excitingly.). That's at least $12 worth of goods! Then they started fingering my Proactiv. Well, you can imagine the reaction this caused. America hasn't seen so much chanting, praying and contorting since the Pentecostals faced the Dust Bowl. I cycled through at least three major religions prayers and customs before ultimately accepting that I had to let it go. I surrender it all. If it's meant to be, it will be. Well, guess what. The Proactiv was meant to be. I let it go and it came back to me. I can't tell you how many times this has happened to me and my Proactiv at airports. You may say it has something to do with Proactiv being exactly 4 oz and therefore in line with FAA standards, but I like to think it's maybe something else… Prior to going through security, I did check in on those kiosk machine, which are nice because it means one less person delivering bad news to you. In this case, the computer delivers bad news to you. "Chances of boarding this flight: Great, Good, Average, Fair, None. Your chances: Fair." I swallowed hard and told myself to be strong. Worse case scenario: I am sleeping in a motel and not wearing my bathing suit at work because I am fired. A pretty bleak picture but I happen to love motels and find them more picturesque than a Ritz-Carlton. Of course, serial killers and rapists find them aesthetically pleasing as well…

But bottomline is we now have a situation where it is 10:00 pm California time, I have a fair (ie slim) chance of getting on a flight, I have no lens solution or toothpaste and I have to be in NY at 10 am for a job I secretly love. Jeremy needs to sleep for an early morning class and is almost an hour and a half away. I really need to get on the plane.

This was a situation made bearable only by the fact that Jeremy let me keep his copy of The Hollywood Reporter, which if you're not familiar, is the most uninteresting entertainment magazine available.

Variety is a fluffy tabloid compared to The Hollywood Reporter. THR, as I'm going to call it from here on out--get ready--leads with tantalizing stories like "Celotta keeping office at NBCU" and "Supernatural thing at FX from Bochno" and the breathtaking "Web music royalty fee challenged." I love that I'm supposed to know Celotta and Bochno. I love that I'm supposed to have some emotion about web music royalty fees. You know, if it bleeds it leads…and that certainly is the case with The Hollywood Reporter.

The ads alone in THR could send shivers down the spine of even the hippest theater director. "The Mobile Entertainment and Advertising Summit 2007." "Insights on the Digital Delivery of Entertainment Content, Breakfast Series, March 29, 2007." "Levels Audio, the industry's first 5.1 Post Production HD Super-Boutique, is pleased to congratulate its partner American Idol, on their 200th episode." I have no fucking clue what a 5.1 Post Production HD Super-Boutique is, but the prospects are blowing my fucking mind. Seriously. Super-boutique? Part of me thinks I can only be disappointed. This is the Borat of ad copy.

An annual subscription to THR will set you back $269. But let's not talk in terms of "set back." I think we can only talk in terms of set forward. If I had this kind of shit fed to me each day I would be a better person. Driven, punctual…totally insane.

On page 20 in their Reviews section, Ray Richmond simultaneously scolds and nurtures The Whitest Kids You Know,

the latest in all white male sketch shows, praising them for their few strong pieces and admonishing them for their frequent use of peepee poopoo humor. He ends by saying that "it's easy to see the potential of this outrageously original bunch once they figure out how to evolve beyond mere shock value." Potential is code for "money-making ability" of course, in THR world—which is why I'm saving up for a subscrip. This is exactly the kind of thinking I need to be doing if I plan on using stand-up comedy to buy me Marc Jacobs jackets, prescription pills and the occasional dope.

So there's the backstory on THR. So you know that when I sit at gate 73 and "read" my THR, it can be nothing other than total and complete crap. It's my living out the fantasy of being in entertainment and traveling from LA to NY, NY to LA, and being connected to Hollywood. At some point of course I realize that I am in entertainment and that I am flying from LA to NY and I do know people in Hollywood and that somehow THR has found it's way to me organically, and I have become everything I've always wanted to be. This is all well and good but this does not change the fact that I have no business having THR out on my lap. I was starting to plummet into self-loathing when our most glorious God, creator of Heaven and Earth, sensed my despair and offered to me the perfect salve to cool my raging heart: Bob Balaban, star of For Your Consideration, A Mighty Wind andCity Slickers II: The Legend of Curly's Gold. Bob is the short, balding man with round dark glasses that shows up whenever the script calls for a "likable dweeb" who isn't Woody Allen. Here he is now:

You know him. You love him. So your head would be turned around a good 180 too if he were sitting, waiting, in the row behind you. I did a lot of constant turning, texting, turning, texting, as I tried to describe him to Jeremy. (Eventually he must have gotten uncomfortable with this, because he walked away. But maybe that's me thinking everything's always about me.I'm now getting dysfunctional with Bob Balaban.) I wasn't sure exactly what roles he played, just said "that nerdy guy who's always in Christopher Guest moveies." This didn't exactly narrow it down. Jeremy sent back "Eugene Levy?" "NOO!! The other one!!"

We eventually grow tired of this game, as there is the more exciting "will I get on this plane, will I get first class, will I get murdered in a motel" game. Jeremy calls and we try to have a normal status talk. We're both so stressed we can hardly talk. Our vocal chords are barely letting words out. We speak in monosyllables.

"So..what's…Is the…" "I don't knoooww. Do you kno--…They're saying nothing..I…" We are unusually inarticulate.

"BULLER. PASSENGER BULLER."

"I…me..saying my name…talk later. Okay. Bye."

I walk up to the counter. "Yes, I'm Buller." At this point I will take anything. I will sleep between the legs of the co-pilot. Okay, well duh, but like I will sleep on top of the terse gay Steward we all know and love. I will do whatever. Just put me on a plane. The lady hands me the cream-colored boarding pass. The moment of truth. I look at the seat number.

"1D"

I nearly faint. I am moved to hug this woman. I feel like I have so many people to thank. How can one girl have so many highs so high and lows so low? Tonight, Bob Balaban, you and I shall sail across the wine-dark sky, and dream the dreams of Hollywood dreamers. Come along now, Bob. The crew is waiting. And I've got a Bellini waiting for me with my name on it.

The bad news is that Bob was like 7B and in a different section. I ended up sleeping between a really sexy short Jewish man who slept face down (!) in his chair/bed and a hot alternative guy with a hoodie, an i-pod, and, this is such a drag, a wedding ring. Why are alternative people getting married and flying first class? Or is that married rich people are wearing hoodies and Converse? Ugh. Who has time to chart all these demographic trends. Certainly not me. I have industry dailies to pretend to read and bathing suits to wash out. Darlings, it has been wonderful. Sorry about the earlier drama with the suicidal depression. But you've got to mix it up from time to time. From basecamp, this is Kara.

These Clothes Smell

2007-03-21T10:26:00.000-05:00

These clothes smell.
I can't tell you how bad my pants smell. I was supposed to fly out on Monday. I'm still here, wearing my "yoga pants" that smell like crotch, pizza and cigarettes. It feels so reckless, so dramatic. Like I'm a Katrina victim or something. And tomorrow I have to wear my bathing suit as underwear when I go to work in the morning. I'm taking the red eye to NY tonight (this way I can definitely get first class and hopefully sleep with the celebs!) so I have to go straight to work from the airport. I'm going to miss Studio City, though. Each day I drop Jeremy off at school, then I come back to the apartment and write and read. Do my floor exercises. Talk on the phone. Go out on the lanai and look at the hills and the city below. Think about my direction, my motivations, my goals. Before I left last Wednesday, I formally took the third step with my sponsor. I formally handed my life over to an entity other than myself. My will no longer runs the show. My actions and my thoughts are to be guided by a higher being. This has made this a very different trip for me. I have tried to be selfless instead of selfish, tolerant rather than intolerant. Jeremy and I are different in many ways. He likes to stay home. I like to go out. He likes Univeral Studios. I do not. I have tried to 'be" with this, and not fight it. Surrender to this. It just is. I have started doing my step four, where I list all of my resentments, from early memory to today. I look at my role in it. Where was I selfish, dishonest, or self-seeking. Selfish appears on the list time and time again. I have gone through life trying to get my way, make others like me. It is always about my needs, my power, my ego. It feels very good to see my role in these situations. I go from being a victim to being just a human, doing human things. Speaking of addiction recovery, HBO has released their monstrous Addiction documentary. I was disappointed to see it addresses solely drugs and alcohol, not gambling, sex, love, food, shopping and other "process addictions." I obviously think these are very destructive as well. It also stresses that it is a biological and (therefore) medical issue. I see addiction as a spiritual issue. Most addicts are seeking to fill a void. At the root, this is not a medical condition. It stems from neglect or abandonment in childhood, an absence of love and safety. A doctor can't fix that. In order to fix any problem thoroughly and for good, you have to go to the root. Replace anger with forgiveness, hate with love, blah blah blah. But it's true. I'm really tired of non-addicts, (Dr.Drew, Dr.Phil, Dr anyone) talking about addiction. Talk about it if you've lived it. I think people are too wrapped up in the shame of it. I see no shame in it, obviously. This is who I am. This is who I will always be. You can like it or not. I'm never gonna stop. Roseanne Barr is coming back so of course I'm all reved up on that. Such an inspiration. The facelift at 39 though? Well that's fine. I like a little crazy. To have an imperfect role model, that's fine. Of course, that's all there is. We're all just so perfectely imperfect aren't we? Dear god I'm turning into Ilyana Vansant. If Ilyana Vansant wore crotch pizza pants. So gross. Really sorry. Better take it out to the lanai. Lots of love if you made it this far, Kara.

Whoops

2007-03-21T10:22:00.000-05:00

I want to apologize for my earlier outburst of sincerity this morning. I'll try to keep it in check, but sometimes these spells just come over you. Jeremy is napping now. We did try to watch Stranger Than Fiction, starring Will Ferrel and people from Second City I would have liked to have slept with. This was very exciting for me, to see these near-famous faces but apparently not for Jeremy. He's fast asleep. That's the danger with watching movies in Hollywood. It's no longer exciting. It's like doing labs all day and then popping in a video of someone doing a nitrate reaction. You just think, "I wonder if the writing team got in on any of the cross-platform distribution revenue?" You start to put yourself to sleep. I read my Variety this morning then checked my voicemail to see if my agent called. Of course not. This is because I don't have an agent. But this shouldn't stop one from pretending to check your cellphone for her calls. I've decided my pretend agent is female, high-powered, overbearing, annoying. I need a follow-up punchline here, but sadly, we're not going to have one. I drove to UCLA today. Parking there is twenty-five cents for eight minutes. I decided that was too much to pay to walk around and see hot, educated twenty-two year olds prepare for lives better than mine. Back in my corporate Blyatt days it would have been no problem. I got back in the car and drove up Coldwater Canyon Drive, where I proceded to have a landscaping-induced orgasm. I have never seen such beautiful landscaping. And I lived near North Barrington! Then I picked up Jeremy at Studio City Plaza, which is our "home away from home." It has a McDonalds, a Trader Joes, Pinkberry and, my favorite, Manhattan Bagel. Studio City Plaza is right near "Radford" which is the nickname for the CBS Studio where Jeremy attends class each day. It's under tight security so I just drop him off at the gate. I can see through the gate a big painted wall that says "According to Jim" so the extra security makes perfect sense. Tonight I'm going to try to get Jeremy to drive me to the airport so I don't have to spend $50 on a cab ride. It's going to be hard to say goodbye, like a scene out of Color Purple, as Jeremy said. I don't want to leave LA. Especially since I know what awaits me. It's kind of like having to go back to Iraq after working at the Hustler store. Well, that's a bit extreme and a very awkward way to introduce the Hustler store, which Jeremy and I did go to and did love. They have a cafe there with drinks like "The Flynt" which is basically a carmel macciato. There's also the "Hedgehog", named after Ron Jeremy. They had an incredibly elaborate and categorized porn section. "Gonzo," "Ethnic" and "Anal" were all nicely separated, making shopping very easy. They also had t-shirts, leopard print jeans with lots of zippers, underwear, shot glasses, coffee mugs and a wide variety of soaps. I was pleased to see some candles as well. Parking is free in back. In front are several in-the-ground bronze stars, with porn star's hand prints in the cement. Jenna, Ron, all your faves are there. I had mixes emotions about it. Disgust mixed with pleasure mixed with jealousy. An odd blend. We ultimately ended up purchasing nothing, and I think that's for the best. I haven't written too much while on this trip. I created a detailed joke making fun of the British who stay at our hotel, as well as a joke making fun of sex addicts. They are both done with love though, of course. Well, maybe not the British one. I really can't stand the British. Last night I went to one of my twelve step meetings. It was held in a beautiful church. I just kept staring at people to see if they looked familiar. I got fed up when people's shares didn't reveal whether they had Hollywood jobs or not. You would think that would come up. "Today at the studio there was a hot girl, and I really wanted to reach out and feel validated, but instead I called my sponsor." Something! I'll take anything people. I keep telling Jeremy that I'm a "panty sniffer." I go around town trying to get a good whiff of Hollywood. Really hold those panties up to my nose and do a good inhale. I think that's what I've been doing my whole time here. But I'm like sniffing t-shirts and socks, not really panties. Got to find the panties! Next trip.

Am I a Lesbian?

2007-03-20T10:28:00.000-05:00

I've decided to start a reality show called America's Next Top Lesbian. On this show, contestants compete to be lesbians. They have to compete in various lesbian-type activities like bandana-wearing, SUV-driving and being funny and also not being funny at all. One by one they get eliminated. They also do things like stick you in a hot tub with George Clooney and see if you make a pass. They give you a $10,ooo shopping spree at Fred Segal and see what you buy. I think I might just win. I've used this LA trip to find out if I'm a lesbian. So far, I have been attracted to Sandra Bullock (!), purchased t-shirts from Teenage Millinaire on Melrose, and toned my thighs. I think I might be a big old queero. I'm getting okay with this. An unexpected result of my spiritual journey is discovering that I'm a big old dirty lesbo. Who knew! But the weird thing is I want to have sex with old jewish men. Like fat, powerful jewish men. This is an unexpected result of my spiritual journey as well. I want to encourage everyone to start their own spiritual journey, but I do want to warn you about this unexpected consequence. God I can't wait to get back to NY. I think I am an insane person. Like more than we realized. But less than the media portrays it.

What My New York Looks Like

2006-11-25T20:59:00.000-05:00

Thanksgiving Dinner

2006-11-25T20:52:00.000-05:00

Hello from Brooklyn!

2006-11-25T19:28:00.000-05:00

I live in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York, USA now. Here she is. Isn't she a beauty!

In this blog, I will keep the whole world posted on my comings and goings. Isn't that great!

Planning Your Life

2005-10-18T21:07:00.000-05:00

Imagine you are having a nightmare. In it you are baking crab cakes for a party. You buy the crab, the breadcrumbs, the seasoning, you add the egg, you pat them into perfect smushed discs, but then, inexplicably, an hour later, at your party everyone is eating dog shit and laughing about it. They are smearing it on their faces and laughing. In the sink, you see the eggshells, the bowl lightly dusted with breading, but in your living room, which you can see through the archway, there's not a trace of crab. The guests continue laughing and eating from their plates of dog shit. You begin to cry. You sob into your hands, more from confusion and desperation than from any heartache over the guests' not eating crabcakes. With this sobbing, though, it feels as if a lifetime's worth of stress hormone is floating off of you. Then you wake up from this nightmare, refreshed and reinvigorated but also relieved that all of it, especially the dog shit portion, was just a dream. And then you see in your living room a beautiful woman eating from her plate of dog shit.

That's how things can go. Like that. You can think things are horribly out of control, discover that they're not, of course your life was not going to be this bad, then--oops!--turns out it is going to be that bad. But not as bad as it could be.

This is why it's best to have no expectations, no plans, no dreams.

Of course that was sarcasm.

Here's the deal: you have to build the towers again. You have to replace the empty spot with another dream.

Folks, I don't know what's going on. I'm on a heck of a lot of drugs right now.

I'll be back later.

Valley Girl Explains the Difference Between Sunni and Shiite Muslims

2005-10-17T07:02:00.000-05:00

First off, let me say something about people who move to Chicago from the East Coast: I don't trust you. I think you're up to something. Why didn't you go to New York City? Are you weak? Are you scared? Do you think Chicago's "more real"? I don't know, I guess there are valid reasons, I'm just saying I have a weird feeling about you, and this choice you made. It's a little condescending, that's all. Listen, I'll get over it I'm just saying right now it's coloring our relationship. It's just something buzzing inside me right now, probably stemming from my own insecurity and it will go away.

So like I always remember that there are more Shiites than Sunnis in Iraq by remembering "there's more shit than sun in Iraq." But of course that's like figurative because I think there is A LOT of sun in Iraq, as well as a lot of "shit." But there are, right now, more problems than happiness. Anyway, there are a lot more Shiites even though they did not for many decades have the political power that the Sunnis had. Saddam was toooootally unaccepting of them and their religious practices so that's why when the Americans came they were like, "yaaaay!" They could now practice their religious rituals and possibly enjoy more political power. ANYWAY, the difference between Shiites and Sunnis starts back in 632, with the death of Mohammad, their prophet. Muslims believe Mohammad was the last in a long line of prophets, including Abraham and Jesus. I sooo know there is a connection between Christianity, Judaism and Islam and I think it's Abraham...and the First Testament? Something like that. So Mohammad dies and leaves behind four sons, or like men, maybe they're just appointees, I'm not sure. But there's these dudes: Ali, Hassan, Habib and Abu. Okay, I made up all of those names except Ali. I remember Ali because he is very important to this. The Shiites believe that Ali was the special descendent of Mohammad. Listen, all sons were good, it just happens that Ali was the best--according to the Shiites. Are you guys still with me?

The Jeremy Show Interview

2005-10-06T23:25:00.000-05:00

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH KARA FROM WWW.THEJEREMYSHOW.COM

Kara Buller has agreed to open up her life and her purse for The Jeremy Show. Kara Buller is a stand up comedian who has been tearing up the boards on the Chicago Stand-Up circuit for years.

From Kara's bio- "During her six years in Chicago, Kara Buller has done just about all you can do to a stage. She has been a theater critic, writer, actor, improviser, stand-up comic, story-teller, and instructor. She has written and performed three shows in Chicago: A Fag & His Hag, Work (both with Jeremy Wells) and Cowboy Crushes, Prank Calls & The Biblette. In response to her two-person show A Fag & His Hag, The Chicago Reader claimed Buller showed "great comic promise, with a self-deprecating edge to her carefully enunciated phrasing."

You've been doing stand up comedy for awhile now in many of the greater venues around chicago, you've even traveled the greater midwest spreading love and laughter...have you ever gotten busy in in a comedy club, how far have you gone, with who and how was it?

Yes, some business has been taken care of in the comedy clubs. It has always been
very tasteful and tender business, oddly enough. I think it's important to have feelings for the people you are with, and to then get overly attached and act inappropriate towards them.

What is your stripper name (first childhood pet, and
name of the first street you lived on)?

Brandy Unknown

You're planning a trip to southeast Asia. First, what
is Southeast Asia and second, why are you going there
and what will you do when you are there? What will you
buy me?

Southeast Asia is China's sexy little sister. She teeters around on clear plastic heels and drinks way too much. She is constantly making out with European and Scandinavian backpackers, entertaining pedophiles and making really good meals. Southeast Asia includes Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Phillipines, the Krati Peninsula, the Galapagos, Puerto Rico and all Sandals Resorts.

I am going for the only reason I do anything: DRAMA! Angkor Wat in Cambodia is the world's largest religious structure. It was the crown jewel of the great Khmer empire--and is the only building visible from outer space! Then things started to go not so well for the Khmer: the Thai army came, the French came and in the 1970s the Khmer Rouge took over and ended up killing 2 million of their own people. It's a huge failure you can see from outer space. This moves me. The things that humans can do--and undo. I want to see it with my own two eyes (pointing two fingers to my eyes). Also, I have a friend over there in Cambodia who is very dear to me and I would like to see him.

You lived with me for 3 years, what was the grossest
thing about living with me?

There was a period there when it smelled like Jeremy was bowel-movementing iron ore. I don't know what was going on with him gastrointestinally, but it was not good. It was this weird metallicy-sweet smell that really worried all of us. It was strongest at our middle place: "2324" and subsided towards the end, at "1761." For a while I thought it was how our bathrooms smelled, but there were three of us and it wasn't happening with Geoffrey and me. Of course, now, I miss that smell.

You've told me you've had your purse stolen repeatedly
over the last year. What do you have in your purse?
Take your time and list all of the contents.

First off, I purchased a Le SportSac bag in NY. It was very expensive and, I thought, very French. I've only seen LeSportsac stores in Waikiki and NYC. I thought that meant "class." Then I started noticing that the only people who had LeSportsacs were overweight 50 year old women at museums.

Inside..there is
Ipod
palm pilot
FACE Stockholm pale pink lipstick
Black Honey Clinique lipgloss
Clinique powder
protective goggles for when I go tanning
a black Uni-Ball pen (micro of course)
a cool looking yellow mod notebook from Target
Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
Aleve gelcaps
SuperGroom nail and cuticle groomer from Blisslabs NY
and
Eclipse gum.

Oh, and my wallet, which I received in the mail in April after having it stolen from me in November. People are good at heart! (Except for me--I just disparaged overweight 50 year old women. But it's not like I won't be one someday.)

Have you ever had an STD? I have. If you haven't which
STD would you choose?

I have not had an STD. I did at one point have an STP bumper sticker on the back of my car, which is, yes, very very regrettable. I would chose to have crabs. I think it's the cutest one to have. It's almost like having a musical in your pants. What STD did you have? Wasn't it crabs?

What is love?

Love is an endless, aching need. It is for me anyways. Did I quote Bette Midler correctly there? There are many types of love: mad, crazy in love love; brotherly, sisterly love; you work in the cubicle next to me and yell "oh momma!" and "whatta knucklehead!" and make me laugh love, i didn't want to be with you at first but now it's quite comfortable and great love....many types. They all make us feel connected to another and help to remove cinderblock by cinderblock the cylindrical wall that surrounds us. Maybe? I personally love love. I can't wait to love again. There is a sticker pasted around Wicker Park that says "Love Again." Please. Give me a break....(teary eyed) Thank you.

I need to go buy cigarettes but I'm not sure what time
Walgreens opens but I'm gonna go ahead and assume that
they are open. While I'm gone, please tell me who
you'd rather french kiss Katie Couric, Kathie Lee
Gifford or Condi Rice..set the scene.

I think there is something about Katie Couric. I hear she is evil--and she has no lips. There's something there. I want to explore it. It would have to involve a city, a big black car and too many glasses of chardonnay at a "gala."

I'm back. What is the biggest misconception about Kara
Buller?

Unfortunately, there are no misconceptions. Everyone is dead-on. One co-worker did tell me I always look very pulled-together, very stylish. I fear she was very wrong.

Well, we've all been reading about how you're going to
uproot and move to the Big Apple and take it by storm.
On March 25, 1911 the Triangle Factory Fire in
Greenwich Village took the lives of 145 female garment
workers, which would eventually lead to great
advancements in the city's fire department, building
codes, and workplace regulations. So, what are you
wearing today?

Oh, it's terrible. Red dress pants that hit just above the ankle, black strappy high heeled sandals that smell bad, a black sweater with a gold neckband and an orange and green scarf wrapped around my head. I woke up late and didn't have time to wash my hair. I smell very animally too. I kind of like it though.

Where were you born? Now, rearrange the letters of the
town you were born in and then try to make a word out
of them. Put that word into a sentence. Quickly..we
don't have all day.

Ithaca, New York. Chaita. I chaita do it but I couldn't.

Thank you for your time today, Kara Buller. Is there
anything you'd like to say to The Jeremy Show viewers?

Yeah, I took Jeremy's security deposit and went to Asia with it. It wasn't right. It wasn't polite. But we're going to work through this. I'm sorry if this in anyway hurt the show. We'll talk about it off camera.

Maybe you could buy me an Ipod and not one of those little pansy ones either. I want a big honker.

Where can our viewers come to see you live? What's
your schedule?

I am hosting at Gunther Murphys Aug 2. I do open mics at Bad Dog and Crush. That's it. When I get to New York, you'll be seeing me at all the big-name clubs. New York cannot resist a smelly girl in a scarf. I know it.

Sokla

2005-10-05T06:57:00.000-05:00

I'm convinced my love affair ended because of some bad karma arising out of the way I treated Sokla, a 27 year-old orphaned by the Khmer Rouge. For most of my time in Cambodia, Sokla was my driver, making 5 to 13 USD from me everyday. He had the face of a god in a Hindu sculpture: strong cheekbones a

nd wide, peaceful almond shaped eyes. His hair was wiry, not sleek and straight. Like so many people in Southeast Asia, he was a genetic mystery. Were his ancestors Chinese merchants, Indian Ramans or Khmer farmers? Sokla had the great fortune or misfortune of driving me around on the back of his $300 motorcycle. My first day at the Lazy Fish I approached a cluster of moto drivers and told them I wanted to go to the Killing Fields and the torture center. There were only two who were able to take me. The cute little one pointed to this sour looking guy with a peach shirt and said, "Sokla will take you." I tried to think of some reason why he couldn't be my driver. Maybe say "maybe later I come back" and hope that this moody-looking Sokla character would be gone. That was my first encounter with Sokla: "How do I get out of this situation." And that was how my last encounter went as well.

I made the mistake of taking him out to dinner, breakfast, saying maybe I could go out to the country with him and see his grandma, yes I would come back to Cambodia, yeah, maybe we could go to a disco...the list goes on. The truth is I used him. I used him as company. When we went riding around on his bike, we sat with our thighs pressing against each other, making a double-layered "v" if viewed from above. When he told me he loved me and asked if I loved him, I didn't say no. I said, "sure."

I'm sorry, Sokla. I will dedicate my next performance to you. I will work my ass off so I can fly back to Cambodia and find you and tell you I am sorry. I didn't mean to lead you on. I didn't mean to make you dream of things that were never going to happen. And I'm sorry that then happened to me... but most of all I am sorry you are in Cambodia and want to come to America.

You Gotta Do Wyoming

2005-09-10T21:00:00.000-05:00

My friend Tracy just called to tell me I need to go to Wyoming. I would slay in Wyoming. The college kids would petition Hollywood and make me a star. That was very kind of Tracy. It is kind of her to look out for me. Unfortunately, I have more important things to tend to. Like fake apartment hunting and admiring my fading beauty in a hand mirror and googling love interests' ex-girlfriends for a half hour. Here, I am not kidding. Folks, how is a girl to make it?

A Vietnamese landlord hugged me today when I told her I just got back from Vietnam. Poor lady. Now she is in America, where yuppie girls fake apartment hunt for their own amusement. If you ever get tired of being you, just come up with a fake name, fake situation and start looking for Apartment for Rent signs. "Yes, I am looking for a three bedroom. It would be me and my two adopted children. My husband, their father, is out on the road. You guessed it, steak knife sales..." Am I really fake apartment hunting? Perhaps I really am interested...These cards. I hold very close to chest. Yes?

Folks, the book recommendation of the day is the beautifully written Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Anthony Shahid. I'm only on page 27 so PLEASE hold your questions. So far, of note:
--"Nobody walks into a room in the Arab world without being greeted. Nobody." That's great. If it's true.
--"They're going to burn the forest to kill the fox," says one Iraqi artist nervously, days before the Americans come.
--You really get the sense that these Iraqis are far more sensitive, worldly, and informed than George Bush could ever hope to be. The absurdity of the situation sickens you--the idea that this nitwit from Texas has the power to terrorize these people in an ancient land on the other side of the world.
--Iraqis don't frequently use the word for freedom, but the word for justice comes up often. Here in America we're really heavy on the freedom, and not so into the justice lately it seems. We use the word for freedom in ads for cell phone plans and maxi pads and pills. Justice and fairness, that ain't our bag.

Breakfast

2005-08-08T10:49:00.000-05:00

It's six am Cambodia time and I am ready to go. Even though I went to bed at three. God this sleep disorder is out of control. I have jet lag embedded inside of a serious sleep disorder. So here we are again with the lonliness and the books and the not sleeping in the hotel room. I organize my stuff. I organize it again. I shower. I realize I left my shower products at the fancy hotel in Bangkok. Great. Now I have to use Khmer Rouge Shampoo. I fix my hair. I read. I readjust my hair. Do I look like a lesbian soccer mom? They do exist right? If they do they look exactly like me. I go down to the lobby and email. I tell them "On Jerome's house account, okay? On house account." This hotel is not getting one cent from me. I'm hungry now. Great. There is nothing I want more than a big Ann Sather breakfast laid out on a table full of my friends and a big tall man who loves me. But it's not 2002 or whenever stuff like that happened in my life. I am in Cambodia. Where Jerome did not let me crash at his place.

Jerome and Lucy

2005-08-07T22:15:00.000-05:00

While Jerome was taking me to get Valium he was talking to his little Khmer princess on the phone. She would be joining us for dinner. According to Jerome she's the most beautiful girl in all of Cambodia. Well, this I have got to see. I am not even the most beautiful girl in all of Albany Park, Chicago so to say I am feeling insecure and intimidated is to say, well is to say I'm not loaded up on Valium.

Somehow I end up paying for dinner because I'm the only one with cash one me. This is suspect. I think I read about this in a Dear Abby article. If it happens again, I should act like I forgot my wallet as well. I'm having a Dear Abby moment with a sex casino operator and his former hooker Khmer princess girlfriend. There is so much to not like about this situation.

Later we go back to the sex casino and drink and watch satellite television. At some point Lucy starts freaking out about Jerome not giving her enough attention and something about past girls and affairs and I kinda wanna say "Honey, this is soo U of I 1998. He was pulling this shit then too." Then she mentions him hitting her. Well, this is a new element. And not one any Midwestern liberal girl can stomach. What the fuck is she talking about? She goes into detail about black and blue eyes and cuts to her face. I'm on my third gin and tonic so it's time to kick Jerome's ass. Although, that seems contradictory and also physically impossible given his six foot frame. So I just verbally freak out at him. He says of course she's lying. All Khmer do is lie. Hmph. Jerome and I did have a relationship as transparent as Simone de Beauvoir's and Sartre's and he never lied to me and never spared me any detail about his life so maybe he's telling the truth now. Hmph. I At one point I find Lucy in the bathroom freaking out again. "He not give me ten dollah. I say if you love me you can give me ten dollah. He sleep too with other women. He sleep with one Vietnamee, he sleep with two Vietnamee." Hey, wasn't that a Dr. Seuss book? "One Vietnamee, Two Vietnamee." Okay, Kara, no jokes, this is a defenseless girl losing her mind, breaking down crying, abused by an American and tortured by demons that seem waaay too familiar. I tell her that she needs to make a choice. He is a womanizer and a sex addict and she needs to either accept that or move on. "He not even give me ten dollah. I tell him I have no money." Well, I see my little Dr. Phil moment is not having the impact I thought it would. Fuck her. Learn some English. Get a job. And leave men that treat you like shit. Simple. As. That.

So then I go back to talk to Jerome. At some point Lucy comes back out and starts fighting with him again and he threatens to call security on her. Which honestly, made me sort of jealous. You know it's love when someone's threatening to call security. I never loved a man so much he had to call the police on me. Although, I hear my text messaging to a certain ex made him want to change his phone. BUT HE DIDN'T. You hear what I'm saying? Men love this kind of dramatic attention. It makes them feel like Blake Carrington. "All these crazy women! So in love with me! When will the madness stop?!" As soon as you decide to file a restraining order.

Jerome brings us to a bar that he says is the most intense and dangerous in all of Asia. Whatever that means. It looks like the homo bar Berlin in Chicago. Well, old school Berlin. Black and silver. The way a bar should look. Not all this sumptuous orange and red couch shit. I want it punk rock. And here, we got it. I guess people are doing a lot of drugs...Hmmm....and everyone is Asian and the music is this techno thrash speed metal type stuff that's kinda creeping me out.

At the end of the night, Jerome and Lucy head off to do whatever and he says goodnight to me. "Tomorrow! Royal Palace"

Whatever. Tomorrow I leave your sex hotel

Yes Hi, I Would Like Some Valium? Valium?

2005-08-07T21:30:00.000-05:00

I walked down towards that freeway or whatever the hell it is but before I got there Jerome showed up on the back of a moped. Time had certainly written a story on his face, if you get what I mean. Time has written a story on mine too, but I edit it with an excellent anti-oxident mattifier from DDF and Chanel creme poudre in "claire." Men have no such weapons in their arsenals...although I am reminded of a certain gay friend from U of I who kept a wonderful stash of cosmetics going. He didn't use them, he just collected them and pulled them out every now and then to look at, like a box of one's grandfathers war medals. This whole experience is going to require me to book two dermatologists to deal with the stress effects on my skin. Jerome did drive me to a pharmacy to get the Valium I need to deal with all the bikes, sheep and palpable resentment I feel for him. Palpable like I'm sure he can feel it. Good. Things are weird between us. Maybe that's what happens when people don't show up in foreign cities like they are supposed to!

At the pharmacy I mess up and get Xanax. Xanax does take away the evil stepsister Anxiety but doesn't replace her with her hot distant cousin "Floating in Space." For that, you need Valium, which makes everything oooookaaay. But luckily this is Cambodia and you can just go right back to the pharmacy and for 2 dollars get what you really need. Flight crew prepare for take off.

I Am Not Leaving This Khmer Rouge Hotel Room

2005-08-07T21:00:00.000-05:00

I am readying myself for battle. That is what one has to do in these situations. Ready oneself for battle. Hunker down. Steel oneself. I have no idea what is going on outside on that "freeway." There certainly was no order I can tell you that. I've never seen so many people on mopeds. Well, of course not. I've seen those pictures of Asians on bicycles, sure. But here we have mopeds, cars, sheep and bicycles. I didn't see any pedestrians nor any sidewalks. Certainly no bicycle lanes. Plus, I think I saw an AK-47. It seems very dangerous outside this room.

I am not leaving my Khmer Rouge hotel room.

Yes I am. I'm not going to wait for Jerome any more. I know he said he was going to come find me but I've heard that one before. I am going for a walk. A Cambodian walk. And so I am readying myself for battle. A little daub of lipstick, some powder, we're ready to go. Cambodia, here comes Kara.

Fuck this Khmer Rouge Hotel Room

2005-08-07T20:46:00.000-05:00

My attempt to get the fuck out of Bangkok didn't go so well. My little good luck Thai angelhomo could only get me so far. I realized I needed singles for Cambodia. I think some people in Cambodia can't even break a single. "Too mosh! Too mosh!" All I had was twenties and fifties and I remember Jake Riddleton saying I would definitely need small change in Cambodia. So I went to a bank and asked them for singles. "Yes, hi. Umm...Can you break a twenty? Umm...Singles? Small ones? Small small? Ones? Hello?" This did not go well. She offered me many small Thai Baht bills. I wanted to yell NO! US Dollars. You know US. America? Where people try? Where people greet each other with smiles and a friendly "Hi, how may I assist you"?! Where there is a modicum of understanding that if you work hard you will be rewarded and by golly I think that just might be true! No singles? Okay. Thank you.

So I'm now in Phnom Penh. I wanted to be in Siem Reap with all those hot backpackers I invented, getting mistaken by the townspeople for Angelina Jolie. Angerira Jorie! Angerira! (Do they know to ask for autographs?...wait...do the Cambodian people even know who Angelina Jolie is??? I'm guessing subscription to US Weekly is not high on their Christmas lists. For shame...wait...do the Cambodian people even have Christmas lists?? Christ. There is too. much. difference! To take in right now anyway.) So I wanted to be in Siem Reap, enwrapped in my pink scarf, rolling joints with the mighty-thighed of Europe, laughing about how ugly they think the Thai women are and graciously accepting complements on my long, graceful limbs, but the whole singles debacle made me rethink this whole border-crossing adventure. It's a challenge even for the veteran world traveler and I'm just a pill-popping Chicago yuppie who thinks that US Weekly and Carmel Macchiatos and palm pilots should be air-dropped to the children of the third world. MAKE A TO DO LIST. REVIEW YOUR GOALS. IF YOU BELIEVE YOU CAN ACHIEVE. DON'T SIT AROUND WAITING FOR SOMEONE TO NEED A TUK TUK. CREATE A NICHE MARKET. THINK LIKE YOUR CUSOMER!! IF YOU WANT TO SELL ME MEATS ON A STICK YOU COOK ON THE STREET THAT SMELLS LIKE PUSSY HONE YOUR CONCEPT. MAYBE MAKE IT LIKE A COOKING SHOW. STAND. OUT. Asia needs a swift kick in the ass if they expect to make it in the 21st Century. I'm seeing a lot of waiting around and I haven't seen a single power tie the whole time I've been here. Nobody seems to be in a rush to get anywhere and let me tell you, there's a price to pay for that. It's like Kanye West says. Difficult takes a day. Impossible takes a week. Aim High. Fuckin' A...ANYWAY I decided that maybe racing to do this make it across the border before it closes thing might not be such a great idea. Apparently, Poipet is still a really dangerous border town and if you stay there as a naive, single American female who always has bad things happen to her, bad things will happen to you. So I get off the sexy Skyway system that was actually easy to understand, except that all the stops were like "Sissawithasunahunafanny Way" or "Thilla Met Lok Avenue" instead of "Grand & Milwaukee" or "Wilson." But that's okay. Asia will come around and understand that their words can't be so long if they expect to make it in this modern world...ANYWAYS I then hail a cab, if we can call these things that, they certainly aren't Caprice Classics...and throw all three of my bags in the back seat and tell the dude to take me to the airport. We had a nice little discussion.

"What your age?"
"28. Although on Friday I turn 29. It's my birthday...What is your age?"
"Thailand."

Well, sure. That went well enough. It was human contact. It was a dialogue. Information was exchanged. Probably not. At any rate, he got me to the airport. Which got me on a plane. Which got me to Cambodia. Which got me to a sex casino.

The folks at Jerome's sex casino hotel just put me in the creepiest room. There was the usual language confusion when I came up to the front desk. "Hi, yes, I am here for Jerome Byron (This is not my friend's real name. I am going to use fake names that sound like soap opera names unless the person actually wants to be mentioned in my blog. Like Tracy Tedesco. Or Jeremy Wells. But like Sike Ridenstein? Fake name.)

"Ehhh....Jerooohhhh....wha??"

"Yeah, uh. Jerome Byron. Jerome Byron. He runs the casino here."

"Ehh....Mr. Jerome?"

"YES. Mr. Jerome. That's the one. Mr. Jerome. Is he here?"

"Ehhhh....waahhh momannnnhhh."

He came back and said that Mr. Jerome was out for the night but would I like to go on the house account? Sure. Whatever. That sounds really suspect to me and I don't know what this HOUSE ACCOUNT is about but it sounds like maybe I don't have to pay for a hotel room that I shouldn't have to pay for because I came HERE to rescue Jerome's ass. It also sounds like maybe I am now a prostitute. Mr. Jerome's house account. Jesus Christ. At least now we're getting closer to this Jackie O trip I'm talkin' about. The guy gives my room key to the doorman (!) who takes my bags and walks me through many creepy hallways to my creepy room. You don't get this kind of service at the Sheraton, I will tell you that. He shows me how to operate the console by my bed. (see creepy picture of creepy Khmer Rouge console) These Asians are really big into their control centers. This room is real 1970s and broken in but basically clean. 25 USD a night I think the guy mentioned at the front desk. ("But Mr. Jerome's house account right? Mr. Jerome's house account.") But folks, there are some stains you can't wash away. Like murdering 2 million of your own people in the 1970s. I want the fuck out of this room. I want to be in Chicago. Or have one of my Chicago boys with me right now. Why didn't I just sponsor one funny male companion. It would have just been $1000. He could pay me back. I could have charged it to my credit card. Anything but be inside a room alone where UNDOUBTEDLY party talks went down. I can feel it. Look at that console. Look at it good. It has a story to tell. And I don't want to hear it. I need to get the fuck out of this room. Fucking Khmer Rouge. Why didn't they just take everything from the 1970s and put it in a pile and burn it?! That's what I did when Blake broke up with me. I just had to take everything that reminded me of that phase and destroy it. Move. Forward.

I need to leave this hotel room. But outside my door it's even worse. What am I gonna do? Go for a walk? In CAMBODIA??

look out for number one

2005-08-07T13:04:00.000-05:00

(the meal aboard china air flight from san fran to taipei)

So I decided that I needed to "look out for number one" and forget about Jerome and go do what I want to do. Which is see that big old nasty mildewy temple thing that you can see from outer space and get the fuck out of Bangkok. The whole city smells like pussy smoke. All this pussy smoke bellowing out at you. Pussy smoke? Yeah, just go with me here. My hotel provided me such guidance as "'Angkuh...anguk wat? ehhh no. ankkkguhhh" What?!? How can these people not know about the largest temple on the planet and one of the seven wonders of the world? I freaked out because I had no guide book, no "malls" were open in Bangkok and I had no way to get help. Internet was 8 dollars at the hotel!! Too mosh! Too mosh! So I went over to the gleaming, tall Hotel Intercontinental (that's what I'm talking about!) and found a wonderful ENGLISH speaking flaming thai homosexual. He even did the folded hands to nose proper thing. I had to do it too but I had all these papers in my hands and it was all awkward and shit. Probably the worst executed namaste or whatever they call it. But he printed out all these directions, and gave me maps and said the bus trip would be very nasty. I wanted to stand there and talk to him all day I was so starved for human affection. But I had a bus to catch and a city to flee.

I got to the end of the subway line, freaked out, got back on and went to the airport to get out of town that way. I ran from ticket booth to ticket booth begging them to tell me about their next flight out of their crappy city. I found a 2:40 to phenom pehn and booked it. I would go find Jerome. I hated him, was repulsed, but he would be someone to talk to.

So not Jackie O. Jackie O would never get her self in this situation.

Blog too long! too long!

Kara Does Asia: Episode 2

2005-08-07T06:53:00.000-05:00

the following things are totally unacceptable but have been seen:

--an asian 15 year old girl with pig tails and dark kohled eyes, socks and flip flops and a tall hot white man. there must be about six levels of wrong. and all this at the san francisco international airport! i thought they patrolled such things.

--grown men with socks off at airport. please you are not bill buller and this is not your living room.

--somebody moving the handrest between us midflight and LYING down across two seats and pulling blanket OVER her head. WRONG. then this woman, and elderly indian woman LATER decides to pull down seat tray, put legs on that and sleep. At this point i am about to call over the flight attendant. but they are too busy being skinny hot and chinese.

--as hinted earlier, socks with flip flops are not uncommon.

--Folks, I'm gonna need someone from Plano fuckin Texas. Okay, just give me someone from like Henderson Kentucky. I'll even take a German. I just need somebody who makes me feel a little bit more in synch here folks. No man is an island unless she is tall and white and wearing most excellent clothes. God they really dress bad.

--Tyrone is coming. He says there were problems. There had better been. This has been the most insane experience of my life. A woman going alone to a weird third world city. It has O magazine article written ALLL over it. My aha moment! Oh my god I'm gonna do it.

--I am writing to you from a mall. But this aint no Woodfield and this ain't no powerbook.

--I gotta wrap it up. I wish you were here.

The Nightclub

2005-08-06T15:34:00.000-05:00

The nightclub in the basement of my hotel is called Spazzo. It was filled with gorgeous, skinny Thai girls with middle aged white men rubbing their boners up against them. Now, I had heard of such things, but to see it all right in front of you is really quite alarming. And arousing. I had to take this all in as the band played such crowd-pleasing hits as Love Shack and Let's Get Retarded. Yeah, there was a cover band. Playing Love Shack. And Let's Get Retarded. Oh, I think we're already there. I don't think there's any need to ask for retardation or wait for retardation...we've pretty much hit it full on.

I couldn't get a drink there to save my life. I'm surprised I wasn't asked to leave. "Excuse me ma'am, yes, this is a Thai sex stick and dirty old white man sex house. You look like you are a white woman close to maybe 30. You might remind these men of their daughters or wives, things they are running away from. Please, take your lonlieness and your nice little attempt at dressing up back up to your hotel room and your MTV. Thank you, rady."

He develops an Asian accent right at the end of his speech for some reason.

This is me in Bangkok

2005-08-06T15:23:00.000-05:00

MTV Asia has kept me going. They play Blink 182 and Shakira and they know what I need. I watch MTV Asia at 5 pm, 3 am, 8 am...It does not matter. I am not going outside and dealing with that pussy smell and all those weird taxis. My Ambien is no longer working. I cannot sleep day or night. I read about Buddhism. The Buddhists believe that suffering is the result of wrong doing. Love and forgiveness bring good fortune. I think about strength. I try to forgive Tyrone. I try to let anger go. I shower a lot. I try to read my books but cannot. I go to check my email to see if Jerome is coming. I shower again. I re-organize my belongings. I email Jeremy. I see people walking with other people. That is neat. I see people talking with others. Engaging in conversations and making one another laugh. Most interesting. I walk and walk. It is like New York City, but with incense, tuk tuks and people talking backwards. I go to see an American movie. To commune with my kind. I see The Island, a sci-fi starring Scarlett Johanson. This is not my kind. I laugh about how stupid it is. I look around to see who will laugh with me about how bad this movie is. They are not laughing. They are enchanted. They think this movie is great. I think they are retarded. I walk out. I go to check my email. It takes me half an hour to find the exit to the mall. I am so tired I somehow get stuck in a food court on the fourth floor. I walk around and around the food court but it’s like a maze. There is no exit. Then, out of nowhere, California Dreaming starts blaring. I must be going mad. Surely, I have lost my mind. This would never happen to Jackie O. Asia received Jackie with open arms and lines of wais and leis. That’s right. They started pulling shit from other cultures and heaping it on her they were so happy to see her. Thai monks donned leiderhosen and danced around the maypole. Whatever, it was the opposite of being stood up by a drug-addled Montana hill billy. Jackie O would never let this happen to her. She would have gotten a bad feeling about Jerome and ran in the other direction. Or glided in the other direction. Whatever it is that Jackie does. Maybe that’s what I need to do. Fuck him and his problems. I can’t be Mother Teresa for everyone. Just a select few and this kid ain’t making the cut anymore. First thing tomorrow morning, I’m getting out of here, putting this behind me, forgetting about helping this asshole and getting on the first bus to Sanityville, aka Siem Reap. There I will find my Scandinavian backpackers who go limp at the thought of skinny Thai girls. Their dreams are filled with strong busty German girls with child-bearing hips and long, long arms that help them drag their 40 pound Columbia backpack around airports. This soothing thought, escape, should help bring sleep.

Sleep is not coming. But room service is.

3 AM. I order room service. 34 dollar prime sirloin. I do the wai to the boy who delivers it. He asks me where I want the table. Right there. Right in front of my MTV Asia. Perfect. Ah, prime rib, potatoes and MTV Asia at 3 am. Life does not get any better than this. This is perfect.

Except that I am full-bore batshit crazy.

And I want to go home.

Kara Does Asia: Episode 1

2005-08-05T21:19:00.000-05:00

Email to Jeremy from Bangkok, August 5:
everysing es very bad. had to take cab on wrong side of road to hotel, where much loneliness and Scarlet Johannson can be played. i am on sleepeing pills right now, but later: very funny, astute, travel observations. so much turburence! sorry for turburence! oh lord. every lady very attractive and very much sexual. don't tell anybody that i am totally all alone in scary foreeign city.