All Kato Kaelin wants to do is have some fun. Is that so wrong?

Amy Pagnozzi spends quality time with the clown prince

of the case of the century

henever he is spottai by his public, KaroKaelin is always obliging.

"Kato, man, how ya doing?" "Kato-love che hair." It doesn't matter where

Kato's headed, or what he's supposed to do. There is never too little time-no matter whose time he's on-to ask people's names, sign auto­graphs, swap pleasantries. Clocks don't faze him. They do me, but I'm me one whds spent two weeks of my life in an L.A. hotel suite wooing Kato's publicist, agent, and lawyer by telephone and fax machine to nail this sir-down interview, which to Kato means me standing behind him while he talks to his fans. I want to mump him on che head when I see him whip out that tube of Vaseline Lip Therapy again.

Behold, me relic! "Is mat che same rube of lip balm you

used in front of Marcia Clark on me wimess srand? Way rooll" his fans exclaim.

Though Kato swears it's che same rube from M.a!dl, I know it can't be-not ar the rate hes putting it on. Still, its a good trick.

As a teenager, playing air guitar was Kato's favorite act:

"He thought he was Bruce Springsteen,"

says his sister Go~. "All the little girfs used to scream

when he I played,' If

The one that made him a star. One day you're an under­

employed thirtysomething houseboy wim me sex: appeal of Lassie, next thing )QU know, Hollywood's at your paws and college coeds are stripping fur you on the street, present­ing the glories that bounce beneath their T-shirts fur your inspection. Karo Kaelin is a happy puppy these days, rolling around in the karmic wave that carried him from freeloader to phenom as if he were born to it. "People ask me ifl'm sick of the arrencion. It's an honor," says Karo. "Every person I meet is a sep­arate person. I{! hate to go up to some famous individual on the day he gave out his one millionth autograph and have him just go harummph."

From what I've seen, the positive attention far out­

weighs the negative, and Kato agrees: "My ra~ ~about 92 percent positive-that's berrer dtan most politicians, I think. Two or three weeks ago," he concedes, "somebody said something bad to me in a mall ... jusr a comment I didn't like, something about, 'Your careers·mriving because of murder' or something, and I really felt bad."

He looks at me like I'm loopy when I >

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suggest r.his was merely the truth. On the day of the murders, he reminds

me, had his cypewrirer been working, he would have composed a new resume co tuck beneath a pizza he imended to deliver personally to a casting director holding an audition. Who knows? he says, perhaps that pizza would have landed the role that would have made him as famous as he is now because of the murders.

Sounds like DNA odds co me. To Kaco, "You can't know 1 wouldn't be F.unous now and I can't know that. l always knew some­thing, whatever, was going to happen in my life. I always knew la be here."

When Kato talks locations, he is talking degrees of fame. "Here" i.~ Famous. "Up there," more famous. Acmallocations are

problematic, because he does not und~rand you can only be in one place at a time and must choose between all those A-list parties, show-business meetings, and hot new babes.

When, by some miracle, be shows up at my hotel for our interview only s~ghcly lace, he gets waylaid further in r.he lobby.

".Am-age!" he trills over the house phone. (No matter how short your name, be diminutizes it furthe.r. Amy, An1age. The Juice, Juiceage .. ) "You have co rome down co the lobby right now and see this! There's a woman here whose husband plays in Rod Stewart's band! Rod's coming and he wams to meet me!''

I agree, with a warning: Should he waste any more of our time be will have co can­cel his date with Laylage, a twencyish "model-girl" he just mer ar a photo shoot.

"I promise it will just take a minute," he says.

When I get there, the band member's wife is seducing Kato with cue-rate vacations to Singapore, which she can arrange through

her job with an Asian airlines carrier. ''Where's your camera?" she demands when she sees me. T tell her I am a writer, not a photographer. She sends me to my room to

search lOr a disposable camera in the mini­bar, saying, ''Go now. Rod won't wait." I know my \Vay around rhe minibar; llmow there's no camera in there; obligingly, 1 go anyway. When 1 get back, Karo is air playing the guitar with Rod's band (Rod never showed) while she rakes phoco afi:er photo with a camera she has somehow managed to

borrow. One of the original members of rhe Face.~ is offering Kato front-row seats and backstage passes to Rod's L.A. gig as I'm dragging Karo back to my room. 'Td love ro go, ifl 'm around," I<ato says as we're leaving. "But by that time, I may be 'up there.' "

Kato Kaelin is a happy puppy these days, rolling around in the karmic wave that carried him from freeloader to phenom as if he were born to it.

I don't want to give you the impression that Karo KaeEn is unremittingly tedious. Yes, he does have time and space issues> bur his manners, when it comes to remember­ing names, opening doors, saying please and thank you, and avoiding profimiry, are impeccable. Once in my room, he notices I got my hair trimmed, mixes me his signa­ture Karo Kaelin Global Fan Club rock.rail (apple juice and iced rea), then shows me to the couch, plopping to the £loor at my feet. I know that rm being shined and that T am only one year older than he is--but whenever Kato is around me, I nonetheless have this recurring urge to say, "My, you're a well-brought-up young man."

lone with Kato, away from the Phenomenon, you can see how pleasant it must have been for 0.}. and Nicole to have someone so deter­minedly ingratiating banging

around the house--someone sufficiently

underemployed to be available, someone sufficiently beholden that you can send rum back to his room, like an actual kid. When he gives you that trademark rorally­rapt-bur-slighdy-bcwildered look, you feel powerful by comparison. You know the expression I mean; ic:~ d1e one your dog gets when you've got a pocketful of Milk-Bones.

Kid and animal analogies are inescapable in any disrussion of the man; everyone who knows him uses them. ''Kato reminds me of a puppy or a kirten- he's got this playful, innocent-but-rroublemaking quality to his character," says director Savage Steve Holland, who in fact cast Kato as Kat the Kitten in his FOX cartoon Eek! The CAt.

"He's so vivacious." Holland adds. "He's kind ofl.ilre r.he prom king, but even though

be's the prom king, you still like him." Brian "Kaco'' Kaelin, who took his

nickname from a character on the 1V show The Grem Hornet, was, in fact, prom king at Nicoler High, School in Glendale, Wtsconsin, and prides him­self on being congenial. He says he mixed with greasers and stoners in school as easily as he did with the jocks and the drill-team girls: "T didn't have any Favorites, and that's the truth," he declares earnestly.

His mother, Isabelle, who worked as an industrial .nurse at the Schlitz Brewery when he was growing up, says that from his first day in the first grade ar Our Lady of Good Hope parochial school, he was always "very, very popu­lar. We have a grear big backyard, and he was always putting on sl;ows for the

kids here." Kato's Favorite act? Scooting inside the house to come bounding our wid1 his clectcic guiCU", on which he would air play "Born to Run" while Bruce Springsteen blared &om the stereo.

"He d1ought he \vas Bmce Springsteen," says Kato's thirty-seven-year-old sister, GaiL '~I the little girls used to scream when he 'played' -he was always so up. Kato's were tough fOotsteps to follow." In d1ose days he was known as Brian, the restofthesix Kaelin siblings were known as "Brian's brothers and sisters" -even though Kato was the serond youngest among them.

Of course, the skills that make you big­time in high school dont necessarily take you beyond it, but, apart from Kato's father, Al, the rest of r.hc family always accepred Karo for the star he thought he was.

Al, who died five years ago of a heart at­rack, sold Equor co restaurants. Two of his sons, Mark and John, folloWIXi him in co sales; Robert is a romputcr operator; and Mary and Gail, just like d1eir mother, became>

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health-care professionals. Kato was the only one of Al's kids who never held down a tra­

ditional job; his father had a problem wiLh thar. AI felt he needed to find some profes-. sion, some trade-something other than "Class Clown" to pur on his resume.

"I always thought my dad was tough on me," Kato recalls. '1tsrarnxi when I was in school. He wanted me to be a pro ballplayer, and T was good enough to have a shot, but I wasn't commirred. 1 preferred hanging with my buddies co mnning and working out."

To this day, Kato

Eek! The Cat director Holland daims, "There are 2illions of guys like Karo out here in LA who reason that at some point you aan only do so much, then you're wait­ing for your break. You just open yourself up and let it come in, instead of putting it out. And sometimes it happens; people who don't work all thar nard suddenly become famous."

lr's happening for Kato. A Roseanne episode he appears in bas not ytt aired, but there are movie roles he could take right now, if he wanted them. Eek! T/;e Gtt and

occasional stints host­does not have the focu~ his father wanted for him. nr just always wanted ro be on the top, in something, to be in d1e spoilighr. I never gave up," Kato says.

Alone with Kato, you can see how pleasant it must have

ing Talk Soup keep him afloat till he plays Vegas with Anderson, whom he'll also accompany on che road. Ir's almost as if he can't put his foot down without step­ping in it. When Kato went to see the heavy­metal band Anthrax, they told him, even though he can't sing, that he could join their group. When he flew back to LA from the Kentucky Derby (where he was f~ted with Muhammed Ali), he just happened, hav-

He decided Cali­fornia was the place where destiny would find him after taking a trip to Redlands with one of his high school buddies. Just over a year later, he transferred to a college in che area. Again, he had a slight problem with location. ''1 thought Redlands was LA," he admits.

been for OJ and Nicole to have someone so determinedly ingratiating hanging around the house.

"How did I know what was meant co bappeo ro me when I wa~ growing up?" says Kato. "I was pretty, no, very hip back then-I mean, 1 always knew I was way, way ahead of my time. I remember when I was a lirde kid looking in the mirror sometimes, when fd get into an argumenr with my dad or something, r remember crying all the time and going: Tm leaving. I am not staying here. I'm leav­ing.' " (He says these words in a sniveling, childish voice.) "I'd wa.ir until I'd stopped bawling. And then fd move away !Tom the mirror. J knew I was supposed to be ... "

Infur "here." Portents of grearness. Perhaps you have

to live in LA to understand. The aaors I know in New York cot1stancly go to classes and workshops, showcases and auditions to refine their art, and yer they remain wracked with self-doubt. Kato, who takes no classes, cites college productions when you ask about his theatrical experience, and never performed at a single amateur night before opening recently ar some small com­edy d ubs for Louie Anderson, exudes a confidence so Zen, l asked if he was a Buddhist. (He isn't.)

ing been bumped up to first class, co be seared next ro Jon Lovit'l.. Lovitt offered him a role on bis FOX car­toon series, The Critic.

'Tm going to conquer this comedy thing first," declares Karo. "I've got Louie Anderson, T can't ask for anything more. He's brilliant, he's a genius. He has an insight in me-l mean, he just knows me."

rand-up comedy, perhaps an album, his own TV show, and definitely movies are what he sees in his furure, for srarters. Not only comedic roles, either. Imagine. Kato Kaelin sr-,ming

in "The Tragedy Thing." "It's in me. I'm very deep. Believe me,

emotions are ... " Kaco begin.., then he tells me this srory: "I was watching Drugstore Cowbi1J and d1ere's a scene where the girl dies, and as soon as she died I got a phone call from my sister saying thac my dad had died. That's why it always bad so much . " unpacr on me.

I have no idea what he means. "I mean, 1 need to go and srudy some

more, but it just has to come our," says

Kato. '1\cring, you're on a set getting a lot of money and you're there to do make-believe. Youre playing pretend. You're a kid again."

I had never before met anybody over age eight who gaz..ed out at the worJd to see such limitless horiwns. Close your eyes and lis­ten to binl. You could be c-alking to a child.

''A lot of the girls, they see me as a boy, and yet, a man," says Karo. "It's funny. Even though I wa~ a prom king, I always looked like a baby. The girls I wanted to go out with were set on the older guys. Now it's just the opposite."

Of course, now he is an older guy, the bags beginning to set in beneath those puppy-dog eyes, buc he doesn't choose to know it. At thi rty-six, he still talks about marriage and children as if he hasn't already been there and gone. ''I would love to f.tll in love someday and get married. Kids? I know I will. Lots of kids. rll have all that scuff. Maybe an occasional nanny, so J could srill do stuff with the wife.''

I remind him that he has ao ex-wife named Cyndi. He says, "I never should have gotten married. She was going ro beauty school and modeling and she was very beautiful and T said, 'Oh my God, this model-girl likes me, she loves me, she'd marry me, I'd better get her befOre my friends do.' That's how immature T was at rwency-three."

Layla, or Laylage, as be call~ her, comes to my mind immediarely-bur I don'r bring her up, because 1 don't want to remind him that he's lace for this week's "model-girl."

"It was Like a total rejection after Cyndi and J separared, o he continues. "J .felr very w1atrractive physically and I couldn't be fUnny anymore. l had this emotion ofbeing hwl. I felt very alone . ., He feels he suffered a major-league depression that lasted three weeks, until he found bachelor digs with rwo guys and three girL~ and "was fine."

l<ato's ex-wife, Cyndi Parrerson, agrees chey were too young tO wed when they married at St Juliana's Church in Fullerton, C.alifornia, then flew off for a honeymoon trip to Vegas that Kato had previously won on a game show. fn 1985, when their daughter, Tiffany, was just six months old and scill breast-feeding, Karo announced he needed to be an aaor, and then be split. It musr have been rough for Cyndi, who ulti­mately had to pur aside her own dreams of modeling and acting to become a legal sec­retary. According to court papers she £Jed in 1989, Kato frequcmly dragged his heels in paying his $300-a-montb child support and wasn't the best caregiver when he took Tiffany from her on wcck.ends, neglecting,>

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at times, even to see rhac she showered. Nevenhclcss, Cyndl's attitude coward her ex today is more bemused than angry: "What am. I say abour Kato? He's one of a kind," she says. Cyndi .!>'a)'S her generosiry springs from her happy marriage to an engineer named Rick, who embraced the fatherly duties Kaco abandoned.

Karo himse!fadmits he had no desire ro be a dad. ''I was like, Oh my God, no way can you be pregnane, you Cln't be, you can't be, 1 don'r want to have a haby. l'd always rhink. r 'Or what ~n do l have a baby? and it's only now that fm srarting to

flick he srarred in], with aU the boob kissing and humping and grinding and everything else--when she was five!" Shelaughs. "Kato claims he made her close her eyes during rhe bad pans. Lcr's just say he's more into being a buddy than raking on a fatherly role."

Karo's such a textbook ClSC of Dan Kiley, MD's, The Peter Pan Syndrome: Men. Wbo Have Never Grown Up. f go our and pick up a copy of the 1983 best-seller ro reread it. When I call Cyndi to make sure I'm not being unfu.i.rly harsh on Kaw, she giggles and reUs me about the rime Kato wrapped

an eight-by-ten glossy of himself 1n shiny paper and gave it 1.0

know why TtfEmy was born." When I ask him co elaborate, he says, "As far as me looking at a flower, to me, it's a flower, okay, bur Tif­fany looks at a flower very diffct~::ntly, deli­cately. Now l under­stand women, with her growing up."

'Growing up I was pretty, no, very hip back then-1 mean, I

always knew I was way,

her for Chrisrmas. I make Cyndi rake

Dr. Riley's test for women who want ro see if there's a Peter Pan in their lives. Out of a possible score of forty; Kato rates a pathological twenry­six, indicating that both he and any woman considering sharing his life should

He seems to be implying chat Tilliny was born 1.0 enhance his own self-growth, but I figure he can't be. Then he nods his head: Yes, that's right. Daughters. This years

way ahead of my time,'' says Koto.

seek professional help.

perfect accersory for the weU-dressed narcissist. Earlier in our conveJ~tions, Kaco had

told me that Shakespeare's The ]empest was aU about a guy who wanted "ro go out and travel and experiment in life." Thar was pretty scary. But it was only when he began calking about his daughter that I felr genuinely horrified. Lt's not that he doesn't truly love his daughter, either-he does., within his limited understanding of what that means.

"Dad, you want co hear asong?"liffimy a.~ks, when he calls her on speakerphone from my room. 'lo rhe nme of"Oay-0," she sings, "Kato, Ka-a-a-to. O.J.'s gone and Kato's got no home."

Kato: "Sing a di:Herenr song." T rffany: "Kato, Ka-a-a-ro. Karo gees girls

wherever he goes .... Amy didn't Like that one, did she? Dad, do you like Amy-of­the-week?"

Kato: "No, T tff, Amy here Is a friend. shes interviewing me."

Tlfimy: ''Yeah, r.ight." She's teaching him about women. He's

reaching her about roeo. "When Tiffany was five years old," says

Cyndi. "Kaw went out and rented the uncut version of Beach Fever [a sex:ploiration

The symptoms: Doesn't like to say he's sorry. Fo'l'gets birthdaJS

and anrtiversar£es. Musr be the life of the parry, Has unexplained f~an Hates being alone- that one l :already knew. The night he got back from Kentucky; before we'd even mer, Karo was so despcrnte co have company for dinner, he called all of his friends, then evetybody he knew, rill, .finding nobody at aU was home, he got down to me.

UncaUe~forjlashes ojmge?ll1at one sur­prised me. Cyndi laughs again. "Oh, yes. He's gor quire a temper, and irs always over the silliest things. I'll tell you wl1at, rhough," she adds. "He used to wcite me the mosr beautiful poetry and the most beauriful letters when we were still court­ing." Prerry odd, Cyndi concedes, for someone who can't finish sentences when he's speaking. It gave me something w think abour. Could it be, when Karo says, ''I'm very deep,'' he is tclling the truth?

e claims he has never been in rherapy and ha.~ never fdr the need ro be because his rwo be.n buddies from high school, 1om O'Brien and Will Srumpe, now live

nearby in LA. O'Brien is a disrrict attomey. Srumpe owns a lighting supply company.

"They're better than any comedy act. Iff get cocky. rhey tell me, 'He's changing his name from Kato to Pluto, he's got his own planet now.' ' '

As Karo puts it, "'IV will always be there, but being our wich my buddies, it's so important." He's got a lor of buddies these days, including Charlie Sheen and Nick Cassavercs, with whom be enjoys hit­ting the clubs and playing baseball. Kaw wore one of Sheen's jackers to coutt on one of the early days of his testimony. 'Tve made so many friends," he end1Uses, infurming me chat Lany King invited him to his engagement parcy and Politically Incorrect host Bill Maher took him along :as a sidekick ro a friend's bachelor party.

Jessica H alm and Roxanne Pul irlCr and Gennifer flowers spring immediately ro mind. l know ir's boode.~s to t:ell him, ''Well, of course they invire you places, you're the flavor of the weekJ ir's a wonder rhey didn't make you jump out of the cake." I rell him anyway.

"1 don'r get what you mean," he says. ''1 am see when there's fi·iendsh.ip."

For rhe first rime ever in my life, I regret 1 wasn't more blunt. Karo Kaelin is rhe brand-spanking-new, latest spin on a long­standing, time-honort:d tradition. He's America's first Male Bimbo. And he doesn't even know it.

yndi is amazed at the change in the way people perccive Karo these days, righr down ro her own family. "My relatives, rhe same people who were saying he was such a jerk, such a lose.~;,

want ro get rheir pictures calcen with him now, they're&.wningall over hlm."

Daughter Tiffany goes deadpan when she sees people do rhis. "T mean, he's nice," she says, "bur 1 just don't see it, Mom. What's the big &scinarion with my dad?"

Kato himself is the only one who's not amazed. Theres no doubt he saw his srim on the stand ar the OJ. rrial as an audition, ot chat he was positively staggered when Marcia Clark had him declared a "hostile wit;ness.'' He tOld me he had no idea whar tbe tetm meanT aT that ume. H ow could she possibly say he was ''habuit-," when he'd tried so vety hard to gee people to like him, and so many had?

He srill cant understand either why any­body accused him of lyi.ug. "I wasn't lying on the stand. I told the truth," he says. He is refening to his testimony on March 28, 1 995, when he rold Clark no, he absolutely did not have a book proposaL Of course, Muc Eliot, who claim~ Karo had already >

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given his final approval ro Stnr Witness: .My Lift With Nicole and 0.). Simpson, a manu­script they'd worked on for six monrhs together, has a different take on that.

Bur I believe Kato really thinks he is telling the truth when he says, "There was never a book." After all, he knows nothing of the literazy world, only show business. In show business, when somebody pitches you a project, whether you love it or hate it, you say yes, yes, yes. Does tbac mean you made a deal? No, all it means is you're a player. ln show business, nothing is real but d1e check. That's how Karo can con­cede chat his voice was on Eliot's tape recorder and his name was on the proposal Eliot shopped around,

inrended. He wasn't even thinking about her when he made his decision: He was far too busy envisaging the exciting adven­tures he'd have living wim 0 .J.

This a fellow for whom nm, in the most childish meaning of that word, is para­mount. Who keeps a princess phone in his '83 Jaguar so he can pretend he's calk­ing on it. Who ends every phone conver­sation with .. Whoever hangs up first is the greatest." \'V'ho doses every personal encounter with rhe Karo handshake, which is sort of a consensual snap.

In fu.imess, just as Karo has no jusri6carion for the great expectations he has for himself, he's given others no justification to expect

anything &om him. while ~'till insisting there was no deal.

"1 never acruall y signed anything," Kato rold me. "J never got paid."

It is a licrle hard to

figure out why he clid­n't publish a book, con­sidering how innocu­ous Kato !Gulin: ihe Whole Truth (the un­authorized version Eliot published without him) is, until you remember how much Karo's life has changed in the rime that elapsed be-

Kato' s father thought he needed to find some profession, some trade-

You don't expect a boy to prO(ect you the way you would a man.

You don't expect a joker to sraod behind you in tragedy.

When it comes ro tl:iends, maybe you get what you pay foL

In times before ours, every noble household had jrs jester. Thac was Kato Kaelin's role in the Simpson households­tO provide comic re­lief-and it is a role recurring frequently

something other than 'Class Clown" to put on his resume.

tween the pitch and the publication. Karos dance card is much fuller roday. What looked like a great financial opportunity at the time doesn't look so good now that he knows he can make money in ways more helpntl ro his career because they arc less directly exploitative of his relarionship with rhe Simpson family, and rhus less likely to underscore his curiosity value. Says Kato: "Everything's becoming very legitimate for me now."

I'm nor daiming that Karo treated Eliot nicely; but why would Eliot, a mere hired hand, expect Kato to be nice, a.fi:er what Karo did to his friend Nicole? After all, Nicole Brown Simpson might very weU be alive today ifKaro bad followed mrough on his agreement to rem a room in her condo on Bundy, insread of accepting a bercer offer from O.J. She never really spoke ro Karo again after that, and you can under­stand her feeJjng of becrayal, given that Karo was nor ju''t her roommate bur a con­fidante with whom she shared her fears abour her ex-husband. Karo, of course, was surprised at her ani rude, because as far as he was concerned. no snub to Nicole was

enough in the com­pounds and mansions of Los Angeles that after Karo's resrin10ny you could hear peo­ple at dinner parties saying, "You know, I also have a Karo in my guest house."

During me si.x days Karo testified on the witness smnd, thanks to the cameras imide the courtroom, we got ro have one, too.

Shakespeare never inflicted a rragedy upon us without leavening it wim the odd drunkard, sprite, or grave digger. And let's be honest, the gavel-to-gavel courtroom coverage of the 0.]. trial seldom rises ro that lcvd. On most days, the testimony is dull, just as on most days our lives are. The one-liners Kato was cracking on the wimcss sraod wouldn't get a rise out of you if you were paying co hear them ac a club. But in the context of that trial, they provided comicrdief.

f'm not forgetting that rwo people are dead; only suggesting that reality is dreadful, and sometimes we w.mt to be disrr-acted.

Charlie Manson's name sells T-shirrs, Jeffrey Dahmer's sells comic books and rrading cards.

David Letterman turns the LA. riots, the Clarence Thomas hearings, the

Menendez brothers inro comic fodder. When thousands of people were starVing

in Africa, the lare Sam KiJlison joked, ''Why don't they go where the food is?"

!laughed. fm nor a horrible person­why did l think that was funny?

As much as I hare ro admit ic, Kaco Kaelin is far from being the only person in America wim a teensy lirde attention span and tendencies gallopiJ1g toward narcissism. He is merely an extreme case.

"Alll want ro do is have some fun and I have a feeling I'm not the only one," sang Sheryl Crow.

She was too right. Within the first three weeks after the

Kato Kaelin Global Fan Club set up irs 800 number, more than 7,500 calls poured in.

The truth is, the guy couldn't be selling himselfifnobodyout there was buying.

What better poster child could there be for a post-baby-boomer generarion thar believes you're likelier ro get life's rewards by bumping your unimproved self into the right person at the right pany than you are through hard work? And if there are tril­lions of guys just Like Karo in LA., New York's East Village is littefed wid1 the same number of aging waifs who believe a pierced naval or interesting earrings to be an excuse for a life.

ay ro go, Karo! Here's ro the man who not only survived co age thirty­six without stjckiog ro college or a job or mar­riage or fatherhood, he's

thriving because of it. Here'~"' ro the boy who never grew up. and now never has w.

He has turned his pathology into schtick.

"I think sometimes I'm acrually coo sen­sitive. lfl hear whispering, J think people might be laughing at me, that they think rm this dweeh," says Karo.

Okay. So he isn't going ro play Hcnzy IV, part one or two. Bur game-show host, late­night sidekick, video VJ? All I can say is if you don't believe there are enough cable­TV channels out there for Kato Kaelin to find a place on one of them, you haven't been w.trching lately.

"Knock, knock," he says. Who's there? "Kato," he says. Katowho? "That's my biggest fear," he says. He's joking. Given me launching he5 gotl'en so Far, he

can malce the ride last for a whil.e. Sometimes, lik is like a rube ofUp balm. 0

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amy pagnozzl Columnist and writer Amy Pagnozz.i flew off to meet Kato Kaelin determined to lind an explanation fOr his enormous popularity-"! thought there had to be more to him." Four days in L.A. with the Phenomenon left Pagnozzi feeling uneasy about our culture and rocally exhausted. "He was excruciatingly annoy­ing," she says. "Imerviewing Karo is like crying to hold mercury in your hand." Despite her tiranic srmggle to engage Kato in adult conver­sation and keep him ar a professional &tance ("He kept asking me if I was mad at him,'' she says), PagnOZI'..i finally surrendered to his childishn~. 'There comes a point where you just give up, and you do the Karo handshake." Pr~ for a comparison, she's srumped, until suddenly it hits her: "It's Bill Clinton," she says. "They're on opposite ends of the intellecrual scale, but rhey both have that Dale Carnegie-esque l'm-going-ro-make­you-like-me-no-marrer-what quality."