'Daily Show's' Bee here on book tour

'I'm really excited about coming to Philly," says Daily Show faux-news correspondent Samantha Bee.

"I'm bringing my family and we are going to spend the weekend. We are going to learn all about your people and really explore."

Bee, 41, will read from her new book, the ridiculously smart, funny, and slightly slutty - insofar as books can be slutty - collection of personal essays, I Know I Am, but What Are You? Saturday at the Free Library.

Bee, 32 weeks pregnant with a girl, says she's bringing her husband, fellow Daily Show reporter Jason Jones, and their two kids, Piper Bee-Jones, 4, and Fletcher Bee-Jones, who'll turn 2 on Sunday. Any places in Philly she's dying to see?

"I really want to hit all your T.J. Maxxes. I want to hit Macy's and eat at the TGI Friday," Bee says with a straight face on the phone from her pad in New York. "I need to know the world is stable . . . to know that the food in Philly is the same as the food in a truck stop in Peoria."

Since joining Jon Stewart's Comedy Central show in 2003, Bee has bowled over fans with her uncanny talent for luring otherwise serious folks to unwittingly mock themselves.

She'll draw out the most surreal truth from the most recalcitrant subject, as in the 2004 report, "Kill Drill," which featured hard-core game hunters and gas-company execs who claimed they were environmental activists.

"You can never underestimate how much people want to be on TV," she says, "and I include myself." She adds that she's always shocked to hear that some people watch her show unironically: "They probably don't enjoy the show."

I Know I Am, Bee's debut book, is as hilarious as her TV work - and even edgier.

In 12 sidesplitting essays, Bee reveals that every generation in her family has been divorced; writes wistfully of her short-lived, intense love affair with Jesus; describes in graphic detail the night her cat tried to have sex with her; and details how flashers are particularly drawn to her.

Think of it as a David Sedaris memoir on steroids - Sedaris, the NC-17 rated edition.

"Wow, it makes me happy you feel that way," she says of the comparison. "I'm a huge fan of his work. But I wouldn't make that comparison myself. That's like putting out a teen hip-hop album and comparing yourself to the Beatles."

Wasn't it uncomfortable to reveal so much personal information?

"It wasn't that hard," Bee says. "I questioned myself sometimes as I was writing and I thought, 'Can I get arrested for any of this?' "

There is, for example, the grand theft auto.

"I started when I was 15, even before it was legal to drive the cars I was stealing. . . . but I guess that's academic," she says. "I always went for midlevel imports, something zippy and small. . . . We'd go joyriding, play the stereo."

Was she acting out because of her parents' divorce? Or because they left her for her grandmother to raise? Was it peer pressure?

"I don't know. I don't know. I'm glad I did it. . . . I got something out of my system."

Poor woman. No idea she was that disturbed. Did Bee, who admits she was extremely shy as a kid, grow up as a suicidal, Baudelaire-quoting Goth chick obsessed with the Smiths and the Cure?

"I wasn't, like, morose," she objects. "Well, I was a little bit of a Goth. But I was always kind of funny. [Useful] when you're not known as the beautiful girl . . . I worked hard to cultivate a personality," she says, with a serious tone. "But I did have friends."

After drama school, Bee tried her hand at being a serious thesp. It didn't work out.

"I wanted to be a very serious actor. I took myself really seriously," she says. "But I found out I'm a terrible actor . . . because no one ever hired me to be serious. Ever."

That's not entirely true. Last year, Bee starred in Nora and Delia Ephron's well-received Off-Broadway comedy Love, Loss and What I Wore. And in January she was featured on an episode of Law & Order. Of course, in a matter of months, NBC canceled the long-running drama. Bee admits she was responsible.

"I feel like I brought the franchise down. I feel I did that," she says. "Finally, they were like, 'We really have jumped the shark here.' "

After being subjected to enchanced interview techniques, Bee also admitted that she and her husband are part of the immigration plague that has pushed America to the edge of annihilation.

"Yes, we're Canadian. We're green-carders," she says with the bombastic, in-your-face tone common to movie terrorists and sports anchors. "There are waves of Canadians pouring over the border for your amazing health care. We all want a piece of the awesomeness of your health care."

Her subversive activities extend to Christmas, as Fox News' Bill O'Reilly discovered in 2005. Bee, he said, was part of the War on Christmas, citing her 2004 report satirizing the commercialization of the holiday.

Dastardly as ever, Bee doesn't even try to deny it.

"Yes, there's a war on Christmas," she boasts. "I personally have launched my war on Christmas, and I have been very successful. Notice that we don't celebrate Christmas anymore."

Author Appearance

Samantha Bee: 'I Know I Am, but What Are You?'

2 p.m. Saturday at the Central Library of the Free Library, 1901 Vine St. Free. Information: 215-567-4341; www.freelibrary.org.