ANON
            Remember.  I have no name. And there is no me as a real person. 
            Remember. (repeated 3x) Remember.  I have no name, and there is no me as
            a real person.  Because I started out my life knowing all kinds of black
            Americans, and because all of us have a natural tendency to seek out
            ourselves in the public culture, I want to ask America this question.  Why can't
            all black Americans be Elvis Mitchell?  Is that too much to ask?  Maybe it is.

                                   BLIEDEN
            What's up internet?  Guess which podcast producer teamed up with a record
            label this week to get some free awesome techno music.  If you guessed the
            cold bath you would guess correctly. (music vocals, Blieden laughs)  Oh my
            god.  If I had the energy to edit the whole show this way every week.  Oh my
            god.  I would do it. I would sit around my apartment and get high and edit this
            show to this music. But I'm 35, and I have to make a living.  You're listening to
            John Tejada off Plug Research Records.  It's one of the record labels that's
            going to let us use music on the show.  The other one is called Secretly
            Canadian.  And I'm really excited about having their music.  Because I was just
            stealing it before.  Just using whatever I wanted.  And that's not cool.   So,
            decided to go legit and I contacted these guys and they said they'd be happy to
            be a part of it so I'm very grateful.  Anyway this is episode 8 of the cold bath. 
            That voice you heard earlier was the anonymous man that I interview on this
            show.  I am Michael Blieden.  I think the title of this episode is going to be "The
            Women At The Mall."  This music is cracking me up. Okay I gotta start the show.  

                                   ANON
            Any way um...I um...

                                   BLIEDEN
            You like Elvis Mitchell?

                                   ANON
            Elvis Mitchell is just the kind of entirely superior Black American who the
            masked media would support except how can they when they are stupid.  And
            the stupid wish to celebrate one another.  

                                   BLIEDEN
            Don't you think there's something slightly racist in the phrase "kind of superior
            black American?"  Or am I conditioned...

                                   ANON
            You're conditioned.  

                                   BLIEDEN
            To think that any time you use "superior" and "race" in the same sentence. That
            that's....that you've gone into the danger zone.  

                                   ANON
            It's just the conditioning.  You don't think there are superior white Americans,
            and mediocre white Americans and (noise) white Americans.  I mean of course
            there are.

                                   BLIEDEN
            What's so great about Elvis Mitchell.

                                   ANON
            Uh...brains.  And that he has been permitted to work in the masked media even
            though he is a superior human being.  And what we normally have is Katie
            Couric.  She gets 85,000 dollars a day.  

                                   BLIEDEN
            You're phrase that you...the way that you described Katie Couric and people of
            her ilk was...described them as "actors playing journalists.".

                                   ANON
            Yeah but that's....

                                   BLIEDEN
            Another pithy...another pithy comment.

                                   ANON
            There's nothing unfair in that.

                                   BLIEDEN
            You talked earlier...you were going to talk about women In the mall which
            is...I'm always interested in women in the mall.

                                   ANON
            Well I just want to say a little more about Obama Size Me.

                                   BLIEDEN
            Oh sure.

                                   ANON
            Let me tell you what the presidential contest is all about.  It's Harvard versus
            Yale.   The last presidential contest was Yale versus Yale.   And not only Yale
            versus Yale, but they were both members of the same secret society.  Skull
            and Bones.  See everybody, the bottom, the top, the middle, are all full of shit. 
            But the top have a way of vanishing into the penumbra of America and they are
            unseen.  In fact that's one of the worst things about America.  There is no
            communication between the ruling classes and the upper middle class. 

                                   BLIEDEN
            I want to hear about women in the mall.

                                   ANON
            I'm....that's all related because there was this girl who was trying to fuck me. 
            This is back in Connecticut.  And she was beautiful, very rich, but very stupid. 
            And so I just couldn't get it up for her.  So she was having dinner with me and a
            bunch of friends at this elegant little restaurant that was just owned by one of
            our friends and somebody had said something about this guy who was always
            seen with beautiful models.   And I said he's not going to be interested in you,
            and she was offended.  And I said no, no, no.  He's not going to be interested
            in you not because you don't compare favorably to the models, you do.  He's
            not going to be interested in you because a man who's seen with a lot of
            models is almost always gay.  Because straight me with money are not
            interested in models because if they're sensible they're not interested in heroin
            addicts and anorexics.  There's  a wonderful comedian who used to say
            "Hollywood actresses and other female impersonators."  Chou En-Lai was a
            female impersonator.  This is not a joke.  He did this for a living.  Chou En-Lai
            was a female impersonator.  

                                   BLIEDEN
            Chou En-Lai he was...Peoples Republic of China he was their....

                                   ANON
            Henry Kissinger asked him what do you think about the French Revolution? 
            And he said, "I have to get my eye makeup off."  No he said...um.."it's too early
            to tell."

                                   BLIEDEN
            This was in another episode.

                                   ANON
            Yeah.  Oh, you see?  There you go.  We're self-referencing.  

                                   BLIEDEN
            What did Chou En-Lai do?

                                   ANON
            He was a female impersonator.

                                   BLIEDEN
            No no, but what did he do with the government of the People's Republic of
            China.

                                   ANON
            He was the upper class intellectual Deputy Head of State under Mao Tse-tung. 
            There is someone.  I won't mention her name, but she is a candidate for office
            and her slogan is "Mao now, pay later."   In any event.

                                   BLIEDEN
            I know who you're talking about.

                                   ANON
            Well you do, but no one else does.

                                   BLIEDEN
            I can't say it?

                                   ANON
            That's right.  All of us have something greater than ourselves that we believe in. 
            There are people who have religion.  There are people that are just as religious
            but they say that they are anti-religious.  I'm just not religious.  But I'm not anti
            religious because I have no idea.  Unlike most grown men, I spent a good deal
            of time in the cancer ward and I had to consider this question.  And my most
            profoundest answer is I have no idea.  

                                   BLIEDEN
            If this doesn't lead to women in the mall I'm going to be really really bummed
            out.

                                   ANON
            Yes it does.   It does because this woman who was after me said, after I had
            said what I said about the models, remember this is a woman who wants to
            sleep with me, and she said, "if there's anything that makes me think you're
            gay, " it's always a good opening for a woman that's trying to get laid, "it's that
            you don't like models."  And I said, "Straight men are not interested in models.
            They want to fuck the girls in Playboy. They don't want to fuck these skinny as a
            rail, anorexic heroin addicts.  But she had gotten this, what the French call and
            Idee Fixe, what the English call an obsession, and she couldn't get it out of her
            mind because her mind was so small, that there wasn't room for more than
            one idea.  

                                   BLIEDEN
            And she was taking the tack of trying to goad you into sleeping with her by
            calling you gay.  Which I've run into that before too.

                                   ANON
            She thought that if she called me gay I'd pull down her pants and nail her on
            the floor of the restaurant.  But she was wrong.  Because I have had all the brief
            affairs that I want to because I was in politics.  Jay Leno says this is "show
            business for ugly people."  And what if you're not ugly.  What if you're just
            average looking.  It's fabulous.  So this is why young men, young women, you
            should be involved in politics.  When I go into any suburban mall I see the
            victims of the models.  I am not very good on the numbers.  I often say 1068 for
            the Battle of Hastings.  But you have to say everything I say up.  And especially
            every number because I'm often wrong by a century. 
            About one third of American women seen at the suburban mall are the size
            approximately of a house.  Not a big house but the kind of house that President
            Carter builds now these ah....what do you call them? 

                                   BLIEDEN
            Habitat For Humanity?

                                   ANON
            They're small but sturdy, and they are small but sturdy they're the same size. 
            About a tenth of the women are the size of a razor blade.  Or at least the width of
            a razor blade.  And this is a product of the model culture.  For men who both
            love and like women, they do not want to see them inflated with helium, nor do
            they want to see them shrunk down to the size that they should be when they're
            11.  

                                   BLIEDEN
            Well I'll tell you something which is...I'm not proud of but...I like those really thin
            girls.  

                                   ANON
            No no, I like really thin girls.  Emaciated I don't like.  Holocaust survivors do not
            turn me on.  And there's no Holocaust magazine like Playboy.

                                   BLIEDEN
            I don't think most models look like holocaust survivors.  

                                   ANON
            No they just inspire women to either grossly overeat in reaction to not being
            their perfection or to starve themselves because women are as immune to
            stupidity as men are.

                                   BLIEDEN
            How did this become an issue that you were...

                                   ANON
            Because I love myself, and by extension I love my country because my country
            is myself writ large.  

                                   BLIEDEN
            Okay I'm going to ask you to tell a story now.  Cause you've told it to me.

                                   ANON
            Sure.

                                   BLIEDEN
            So I want you to repeat it for the audience.  But for people who don't know the
            story of Plato's Cave...why don't you tell the story of Plato's Cave.

                                   ANON
            All of humanity is chained to a marble bench.  And they are looking at the
            shadows on the wall of the cave in front of them.  

                                   BLIEDEN
            There's a fire behind them.

                                   ANON
            Behind them there's a roaring fire with a theoretically endless supply of wood.
            And that acts like a movie projector, and the image is the image of themselves
            shown on the cave.  That's it.  And Plato says that one man, not through greater
            strength or superior knowledge, it's just by dumb luck, the most important
            component in life, get's free of the bonds.  And goes around the cave and is
            able to go past the roaring fire, and then he goes down the dark tunnel.  We're
            in the dark tunnel if we're trying to escape the masked media because the
            shadows on the cave is television.  Anyway this fellow goes through the dark
            tunnel and into the sunlight.  Now of course he's blinded by the light, but
            eventually his eyes adjust and he finds himself in a sunny spot of greenery. 
            And uh...he is amazed that he's now in the real world.  And he turns around and
            he goes back.  That's the fatal decision.  Because once you've come out of the
            cave you can't go home again.  And um..he...uh, tries to explain to the people
            chained on the bench that what they're seeing is just themselves. An image of
            themselves.  You know, like American Idol.  Anyway that's the story of Plato's
            Cave, and uh....

                                   BLIEDEN
            There's a part of the story you didn't tell, which is when he goes back into the
            cave. 

                                   ANON
            Oh they hate him.  They hate him.  

                                   BLIEDEN
            Not only do they not believe him.

                                   ANON
            Well of course they don't.  How could they believe him?

                                   BLIEDEN
            Well I have two comments on that story.  One is having read a few lines about
            schizophrenics...

                                   ANON
            Right.

                                   BLIEDEN
            And knowing that we're all slightly...

                                   ANON
            And having written a brilliant where a play a schizophrenic was played by Jack
            Black in your movie...

                                   BLIEDEN
            Thank you.

                                   ANON
            No it's wonderful.

                                   BLIEDEN
            Um....One of the things that I find fascinating about schizophrenics and why I
            relate to them is that they have a self enforcing, a self-reenforcing concept of
            the universe which is that they have constructed this world where every piece of
            input that comes in to them reinforces how they see the universe. So if
            someone tells you...

                                   ANON
            All of us of do that to a certain extent.  Schizophrenics just do that more.  

                                   BLIEDEN
            So you could....seeing as how the punchline to this story is that people don't
            believe this guy and they hate him, you know, this could either be a very
            profound prologue to everything that you might have to say which is...if your gift
            is to pull the curtain back and to expose people to the way things are then the
            story is an appropriate prologue to why they may disagree or hate you.  That's
            the positive spin.  The negative spin is that you use this story to justify the fact
            that people may disbelieve you or hate you.  You know, I mean and there's no
            way to know which one is right.  It's just an interesting...

                                   ANON
            The truth is a moving target and none of us ever know what the fuck it is. 
            Um...not the Pope.  Not the atheists.  No one.  Ever.  

                                   BLIEDEN
            If you say his greatest mistake is going back into the cave, then why are you
            doing it.  I think this show...

                                   ANON
            Cause I'm dying, so I don't give a shit.  There's just nothing....my body  signals
            me.  The doctors have not  given me a death sentence.   It's worse they've
            given me a life sentence.  But it's this life.

                                   BLIEDEN
            I have to just...I have to come in and say again how much I love this music.  It
            makes everything that he says sound so cool.  Like it already sounded cool, but
            then you put the music under it and it sounds...I mean.  It's like it's cheating. 
            Am I cheating using music that's this cool?  Um...all of the music in this
            episode is from Plug Research records.  And I'm very grateful to Alan
            Avenessian who is the guy who handed me a box full of cd's that I'm freaking
            out over.  Please go to www.thecoldbath.com/Transcripts/music8.html  to see a
            list a list of every artist and every song that was in this show.  And please go to
            plugresearch.com And let them know that you heard the music and that you
            think it's great.  Even if they get like one email that says they heard the music
            here and it's great.  That will make me feel great.  Make me feel great.  Here's a
            tease from next week.  If you have red Spengler, which I haven't then this may
            sound familiar.    

                                   ANON
            Spengler in 1928 he explained in "The Decline Of The West" that failure moves
            West.