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"Always grab the reader by the throat in the first paragraph,
sink your thumbs into his windpipe in the second, and hold him against the wall
until the tag line."
- Paul O'Neil
All Original Site Content
Copyright © 2003-2004
Phil Elmore, all rights reserved.
I am a grownup.
I know I am a grownup because I do not understand why my peanut butter, my game shows, and my sports drinks must be EXTREME.
I write that in all-caps because you must say "extreme" with as much enthusiasm and power as you are capable of mustering. It seems, my fellow adults, that we are surrounded by young people who are faster, jump higher, snowboard better, and snack with more gusto than their non-extreme grownup counterparts.
Our television shows are extreme. Our television commercials provide extreme solutions to extreme situations with extreme this and extreme that. Snowboarding and body boarding and parasailing and jumping off cliffs wearing large rubber bands are all extreme, of course, but this is just the beginning of the extreme marketing trend within our newly extreme society.
Extreme thirsts demand Extremonade! Gatorade is a FIERCE thirst quencher! Yogurt may now be had in squeezable tubes, which we are exhorted to "grab and glurp" -- or at least we were, the last time I saw a "Gogurt" commercial! Peanut butter likewise now comes in squeezable tubes, for extreme snacking! Ending every sentence with an exclamation point is likewise extreme -- and extremely annoying!
I study an ancient Chinese martial art called Wing Chun Kung Fu. Recently in a martial arts supply catalog I noticed a set of instructional videotapes called EXTREME WING CHUN. I could only imagine a group of teenaged boys with questionable choices in facial hair, wearing Chinese martial arts uniforms while riding snowboards and jumping off cliffs, furiously beating up one another as they drink Mountain Dew from open cans held six inches away from their gaping mouths.
I am not sure what about refusing to let one's lips touch one's beverage is "extreme." I am not sure why placing any sort of food in a squeeze tube makes it "extreme," and therefore more desirable than, say, actual peanut butter in a jar waiting to be spread by grownups on adult-constructed sandwiches. I am not sure precisely why I need to eat while bungee jumping, much less why my bungee jumping snack should be a plastic tube of yogurt. I am unclear as to what part of hurling one's body through the air makes one extreme and therefore much cooler, as opposed to making one a projectile and therefore much less likely to survive until next Thursday.
But then, I'm a grownup, and therefore extremely confused.