EXTREME!!!!
There’s a place near our house called Extreme Pita. Normally a pita is a flat piece of bread filled with vegetables, sauces and meat. Like a baked bread sack of food. (Which is what my wife calls me in her crueler moments.) All well and good. But what is an Extreme Pita? The moment they opened, my curiosity was aroused. We drive by it every day and I began to wonder… Perhaps the meat is still alive. Or the pita is the size of a bedroll. Or you have to eat it in under five seconds to avoid electric shocks. Maybe the staff are naked. Or covered in body piercings. Or both.
I finally worked up the courage and went in to see what constituted an ‘EXTREME’ pita. Assuming it was going to be something incredible and possibly dangerous, I wore my bike helmet and football pads and ear plugs in case of explosions. I won’t take you through the whole sordid seventeen minutes. Suffice to say I was disappointed. If giving ‘Free Pop’ to anyone who has coupon is extreme, then yes, this was an EXTREME PITA! Of course later, as I mentally digested what had happened, and physically digested the green peppers, I realized, I was the victim of ‘hype.’ A Pita is bread and stuff. How can it be extreme. It’s flat bread. It doesn’t even have the yeast to rise.
I’d been suckered into forgetting that we live in the age of hype. The age of extreme everything.
Once upon a time the word extreme had some cache. Extreme Sports. Extreme Martial Arts. Both are legitimately extreme. Most of these extreme sports are clearly impossible and are merely a way of generating free footage for those disaster clip shows like “What Were They Thinking?” and “Seconds From Disaster!” and “I Bet His Nards Hurt Like Hell.” (Coming soon to the Manly-Man network.)
But now, a lot of the extreme stuff, like Extreme Pita, seems a little… well, lacking in yeast. There’s an EXTREME TAN near us. Isn’t an EXTREME TAN a sunburn? Or skin cancer?
When visiting my in-laws we pass by “EXTREME PAINTBALL!” Do they use boric acid instead of paint? No. Apparently what makes this place extreme is the word EXTREME on the sign.
There’s also an “EXTREME CAR RENTAL” But they rent exotic cars. Fair enough. Definitely an extreme experience. Driving a Pagani Zonda instead of a Honda Accord would be extremely awesome.
But EXTREME SELF STORAGE? Unless it’s a place where you are cryogenically frozen, so that you are being stored, and it’s literally SELF STORAGE, this is clearly hype.
There’s another business called EXTREME SANDBLASTING. Unless they use diamond grit and their staff are made up of the various huge warriors from the movie 300, like that crab claw fat guy, then I think they should be required to change their name. It’s false advertising!
It’s not just the word extreme. Hype is everywhere of course. The one that irritates me the most is the new ad campaign for Miracle Whip. Basically it’s designed to convince you the only people who use Miracle Whip are people who were kicked out of the Sex Pistols for being too aggressive. The ad slogan? “We are Miracle Whip and we will not tone it down!” Tone what down? You’re a slightly tangy version of mayonnaise for heaven’s sake. You’re the most MOR, boring sauce around. There’s nothing to tone down, unless you’re going to redo the turquoise lids on your jars so they aren’t quite so vibrant.
Anyway, I’m noticing that everything is extreme.
Over the top!
The end of the world!
And with ADHD, that’s not helpful. As Dr. Brown has noted in his work, people with ADHD are often somewhat sensitive to input, to stimulation. Overly sensitive to some things. Especially sounds and smells. (Hey maybe Miracle Whip is extreme to us ADDers.) Our emotions are often at a high setting. Everything’s a crisis. Or we make it into one. Many ADDers can talk on and on about our problems and our issues and the injustices we’ve suffered. I used to be quite a drama king myself.
So ads and news reports and all media are coming at us faster and faster, louder and more extreme, with more and more shocking images. There’s a new ad for latest Windows operating system that features Zombies and sharks and creatures eating flesh. Nice. When I was a kid that was R rated material. Now it’s on prime time to convince families to buy software. This barrage of energy just adds to everyone’s agitation and stress. But when you have ADHD it can be an extra burden.
My advice? Turn off the TV. Take a few minutes a day to just unwind, breathe, relax, stretch…Especially an hour before bedtime. I’m starting to do that myself, on a regular basis, and I’m finding it’s hugely helpful. I don’t always remember, but when I do, I really take it on.
I call it EXTREME DE-STRESSING!!!!
9 Responses to “EXTREME!!!!”
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lol…………I love this site!
There is a small water feature in a new house across the road…….on waterfront property. I live in a mobile park.They paid for their view, mine comes with the pad rent.
Anyway, I want to ask them to turn it off after oh 5pm, cuz it drives me crazy. it’s impossible to relax on my deck.,yard or anywhere outside. The only noise I am used to is the geese and eagles. and they are too noisy at times.
btw…..I am feeling liberated with the ADD diagnoses, now I have the whole alphabet! It has been 2 months. .Seriously, the stimulant med has just begun to change my life. At 57, I am ready.
I am glad I found some ADD family, I think we are very special. It’s ok to be me. it’s just everyone else who seems to have the problem:)
Yesterday, as I walked through BCE Place, I spotted a new tenant in the Food Court: Extreme Pita. And I thought of this Blog posting, and started to giggle. At this, the sea of suits around me parted, giving me a nice, clear path to navigate through them.
Just one more example of how wonderfully useful this website is!
You’re not a grumpy old guy, Rick. You don’t need to be a grumpy old guy to write with the voice of one. Just like you don’t need to be Hitchcock to turn an “Adventures With Bill” into a breathtaking homage to “The Birds”. I never thought I’d use the word “breathtaking” to describe something on “Red Green”, but when I saw it yesterday, it really was.
You’re right about our cities being too noisy and full of audio wallpaper. Every morning, I am rudely awakened by the sounds of a condo tower being built, right across the street from my bedroom window. On cool days, I’d love to open my windows to enjoy the breeze off the lake, but the noise is deafening. Even with the windows closed, it’s awful. After three months, the builders are up to the 5th floor, with another 25 to go.
Yesterday, I went for a slice of pizza, and the place had a loud stereo and a loud TV on at the same time. And there was something wrong with the CD player, because every song sounded like it was being covered by The Chipmunks. But nobody noticed that, except me, so I guess nobody was listening. It’s sad when music isn’t worth listening to, because it’s just a barrage of noise. And when you can’t have a conversation without straining your voice or talking in a high falsetto to be heard above the blaring “background” music.
Maybe it’s time for me to make another trip up to Moose Factory. Their intersection of Front & Bay is so quiet that you can hear the tall grass rustling in the breeze, along the dirt roads. Perversely, although it’s so isolated, there’s a big sign there, announcing that you can get Pizza Hut or KFC Express at the general store. It was so ridiculous, I took a photo of it.
Larynxa, I may indeed be a grumpy old man. Or I may be discovering what everyone from Buddha to Thoreau has been praising–quiet and peace to actually be present in the world. We have music on all the time. But when was the last time we every lay down in front of the speakers, or put on the headphones and actually listened to music.
It’s audio wallpaper most of the time.
I think many people wear Ear Buds and I Pods to shut out the noises of the city. Here’s an idea, let’s lower the noise in our cities!
It’s true what you say about the volume of noise and information. I should blog about it.
In fact, I think I will.
I like this piece Rick. Hype has become such a part of life that, like air, we are likely to notice it only when it is gone.
Years ago, well before I had a clue that ADD might be a part of my life, I realised that I just didn’t enjoy the pace of the world they way others seemed to. Yes, they would agree that things moved too quickly but they still subscribed to 10e25 channels of nothing, went to violent action movies and never let silence interfere with the constant stream of sound from the car radio or the TV or whatever.
I hate the hypocrisy of hyped up advertising or guys like Don Cherry talking about sports as if it really mattered or the constant music in otherwise nice café that is so loud that it steals my ability to read and think or talk about things that matter with a friend. The background sounds of conversation help create a community but the noise from the speakers is isolating.
One day recently I walked into the Red Brick Café here in Guelph and it was quiet. I told the teenager that served me that I really liked the quietness, hoping to encourage the café to do this more often but that was a mistake. I could see from the look on her face that the silence was an oversight that needed to be rectified. It was only few minutes before the thump thump thump of canned pop music with about as much musicality as my washing machine can muster, filled the place. I suppose it was inevitable but I was still disappointed. Can’t we have a chance to enjoy our thoughts? The worst part was that every room as well as the patios had speakers. There was no escape.
A couple of months ago I disconnected the cable from my TV with the idea that if I didn’t reconnect it within a month I would just have the service terminated. Well, the first part has been great. I bought a set of Looney Tunes DVDs and haven’t had so much fun in a long time. Yes they’re fast, frenetic and zany but they are also very artful and beautifully made.
I used to be a CBC news junky and that was my main reason for subscribing to cable. Not any more. The hype has won over substance. Now they won’t let poor old Mansbridge sit down. They fill the screen with meaningless animated graphics. Vacuous snippets arrive and stop at the bottom of the screen like a subway train every few seconds. This is all so distracting that I can’t watch it anymore. Unfortunately I keep forgetting to call Rogers.
Now that I have a better idea of why my world is so different from that of others, I have started to ask that the music be turned down before I give them my money. My car runs just fine with the radio off. Curling up on the chesterfield with a cat and a book before bed is a great luxury. And, I avoid places like EXTREME PITA simply because the hype tells me that the substance probably isn’t there.
Larynxa says that Rick sounds like a “grumpy old guy” and wonders if “this is what happens when you hit middle age”. Well, I’ve liked simple and quiet over fast and furious forever. Perhaps its the middle age that give me permission to listen to myself and ask for what I need.
I’ve never found an extreme pita… but I would think it’d have to have thick cut bacon… mmm bacon!
my 15 year old son was diagnosed with ADHD years ago, and I thought we had a good handle on dealing with it. Reading your blog made a light come on for me though. My son has never been a sleeper, not as a baby and not as a teenager. I’ve been blaming video games not realizing that it might be another symptom of ADHD. He has now agreed to try the hour of quiet and downtime before bed…if only I could convince him that it also includes no texting during that time!
Geez, Rick, this sounds like one of those “grumpy old guy” rants about how screwed up the world is these days, how screwed up kids are these days, how screwed up music / movies / TV are these days…
And I agree with you, completely. (I wonder if this is what happens when you hit middle age.)
It got me thinking. Then, it got me writing about all the things that made TV so irritating that, if I didn’t turn it off, I’d put my foot through it.
That list is now up to more than 1500 words. Far too long to post here as a reply.
But at least it gave me something to do instead of watching TV.