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Of mutant bread and Frankenstein
01/03/2006 . Source: Mark R. Leeper 
Evelyn got a new kind of bread. It is called "Extreme Wheat Bread." Now most people would not give that a second thought. I am not most people. I am not sure what makes bread extreme. They show sweaty football players on the bag. Not a sight I like to look like over breakfast. That makes the bread experience not so much extreme as repugnant. I did notice that the bread seems to lead an unnatural life. This stuff can be weeks old and it still feels fresh. The other loaf of bread sitting next to it went stale very quickly. It, in fact, was a newer loaf of bread but it got older faster. And there were two funny holes in the neck of the wrapper. It is most mysterious. Meanwhile the extreme wheat bread stayed fresh and happy beyond its time. The loaf of bread gets kept in a breadbox that has a layer of dirt from the field where the wheat was grown. That keeps it fresh indefinitely.
I'm stretching the truth a little, of course, but I wonder what it really means to be such extreme wheat bread? Bakers have been making wheat bread for centuries, probably millennia. But until recently they have never gotten beyond simple wheatness. There is only so far you can go in wheatitude. But now there is extreme wheat bread. I am sure that if they do now have extreme wheat bread it is a sign either that science has gotten smarter or the consumer has gotten dumber. Now this new wheat bread is not just wheat bread but goes all the way to being extreme wheat bread. I think that the special wheatness controls at the bakery now go to eleven.
Correct me if I am wrong, but if you want really extreme wheat bread what you really want is matzoh. That is just wheat and water. You can't get much more extremely wheat than that unless you are simply going to shovel wheat flour into your mouth. If they really wanted to express extreme wheatness on the bread bag they should show guys in peyes and fur hats, not football helmets.
But this use of extreme seems less wheat than just all wheat. Now that I look at the label and the extreme wheat bread has in it other things like Pyridoxine Hydrochloride and Magnesium Oxide. I am sure these do all sorts of yummy things for the bread, but does any of it really increase the wheatness? Does it make it more extremely wheat? Or does putting the name extreme on it mean it will be less so? These are the people who have the wheatiest bread around.
I am reminded of when our book discussion group was reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Somebody bought and read a book whose title was Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. That turned out to be a very different book. Simply calling the book Frankenstein helps to assure that it really is Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, but calling it Mary Shelley's Frankenstein guarantees that it is not Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, but a novelization of a film script.
Actually, in the book world Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is less Mary Shelley's Frankenstein than is Frankenstein. However, in the film world Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is more Mary Shelley's Frankenstein than is Frankenstein. But Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is less Mary Shelley's Frankenstein than is Terror of Frankenstein. Terror of Frankenstein really is very much Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and deserves to be called Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, but that was not what it was called. It was called Victor Frankenstein and then renamed for television. (I could not say that on the radio, and I am not sure it will make sense even here.)
Looking back at my loaf of bread I realized that I had not been honest with you. And I should always be honest. In actual fact the bread is not Extreme Wheat Bread. It is "X-treme Wheat Bread". That is not quite the same thing. These days if you misspell a word it is taken to mean that you are even more sincere about it than if you spelled it correctly. I think the idea is that the speaker is supposed to be a "homeboy" who is less intellectual and is therefore speaking more from the heart. Of course, the name homeboy is itself a misnomer.
Most people who consider themselves homeboys are not really saying that they are people who tend to stay at home. Homeboy sounds like someone who is homely, in the original meaning of "homely." Homeboys are not noted to be people who sit in their homes on Saturday night with not much to do but watch the Sci-Fi Channel movie (which might indeed be Mary Shelley's Frankenstein). This may be the image that the name "homeboy" conjures up, but it does not really fit most people who call themselves homeboys. At least that is my impression of Homeboy language. If my Homeboy is bad I'm moded. It would be def of you not to 86 me.
My bad.
Mark R. Leeper
© Mark R. Leeper 2006
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