Seems like the medical industry would be quite happy for us to revert back to the days when George Washington had wooden teeth and Michael Bakunin didn’t have any. He probably ended up having some kind of teeth — I don’t know what kind — after he lost them from scurvy in the infamous Peter and Paul fortress in St. Petersburg, as he went on to marry a young woman when exiled to Siberia and enjoy a long career as an anarchist after his return to Europe. Hardly anyone’s health insurance policy covers dental, so when you go into the dentist’s office for a simple filling: $300. Need a root canal, which probably won’t work anyway and you’ll end up losing the tooth: $1,500. A tooth implant or bridge? I don’t even know because you lost me back at the $1,500 for the root canal. I just have them pulled and leave a space. So far, those spaces have been at the back of my mouth, but I’m sure the day will come when it’s one of my front teeth and I will be consigned to being either a toothless old hag or bankrupt.
When Mark had an appointment with his urologist, who, by the way, is a very nice man and a very competent doctor, I started wondering why anyone would want to be a urologist. Or a proctologist. Or even a gynecologist who gets to deliver babies as a bonus. But I know why someone wants to be a dentist: money! I recently had fillings put across the top of my three bottom teeth, worn down by wear and tear. No Novocain was administered, I was in the dental chair for half an hour tops, and bingo, I owned $575. A few customers like that every day, even with the office overhead, and you’re taking home a big bundle.
I suppose some of this dentist vitriol also comes from the fact that they hurt you — almost all the time. During one of those great root canal experiences where I ended up losing the tooth anyway, the dentist injected Novocain into a nerve that went all the way up into my cheek and had the entire side of my face tingling for months. Or they’re drilling away and suddenly hit a nerve that wasn’t deadened by the Novocain and you’re Dustin Hoffman being tortured by Lawrence Olivier. And every time they put those rubber blockers into my mouth to isolate teeth for x-rays my gag reflex makes me spit the thing out of my mouth and then they make me do it all over again.
Why isn’t dental care covered by insurance? Do they figure the rich people are just going to pay for it no matter how much it costs out of vanity, and the poor people will, after enormous pain and suffering, go to Juarez for a set of false teeth they can afford? In a time when the advertising industry has everyone convinced that the path to success requires a set of big teeth — remember those big white smiles of Hilary Clinton and Barach Obama plastered across our TV screens for months — we’ve come up with an entire category of haves and have-nots: the ones who can afford to buy the veneers and the rest of us with the crooked, slightly yellow teeth of character. Before advertising I never particularly noticed teeth. Now I see that all my friends are in the same character category as me, and it’s comforting, really. Except that none of us want to be hags.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Monday, March 1, 2010
The Olympics
It’s Olympics time again, the Winter Games in Vancouver, where we’re already experiencing the “heartbreak” of Lindsay Vonn, whose entire life has been building towards this moment when she was expected to win as many gold medals as Michael Phelps did in the Summer Games. The heartbreak being, of course, that she was injured just before the games began, that she failed to win multiple golds, and wiped out completely in several races. The list of injuries that led to this disappointment, however, is just as heartbreaking: uprooting a family, a divorce, and not speaking to her father for the last four years. But hey, if that’s what it takes to produce a
world class athlete, who am I to quibble. As these games come to an end, this post is about the previous Olympics, where there was just as much hype and heartbreak.
I was turned off to competitive sports a long time ago when I was on the YMCA swim team as a pre-adolescent. So when the Olympics roll around every four years I usually don’t bother to watch much, even — or especially — the swimming competition.
During the last summer Olympics, however, it was hard to avoid the hype about Michael Phelps and his quest for eight gold medals, more than anyone has ever won in a single Olympics game. I ended up watching him easily win several freestyle events, then swim the heart-stopping butterfly event where he was behind and won only by one-hundredth of a second, and finally swim for his eighth gold medal in the medley relay event, where he had to depend upon his three other teammates to also swim their best race. Now, at 23, he can sit back and watch the endorsements come rolling in. But what does he do with the rest of his life?
I also watched some of the gymnastic events, mostly the girls’ team competition and a few of the individual events. It’s much more difficult to watch a sport like gymnastics as opposed to swimming: the subjectivity of the judges and the opportunity for costly mistakes make it excruciating for me as a spectator and, I imagine, excruciating for a competitor to have to experience. Several times during the course of the competitions the T.V. cameraman stuck his lens in the face of some poor young woman who had just made some momentary, but irreparable, mistake that cost her a medal in her event. Her tears and anguish were on display for millions of people around the world to witness. It’s just another example of the lack of privacy any public figure must relinquish, but you feel sorry for her, nonetheless. And per usual, there were complaints that the judges unfairly awarded a medal to the host country’s Chinese competitor, despite the major error she committed in one of her individual events.
Of course these athletes, with their flag waving and anthem signing gestures of patriotism, complicity agree to participate in these games that are political games as well. They interviewed Serena and Venus Williams about coming to the Olympics despite having to rush back to the States for the U.S Open, and they delivered the expected paean to patriotism: we’re so happy to be representing our country and participating in one of the most exciting and important events in the world. What else could they say? We’d get accused by the media of being unpatriotic and selfish if we didn’t come to play so we have to do this for our careers? We have to show the Chinese that despite their dominance of gold medals, America is still the most powerful imperialistic country in the world and intends to remain as such no matter what it takes? Neither Serena nor Venus won an individual gold medal (they won in the doubles) but neither did the Chinese. Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers was also there to do his patriotic duty to himself by telling the interviewer that his team was a special team that appreciated the significance of representing your country, doing damage control for previous basketball teams of NBA superstars who were accused of not taking the games seriously enough, and damage control for his own reputation as an accused rapist and renegade.
Then there was Dara Torres, the 41-year old wonder who was participating in her fourth or fifth Olympics (not in consecutive order) who was out to prove that with millions of dollars in endorsements to pay for the state of the art training and attention it took to get her body into shape to beat 20-somethings in the 50 meter freestyle, anyone could be in the Olympics at 41. They showed pictures of trainers walking on her muscles for massage, while others hovered over her weight-lifting routines, and still others directed her Pilates, yoga, and meditation sessions. All for her eleven seconds of fame, where she came in second. She was very gracious and smiled her toothy grin, but you can bet she was devastated.
So back to what you do with your life after the gold or silver. Mark Spitz became a dentist, of all things (see the blog spot Dental Insurance, Or the Lack Thereof). Michael Phelps gets caught smoking a hookah on camera. Some of the ice skaters join the Ice Capades, a few become sports commentators, but most of them join the rest of us in obscurity, where we have to generate our own sense of self worth without the aid of the TV camera. I finally threw out all my swimming medals from when I was a kid when my own children were still kids. Max was appalled, and made me give him several golds to put in his pile of accumulated junk. Now his chess trophies line the top of the dresser in his former room, and when he comes home for xmas/hannukah this year we’re going to make him put them away somewhere so we have more room for our accumulated junk.
A postscript about the Winter Olympics. Because NBC overbid for the rights to broadcast the games and had to make as much money as possible, the frequency of commercials ruined my already lackluster attempts at watching even the interesting sports, like figure skating. After two hours of commercial bombardment during prime time at night, like most baby boomers I was already nodding out by nine, when they showed the skaters in contention for the medals, and asleep by ten (only for a couple of hours, though, as that’s all I get at one stretch these days; if they aired the show at midnight, I might have seen a few triple axels or double salchows, whatever they are). Ah well, it’s finally over, the Canadian hockey team beating the Americans. Amen.
world class athlete, who am I to quibble. As these games come to an end, this post is about the previous Olympics, where there was just as much hype and heartbreak.
I was turned off to competitive sports a long time ago when I was on the YMCA swim team as a pre-adolescent. So when the Olympics roll around every four years I usually don’t bother to watch much, even — or especially — the swimming competition.
During the last summer Olympics, however, it was hard to avoid the hype about Michael Phelps and his quest for eight gold medals, more than anyone has ever won in a single Olympics game. I ended up watching him easily win several freestyle events, then swim the heart-stopping butterfly event where he was behind and won only by one-hundredth of a second, and finally swim for his eighth gold medal in the medley relay event, where he had to depend upon his three other teammates to also swim their best race. Now, at 23, he can sit back and watch the endorsements come rolling in. But what does he do with the rest of his life?
I also watched some of the gymnastic events, mostly the girls’ team competition and a few of the individual events. It’s much more difficult to watch a sport like gymnastics as opposed to swimming: the subjectivity of the judges and the opportunity for costly mistakes make it excruciating for me as a spectator and, I imagine, excruciating for a competitor to have to experience. Several times during the course of the competitions the T.V. cameraman stuck his lens in the face of some poor young woman who had just made some momentary, but irreparable, mistake that cost her a medal in her event. Her tears and anguish were on display for millions of people around the world to witness. It’s just another example of the lack of privacy any public figure must relinquish, but you feel sorry for her, nonetheless. And per usual, there were complaints that the judges unfairly awarded a medal to the host country’s Chinese competitor, despite the major error she committed in one of her individual events.
Of course these athletes, with their flag waving and anthem signing gestures of patriotism, complicity agree to participate in these games that are political games as well. They interviewed Serena and Venus Williams about coming to the Olympics despite having to rush back to the States for the U.S Open, and they delivered the expected paean to patriotism: we’re so happy to be representing our country and participating in one of the most exciting and important events in the world. What else could they say? We’d get accused by the media of being unpatriotic and selfish if we didn’t come to play so we have to do this for our careers? We have to show the Chinese that despite their dominance of gold medals, America is still the most powerful imperialistic country in the world and intends to remain as such no matter what it takes? Neither Serena nor Venus won an individual gold medal (they won in the doubles) but neither did the Chinese. Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers was also there to do his patriotic duty to himself by telling the interviewer that his team was a special team that appreciated the significance of representing your country, doing damage control for previous basketball teams of NBA superstars who were accused of not taking the games seriously enough, and damage control for his own reputation as an accused rapist and renegade.
Then there was Dara Torres, the 41-year old wonder who was participating in her fourth or fifth Olympics (not in consecutive order) who was out to prove that with millions of dollars in endorsements to pay for the state of the art training and attention it took to get her body into shape to beat 20-somethings in the 50 meter freestyle, anyone could be in the Olympics at 41. They showed pictures of trainers walking on her muscles for massage, while others hovered over her weight-lifting routines, and still others directed her Pilates, yoga, and meditation sessions. All for her eleven seconds of fame, where she came in second. She was very gracious and smiled her toothy grin, but you can bet she was devastated.
So back to what you do with your life after the gold or silver. Mark Spitz became a dentist, of all things (see the blog spot Dental Insurance, Or the Lack Thereof). Michael Phelps gets caught smoking a hookah on camera. Some of the ice skaters join the Ice Capades, a few become sports commentators, but most of them join the rest of us in obscurity, where we have to generate our own sense of self worth without the aid of the TV camera. I finally threw out all my swimming medals from when I was a kid when my own children were still kids. Max was appalled, and made me give him several golds to put in his pile of accumulated junk. Now his chess trophies line the top of the dresser in his former room, and when he comes home for xmas/hannukah this year we’re going to make him put them away somewhere so we have more room for our accumulated junk.
A postscript about the Winter Olympics. Because NBC overbid for the rights to broadcast the games and had to make as much money as possible, the frequency of commercials ruined my already lackluster attempts at watching even the interesting sports, like figure skating. After two hours of commercial bombardment during prime time at night, like most baby boomers I was already nodding out by nine, when they showed the skaters in contention for the medals, and asleep by ten (only for a couple of hours, though, as that’s all I get at one stretch these days; if they aired the show at midnight, I might have seen a few triple axels or double salchows, whatever they are). Ah well, it’s finally over, the Canadian hockey team beating the Americans. Amen.
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