Comments

  1. Pacal says

    One of my former Dentists showed movies on a TV screen to entertain patients waiting for their appointments. One day while I was waiting he was showing the film Marathon Man with Laurence Olivier and Dustin Hoffman. The scene they were showing was the one where Dustin is tied into a dentists chair and being tortured with dental instruments and then drilled without any painkiller. Not surprisingly my appointment did not go well.

  2. vanharris says

    I attended a dental practice in Toronto where both the dentist & the nurse assigned to me were a pair of stunning beauties.

    Sadly, they didn’t work the same procedure as in the video on me.

  3. Tim_Danaher says

    Sally Phillips, playing the dentist, is a born-again xtian.

    And to think I used to fancy the pants off her.

  4. Xenithrys says

    My dentist has added a hygienist to her practice, and all of a sudden it’s become essential that I go to the hygienist between dentist’s checkups. I’m going to see another dentist for a second opinion.

  5. Janet Holmes says

    You think you’re suffering! I’ve had orthodontic braces for most of the last year (I’m 49 for heaven’s sake!)but I’m getting them off next Tuesday in time for the convention. O/ I’ve had to keep them stuffed up with wax the whole time to avoid slashing up my cheeks. Old age sucks.

  6. Uncle Glenny says

    PZ, sorry, I can’t give you much sympathy for needing a deep cleaning at your age. You’ve got gums. I had a receding gum line, and a couple teeth were being pushed (translated not rotated) out from the gums, threatening to expose the roots. So in my early twenties, on my own dime, I went to an orthodontist.

    He sent me to a periodontist. I needed gum grafts. Where, you might ask, does the grafting material come from? The palate. That was the worst part, and the source of post-op bleeding.

    The periodontist had said something like I might not want to do any strenuous activity that day. The cab driver on my way home asked me if I’d just gotten into a fight with Mike Tyson. A couple days later the extreme activity of proofing someone’s thesis caused me to spontaneously hemorrhage.

    I got the braces. My teeth migrated pretty easily (not actually a good sign). Thirty years later I still have all my teeth, at least the roots (lots of fillings and crowns – I wish I’d had fluoridated water as a child).

    Janet Holmes:
    I remember the wax, and the long list of foods I wasn’t supposed to eat. But somehow, without thinking about it, I learned to accommodate them, and was eating all that stuff (corn on the cob, pizza crust) I wasn’t supposed to.

    btw, once I fell and smashed my face into a doorjam. The archwire kept one incisor from dislodging completely. Years later that tooth required a root canal, but it’s still (mostly) there.

  7. Amorrn says

    Yeah, going to the dentist sucks, I wish there was some other way to…

    Wait, I’m seeing an opportunity here to make a killing: homeopathic dentistry! Imagine no more painful, time-consuming preocedures, no more burshing twice a day, and especially no more root canals. I’ll just sell you some extra special, extra expensive water to gargle with, and you’ll be good to go. Interested, PZ?

  8. defides says

    @Angus McPresley:

    Doh! It’s precisely because it’s women on a guy that makes the scene humorous. You know, role reversal, that type of thing.

    Good grief.

  9. Chris Hughes says

    Reverse the genders. Is it still funny?

    Does he mean the sexes?

    Smack The Pony was a show written and performed by women, which was refreshing.