DEAD ICONS, DARING DENTISTS, AND A TOOTH DUST FAIRY TALE

Okay, so in case you haven't heard, a Canadian dentist by the name of Michael Zuk is trying to bring back the Beatles. Well, one Beatle anyway. But it has nothing to do with their music. Confused? Allow me to explain. Seems that Dr. Zuk is the proud owner of a discolored molar that once resided inside the mouth of John Lennon. No...seriously. It's absolutely true, not to mention extremely gross. But, again, allow me to explain. See, Zuk purchased the late Beatle's rotten molar at an auction in 2011 (I hate to think of what else was being auctioned off) for the somewhat princely sum of 19,500 pounds and is now intent on using the DNA to clone the late Mr. Lennon. According to an article in The Guardian, Zuk has already begun "sequencing" the aforementioned DNA, which is the first step in the cloning process and exactly what scientists are doing in their efforts to clone a recently discovered (dead) woolly mammoth. Wow.! And I thought I was a Beatles fan just because I own all of their albums and have watched "A Hard Day's Night" a couple hundred times, and cried the first time I visited Strawberry Fields in Central Park. But, clearly, I have nothing on Dr. Zuk.

It gets even better, though. Zuk's interest in John Lennon's icky, yellowed tooth isn't limited to a desire to clone a member of the Fab Four. Zuk is also doing his bit to promote mouth cancer awareness by hawking pendants and a sculpture created from (John Lennon's) "tooth dust", the recording of a parody song called "Love Me Tooth", and a book devoted to photographs of the insides of famous people's mouths. No...seriously. You can read the article yourself. I won't be the least bit offended. But you may find yourself more than a little freaked out by the idea that an otherwise unknown Canadian dentist is committed to "resurrecting" the late great John Lennon.

I'll spare you my in-depth thoughts on the concept of cloning human beings. No doubt you have your own thoughts on the matter. But where we might agree is in regard to Dr. Zuk's assumption that cloning John Lennon would be the same thing as "bringing back one of rock's greatest stars." Because...well....it's not the bloody same, damn it! I mean, John Lennon wasn't just a rock star. He was a person from a specific time and place, to whom certain, specific things happened while he was with certain, specific people (i.e. Aunt Mimi, Paul McCartney, Ed Sullivan...the list goes on into Beatles infinity). So, unless Dr. Zuk and his scientist friends know something I don't about cloning (which is very possible, although in no way a deterrent to my basic feelings regarding the cloning of human beings), it would be impossible to actually bring back the John Lennon who we all knew as John Lennon. I mean, I love Canada (got relatives there and love their bacon), and Montreal was the site of John and Yoko's famous "bed-in" back in 1969, but come on. John Lennon cannot be from Canada. He has to be from Liverpool. And he has to have Paul, George, and Ringo at his side (at least until he meets Yoko and the band breaks up). Does Dr. Zuk have a podiatrist friend who's hoarding a discolored toenail clipping from George Harrison's foot? And what about Sir Paul and Ringo? And Yoko? Would anyone even dare to clone Yoko? My thoughts veer decidedly to the negative side of the (long and winding) road.

Bottom line, I hope that Dr. Zuk raises lots of awareness about mouth cancer and sells enough tooth dust pendants and celebrity teeth picture books to make back the 19,500 pounds he spent buying on John Lennon's discarded molar. But as far as cloning Mr. John Winston Ono Lennon is concerned, I can only warn him to Get Back! And speaking of records (which we are, in a vague, disconnected way), what is it about dentists and John Lennon? You may recall that it was John Lennon's dentist who first "turned him on" to LSD back in 1966, during a dinner party which John, George, and their (at the time) wives attended at the (apparently) groovy dentist's flat in London. You don't recall? Well, suffice it to say that, after drinking the acid-laced coffee that their dentist host served up, the group decided to go out on the town, which was not a great idea, and led to some very confusing and awkward (if not downright scary) moments before the night ended and John went on to write Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds and many other famous songs filled with acid trip imagery that Lennon always insisted was not acid trip imagery, but merely regular imagery that people misinterpreted as acid trip imagery. But I digress! My point was that dentists, as a group, are usually pretty nice people, but get one of them alone in a room with John Lennon or his rotten molar and....well, as I said before....Get Back!

And to those anonymous scientists busily working on cloning that woolly mammoth....look, guys and/or gals, I think that woolly mammoths are adorable, too, and way, way cooler than those trendy, can't throw a Canadian-cured-ham-without-hitting-one llamas (Napoleon Dynamite, remember?), but let's be honest here...what the hell are we supposed to do with a damned woolly mammoth clone? I mean, they went extinct for a reason.  Albert Einstein once said, "God does not play dice with the universe." And even though he didn't come right out and say it, I'm pretty sure ol' Al was warning we lesser beings against rolling the bones as well. So, please, let the woolly mammoths rest in peace, and leave John Lennon in our hearts and in our CD players where he belongs. Besides, how can we even think of a reborn John Lennon walking among us when Ringo Star has yet to be knighted by the Queen? Now that's a cause some Beatles-loving dentist could really sink his or her teeth into, don't you think?

See you in the tunnels....