Click image for larger and more disgusting.First Day Issue / Tierra de los Sueños / TdSPosta
Vampyr3000 / Vleeptron New Smile Project Phase 3
Soon -- maybe a month from now -- I will have Tom Cruise's Smile, and the damn thing will actually chew solid food just like I used to be able to!
But now ... well, about 2 weeks ago, this is what my mouth looked like. Vampyr 3000, all surgical steel and titanium.
I could tell it was so geeky horrible that I asked the dentist if he could take a photo of my mouth while these crazy things were in them. He thought that was a nifty request and ran to get his digital camera. He just sent me the photo via e-mail.
Technically these 4 tall black metal posts are called Pickup Impression Copings. While they were screwed into my jawbone, they made 4 marks in a soft gooey template, which will be the model for my lower teeth. They'll snap into four gold buttons. This procedure lines up the snaps on my gumline with the buttons on the denture.
By the year 3000, this is what Vampires, and other people who like to put on a jewelry and metal show in their mouth, will look like. Behold Vampyr 3000!
The face is Max Schreck, the actor who played Nosfaratu in the 1922 F.W. Murnau silent movie "Nosferatu," aka Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (translated as Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror; also known as Nosferatu: A Symphony of Terror.)
Why is the entire entertainment industry so whacky about vampires?
In the early days of Vampires -- the Bram Stoker novel, the silent movies, Bela Legosi -- Vampires were either late middle-aged or incredibly old. Old guys drooling all over innocent young virgins, and sucking their blood, turning them into their Undead Love Slaves for Eternity.
Now all the vampires are teenage high school California pumped hunk Todds. Fascinating. Teenage high school vampires. Color me thrilled.
My guess is that High School Romance is aleady so confused and miserable and doomed that some producer decided Vampires would make a great metaphor for 16-year-old high school love -- finally an explanation of why everything's so painful, doomed, unsuccessful and miserable at that age.
That would indeed be Hell: To have to live forever as a high school student.
