I used to have a recurring nightmare about my teeth falling out. I would hold out my hand as I helplessly spit out the teeth. I’ve heard it’s a common dream and it probably means something about something.

Over the weekend, I was able to experience this in waking life.

I spent a huge wad of money on replacing some cracked teeth with crowns. The dentist used some temporary cement and told me to go home and see if I was happy with the crowns.

Friday night, I bit into something chewy and felt a tooth come out. I felt around with my tongue and the lack of tooth felt weird. I ran to the bathroom mirror to see the effect: One missing tooth and it’s instant bag-lady.   The horror is too visceral to describe.

I googled “what if my crown falls out” and read all kinds of misinformation and alarmist warnings. I stuck the crown back in my mouth and went to bed, traumatized.

The dentist said to buy tooth cement from the pharmacy but it was worthless. For the next two days, the crown kept falling out with no warning. Then the other crown fell out. Now I had two blank spaces in my mouth: From bag-lady to crack-whore to full hillbilly.

Here is what I learned: Leave your teeth alone! Dont try to fix them if it means getting a crown. Wait until someone hits you in the mouth with a baseball bat. HANG ON TO YOUR REAL TEETH!

Now the crowns have been cemented in, “permanently.”   I don’t know if I’ll ever trust them.

Try taking a photo of your smiling face and black out a tooth, like I did above.   It may remind you to floss.

Patti Smith gave a commencement speech at Pratt Institute on Monday night:

“I’ve been thinking about what I’d like to talk about: Moby Dick, the slaves of Michelangelo, Hans Hoffman, My Bloody Valentine, but now that I’m here, my greatest urge is to speak to you of dental care.   My generation had a rough go, dentally.”

Listen to the whole speech here. No one is wiser, funnier, or cooler.

I don’t know why a gap between the front teeth is so endearing, but I assume it’s something to do with evoking babies. I can’t resist a gap-toothed smile.   It’s only fair that Johnny Depp got the gappest-toothed woman in the world.

My BFF has a gap, and I’d ask my dentist to give me one if I thought he’d cooperate.

Is Brigitte Bardot the modern prototype, or was there someone before her?? (The Wife of Bath doesn’t count.)

A dead “swimsuit model” in a suitcase doesn’t seem very interesting at first glance. I remember another one they found out in the desert somewhere, murdered by some guy on craigslist.

But now the story has branched out in several directions, promising a perfect storm of sensationalist trash.   The murder suspect is a former reality show contestant who has just finished filming another reality show.   And not only that, but the cops have revealed that the victim’s teeth and fingers had been “removed.”

That is where I draw the line, and I hope you agree.   If you have to kill someone and stuff them in a suitcase, so be it. But the teeth removal, no fucking way. It’s just too awful and unfair. It’s such an insult in every way.

Now VH1 will have the choice of scrapping season 3 of “I Love Money,” out of concern for the murder case, or going ahead with some inane excuse that there’s a moral imperative to air the show.   They must be flipping out at VH1, thinking, “God, what a break! Our ratings will go off the chart!”

I don’t know where this will lead,   in terms of creating a frenzy to distract us from the lack of new Michael Jackson minutiae.   But for now we can all be grateful that we’re not stuffed in a suitcase somewhere without our teeth.

And when we watch a reality show and marvel at how crazy those people are, we will know there’s a chance theyr’e even crazier than they look.