By Dr Jeff Golub-Evans, the SmileGuru

During the campaign, President-Elect Obama had an engaging, winning smile; One reason was that his teeth were literally smiling. There are times when he may have been yawning, pausing, or thinking, but it appeared that he was smiling because his teeth are shaped in an arch form that enables him to just open his mouth to smile. It should be pointed out, however, that we have not seen much of that Obama winning smile since he got elected, since he met with George Bush and found out the true state of the nation’s economy, since he began hanging out with potty-mouthed Rahm Emanuel, started hiring those diverse cabinet members, began dealing with the Blagojevich issue, and hired Pastor Rob Warren as an Inauguration participant. It would be sad to see those big bold teeth of his get ground down from stress over the next four years, but it’s probably inevitable. It goes with the job.

Barak Obama’s smiling teeth are a design I’ve use for two decades in the modeling industry. I’ve extended many a supermodel’s working years when I crafted smiling teeth. Those women have never had to smile to look like they are smiling. They’ve just had to open their mouth and Presto.!….instant smile. The added benefit? They rarely develop any premature smile lines ( wrinkles around their lips or eyes).

A tooth whitening might have helped

Perhaps the election results would have been different if the Republican candidate and his advisers had some dental foresight. For John McCain it was particularly hard work to smile because his teeth are so short. They’ve been abraded through the years, a telltale sign of aging. He had to work harder than the other candidates to smile. Senator McCain had to physically force his mouth apart to show any upper teeth. Often that extra effort appeared as a grimace or a sarcastic look, but it may very well have been just the man trying hard to smile. Too bad; it could have been easily corrected. As we mature, the tissue of the face drops, and we show more of our bottom teeth when we talk….. and less of our top teeth. Senator McCain was still talking with his top teeth four years ago, but his political shift to the right was matched with the shift of his smile downward. McCain’s teeth were also much darker than the other three candidates’ teeth…..another sign of aging.

Senator McCain had to work harder to smile

With so much emphasis on the look of the Republican vice-presidential candidate, with her $150,000 clothing allowance, and her $22,000 per week make up artist, you would think that someone in the Republican organization might have suggested a $600 in-office dental whitening for the Republican presidential candidate. It would have cost less than a Sarah Palin eyebrow for the day. No time for a dental office visit? A $26 box of Crest Whitestrips used twice a day for a week probably would have taken 10 years of pigment off McCain’s teeth. If the Senator’s campaign advisers had been thinking ahead, long before the first primary election, they might have even arranged for ten upper porcelain veneers for the Republican presidential candidate, at a cost of $15,000-$22,000. That would have been less than the $22,000 for one week of the high-priced Palin makeup artist, and would have lasted a lot longer than one campaign stop, more like 15-18 years.

Barak Obama's winning smile

Governor Sarah Palin has TV Beauty Pageant teeth. Through the years we have provided that cookie-cutter smile style hundreds of times for beauty contestants, models and aspiring actresses, Hers are a perfect match for her, delivering the message “ I’m a beautiful All-American woman . The shape of her teeth and her glasses match and echo the square shape of her face, a good design choice. The age-appropriate color is one we have chosen often for news anchors and working actresses and radiate confidence and attractiveness. The Governor’s makeup artist must have enjoyed applying color to those lips with such an engaging grid of smile architecture behind. Time will tell whether the words spewing out of her attractive smile four years from now will sound any wiser than they did in this last campaign.

Governor Palin's pageant teeth

Senator Joe Biden has an exaggerated Bill Clintonesque presidential look, and has been well made: gray hair transplants, well-fitted suits, and cosmetic dentistry. He looks the part, though some patients of mine have said that he is a living caricature of a presidential look combined with that of a used car salesman. His smile may too perfect, a bit too white, and a bit too wide. On the other hand, tkhe Dean of New York University College of Dentistry mentioned at a graduation ceremony several years ago, that an over 70-something morning talk show host, (Regis), had “successfully raised the bar on white,” Perhaps it gave permission for almost-70-something, like Senator Biden, to do the same.

Senator Biden's too white smile?

We live in a wonderful age. Everyone can have white teeth, and the process can be safe, effective and affordable. Three of our four candidates ( or their advisers) have discovered this fact. Americans know it too. They know that a white smile has become a standard fashion accessory, not only for supermodels, pageant queens, news anchors and actresses , but also for regular folks and surely for their candidates. What about the past smiling history of our presidents? George W. Bush has his father’s old man smile, Clinton has a full-face expressive smile, Kennedy had a celebrity smile, , Nixon’s smile? Did we ever see Nixon smile?, Eisenhower’s was grandfatherly and Reagan’s smile was folksy and off-centered. It is well known that George Washington sported a set of wooden teeth, and less known that an extra special set was made for him on a silver base by none other than Paul Revere ( yes, that Paul Revere). Could it have possibly been made with lighter teeth for special public occasions? I’m Dr. Jeff Golub-Evans, the SmileGuru, and I approve this message.

EXPECTATIONS OF EXCELLENCE

“I just realized what tough job you have, Doc, ” A wall street money manager was trying to talk through the Novocaine, assorted cotton rolls and gloved fingers in his mouth as I was preparing his veneers. “I can have a bad day,” he said. “You cant. In fact you can’t have a bad minute on any day. I can lose a fortune in one day, but I can recapture it the next day or a year later. There’s always tomorrow in the financial industry. But these veneers are now ,” he said, ” Then I’m gone; the next person’s bondings are next . You have to be at the top of your game all the time for each and every patient.” When he went on to remind me that the pressure must be enormous, I told him perhaps that’s probably why I do yoga three times a week.

One the one hand, he’s completely right of course. I do feel an Expectation of Excellence at every moment. It’s OK. I grew up with it. My Dad demanded it. One time I came home with a report card that had six A’s and one B+. He pointed to the B+ and said, “What happened here, son?

On the other hand, he’s completely wrong. Although some patients do have an emotional attachment to the immediacy of an excellent outcome, if bonding and veneers are not 100% successful on the first day, they can be looked at as a creative process, as an art form that can find Excellence after several sessions. Although there is always an Expectation of Excellence, cosmetic restorations can be redone safely and effectively if necessary. It’s unusual, but when it happens, the results are often spectacular.

I Join the Church Choir

I was thinking about the Expectation of Excellence as I was about to sing in my wife’s choir last Sunday morning. Alecia is a talented operatic performer and choral director who leads the First Congregational Church Choir of Washington, Connecticut . How did I come to sing with this group? About five years ago Alecia told me she had taken the choir director’s position, and with a rehearsal on Thursday evenings and a newborn Eva, she asked if I could leave work a little early on Thursdays to baby sit for the little one . I agreed and made arrangements to do that when my schedule freed up. On the first afternoon of my planned babysitting, I called my wife to tell her I was leaving the city. She said ” I don’t need a babysitter anymore: I needed a baritone.” …….And so it came to pass that I began to sing and have continued to sing in the church choir. I like it. The music is uplifting, and the choir box is the best place to feel the spirit and hear a sermon, but also to check the Blackberry undetected. I also like wearing the long red robe: it keeps me warm in the drafty church.

Struggling to Sing

This Sunday however, I was struggling to sing. I was laboring with a bad cold and feeling the pressure of my being one of only two baritones who had shown up. And there was that Expectation of Excellence pressuring me to be able to sing full voice without cracking. My other baritone buddies who I’d come to rely on for vocal output had probably seen the early morning snow and had “slept in” on this picturesque New England morning. . The pressure was on for an Expectation of Excellence. I was to be fifty percent of the vocal output from my section. My wife raised her hands and gave me the encouraging look of ” You can do it…. or rather, you can sing it” I caught Wendy, the High School Principal, out of the corner of my eye in the third pew. Wendy is our vocal benchmark. Most choir pieces, if sung well, make her cry. If the sound is pure and uplifting , she bawls. If the sound is just ok, she fidgets. I knew my part, and I was pushing for the extravagant wet-faced bawl.

I had managed to get through the early morning rehearsal after downing tons of cough medicine, cough drops and assorted cold remedies. I actually didn’t feel too bad. I just had this urge to cough, and sneeze, and cough again, but I was sure I would able to control it and sing out. I was feeling great as the choir began its first piece. With one eye on Alecia’s leadership and the other on Wendy’s tears-or-not approval rating, I sang out the out the first line past my scratchy throat. And then it came…. a bronchial rumble, an uncontrollable fit of coughing, a cacophony of hacking and wheezing, a spell that lasted through all the “Hallelujahs” and the “Forever’s” and all the “And he shall reign forever and evers” right to the end of the piece. As the choir stood standing and singing, I was sure the congregation could see that my robe and me were visibly doubled over. I occasionally straightened up gasping for air amid Handel’s ascendant work to check in with Wendy the High School Principal. She was not bawling. She was whispering and fidgeting.

I had dropped the ball, missed my cue, probably distracted my teammates, disappointed the coach (my wife) and denied Wendy the Principal the uplifting experience she has come to expect on Sunday mornings. How does Celine Dion do it, or Wayne Newton night after night? I once watched Michael Jordan play a championship game with flu-like symptoms and 103 degree temperature. They had to give him fluids on the sidelines, but he scored 44 points and won the game with a last minute shot. Then they took him to the hospital.

The Wall Street guy had hit upon something, but I discovered mine was not the only profession with a minute-by-minute Expectation of Excellence. Live performance, whether it is an entertainer’s act, an athlete’s fortitude or a doctor’s cosmetic craft all have an immediacy of participation, a defined moment of time when it must be good. On Monday I wore two masks and downed lots of extra cough remedies and performed some beautiful veneering work (according to a most happy patient). The few times I started coughing, I excused myself, only to return a few minutes later and apparently achieved the Excellence that was Expected.

A Happy Veneer Patient

Hugh Jackman was in the office the other day and I asked him, “You sang and danced in ‘ A Boy from Oz’ for entire year on Broadway. You never left the stage: You were the entire show. Did you ever have a cold?” He answered,”I was sick for a month.” “How did you sing,” I asked. He replied. ” You just do it. You have to. ” I guess I just don’t have it in that field. I’ll stick to designing smiles.

Very few places in the world can rival Jaipur, Rajasthan, India for the variety of human transport on the road from Jaipur’s airport to its center city. Through the years I’ve traveled that road many times to teach cosmetic dentistry in the fabled “Pink City.”

On that airport road I’ve seen every manner of human transportation that has existed over the last 20,000 years - people walking, people riding on elephants, donkeys and camels; people on bikes and motorcycles, Arabs (from their clothing) in caravans of Mercedes limousines, lots of conventional cars, taxis, buses and three wheeled cabs; rickshaws, Pedi cabs, carts pulled by horses, carts pulled by donkeys, carts pulled by water buffalo, and even carts pulled by goats. My five-year-old daughter seemed surprised that that I did not mention magic carpets when I told her this tale. There was also a fellow walking on the road with an entire household of furniture perched on his head. Not possible, you say? Then you haven’t been on the airport road to Jaipur. I also learned an important rule of the road – traffic moves as fast as the slowest method of getting from one place to another, in this case- bare feet.

Arundhati Roy, in her novel, “The God of Small Things,” talks of India as being a most unusual civilization, the oldest continuous culture on the planet. Since lots of those barefoot guys walking on the road in Jaipur are talking into cell phones, she has said, ”India is the only place on the planet that exists in the 20th century and 20 thousand years ago at exactly the same time. “

"Big Apple” woodcut, 12” by 12” by Jeff Golub-Evans

How Celebrities Get to Us
I was reminded of Jaipur’s airport road this week as a New York businessman arrived at the New York Center for Cosmetic Dentistry in a black Cadillac Escalade stretch limo. I had never seen one of those, not even on Jaipur’s airport road, and I remarked that it had been a long time since I had seen a uniformed driver in America with a chauffeur’s hat. It started me thinking about all the means of human transport that our patients use to get to the New York Center for Cosmetic Dentistry. We treat lots of regular folks who take trains, buses, taxis, private cars and planes from near and far, but what about the celebrated crowd? What about those folks in the public eye, the celebrities in People Magazine we treat? How do Regis and football’s Tom Brady get to us? By taxi?

Hugh Jackman is People Magazine's "World's Sexiest Man"

The Answers:

Our icons of beauty like Paulina Porizkova, Padma Lakshmi and Bridget Moynahan, all at one time downtown girls, would get uptown to us by taxi or private car, though I once did watch Paulina speed away on her motorcycle. We’ve also seen lots of models and actors on bikes, scooters and motorbikes. Hugh Jackman, an icon of beauty in his own right, takes the subway, sporting a camouflaging goofy hat and often with a child in tow. (People Magazine recently named him the World’s Sexiest Man. Our staff would agree.) Harry, a retired brigadier general, glides into the waiting room and up the stairs on rollerblades. Private equity bankers and hedge fund managers sometimes have his and her cars and drivers, and we have had the occasion of both the husband and wife in our office at the same time while their two drivers are waiting outside schmoozing. Wayne Newton has piloted his own plane from Las Vegas to Teeterboro Airport in New Jersey to get to us. Kim Catrall, the Yankees’ Jason Giambi and Jorge Posada and other famous locals walk a few blocks to our office. And yes, Regis and Tom Brady take taxis, but none can rival Usher for sheer visual impact the first time he arrived at the office.

Usher arrives in style

Usher’s Vehicles
One day Usher’s mom, who is also his manager, called to say that he needed some treatment and could be at the NYCCD later that afternoon. He was in town rehearsing for a starring role in the Broadway musical, “Chicago,” and had just garnered another set of Grammy Awards. The female staff was so excited to meet him. At 4:30pm we noticed a line of nine black limousines pulling up outside our brownstone on East 71st Street - six Cadillac Escalades and three Lincoln Navigators. The little old ladies in the buildings across the street were hanging out of their windows, craning their necks for a look, assuming that perhaps President George Bush was paying us a visit. Thirty people then spilled out of those vehicles, including five or six really big guys, football-lineman looking guys, guys who looked like they were wearing bulletproof vests under their jackets even if they weren’t. Also spilling out onto the street was a score of beautiful little women in evening dresses and strapped high heels. An advance party of two of the women and one of the burly guys made their way into the office where they politely asked to see the facility, walked into every room, checked a few locked doors, and felt content to go back out and send in the Man. The rest of the tale is private, but suffice it to say that after that introduction, we were surprised to meet such a gracious, well-spoken, demonstrably appreciative young man. In fact, he went beyond that. We have a regulation at the NYCCD, which is that staff is requested not to ask any celebrated clients for their autographs so that they can feel comfortable and protected in our environment. The staff honored that requirement, and no one asked for an autograph. When we completed the work and he was about to leave and join his vehicular entourage, he said “Doesn’t anyone want an autograph?” As the staff excitedly went to retrieve notepads, napkins, post-its and other scraps of paper, Usher calmly used his cell phone to call someone in one of the cars. Soon stacks of Vibe Magazines appeared, each with a picture of the star on the cover. He sat and took the time to personally sign every one of them.

Usher’s Kindness

Even more impressive was that there was a fourteen-year-old girl in a treatment room having her teeth whitened who heard the buzz that Usher was in the building. She was locked into the timing of the lamp, the isolating material and the bleaching gel and was beside herself that she could not move to gaze upon the man whose music she loved. I mentioned to him that a big fan was upset that she couldn’t meet him. He bounded back upstairs and into the treatment room. “How are you doing,” he asked. She garbled beneath the mask and cotton rolls and gel, “Is it really you?” He lifted his sweatshirt to show his famous MTV abs. “It’s me,” he said. As she practically fainted he darted downstairs and outside to his waiting chain of Escalades and Navigators, ready to usher Usher to Philadelphia for a performance that evening.

The next morning a British gentleman arrived for a consultation. I was curious how he had been referred to us. Was it by another patient, or a magazine article, or the Internet? I asked, “How did you get to us,” he answered, “I took the 6 train.”