Give Me Some Tooth

An Albertan dentist bought John Lennon's rotting tooth for $32,000.

Despite inflation, $32,000 can still buy you quite a bit. A cushy car. A home office. Or alternatively, a tooth that has been rotting for over 40 years. Canadian dentist Michael Zuk apparently bid that amount yesterday to win an online auction for John Lennon’s tooth. The tooth had originally been removed by another dentist and given by Lennon to his housekeeper Dorothy Jarlett as a souvenir (we suspect a salary might have been better). When Jarlett turned 90 this year, she decided it was finally time to put the tooth up for auction for the sake of its preservation. Zuk will add the cavity-ridden tooth to his collection, presumably to warn kids what they'll get if they don’t floss: more money than you can possibly imagine and an unsurpassed musical legacy.