There was an episode in the last season of “Mad Men” where Don Draper had a toothache; he solved it with the usual Don style. A cotton ball soaked in whiskey, jammed in the back of his mouth. When his secretary inquired about his surly mood, he said “I have a hot tooth.” I’ve no idea if people said that, but it’s a great line. That said, I have a hot tooth, and it’s the same one that needed the roto-root canal last year. Or I just ground it in my sleep. I’ll find out in the morng from my kindly dentist. If I have to have a root canal on Friday or Monday, so be it; I won’t be there. Dental sedation is a wonderful thing. It’s like falling asleep while they change the oil in your car. Not to compare the skill involved, of course, but you know what I mean.

In related news: took my daughter to Target to get the flu shot, which I had not done before - it got lost in the list of Things to Do, and there was that study last fall that said “hey, they really don’t do much. Sorry.” At least that’s how the study was reported. Hell, that’s how I reported it. It didn’t keep me from getting one, but I’m at Target every other day, so wandering in for a poke while picking up Master’s English Toasting Bread (“Pre-staled for your convenience!”) wasn’t a problem. Then we get hit with a really bad flu season, with the horrible news that two teens in Minnesota have died, and, well:

The line at the Target clinic was out the door.

This was reassuring, in a way. All these nice good conscientious moms were as lax, and overreacting, as I was. Hour and a half wait. We put our name in, and went off to find a place to have supper; ended up at Byerly’s grocery store, which has a wall of hot-food shops and a nice little cafe with a gas fireplace. When we went back to the nook by the fire there was a young woman typing away at a laptop - although I suppose that goes without saying; not many people lug an Olivetti to the cafe these days - and she looked up with that “hrmph. A kid.”

Which I can understand, if this was a bar, instead of a grocery store. It’s as if the act of typing in public somehow bestows rights and privileges that normally accrue to one at home.

This was a controversy today:

"Wow, I'm telling you quarterbacks: You get all the good-looking women," Musburger said as the camera focused on Webb, sitting with McCarron's mother. "What a beautiful woman. Wow!"

Some found the remarks from Musburger, 73, out of line. On Tuesday, ESPN released this statement: "We always try to capture interesting storylines and the relationship between an Auburn grad who is Miss Alabama and the current Alabama quarterback certainly met that test. However, we apologize that the commentary in this instance went too far and Brent understands that."

Is it because of his age? That’s possible. It’s permitted to praise in beauty your own group and above, but not below; then it’s creepy. If you do it, then you’d best find some quaint cute way that removes all possibility of sexual content, and make it some austere aesthetic appreciation of the concept of beauty as manifested by this person, who is also probably a brain surgeon, except that it's demeaning to mention beauty when someone's accomplishments are primary intellectual, unless you're writing in Jezebel, in which case it's complicated. And then when someone writes something about how it's complicated, it's a Buzzfeed story.

It’s one thing to single out random women in the audience and comment on their appearance, and it’s probably best to let the image speak for itself these days, but if you can’t say that a beauty queen is beautiful then we’re into a peculiar area where you're allowed to link to this, but draw no conclusions or make any judgments. (Warning, work -wise legit news site, but contains bikinism.)

Once upon a time the basic nature of men was commonly understood:

There’s a story in the paper about the Lyndale Garden Center, which you do not care about. It’s been gone for a few years, an eyesore, abandoned - a big glass shed that once held a million plants, a cavernous store that had everything you needed to make your backyard verdant. It was squeezed between specialty places and big-box options, and gave up the ghost a few years ago.

Now the area is slated for redevelopment - a big food co-op will go in, along with townhouses and apartments. It’s part of an attempt to destroy the mistakes of the past, which seemed like a good idea at the time: small one-story retail set off from the street by parking lots, feeding off a bigger strip mall down the road. For the last few years they’ve done everything possible to make the area more dense, with high-rise apartments and a new series of blocks that replaced the old ugly mall. I have no idea who would want to live there, but it’s better than what was there, and a sign of how the inner-ring burbs around here are transforming themselves into the opposite of what they started out to be.

Which brings us to this.

I am a fan of old burger-stand lore - the local places remembered with almost painful fondness, mainly because you were 9 years old and recall some really, really fresh fries - good down to the salty shards at the bottom of the bag - and a good hamburger. Henry’s was a chain that flared and guttered, rolled over by the big boys. (Although not Big Boy, which would suffer similar diminution.) There was a Henry’s in Fargo on University Avenue; it’s where we got fast-food in the days before McDonald’s finally came to town. There was also Crown’s and King Leo’s, but that’s another website.

I knew there were Henry’s in the Twin Cities from the old newspaper ads. Around the time I did the Thunderbird site posted yesterday I also did something on Henry’s, having discovered the sign for the Lyndale Henry’s still standing in the lot of the Lyndale Garden Center. It must have cost too much to move it when the street was realigned. Whoever owned the business saw his livelihood vanish, because urban planners had gone to a conference and learned about the rejuvenating effect of curving a street to keep the driver interested. Poof: no more street. No more Henry’s.
At least I think that’s what happened. In any case, the sign survived, and I took pictures. I’ve no idea when it was taken away.

All of which is an excuse to redo the Henry’s site, which I did tonight. . See what I mean about lots of updates? Or quasi-sorta updates? It’s here.

Annnnd there are motels, too. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to find some cotton balls. See you tomorrow.