Bitten by the Burger Bug, by Arthur Tebbel – Pop Art #183 | @MDWorld

June 5, 2012 Arthur Tebbel 4 Comments

One more week of completely disregarding my stated format, I promise.  I’m just super stressed about something right now and I want to talk to all of you about it.  I promise there’s comedy in here; don’t run away just yet.

I am getting a temporary crown put on tomorrow.  A procedure that is about as unpleasant as it sounds.  I took pretty terrible care of my dental health in my mid-20s and I’ve been paying for it in the last couple years as I slowly slog back to some level of tolerable health.  This is the closest I’ve ever come to understanding any form of religious penance and I can’t tell you how much I wish this could be waved away with some short prayers.  Surgical acts of contrition sucks guys, believe that.

Normally this would just be a small inconvenience, a couple weeks of avoiding foods that might break the temporary crown and trying my best to chew on the other side of my mouth.  In fact, I had the same procedure done two thanksgivings ago and it was really not a problem at all.  This week, however, is Burger Week.  Once a year The Oinkster, a “slow fast food” restaurant in Eagle Rock, does a week where every day is a specialty burger.  There’s a commemorative t-shirt for anyone who attends all seven days and I’ll be damned if I’m going to miss out on a cool t-shirt because of something as trivial as risk of massive dental pain.

I think we can all agree that a good burger has a certain crispiness to it.  The veggie toppings should have a good crunch to them.  I’ve had pieces of bacon that were downright hard.  There’s no shortage of potential pitfalls between two buns.  Or between two grilled cheese sandwiches, as is the case for Thursday’s burger.  There are things that are important in this world and one of those things is driving 20 minutes each way to have a restaurant do better versions of famous fast food hamburgers.

OK, enough whistling in the dark, I’m still freaking out about this.  I read about our own MOTU’s recent disastrous dental trip and that combined with the general cloud of poor fortune that seems to be surrounding the people I care about lately has got me genuinely spooked.  I’m sure I’ll be fine, the rational part of my brain is really confident that this is a routine procedure that hundreds of people have every day and even if something disastrous happens I live less than a mile and a half from my dentist’s office.  Furthermore not getting it done could lead to way more serious problems that would require far more intimidating procedures.  None of that is very fun to think about though so instead I’d like to focus on what a tragedy it would be if I missed a specialty burger.   It’d be a huge tragedy, like six simultaneous Romeo and Juliets.